(note by Elisabeth Higgins Null with Charles H. Baum)
Hangman, Hangman (Maid Free From The Gallows, Child #95)
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:
True love, I stretch my hand to thee
No other help I know
If you withdraw your hand from me
O whither shall I go?
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:
'Hey Pa (Ma, Brother, Sister, etc.), did you bring me any gold?
Gold to pay my fee?
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:
'Its hard to love, hard to be loved
Hard to make up your mind
You've broke the heart of many poor girl
True love, but you won't break mine.'
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
(2) Ibid, 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:
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:
www.csufresno.edu/folklore/ballads/C095.html
For more recorded versions go to:
Masato Sakurai's compendium of recorded materials from the Folk Music Index posted on the online forum, 'Mudcat Café':
www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=62077 - 812665