Bachelor's Hall (II)

DESCRIPTION: "When young men go courting they'll dress up so fine," meet the girls, dress up -- and end up worn out, (broke), and claiming, "I believe it's the best to court none at all, And live by myself and keep bachelor's hall," where neither wife nor children nag
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1925 (recording, Fiddlin' John Carson)
KEYWORDS: courting bachelor
FOUND IN: US(Ap,MW,Ro,SE) Canada(Newf)
REFERENCES (13 citations):
Abrahams/Foss-AngloAmericanFolksongStyle, p. 120, "Bachelor's Hall" (1 text, 1 tune)
Gardner/Chickering-BalladsAndSongsOfSouthernMichigan 183, "Bachelor's Hall" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fuson-BalladsOfTheKentuckyHighlands, p. 133, "Bachelor's Hall" (1 text)
Ritchie-FolkSongsOfTheSouthernAppalachians, p. 35, "Bachelor's Hall" (1 text, 1 tune, with a first verse that seems to have floated in from "The Wagoner's Lad")
Sharp-EnglishFolkSongsFromSouthernAppalachians 153, "When Boys go A-courting" (2 texts plus a fragment, 3 tunes)
Peacock, pp. 237-238, "Bachelor's Hall" (1 text, 1 tune)
Fowke/MacMillan-PenguinBookOfCanadianFolkSongs 36, "Bachelor's Hall" (1 text, 1 tune)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore3 337, "When Young Men Go Courting" (1 fragment, probably this)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore5 337, "When Young Men Go Courting" (1 text, 2 tunes plus a text excerpt)
Morris-FolksongsOfFlorida, #81, "Bachelor's Hall" (1 text)
Hubbard-BalladsAndSongsFromUtah, #91, "The Bachelor's Hall" (1 text, 1 tune)
Darling-NewAmericanSongster, p. 273, "Bachelor's Hall" (1 text)
DT, BACHHALL
Roud #385
RECORDINGS:
Fiddlin' John Carson, "The Batchelor's Hall" (OKeh 45056, 1926; rec. 1925; on TimesAint04 as "Bachelor's Hall")
Earl Shirkey & Roy Harper [pseud. for Roy Harvey], "Keep Bachelor's Hall" (Columbia 15429-D, 1929)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Putting on Airs" (theme)
NOTES [166 words]: There is another "Bachelor's Hall" which describes the difficult life in the Hall: "Sure when I think what a burning disgrace it is, Never at all to be getting a wife, See the old bachelor gloomy and sad enough...."
As I have only one version of #1, I cannot really determine the relationship between the two -- but the present text is not in the same meter as the other.
Charles Dibdin wrote a piece called "Batchelor's Hall" in 1794, but I haven't found a text of that, either.
Gardner and Chickering's text is rather confusing and perhaps composite; it starts by talking about *girls* and the troubles of marriage -- "When young girls get married, their pleasure is all gone; They doubt on their prospects, their troubles come on." But it ends with the warnings found in this song. It appears that their text is either a fusion of two songs or an incomplete attempt to convert this piece to a woman's point of view.
Jean Ritchie's version also hints at that, but with a different first verse. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.4
File: AF120

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