{"collection":"ame","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/ame/cig/cig05.htm","path":"ame/cig/cig05.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/ame/cig/cig05.htm","text":"Coffee in the Gourd, ed. J. Frank Dobie [1923]\nThe following ballad was given to me by Mr. Preston Churchill, a freshman student of mine from Fort Worth. He states that he learned the ballad at Fort Worth when he was seven or eight years old (about 1910 or 1911) from a migratory family coming from the vicinity of Amarillo, Texas. They were poor and illiterate, and their chief method of earning a livelihood was picking cotton in the late summer and throughout the autumn. Their custom was to leave in August or early September and go as an entire family to the farmers living from twenty-five to one hundred miles from Fort Worth, remaining away from Fort Worth until the cotton-picking season was over. The ballad was brought back by the family when they returned one winter from their cotton-picking expedition. It was the favorite song among a number that the family sang, and Mr. Churchill was so impressed with it as a child that he memorized it accurately. \"I again heard this song,\" says Mr. Churchill, \"in the summer of 1922 at Tucumcari, New Mexico. A sheep-herder--at least I was told that he was a sheep-herder--sang it. He gave about three more verses of the song, but I do not remember them.\" The last part of the ballad relates the manner of death of the heroine, but Mr. Preston cannot recall any of the details of these additional stanzas, though he thinks the girl grieved herself to death.\nThe composition has all the earmarks of a late ballad. A few old words seem to indicate that there was an earlier original. In the fifth stanza \"rush and cruel\" may be a corruption for \"rash and cruel\" or perhaps \"harsh and cruel.\" The old or obsolete form \"gare\" for \"gore\" seems to be a survival of older ballad diction. In the sixth stanza the word \"muvven\" is entirely new to me. I do not find it recorded in Wright's Dialect Dictionary nor in The Oxford Dictionary. It may be a corruption of \"heaven.\" Mr. Preston is certain that he has reproduced the word exactly as he learned it. In the last stanza, \"o'er-casting\" is probably a corruption for \"o'er-cast them.\"\nThe next morning they rose early\n \u00a0 For a game of hunting for to go;\n Upon this young man they both insisted\n \u00a0 To come along and with them go.\nThey rode o'er hills and over mountains\n \u00a0 And over lands that were unknown,\n Till they came to a place in a lonesome valley\n \u00a0 And there they killed and left him alone.\nThey got up, and on returning,\n \u00a0 Their sister asked where he might be.\n They said, \"We lost him in our game of hunting;\n \u00a0 No more of him you will ever see.\"\nShe went to bed all heavy-hearted,\n \u00a0 And in her dreams her true love came,\n Saying, \"Your brothers killed me rush and cruel,\n \u00a0 And in a gare of blood I've lain.\"\nThe next morning she rose early,\n \u00a0 She dressed herself, put on her gloves,\n Saying, \"I'll ride all day to the end of muvven,\n \u00a0 Or find the object of my love.\"\nShe rode o'er hills and over mountains\n \u00a0 And over lands she did not know,\n Till she came to the place in the lonesome valley,\n \u00a0 And there she found him dead and cold.\nHis dark blue eyes were forever faded,\n \u00a0 His lips were salty as the brine,\n But she kissed him o'er and over, weeping,\n \u00a0 \"He was a darling friend of mine.\"\nShe got up, and on returning,\n \u00a0 Her brothers asked where she had been.\n She said, \"Hold your tongues, you deceitful villains;\n \u00a0 Far across the sea you both will land.\"\nThe next morning they rose early\n \u00a0 For a trip across the sea to roam,\n But the ship was sunk, and the waves o'er-casting,\n \u00a0\u00a0And they were buried in the foam.","title":"Coffee in the Gourd: One Evening As I Sat Courting, by L....","type":"page"}