Needle's Eye, The

DESCRIPTION: "The needle's eye that doth supply The thread that runs so true, Oh many a beau have I let go Because I wanted you." The remaining verses describe how the singer(s) have courted and passed others by; the needle may have "caught" the (girl)
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1903 (Newell-GamesAndSongsOfAmericanChildren)
KEYWORDS: playparty courting
FOUND IN: US(Ap,MW,NE,So)
REFERENCES (16 citations):
Randolph 545, "The Needle's Eye" (2 text plus an excerpt, 1 tune)
Spurgeon-WaltzTheHall-AmericanPlayParty, pp. 144-145, "The Needle's Eye" (1 text, 1 tune)
Bush-FSofCentralWestVirginiaVol4, pp. 9-10, "Needle's Eye" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 74, "The Needle's Eye" (1 fragment)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore5 74, "The Needle's Eye" (1 tune plus a text excerpts)
Hudson-FolksongsOfMississippi 144, pp. 291-293, "Needle's Eye" (2 fragments)
Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland, pp. 43-44, "The Needle's Eye" (1 text, 1 tune)
Wolford-ThePlayPartyInIndiana, pp. 72-73=Wolford/Richmond/Tillson-PlayPartyInIndiana, pp. 196-197, "Needle's Eye" (1 text, 1 tune)
List-SingingAboutIt-FolkSongsInSouthernIndiana, pp. 131-133, "The Needle's Eye" (1 text, 1 tune)
McIntosh-FolkSongsAndSingingGamesofIllinoisOzarks, pp. 94-95, "The Needle's Eye" (1 text, 1 tune)
Lewis-FavoriteMichiganFolkSongs, p, 36, "The Needle's Eye" (1 text, 1 tune)
Hudson-FolkTunesFromMississippi 34, "Needle's Eye" (1 short text, 1 tune)
Abernethy-SinginTexas, p. 90, "Needle's Eye" (1 text, 1 tune)
Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame pp. 42-43, "(The needle's eye that doth supply)" (2 texts)
Newell-GamesAndSongsOfAmericanChildren, #29, "Threading the Needle" (2 texts); #171, "The Needle's Eye" (1 text, 1 tune)
Welsch-NebraskaPioneerLore, pp. 288-289, "The Needle's Eye" (1 text, 1 tune)
ST R545 (Full)
Roud #4506
RECORDINGS:
Margaret MacArthur, "The Needle's Eye" [fragment] (on MMacArthur01)
NOTES [197 words]: According to Bush-FSofCentralWestVirginiaVol4, this song supplied the title for a novel called The Thread that Runs So True by Jesse Stuart. The LibraryThing database shows that this was popular enough to have been published in fifty editions or more and to have been turned into a play by Reginald Lawrence.
A publisher's blurb for the book reads "First published in 1949, Jesse Stuart's now classic personal account of his twenty years of teaching in the mountain region of Kentucky has enchanted and inspired generations of students and teachers. With eloquence and wit, Stuart traces his twenty-year career in education, which began, when he was only seventeen years old, with teaching grades one through eight in a one-room schoolhouse. Before long Stuart was on a path that made him principal and finally superintendent of city and county schools. The road was not smooth, however, and Stuart faced many challenges, from students who were considerably older--and bigger--than he to well-meaning but distrustful parents, uncooperative administrators and, most daunting, his own fear of failure. Through it all, Stuart never lost his abiding faith in the power of education." - RBW
Last updated in version 6.0
File: R545

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