Mary of the Wild Moor: A Song History
"Mary of the Wild Moor" tells of a young mother who comes home with her baby on a freezing night, goes unheard at her father's door, and is found dead on the threshold in the morning; the Traditional Ballad Index files it as Laws P21 and Roud 155.[1] Its earliest dated copy in the Index is a London broadside from the press of J. Catnach, printed between 1813 and 1838, and notes reproduced by Mainly Norfolk add that it appears in Catnach's 1832 catalogue and was also printed by Ford of Chesterfield, Barr of Leeds and Bebbington of Manchester.[1][2] In America it ran through broadsides and songsters, among them an H. De Marsans sheet from New York in the early 1860s, and Oliver Ditson & Co. of Boston issued it as sheet music with its tune in 1882.[1] Notes from the University of Maine's folklife archive say Joseph W. Turner first joined the text to a traditional English tune in the mid-nineteenth century, though both are older, and that the backstory he supplied, in which Mary had eloped against her parents' wishes, was probably a sales device.[3]
Henry Linton after J. Pasquier, En Angleterre: Pauvre Jenny!, from Le Journal Illustré, wood engraving, 1865. A mother and children in the snow, shown for the ballad's scene; the French engraving has no connection to the song.
Steve Roud, as quoted by Mainly Norfolk, found the ballad well liked among British singers but seldom taken down by collectors, probably because it struck them as too sentimental, while American collectors put it in nearly all the major collections.[2] Other notes on the same page name Frank Kidson in Yorkshire, Alfred Williams in Gloucestershire and George Gardiner in Hampshire among the English collectors who did note it.[2] The Index cites American and Canadian texts from the Ozarks to Nova Scotia, and the John Quincy Wolf collection at Lyon College holds a 1952 recording of a Texas singer who had learned it at Sylamore, Arkansas.[1][4] In Maine, Evelyn Huckins collected it from Jennie Gray at East Eddington in 1961.[3]
On record, the Blue Sky Boys, Bill and Earl Bolick on mandolin and guitar, cut it in Atlanta on February 5, 1940, for release on Bluebird and Montgomery Ward.[5] Mainly Norfolk lists later versions by Bob and John Copper of Sussex's Copper Family, by Bill Clifton with Hedy West, and by Dolly Parton on her 1994 album Heartsongs.[2] Janene Millen and Shawn McCurdy arrange it in DAD tuning in From Ditties To Dirges, a 31-tune mountain dulcimer collection of mostly solo arrangements that also includes song sheets for singers.[6]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Mary of the Wild Moor [Laws P21]".
- Mainly Norfolk: "The Copper Family: Wind Across the Moor".
- University of Maine, Maine Folklife Center: "Eddington, 'Mary of the Wild Moor'".
- Lyon College, John Quincy Wolf Folklore Collection: "Mary O' the Wild Moor" (sung by Mrs. T. F. Guthrie).
- Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Victor matrix BS-047511. Mary of the wild moor / Blue Sky Boys".
- Janene Millen And Shawn McCurdy: "From Ditties To Dirges".
- Image: Henry Linton after J. Pasquier, En Angleterre: Pauvre Jenny!, from Le Journal Illustré, wood engraving, 1865. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.