Uploaded August 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Sir Henry / Lord Henry / Love Henry / Loving Henry Lee / Lady Margaret / Young Hunting (Child No. 68) - Sung by Mr. Adolphus "Dol" Glenroy Small (1869–1956, then 81 years old) at Nellysford, Nelson County, Virginia. Recorded by Maud Karpeles and Sidney Robertson Cowell in September 1950. Previously collected by Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles on May 22, 1918.
00:00:00 Lady Margaret - Adolphus "Dol" Small
00:04:03 Sir Henry (Fiddle Tune) - John Scisrow Witt
00:05:49 Sir Henry - John Scisrow Witt
00:06:50 Heneree - Frank Jones
The Library of Congress blog posts by Brian Peters and Catherine Hiebert Kerst about Maud Karpeles' and Sidney Robertson Cowell's 1950 field recording trip are well worth reading. I found the recording of Mr. Dol Small there too while I was comparing texts of Young Hunting that include the bugle horn opening.
Here: blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2023/12/song-hunting-in-the-appalachians-with-karpeles-and-cowell-in-the-footsteps-of-cecil-sharp-part-1
And here: blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2023/12/song-hunting-in-the-appalachians-with-karpeles-and-cowell-in-the-footsteps-of-cecil-sharp-part-2
An excellent article by Mike Yates on Cecil Sharp's and Maud Karpeles' Appalachia trip in the 1910s can be read here: mustrad.org.uk/articles/sharp.htm
A selection of 1930s phonograph recordings made by folklorist Arthur Kyle Davis Jr. (1897–1972) of Virginia ballad singers has been digitised and made available for listening online: https://avalon.lib.virginia.edu/collections/7m01bk901
We get a chance to listen to some of the very same people Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles met and noted songs from in the 1910s.
The audio quality of these recordings is relatively poor, being made with portable equipment at that time, but the songs are interesting and worthy of attention. I had the idea of creating small compilations of related versions of each song for these videos. This is because I noticed that I often had more than one recording of each song available from singers who were related or lived in the same area.
Arthur K. Davis Jr. published the hundreds of Virginia ballads he collected in two books, "Folk-Songs of Virginia" (1949), and "More Traditional Ballads of Virginia" (1960) with the editorial assistance of Paul Clayton Worthington.
Note by Kevin W.:
A poorly remembered text. It did not change between 1918 and 1950 and Mr. Adolphus Small sang it from memory on both occasions. Nonetheless it preserves the rare bugle horn opening and the tune is a particularly enjoyable one.
The later half of Young Hunting with the king's divers being instructed to search for the body by the talking bird has only once been recorded in America in a fragment titled "Sir Robin", distinct from all other US texts: bluegrassmessengers.com/sir-robin--swetnam-ms-1936-hudson-a.aspx
I wonder if the shorter US texts aren't closer to a speculative ur-form of the ballad, with the supernatural elements having been grafted onto the song by literary Scottish poets at a later date. If these elements were part of the ur-ballad wouldn't they show up in at least some of the US texts? It's likely the song arrived in Virginia with the early settlers in the 1600s-1700s and predates the Scottish texts printed by Prof. Child.
The scant surviving tradition of the ballad in Ireland and Canada agrees with the US texts.
Song transcription:
Last Friday night Lady Margaret lie,
A-sleeping very sad.
She heard the sound of a bugle horn,
It made her heart full glad.
She thought it were her brother John
Returning from his king,
Although it were her Henery,
Returning from his wild hunting.
Get down, get down, O Henery,
And stay all night with me,
The very best of lodging I have here,
I'll give it all to thee.
I shan't get down and I won't get down
And stay all night with thee,
For I have a lady in the merry green land
I love far better than thee.
I wish I had my string and bow,
And my arrow too.
I'd pierce you to your heart so free
That you'd be seen no more.
Then up spoke a little par-ri-ot
That sits on yonder's limb;
O how could you murder your own true love
That you and I have seen.
Get down, come down, little par-ri-ot,
And set on my right knee.
I'll buy you a cage of yellow gold
And I'll hang it on yonder's tree.
I shan't come down, I won't come down
And set on your right knee,
For the sooner you'd murder your own true love,
The sooner you'd murder me.
Sir Henry / Lord Henry / Love Henry / Loving Henry Lee / Lady Margaret / Young Hunting (Child No. 68) - Sung by Mr. Adolphus "Dol" Glenroy Small (1869–1956, then 81 years old) at Nellysford, Nelson County, Virginia. Recorded by Maud Karpeles and Sidney Robertson Cowell in September 1950. Previously collected by Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles on May 22, 1918.
00:00:00 Lady Margaret - Adolphus "Dol" Small
00:04:03 Sir Henry (Fiddle Tune) - John Scisrow Witt
00:05:49 Sir Henry - John Scisrow Witt
00:06:50 Heneree - Frank Jones
The Library of Congress blog posts by Brian Peters and Catherine Hiebert Kerst about Maud Karpeles' and Sidney Robertson Cowell's 1950 field recording trip are well worth reading. I found the recording of Mr. Dol Small there too while I was comparing texts of Young Hunting that include the bugle horn opening.
Here: blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2023/12/song-hunting-in-the-appalachians-with-karpeles-and-cowell-in-the-footsteps-of-cecil-sharp-part-1
And here: blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2023/12/song-hunting-in-the-appalachians-with-karpeles-and-cowell-in-the-footsteps-of-cecil-sharp-part-2
An excellent article by Mike Yates on Cecil Sharp's and Maud Karpeles' Appalachia trip in the 1910s can be read here: mustrad.org.uk/articles/sharp.htm
A selection of 1930s phonograph recordings made by folklorist Arthur Kyle Davis Jr. (1897–1972) of Virginia ballad singers has been digitised and made available for listening online: https://avalon.lib.virginia.edu/collections/7m01bk901
We get a chance to listen to some of the very same people Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles met and noted songs from in the 1910s.
The audio quality of these recordings is relatively poor, being made with portable equipment at that time, but the songs are interesting and worthy of attention. I had the idea of creating small compilations of related versions of each song for these videos. This is because I noticed that I often had more than one recording of each song available from singers who were related or lived in the same area.
Arthur K. Davis Jr. published the hundreds of Virginia ballads he collected in two books, "Folk-Songs of Virginia" (1949), and "More Traditional Ballads of Virginia" (1960) with the editorial assistance of Paul Clayton Worthington.
Note by Kevin W.:
A poorly remembered text. It did not change between 1918 and 1950 and Mr. Adolphus Small sang it from memory on both occasions. Nonetheless it preserves the rare bugle horn opening and the tune is a particularly enjoyable one.
The later half of Young Hunting with the king's divers being instructed to search for the body by the talking bird has only once been recorded in America in a fragment titled "Sir Robin", distinct from all other US texts: bluegrassmessengers.com/sir-robin--swetnam-ms-1936-hudson-a.aspx
I wonder if the shorter US texts aren't closer to a speculative ur-form of the ballad, with the supernatural elements having been grafted onto the song by literary Scottish poets at a later date. If these elements were part of the ur-ballad wouldn't they show up in at least some of the US texts? It's likely the song arrived in Virginia with the early settlers in the 1600s-1700s and predates the Scottish texts printed by Prof. Child.
The scant surviving tradition of the ballad in Ireland and Canada agrees with the US texts.
Song transcription:
Last Friday night Lady Margaret lie,
A-sleeping very sad.
She heard the sound of a bugle horn,
It made her heart full glad.
She thought it were her brother John
Returning from his king,
Although it were her Henery,
Returning from his wild hunting.
Get down, get down, O Henery,
And stay all night with me,
The very best of lodging I have here,
I'll give it all to thee.
I shan't get down and I won't get down
And stay all night with thee,
For I have a lady in the merry green land
I love far better than thee.
I wish I had my string and bow,
And my arrow too.
I'd pierce you to your heart so free
That you'd be seen no more.
Then up spoke a little par-ri-ot
That sits on yonder's limb;
O how could you murder your own true love
That you and I have seen.
Get down, come down, little par-ri-ot,
And set on my right knee.
I'll buy you a cage of yellow gold
And I'll hang it on yonder's tree.
I shan't come down, I won't come down
And set on your right knee,
For the sooner you'd murder your own true love,
The sooner you'd murder me.
