Two Virginian Ballads on Themes of Human Sedulity (2016-17)
for solo guitar
Program notes
I. “Colonel Lightfoot and the Devil at Dancing Point”
According to Virginian folklore (and L.B. Taylor, Jr., whose book The Ghosts of Williamsburg recounts the story), there is a plot of land along the James River that was laid claim to by both the Devil and Colonel Philip Lightfoot (who was a real person). To resolve the dispute, they agreed to a dancing contest one night around a flickering fire. In short, Colonel Lightfoot ultimately proved worthy of his name, and by dawn the Devil conceded the plot of land which is now known as Dancing Point.
II. “The Rose and the Briar”
When green buds were a-swelling,
Sweet Jimmie Grove on his deathbed lay,
For the love of Barbara Allen.
[…]
She hadn’t gone more than a mile from the place
Till she heard his death-bell ringing;
Nor had she gone more than five miles from the place,
Till she saw his corpse a-coming.
“Oh, lay him in the cold, cold clay
And let me look upon him!
O mother dear, you caused all this;
You would not let me have him.
“And father, father dig my grave,
And dig it deep and narrow.
Sweet Jimmie dies for me today,
I’ll die for him tomorrow.”
Sweet Jimmie was buried in the South Church yard,
And Barbara in the other.
A rose bush sprang from one of their breasts,
A briar from the other.
They grew, they grew, till they reached the church top.
They grew till they couldn’t grow higher.
They grew and tied a true love-knot,
The rose wrapped round the briar.
As sung by Mrs. E.W. Hale of Pembroke, VA, March 16, 1914; printed in Davis, Arthur Kyle: Traditional Ballads of Virginia (Harvard University Press, 1929), p. 320-321.