Charming Billy

Can she bake a cherry pie, charming Billy?
She can bake a cherry pie, quick as a cat can wink an eye
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

How old is she charming Billy?
Three times six and four times seven
Twenty eight and eleven
She's a young thing and cannot leave her mother.

I thought of this old folk tune the other day when I browsed Chef John's recipe files. As I tried to remember some of the verses I began to recall other tunes my brothers and sisters and I sang as children.

Johnson boys eat peas and honey,
They have done it all their life,
It makes the peas taste mighty funny,
But it keeps them on the knife.

And of course there was 'Bile them cabbage down' and Barnacle Bill, the sailor who would black your eyes and eat your pies. On occasion we could coax Dad into singing

Darling Nelly Gray, they have taken her away
And I'll never see my darling anymore.
They have taken her to Georgia,
Just to work her life away,
And I'll never see my darling anymore.

One of my favorite memories is grandma W singing Jessie James for us.

“It was a dirty coward, that shot Mr Howard,
and laid poor Jessie in his grave”

On warm summer nights after all the small children were asleep in bed, we older ones would join grandma as she sat in a rocking chair on the porch, and we on the steps keeping her company. After we found out that she knew the words to Jessie James, we begged her to sing it for us. It took a bit of coaxing, but when she consented to sing for us, she sang all the verses.



Dulcimer Player