The Jewress Lady Gay- Finlay (KY) 1917 Sharp E
[My title. From English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, I, 1934 edition; collected by Cecil J. Sharp, edited Karpeles. Comprising two hundred and seventy-four Songs and Ballads with nine hundred and sixty-eight Tunes; Including thirty-nine Tunes contributed by Olive Dame Campbell. Karpeles and Sharps notes follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
Notes; No. 31. Sir Hugh.
Texts without tunes:—Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, No. 155. C. S. Burne's Shropshire Folk-Lore, p. 539. Baring-Gould's Nursery Songs and Rhymes, pp. 92 and 94. Cox's Folk Songs of the South, p. 120 (see also further references). Journal of American Folk-Lore, xix. 293 ; xxix. 164; xxxix. 108.
Texts with tunes :—M. H. Mason's Nursery Rhymes, p. 46. English County Songs, p. 86. Journal of the Folk-Song Society, i. 264. Rimbault's Musical Illustrations of Percy's Reliques, p. 46. Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, xvii, tune No. 7. Scots Musical Museum, vi, No. 582. Folk Songs from Somerset, No. 68 (published also in English Folk-Songs, Selected Edition, i. 22, and One Hundred English Folk- Songs, p. 22). Newell's Games and Songs of American Children, p. 76. Reed Smith's South Carolina Ballads, p. 148. D. Scarborough's On the Trail of Negro Folk Songs, pp. 53-5. Musical Quarterly, January 1916, p. 15. Journal of American Folk-Lore, xxxv. 344; xxxix, 213. Davis's Traditional Ballads of Virginia, pp. 400 and 587.
Sharp diary 1917 page 230. Friday 10 August 1917 - Manchester, Kentucky
Didn’t sleep well as night very chilly with a dank, clammy mist which swept through the windows and wire door of my little out-house. No blankets, only counterpane sheet and cotton quilt. Dress with cold water and not too much of it, at 6 and breakfast at 6.45. Call on Mrs Broughton’s sister — a nice woman but no singer. Make 2 or 3 blank calls and then on return make friends with Walker, Judge Lyttell and his father, Dr Manning etc and get hold of a singer, Ben Finlay who gives me a new Child Lizzie Wan, much to my delight. Unhappily he is leaving his home tomorrow for a few days. Am very asthmatic sneezy etc. Weather damp and hot in the day but very cold in the evening.
E. [The Jewress Lady Gay] Sung by MR, BEN. J. FINLAY at Manchester, Clay Co., Ky., Aug. 10, 1917. Pentatonic. Mode 3.
1. Low and low and low holiday
When dew drops they do fall,
And ev'ry scholar of that school
Went out to playing ball, ball, ball,
Went out to playing ball.
2 Along comes the Jewress lady gay
With some apples in her hand.
She says: Come along, my littly son 'Ugh-ey[1]
And one of these shall ha'.
3 I'm not a-going to come,
Nor I won't a-come,
For if my parents knew,
It would make my red blood run.
4 She took him by his little white hand,
She led him for a while;
She led him down to that cold well
Where it was so cold and deep.
5 Sink, O sink, my little son 'Ugh-ey,
And don't you never swim,
If you do it'll be a scandal
To me and all my kin.
6 The day passed off and the night come on,
The parents went to seek their son;
And every parent had a son,
But Urie's [Hughie's] she had none.
1. Sharp has [Hughie] following "Ugh-ey" which is Hughie pronounced with a silent "H".