Ben Bolt

DESCRIPTION: "Oh! don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt, Sweet Alice, with hair so brown She wept with delight when you gave her a smile, And trembled with dear at your frown." But Alice now lies in the churchyard, and the mill where they courted is dried up
AUTHOR: Words: Thomas Dunn English
EARLIEST DATE: 1843 (The New Mirror)
KEYWORDS: love courting death separation burial
FOUND IN: US(MW)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Dean, pp. 31-32, "Ben Bolt" (1 text)
RJackson-19CPop, pp. 30-34, "Ben Bolt" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber-FSWB, p. 252, "Ben Bolt" (1 text)
DT, BENBOLT
ST RJ19030 (Full)
Roud #2653
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Sam Holt" (tune & meter)
SAME TUNE:
Answer to Ben Bolt (broadside LOCSheet, sm1854 741250, "Answer to Ben Bolt," W. C. Peters and Sons (Cincinnati), 1854 (tune)
Notes: Originally published as a poem in The New Mirror of September 2, 1843. Various tunes were offered; that by Nelson F. Kneass (made in 1848) proved the most enduring. It is possible that it was an adaptation of another tune.
T. D. English did not receive royalties for the popular editions of the song, and Spaeth (A History of Popular Miusic in America, p. 123) reports that he "came to resent [the song's] enormous popularity as compared with what he considered his more important efforts." Where have we heard *that* before? - RBW
File: RJ19030

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