The House Carpenter- Wilson (NC) 1938 Brown K (Abrams B)
[From Brown Collection of NC Folklore Vol. 1, 1952 and from the MS sent to Abrams, which is found in the Abrams Collection and can be viewed on-line; http://omeka.library.appstate.edu/items/show/14932.
The handwritten MS is from Mrs. Jim Wilson [nee Hattie Carlista Wallace], 1904-1983 and Mrs. Ira Reeves [Mrs. Ira Reece (Ollie B. Wilson)], 1891-1972 of Zionville and also Mabel, Watauga County, North Carolina, dated 1938.
R. Matteson 2013]
40. James Harris (The Daemon Lover) Brown Collection
(Child 243)
If the various traditional versions of this ballad all go back, as Child believed, to the long-winded, pedestrian seventeenth-century broadside of 'James Harris,' they constitute something of an argument for Barry's doctrine of communal re-creation. For its range as traditional song, see BSM 79, and add New Hampshire (NGMS 95-7), Tennessee (SFLQ xi 127-8), North Carolina (FSRA 38-40), Florida (SFLQ viii 160-1), the Ozarks (OFS I 166-76), Ohio (BSO 70-7), Indiana (BSI 136-48, JAFL lvii 14-15), Illinois (JAFL LX 131-2), Michigan (BSSM 54-8), and Wisconsin (JAFL LIT 46-7, originally from Kentucky). Few regional collections made in this country fail to record it ; [1] it is therefore surprising that Child knew, apparently, only one American text and that a fragment. It is almost always called in America 'The House Carpenter.' The notion that the lover from the sea is a revenant or a demon, present in the original broadside and less definitely in some of the other versions in Child, has faded from most American texts; with us it is a merely domestic tragedy. And perhaps for that very reason it is one of the favorites of American ballad singers. There are some fourteen texts in the North Carolina collection, most of them holding pretty closely to one version. A full text of this version is given first and most of the others described by reference to this.
Footnote for above:
1. There are traces of it in our K and M versions.
K. 'The House Carpenter.' Secured by W. Amos Abrams in 1938 from Mrs. Jim Wilson of Zionville, Watauga county. It runs like A for the first seven stanzas but then shifts unexpectedly to the first person of the lover and even brings in the vision of heaven and hell of Child's versions E and F, not often found in American texts. The last six stanzas run: [see complete text below]
8 We had not been on board three weeks,
I am sure it was not four,
When tears did come to my true love's eyes
And melted to rise no more.
9 'Are you weeping for your house carpenter?
Are you weeping for your store?
Are you weeping for your dear little babe
That you will never see any more?'
10 'I am neither weeping for my house carpenter,
Neither for my store.
I am just weeping for my sweet little babe
That I will never see any more.'
11 We had not been on board three months,
And I'm sure it was not four.
When tears began to come in my true love's eyes
And melted to rise no more.
12 'What banks are these we are passing by?
They shine like glittering gold.'
'It's the banks of heaven that we are passing by.
Where you and I can't go.'
13 'What banks are these we are landing on?
They are black as any crow.'
'They are the banks of torment we are landing on
Where you and I must go.'
Complete text (From Abrams collection)
1. We have met, we have met, my old true love.
We have met. We have met, my dear.
I am just returning from the sea salt sea,
And it's all for the sake of thee.
2. I could have married a king's daughter
And she would have married me.
But I have forsaken her crowns of gold,
And its all for the sake of thee.
3. If you could have married a kings daughter,
I'm sure that you are to blame.
For I am married to a house carpenter,
And I think that he is a nice young man.
4. Well won't you leave your house carpenter,
And go along with me.
I will take you where the grass grows so green,
On the banks of the deep blue sea.
5. If I should leave my house carpenter,
And go along with you,
Have you anything to maintain me on
Or to keep me from slavery?
6. I have five ships on the ocean wide,
Now rolling for dry land,
And a hundred thousand sea sailing men,
Which will all be yours at your command.
7. She picked up her sweet little babe.
Kisses she gave it three.
Stay at home with your own dear papa,
And keep him company.
8 We had not been on board three weeks,
I am sure it was not four,
When tears did come to my true love's eyes
And melted to rise no more.
9 'Are you weeping for your house carpenter?
Are you weeping for your store?
Are you weeping for your dear little babe
That you will never see any more?'
10 'I am neither weeping for my house carpenter,
Neither for my store.
I am just weeping for my sweet little babe
That I will never see any more.'
11 We had not been on board three months,
And I'm sure it was not four.
When tears began to come in my true love's eyes
And melted to rise no more.
12 'What banks are these we are passing by?
They shine like glittering gold.'
'It's the banks of heaven that we are passing by.
Where you and I can't go.'
13 'What banks are these we are landing on?
They are black as any crow.'
'They are the banks of torment we are landing on
Where you and I must go.'