Come All Ye Fair & Tender Maidens

#57 / April 8 Podcast

To say that “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens” is an Appalachian tune is an understatement.

In the southern mountains between 1916 and 1918, the great English-born song catcher Cecil Sharp collected and published no fewer than 18 versions of the ballad, including a rendition from one of his best sources, Mrs. Jane Gentry of Hot Springs, North Carolina.

The tune qualifies as one of the best known songs in traditional music today, having been recorded by scores of artists, from the Carter Family and Pete Seeger to Dylan and Baez to Emmylou Harris and Dolly Parton. (Incidentally, that title has been regularly used only since the 1960s; prior to that, “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens” was more commonly known as “Little Sparrow.”)

Kentucky’s Jean Ritchie, who sang versions of the song on 1954 and 1965 albums, called it “one of the incomparable love songs of all time,” adding, “It is widely known throughout our part of the Appalachians, and even within our own family is sung in two or three different tunes and with varying sets of words.”

The song still has legs. For instance, in the award-winning 2010 film “Winter’s Bone,” Marideth Sisco performed a portion of it in a moving scene.

Our Take On the Tune

When we in The Flood bought “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens” to our first album back in 2001, our take on the tune was already 20 years old.

It was on a hot summer’s night in the early 1980s that Flood co-founder Roger Samples sat in Pamela and Charlie Bowen’s kitchen and came up with his unusual arrangement. This particular version of the song settled in our memory over the years, coming out again only occasionally. Earlier this week was one of those evenings.

Now, any musician will tell you that the “meaning” of a song is much more than merely the words. While the lyrics can tell a story, the real mood and richness of the tune is in the melody and the harmonies. It’s the notes with which the players fill the spaces around and between all those words. Listen to Dan Cox’s guitar beautifully complementing Veezy Coffman’s lovely tenor sax. It’s a conversation, one that has absolutely nothing to do with nouns, verbs and adjectives. Click here to hear our 2022 rendition of “Come All Ye Fair and Tender Maidens.”