The Troubled Soldier
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-06-02

Day 78 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series.  (folksongindex.com)

Another version of "One Morning in May."

Sandburg writes: "This is a mountain dance tune. One can see feet and fiddles, the bowing of lovers looking into  each other's eyes, the exchange of glances as they go circling in "all hands around." Such a song  was particularly useful when the fiddler failed to show up or went out of commission with a heavy  cargo of "corn." 

This lineal descendant of old British balladry has many variants in America;  an instance of certain English folk-songs which have a wider variety of text and tunes in the Appalachian Mountains of the United States than are to be found in the British Isles. The musical  design here is cunning, and the skill of it grows on us as we become more familiar with it. This  was heard by Gilbert R. Combs in his Pine Mountain years. He gives us two texts, One Morning  In May and The Troubled Soldier, both of which can be managed to the one tune.