Silvery Moon, The

DESCRIPTION: The singer sees a girl lamenting in the moonlight. Her lover was true and brave, "but now he is dead, the youth once so gay... And he silently sleeps while I'm left here to weep By the sweet silver light of the moon."
AUTHOR: possibly Charles Sloman (source: FolkSongAndMusicHall)
EARLIEST DATE: 1825 (broadside, Bodleian Johnson Ballads fol. 19)
KEYWORDS: love death separation
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South)) US(MA,MW,So)
REFERENCES (11 citations):
Gardham-EarliestVersions, "BY THY SWEET SILVER LIGHT, BONNY MOON"
Randolph 800, "The Silvery Moon" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania, pp. 154-155, "Roll On, Silver Moon" (1 text) (pp. 132-133 in the 1919 edition)
Williams-FolkSongsOfTheUpperThames, p. 128, "By Thy Sweet, Silver Light, Bonny Moon" (1 text) (also Williams-Wiltshire-WSRO Gl 41)
Huntington-SongsTheWhalemenSang, pp. 233-234, "Silvery Moon" (1 text, 1 tune)
Dean-FlyingCloud, p. 94, "Sweet Silver Light of the Moon" (1 text)
OCroinin/Cronin-TheSongsOfElizabethCronin 123, "Roll On Silvery Moon" (3 texts)
Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, #2023, p. 136, "Roll On Silver Moon" (2 references)
Dime-Song-Book #5/72, p. 23 and #5/64, p. 20, "Roll on Silver Moon" (1 text)
Velocipede-Songster, p. 43, "Roll On SIlver Moon" (1 text)
FolkSongAndMusicHall, "Roll on Silver Moon"
Roud #906
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Johnson Ballads fol. 19 [words barely legible], "The Sweet Silver Moon" ("As I went to my cot, at the close of the day"), J. Catnach (London), 1825; also Johnson Ballads fol. 16, "The Sweet Silver Moon"; Firth b.26(337), Johnson Ballads 1016, Harding B 11(3819), Firth b.25(408), Harding B 17(306a), Firth b.28(39) View 2 of 2, Harding B 16(288b), Firth c.26(37), Harding B 26(636), 2806 c.8(275), "[Thy | The] Sweet Silver Light Bonny Moon"; 2806 c.17(391), "Silver Moon"; Johnson Ballads 1351, Johnson Ballads 12 View 1 of 2 [some words illegible], Johnson Ballads 2987, Firth b.27(396), Firth b.25(306), "[The] Bonny Moon"
NLScotland, RB.m.168(065) , "Bonny Moon" ("As I went to my cot, at the close of the day"), T. Birt (London), c.1840
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Roll On, Silver Moon
NOTES [300 words]: Broadsides Bodleian Johnson Ballads fol. 19 and Johnson Ballads fol. 16: "Altered from a song entitled 'come down, bonny Moon.'"
Broadside Bodleian Harding B 26(636) has five verses; the other broadsides have only three. The first added verse, verse 2, has Edwin show Jane the ring and pick the wedding date on the banks of the Shannon; the other added verse, verse 4, has Jane dream of holding Edwin but now, she says, "the willow I'll wear, I shall mark my despair Bewailing my lover's sad doom; But welcome cold death." - BS
FolkSongAndMusicHall mentions an attribution to Charles Sloman (1808-1870). Sloman, according to Richard Anthony Baker, British Music Hall: An Illustrated History, 2014 (I use the 2020 Pen & Sword paperback edition), p. 122, reportedly first began singing in London taverns at the age of eight (so 1816/1817), later made a habit of improvising songs on stage, and wrote many songs for other music hall performers. But Baker says that Sloman's heyday was in the 1840s and 1850s (i.e. before the music hall as such was even establishd), after which his career declined steadily. He actually died in a workhouse in 1870.
This seems to be supported by what we learn of Sloman in Tavern Singing in Early Victorian England: The Diaries of Charles Rice for 1840 and 1850, edited, with an introduction and notes by Laurence Senelick, The Society for Theatre Research, 1997. Rice encountered Sloman fairly often in their joint performing career, and seems to have been impressed by him -- but based on the index at the back, Rice encountered Sloman nine times in 1840, only twice in 1850, and one of those was a notice that he failed to appear.
Could Sloman have written this song? If the Bodleian is correct in dating their broadside to 1825, this seems almost impossible. - RBW
Last updated in version 7.2
File: R800

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