Old Betty Larkin: A Song History
"Old Betty Larkin" is an American play-party song about stealing and swapping partners; the Traditional Ballad Index tags it as a non-ballad with the keywords playparty, dancing and courting, finds it in the American South, and records other titles including "Betsy Larkin," "Steal Partners" and "Stole My Partner."[1] Jean Ritchie printed a text with its tune in Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians.[1] The earliest date the Index gives is 1935, for a two-stanza fragment called "You Stole My Pard"; because the Roud index numbers it separately it may be a different piece, although the Index's editor thinks a shared line ties it to the Ritchie family's "Betty Larkin" texts.[1]
Shepherds in a Round Dance, wool and silk tapestry, around 1500. A European ring dance far older than the American play-party, shown for the dancing in a ring; it has no connection to the song.
Pete Seeger recorded "Betty Larkin" with his young daughter Mika and Rev. Larry Eisenberg for the 1959 Folkways album American Play Parties, whose songs come mainly from the collections of Lynn and Katherine Rohrbough.[2] As the album's description explains, nineteenth-century young people in communities that forbade dancing on religious grounds turned permitted children's games into these sung parties, and the trio performs them with only handclapping behind the voices.[2] Aubrey Atwater, who publishes the book herself, sets "Old Betty Larkin" in DAC tuning in Song By Song, Vol. II, a download of dulcimer tablature that comes as a 157-page PDF plus 64 separate song files.[3]
Sources
- The Traditional Ballad Index: "Old Betty Larkin (Betsy Larkin, You Stole My Pard, Steal Partners, Stole My Partner)".
- Smithsonian Folkways: "American Play Parties".
- Aubrey Atwater: "Song By Song, Vol. II".
- Image: Shepherds in a Round Dance, wool and silk tapestry, around 1500. The Cleveland Museum of Art.