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

[telynor.livejournal.com]

I tend not to like the long Scots versions of ballads, with the exception of things that really need their stories told in excruciating detail, like Tam Lin for example. First, to me many of these versions seem unsingable, not because they're long but because they're so many things cobbled together, and second because many of them are transcribed in Scots dialect, and being American and Southern, I don't have any desire or ability to sing in lowlands. I like to sing things in a way that feels natural to my voice, I guess, and long ballads in Scots dialect ain't it. ;)

[mneme]

It depends, for me. I do find that they'll run to unsingably wrong -- I mean, the 30 of Binnorie is pretty long as-is, but Hind Horn is well over 40, and Thomas the Rhymer (which also has lots and lots of more-or-less unnecessary verses; as you say, many things cobbled together) is also well over 30 IIRC.

OTOH, I do quite like the Binorrie ending -- unlike a lot of the middle bits, (like the quite-a-number-of-verses about the dead lady in the water), it flows nicely and has something resembling resolution.

I admit that I tend to simply modernize dialect when singing songs written in it where possible (ie, where it doesn't mess up the rhyme scheme).

[occams_pyramid]

Probably best not to try doing The geste of Robin Hood then :-)