More Ballad Extraction: Two Sisters

[kniteracy]

I've been familiar with "Two Sisters" for a long time, and of course I love all the English versions with harps and stuff, but I fell in love with a "Wind and Rain" version I heard on an Armstrong Family CD years ago, and that's the version that stayed with me.

I don't particularly like "Bonny Swans" versions, although bardling sand me a "Binnorie" one that I liked very much.

The "Wind and Rain" version I learned so long ago was very short, and I knew there must be a little more to it. Now, some Appalachian versions add a tag where the miller/fellow who builds the instrument from her bones is hanged for her murder, and some add a version where the sister is executed because she is accused by the sister, but I'm not sure I like that ending. But it can be evocative when you add a little imagery.

Anyway, here's the version I'm working on learning:


Two Sisters/The Wind and the Rain

There were two sisters of a valley town
Oh the wind and the rain
One was fair and the other was brown
Oh the dreadful wind and rain

And they both had love of the miller’s son
Oh...
But he was fond of the fairer one
Oh...

So she pushed her into the river to drown
And watched her as she floated down

She floated ‘til she came to the miller’s pond
Dead on the water like a golden swan

And she came to rest on the river’s side
And her bones are washed by the rolling tide

Then along the road came a fiddler fair
And found her bones just a lying there

So he made a fiddle peg of her long finger-bone
He middle a fiddle peg of her long finger-bone

He strung his fiddle bow with her long yellow hair
He strung his fiddle bow with her long yellow hair

And he made a fiddle fiddle of her breastbone
He made a fiddle fiddle of her breastbone

But the only tune that the fiddle would play
The only tune that the fiddle would play

(almost entirely from the singing of Gillian Welch, from one of the Songcatcher CDs)

Comments

[mneme]

Oh yes -- put a harp in a good wind, and it sings. Not exactly pretty -- more eerie...but then...

[telynor.livejournal.com]

While I appreciate the integrity of the harp story, I tend to like the tunes that go with the fiddle versions more, probably because they're more American and often Appalachian in cadence.