Folk Songs from the Southern Highlands - online songbook

Southern Appalachians songs with lyrics, commentary & some sheet music.

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	Ballads and Songs
	5. Here's your letters and your locket And your ring I love so well. I will meet you as a stranger, But to never say farewell. 6. Wish I was in some deep ocean With the fish down in the sea; I would whisper beneath the waters, And land on some distant shore.
	72 FLIRTING See Hudson, Journal, XXXIX, 164; Richardson and Spaeth, American Mountain Songs, p. 57; Henry, Journal, XLII, 278; Bradley Kincaid's Favorite Old-Time Songs and Mountain Ballads, Book 3, p. 36, Chicago, 1930. A "Willie." Recorded by Mrs. Emory P. Morrow, Aliceville, Alabama, 1925. Mrs. Morrow writes how she obtained the song and tune from mountain boys: "Some of the 'song-ballets' are so melodramatic and tragic and the tunes so doleful that it is hard to keep from laughing at them, but we finally succeeded in writing down the words to 'Willie' and 'My Little Mohea.' It was even more difficult to remember their tunes. About that time my two room-mates and I succeeded in getting enough money to have water put in the boys' dormitory, in which we roomed, and then I knew my problem was solved, because it is instinctive for boys to sing while bathing. I used to call to them to sing 'Willie' and 'My Little Mohea/ while five or more of them were taking their shower bath — and they couldn't resist. In that way we learned many of the tunes."
	1. They say it is sinful to flirt. They say I've a heart made of stone. They tell me to speak to him kindly, Or else leave the poor boy alone.
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