Angelina Baker

DESCRIPTION: "Angeline the baker lives in the village green, And the way that I love her beats all to be seen." "Angeline the baker, her age is 43." "Bought my love a brand new dress, Neither black nor brown." "Angeline is handsome... She broke her little ankle"
AUTHOR: Stephen C. Foster
EARLIEST DATE: 1850 (date of composition, according to Spaeth)
KEYWORDS: nonballad injury music food
FOUND IN: US(Ap)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Bush-FSofCentralWestVirginiaVol4, p. 47, "Angeline"; pp. 48-49, "Angeline, the Baker" (1 text plus 2 fragments, 2 tunes)
Roud #18341 and 17854 and 7043
NOTES [162 words]: This is a mess. Stephen Foster wrote "Angelina Baker" in 1850. Foster's original didn't really survive in oral tradition, but a fiddle tune, usually called "Angeline the Baker," rose from the ashes. This has the sort of absurd lyrics one often finds with a fiddle tune, although they are at least consistent in talking about Angeline: The singer loves her. He "bought her candy by the peck, but she won't marry me." She is 43. She is handsome and tall; she broke her ankle dancing. When her father sees the singer, he chases him away.
Bush appears to split his "Angeline" from "Angelina Baker," and Roud gives them separate numbers (7043 for "Angeline," 18341 and others for "Angelina Baker"), but I've encountered at least one of Bush's verses of "Angeline" in a version of "Angelina Baker," and the other appears to be a confused conflation of two traditional verses; I've lumped them on the grounds that there is no real way to classify them independently anyway! - RBW
Last updated in version 6.0
File: BWV4047

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