The Golden Ball- Grauman (MI-KY) 1883/1915 Gardner
[From Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan; 1939, Gardner and Chickering. Their notes follow. See McIntosh 1945 version with similar text. See also Kittredge (1917 JOAFL) and the article by Gilchrist and Broadwood.
In The Gallows and the Golden Ball: An Analysis of "The Maid Freed from the Gallows" (Child 95) by Ingeborg Urcia she writes:
In an appendix to Henderson's Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Border, Baring-Gould gives a version from Yorkshire to which a short introductory story is attached. This introductory story has two variants. In one form a girl is given a golden ball by a stranger, and for losing it is condemned to death. The other form of the story tells about a servant girl who has to clean a golden ball of a rich lady every day. Eventually she loses it and is supposed to be hung. In both cases the girl does not appeal to her relatives for money, but asks whether they have found the golden ball, which her lover finally brings. Here the relatives do not appear as cruel as usual, since the loss of the ball is not their fault and they may not have been able to find the ball. But even then they seem to gloat in her misfortune, having explicitly come to see her executed.
R. Matteson 2012, 2015]
50 THE GOLDEN BALL
(The Maid Freed from the Gallows, Child, No. 95)
The Michigan form, except for die lack of dialect and for the use of "golden ball" for "goold," is very similar to a version M Child, V, 296. Reed Smith, pp. 93-94, concludes his scholarly study of the ballad with its use as a game and the following resumed "In the game of the 'Golden Ball,' the wheel of the ballad has come full circle. Composed before Chaucer's pilgrimage, sung in England and Scotland during the spacious times of Queen Elizabeth, recorded by the antiquarian scholar Bishop Thomas Percy in the days of George III, just before the American Revolution, scattered over most of the countries of Europe, crossing the Atlantic with the early settlers and still lingering in out-of-the-way places in both America and Great Britain, the ballad of 'The Maid Freed from the Gallows' has in the end become a rude rustic English tale, a Negro cante-fable in the Bahamas and the West Indies, a playlet at a Negro school commencement, and a children's game in the slums of New York City. A long life and a varied one." For additional discussion and references see Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth, pp. 206-213; Davis, pp. 360-382; Hudson, p. 16, Scarborough, pp. 196-200, and Smith, pp. 80-94. For some Negro forms of the ballad see Martha M. Beckwith, "The English Ballad in Jamaica," PMLA, XXXIX, 475-476, Henry, JAFL, XLII, 272-273; Walter Jekyll, Jamaican Song and Story (London, 1907), pp 58-59; Elsie Clews Parsons, Folk-Tales of Andtos Island, Bahamas (New York, 1918), pp. 152-154; and Scarborough, On the Trail of Negro Folk-Songs, pp. 34-43.
The present version was obtained in 1915 from Miss Grauman, a student in Michigan State Normal College, Ypsilann, Michigan; she had learned the song in childhood from hearing it sung by an Irish nursegirl in Louisville, Kentucky, about 1883.
fa-ther's face, A man - y, a man - y a mile."
1. "O hangman, hangman, hold your ropes,
O hold them for a while;
I think I see my father's face,
A many, a many a mile."
2 "O father, have you brought the ball,
And come to set me free?
Or have you come to see me die
Beneath the gallows tree?"
3 "I have not brought the golden ball,
Nor come to set you free;
But I have come to see you die
Beneath the gallows tree."
4 "O hangman, hangman, hold your ropes,
0 hold them for a while;
1 think I see my mother's face,
A many, a many a mile.
5 "O mother, have you brought the ball,
And come to set me free?
Or have you come to see me die
Beneath the gallows tree?"
6 "I have not brought the golden ball,
Nor come to set you free;
But I have come to see you die
Beneath the gallows tree."
7 "O hangman, hangman, hold your ropes,
O hold them for a while;
I think I see my brother's face,
A many, a many a mile.
8 "O brother, have you brought the ball,
And come to set me free?
Or have you come to see me die
Beneath the gallows tree?"
9 "I have not brought the golden ball,
Nor come to set you free;
But I have come to see you die
Beneath the gallows tree."
10 "O hangman, hangman, hold your ropes,
0 hold them for a while;
I think I see my sister's face,
A many, a many a mile.
11 "O sister, have you brought the ball,
And come to set me free?
Or have you come to see me die
Beneath the gallows tree?"
12 "I have not brought the golden ball,
Nor come to set you free;
But I have come to see you die
Beneath the gallows tree."
13 "O hangman, hangman, hold you ropes,
O hold them for a while;
I think I see my sweetheart's face,
A many, a many a mile.
14 "O sweetheart, have you brought the ball,
And come to set me free?
Or have you come to see me die
Beneath the gallows tree?"
15 "I have not come to see you die
Beneath the gallows tree;
For I have brought the golden ball,
And come to set you free."