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Our Singing Country |
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10 They rode till they came to his mother's house 5 He knocked and he tingled at the ring. "Asleep or awake, dear mother," I said, "Pray arise and let me in."
11 His mother arose and she slipped on her clothes To let Sweet William in 5
No one was so ready as his mother herself To arise and let him in.
12 "Dear mother," I said, "come and bind up my head, You never shall bind it any more."
Sweet William, he died of the wound that he bore, And Fair Ellen, she died also. |
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BLACK JACK DAVY
b. No. 72. Gant family, Austin, Texas, 1934. See "The Gypsy Laddie," Child No. 2005 Sh, 1:233; Hu, p. 118; Be, p. 73.
One morning I called on the Gant family at ten o'clock. Mrs. Gant met me at the door dressed in her early morning wrapper.
"The children are all asleep," she whispered apologetically, "and haven't gone to school today. Last night we all got to singing and dancing. We didn't go to bed until two o'clock this morning. The children stayed up, too, so I'm letting the whole bunch sleep until dinnertime."
The Gants were east Texas people from the sandy, square-dancing, razorback country that stretches into Arkansas, through northern Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama to the mountains. The Gants had followed cotton into Oklahoma, then down into the Panhandle and, in drought and years of bad prices, had moved on. In Oklahoma they learned new songs, new Gants were born, and some of the young ones began to pick the guitar. In the PanÂhandle they learned cowboy songs, the oldest daughter was married and had her first baby, and Adoniram began to pick the guitar. Dispossessed again, they came to Austin, the capital, looking for something to do. When there were no more jobs, they got a little food from the Relief and lived in a shack on the bank of the Colorado River. |
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