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False True Love

[ Roud 419 ; Ballad Index SKE42 ; trad.]

This mournful dialogue was recorded twice by Shirley Collins accompanying herself on banjo. The first version is on her 1960 Folkways LP False True Lovers with the title The False True Love and was also included in her anthology Within Sound. She and Alan Lomax commented in the original album's notes:

From Cecil Sharp's English Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians, Volume II. The False True Love is one of hundreds of examples showing that the British folk song tradition has grown steadily more lyrical in the past two or three hundred years. As the role of the ballad singer lost its importance, the narrative pieces were broken down into fragmentary lyric songs. This process has been especially marked and rapid in the Southern Appalachian area, from which this song comes.

The original piece is a tragic ballad, called Young Hunting, (Child 68), probably Scots in origin, but widespread throughout Britain and North America. It tells of a young man who rides by to visit an old sweetheart. When she bids him to light down and spend the night, he says that he prefers his new light of love. Whereupon the jealous girl stabs him, throws his corpse into the well and curses him. The remainder of the ballad consists of a dialogue between the murderess and her little parrot, the sole witness, who insists he will tell all and will not be bribed or threatened into silence.

All that is left of this story in the Tennessee lyric form is the opening bit of dialogue. Moreover, the situation has been so generalised that either part may be taken by a man or a woman, and there is no hint of violence. The song dwells upon the faithlessness of lovers, and the tragic position of the betrayed one, twin themes which are paramount in American erotic folk poetry. In the view of an academic critic such as Louise Pound the shortening of the ballad into the lyric song represents merely a decay in the folk tradition. Perhaps she would not hold to this opinion if she could hear the song as it is actually sung. One can say no more than this; at one time there was a fine ballad and later it gave rise to an equally beautiful lyric piece.

Shirley Collins recorded it again in 1967 with slightly different verses as False True Love for her Topic album The Sweet Primeroses, where she commented in the sleeve notes:

This sad and tender lyric fragment is recognisably similar to the opening of the ballad Young Hunting, but it was collected in this short form by Cecil Sharp from Mr Jeff Stockton, Flag Pond, Tennessee, in 1916. Versions of the British original, all involving the young man's murder and drowning have been collected all over the Appalachians. When I started out with singing and researching, the Anglo-Appalachian tradition seemed full of wonders, but lately I feel that the hybrids are like sorrowful ghosts, lost between the purely American forms like the blues and bluegrass, and the robust spirit of the British tradition. However, I still feel that the marvellous sense of loss and loneliness in this particular song makes it worth singing.

This version was also included in her compilations Fountain of Snow and The Classic Collection and on the Topic anthology The Voice of Folk.

James Yorkston sang False True Love in 2003 on his promotional EP Someplace Simple.

Lyrics

The False True Love on False True Lovers

Come in, come in, you old true love,
And chat for a while with me,
For it's been three quarters of a long year or more,
Since I spoke one word to thee.

I shan't come in, I shan't sit down,
I ain't got a moment's time,
And since you are engaged with another true love,
Then your heart is no longer mine.

When you were mine, my old true love,
Then your head lay on my breast,
You could make me believe by the falling of your arm,
That the sun rose up in the west.

There is many the star shall jingle in the west,
There is many the leaf below,
There is many the damn that shall light upon a man,
For treating a poor girl so.

I wish to the Lord I'd never been born,
Or had died when I was young,
Then I never would have mourned for my old true love,
Nor have courted no other one.

False True Love on The Sweet Primeroses

Come in, come in, you old true love,
Won't you chat for a while with me,
For it's been three quarters of a long year or more,
Since I spoke one word to thee.

No, I shan't come in, no, I won't sit down,
For I don't have a moment's time,
And since you are now engaged with another true love,
Then your heart is no longer mine.

But when you were mine, my own true love,
And your head lay upon my breast,
You could make me believe all by the falling of your arm,
That the sun rose up in the west.

Now there's many's the star shall jingle in the west,
And it's many the leaves all below,
And there's many's the damn that shall light upon a man,
For treating a poor girl so.

Now I wish to the Lord I'd never been born,
Or had died when I was young,
Then I never would have mourned for my own true love,
Nor have courted no other one.