Gypsy Davy
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-09-21

Day 187 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series

Where as yesterday's Coon Can is not racist, this one certainly is—although changing the title to something else (Traveller Davy, Roma Davy) doesn't quite work. The history of the Roma people is one of indignations and prejudice (even as victims of the Nazi holocaust) they underwent over the centuries.

The earliest date for this song is 1720, according to the Traditional Ballad Index which cites ninety-three references, including Sandburg. It is a traditional folk song that originated as a Scottish border ballad, and has been popular throughout Britain, Ireland and North America. It concerns a rich lady who runs off to join the gypsies (or one gypsy). Common alternative names are "The Raggle Taggle Gypsy", "The Gypsy Laddie(s)", "Black Jack David" (or "Davy") and "Seven Yellow Gypsies". 

Racist to its core, it still may reflect an actual event in which a lord comes home to find his lady "gone with the gypsy laddie." He saddles his fastest horse to follow her. He finds her and bids her come home; she will not return, preferring the cold ground and the gypsy's company to her lord's wealth and fine bed. 

This story is told in varying lengths. Sandburg has just two verses and the story between those two verses he leaves to the hearer's imagination. 

Sandburg writes: "A fragment of an old ballad lives on in versions of two verses or ten, with many varying accounts of what happened between the two men and the one woman."