Homespun Dress, The

DESCRIPTION: "Yes, I am a southern girl, and glory in the same, And boast it with far greater pride than glit'ring wealth or fame...." The girl proudly boasts that, though her dress is homespun and her clothing poor, it is all southern and better than northern finery
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1867 (Southern Poems of the War)
KEYWORDS: clothes Civilwar patriotic
FOUND IN: US(SE,So)
REFERENCES (12 citations):
Belden-BalladsSongsCollectedByMissourFolkloreSociety, p. 360, "The Homespun Dress" (1 text)
Randolph 215, "The Southern Dress" (1 text, 1 tune)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 380, "The Homespun Dress" (2 texts plus a reprinting of a printed version)
Hudson-FolksongsOfMississippi 125, pp. 265-266, "The Homespun Dress" (1 text)
Morris-FolksongsOfFlorida, #9, "The Homespun Dress" (1 text, 1 tune)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #C154, p. 194, "Southern Girl and Parody" (1 reference)
Silber-SongsOfTheCivilWar, p. 68, "The Homespun Dress" (1 text, tune referenced)
Scott-TheBalladOfAmerica, pp. 229-230, "The Homespun Dress" (1 text, tune referenced)
Arnett-IHearAmericaSinging, pp. 78-79, "The Homespun Dress" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, CNFEDGAL*
ADDITIONAL: Fred W. Allsopp, Folklore of Romantic Arkansas, Volume II (1931), p. 224, "The Homespun Dress" (1 short text)
ADDITIONAL: Alfred M. Williams, _Studies in Folk-Song and Popular Poetry_, Houghton Mifflin, 1894, pp. 67-69, "The Southern Girl's Song" (1 text)
Roud #4504
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Bonnie Blue Flag" (tune & meter) and references there
cf. "Young Ladies in Town" (theme)
NOTES [136 words]: The authorship of this piece is disputed; several sources list a Lt. Harrington, killed at Perryville (Oct 9, 1862); others credit the song to Carrie Bell Sinclair, whose name is listed on the Wolf broadside. The notes in Brown contain an extensive, but inconclusive, discussion, which consists mostly of citations of unauthoritative sources.
E. Lawrence Abel, Singing the New Nation: How Music Shaped the Confederacy, 1861-1865, Stackpole, 2000, pp. 126-127, discusses a major investigation of the question. Apparently some five hundred people attempted to claim the piece when a Dr. Lloyd offered a reward for helping him secure a complete text, and it eventually was submitted to a panel of judges. The conclusion was that the words were by Carrie Bell Sinclair. I do not know the basis for this conclusion. - RBW
Last updated in version 3.7
File: R215

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