"Wildwood Flower" is an American song, best known through performances and recordings by the Carter Family. However, the song predates them. The original title was "I'll Twine 'Mid the Ringlets". PDMusic.org says the song was written in 1860, with words by Maud Irving and music by Joseph Philbrick Webster (1819-1875). ^[1] The tune was used by Woody Guthrie for the verses of his song "The Sinking of the Reuben James" (about the USS Reuben James (DD-245)). Guthrie's song had a tune of his own devising on the chorus. ^[2] Maybelle, A.P. and Sara The Carter Family was a rural country music group that performed and recorded between 1927 and 1943. ... Woody Guthrie with his famous This Machine Kills Fascists guitar. ... The first USS Reuben James (DD-245), a post-World War I four-stack Clemson-class destroyer, was the first United States Navy ship sunk by hostile action in World War II and the first named for a Boatswains Mate who distinguished himself fighting the Barbary pirates. ...

Although originally a parlor song, the song had undergone quite a bit of the folk process by the time the Carter Family recorded it. For example, the original first verse was: Parlor music was a type of popular music associated with the period between the 19th century rise of the sheet music industry and the advent of recorded music. ... Folk music, in the original sense of the term, is music by and of the common people. ...

I'll twine 'mid the ringlets of my raven black hair,

The lilies so pale and the roses so fair,

The myrtle so bright with an emerald hue,

And the pale aronatus with eyes of bright blue. ^[3]

The better-known Carter Family version begins:

Oh, I'll twine with my mingles and waving black hair,

With the roses so red and the lilies so fair,

And the myrtle so bright with the emerald dew,

The pale and the leader and eyes look like blue. ^[4]

Other variants exist; for example Iris Dement sings "…The pale emanita and hyssop so blue…". Joan Baez sings "pale amaleder", but retains the original reference to "raven black hair." Most other singers (Roger McGuinn, for instance) substitute "amaryllis and violets so blue" here. ^{[citation needed]} Iris DeMent (born 5 January 1961) is an American country/folk singer and songwriter. ... Species Hyssopus ambiguus (Trautv. ... Joan Baezs 1975 bestseller Diamonds & Rust. ... James Roger McGuinn (born July 13, 1942) is an American singer-songwriter, who was born as James Joseph McGuinn III in Chicago, Illinois. ... Binomial name Amaryllis belladonna L. Amaryllis is a monotypic genus of plant containing one species, the Belladonna Lily (Amaryllis belladonna), a native of South Africa. ...

Plant expert Ed Hume reports that he is unaware of a plant known as aronatus. ^[5]

Another famous mondegreen stems from a later verse: A mondegreen (also sometimes spelt mondagreen) is the mishearing (usually accidental) of a phrase, such that it acquires a new meaning. ...

I will dance, I will sing, and my heart shall be gay

I will charm every heart in this crowd I survey

Most contemporary singers render that second line,

I will charm every heart; in his crown, I will sway.

Don Bowman, in 1974, appropriated the tune as a background for "Wildwood Weed", a monologue about marijuana. Performed by Jim Stafford, it peaked at number 7 on the Billboard Country chart. ^[6] A Cannabis sativa plant The cannabis plant can be dried or otherwise processed to yield products containing large concentrations of compounds that have psychoactive and medicinal effects when consumed, usually by smoking or eating. ... Jim Stafford was a comedian and musician in the 1970s and had a couple of semi-novelty hits with two songs, Spiders and Snakes and the controversial My Girl, Bill. ... An example of a Billboard Magazine. ...

Notes

1. ^  PDMusic.org.
2. ^  Smith.
3. ^  Smith.
4. ^  Horstman.
5. ^  Hume.
6. ^  Michael Allen for the fact of appropriating the tune; Billboard ranking of August 24, 1974 is cited at [7]

August 24 is the 236th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar (237th in leap years), with 129 days remaining. ... 1974 (MCMLXXIV in Roman) is a common year starting on Tuesday (click on link for calendar). ...

References

• Michael Allen, "'I Just Want to be a Cosmic Cowboy'": Hippies, Cowboy Code, and the Culture of a Counterculture", in The Western Historical Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 3, Autumn 2005.
• "I'll Twine 'Mid the Ringlets" on PDMusic.org.
• Dorothy Horstman, Interview with Maybelle Carter, Nashville, Tennessee, 6 September 1973; also two versions of the song. Reprinted in Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy, New York, 1976, pp. 201-202 Lyrics as reprinted ibid., p. 202
• Ed Hume, Finding Rare Flowers, retrieved 22 December 2005.
• Rod Smith, Rod's Encyclopedic Dictionary Of Traditional Music, retrieved 1 December 2002 by the Internet Archive.