The House Carpenter- Chandler (MO) c.1862 Belden D w/music
[From: Ballads and Songs collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society, 1940, listing versions A-I with texts from JOAFL for A, B and H. Texts are supplied for C, D, G and I with music for D and G. I've listed Missouri Folk-Lore Society as Belden A-I since belden was the editor and organizer of the collection.
His notes follow.
R. Matteson 2013]
Belden's Notes: James Harris (The Daemon Lover)
(Child 243)
Al of Child's versions from oral tradition are Scotch; A and B are from ballad print, A a Pepys broadside and B from a later garland. He gives no American texts except two stanzas of an American stall print that had appeared in a magazine. Since then Barry has printed the Demarsan (New York) broadside, of about 1860, in JAFL XVIII 207-9 - a text to which most of the American copies from oral tradition conform rather closely. The nearest to it of the Child versions is B, the garland print. There can be, I think, no question, in the case of this ballad, of the importance of print in spreading and perpetuating it. Yet if Child was right in believing that the seventeenth century broadside was the original or at least the ancestor of the traditional forms, we have here a fine instance of what Barry called communal recreation. Nothing could well be more prosaic and pedestrian than the James Harris of the Pepys collection; but tradition has transformed it into a pretty good ballad, and one that has maintained. a strong hold on the affections of ballad singers. Whether Child B and the DeMarsan print are the work of professional ballad-makers or merely record a text wrought out by folk singers it would not be easy to say; probably the latter. Child adduces no parallels from other languages. There is however a Danish ballad (DgF 39) of the treacherous merman which bears some resemblance to it in plot.
It has been reported in recent times from Aberdeenshire (LL 196-7) and Dorset (JFSS III 8.1) in the old country, and in the United States from Maine (BBI,I 304-10), Vermont (GGIIS 80-2, BFSNE VI 78, the latter Irish), Pennsylvania (JAFL XXV 274-5), Virginia (TBV 439-78, SharpK I 256, 257, SCSM 151-6, Grapurchat for 25 August, 1932), West Virginia (FSS 139-49), Kentucky (JAFL XX 257-8, TKMS 54-6I, DD 172-3, SharpK (I 246-8, 256, 257, 258, SCSII 158-9), Tennessee (JAFI-r XI-III 274-6, SharpK(I 249-5A,252-4, FSSH 116-8, SFL,Q II 75), North Carolina (JAFIT XLV 2I-5, SharpK I 241-6, 248-9, 250-2, 254-6, 258, FSSFI 113-6, SCSM 756-7), South Carolina (SCB 151-5), Mississippi (FSM 119-22), Texas (PFLST X 159-62), Ohio (JAFL XXXV 347-8), Indiana (JAFL XLViII 295-6), Illinois (JAFL- XXVI 360-1, by way of Nebraska, reprinted ABS 43-5), Iowa (MAFITS XXIX 11-3), Minnesota (Dean 55-6), and Missouri (Ozark Life V No. 8, JAFL XLIX 209-11). In SFLQ II 75-6 is a text, learned from a man in Kentucky, of 'The Rocky Mountain Top' which curiously combines stanzas from this ballad with others from Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight.
In Missouri the texts are much alike, and all are close to the DeMarsan broadside. The title, where one is given, is 'The House Carpenter' (the English 'ship carpenter' is lost, except in version I). All except E and H, which lack the opening lines, begin with the man's greeting to the woman,'Well met, well met, my own true love' or the like. In all he replies to her question of how he is to maintain her by telling of his ships. In all he promises to take her 'where the grass grows green on the banks of the sweet Willee 'A B F G,' of the salt water sea 'C,' of the sweet Dundee 'D,' of Elmor 'E,' of liberty 'H -variations of DeMarsan's 'where the grass grows high, on the banks of old Tennessee.' In all she kisses her baby goodbye and bids him keep his father company; and tells her lover, in reply to his question what she is weeping for, that she is weeping for her baby (in C for her husband and her baby). All except C and I have the curious incremental repetition in the statement of time (see the text of D, below). In all the ship sinks (springs a leak in all except E) and disappears, with no intimation of supernatural agency. Two traits of the DeMarsan broadside, his boast that he might have married a king's daughter and the closing curse on seamen, have been lost from about half of the Missouri texts, the former appearing only in C D F H I, the latter only in B D G. The hills of heaven and of hell, the only clear evidence of the supernatural in American texts, retained in several from Virginia, Kentucky, and other southern states, are not in the DeMarsan broadside nor in any of the Missouri copies.
Song Notes: Taken down by Miss Colquitt Newell in 1912 from the singing of T. B. Chandler of Farmington, St. Francois County. Mr. Chandler had learned it from his mother about the time of the Civil War. The mother was born in Tennessee but moved to Missouri in 1820.
The House Carpenter- Sung by T. B. Chandler (Farmington, MO) c.1862 Belden D. Learned from his mother during the Civil War (1861 to 1865). Collected in 1912.
"We have met, we have met, we have met, my dear,
We have met, we have met," said he;
"For I've just returned from the salt, salt sea,
And 'twas all for the love of thee.
"I once could have married the king's daughter,
And she would have married me;
"But I refused hercrowns of gold,
And 'twas all for the love of thee."
"If you could have married the king's daughter
I'm sure you were to blame.
For I have married a house-carpenter,
And I think he's a niee young man."
"If you will forsake your house-ecrpenter
And go aiong with me
I'll take you to where the grass grows green
On the banks of the sweet Dundee."
"If I should forsake my house-carpenter
And go along with you,
What would you have to support me on
And keep me from slavery "
"Seven hundred ships on yonder sea
All sailing for dry land,
Ten thousand and fifty jolly sea-boys-
They shall be at your command."
Then she dressed her babe so neat and clean
And gave it kisses three,
Saying, "Lie still, lie still, my sweet little babe,
And keep your father company."
Then she dressed herself so neat and clean (or in the finest silk)
And along with me did go,
And as she walked along the street
She looked like the glittering gold.
She hadn't been gone more than two weeks,
I'm sure it was not three,
Until she sat herself down to weep
And she wept most bitterly.
"What are you weeping for? My gold?
Or is it for my store?
Or is it for your house-carpenter
That you never expect to see any more?"
"I am not weeping for your gold
Nor neither for your store;
I am weeping for my sweet tittle babe
That f never expect to see any more."
She hadn't been gone more than three weeks,
I'm sure it was not four,
Until the ship she was on sprung a leak
And she sunk, for to rise no more.
"A curse, a curse, a curse," said she,
"A curse to all sea-men,
For they robbed me of my sweet little babe
That I never can see again."