The Gyptian Laddie- Laws (MO-KY) c1869 Belden C2
[From: Five Old-Country Ballads, Belden; The Journal of American Folk-lore, Volume 25; 1912. His notes from 1912 are:
"Of the following ballads, the first two are from the recollection of Miss Lucy R. Laws of Christian College, Columbia, Mo. She learned them in her childhood in Mercer County, Kentucky, from a Shakeress who was a nurse in the family."
Also from Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouni Folk-Song Society, 1940 where it is the second of two versions given by Lucy Laws. Belden's 1940 notes follow.
I assume the date is circa 1869 since she mentioned learning a version then.
R. Matteson 2015]
The Gypsy Laddie
(Child 200)
Of the twelve versions of this ballad recognized by Child (five Scotch and two from the north of England, one Irish, one from Shropshire, one from gypsies, one from Massachusetts, and one from New York) the northern broadside, G, is apparently the source of or at least the nearest akin to the American texts. It was also printed by Catnach, and had sufficient popularity in this country to be burlesqued in Dewitt's Forget-Me-Not Songster (New York, 1972, p. 223). Child gives no analogs from other languages ; but since Child's work was completed Olrik, in his continuation of Grundtvig's work, has published (DgF No. 369) a Scandinavian ballad in which a proud girl who has refused princes and noblemen is fooled into marrying a roaming 'skinner,' the Danish equivalent of gypsy or tinker, and ends as a tinker's trull. The jingling refrain commonly found in American versions (as in Miss Laws's text, below) I have not found in British texts. The compelling charm of gypsy music (regarding which see
JEFDSS II 83-91) is fairly well retained in America, north and south, as are also the shoes (or boots) of Spanish leather; the latter derive from the English broadside. But what has apparently most pleased American singers is the contrast between domesticity, security, and luxury on the one hand and the homeless poverty of the wandering gypsies on the other. Few texts miss the comparison between the warm feather bed and the cold, cold ground. Texts have been recorded from tradition since Child's time in Aberdeenshire (LL 126-9; also in Ord), Oxfordshire (FSUT 122), Berkshire (FSUT 120), and Somerset (FSSom 18); and on this side of the water in Newfoundland (FSN 13-6, BSSN 38-9), Nova Scotia (JAFL XVIII 191), Maine (BBM 269-77), Vermont (GGMS 7B-9, VFSB 220-1), Massachusetts (JAFL XVIII 191-3, XXX 324-5), Rhode Island (JAFL XVIII 194), Nantucket (by way of New Jersey, JAFL XVIII 193), Pennsylvania (JAFL XXIV 846), Virginia (TBV 423-31, SharpK I 294-9, SCSM 219-21), West Virginia (FSS 180-6), Kentucky (FSKM 14-7, SharpK I 237-9), Tennessee (ETWVMB 59-60, sharpK I 233-4,236, FSSH 110-2), North Carolina (SharpK I 234-6, 237, 219, FSSH 112, BMFSB 6-7, TBSSG 4-5, SCSM 216-9), South Carolina (SCSM 221-3), Mississippi (FSM 117-9), Ohio (JAFL: XXV 174-5), Illinois (JAFL XLVIII 385-6, TSSI 140-1, SCSM 223-4), Iowa (MAFLS XXIX 11), and Missouri. It is given without precise location in FSSM 4-5.
THE GYPTIAN LADDIE --Collected from Lucy Laws, who learned the ballad in her childhood in Mercer County, Kentucky, from a Shakeress who was a nurse in the family. Communicated to Belden in 1911.
"O would you leave your house and home,
O would you leave your honey?
O would you leave your three little babes
To go with the Gyptian laddie?"
Chorus: Raddle-um-a-ding, a-ding, ding, ding,
Raddle-um-a-ding-a-dary,
Raddle-um-a-ding, a-ding, ding, ding,
Raddle-um-a-ding-a-dary (or, She's gone with the Gyptian laddie!)
"O yes, I'd leave my house and home,
O yes, I'd leave my honey,
0 yes, I'd leave my three little babes
To go with the Gyptian laddie!"
The old man came home that night,
Inquiring for his honey;
The maid came tripping along the hall, —
"She's gone with the Gyptian laddie!"
"Go saddle for me my milk-white steed,
Go bridle for me my brownie;
I'll ride all night and I'll ride all day,
I'll overtake my honey."
"O come go back with me, my love,
Go back with me, my honey;
I'll lock you up in a chamber so high,
Where the Gyptian can't come near you."
"I won't go back with you, my love,
I won't go back, my honey;
I'd rather have one kiss from the Gyptian's lips
Than all your land and money."
(Forgotten stanzas, in which he bids her strip off her finery, after which the 'Gyptian casts her off.)
"Last night I slept in my fine feather bed,
And in my arms my dearie;
Tonight I sleep in an old . . .
And the Gyptian won't come near me." [1]
1 Or "And the Gyptians all around me."