One I Love: A Song History

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“One I Love” is Jean Ritchie’s reworking of an Appalachian parting song in which a lover too poor to stay must cross the mountain yet promises unchanging devotion.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index gives its earliest date as 1918 and lists one text and tune in Cecil Sharp’s English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, as no. 190, “I Love My Love”.[1] June Tabor’s sleeve notes say that Sharp and Maud Karpeles collected it from Mrs. Ellen Webb of Cane River, Burnsville, North Carolina, on 21 September 1918.[2] The Index assigns it Roud 3612 and notes that the many related love songs make it difficult to pin down as a distinct song.[1]

Etching of a figure standing by a gate at the edge of a field, with trees and a hill beyond under a wide sky

Samuel Palmer, The Skylark, etching on chine collé, 1850. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its mood; it has no connection to the song.

Ritchie recorded it on her 1965 album A Time for Singing.[2] Her notes say that the older singers she heard knew only scraps of it, chiefly the first verse and one about going over the mountains, and that the version printed in Sharp’s collection used a quite different melody.[2] She wrote the remaining verses from hazy recollection and imagination, because she was unwilling to let a favorite song stay incomplete.[3] The Ballad Index notes that she changed the singer’s gender and added a chorus, and it indexes that chorus separately.[1] In a FolkWorks column, singer Susie Glaze gives her own view that the melody is Ritchie’s composition, and she interprets Ritchie’s notes to mean that the source material was traditional rather than Ritchie’s own.[4]

Judy Collins sang it, with Eric Weissberg on guitar, on the 2014 Compass Records tribute Dear Jean: Artists Celebrate Jean Ritchie.[5][6] Aubrey Atwater recorded it on her 1999 album Daily Growing: Aubrey Atwater Live in the Classroom, and she printed it in both volumes of her Song By Song songbooks (2001 and 2022), each of which includes material on the mountain dulcimer.[7][8][9] In 2020 she taught it in a mountain dulcimer workshop on Ritchie’s life and songs.[10] June Tabor’s 2007 Topic album Apples includes the song under Sharp’s title, “I Love My Love”.[2]

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Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "I Love my Love (II)".
  2. Mainly Norfolk: "One I Love / I Love My Love".
  3. FolkWorks (Susie Glaze): "One I Love".
  4. FolkWorks (Susie Glaze): "One I Love – Redux".
  5. Sing Out!: "Various Artists: Dear Jean".
  6. FolkWorks: "Dear Jean ~ Artists Celebrate Jean Ritchie".
  7. Atwater~Donnelly: "Store" (Daily Growing track list; Song By Song books).
  8. Atwater~Donnelly: "Song By Song, Volume I: Table of Contents".
  9. Atwater~Donnelly: "Song By Song, Volume II: Table of Contents".
  10. Atwater~Donnelly: "Workshop Videos & Handouts".