The Old Apple Tree

The Old Apple Tree

"If my Pappy had-a knowed it,
He be sorry that he growed it,
'Cause he died in that old apple tree."

Have you ever noticed that country-western and folk songs can be just a wee bit morbid? Well, that's nothing new. It's been going on for years. For those of you old enough to remember, the country music TV show, "Hee-Haw" used to have a segment called, "Doom, Gloom and Agony on Me", wherein unfolded a tragic musical tale, accompanied by appropriate weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth...or gums. As a matter of fact, country western music is famous, or rather infamous for its lyric tragedy. A musical adaptation of the last act of "Hamlet" would make great fodder for the Grand Ol' Opry, except iambic pentameter doesn't lend itself to banjo and slide steel guitar.

Country-western and folk music have their roots in the traditions of storytelling...and some of which get downright painful. We've become accustomed to the "Disney-fied" versions of fairy tales. We forget that one of Cinderella's step-sisters cut off her toe trying to get into the slipper, and that Red Riding Hood had to be extracted from the stomach of the wolf.

Way back when, songs and stories were used as much to warn as entertain. If mother's stories spooked her children not to wander off into the woods, so much the better. Or maybe it was to remind her man not to wander...or go too far for that matter. Such is the sad tale of "The Old Apple Tree." When I was a child, my own grandmother introduced me to the song, the lyrics of which went right over my head. Think of it as a reminder, as Barry Fitzgerald said in “The Quiet Man”, to keep "the proprieties, as always."

Now, “The Old Apple Tree” isn’t a folk song in any real sense, but it certainly sounds right--as though it were birthed somewhere high in the Ozarks or Appalachia. To hear it, (or at least the way I learned it) one could easily picture Granny Clampitt churning it out on her lap organ on an early episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies.” (In fact, it was written by M.K. Jerome and Jack Scholl for the Humphrey Bogart movie, "Swing Your Lady" (1938), and the tune was subsequently featured as background music to several Warner Brothers cartoons. Bob Crosby and His Orchestra also recorded a version of it.) And while it may not qualify as a folk song, as say, "Oh Susannah" (depressing enough in it's own rite), it serves the point.

The Old Apple Tree

Oh! The old apple tree in the orchard,
Lives in my memory,
'Cause it reminds me of my Pappy,
He was handsome, young and happy
When he planted the old apple tree.

Then one day Pappy took Widder Norton
Out on a jamboree,
And when he took her home at sun-up,
Brother Norton raised his gun up,
And chased Pappy up in the tree.

When the neighbors came after my Pappy,
Up in the tree was he,
The neighbors took a rope and strung him
By the neck and then they hung him
To a branch of the old apple tree.

Now my poor Pappy lies in the orchard
Out of his misery.
They put the apples in the basket,
Chopped the tree down for a casket,
And my poor Pappy's gone with the tree.

Say "Good-bye,"
Say "Good-bye,"
Say "Good-bye" to the old apple tree.
If my Pappy had a knowed it,
He be sorry that he growed it,
'Cause he died on the old apple tree.

Acknowledgments: 63, 64, 65, 66