I learned this song from my mother. It appears in a book that belonged to her, still in my possession – The Coffee House Songbook, compiled by Jay D. Edwards and published in 1966 (the year I was born!). The version in the book is more or less the version I learned from her, but there are a number of differences in the lyrics.
There’s another version of ‘The Wagoner’s Lad’ in my well-thumbed copy of Alan Lomax’s Folk Songs of North America, credited “As sung by Buell Kazee, Eastern Ky., Folkways 7, 251”, and Cecil Sharp gives four different versions in English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. The closest one to mine, melodically and lyrically, is that collected from Mrs. Jane Gentry at Hot Springs, North Carolina, on 14 September 1916:
In old North Carolina I was bred and was born,
And in my own county I was a great scorn.
As I was a-riding one morning in May,
I met as fair damsel as you ever might see.
I viewed her features and she pleased me well;
I forced all on her my mind for to tell.
She quickly consented my bride for to be,
But her parents wasn’t willing for she to have me.
I am a poor girl and my fortune is bad,
And I’ve duly been courted by the wagoner lad,
I’ve duly been courted by night and by day,
But now he’s a-loaded, he’s going away.
Your horses is hungry, go feed them some hay,
Come set down beside me, is all I can say.
My horses ain’t hungry, they won’t eat your hay,
So farewell, pretty Nancy, I’ve no time to stay.
Your horses is not geared up, nor your whip in your hand,
Come set you down by me, just at my command.
My horses is geared up, my whip in my hand,
So farewell, pretty Nancy, I’ve no time to stand.
I’ve duly been courted by day and by night,
But now he’s loading, he’s going away;
But if ever I meet him, I’ll crown him with joy,
And kiss the sweet lips of my wagoner boy.
No less than five variants of the song appear in the I. G. Greer Folksong Collection, part of the W. L. Eury Appalachian Collection at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Two of these include the “I can love you right lightly” verse, which appears in neither Lomax’s version nor any of Sharp’s.
The late Bruce Olson, who was a frequent and erudite contributor to Mudcat before his death in 2003, managed to unearth a song entitled ‘The Ladies Case’, by English poet, dramatist and composer Henry Carey (1687-1743), the first verse of which is:
How hard is the fortune of all womankind,
Forever subjected, forever confined,
The parent controls us until we are wives,
The husband enslaves us the rest of our lives.
Given that it was described as having been sung at the Theatre Royal by one Miss Raftor, who made her debut in 1728 and became Mrs. (Kitty) Clive in 1732, Olson deduced that the song had to date from the period 1728-32. Olson’s extensive research on this and other songs is archived, together with other equally useful ballad material, at
www.csufresno.edu/folklore.