The House Carpenter- Steele (KY) 1957 Kahn REC
[From: Folkways Records, Album No. FS 3828. Their notes follow. The last two stanzas are taken from "The False Young Man." See SharpK 1932, No. 94.
R. Matteson 2013]
From: FOLKWAYS RECORDS Album No. FS 3828
©1958 Folkways Records & Service Corp., 43 W. 61st St., NYC USA 10023
Pete Steele was born in the small town of Woodbine, Kentucky, on March 5, 1891. It was in this area, from his father and people that he met, that he began to learn songs and the techniques of playing the five string banjo. "At six years old, my father made a small banjo. He took a sleve and put a squirrel's hide on for the banjo head; put thread strings on it and that's how I learned to play a banjo.
My father was a violin player, one of the best, I think. I learned most of my banjo pieces from him. We had lots of good times together playing music at the last days of schools and at box suppers and so on. And when I think of those good times we had together, I get to feeling very sad, wishing we could be together and live them days over."
At the age of nineteen, Mr. Steele married Lillie Swanner. Miss Swanner was born in Pittsburg, Kentucky, but at the age of six her family moved to London, Kentucky, where her father bought a farm. Of London, she remembers: "I worked with my father in the fields as my brothers were much younger and not yet old enough to work. At the age of sixteen I got married."
After their marriage, they lived in various parts of Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio, where Mr. Steele worked at jobs ranging from carpentering to making staves for whiskey barrels, and back to farming, his original occupation. Probably the most formative years for the Steeles, from a folk music point of view, were the eighteen years they spent in Harlan County where Pete worked in various coal mines. From Harlan County, they moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, for a few years, and then back to Laurel County, Kentucky, where both Pete and Lillie Steele had spent their childhoods. Of East Bernstadt, in Laurel County, Pete remembers: " there I played my banjo for our neighbors to square dance. We would all meet at one neighbor house one Saturday night and the next Saturday night at another house."
After leaving East Bernstadt, they moved to Hamilton, Ohio, where they have lived since 1937. In 1938 Alan Lomax recorded the Steeles for the Library of Congress Folk Music Archives.
SIDE II, Band 8: THE HOUSE CARPENTER (Child #243)
"The House Carpenter" is one of the best known of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads in this Country, making its appearance in almost every state where good collecting has been carried on. This version is interesting in that it has undergone extreme sentimentalization and moralization with the addition of the last three stanzas. The "cursed" verse is occasionally found in the ballad (see Davis, pp. 439-478); however, the "never believe" stanzas are most likely borrowed from the "unconstant lover" cycle (see Sharp, II, pp. 51-58). This version was learned by the Steeles' from the singing of Elizabeth Steele Jones, Mr. Steele's sister.
References: Coffin, p. 138 Davis, pp. 439-478
We have met, we have met, said my old true love,
We have met, we have met, said he,
For I've just come from a salt salt sea,
And it's all for the sake of thee.
I have refused a king' s daughter fair,
I'm sure she'd have married me,
I have refused a crown of gold,
And it's all for the sake of thee.
If you have refused a king's daughter fair,
I'm sure you are to blame,
For I have married to a house carpenter,
And I'm sure he's a very fine man.
If I was to leave my house carpenter
And go along with you,
I'll take you where the sugar cane grows
On the bank of the deep blue sea.
She went unto her little babe,
Of kisses she gave three,
Lie there, lie there, my sweet little babe
And keep your father's company.
She went unto her golden store,
She dressed herself in green,
And as she walked the streets all around,
She looked like a lovely queen.
I'm not weeping for my house carpenter,
I'm not weeping for my store,
I am weeping for my sweet little babe
That I never shall see no more.
They had not gone but a week or two,
I'm sure not more than four,
Till her gallant ship by night did leak
And it sunk for to rise no more.
May cursed be to all sea men,
May cursed be their life,
For they have been the ruin of a house carpenter
In persuading away his wife.
Don't never believe what a young man says,
Let his hair be dark or brown,
Unless he's on some high gallis drop[1]
And say he would like to come down.
Don't never believe what a young girl says,
Let her hair be dark or brown,
For she'll tell you more lies than the stars in the skies
Or the grass that grows on the ground.
1. rope ?