More new music! “Free Goodwill”

About the song

“This version of the song ‘Sharp Prints’, which he attributes to a Mrs. Ellen Webb of North Carolina, is a small gem with a lyrical flowing melody and austere poignant verses that contain numerous floating phrases from British lyric tradition. I found the song sometime in the 1950s and sang it in programs numerous times. I even sent a recorded rendition that I did of it to a well-known performer in the 1970s, but nowhere else did I find versions of it.

“The trail of tradition for this song was invisible to me and as I finished my studies and gained a Ph.D. never finding a trace of it, I began to think that Cecil Sharp may have composed it himself and slipped it into his marvelous collection of songs. However, now I favor the theory that Mrs. Ellen Webb might well have composed the song herself or at least creatively chose to perpetuate it by singing it for Sharp. (The people in the mountains realized that Cecil Sharp was there to collect songs and ‘preserve’ them.)

“The words Ellen Webb sings, as found in the Southern Mountain collection, are those of a lover who declares love for a woman. Now, It is not unusual for women singers in the Anglo-American tradition to sing songs in which a man is the protagonist, or for men to sing songs in which a woman is the voice in the text. However, in this case, where ‘All my friends fell out with me because I kept my love’s company,’ the song might well be speaking of a same-sex relationship, which would have accounted for the ‘I’ of the song having ‘fallen out’ of the company of her peers. Indeed, in the early 1900s in the Appalachians, such a same-sex relationship would have been taboo, I would venture that this might well be one of the few cases of a lyric being collected by Cecil Sharp that speaks of same-sex love.

Lyrics

Over the mountain, I must go
Because my fortune is so low
With an aching heart and a troubled mind
For leaving my true love behind

The moon above looks down and see
The parting of true love and me
It’s as hard to part the moon and sky
As it is to part true love and I

When I have gold, he has his part
When I have none, he has my heart
And he won it too with a free goodwill
And upon my honor, I love him still

The winter’s passed, and the summer’s come
The trees are blooming one by one
And if my true love chooses for to stay
I’ll stay with him ’till the break of day

Credits

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