Lyr Req: Ballad: Roses Bloom Sweetly

Subject: Ballad: Roses Bloom Sweetly
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 25 Sep 02 - 12:02 PM

I heard Peggy Seeger sing this ballad, and I would love to have the words.

The story line is more or less as follows:
The suitor asks the maiden for her hand, and she tells him he must ask for her hand from various relatives, specifically her brother John. But he neglected to ask brother John. Everyone he asks approves of the match.

They are wedded, and as she mounts, brother John stabs her secretly. She withdraws to a hilltop, and when approached it's clear she is dying. What will you leave to so and so, and to so and so. Among other things, to her mother she leaves the dress she is wearing--"my heart's blood flows in every seam". Seems to me I remember she leaves brother John a hangman's noose. And to John's widow she leaves a curse.

The unspoken subtext seems to be that there was incest between her and brother John, thus explaining his stabbing her when she married someone.

The refrain includes the line, "and the roses bloo-oom, sweetly."

Can anyone help with this?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ballad: Roses Bloom Sweetly
From: GUEST,NOMADman
Date: 25 Sep 02 - 12:07 PM

Child Ballad #11, The Cruel Brother.

Regards,
John

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ballad: Roses Bloom Sweetly
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 25 Sep 02 - 12:21 PM

Thanx, NomadMan. That is the basic ballad I'm describing.

I'd love to get a version closer to what I outlined, and particularly that uses the line "my heart's blood flows in every seam." And the curse on the widow of brother John.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ballad: Roses Bloom Sweetly
From: Sorcha
Date: 25 Sep 02 - 12:28 PM

There are 11 variants at Contmeplator, any of them the right one?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ballad: Roses Bloom Sweetly
From: GUEST,Uncle_DaveO
Date: 26 Sep 02 - 12:02 PM

The first one is close. Thanx.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ballad: Roses Bloom Sweetly
From: GUEST
Date: 26 Sep 02 - 12:28 PM

test

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ballad: Roses Bloom Sweetly
From: Sandy Paton
Date: 26 Sep 02 - 12:29 PM

One version in Cecil Sharp's Appalachian collection (English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians) contains the following two verses (if memory serves):

What will you leave to your old mother dear?
I - O, the lily gay.
This bloody clothing that I wear.
And the rose smells so sweet, I know.

Tell her to wash it in yonder stream,
I - O, the lily gay.
For my heart's blood sticks in every seam.
And the rose smells so sweet, I know.

Andrew Rowan Summers recorded this version on an early Folkways album. The "hech aye" version quoted in Contemplator from Kinloch is on Archie Fisher's Folk-Legacy CD-61 (The Man with a Rhyme).

Sandy

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ballad: Roses Bloom Sweetly
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 26 Sep 02 - 12:34 PM

Bronson prints two sets which fulfill the basic criteria stated above. The first, which Sandy has just mentioned, (3) [The Cruel Brother], noted by Cecil Sharp from Mrs. Hester House, Hot Springs, N.C. in 1916, has

For my heart's blood is in every seam

and

A rope and a gallows for to hang him on

(7) [The Three Knights], which is also Child's example F, and was quoted from Gilbert's Ancient Christmas Carols, 2nd. ed., 1823 "as remembered by the editor, West of England" (Bronson has "Sung in Cornwall"), has

For my heart's blood sticks in ev'ry seam

and

A rope and a gallows to hang him on.

A few other sets have been published since then; it may be that Peggy Seeger recorded one of them. What we really need here is someone who knows where she said she got it. Neither refrain in the two examples I've mentioned quite matches, but she may have changed that herself, of course.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ballad: Roses Bloom Sweetly
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 26 Sep 02 - 01:04 PM

I KNOW that the line, "My heart's blood flows in every seam" is what she sang. I'm not so sure of the exact words of the hanging line.

She says that she will on occasion change a ballad in what she considers an improvement. That just could be involved here.

This was from her singing at Banjo Camp North this last spring, in a class on ballad singing.

In any case, what Sandy and Malcolm have given will help, when combined with the Contemplateor text(s), to give me a version close to what I heard. Thank you muchly.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Ballad: Roses Bloom Sweetly
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 26 Sep 02 - 03:29 PM

Apparently she's got a cd of traditional and traditional-like songs coming out soon. Info here. No track list, though, but you could probably inquire.

~ Becky in Tucson