Mary Hamilton

6.Mary Hamilton – 4:17
Traditional, arr. Wendy Grossman
Publishing administration by Riverlark Publishing (BMI)

For more information, contact:
Andy Cohen, Riverlark Music
Email: twangoleum@outlook.com

It is rare to hear a version of this classic ballad that *isn't* the one popularized by Joan Baez in 1960. I heard this one from Folk Legacy Records co-founder Caroline Paton (1922-2019), who learned it from the Texas singer and musicologist Hally Wood (1922-1989), and preferred it immediately, in part because the different tune leads you to hear the story afresh.

The basic story is the same: a personal attendant to the queen becomes pregnant by the king, kills the
resulting child, and is caught and hanged for it. Caroline sang it unaccompanied.

This is the only song in this collection that I play in "standard" guitar tuning, expanded by the baritone guitar in drop A, capoed two, to add some bass notes of doom.