"Water Birch": An American Variant of "Hugh of Lincoln"
by Frances C. Stamper and Wm. Hugh Jansen
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 71, No. 279 (Jan. - Mar., 1958), pp. 16-22
[Proofed once. Because of a false attribution in Stanza 7, the authors assume that the mother is the "lady gay, with apples in her hand" when to me it's clearly the Jewish daughter. Later the "she" is the mother who carries the water birch switch looking for her child. It makes no sense to assume they are the same person since the reference to "my little son Hughie" in stanza 7 is clearly a corruption.
The water birch is a switch or a rod carried by the mother to punish Hugh for not coming home. In Sharp B (birch-rod) and F (a switch off the birch), for example, we find variants of the words, "water birch". Other versions like the Clonmel version (an Irish version from the early 1800s) and Child F (Hume) mention the mother having a rod to whip Hugh, since he did not return home. Fowler is convinced that 'there can be little doubt that the anxious mother searching for Hugh has taken on the character of the Virgin Mary bent on punishing her child and that the rod in her hand is a branch of 'The Bitter Withy.'
In McCabe's (1980 thesis) three groups this is a version of Group II, the School Group which has been found in Kentucky by Sharp and others.
R. Matteson 2015]
"WATER BIRCH": AN AMERICAN VARIANT OF "HUGH OF LINCOLN"
BY FRANCES C. STAMPER AND WM. HUGH JANSEN [1]
THE ballad called by Child "Sir Hugh, or, the Jew's Daughter" (No. 155), which tells in part the same story as Chaucer's "The Prioress's Tale," has received two recent important and fairly extensive discussions from scholars. One is Tristram P. Coffin's The British Traditional Ballad in North America,[2] a book that is among the most useful contributions to ballad study in our time; the other is James R. Woodall's exciting paper, "'Sir Hugh': A Study in Balladry."[3] This is not to mention the innumerable printings of the ballad, sometimes with elaborate headnotes, those listed by Coffin and Child as well as others. However, a study of eighty-nine available versions of "Sir Hugh" and a perusal of the scholarly discussions of that ballad seem to confirm that a quite distinct and peculiar variant of that same ballad has been sung in Knott County, Kentucky, for at least the past thirty years. It is a variant of interest because of its rationalized story, of its form, and, above all, of the comment it affords on the living art of the ballad singer today. This is the ballad, "Water Birch," as recorded on 30 December I955, in Littcarr, Kentucky.
(1) It was on one dark and holiday;
The dewdrops, they did fall.
All the children in the school
Were out a-playing ball.
(2) There was a lady, lady gay,
With apples in her hands.
"Oh, come along here, my little son Hewie,[4]
And take one from my hand."
(3) "I will not come, I dare not come,
I'll tell you the reason why.
I will not come, I dare not come,
You'll make my red blood fly."
(4) She took him by his lily-white hand
And led him through the hall.
She locked him up in a tight little room
Where no one could hear him call.
(5) She locked him in a folding chair
And stabbed him with a pen,
A silver basin in her hand
To catch his heart's blood in.
(6) She wrapped him in a folding sheet
Until he fell asleep;
She took him down to yonder well
Where the water was cold and deep.
(7) "So fare you well, my little son Hewie;
I hope you'll never swim,
For if you do, it'll be a disgrace
To me and all my kin."
(8) The day had passed, the night had come,
And all the children went home.
Every mother had a little son;
But Hewie's, she had none.
(9) She picked her up a little birch switch,
Went walking off down the road,
Saying, "If I meet my little son Hewie,
I declare I'll whip him home."
(10) She walked up toward the gate
Where all were lying asleep;
Then she went back toward the well
Where the water was cold and deep.
(11) "Are you in here, my little son Hewie?
Answer your dear mother [mother dear?],
Answer your mother, little son Hewie,
If you are in here."
(12) "Yes, I'm in here, oh Mother dear,
And have been here so long
With a sharp penknife run through my heart.
And the blood, it run so strong [past tense?].
(13) "Go tell my little schoolmates
Beware of the water birch.
Take me out of this cold deep well;
Go bury me in yonders church.
(I4) "My home is high in heaven, Mother,
Where all things, they are well.
My home is high in heaven, Mother,
And yours low down in hell."
Although obviously Child 155 and, in certain passages, remarkably close in wording and details to two versions that Child identifies as Irish, "Water Birch" tells a story essentially different from that in any of Child's versions.[5] It is, in fact, essentially different from all available versions except for one quite corrupt and fragmentary form, significantly also recorded in the Kentucky mountains, whose import has understandably gone unnoticed.
The story told in the conventional forms of Child 155 has been reduced to three basic types by Coffin: type A tells of the boy in pursuit of a ball who is enticed by a Jewess into her father's garden and then into her house where she murders him; type B adds to A an episode in which a worried mother finds her murdered son and miraculously converses with him; type C is a "degeneration" of type A in which the boy wanders into a garden and is murdered by person or persons unknown.
Coffin must now add a type D to his schematic representation of 155, a type which is described in full detail since it has not previously been analyzed, as follows: a little boy is called away from a ball game by his mother, with whom he apparently does not live. Knowing her evil intentions (and temper?), he goes reluctantly. She murders her son and disposes of the body in a well in an attempt to protect herself and her family's reputation. Scheming further to protect herself, she pretends to seek angrily for her overdue son, and is confounded when his corpse miraculously speaks and predicts her damnation.
Upon being questioned about why the "little schoolmates" of stanza 13 should "beware of the water birch," the informant readily conjectured that it meant "beware of cruel mothers," since "birch tea" is a local euphemism for a whipping with a birch switch. As mountain people are still very conscious of proud and bitter family traditions, the local hearers of "Water Birch," if they feel need for any further rationalization, would probably picture Hewie's parents as separated by loyalties to their respective families and the murder as a feudlike episode.
All in all, particularly in comparison to many of the American versions, this seems a strikingly neat and coherent plot. We must consider "Water Birch" a remarkable example of re-creation by some unknown but truly gifted ballad singer, comparable to Walter Anderson's exceptional story teller whose role is to revivify a specific moribund folktale in its progress through time and space. We may, with some certainty, conjecture that "Sir Hugh" degenerated in Appalachia for two reasons, besides the usual one of bad transmission due to faulty hearing and memory: the particular religious prejudice involved in "Sir Hugh" would be practically incomprehensible in Appalachia; the murderess addressing her victim as "my little son"-obviously originally intended only as an ironic endearment and not a statement of relationship -would lead to confusions. In fact, Coffin refers to this latter usage in two of the versions collected by Cecil J. Sharp[6] (it occurs in other versions as well) as "baffling," and proves the aptness of his statement by failing to see--understandably, in the light of its incoherence-that one of those two versions, D, might well be interpreted as a type other than his three. It is this D version of Sharp's that in six disjointed stanzas tells what may be a fragmentary form of the "Water Birch" plot, or what may be, conceivably, a form of the prototype upon which the gifted ballad singer, conjectured above, based his re-creation. Sharp D tells the story of a "Jewish lady" who kills her own "little son Hugh" and casts his body in a well. There is not the usual fear and resistance on the part of Hugh. Naturally there is no birch rod or warning to the schoolmates. No reason is given for the crime, though the listener may infer without much justification that the murderess is an unwed mother trying to rid herself of her shame. The stanzas of most interest for comparison with "Water Birch" are the last three:
(4) She went to the well next day
To see what she could see;
And there she saw her little son Hugh
Come swimming around to thee.
(5) "O take me out of this deep well,
O take me out," says he,
"O take me out of this deep well
And bury me in yonders yard."
(6) "Sink, O sink, my little son Hugh,
Sink, O sink," said she,
"Sink, O sink, and don't you swim,
You are an injury to me and my kin."
Despite the similarity of plots and of location of collection, Sharp D is so disorderly that "Water Birch" can hardly have grown directly from it; for in addition to being exemplary in coherence", Water Birch" could also serve as a model of the all too rarely encountered ballad style. In keeping with that style, "Water Birch" is about as dramatic as a ballad can be, with eight of its fourteen stanzas being devoted in whole or in part to dialogue. Only once, incidentally, is the speaker explicitly indicated; yet the audience is always aware of who is speaking, and many of the crucial details in the plot are revealed only through the conversation. There is repetition in ample measure (stanzas 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, I2, and 14), both incremental and otherwise. "Lady gay," "red blood,"" lily-white hand," "silver basin," "heart's blood" (in a way), "dear Mother," "sharp knife," and "cold deep well" form almost a catalog of conventional epithets, while there is a supply of adverbial and adjectival shibboleths ("high in," "low down in," "run strong") to enhance further the artistic value that is assumed to be in the conventionality of traditional ballads. Certainly, too, "Water Birch" is coldly objective, and yet it does convey an emotional impact with the very reliance upon "basic elements of situation" that Woodall hails in the other variants of "Sir Hugh," [7] though the elements are somewhat different in "Water Birch."
Certainly, as has been said, "Water Birch" is a re-creation, one that may be assumed to have happened in Kentucky, one that invented a practically new story while preserving or revivifying with startling skill the conventional artistic merits of the traditional ballad style. Yet, as has been asserted, there is a marked coincidence both in words and details between "Water Birch" and other versions of Child 155; it is this coincidence that remains to be discussed, and perhaps the most convenient method is to move stanza by stanza through our Kentucky variant.
Our first stanza is in general the opening stanza of Child 155 with its setting of school children playing ball on a dark, misty day. The "holiday" is a little unusual, but Child E begins "Yesterday was brave Hallowday," and Child T opens "Easter Day was a holiday," while Sharp's B and C, from Tennessee, both begin "As I walked out one holiday."
Likewise, stanza 2 corresponds to a number of versions, except, of course, that the speaker is usually "the Jew's daughter," sometimes merely a murderess, and once as already indicated-a "Jewish lady," the mother of Hugh. The "lady gay" is a shibboleth of mountain balladry and is, for instance, a common Southern title for "The Wife of Usher's Well." But there is a precedent for "lady gay" in Child 155, for the murderess is introduced in stanza 2 of Sharp E, from Kentucky: "Along comes the Jewress lady gay / With some apples in her hand. / She says: 'Come along, my little son 'Ugh-ey, / And one of these shall ha'." It is clear from reading the rest of Sharp E, that this "lady gay" is not the boy's mother, but it is also easy to see how, in the process of transmission and rationalizations, he might well become so, as she did in "Water Birch" and the already c ited Sharp D.
Our stanza 3, with its artful use of repetition, is close to its corresponding stanza in a number of versions, and yet incorporates a change essential to the tenser and yet simpler plot of "Water Birch." Usually the boy protests that he cannot go because his family will punish him. Compare stanza 3 of Sharp C: "'I cannot go, I will not go, / I cannot go at all, / For if my mamma she knew it, / The red blood she'd make fall."' In no other version does the boy seem to so completely anticipate what will actually happen to him as in "Water Birch"- an anticipation which, of course, enhances the dramatic quality of that latter version. And if one will connect the stanza just quoted with the one from Sharp E cited immediately before, he will see what easily may have been the materials which the re-creator of "Water Birch" used to "correct" his plot into a story of a mother who murders her own son. Incidentally in the stanza of another version corresponding to the third of "Water Birch" may also lie a hint as to the origin of the split family concept that seems implicit in the latter. In Child A, the boy gives as his reason for not accompanying the Jew's daughter, "For as ye did to my auld father, / The same ye'll do to me."[8]
Stanzas 4 and 5 contain what Belden [9] considers ritual survivals, and they are well preserved, though of course with no ritual significance. In Child F, from Ireland, the corresponding stanzas are also 4 and 5:
She took him by the milk-white han,
An led him through m any a hall,
And called for a goolden cup
Where no man might hear his call.
She set him in a goolden chair,
And jaggd him with a pin,
Until they came to one stone chamber,
To houl his heart's blood in.
The reduction of the golden chair to a "folding chair," while not a happy one, is understandable in a society that knew neither golden chairs nor houses with "many a hall," a "stone chamber," and a "golden cup." The emendations for the latter elements in "Water Birch" are generally not bad: certainly a "silver basin" is a metamorphosis preferable to the "wash-basin" of Child H. The "folding sheet" of our stanza 6, while an echo of the "folding chair" of stanza 5, represents possibly t he poorest assimilation in the whole of "Water Birch."
Otherwise, stanza 6 coincides well with its corresponding stanzas as in other versions. Witness stanza 9 of Child N, probably of Irish origin: "She rolled him in a quire of tin, / That was in so many a fold; / She rolled him from that to a little draw well, / That was fifty fathoms deep"; or a West Virginia form[10] which has lost its rhyme: "She wrapped him in a sheet of lead, / One fold or two, / And threw him into a draw-well / Which was so cold and deep." And, of course, there may be an influence upon the "folding sheet" from the "winding-sheet" in the conclusion of Child F and other versions.
The already quoted last stanza of Sharp D from Kentucky and the stanza about to be cited from Child N show how well our stanza 7 coincides with other versions, though "Water Birch" attains an additional fillip of irony by including the fare-you well wish and handles the rhyming problem considerably better than either Sharp D or Child N: "'Lie there, lie there, little Harry,' she cried, / 'And God forbid you to swim, / If you be a disgrace to me, / Or to any of my friends.' "
Most of the versions of 155 include in some form the pathos charged contrast of stanza 8, and many of them include the moving picture in our stanza 9 of the mother going out to whip her son for tardiness,n ot knowing that death has waylaid him. Note Child B: "Whan bells wer rung, and mass was sung, / And every lady went hame, / Than ilka lady had her yong sonne, / But Lady Helen had nane."[11] Or, Child F (the Irish form):
Day bein over, the night c ame on,
And the scholars all wenth ome;
Then every mother had her son,
But little Sir Hugh's had none.
She p ut her m antle about her head
Tuk a little rod in her han,
An she says, "Sir Hugh, if I fin you here,
I will bate you for stayin so long." [12]
Of course, the statement of the mother's loss, her actions, and her words all have, in "Water Birch," a completely changed emotional impact, since the mother is no longer a person unknowingly bereaved of her son, but a woman wilily attempting to conceal her murder of her own child.
Stanza 10 contains another fairly meaningless assimilation, but since it occurs at no crucial moment, it is less harmful than the similarly meaningless one in stanza 6. Here Hewie's mother walks "up toward the gate / Where all were lying asleep," but what is it a gate to? If the local listener were pressed, he might hazard that it is the gate to the cemetery or church yard, the presence o f which is fairly explicit in stanza 13, but the older versions, Child F for instance, describe the frantic mother seeking her lost child: "First she went to the Jew's door, / But they were fast asleep; / And then she sent to the deep draw-well/, That was fifty fadom deep."
Stanzas 11 and 12 are very like their counterparts in other versions, except that some of the pathos has been removed from the dead boy's apology for being out late. Compare, for example, Child F again:
She says," Sir Hugh, if you be here,
As I suppose you be,
If ever the dead or quick a rose,
Arise and spake to me."
"Yes, Mother dear, I am here,
I know I have staid very long;
But a little pen knife was stuck in my heart,
Till the stream ran down full strong."
In stanza 13 occurs the "beware-of-the-water-birch verse." Although the idea is unique, the presence of "birch" itself is easily accounted for, as, for example, in Sharp F: "'Go take me out of this draw-well / And make me a coffin of birch; / O take me out of this draw-well/ And bury me at yonders church." ' [13]
The final stanza of "Water Birch" is very nearly unique. The only parallel to it that I know of is the only stanza given for Sharp's J, listed as from Kentucky, and it would seem to derive from a conversation between the boy and his mother a bout a third person, t he murderess (notice, incidentally, the lack of rhyme-an indication of degeneration, we may assume):" 'Here I am in this cold place,/ Where it is both cold, winding deep. / My soul is high up in Heaven above, / While hers is low down in hell."'
To sum up then, "Water Birch" is a peculiar, perhaps unique version-probably of American, even of Appalachian, origin-of Child I55. It is noteworthily conservative of motifs, diction, and rhymes from older forms, probably being closest to Child's Irish originating versions and to Sharp C among the American versions. Sharp D is the only known version that resembles the story line of "Water Birch," although it is fairly easy to spot the materials which gave rise to the changes effected in that story line. Whoever did the reconstruction, [14] he (it is, of course, possibly the work of two or more working in close succession) was a fine folk artist, sensitive to the virtues of the traditional ballad stylistic devices and to the power of simple, coherent dramatic narrative. Seemingly, the re-creation must have been done within the past generation, and thus it affords a noteworthy comment on the ballad singer's craft in the twentieth century.
NOTES
1 Frances Stamper recorded "Water Birch" as part of her field research for English 180, a course conducted by Maurice A. Hatch of the University of Kentucky, and is also responsible for the field data. The comparative or library data and the discussion are Wm. Hugh Jansen's.
2 Philadelphia, I950, pp. IIo-112.
3 Southern Folklore Quarterly, XIX (I955), 77-84.
4 This is the spelling generally given, since there is no sense that the name is a diminutive of Hugh.
5 Francis J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vols. (Boston, I882-98). In quotations from this and other sources, the punctuation, capitalization, etc., have been normalized.
6 Maud Karpeles, ed., English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (Oxford, 1932), I, pp. 222ff.
7 Karpeles, p. 83.
8 Child also refers to an Anglo-French version of the ballad that mentions Hugh's stepfather, 1II, 238.
9 Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folklore Society (Columbia, Missouri, 1940), pp. 69ff.
10 Asher E. Treat, "Kentucky Folksong in Northern Wisconsin," JAF, LII (I939), 43.
11 Cf., inter alia, Child C, D, E, F, K, and N.
12 For interesting comparisons to the content of this second stanza, see also Child N, the version cited in note 10, Sharp B, C, and F, and Dorothy Scarborough, Songcatcher in the Southern Mountains (New York, 1937), p. I74. Interestingly, the '"birch switch" has had a varied existence. In an early version, Child C, it is a pike staff in the hand of the repentant murderess about to start out on a pilgrimage. In Child N, it is a "little sally rod" in the mother's hand, while in Sharp B and C it is a birch rod.
13 The same stanza occurs almost verbatim in the version cited in note 10. In Child N, probably Irish, the dead boy asks that his coffin be made "of hazel and green birch," while in several versions, the dead boy makes an appointment to meet his mother at, for example, "the birks of Mirryland town" in Version B in MacEdward Leach, The Ballad Book (New York, 1955), P. 429.
14 Certainly many of the principles that have been developed about the transmission of folktales and the functions of gifted tale tellers can be applied to gifted folksingers and their effects upon folksongs. In this connection, see Stith Thompson, The Folktale (New York, 1946), pp. 428-448, particularly references to kinds of change, gifted raconteurs, C. W. von Sydow, and Walter Anderson.
Carr Creek, Kentucky
Universityo f Kentucky
Lexington, Kentucky