Black Jack Davy's got a roving eye,
black, with a black curl that's hanging down.
He sang so sweet and so complete,
that he charmed the heart of a lady.
It was late last night
when her husband came home,
inquiring for his lady,
and some denied, and some replied;
"She's run away with the Black Jack Davy."
"Go saddle for me my bonny brown mare,
the gray was never so speedy.
I'll ride all day, and I'll ride all night, until
I catch that Black Jack Davy."
So he rode East, and he rode West,
he rode it late and early,
until he came to the riverside,
to the camp of the Black Jack Davy.
"How could you leave your house and lands?
How could you leave your money?
How could you leave your husband, my dear,
to run away with the Black Jack Davy?"
"What care I for your house and lands?
What care I for your money?
I'd rather have a kiss from the gypsy's lips
than all of your gold and your money."
"Last night I lay in a goose feather bed,
with the sheets turned down so bravely.
Tonight I'll lay on the cold hard ground,
in the arms of the Black Jack Davy."
................................................................................
This version of Black Jack Davy (the ballad has many titles.) is an amalgamation
of many versions...I'm not sure exactly where all of them came from. I know
that it isn't like Jean Ritchie's version...which I learned...and not like Martin
Carthy's, which I admire. These are the words that I came up with when I tried
to remember the ballad without aid from a text. The first two lines are my own
invention...my dad had a curl like that, & so did the sweet guy in Jane Campion's
"Sweetie." Those curls are irresistible I figure.
Ballads have a typical construction, certain poetic conventions occur more often
than not, and this makes it possible to recreate a ballad, providing that you
have an understanding of the general form, and a skill (developed through practice!)
for making poetry and music.
Some of the descriptive language in traditional ballads is formulaic...there
are adjectives and phrases that sing easily and effectively in English and they
reoccur, sometimes with telling slight variations. So it is that people with
someplace to get to in ballads often do what the left-behind husband in Black
Jack Davy did; "He rode East and he rode West, and he rode it late and early."
In Lord Bateman both Bateman, and later in the ballad, the Turkish Lady travel
in a like manner; "So he sailed East, and he sailed Westward." These phrases
are easy both to remember and to sing. Perhaps this is due to certain aspects
of European geography...but I suspect it has to due with the sun's pathway across
the sky. Dawn and sunset have powerful associations in poetry...being the beginning
and ending of light in the days before lightbulbs...speaking of traveling the
span between East and West is a quick way of saying, "they went everywhere"
and it links their passage to the powerful metaphor of the sun's journey. Ballad
travelers occasionally go North, and that has its peculiar tone as well...into
cold darkness. I don't know of a single ballad with European origins that mentions
going South.
Sometimes stanzas or sentences common to more than one ballad are called "floaters."
A good example is the motif of the dead lovers who have a red rose or a green
briar grow out of their respective bosoms after they die for love. The rose
signifies the 'soft-hearted," slighted, unrequited or "true" lover of the pair,
the briar grows from the heart of the "hard-hearted," selfish, or indifferent
one. In Barbara Ellen, its the man who sprouts the rose, in Lord Lovel and William
and Margaret, its the woman. This makes a very memorable ending for a love affair,
and for a ballad as well.