The Seventh Brother- Gibson (VA) 1931 Davis BB
[From Davis- More Traditional Ballad from Virginia. Davis's notes follow Foss. It's interesting to see that Davis is aware of the Smith's (Thomas P. Smith and his brother) submitting a version already published in Brown as a "new" version. However, Davis gives credence to some of the the unusual offerings of the Smiths in his 1960 book.
The Morris version is similar to the dozen versions from the Shenandoah region in Virginia. George Foss who collected an excellent version in 1961 from Robert Shiflett, wrote about the region From White Hall to Bacon Hollow. Also see article at bottom of this page: Secrets of the Blue Ridge: Victoria Morris: From Bacon Hollow to Pennsylvania Avenue by Phil James.
R. Matteson 2014]
George Foss, From White Hall to Bacon Hollow excerpts:
From White Hall to Bacon Hollow is about a place and about its culture and people. I have granted myself the author's indulgence of selecting a title significant in its double meaning. White Hall to Bacon Hollow is a stretch of twisting country road, Virginia route 810, crossing the line between Albemarle and Greene Counties.
The earliest settlers of importance to the area were members of the Brown family. The patriarch of the Virginia Browns was Benjamin Brown, who began acquiring land in Albemarle County in 1747. He amassed six thousand acres of what was to become known as Brown's Cove. Included in these holdings was a tract patented to him by King George III in 1750.
It is of importance at this point to mention Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr., who was a collector of ballads and folksongs specifically of Virginia. He was not a collector in the same sense as Sharp, that is a field worker and face-to-face gatherer of songs. He was more in the mold of Francis James Child, the great collector-editor of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, that is, he served to gather and organize, to sift and evaluate the field work of numerous amateur, hobbyist and professional collectors. As early as 1929 he produced Traditional Ballads of Virginia; in 1949 he published Folksongs of Virginia and More Traditional Ballads of Virginia, all three under the auspices of the Virginia Folklore Society. A courtly gentleman “of the old school,” he was professor of English literature at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville for a great span of time. It was professor Davis who was Paul Clayton Worthington's teacher at the University during the 1950's and inspired Paul's interest in balladry and folksong.
Two later collectors who visited and worked in the White Hall-Bacon Hollow area were Richard Chase and professor Winston Wilkinson whose manuscripts are now kept by the University of Virginia. They were the first collectors to record the songs of some of the finest singers in the region, Ella Shiflett and Victoria Shiflett Morris as early as 1935.
Excerpt of Davis' notes:
In Virginia the ballad is reasonably rare. TBVa, printed four variants, of five available, and two tunes. Of five items (not counting two overlapping ones) more recently collected and listed in FSVa, four are here presented, all of them with tunes. The one omitted item contributed by R. E. Lee Smith and Thomas p. Srnith, though long resident in Virginia, comes ultimately from North Carolina and is printed in Brown, II, 29-3c.. It is also a good full text available in the Virginia collection.
Bronson (I, to6-27) finds "a marked formal cleavage" in the musical tradition of "this impressive ballad." He divides his forty tunes into six groups of one, two, fourteen, seven, three, and thirteen members, respectively. His fourth group of seven variants consists of texts and tunes collected in Virginia by either Sharp and Karpeles, Winston Wilkinson, or the present editor. "Group D," he says, "is a comparatively small gathering of Virginia variants with mid-cadence consistently on the flat seventh. All are authentic Dorian tunes. The group as a whole begins to display marks of the omnipresent 'Gypsy Laddie' scheme, which appears much more clearly in the next group." TBVa B he classifies ln this Group D, while TBVa D appears in his final "aberrant" Group F, of the four new tunes here given, he would certainly find both AA and BB highly distinctive specimens in any grouping. Incidentally, DD below is a later recording and transcription-from the same singer as TBVa D (Bronson's Group F, No. 40), interestingly varied and now verifiable. of the tunes below, AA belongs in Bronson's Group D, of which it is a fine example; CC shows a similarity to Bronson's Group A, Ia; and DD falls clearly into Bronson's-Group F.
BB. "The Seventh Brother." Phonograph record (aluminum) made by A. K. Davis, Jr. Sung by Mrs. Martha Elizabeth Gibson, of Crozet, Va., Albemarle county. April 13, 1933. Transcribed by P. C. Worthington. Tune noted E. C. Mead. collected by Fred F. Knobloch. May 1, 1931, significant variants footnoted. "A beautiful tune, fluid , rhythmic" remarks Mead. A few of Mrs. Gibson's dialectical peculiarities are phonetically suggested in the text.
1. "Get you up, get you up, you seventh sleeper,
And do take warning of me,
Oh, do take keer of your oldest daughter dear,
For the youngest going on with me."
2. He mounted her up on his bonny, bonny brown,
Himself on the die-apple gray,
He grewed his buckles[1] down by his side,
And away he went whistling away.[2]
3. "Get you up, get you up, my seven sleepers,[3]
And get in your arms so bright,
For it never shall be said that a daughter of mine
Should lie with a lord all night.
4 He rode, he rode, that live-long day,[4]
Along with his lady so dear,
Until she saw her seventh brother bold
And her father was walking so near.
5 "Get you down, get you down,[5] Lady Margaret," he cried,
"And hold my horse for a while,
Until I can fight your seventh brother bold
And your father is walking so nigh'"
6 She helt, she helt, she better, better helt,
She never shedded one tear,[6]
Until she saw her seventh brother fall,
And her father she loved so dear.
7 "Do you choose for to go, Lady Margaret," he said,
"Do you choose for to go or stay?"[7]
"I'll go, I'll go, Lord Thomas," she cried,
"For you've left me without any guide."
8 He mounted her up on the bonny, bonny brown,
Himself on the die-apple gray,
He grewed his buckles down by his side,
And away he went bleeding away,
9 He rode till he came to his mother's stile
Three hours 'fore hit was day,[8]
"Get you down, get you down, Lady Margaret," he cried,
"So that we can rest for a while."
10. "It's mother, mother, make my bed,
And fix that smooth and wide
And lie m lady down by my side,
While we can rest for a while."
11. Lady Margaret she died about midnight,
Lord Thomas 'fore it was day,[9]
And the old woman died for the lost of a son,
And there was several lives lost.
1. buckler- small shield; He drew his buckler. . . or the folk perfect tense: He drewed his buckler
2. MS. has "And he went singing away."
3. MS. has "sons bold."
4. MS. has "night."
5. MS. has "Get you down" once only.
6. MS. has "And never shed a tear."
7. or "abide."
8. MS. has:
He rode, he rode, the live-long night,
Till he came to his mother's stile.
9. MS. has:
Lord Thomas he died about midnight,
Lady Margaret before it was day.