Indigenous Ballads 511 inclination for romantic pathos or tragedy, or for sentimental story. Several tell of the return of a lover, as The Banks oj Claudy, or of a girl who follows her lover. Others tell of a girl whom her lover lures away and kills. A striking piece of wide diffusion and of Old World provenance is The Drowsy Sleeper, known as The Bedroom Window, Willie and Mary, etc. " Mary dear, go ask your father If you my wedded bride may be; And if he says nay then come and tell me, And I no more will trouble thee." " Willie dear, I dare not ask him, For he is on his bed of rest, And by his side there lies a dagger To pierce the one that I love best." Robbin, Bobbin, Richard, and John, or The Wren Shooting is a St. Stephen's Day song, from the Isle of Man. Other pieces connected with British folk-song, some of them lingering only as songs for children, are Father Grumble, or Old Crumbly, etc., who thinks "he can do more work in a day than his wife can do in three," The Children in the Wood, Billy Boy, The Frog and the Mouse, and many nursery rhymes. Of modern importation and widely current because used as a party song is the Irish William Reilly or The Coolen Bawn. Ritual songs hardly occur in the United States ; for instance Harvest Home songs, carols, springtime and Mayday songs. Ritual observances have not been transplanted. Aside from the historical pieces enumerated earlier, there are now many short narrative pieces, orally preserved, and apparently authorless, which may fairly be called indigenous ballads. Already, they are marked, to an instructive degree, by fluctuation of text, variant versions, and local modifications and additions. Most of them have a direct unsophisticated note, and some show traces of rude power. An example of an indigenous ballad is Young Charlotte, who was frozen to death at her lover's side, on her way to a ball. Spoke Charles, "How fast the freezing ice Is gathering on my brow." Young Charlottie then feebly said "I'm growing warmer now."
Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/99
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