The Wagoner's Lad: A Song History

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"The Wagoner's Lad" is a traditional American courtship song: a girl's parents frown on her poor suitor, a wagoner, who answers that he earns his own way and then refuses her plea to stay and departs.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index dates it to 1908, when Olive Dame Campbell collected it, and finds it across the Appalachians, the South and the Midwest, though its editor remarks that it barely counts as a ballad.[1] Its verses have traded freely with songs such as "Rye Whiskey" and "The Cuckoo," and while it is often tied to "On Top of Old Smoky," the same editor argues that this link owes much to editors' choices, since the two differ in story and tune.[1]

Etching of a canvas-covered wagon on large spoked wheels drawn by a team of horses, with figures at the back of the wagon.

Thomas Rowlandson, Millers Waggon, from The Rhedarium, or, A New Book of Horses and Carriages, etching and stipple, 1784. A covered wagon and its team, drawn in England in 1784, shown for the song's wagoner suitor; the etching has no connection to the song.

Cecil Sharp took down a version from Jane Gentry at Hot Springs, North Carolina, on 14 September 1916, and he printed four variants in English Folk Songs From the Southern Appalachians.[2] Singing to his own banjo, Buell Kazee recorded it in New York on 18 January 1928 as "The Wagoner's Lad (Loving Nancy)," and Brunswick issued it on record 213.[3] Harry Smith later chose that recording for his Anthology of American Folk Music, released by Folkways in 1952.[2] Kazee, whose working life was given chiefly to the ministry, recorded the song again for his 1958 Folkways album Buell Kazee Sings and Plays.[4] Related versions had already reached records under the title "My Horses Ain't Hungry," by Kelly Harrell for Victor in 1926 and by Vernon Dalhart for Edison in 1927.[5] Later singers include Peggy Seeger, Joan Baez with Roger McGuinn, and Elizabeth LaPrelle.[2]

In Aubrey Atwater's Song By Song, Vol. I, a book she issues herself with separate sections for mountain dulcimer, old-time banjo, Irish tin whistle and chord-and-lyric songs, "The Wagoner's Lad" is set for dulcimer in DAA tuning.[6]

Our book that contains the song "The Wagoner's Lad"

Sources

  1. The Traditional Ballad Index: "Wagoner's Lad, The".
  2. Mainly Norfolk: "The Wagoner's Lad".
  3. Discography of American Historical Recordings: "Brunswick matrix E26063-E26064. The wagoner's lad (Loving Nancy) / Buell Kazee".
  4. Smithsonian Folkways: "Buell Kazee Sings and Plays".
  5. The Traditional Tune Archive: "Wagoner's Lad (The)".
  6. Aubrey Atwater: "Song By Song, Vol. I".
  7. Image: Thomas Rowlandson, Millers Waggon, from The Rhedarium, or, A New Book of Horses and Carriages, etching and stipple, 1784. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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