Girl I Left Behind Me (II), The (lyric)

DESCRIPTION: The singer recalls the girl he left behind, and now plans to return to her, even if it involves losing his job. He reminisces: "Oh, that girl, that sweet little girl, The girl I left behind me, With rosy cheeks and curly hair, The girl I left behind me."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1825 (broadside, Bodleian Harding B 28(66)); (tune "Brighton Camp" dated by Chappell to 1758)
KEYWORDS: separation love return nonballad playparty
FOUND IN: US(Ap,MW,NE,So)
REFERENCES (24 citations):
Randolph 546, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (3 texts, 1 tune)
Hudson-FolksongsOfMississippi 98, pp. 229-230, "The Gal I Left Behind Me" (1 text)
Gainer-FolkSongsFromTheWestVirginiaHills, pp. 173-174, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (1 text, 1 tune, short enough that it's not really clear if it's this or a very defective version of "The Girl I Left Behind Me (I)")
Welsch-NebraskaPioneerLore, pp. 10-11, "The Gal I Left Behind Me" (1 text)
Wolford-ThePlayPartyInIndiana, pp. 46-47=Wolford/Richmond/Tillson-PlayPartyInIndiana, pp. 155-156, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (1 text, 1 tune)
McIntosh-FolkSongsAndSingingGamesofIllinoisOzarks, pp. 76-77, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (1 text, 1 tune)
Abernethy-SinginTexas, pp. 107-108, "The Gal I Left Behind Me" (1 text, 1 tune, unusually long but still a nonballad)
Lomax/Lomax-AmericanBalladsAndFolkSongs, pp. 280-282, "The Gal I Left Behind Me," "That Pretty Little Gal" (3 texts, 1 tune)
Fife/Fife-CowboyAndWesternSongs 62, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (2 texts, 1 tune, with the "B" text belonging here and the "A" text being a Westernized form of Laws P1)
Thorp/Logsdon-SongsOfTheCowboys, pp. 69-70, "The Gal I Left Behind Me" (1 text)
Lingenfelter/Dwyer/Cohen-SongsOfAmericanWest, pp. 390-391, "The Gal I Left Behind Me" (1 text, 1 tune)
Finger-FrontierBallads, p. 63, "The Gal I Left Behind Me" (1 short text, filed here because it is Western and short)
Dallas-TheCruelWars-100SoldiersSongs, pp. 48-49, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (1 text, 1 tune)
Chappell-PopularMusicOfTheOldenTime, pp. 708-711, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (1 text, 1 tune)
Chappell/Wooldridge-OldEnglishPopularMusic II, pp. 187-189, "Brighton Camp, or, The Girl I've Left Behind Me" (1 tune, partial text)
Scott-EnglishSongBook, pp. 8-9, "Brighton Camp" (1 text, 1 tune)
Linscott-FolkSongsOfOldNewEngland, pp. 79-80, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (1 tune plus dance instructions)
Hill-PoemsAndSongsOfTheCivilWar, pp. 226-227, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (1 text, a Civil War adaption)
Forget-Me-Not-Songster, p.218, "The GIrl I Left Behind Me" (1 text, possibly rewritten, which does not seem to include the chorus; pp. 220-221 have "The Maid I Left Behind Me," which is the ballad version of the song, Laws P1)
Jolly-Miller-Songster-5thEd, #141, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (1 text)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 281, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (1 text)
Fuld-BookOfWorldFamousMusic, pp. 242-244, "The Girl I Left Behind Me"
MidwestFolklore, W. L. McAtee, "Some Folklore of Grant County, Indiana, in the Nineties," Volume 1, Number 4 (WInter 1951), p. 259, "(Oh! where's that gal)" (1 text)
DT, GIRLLFT4* GIRLLFT5* GRLBHNDZ
Roud #4497 and 7680 and 23929
RECORDINGS:
Anonymous singer, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (on Unexp1)
Bull Mountain Moonshiners, "Johnny Goodwin" (Victor 21141, 1927; on TimesAint05)
Vernon Dalhart, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (Columbia 437-D, 1925)
Uncle Dave Macon, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (Vocalion 15034, 1925)
Pete Seeger, "Girl I Left Behind" (on PeteSeeger24) (on PeteSeeger40)
Gid Tanner & his Skillet Lickers, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" (Columbia 15170-D, 1927)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 28(66), "The Girl I Left Behind Me" ("I am lonesome since I cross'd the hills"), W. Armstrong (Liverpool), 1820-1824; also Harding B 16(330b), Harding B 18(570), Harding B 11(1322), Harding B 26(214), "[The] Girl I Left Behind Me"; Harding B 11(455), Firth c.20(167)[many illegible words], "Brighton Camp" or "The Girl I Left Behind Me"
LOCSinging, cw102000, "The Girl I Left Behind Me" ("I'm lonesome since I cross'd the hills"), J. Andrews (New York), 1853-1859; also cw102010, as201170, sb20156a, as104460, as107220, as10446a, "The Girl I Left Behind Me"
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Brighton Camp" (tune)
cf. "The Wayward Boy" (tune)
cf. "The Battle of the Windmill" (tune)
cf. "The Waxies' Dargle" (tune)
cf. "When I Look Back to Bonny Aberdeen" (tune)
cf. "Anti-Confederation Song (II)" (tune)
NOTES [222 words]: The tune "Brighton Camp," suitable for playparties, dances, and all sorts of fun occasions, seems to have sustained a variety of texts which then became intermixed. Some may even have cross-fertilized with the ballad "The Girl I Left Behind" [Laws P1]. The reader is advised to check all these sources to get a complete cross-section.
W. Bruce Olson contributed extensive notes to the Digital Tradition regarding the origin of the tune, arguing against Chappell's date.
The Folksinger's Wordbook credits this piece to Samuel Lover, who did indeed publish a set of lyrics in 1855. Jolly-Miller-Songster-5thEd also attributes its version to Lover. But it seems likely he just touched up an existing piece, as the tune and the title are older.
This song seems to have given rise to a singing game/playparty of the same title, exemplified e.g. by the versions of Wolford-ThePlayPartyInIndiana and McIntosh-FolkSongsAndSingingGamesofIllinoisOzarks. Roud seems to number the playparty versions as #7680 and the non-playparties as #4497. I think. But unless a version is labelled a playparty, it's next to impossible to tell them apart. - RBW
Broadside LOCSinging cw102000: J. Andrews dating per Studying Nineteenth-Century Popular Song by Paul Charosh in American Music, Winter 1997, Vol 15.4, Table 1, available at FindArticles site. - BS
Last updated in version 6.8
File: R546

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