“The Gypsy Maid (The Gypsy's Wedding Day)”

Description

The gypsy girl, left to fend for herself, meets a young lawyer who asks her to tell his fortune. She tells him that he has courted many fine ladies, but he is to marry a gypsy. He takes her to his home and marries her

Notes

[Sources such as] Charlie Poole have cleaned this one up. Broadside LOCSinging as201140 reads:

He took me to a house, it was a palace I am sure,

Where ladies were waiting to open the door;

On a bed of soft feathers, where I pleased him so well,

In nine months after his fortune I could tell.

Her father keeps the baby, she gets a pension of twenty pounds a year and "no more shall my gipsey girl ever more rove" but when she's in the neighborhood, she says, "your fortunes I will tell."

The Murray broadsides are all of the same version in which "little gypsy girl" meets "two handsome young squires," goes with one of them, and becomes pregnant; they marry.

Broadside LOCSinging as201140: H. De Marsan dating per _Studying Nineteenth-Century Popular Song_ by Paul Charosh in American Music, Winter 1997, Vol 15.4, Table 1, available at FindArticles site. - BS

This song may, just possibly, have actually encouraged one actual marriage: "Alberta Slim" (Eric Edwards, 1910-2005), the Canadian country singer, had a sideline of reading tea leaves. His daughter, after his death, reports that her father had met her mother when the mother had her tea leaves read. Slim looked at the leaves (and presumably looked at her even more intently), and told her that she was going to marry him. Which, of course, she did.

I don't know that Alberta Slim knew this song, but he did know quite a selection of English folk songs. - RBW

Cross references

• cf. "The Squire and the Gipsy" (theme)

Broadsides

• Bodleian, Firth b.26(40), "The Gipsey Girl" ("My father was king of the gypsies you know"), J. Pitts (London), 1819-1844; also Firth b.28(37) View 2 of 2, "Gipsey Girl"; Harding B 16(101d), "Gipsy Girl"
• Murray, Mu23-y1:046, "The Little Gipsy Girl," James Lindsay Jr. (Glasgow), 19C; also Mu23-y1:117, "The Little Gipsy Girl," unknown, 19C; Mu23-y4:028 [the last a very short version probably edited to fit in a corner of a page]
• LOCSinging, as201140, "The Gipsey Girl" ("My father was king of the gipsies you know"), H. De Marsan (New York), 1864-1878
• NLScotland, L.C.Fol.70(55), "The Little Gipsy Girl," unknown, n.d.

Recordings

• Horton Barker, "The Gypsy's Wedding Day" (on Barker01)
• Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, "My Gypsy Girl" (Columbia 15519-D, 1930; on CPoole02)
• Jasper Smith, "The Squire and the Gypsy" (on Voice11)
• Joseph Taylor, "The Gypsy Girl" (on Voice01)

References

1. Laws O4, "The Gypsy Maid (The Gypsy's Wedding Day)"
2. Randolph 129, "The Gypsy Maid" (1 text)
3. Eddy 100, "The Gypsy's Wedding Day" (1 text, 1 tune)
4. Kennedy 346, "The Little Gipsy Girl" (1 text, 1 tune)
5. JHCox 100, "The Orphan Gypsy Girl" (1 text)
6. Rorrer, p. 90, "My Gypsy Girl" (1 text)
7. DT 469, GYPSGIRL
8. Roud #229
9. BI, LO04