Three Sorrowful Appalachian Folk Songbirds Cautioning Young Lovers

Songs: “Leatherwing Bat” by Peter, Paul and Mary; “Cuckoo Bird” by Clarence Ashley; and “Little Sparrow” by Dolly Parton

Virginia’s golden eagle, portrayed to scale. Incoming!

Ahhh. . . birds. Whether the alluring sirens of Greek mythology, the murderous flocks of horror master Alfred Hitchcock, the bald eagles soaring above the Grand Canyon, the mafioso pigeons of “Animaniacs,” the phoenix rising from the ashes, the foreboding raven of Poe, the dove with an olive branch, or the wise old owl, birds represent a broader range of symbols and emotions than any other creature on Earth. Birdwatching has become a trendy new hobby for thirty-somethings, who descend on city parks at 8 a.m. Sundays hoping to sight a rare booby-crested thrush despite not really knowing how to focus the binoculars. To Americans raised with the nuisance of goose turds on lawns, seagull crap on windshields, and the threat of pandemic-level avian flu, birds have lost some of their mystic appeal. Nowhere is the chasm between myth and reality more apparent than this hilarious Portlandia skit skewering hipsters who enjoy the idea of birds- as long as they stay very, very far away.

We’re familiar today with the bird as an icon of wisdom, majesty, rebirth, freedom, horror, peace, temptation, and nature. But it once held a now-forgotten role: the wary, doleful prophet (Homer’s ominous Cassandra) warning young romantics of love’s fickle nature. And this role held fast for centuries; the following three folk songs originated in England sometime prior to the Industrial Revolution and remained popular even after they crossed the pond and descended into the shadowy hollers of Appalachia.

“Leatherwing Bat”

While I’ve loved this song since childhood, it was hella awkward playing a cassette with this cover in my boom box as a high-schooler.

“Leatherwing Bat” fulfills two purposes as a folk ballad. It conveys an emotion with multiple examples through verse, and it explains to the commoners why certain birds look the way that they do.

“I” said the blackbird sittin’ on a chair
“Once I courted a lady, fair
She proved fickle and turned her back
And ever since then I’ve dressed in black. . .”

“I” said the woodpecker sittin’ on a fence
“Once I courted a handsome wench
She got scared and from me fled
And ever since then my head’s been red. . .”

Songwriters: Noel Paul Stookey / Peter Yarrow

Not much is known about this song. Like hundreds of other English traditional tunes, it was first catalogued by pioneering ethnomusicologist Francis Child in the late 19th century. However, the relatively modern language and rhyme pattern suggest it’s not particularly old. A few historians have speculated that “Leatherwing Bat” derives from an original piece that is very old: “The Three Ravens,” first documented in 1614 (and likely predating that time.) It’s a plausible theory- the melody and structure are pretty similar- but the subject matter is completely different. The 17th-century composition describes three greedy ravens planning to feast on the corpse of a dead knight. If these two works were connected, it would be interesting to trace the lyrical evolution from its ghastly origin to a much more sanitized, tranquil ode.

“Cuckoo Bird” (also spelled “Coo Coo Bird”)

Once of the earliest versions ever recorded, dating from 1929 in the Western Carolinas.

We know a good bit more about this tune than the last one. It first surfaced on an English broadside around 1800 with a rather puzzling structure. Its chorus celebrated the arrival of the cuckoo, heralding the dawn of spring:

“The cuckoo is a fine bird, she sings as he flies,
She brings us good tidings and tells us no lies
She sucks all the birds’ eggs to make her voice clear
She never sings cuckoo til the summer draws near. . .”

But the verses take a darker turn by narrating the woes of false love and infidelity:

“Come all pretty maidens wherever you be,
Don’t trust in young soldiers to any degree,
They will kiss you and court you, poor girls to deceive,
There’s not one in twenty poor girls can believe. . .”

An early 19th-century broadside in the Bodleian Library. Emo before there was emo!

This strange juxtaposition stems from the cuckoo’s dual symbolism in English mythology- one that goes back almost nine hundred years. It’s a sign of spring, but it also represents marital infidelity due to the species’ furtive habit of laying eggs in other birds’ nests. “Cuckoo” is the root of the word “cuckold,” which was first documented in 1250 as a term for either a) a husband whose wife has been unfaithful, or b) a father unknowingly raising children that aren’t his. A 1620s ballad bemoans a hardworking blacksmith unable to hear the cuckoo’s warning cry that “another in his forge at home may steale a private heart.” Many traditional songs associate warmer weather with sexual freedom- and many modern pop hits still do- so it’s interesting to see “Cuckoo Bird” examine both the positive and negative sides of romantic summer flings.

While this song certainly originated in the Old World, it never became a staple of the folk canon like it did in Appalachia and the American South. As a testament to its popularity, there are tens of versions. Some substitute the original English “til the summer draws near” with “til the 4th of July”; others blend into lesser-known trad songs like “Jack of Diamonds,” which also combines both a Civil War-era soldiers’ lament and an old Scottish Highland melody. Pretty much everyone has covered this from Jean Ritchie to Taj Mahal to Rising Appalachia. I’ve included the Clarence Ashley version as it’s one of the oldest and closest to how the tune might have been sung in the 19th century, but many of the other renditions are equally as spectacular and haunting.

“Little Sparrow”

There are dozens of versions, but this Dolly Parton version ranks among the best.

This song is just as deeply ingrained into Appalachian culture as “Cuckoo Bird,” but you might know it by a different name, either “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens,” or “Fair and Tender Ladies,” or some mash-up inbetween. It features on the soundtrack to 2010’s Winter’s Bone, a coming-of-age story set in Missouri’s rural Ozarks that earned Jennifer Lawrence her first Oscar nod for Best Actress. It’s also the title to one of my favorite novels: Fair and Tender Ladies by acclaimed Virginia author Lee Smith, who examines the roles and narratives of Blue Ridge Mountain women with an extraordinary brush of grace, insight, and dignity.

The theme doesn’t stray far from “Cuckoo Bird” or “Leatherwing Bat,” with its ominous message to young lovers and the desire to leave a troubled broken heart through flight:

“Come all you fair and tender ladies
Be careful how you court young men
They’re like a star in a summer’s morning
First appear and then they’re gone

I wish I was some little sparrow
That I had wings could fly so high
I’d fly away to my false true lover
And when he’s talkin’ I’d be by. . .”

Lyrics: Traditional

Virginia alone has several species of sparrow. Excellent chart courtesy of Kate Dolamore Art and available for purchase at her website as a handy guide to hang up by the back window.

Like many rural North American traditional works, it was first recorded in the early 20th century (although this one was exceptionally common, with dozens of different stanzas collected from Florida to Newfoundland.) Unlike “Cuckoo Bird” and “Leatherwing Bat,” “Little Sparrow” didn’t initially seem to have a European origin- no faded print copies or surviving counterpart across the pond. Historians were flummoxed by how a song so widespread and diverse could leave zero trace until its first documentation in the early 1910s. Until a few brilliant scientists realized that after emigrating, English settlers had changed the name of the bird from “swallow” to “sparrow.” Ahhh. The most direct antecedent comes from a 1760s London broadside called “The Lady’s Address to the Fair Maidens,” which begins with lyrics almost identical to the later American version:

“Come hither, all you pretty maidens,
Take Warning how you love a Man. . .”

Girl, PLEASE! He’s only looking for one thing.

The history of “Little Sparrow” gets even murkier when researchers discovered that the song was a dazzlingly complex jumble of floating verses and narrative structures stitched together from influences dating back to the early 16th century- a sort of Frankenstein’s monster of a tune. But while settlers in the New World added new lyrics, blended other sources, and preserved their unique versions within isolated small communities, the song in its original form subsequently died out in the UK by about 1900.

It’s hard to figure out why and how traditions are kept. Some have been more crisply preserved, like Cape Breton’s fiddling heritage; some, like these three songs, retain the general guidelines but allow for a little wiggle room to pitch and yaw with the culture. A friend from South Africa once told me, “When I visit America, I want to get a sense of how big it really is.” And these songs are a perfect example.