The Gypsen Davy- Coates (TN) 1916 Sharp A
[My title. From: English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians; collected by Cecil J. Sharp also Olive Dame Campbell. Edited by Maud Karpeles; Volume I, published 1917, 1932. Notes from 1932 edition follow, then Sharp's diary entry.
Below is a great excerpt from an article by Yates.
R. Matteson 2012, 2015]
Notes No. 33. The Gypsy Laddie.
Texts without tunes:—-Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 200. C. S. Burne's Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 550. Gavin Greig's Folk-Song of the North-East, ii, art. 110. Irish and English broadsides. Garret's Merrie Book o' Garlands, vol. i. A. Williams's Folk Songs of the Upper Thames, p. 120. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xix. 294; xxiv. 346; xxv. 171-5. Broadside by H. de Marsan, New York (a comic parody).
Texts with tunes:—-Songs of the West, 2nd ed., No. 50. Folk Songs from Somerset, No. 9 (also published English Folk Songs, Selected Edition, i. 13, and One Hundred English Folk-Songs, p. 13). Gavin Greig's Last Leaves, No. 60. Scots Musical Museum, ii, No. 181. Cox's Folk Songs of the South, pp. 130 and 524. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xviii. 191 ; xxii. 80 (tune only) ; xxx. 323. British Ballads from Maine, p. 269. Davis's Traditional Ballads of Virginia, pp. 423 and 590. McGill's Folk Songs of the Kentucky Mountains, p. 15. Sandburg's American Songbag, p. 311.
Version A is published with pianoforte accompaniment in Folk Songs of English Origin, 2nd Series.
The first two lines of the second stanza of text A provide a good instance of the stereotyped idiom of the ballad. Owing to the almost invariable description of a 'steed' as 'milk-white' the term has come to lose its literal significance, and in the mind of the singer a 'milk-white steed' means merely a horse. Similarly the folk will sing without any sense of contradiction of a 'false true lover.'
Sharp's diary 1916 page 264. Friday 1 September 1916 - Rocky Fork
Mrs Crane having arranged to take us to see her father Mr Blankenship we left home at 7 and called for her. She took us a weary stony walk up to the top of Higgins Creek where we made friends with the B[lankenship] family a large number of relatives belonging to three or more generations! Got a few songs and on the way home called on Mr and Mrs Coates from the latter of whom I got a fine ballad The False Knight [on the Road] and an interesting variant of Wraggle Taggle Gipsies O. Altogether a very successful if fatiguing day. We must have walked 14 miles over very bad tracks. We got back thoroughly tired out at 6.30 p.m. nearly 12 hours since we left in the morning.
The Greatest Prize [Excerpt]
Eliza and Gabriel Coates
by Mike Yates - 3.3.05
September 1, 1916 was, according to Cecil Sharp a wet and dismal day. Sharp was in Unicoi County, Tennessee, collecting songs with the help of his secretary, Maud Karpeles. The pair had trudged some 14 miles on foot that day, but their journeying had yielded little in the way of folksongs. But things were to change suddenly, as Miss Karpeles noted in her unpublished autobiography:
But I think that the greatest prize was the one that we secured at the end of a long and disappointing day when we had been on the go from six a.m. to six p.m. We had obtained practically nothing of value, and we were walking a few miles of the end of our tramp we noticed a log-cabin perched on top of a sharp incline. We debated whether we should or should not make one more attempt and finally decided to call at the cabin, though not very hopefully; but after a short conversation there fell on our ears The False Knight on the Road, surely one of the most dramatic ballads in the English language. Cecil Sharp's diary account was more succinct:
Got a few songs and on the way home called on Mr & Mrs Coates, from the latter of whom I got a fine ballad The False Knight and an interesting variant of The Wraggle Taggle Gipsies O. Altogether a very successful if fatiguing day.
Sharp and Karpeles were in the area around Flag Pond, Tennessee, a small settlement just over the State line from Madison and Yancey Counties in North Carolina. By chance they had stumbled upon the home of Eliza and Gabriel Coates who, over a two day period, gave Sharp a total of nine songs, including their first version of the ballad The False Knight upon the Road (Roud 20, Child 3). Eight of the songs came from Eliza and one song, Lazarus (Roud 6566), from the singing of both Eliza and Gabriel. For some reason, Sharp noted Gabriel's name as 'T G Coates', although his correct name was James Gabriel Coates and his family knew him as Gabriel. Eliza, who was better known as 'Liza', was simply referred to as 'Mrs T G Coates' by Sharp.
We now know that James Gabriel Coates (born July 12, 1856 - died March 8, 1929) was the son of John W Coates and Winnie Emmaline Coates, née Ray. In 1892 James Gabriel Coates married Eliza (Liza) Jane Allen (born November 15, 1866 - died February 10, 1936), the daughter of Nathan O Allen and Martha Lucinda Allen, née Wheeler. Despite living in 'grinding poverty' (a phrase used by their grandchildren) Gabriel and Eliza managed to raise a large family, comprising 4 sons and 6 daughters, one of whom, Elizabeth 'Lizzy' Jane (born 1902 -died 1995), was singing a 27 stanza version of Mathey Groves until shortly before she died. Lizzy had made it to college and became a teacher, as did two of her sisters. According to Coates' family tradition, the first members of the family had arrived in America as 'Irish missionaries' and had settled originally in South Carolina; whilst the Allen family believed that they were of 'German-Dutch' origin. This latter comment is interesting, especially as when Cecil Sharp met Mrs Coates' brother, the singer John Allen of Boldens Creek, Yancey County, NC, on October 7, 1918, Sharp called Mr Allen 'a tall Scotchman'.[1]
Recently Malcolm Talor, Elaine Bradtke and myself included Eliza Coates' splendid version of The False Knight upon the Road in the book Dear Companion.[2] But this was not the only version of the ballad that Sharp was to find in the Appalachians. Eleven days after meeting Mrs Coates, Cecil Sharp was to note a second version from Jane Gentry of Hot Springs in Madison County, NC, and I am inclined to think that it was the discovery of Mrs Coates' version that prompted Sharp to ask Mrs Gentry whether or not she knew the ballad as well.[3] Mrs Coates' version of The False Knight appears to be unique in that it includes a sung opening line, 'The false knight met a child in the road', which is used to 'set the scene' of the ballad.
Both versions of The False Knight upon the Road were included in Sharp's monumental 2 volume set English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians' (London, 1932, reprinted 1952 and 1960). Also included in these volumes were the Coates' versions of Lazarus (Roud 6566), The Gypsy Laddie (Roud 1, Child 200), The False Lover's Farewell (Roud 419), Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies (Roud 451) and The Sheffield Apprentice (Roud 399). Lazarus was not the ballad that Professor Child had included in his collection (Dives and Lazarus - Child 56, Roud 477), but, rather, a later religious song, which some collectors have, over the years, tried to 'claim' as the 'Child ballad'.[4] It is also distinct from another, and similarly titled piece, Po' Lazarus (Roud 4180), which has been noted on a number of occasions in the American South.[5]
Notes:
1 - For a photograph of John Allen see my article Cecil Sharp in America on the Musical Traditions website.
2 - Dear Companion. Appalachian Traditional Songs and Singers from the Cecil Sharp Collection. London. EFDSS. 2004. pp.45-46.
3 - For Jane Gentry's version of The False Knight Upon the Road see Betty N Smith, Jane Hicks Gentry. A Singer Amongst Singers. University Press of Kentucky. 1998. p.140.
4 - A version recorded in 1939 from the Kentucky singer Aunt Molly Jackson was included on the Library of Congress LP Child Ballads Traditional in the United States (AFS L57), for example.
5 - See, for example, the three versions on the CD Southern Journey. Volume 5 - Bad Man Ballads (Rounder 1705).
A. [The Gypsen Davy]- Coates (TN) 1916
1 It was late at night when the squire came home,
Enquiring for his lady;
The servants made a sure reply:
She's gone with the gypsen Davy.
CHORUS: Rattle tum a-gypsen, gypsen,
Rattle tum a-gypsen Davy.
2 O go catch up my milk-white steed,
He's black and then he's speedy.
I'll ride all night till broad daylight,
Or overtake my lady.
3 He rode and he rode till he came to the town,
And he rode till he came to Barley.
The tears came rolling down his cheeks
And there he spied his lady.
4 O come, go back, my own true love,
0 come, go back, my honey.
I'll look you up in the chamber so high
Where the gypsens can't come round you.
5 I won't come back, your own true love,
Nor I won't come back, your honey.
I wouldn't give a kiss from gypsen's lips
For all your land and money.
6 She soon run through her gay clothing,
Her velvet shoes and stockings;
Her gold ring off her finger was gone
And the gold plate off her bosom.
7 O once I had a house and land,
Feather-bed and money,
But now I've come to an old straw pad
With the gypsens all around me.