Annotation:Little Rose is Gone

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LITTLE ROSE (IS GONE). AKA and see "That's My Rabbit My Dog Caught It." Old-Time, Slow Reel. USA, West Virginia. A Dorian. Standard tuning (fiddle). AB. The tune, at least the first part, is a version of "That's My Rabbit, My Dog Caught It," recorded by the Walter Family of Woodford County, Ky. Wilson Douglas, a West Virginia fiddler who also recorded the tune, said of its origins:

That's a slow one. That's one of French's (Carpenter, Douglas's mentor) specials. He liked to play that, especially when he felt a little bad. It's about as old a tune as you'll hear. There were two pioneers, we'll call them frontier man and his wife. They settled somewhere in the southern part of West Virginia, way back. Her name was Rose and her husband came in one day and she was gone. They never did find her. They didn't know if Indians had killed her or taken her captive. This old fellow had some kind of an old fiddle with gut strings. He was grieving so, he composed this tune and called it the 'Little Rose.' French said his grandfather Saul told him that tale and he played it just like he was grieving. That old slow time, see? ... (from an interview with Nancy McClellan).

Gerry Milnes also collected the tune and story from Douglas, although at that time the story told was different in some details. According to Milnes, Douglas told him his version of "Little Rose" was composed by Harmon Carpenter, a Civil War soldier, who left his fiancé, Rose, to go and fight in the war. Upon his return he found that Rose had been murdered by nightriders, whereupon he took up his fiddle and composed the tune. The nightriders were Jayhawkers, Union sympathizers in a guerrilla war fought in the West Virginia mountains where there was much sympathy for the northern cause. Harmon had evidently joined the Confederate army, and thus his loved ones were targeted.

Wilson Douglas (1922-1999)

Source for notated version: Wilson Douglas (Clay County, W.Va.) [Phillips].

Printed sources: Phillips (Traditional American Fiddle Tunes), vol. 2, 1995; p. 79.

Recorded sources: Reed Island Rounders - "Wolves in the Wood" (1997). PearlMae Muisc 004-2, Jim Taylor - "The Civil War Collection, vol. 1" (1995). Rounder 0047, Wilson Douglas - "The Right Hand Fork of Rush's Creek" (1975).

See also listing at:
Hear the tune played by Mark Crabtree & Joel Specht on Youtube [1]
Hear Wilson Douglas's "Little Rose" at Slippery Hill [2]

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