Over The River To Feed My Sheep: A Song History

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"Over the River to Feed My Sheep" is one title in a large, loose family of American courting and play-party songs about a young man named Charlie, which the Traditional Ballad Index files under "Weevily Wheat" (Roud 729); the Index notes that a line about crossing the river to feed sheep turns up often in the family.[1] The Index classes the family as non-narrative, with verses that float freely between versions; it gives 1911 as the earliest date and lists the song from the Appalachians, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, the Southeast and the South.[1] Some writers have linked Charlie to Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Jacobite claimant, but the Index's notes say the connection would be hard to prove either way.[1]

Etching of a herdsman on horseback driving sheep, cattle and a donkey through a shallow stream, with a woman carrying a child

Nicolaes Berchem, Le Troupeau Traversant le Ruisseau (The Herd Crossing the Stream), etching. A herd driven across a stream, shown for the title; it has no connection to the song.

Folklore collectors printed versions of the family in studies of play-parties and singing games from Indiana and the Illinois Ozarks, and in collections such as Vance Randolph's Ozark Folksongs and Cecil Sharp's Appalachian volume.[1] On August 27, 1969, Ollie Gilbert of Mountain View, Arkansas, was recorded for the Max Hunter collection singing it as "Over the River to Feed Them Sheep," and the collection lists "Charley Is a Nice Young Man" as a variant.[2] The singer Jean Ritchie put versions of the song on record several times between 1953 and 1974, using the title "Over the River to Feed My Sheep" on her 1971 album Clear Waters Remembered.[3] An earlier commercial version in the same family, Kelly Harrell's "Charley, He's a Good Old Man," came out on Victor in the late 1920s.[1]

For dulcimer players, Aubrey Atwater sets a song under this title in DAG tuning in Song By Song, Vol. II, her self-published 157-page tablature book of traditional songs, many printed with lyrics for singing along.[4]

Our book that contains the song "Over The River To Feed My Sheep"

Sources

  1. Traditional Ballad Index: "Weevily Wheat".
  2. Max Hunter Folk Song Collection, Missouri State University: "Over the River to Feed Them Sheep".
  3. Mainly Norfolk: "Charlie".
  4. Aubrey Atwater: "Song By Song, Vol. II".
  5. Image: Nicolaes Berchem, Le Troupeau Traversant le Ruisseau (The Herd Crossing the Stream), etching. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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