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Love Call Me Home
01 SING ABOUT THESE HARD TIMES Chorus: Sing about these hard times, I worked hard, I played my part Life gets harder every year The big corporations got no home They moved my job to Mexico O, the world is ill divided Created for an event at the Asheville Arts Museum on March 23, 2003, this song was originally entitled 'Sing about Those Hard Times'. That version dealt with the late 1920s and the Depression because the occasion was a celebration of the work of the great North American artist Ben Shahn (1898-1969). There were rooms and rooms of his paintings, drawing and photographs. I updated the song to the hard times we are going through now and changed Those to These. If you are interested in using folksong tunes as a resource for writing new songs you might take a peek at the song "Down to the River to Pray", popularised in the movie O Brother Where Art Thou? There are most definitely resonances between that tune and mine.
02 POOR ELLEN SMITH Listen to Poor Ellen Smith (mp3)Poor Ellen Smith, how was she found? Who had the heart, O who had the skill I saw her on Monday before that sad day I did ask sweet Ellen to be my dear wife Now she's in her grave, hand on her breast I hung out six weeks afraid of the time They took their Winchesters, hunted me down Now I'm in jail, a prisoner am I, The jury will hang me, that is if they can My brother wrote me, wrote me to say (note by Elisabeth Higgins Null with Charles H. Baum) The lyrics of 'Poor Ellen Smith' have no immediate antecedents in Great Britain or Ireland. As is common with execution ballads, the words are said to have been written by the condemned man, Peter DeGraff, after his conviction for the murder of Ellen Smith (July 20, 1892, in Forsyth County, North Carolina). Legend describes him sitting on his coffin while playing the tune on his banjo. Feelings ran so high after the trial, apparently, that singing the song was banned in public. A letter, purportedly in DeGraff's handwriting, was found in Ellen Smith's bosom when her body was discovered. A copy of it is located in the WPA holdings at the Alderman Library, University of Virginia, and reads as follows:
(1) 1 DeGraff’s letter and much of the information in the preceding paragraph can be found in the notes written by folklorist D.K. Wilgus for a recording of Doc Hopkins produced by John Edwards Memorial Foundation (Birch: 1945). Peter DeGraff was tried and executed in Winston-Salem, although, in several variants of this ballad, he proclaims his innocence. In other versions, he is imprisoned rather than executed. 'Poor Ellen Smith' has circulated widely. Names that tie it to a particular place and circumstance have often been altered in the process. For other versions consult: For additional recorded versions search
the entry for 'Poor Ellen Smith':
03 HANGMAN Hangman, hangman, slack up your rope Say Pa, say Pa, have you brung me no gold, Hangman, hangman, slack up your rope Say Ma, say Ma, have you brung me no gold, Hangman, hangman, slack up your rope True love, I stretch my hand to thee True love, true love, have you brung me no gold, It's hard to love, hard to be loved,
Peggy first recorded this song in 1957 on Peggy Seeger: Folksongs and Ballads (RLP12-655, 1957), and she remains remarkably faithful to that version almost fifty years later, retaining the same C G D G B E guitar tuning and a similar rolling riff on the guitar. Here she has added the verse:
Peggy says she doesn't remember where she got the song but the tune and lyrical structure are similar to a version found on Jean Ritchie: Ballads from her Appalachian Family Tradition (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings SFW40145, 2003). Ritchie learned the song from her father, Balis W. Ritchie, who was born in Knott County, Kentucky in 1869. The lyrics Peggy sings are widespread and make use of incremental repetitions to expand or compress the story at the singer's discretion. In verse after verse, the main character, who is about to be hanged, asks relatives if they have brought the money needed to pay off the executioner or judge:
Each in turn answers that they have brought no money but have come to see the main character executed. At the end, a lover arrives with gold to pay the fee. We cannot always be sure how the story concludes, but this version seems headed for a happy ending, with a final verse tacked on to serve as a wry commentary:
In Peggy's song, the condemned person is a man, although the narrator's voice shifts for that last verse into that of a woman. Shifting narrative voices are quite common in the older ballads, as are dialogues and incremental repetitions such as those used here. This particular ballad, widespread throughout Europe and present in America from the colonial period onward, is certainly old. Its narrative can be traced back as far as the 'Distressed Handmaid,' an Irish tale from the ninth century. (1) A West-Indian cante-fable bears a strong narrative resemblance to that ancestral version. (2) Other versions had probably appeared in America by the seventeenth century and eventually found a place not only among British-Americans but among African-American singers. (1) Ingeborg Urcia, "The Gallows and the Golden Ball: An Analysis
of 'The Maid Freed from the Gallows' (Child 95)," The Journal
of American Folklore, 79 (1966), p. 466 In early versions from England and Scotland, a woman usually takes on the leading role as in the 'Maid Freed From the Gallows,' whose title the nineteenth-century ballad scholar Francis James Child uses as the generic name for all permutations of this sung narrative. He describes versions from continental Europe in which the maid is captured by corsairs; her family refuses to pay the ransom, but her sweetheart eventually comes up with the money. In one family of versions sometimes titled the 'The Golden Ball,' a maid (often a servant girl) is about to be executed for stealing or losing a golden ball from her mistress. In yet another cluster of versions, the central figure is caught in either a 'prickly' or a 'briery' bush. This latter group is uncommon in America. Contemporary updates of the ballad include Led Zeppelin's revision of Leadbelly's 'Gallows Pole.' In their rendition, the hangman takes everything offered by the family members, including the sister's sexual favors, and then laughs as the condemned man swings (lyrics: http://www.songmeanings.net/lyric.php?lid=7760). 'The Maid Freed From The Gallows' has been given a dramatic rendition among African-Americans in the southern United States and there is some indication of its use as a play-party game. For a partial listing of written and recorded versions consult The
Traditional Ballad Index: For more recorded versions go to:
04 CARELESS LOVE
Love my momma and poppa too (3) When I wore my apron low (3) Now my apron's to my chin (3) On this railroad bank I stand (3) How I wish that train would come (3) (note by Elisabeth Higgins Null with Charles H. Baum) In 1911, song collector Howard Odum collected another African-American version as 'Kelly's Love,' and 'Careless Love' is often called by that title in black tradition. Floating lyrics in many of the versions, black and white, resemble those found in English songs such as 'I Wish, I Wish' or 'Waly, Waly.' Whatever name it goes by, the song is widespread in blues, jazz, old-time, bluegrass, and folk repertoires. A partial list of recording can be found through: The Folk Music Index For further written and recorded versions consult The Traditional Ballad Index
05 LOVE IS TEASING Love is teasing, love is pleasing I left my father, I left my mother O, if I'd known before I courted I never thought when love was a-borning So girls, beware of false true lovers Love is teasing, love is pleasing Peggy says she learned the tune of "Love Is Teasing" from the influential traditional singer, Jean Ritchie. Jean sings it in her "high lonesome" Appalachian style but actually learned "O Love Is Teasin'" (her version of the song) in 1946 from Peggy Staunton, an Irish kitchen and dining-room worker at New York City's Henry Street Settlement. Jean, a young social worker from Kentucky, lived at the Settlement's dorm when she first arrived in the city. As Jean reminisces in an internet discussion on Mudcat Café (topical thread "New Book/CD: 'The Rose & The Briar'"), "we used to swap songs and jig-steps in the dining room after everybody else had gone." The words of "Love is Teasing" resemble those found in three similar songs, "O Waly, Waly," "The Water is Wide," and "Down in the Meadows" and all of these can be traced back to the ballad "Jamie Douglas" (Child 204). In "Jamie Douglas," a bride has been falsely accused of infidelity and is sent back to her father with an aching heart. All of the shorter songs have whittled away the narrative over time leaving nothing but an emotional core. Various versions journeyed back and forth between Ireland, Britain, and North America, and singers often augment whatever verses they have learned with others from a common stock of associated "floating" verses. Peggy has done this here, giving her unique stamp to a universal emotion. Songs of this sort, in which narrative plays no role and emotions are conveyed through rich imagery, are called lyric songs and play an important role in British and American repertoire. For further bibliographical reference and recordings consult: The Traditional Ballad Index: An Annotated Bibliography of the Folk
Songs of the English-Speaking World Folk Music Index: An Index to Recorded Resources
06 RYNERDINE One morning as I rambled I said, My dear, my fair one, Your beauty has ensnared me These words were scarcely spoken Her rosy lips and cheeks I had but kissed her once or twice Go look in yonder forest But now, my dear, my fair one, If you come to yonder forest She sought him in his forest (note by Elisabeth Higgins Null with Charles
H. Baum) Playing a four-stringed Appalachian
dulcimer (three high Cs and an F) backed by a drone psaltery, Peggy
sings her own haunting melody with a frequently sharped 4th, used
without modulating from one key to the next. She says she wrote
the tune deliberately in the Lydian mode (found on the white keys
of a piano by starting with F) which she loves because it sends 'chills
into interesting places.' Even so, it also has a decidedly mixolydian
feeling with its use of the flatted 7th and naturalized 4th in
the phrase 'two miles below Pomeroy.' (Peggy reaffirms the song is
in Lydian with cross relations on the 4th and 7th intervals.)
Fragmentary versions were set down with their tunes by some of the early 20th-century Irish collectors, most notably Herbert Hughes in Irish Country Songs, Vol. 1 (London: 1909) who claimed that in Donegal, where he collected a verse or two of the song, Reynardine is considered to be a 'faery who changes into the shape of a fox.' Stephen D. Winick, in his 'A.L. Lloyd and Reynardine: Authorship and Authenticity in the Afterlife of a British Broadside Ballad,' (Folklore, Dec, 2004) argues that this is the only explicit reference to Reynardine as a supernatural character prior to A.L. Lloyd's reworking of the song in the late 1950s through the mid 1960s. Winick believes that Lloyd created his own supernatural version out of Hughes' fragments, other literary reworkings and verses, and versions derived from the broadsides. In none of his writings about Reynardine does Lloyd make a direct connection to the bluebeard-like and decidedly paranormal Mr. Fox of British legend. Rather, he juxtaposes Reynard with references to Mr. Fox as if trying to merge aspects of the two characters. The result is a song so compelling that its supernatural aspects have bubbled over and affected how most singers touched by the British folksong revival view versions of the song today. Lloyd's transformation of Reynardine has touched an emotional core. In keeping with this magical spirit, Peggy joins tune and word to traditional text, forming her own eerie and psychologically powerful version. For a partial listing of written and recorded versions consult The Traditional Ballad Index http://www.csufresno.edu/folklore/ballads/LP15.html For more recorded versions search for Reynardine in The Folk Music
Index Some Versions of Reynardine as recorded by A.L Lloyd:
07 LONDON BRIDGE London's Bridge is falling down Choose you a partner, honey my love, Kiss your partner, honey my love, Circle round, honey my love (etc) Take her home, honey my love (etc) Choose you another one, honey my love (etc) Circle round, honey my love (etc) Hug your partner. honey my love (etc) Then take her home, honey my love (etc) London's Bridge is a-falling down (note by Elisabeth Higgins Null with Charles
H. Baum)
William Wells Newell, in his classic Games and Songs of American Children (New York: 1883) compares Anglo-American versions in which the bridge falls or burns and is built up again to those of France and Italy, where children choose between heaven and hell or wine and water. According to Newell, the game is mentioned by Rabelais as "The Fallen Bridge" (c. 1533) and appears as "Charlestown Bridge" in an American chap-book called Mother Goose's Memories during the early nineteenth century. He also tells us that Pennsylvania Dutch children called a German version of the game ("The Magdeburg Bridge") the "Bridge of Holland." An English version of London Bridge first appears in print in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (1744), although printed references appear in the seventeenth century and circulated in oral tradition well before that. In addition to its mythological resonances, the song has often stood for the resilient and enduring nature of England, and school children there have frequently been taught that it refers to the temporary destruction of London Bridge by King Olaf, early in the 11th century. Destroyed and rebuilt again and again, one of the bridge's recent incarnations was moved to Lake Havasu City, Arizona where it now attracts tourists by the thousand. Peggy's step-daughter, the celebrated pop singer Kirsty MacColl (1959-2000), used the "falling-down" of London Bridge to symbolize the waning of British power in her own contemporary song, "London Bridge is Falling Down." Peggy's version comes from her parents, Ruth Crawford Seeger and Charles Seeger. She says she learned it from her mother, but there is also a 1937 recording of Charles Seeger singing a similar verse of it on Songs for Political Action (Bear Family box set, 1996). Peggy herself previously recorded "London Bridge" on her American Folksongs for Banjo (Folk-Lyric) and included it in her book, Folk Songs of Peggy Seeger (Oak, 1964). Peggy's family version employs a distinctive tune and an unusual set of play-party lyrics that emphasize choosing, kissing, and hugging multiple partners. The original version of the Seeger family song was probably collected in Arkansas by John A. Lomax in 1936 and Laurence Powell, at that time the conductor of Little Rock's symphony orchestra. According to Vance Randoph and Frances Emberson's "The Collection of Folk Music in the Ozarks," (The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 60, No. 236. 1947, pp. 115-125), Powell invited John Lomax (perhaps with his wife Ruby T.) to Arkansas, where they recorded 78 songs from the great traditional singer Emma Dusenbury of Mena, Arkansas. We know that Mrs. Sidney Robertson and Lee Hays (Dusenbury's cousin) did some additional recording of Dusenbury, but "London Bridge" came from the Lomax-Powell sessions according to Duncan Emrich's American Folk Poetry: An Anthology (Boston: 1974). Ruth Crawford Seeger transcribed four of these songs from Emma Dusenbury for Our Singing Country (New York: 1941). The book, authored by John and Alan Lomax, is still in use today. Although "London Bridge" does not appear in the book, Peggy's mother may have learned the tune and lyrical structure of the song in the course of working from the set of field recordings of which it was a part. Dusenbury's song, close to Mississippi versions on file at the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center, employs "O, Girls remember me" as the second line refrain instead of Peggy's "Do Lord, remember me." (We know that Charles Seeger sings "O, Girls remember me" on his 1937 recording.) Peggy's version also adds other common play-party or dance figures such as "circle round" and "take her home" as separate verses, regularly interjecting "honey my love" instead of other instructions such as "as we march around." Some of these displaced instructions also appear as separate verses. Peggy's song is thus given a regular and predictable form and meter. Who contributed most to this lyrical transformation? It's hard to say. The song passed through the creative minds of both mother and daughter both of whom respected tradition even as they infused it with their own meanings and interpretations. Emma Dusenbury's Lyrics to "London Bridge" (from the American Folklife Center,AFS 865A1):
Invaluable research help was provided by Ann Hoog, reference specialist
at the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center (http://www.loc.gov/folklife/ ),
and also by Joe Offer and "Q" of Mudcat Café (http://www.mudcat.org/)
08 LOVING HANNAH I went to church on Sunday O Hannah, loving Hannah, Now you have broke your promise My Hannah's tall and handsome, I'll go down to the river (note by Elisabeth Higgins Null with Charles H. Baum)
Jean says that in her "long life and much rambling about the world I haven't found, outside my family and the small Kentucky Mountain community where my dad was born and raised, this particular version of "Loving Hannah." [communiqué by "kytrad," 3/08/06 in topical thread, "Songs to Avoid ," Mudcat Café internet forum] Peggy kept Jean's tune but shifted the words around a bit herself, borrowing lines and images from other floating verses associated with this song family. Hannah, in Peggy's song for instance, is "tall and handsome" while Jean's Hannah is "fair and proper." Peggy's Hannah is valued for her good nature whereas Jean's Hannah is "quite good lookin'." In either case, "that's the best of all." "Loving Hannah" is extremely popular in Ireland, Scotland, and England where it has been recorded by Shirley Collins and Mary Black as well as by younger singers such as Isobel Campbell. Many simply assume it is a Scots song, especially as it was a mainstay in the repertoire of traditional Aberdonian singer, Jeannie Robertson. The song's peregrinations are a bit more complicated. Sandy and Caroline Paton, American folk singers who run Folk-Legacy Records, made a collecting trip to Scotland in 1958. They recall visiting Jeannie Robertson and hearing her sing "Loving Hannah" "slowly and majestically, in the Scottish 'big ballad' style." When they asked her how she acquired the song, they were startled by Jeannie Robertson's reply: "when the American folksinger Jean Ritchie was visiting here, she gave me a wee record of some of her own songs. I learned it off of that record." Jean Ritchie had met Jeannie Robertson on a Fulbright in 1952, collecting songs and sharing those from her own Appalachian tradition. She had made a small, vinyl lp of "Loving Hannah" and five other songs for HMV and not only passed the disc along to Jeannie Robertson, but sang the song for Elizabeth Cronin, an important source singer from Cork, Ireland. This became a second means by which the Ritchie family song injected itself into Scots and Irish oral tradition. By the mid-nineties, Mary Black, the well-known Irish singer, told Jean that she had learned "Loving Hannah" from her brother, "who had it from an old lady down the street from him." And so this song has returned to the old world from whence it came: "Loving Hannah" is catalogued (without image) as part of the Bodleian Library collection of early modern broadsides at Oxford. How appropriate, then, for Peggy, who has lived in both Britain and America, to sing this song! No matter how specific its meanings are for Jean Ritchie, the song also speaks of universal sentiments and has lodged itself in the repertoires of traditional singers from several countries. It has become, in effect, a folk standard. For further information about Loving Hannah and the variants to which
it is related, search for texts in the traditional Ballad
Index and
recordings in Jane Keefer's Folk
Music Index.
09 BAD BAD GIRL Listen to Bad Bad Girl (mp3)I been a bad, bad girl CHORUS: Judge, please don't kill me, I'm sittin' here in prison (note by Elisabeth Higgins Null with Charles H. Baum)
Ozella sings out of the depth of her own experience as a prisoner and may well be expressing a personal commentary on the facts that caused her to be convicted. There is no motivation here, no excuse, just a recognition of her "badness" coupled with an apology and a promise to do better. The voice is high, girlish with none of the sassiness or injured dignity of the great classic, blues singers. There is an almost passive innocence in her rendition. Peggy pitches the song lower and sings the song as a mature woman with gravel in her voice: slowly, deliberately, with plenty of space between the phrases. She brings a musician's appreciation to the gapped, pentatonic tune Ð drawing it out and emphasizing its mournful singularity. She is neither passive nor innocent but resigned and even tragic. Ozella
Jones rendition is included on the two-disc anthology Alan
Lomax: Blues Songbook (Rounder: 2003, #1866)
10 LOGAN COUNTY JAIL When I was a little boy, I worked on market Square I used to wear the white hat, my horse and buggy fine, One night as I lay sleeping, I dreamed a mighty dream Down came the jailer after ten o'clock Down came my darling, ten dollars in her hand, Sitting by the railroad, waiting for the train, Peggy's enjoys singing the hell out of this song and does so in most performances. In "What's New," (a yearly online personal update on her website) she recalls playing it with fiddler Eliza Carthy for her 70th birthday concert in Queen Elizabeth Hall, London (May 29, 2006): "Eliza and I sat there like two hoydens and whomped out Logan County Jail on fiddle and banjo." (a version which appears on her new CD, THREESCORE AND TEN). On this recording "Logan County Jail" appears in just as lively a rendition, but with Reyna Gellert on fiddle. The song is a ballad of American origin that can be found in a variety of localized and related forms: "Dallas County Jail," "Sporting Cowboy," "Ramsey County Jail," "Seven Long Years in Prison," "Prisoner's Dream," "Hawkins County Jail," "Moundsville Prisoner," "Logan County Courthouse" etc. Peggy's version closely parallels the B version collected by John Harrington Cox in his Folksongs of the South (Cambridge: Harvard University press, 1925), and she tells us about a thief who leaves his sweetheart behind when he is sent to the state penitentiary in Moundsville, West Virginia (used as a prison from 1876 to 1995). As in most versions, we do not know what specific event landed the protagonist in jail. G. Malcolm Laws Jr., in Native American Balladry (Philadelphia: American Folklore Society, 1964) classifies "Logan County Jail" as a ballad "despite its rambling emotionalism, " because it dramatizes "a single major event in the life of the narrator." (p. 76). He describes the song as having a loose construction a singer is likely to add onto or otherwise alter. He believes the song may be inspired by British broadsides and reminds us that Vance Randolph, the Ozark folksong collector, drew parallels between the prisoner's dream in "Logan County Jail" and a similar dream in "Van Diemen's Land," the great British and Irish transport ballad eventually modernized and rewritten by U2 (p. 79):
This particular tune for "Logan County Jail" is Peggy's own and underscores the wildness of a "bad boy" thoroughly enjoying every moment of his misspent youth.
For more information about the song, consult the Traditional Ballad
Index
11 WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN? Who killed Cock Robin? Who saw him die? Who caught his blood? Who will sew his shroud? Who will dig his grave? Who will be the parson? Who will carry the torch? Who will haul him there? Who will lay him in? Who will pat his grave? Who will sing his song? Who will weep and mourn? (note by Elisabeth Higgins Null with Charles
H. Baum) The first published version of 'Who Killed Cock Robin' appeared in Tommy Thumb's (Pretty) Song Book, 2 vol. (London, 1744) and is thought by those who seek covert political messages in nursery rhymes to allude to the downfall of Sir Robert Walpole, England's de facto prime minister during the reign of George II. Certainly the linkages between satire and the song are strong, and they continue from Thomas Moore and Lord Byron onwards to the present day. Consider Bob Dylan's loosely patterned 'Who Killed Davey Moore?' or the more faithfully constructed ' Who Killed Norma Jean?''as sung by Pete Seeger, who set his own tune to Norman Rosten's words about the death of Marilyn Monroe. Less well-known versifiers have reworked 'Who Killed Cock Robin' for their own purposes. Mrs. Eileen O'Neil Ball submitted a parody to the Boston Globe (December 16, 1965) after her brother, John B. O'Neil had been murdered in a spate of gangland slayings. (Bruce Jackson ''Bitter Parody of Cock Robin," Western Folklore, Vol 27, 1968, p. 52). Calling for justice, she concludes:
Most modern updates of the song focus on the direct or indirect complicity of each participant in an act of wrong-doing, whereas more traditional versions, such as the one sung by Peggy, start with an acknowledgement of responsibility and proceed to enumerate all the roles to be played in a communal ritual: the funeral process. The emphasis is less upon who did the wrong than on the processes involved in taking care of the victim. As folklorist Mia Boynton points out, 'Who Killed Cock Robin' is a song about collective decision-making and action (conversation, August 2, 2006). Each living creature volunteers to do its part. In the last verse, the wren says she will 'weep and mourn' and that her 'grief will never end.' This touches upon the age-old romantic association between Robin Redbreast and Jenny Wren whose wedding has also been the theme both for nursery rhymes and for medieval narratives. On occasion, 'The Courtship and Marriage of Cock Robin' is grafted onto the 'Death of Cock Robin' (an alternative title to 'Who Killed Cock Robin'') and this merger becomes a sort of avian mini-epic . In a merged picture-book version, the wedding feast ends in a melee after a cuckoo takes liberties with the bride. The sparrow shoots Robin with his bow and arrow by mistake in trying to avenge or protect Jenny Wren. This provides a motive for the homicide and may add psychological nuance, but it also robs the rhyme of that stark, archetypal quality Peggy captures in her singing. Another suggestion about the origins of Cock Robin, comes from the classicist J. Rendel Harris as reviewed by H.J. Rose ('Origin and Meaning of Apple Cults,' The Classical Review, Vol. 34, 1920, pp. 172-173). Both authors associate the 'Death of Cock Robin' with sacrificial rituals connected with St. Stephen's Day in Ireland and archaic forms of yuling or wassailing the apple trees in England. Occasionally, in England, a boy ascends the apple tree, makes chirping noises, and calls for food—a request met by offerings of bread, cheese, and cider. The tree is apt to be attacked and real birds may be willfully killed in the process. A children's game or play-party, found in England and America, is quoted to underscore the connection between the death of a bird and the life of the apple tree:
Alan Lomax enlarges upon the relationship between birds and sacrifice in his own discussion of Cock Robin in The Folk Songs of North America (New York: 1960):
He adds to this a broader psychoanalytic rumination about popular taste among Anglo and Anglo-Americans. In referring to the 'The Frog's Courtship' (Froggie Would A-Wooing Go) as well as 'Who Killed Cock Robin,' Lomax says the following:
Peggy own speculations show a more historical
frame of mind: does Robin Redbreast refer to Robin Hood or to William
Rufus (William ll), the ruddy and red-headed second son of William
the Conqueror, killed in a hunting accident in New Forest? The correlation
of the bird Robin with the outlaw Robin seems to hinge on little
more than a shared name. The linkages between Robin and William Rufus,
however, are supported by a persistent belief among England's West
Country inhabitants that the song in fact refers to the fatal incident.
Without more textual and archeological evidence, the song's origins
seem to impossible to track through the mists of time. Regardless
of its past meanings, it remains primal on a deeply human level as
Peggy's performance so powerfully demonstrates.
12 LOVE CALL ME HOME When the waters are deep, CHORUS: When the waters are cold When I'm weary and cannot swim Take the gift I bring Life offers a chance Christine was one of the cultural catalysts in Asheville for over a decade. She wrote documentary scripts, plays, poems and performed in the innovative Playback Theatre. Early in 2000 she was diagnosed at age 49 with a brain tumour and given four months to live. Her friends rallied around her as she made her decision to reject chemotherapy, radiation and invasive medical techniques. The fact that she had no medical insurance played no part in her decision. The song was first sung at UNCA on May 27, 2000 when a benefit was raised to help with her medical costs. Christine was there, with 150, glowing in her red velvet dress. She said she'd extended her time because of her friends, who had surrounded her with love and support during her final year. Many times she said, "I don't want you to forget me." She died peacefully, with dignity, on February 13, 2001. Christine: Your friends will always remember you.
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