How does a song go from having 21 different known versions to only one in a few hundred years? It's recorded. The recorded version is then distributed. The spread of literacy, industrialization the emergence of recording technology made what was once a constantly, rapidly evolving thing more permanent. Songs that began as oral traditions continue to evolve, but more slowly, ironically.

It's like this: now everyone in America knows one version of a top 40 song at a time. This is because, until it goes through it's first run of popularity, everyone hears only this one version on t.v., radio and via the internet. Before this technology, many songs had a common source but it was told differently from reigon to reigion.

Until records, writing, the words to songs could be recorded but not the music. So one reason words to traditional songs changed to fit the music of the singer but essentially told the same story. They were also probably changed to fit only what the singer wanted most to express, so we find broader, more reigonal variances.

So, we find 21 versions of the song popularized by the Grateful Dead, "The Dreadful Wind and Rain" in Childs' ballads. It is most commonly called "'Twa (Two) Sisters". This song came from Europe to Virginia's Appalachian Mountains with the European settlers. They have in common, among other things, two stories, one of a murdered girl and another of an instrument made of human bone speaking for itself.

In the 30s, the music of the Appalachian mountains was recorded by musicologists and became popularized in folk revivals of the 50s and 60s. We are experiencing another folk revival now.

When you look at all of these versions, one thing stands out. Parts of a visible whole are found in each but no single one seems to retain a complete narrative.

Perhaps this is because they were passed down over such long time, people came to know the details of the story so well they didn't have to hear all of it anymore. So, what we now see are just the 'recent', (over the past 300 years or so), versions of a story well known for thousands of years.

Maybe the story was also adapted to describe several different real murders. Whatever their reasons, the people who re-told the story in each of these 22 forms chose to focus on the parts that meant the most to them.

Now, for the most part, the earlier 21 versions have been forgotten. The Appelachan version was recorded by Mike Seeger, whose band, the New Lost City Ramblers influenced Jerry Garcia. Now the version recorded by Garcia is the one we are most likely to encounter.

I love the music of Mike Seeger and Jerry Garcia, but wanted to know the whole story. So I put it back together from the 22 versions mentioned above, then re-wrote the song:

The Singing Bones

Two sisters walked by a miller’s stream,
O the wind and the rain.
The one behind pushed the other one in,
O the dreadful wind and rain.

One pushed the other then walked alone,
O the wind and the rain.
They both loved the miller’s son,
O the dreadful wind and rain.

The miller's son was a fiddler fair,
O the wind and the rain.
He loved the one with golden hair.
O the dreadful wind and rain.

Sometimes she sank, sometimes she swam,
O the wind and the rain.
He found her in his fathers' dam,
O the dreadful wind and rain.

She floated on down to the miller’s pond,
O the wind and the rain.
Stop the dam there swims a swan!
O the dreadful wind and rain.

The millers’ son ran down the hill,
O the wind and the rain.
Pulled her out of his mill wheel,
O the dreadful wind and rain

The miller’s son was a fiddler fair,
O the wind and the rain.
He strung his bow with her golden hair,
O the dreadful wind and rain.

He made a little fiddle of her breastbone,
O the wind and the rain.
Whose sound would melt a heart of stone,
O the dreadful wind and rain

The only tune that the fiddle would play,
Was, "O the wind and the rain."
The only tune that the fiddle would play,
was, "O the dreadful wind and rain."

He sat it down and it sang alone,
"O the wind and the rain.
A sister with a heart of stone,
O the dreadful wind and rain."

The only tune it would play again,
was, "O the wind and the rain,
for your love she threw me in.
O the dreadful wind and rain."