Appalachain Folk - Tumblr Posts

Can you do "Hares on the mountain" by Shirley Collins and Davy Graham? Cheers!!

Suggested Song

(do you want the history of your favorite folk song? dm me or submit an ask, and I'll do a full rundown like here)

"Hares on the Mountain" Shirley Collins and Davy Graham, 1964

"Hares on the Mountain" is a traditional English and Irish folk song that was first mentioned in print in 1837 in "Rory O'More A National Lovestory" (vol. 1 p.234) as "blackbirds and thrishes"

It's almost certain that the song has existed prior, and it could be incredibly old.

the first time it was collected in song was by George Petrie in "The Complete Collection of Irish Music" (1902)

as "All the young maidens were blackbirds and Trushes" like the other book.

i remade this melody so you can hear what it could have sounded like

It was then later collected by Cecil sharp in 1903 and Publish 1904 in "Folk Songs of Somerset" as having two distinct versions

i remade these into melodies as well

version 1

version 2

here

Around the same time, Cecil Sharp would also collect the song, "O Sally My Dear" but wouldn't publish it because of the sexual nature of this song and its relatives, "Pretty Polly" "Nancy and Johnny" and "The Knife in the Window"

This specific family of songs could also be the descendants of an even older folk song that has almost disappeared. except for verses in its descendants. : "The Twa Magicians," which is all over Europe in various forms.

For "Hares on the mountain" The earliest recording I could find of Hares on the Mountain was in 1942 in Somerset, but i don't have access to it. i just know it exists.

The earliest recording I could find that is available publicly is by Horton Barker from just a couple of months later (in the USA), "To My Right", which is the same song as the original "Hares on the Mountain"

Shirley Collins' Version is particularly interesting for combining the lyrics of both "Hares on the mountain" and "Sally My Dear" and making it into a cohesive story. I also love how it seems that Sally is singing "Hares on the Mountain" *to* the young man.

Even though this song is old and has hundreds of versions with dozens of different names, this version is my favorite. It seems that in many versions, the lyrics are meant to be humorous or scandalous, but in Shirley Collins's version, they take on a different tone. They're sad, spooky, and tragic. I like the way that she renders the conversation between the two characters, and her voice is simply angelic. I'm glad that the traditional started to get more attention thanks to her version.

I actually didn't know anything about this song (or that it existed at all) when starting this project as my knowledge is focused on American folk, but as soon as I heard it I knew it was now one of my favorite songs ever. Also! as of last year, Shirley Collins has released another version of the song. Nothing can beat the '60s version, but this one is pretty nice too.

Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest, ep. 5 1965

Jean Ritchie performing Shady Grove

the appalachian murder ballad <3 one of the most interesting elements of americana and american folk, imo!

my wife recently gave me A Look when i had one playing in the car and she was like, "why do all of these old folk songs talk about killing people lmao" and i realized i wanted to Talk About It at length.

nerd shit under the cut, and it's long. y'all been warned

so, as y'all probably know, a lot of appalachian folk music grew its roots in scottish folk (and then was heavily influenced by Black folks once it arrived here, but that's a post for another time).

they existed, as most folk music does, to deliver a narrative--to pass on a story orally, especially in communities where literacy was not widespread. their whole purpose was to get the news out there about current events, and everyone loves a good murder mystery!

as an aside, i saw someone liken the murder ballad to a ye olde true crime podcast and tbh, yeah lol.

the "original" murder ballads started back across the pond as news stories printed on broadsheets and penned in such a way that it was easy to put to melody.

they were meant to be passed on and keep the people informed about the goings-on in town. i imagine that because these songs were left up to their original orators to get them going, this would be why we have sooo many variations of old folk songs.

naturally then, almost always, they were based on real events, either sung from an outside perspective, from the killer's perspective and in some cases, from the victim's. of course, like most things from days of yore, they reek of social dogshit. the particular flavor of dogshit of the OG murder ballad was misogyny.

so, the murder ballad came over when the english and scots-irish settlers did. in fact, a lot of the current murder ballads are still telling stories from centuries ago, and, as is the way of folk, getting rewritten and given new names and melodies and evolving into the modern recordings we hear today.

305 such scottish and english ballads were noted and collected into what is famously known as the Child Ballads collected by a professor named francis james child in the 19th century. they have been reshaped and covered and recorded a million and one times, as is the folk way.

while newer ones continued to largely fit the formula of retelling real events and murder trials (such as one of my favorite ones, little sadie, about a murderer getting chased through the carolinas to have justice handed down), they also evolved into sometimes fictional, (often unfortunately misogynistic) cautionary tales.

perhaps the most famous examples of these are omie wise and pretty polly where the woman's death almost feels justified as if it's her fault (big shocker).

but i digress. in this way, the evolution of the murder ballad came to serve a similar purpose as the spooky legends of appalachia did/do now.

(why do we have those urban legends and oral traditions warning yall out of the woods? to keep babies from gettin lost n dying in them. i know it's a fun tiktok trend rn to tell tale of spooky scary woods like there's really more haints out here than there are anywhere else, but that's a rant for another time too ain't it)

so, the aforementioned little sadie (also known as "bad lee brown" in some cases) was first recorded in the 1920s. i'm also plugging my favorite female-vocaist cover of it there because it's superior when a woman does it, sorry.

it is a pretty straightforward murder ballad in its content--in the original version, the guy kills a woman, a stranger or his girlfriend sometimes depending on who is covering it.

but instead of it being a cautionary 'be careful and don't get pregnant or it's your fault' tale like omie wise and pretty polly, the guy doesn't get away with it, and he's not portrayed as sympathetic like the murderer is in so many ballads.

a few decades after, women started saying fuck you and writing their own murder ballads.

in the 40s, the femme fatale trope was in full swing with women flipping the script and killing their male lovers for slights against them instead.

men began to enter the "find out" phase in these songs and paid up for being abusive partners. women regained their agency and humanity by actually giving themselves an active voice instead of just being essentially 'fridged in the ballads of old.

her majesty dolly parton even covered plenty of old ballads herself but then went on to write the bridge, telling the pregnant-woman-in-the-murder-ballad's side of things for once. love her.

as a listener, i realized that i personally prefer these modern covers of appalachian murder ballads sung by women-led acts like dolly and gillian welch and even the super-recent crooked still especially, because there is a sense of reclamation, subverting its roots by giving it a woman's voice instead.

meaning that, like a lot else from the problematic past, the appalachian murder ballad is something to be enjoyed with critical ears. violence against women is an evergreen issue, of course, and you're going to encounter a lot of that in this branch of historical music.

but with folk songs, and especially the murder ballad, being such a foundational element of appalachian history and culture and fitting squarely into the appalachian gothic, i still find them important and so, so interesting

i do feel it's worth mentioning that there are "tamer" ones. with traditional and modern murder ballads alike, some of them are just for "fun," like a murder mystery novel is enjoyable to read; not all have a message or retell a historical trial.

(for instance, i'd even argue ultra-modern, popular americana songs like hell's comin' with me is a contemporary americana murder ballad--being sung by a male vocalist and having evolved from being at the expense of a woman to instead being directed at a harmful and corrupt church. that kind of thing)

in short: it continues to evolve, and i continue to eat that shit up.

anyway, to leave off, lemme share with yall my personal favorite murder ballad which fits squarely into murder mystery/horror novel territory imo.

it's the 10th child ballad and was originally known as "the twa sisters." it's been covered to hell n back and named and renamed.

but! if you listen to any flavor of americana, chances are high you already know it; popular names are "the dreadful wind and rain" and sometimes just "wind and rain."

in it, a jealous older sister pushes her other sister into a river (or stream, or sea, depending on who's covering it) over a dumbass man. the little sister's body floats away and a fiddle maker come upon her and took parts of her body to make a fiddle of his own. the only song the new fiddle plays is the tale about how it came to be, and it is the same song you have been listening to until then.

how's that for genuinely spooky-scary appalachia, y'all?

Jean Ritchie, The Mother of Folk

Hi! Can I ask you about the history of the Wagoner's Lad? I'm a fan of Peter & Gordon their song Pretty Mary, but only today, while listening to some Peggy Seeger, I realised that it's a different pov adaptation of that ballad!

Suggested Songs

"Pretty Mary" Peter & Gordon, 1964

Like you said, "Pretty Mary" is a gender-bent version of the Traditional song "The Wagoner's Lad", which was first documented in 1907 by Cecil Sharp. Here's the fun part- if you are familiar with folk song collector Cecil Sharp and American folk songs, you might expect that it was first collected somewhere in the UK or perhaps Ireland if it was spicy. However, the song was first collected in Appalachia! Despite focusing on English folk songs, Cecil Sharp also collected and recorded folk songs in the Appalachia.

It was first published in "English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians" in 1917. and was first recorded in 1926 by Kelly Harrell as "My horses ain't Hungry".

Another Interesting part of this song is that many of its verses have ended up in the song "On Top of Old Smokey", another song collected by Cecil Sharp in Appalachia in 1916.

This makes it hard to tell the two songs apart, as they've become tangled up with each other. Both songs even contain the same Roud folk song number: 414. "On Top of Old Smokey" was first recorded in 1925 by George Reneau. Old Smokey probably refers to the Great Smoky Mountain range that exists between Tenessee and North Carolina.

This Song, throughout its history, has been adapted and recorded over and over again, here's just a few examples.

Pretty Nancy by Jean Ritchie 1970s (?) The Wagoner's Lad by the Kossoy Sisters 1956 My Horses Ain't Hungry by Mike Seeger 1977 On Top of Old Smokey by Gene Autry 1952 Fare You Well Polly by Pete Seeger, 1954 Rye Whiskey by Woody Guthrie 1940 Goodbye Old Paint by Colter Wall 2021

and there are many many many more.

Thanks for the recommendation! I hope this was helpful

Song of the day

do you want the history of your favorite folk song? dm me or submit an ask and I'll do a full rundown

"Polly Vaughn" The Dillards, 1963

"Polly Vaughn"/"Molly Bawn"/ "The Shooting of his Dear" is a traditional Irish folk song that first appeared in print in a 1765 chapbook, as "Molly Bawn"

This Version was first recorded in 1936 by Emma Dusenbur but I couldn't find a digitized version.

The earliest recording I could find was collected by Alan Lomax in 1937 and performed by Aunt Molly Jackson. It was later recorded and performed on the radio in America, the UK, and Canada during the 1940s and 1950s. I had a hard time finding these recordings but here is one from 1954 by Evelyn Skaggs in Arkansas, collected by Mary Celestia Parler. The Dillards version was recorded in 1963, and, in my opinion, is the best version. The pacing and energy of the performance really add to the tragedy and drama of the story. They deliver the horror of a young man accidentally killing his lover as he mistook her for a swan. Other versions are nice but the one by the Dillard's sounds like how the story feels.

Some other notable covers include those by Tia Blake Peter, Paul, and Mary Hedy West

National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institute

Dulcimers, most belonging to Jean Ritchie