The Roud numbers refer to the system adopted in Steve Roud’s Folk Song Index, an online database available on the website of the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, London (English Folk Dance and Song Society: http://library.efdss.org); the Child numbers refer to the system used in Francis J. Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–98); and the Laws numbers to that in Malcolm G. Laws’s American Balladry from British Broadsides: A Guide for Students and Collectors of Traditional Song (1957).
The number of ‘entries’ given for each song refers to the number of unique entries in The Folk Song Index for versions collected in England. See the General Introduction for further discussion of this aspect of song research.
FMJ: Folk Music Journal
JEFDSS: Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society
JFSS: Journal of the Folk-Song Society
JIFSS: Journal of the Irish Folk Song Society
I
’Tis True My Love’s Enlisted …
Soldiers and Sailors
Sung by Ned Adams, Hastings, Sussex (13 November 1954); recorded by Bob Copper (BBC 22742).
Roud 528, Laws K29; 56 entries.
One of the best-known of our sea songs, collected all over the country. Some singers, at least, believed that it was a true story, but the Princess Royal was a very common name for a ship from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. The song is often set to fine stirring tunes, and it was also regularly printed on broadsides from the 1820s onwards.
The text presents us with an editorial quandary. The BBC recording has five verses, but Bob Copper’s transcription of the text in his Songs and Southern Breezes (1973) gives two more. These additional verses are quite normally found in the song and it is possible that Bob heard Ned sing the song on another occasion, but given his reluctance to sing, as detailed in the book, this is unlikely. Bob was very familiar with the song, as it was included in his own family’s repertoire, but the wording of the two verses in the book is not exactly the same as that sung by the Coppers. On balance, we have decided to leave them in (as verses 4 and 5) but have indicated their ambiguous status with square brackets.
The majority of tunes collected with this song are in triple time and bear a strong resemblance to the jaunty tunes associated with the song ‘Flash Company’ (No. 80), which, in turn, contain clear echoes of the very widespread tune known as ‘Villikins and his Dinah’ (see ‘All Jolly Fellows Who Follow the Plough’, No. 91). Ned Adams’s melody is not of this group, being a very florid realization of a tune which has been noted elsewhere with this song in southern and eastern England. Adams’s style of singing, with its melismas (in which one syllable of text is sung to several notes) and rhythmic freedom is not commonly found in English tradition, but it certainly lends his rendition a highly dignified and commanding feel. The transcription aims to strike a balance between incorporating some of these complexities (for example, through the use of ‘pause’ marks) while keeping the notation readable.
Sung by George Wray, Brigg, Lincolnshire (28 July 1906); collected by Percy Grainger (Grainger MSS, hectograph copy at VWML, song 189, CDA 6).
Roud 664, Laws J5; 54 entries.
‘Bonny Bunch of Roses O’, or ‘Young Napoleon’, was extremely widely known in England, and was also collected often in Ireland and Scotland. Some people have got into a tangle over the song, assuming that it features Napoleon Bonaparte speaking to his mother, and trying to fit its content into his historical life, but it is clearly a fictional account of a conversation between Napoleon’s son, François Charles Joseph, and his mother. Some commentators have also made rather heavy weather of the meaning and social context of the song. Starting from the argument that many in Britain, and particularly in Ireland, saw Napoleon as a potential liberator rather than a tyrant, and assuming that ‘Bonny Bunch of Roses O’ was a pro-Napoleon song, it became common to maintain that the song was originally Irish. There is no evidence for this, and an Irish protest song would hardly include such a line as ‘There is England, Ireland and Scotland, their unity shall ne’er be broke’, but there is a strong Irish connection.
In fact, the song was written by George Brown, who, from what little we know of him, was a prolific songwriter for the London broadside trade. Not only did Brown direct the song to be sung to the Irish tune ‘The Bunch of Rushes’ but he lifted wholesale some lines from an Irish broadside song, ‘The New Bunch of Loughero’ (‘loughero’ means ‘rushes’). It is even possible that he got the idea for the telling phrase ‘bonny bunch of roses’ from ‘bonny bunch of rushes’.
Given this information, we can use this song as a case study in what further can be teased out by a little detective work into broadside printings.
The song appeared numerous times on broadsides in the nineteenth century, but the earliest are by James Catnach, John Pitts and William Taylor of Waterloo Road, Lambeth. It is well known that the broadside printers simply stole each other’s songs, and this is one of the reasons they claimed they could not pay their songwriters much for their work, because they could not protect their ‘investment’. When different printers were in operation at the same time, it is usually impossible to know which issued a particular song first. But in the very few cases where the name of the writer appears on only one printer’s sheet it is more than likely to be the original, simply because those who were copying an ‘anonymous’ song would not know who had written it and could not introduce the information from nowhere.
If we presume this song was written after the young Napoleon’s death, in 1832, all three printers are still contenders: Catnach ceased in 1838 and Pitts in 1844, while Taylor was printing at Waterloo Road from 1831/2 to 1836/7. But it is the Taylor sheet which reveals Brown as the writer, so it is likely that the song was first published by Taylor between 1832 and 1837, and we can further hazard that the song was probably written soon after the young Napoleon’s death, when he was in the news.
There is one factor that might throw some doubt on this identification of Taylor as the original printer. It is also claimed that songwriters would sell a song to one printer and then quickly sell it to another, on the assumption that the first printer would simply presume the second had copied his sheet as usual. There may, therefore, be two ‘original’ printers, but even if this were the case, Taylor would be one of them.
George Brown’s name appears at the foot of at least eleven songs – ten of which were printed by William Taylor or his successors. It is also interesting to note that two other songs signed by Brown are Napoleonic songs – ‘Bonaparte Again from St Helena’ and ‘The Grand Conversation on Napoleon’ – and the latter also includes the ‘bunch of roses’ phrase.
George Wray sings a variant of the most widespread tune for this song as collected in England, which Frank Kidson considered ‘a really fine air’ (JFSS, 2 (1906), 277). The eponymous words ‘the bonny bunch of roses O’ occur at the end of each stanza and are almost invariably sung to the same distinctive melodic figure (bar 8 in the transcription), which falls from the seventh degree (often flattened) and concludes with the descending jump of a fifth.
As indicated, the tune is also associated with the song ‘The Bunch of Rushes’ in England and Ireland, and this tune name is cited for ‘The Bonny Bunch of Roses O’ on the Taylor printing of George Brown’s song. According to D. J. O’Sullivan, this melody derives from an Irish love song, ‘An Beinnsin Luachra’ (‘The Bundle of Rushes’) (JIFSS, 6:27 (1967), 41–2). There is certainly a strong resemblance between the two in mode, range and phrase structure as well as melodic contour, although the Irish song is sometimes found in triple time. Its final A phrase also concludes with the hallmark melodic pattern, though finishing with a leap of a third or second rather than a fifth.
George Wray’s singing is rhythmically very free and this is reflected in the complexity of Grainger’s transcription of the cylinder recording. His notation is reproduced here in a simplified (and slightly re-barred) form. The tune for stanza 1 lacks the second line so this has been adapted from the corresponding phrase in stanza 2. The question marks in the variations are Grainger’s. The tune’s phrase structure varies from stanza to stanza, as follows:
stanza 1: A[A]BC
stanza 2: AABC
stanza 3: BCBC
stanza 4: BCBCBC
stanza 5: AABCBC
3 Captain Ward and the Rainbow
‘Saucy Ward’, sung by ‘Skinny’ Crow, Filby, Norfolk (March 1913); collected by George Butterworth (Butterworth MSS, GB/5/28 & GB/7d/39). One line was missing from verse 3, which has been supplied from a version collected by Sabine Baring-Gould.
Roud 224, Child 287; 18 entries.
Collected a fair number of times, but nowhere near as often as other seafaring ballads such as ‘The Golden Vanity’ (No. 9) and ‘The Bold Princess Royal’ (No. 1). It was also noted occasionally in Scotland and Ireland and a few times in North America. Francis J. Child includes it in his English and Scottish Popular Ballads, but prints only one text, from a black-letter broadside in the Bagford collection, while Bertrand Bronson musters eleven tunes. Other black-letter sheets survive in the Pepys, Roxburghe and Euing collections, and were published in the mid to late seventeenth century – perhaps as early as the 1620s; the ballad remained in print on numerous broadsides and garlands throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The song does include some facts. Information given in Roy Palmer’s Oxford Book of Sea Songs (1986) and Christopher Lloyd’s English Corsairs on the Barbary Coast (1981) shows that John Ward (d. 1622) was indeed a Royal Navy man turned pirate, who, from his base in Tunisia, terrorized the shipping of the major maritime nations of the time. He was famous enough to inspire other ballads and a play, and he also appears to have tried to negotiate a pardon with James I, but was refused. But no fight with the Rainbow, or any other navy ship, is recorded.
Bronson finds the tune tradition for this ballad ‘scattered and thin’, often recalling the tunes of other songs (The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, IV (1972), p. 363). ‘Skinny’ Crow’s tune is no exception, for it is a version of the tune often associated with ‘The Banks of the Sweet Dundee’ (No. 58). With its ABBA structure, flattened seventh and the lack of the second degree of the scale, it is also particularly close to the tune found in this volume with ‘The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter’ (No. 31). George B. Gardiner collected tunes for ‘Captain Ward’ in Hampshire (from Isaac Hobbs and Richard Haynes) whose first two lines comprise the B phrase of Crow’s tune repeated.
Butterworth’s manuscript lacks a time signature so one has been added to the notation here.
Sung by Sam Larner, Winterton, Norfolk (7 March 1958); recorded by Philip Donnellan (BBC 26075).
Roud 690; 21 entries.
A somewhat formulaic seafaring song, but very effective in the mouths of singers like Sam Larner and Bob and Ron Copper. Collected a fair number of times across the country, under various titles such as ‘Warlike Seamen’, ‘London Man-o-War’, ‘Liverpool Play’ and the very un-pirate-like ‘The Sea-Lark’. Only a handful of broadside versions have survived, with the earliest, entitled ‘The Bold Wasp’, dating from about 1800.
It is the many versions which name the ship as the Nottingham which give a clue to the song’s origins and reveal that it reports a real incident. In the laconic words of Captain Sainsbury’s very useful Royal Navy Day by Day (1992), p. 288,
11th October 1746: Nottingham captured the French Mars, 70 miles to the southwest-ward of Cape Clear, after a gallant defence by an ailing crew.
What might be the original song (although the provenance is not given) appears in John Laffin’s Jack Tar (1969), pp. 184–5.
The song is often associated with a four-time melody, such as that sung by Bob and Ron Copper, or a more lilting, compound-time tune of which Sam Larner’s is an example. His rendition includes several vocal slides and grace notes, which add to the tune’s swing.
Sung by George Spicer, Selsfield, Sussex (1974); recorded by Mike Yates; issued on Blackberry Fold, Topic 12T235 (1974).
Roud 376, Laws K13; 25 entries.
‘Faithful Sailor Boy’ was immensely popular with twentieth-century singers and has been widely recorded, but it does not appear in the manuscripts of the major Victorian and Edwardian collectors in England. Presumably, it was too modern to attract them, although the less fastidious Gavin Greig noted no fewer than eight versions in Scotland around 1908, which shows that it was already popular at that time. The texts and tune are remarkably stable across all the known versions.
The song appeared on one or two late nineteenth-century broadsides, and was probably written about 1880. Several sources claim that it was composed by the well-known songwriters Thomas Payne Westendorf (1848–1923) and G. W. Persley (1837–94), but we have not been able to confirm this, nor have we found any original sheet music.
Sung by Mrs Susan Williams, Haselbury Plucknett, Somerset (26 December 1905); collected by Cecil Sharp (Sharp MSS, FW 782–3/FT 698). In the Sharp manuscript, the first line of verse 4 is missing, so we have supplied it from a Hampshire version in the George B. Gardiner MSS (GG/1/18/1148).
The words in the last line have been amended from ’Twas you or either I betrayed …’
Roud 239, Laws N13; 17 entries.
A reasonably widespread song in England, although it only just sneaks into our category of ‘most popular’ songs, and was also found, but less frequently, in Scotland and North America.
Although the cross-dressing motif usually gets this ‘Cabin Boy’ lumped in with the category of ‘female warrior’ songs, there is nothing warlike about our heroine, and really the song is simply an extended joke. Nevertheless, one can see, if one chooses, a deeper significance, as in the comment on the song by Dianne Dugaw in Warrior Women and Popular Balladry (1989), p. 84: ‘Amidst its laughter, it warns of the deep confusions and implicit dangers in such gender masquerading.’ In other versions the heroine is referred to as ‘The Handsome Cabin Boy’, which enhances the gender ambiguity.
It was very widely printed on broadsides from at least the 1820s.
The same jaunty tune is nearly always used for this song, though in various forms. It is also associated with ‘The Female Drummer’ (Frank Purslow, Marrow Bones (2007), p. 141), although not in the case of No. 7 here, and ‘The Little Gipsy Girl’ (No. 32).
Sung by Mrs Elizabeth Smith, Copthorne, Surrey (1966); collected by Ken Stubbs; printed in his The Life of a Man (1970), pp. 34–5. Stubbs added the line ‘He looked upon me kindly and these are the words he said’ from another local version.
Roud 226; 21 entries.
One of the few cross-dressing songs where the girl becomes a soldier, not to follow her lover, but just because she wants to. The song was collected quite widely in England and Scotland, but rarely in North America. It was also a favourite with broadside printers, and it must have been available for almost all of the nineteenth century.
The early broadside texts include the detail that our heroine fought at the Siege of Valenciennes, which took place in 1793. This has led some commentators to suggest that the song refers to Mary Ann Talbot (1778–1808), whose autobiography states that she was at that battle in the guise of a drummer boy. Talbot’s claims were published, in ever-increasing detail, in the years 1799 and 1804, and finally in book form in 1809, after her death, but Suzanne Stark, in her book Female Tars (1996), claims that the whole story was spurious, and mostly concocted by a ghost writer. Nevertheless, the earliest broadside that we know of was published about 1802, so it is still possible that the song was inspired by her story, although beyond the name of the battle the narratives do not tally in any other detail. The subject was obviously popular at the time, as a different song telling a similar story and also called ‘The Female Drummer’ was in print in garlands and on broadsides in the same period.
The tunes associated with the song are appropriately march-like in their feel (see also the note to No. 6 above).
‘Bold General Wolfe’, sung by Alec Bloomfield, Framlingham, Suffolk (27 August 1952); recorded by Peter Kennedy; and by Keith Summers, Newark, Nottinghamshire (1975), issued on A Story to Tell, Musical Traditions MTCD339 (2007). The text we have used incorporates both recordings, which are slightly different.
Roud 624; 32 entries.
Writers of broadsides and folk songs certainly liked their military heroes to die in action, preferably after beating the French. Nelson and Wolfe managed it perfectly, whereas Wellington lived on too long to be truly heroic. James Wolfe (1727–59) died in command of the successful action to take Quebec from the French. Despite his youth, he had already seen action in several campaigns and he was a keen military theorist as well as a practical soldier. He introduced a number of basic improvements to the way our troops went into battle, which were acknowledged as important contributions to the effectiveness of the British army for several generations.
Numerous songs were written about him, but this was the one which took the popular fancy and lasted long enough to be collected 200 years after his death. It was widely known in England, but not apparently elsewhere, apart from some versions collected in Canada. The Americans and Canadians had their own traditional song, variously called ‘Brave Wolfe’ or ‘Bold Wolfe’ (Roud 961, Laws A1), which includes a delightful vignette of Wolfe and Montcalm (leader of the French) strolling together and chatting just before the battle.
Our Wolfe song also appeared widely on nineteenth-century broadsides, but no eighteenth-century examples of it have been found, although they probably did exist. It was certainly in existence in 1818, when it was included in the relatively upmarket Vocal Library, a hardback book of over 1,800 songs, which sold for 10s 6d, bound in red leather. Many of the songs in this book were assigned to named authors, but ‘General Wolfe’s Request’ was anonymous.
Malcolm Douglas and Steve Gardham, the editors of Frank Purslow’s Marrow Bones (2007), observe that the tunes for the song are all clearly related, although they show extensive variation (p. 125) and Alec Bloomfield’s tune is no exception. His rendition is freer in rhythm than can be captured easily in music notation.
Sung by Henry Hills, Lodsworth, Sussex (Jan 1900); collected by W. Percy Merrick; published in JFSS, 1 (1901), 104–5. ‘Messes’ in the last two verses means ‘messmates’.
Roud 122, Child 286; 34 entries.
Widely collected across Britain and North America but not common, apparently, in Ireland, ‘The Golden Vanity’ is still well known because it was taught in school singing lessons after Baring-Gould and Sharp included it in their English Folk Songs for Schools (1906). Francis J. Child printed three early versions, but Bertrand Bronson found 110 tunes. The name of the ship varies considerably, especially in American versions, but in England Golden Vanity is by far the most common, although the song is sometimes called ‘The Lowlands Low’ after the repeated burden lines.
The earliest surviving text, which is probably the original, is found on a black-letter broadside in the Percy and Euing collections, entitled ‘Sir Walter Raleigh Sailing in the Lowlands’ and printed about 1682–5. It provides some details which were lost in later versions: Raleigh has built a ship called the Sweet Trinity, which has been captured by the enemy, and he asks for help getting it back. In this version, the enemy is unspecified. The ending is inconclusive, as the captain agrees to the promised ‘gold and fee’, but refuses to hand over his daughter. The boy says goodbye, ‘Seeing as you are not so good as your word’.
The core story remains the same in most later versions, although they name the enemy variously as Turkish, Spanish, Dutch or French, and the ending often differs. In most, as in Henry Hills’s given here, the captain proves completely perfidious and refuses to even take the boy back on board. The boy says that if it were not for his crewmates on board he would serve the captain’s ship as he had the enemy. Sometimes the crew take him on board anyway. But one way or another, the boy almost always dies, and is often tossed back over the side quite unceremoniously.
The song was widely available on broadsides in the nineteenth century, and most of the versions collected in England follow the printed texts quite closely, as does the published school-book version.
Frank Kidson comments that ‘though there is a great degree of similarity of structure in the various versions of this widely distributed ballad, each one has a distinct and separate tune’ (JFSS, 1 (1901), 105).
Sung by John Masters, Bradstone, Devon (c.1889); collected by Sabine Baring-Gould (Baring-Gould MSS, SBG/1/1/426).
Roud 276; 26 entries.
The song was widely sung in England, Scotland and Ireland, and noted dozens of times in North America; the theme of the land dwellers being out to cheat the poor sailor is clearly universal. In general in folk songs, sailors can be as free and easy with their affections as they wish, but women on shore must not, and there are apparently no songs from the landlady’s point of view complaining about feckless customers who try to get things on credit and never pay their tab.
The song was also widespread on nineteenth-century broadsides, but it was already in print well before that time. A chapbook in the British Library, for example, entitled Philander’s Garland (c.1780), includes a song called ‘A Comical Dialogue Between an Honest Sailor and his Deluding Landlady; Shewing the Diverting Compliments between him and her Daughter’. Another, Four Excellent New Songs (National Library of Scotland), printed in Falkirk by Patrick Mair and dating from the 1760s, includes the song as ‘Green Bed’s Empty’. It is interesting to note that although patently the same song, these two eighteenth-century texts differ markedly and were clearly not simply copied one from the other or from a common printed source. This might be taken as evidence that the song was already circulating orally before this time. In the Philander’s Garland version Jack does not mince his words at the end: ‘O the pox may light on such a parcel of whores.’
John Masters’s tune is a little reminiscent of ‘Three Maidens to Milking Did Go’ (No. 87). The dotted minim in bar 8 has been changed to a dotted crotchet to fit the bar.
11 The Greenland Whale Fishery
Sung by Richard Gregory, Two Bridges, Devon (January 1890); collected by Sabine Baring Gould (Baring-Gould MSS, SBG/1/2/196).
Roud 347, Laws K21; 21 entries.
This song was popular across England, and also collected often in Scotland and North America. Of several songs about whaling, this was easily the most widely known, and the one which lasted in traditional singers’ repertoires. It was also widely printed on broadsides, with the earliest surviving examples dating from about 1820. We have evidence that it appealed to at least two real whalers, as copies are found in the journals of the ships Bengal from Salem, in 1833, and Euphrasia from New Bedford, in 1849 (Gale Huntington, Songs the Whalemen Sang (1964), pp. 9–13). By the time this song appeared, the Greenland whale fishery was already in decline and the ships were moving elsewhere.
Catching whales from small boats, as described in the song, was an arduous and dangerous business. An Authentick Narration of all the Occurrences in a Voyage to Greenland in the Year 1772 contains the following description:
The manner of killing a whale is as follows. As soon as a whale is perceived, the word is immediately given and every man hastens from the ship into the boat to which he properly belongs: for every ship has seven or eight boats, to each of which six men are appointed. As soon as the boats come sufficiently near the whale, the harpooner strikes him with his harpoon, or barb’d dart, and the fish, feeling himself wounded, shoots, with the swiftness of an arrow, down to the bottom of the sea. Great precaution is therefore necessary that the line, one end of which is fastened to the harpoon, runs freely out, for should it by any accident be stopped there will be a necessity of cutting it immediately to keep the boat from sinking … After the whale has continued some time near the bottom of the sea, which is here some hundred fathoms deep, he is forced to come up to the surface of the water for air … While he continues on the surface, a second harpoon is fixed in him, on which he again plunges into the deep, but cannot continue so long under water as the first time. On his coming up they pierce him with spears …
The ‘Greenland Whale Fishery’ melodies vary considerably in their contour but often show a marked resemblance to each other in their final two phrases. Here, the penultimate note of the music notation has been changed from a quaver to a minim. The melodic variation is indicated in the manuscript source by the words ‘or else’ and appears to apply from the end of bar 4 to bar 8; it is set out beneath these bars.
Sung by Captain Lewis, Minehead, Somerset (15 January 1906); collected by Cecil Sharp (Sharp MSS, FW 835–7/FT 779).
Roud 1575; 30 entries.
This song was collected a respectable number of times in England, but was rare in Scotland and apparently not collected at all in Ireland or North America, although it appeared on broadsides there. It was also very common on English broadsides, but only from perhaps the 1840s. The collected texts follow the broadsides quite closely, although there is some confusion in the story. When the coastguard asks the convict if he is of the Shamrock Green, this is often taken as meaning ‘Are you Irish?’, but it is clear from the rest of the song that the Shamrock Green is the name of the ship which has just been wrecked. In at least one collected version, the convict replies, ‘I am not of the shamrock.’ But some versions start with a verse about a grieving female, which confuses things further as ‘my shamrock green’ appears to be the convict’s nickname:
The constant girl was heard to cry
And drop’t the tear from her tender eye
Saying the cruel laws of our gracious Queen
They have transported my Shamrock green.
Even for a song written for the broadside trade, which it almost certainly was, the song is rather sentimental and does not ring true. It is not clear, for example, why the convict was still so heavily chained if he was on his way home, presumably under some form of parole or licence, apart from the stereotype that convicts have to be in irons. It is also not clear whether latter-day singers knew where the ‘Isle of France’ was, or even whether they cared. It is sometimes suggested that it refers to the Channel Islands, but this is simply guesswork. ‘Isle of France’ was an early name for Mauritius, which was taken from France by Britain after the fall of Napoleon, and this is presumably the original location for the song. At least we can rule out the other Isle of France, the French administrative region, which includes Paris and is inland, so not known for its shipwrecks.
The tune to which ‘The Isle of France’ is often sung, as here, is also associated with ‘Early, Early All in the Spring’ (No. 43).
Sung by Robert Hard, Thrushelton, Devon, and others; collected by Sabine Baring-Gould (Baring-Gould MSS, SBG/1/2/657).
Roud 124, Child 289; 28 entries.
Not one of the ‘big five’ Child ballads in terms of popularity, but still collected a respectable number of times in Britain and even more often in North America. Francis J. Child printed six versions, and Bertrand Bronson amassed forty-two tunes. The song goes under various titles, including ‘The Stormy Winds Do Blow’ and ‘Three Times Round Went Our Gallant Ship’, but the simple ‘The Mermaid’ is by far the most common, and highlights the key element of the plot, the significance of which modern readers or listeners might easily miss, but which our predecessors would have taken for granted.
Most seafaring cultures in the world seem to have some sort of lore about semi-human marine creatures, and these take many different forms, including, in Britain, the belief in the existence of seal-folk and mermaids. In Britain, mermaids were accepted as real by many until quite recently, and the idea that the sight of them presages disaster to sailors was also widespread. As Richard of Gloucester says, in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 3 (III.2), ‘I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall.’ But there is another possible superstition lurking in our text and many other versions: that it is unlucky to start any new project, especially a journey, on a Friday. This was ultimately based on Christian teaching, as Friday was a general day of penance and abstinence in commemoration of it being the day of the Crucifixion. The idea of unlucky Friday is well documented in England at least since Chaucer’s time, although the notion that Friday 13th is particularly bad only dates from late Victorian times.
Although ‘The Mermaid’ is often assumed to be ancient, largely because of its subject matter, Child found no earlier version than the one called ‘The Seamen’s Distress’ in a chapbook, The Glasgow Lasses Garland, in the British Library, which is tentatively dated to about 1765 but could be at least two decades later. This is definitely our song, but takes fourteen verses to tell the story rather than the usual five or six of the collected versions. But this eighteenth-century song is in turn clearly based on a much earlier twenty-two-verse black-letter broadside ‘The Praise of Saylors here set forth’, which has the explanatory subtitle, ‘With the hard fortunes which do befall them on the seas, when landsmen sleep in their beds’, dating from about the 1670s and found in the Douce and Rawlinson collections (both available on the Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads website). This has the mermaid and the shipwreck, but they are part of a much longer account of the dangers and discomforts of a seafaring life.
The only evidence as to the song’s melody on the black-letter broadsides is the instruction ‘To a pleasant new tune’. This makes William Chappell’s printing of ‘The Stormy Winds Do Blow’, ‘a fragment of an old sea song, contributed by Mr Charles Sloman in 1840, and the tune noted down from his singing’, the earliest tune record for this ballad (Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, II (1962), p. 742). Robert Hard’s tune is very similar to this in terms of its pitches, rhythm and form. This last consists of a five-line stanza, the final line of which forms a refrain and is set to an embellished repeat of the previous musical phrase and linked to it by means of a ‘bridge’ of four notes (bar 8). This is followed by a burden, or chorus, set to the same music as the verse but with some notable alterations (see Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, IV (1972), p. 370). In common with most of the tunes for this song, which are of the same basic type, Hard’s melody is major in tonality and authentic in range, with the first-phrase cadence on the first degree and a mid-stanza cadence on the fifth.
The first note of the source transcription has here been raised by a semitone, a dot added to the first minim of bar 12 and the final note of bar 14 changed from a quaver to a crotchet to fit the bar.
‘Nancy’, sung by James Parsons, Lewdown, Devon (1888?); collected by Sabine Baring-Gould (Baring-Gould MSS, SBG/3/1/253 & SBG/1/246).
Baring-Gould also collected a very similar version from William Friend, Lydford, Devon (January 1889) (SBG/1/1/245 & SBG/3/1/252). Neither text was quite complete, and verses 2 and 6 in the above are from Friend’s version.
Roud 407; 30 entries.
Widely known in England, and with a number of versions reported from Canada, this song does not seem to have been popular elsewhere in Britain or in the USA. Several of the Edwardian collectors commented how common it was in their time, including H. E. D. Hammond in Dorset and Cecil Sharp in Somerset, and it was still being regularly collected in East Anglia in the post-war period. The wording varies little from version to version, although Nancy often comes from London, Plymouth, Weymouth, and so on, and the title is sometimes ‘The Sea Storm’.
The song was printed on many nineteenth-century broadsides, but the earliest known examples are in undated eighteenth-century chapbooks, such as Lord Anson’s Garland and The Lover’s Jubilee, which were probably printed between 1760 and 1780.
The tune given here is from James Parsons, that of William Friend being a quite different melody. Parson’s tune, as notated in the manuscript, is pretty clearly in C major, the F sharp in the key signature probably being a mistake (it has been transposed into G major here so the sharp is correct).
‘A Broadside’, sung by Bob Scarce, Blaxhall, Suffolk (c.1971); recorded by Keith Summers; issued on A Story to Tell, Musical Traditions MTCD339-0 (2007), also on the British Library Sound Archive’s Traditional Music in England website.
Roud 492, Laws N4; 26 entries.
A rousing sea song full of blood and valour, which was popular with singers across the country. It goes by many titles, such as ‘As We Were a-Sailing’, ‘Down by the Spanish Shore’ and ‘A Broadside’. Likewise the ship’s name is not fixed, including Rainbow, Resolution, Lion, Britannia and, in the older versions, the Union.
It is probably the concentration by successive singers on the naval action at the core of the song which has contributed to a slight problem in the storyline – where on earth does the damsel come from in verse 3? The answer is simple. Earlier versions start with a verse that describes a girl dressing as a sailor to follow her lover to sea; as in this example from another Suffolk singer, Bob Hart from Snape:
Oh a story, a story I’m just about to tell
It’s a fair damsel who in London she did dwell
And before I conclude, well you will quickly hear
How she ventured her life for the one she loved so dear.
They usually also have verses at the end explaining how she brought the ship back to port and was given a pension for her valour. These earlier versions were called ‘The Female Captain’ or ‘The Bold Damosel’, which indicates that this was probably the central motif of the song.
No one has yet been able to date the song, but it is certainly at least eighteenth century and some authorities suggest a seventeenth-century origin, although they are probably confusing it with other Rainbow songs.
There is no one widespread tune for ‘The Rainbow’. Several, including this one, are sung to a tune whose first and last phrases strongly echo those of ‘The Female Cabin Boy’ (No. 6), another song in which a girl dresses up as a sailor. Bob Scarce sings the rhythm very freely, so the transcribed rhythm is an approximation only. Variation (e) is sung in two different places and the change to the minor third (F natural) seems deliberate.
Sung by William Bartle, Bedfordshire (1962); recorded by Fred Hamer; published in Hamer’s Garners Gay (1967), p. 12.
Roud 518; 23 entries.
The free-and-easy nature of sailors is proverbial and well represented in folk song; ‘Rambling Sailor’ was found widely in England, fairly regularly in Scotland, but not so often elsewhere. Although most of the early collectors noted it, often in several versions, they chose not to publish unedited texts in full because they found some of it objectionable. Their manuscripts, and the broadside texts, show that the verse they found difficult was on the lines of the following (collected by H. E. D. Hammond from F. Stockley in Wareham, Dorset, in 1906):
Oh I got up early in the morning
I left my love a-sleeping
I left her there for an hour or two
While I did go court some other
But if she stays there till I return
She may stay there till the doom
For I travel like a rambling sailor.
There was also a very similar ‘Rambling Soldier’ song, popular on broadsides but not so often collected from singers. Sabine Baring-Gould, Cecil Sharp and others assumed that ‘Rambling Soldier’ came first, but this does not seem be correct. Early broadsides of ‘Rambling Soldier’ were designed to be sung to the tune of ‘Rambling Sailor’, and there is evidence that it was written by broadside writer John Morgan, in the 1820s or 1830s, whereas the earliest ‘Rambling Sailor’ texts date from before 1800. There were also other songs on the same model – ‘Rambling Female Sailor’, ‘Rambling Comber’, ‘Rambling Miner’, and so on.
Many broadside copies of ‘Rambling Sailor’ have survived, and the traditional versions are usually very close to the printed texts.
Sharp notes that the song’s tune is ‘always in the hornpipe measure and usually in the mixolydian mode’ (Folk Songs from Somerset, IV (1908), p. 73), and William Bartle’s is no exception.
‘Jack Tar’, sung by Emily Bishop, Bromsberrow Heath, Gloucestershire (13 October 1952); recorded by Peter Kennedy.
Roud 531, Laws K38; 42 entries.
‘The Saucy Sailor Boy’ was collected widely in England, though more rarely elsewhere, but few of the collectors took much notice of it. William Alexander Barrett noted in his English Folk-Songs (1891), p. 55, ‘The song is a great favourite with factory girls in the East of London’, and J. Horsfall Turner wrote in The Yorkshire Anthology that it was ‘formerly much sung at Whitby and Hull and in other parts of Yorkshire’.
The song was printed by many of the mid nineteenth-century broadside houses, with the earliest extant sheet by John Pitts of London, which could be from the first decades of the century. But Barrett noted that it was in print ‘as far back as 1781’, so he must have seen some earlier manifestation. This is quite possible, as the song has the feel of an eighteenth-century duet stage song.
Sailors in the days of sail really did ‘smell so strong of tar’, and the nickname ‘Jack Tar’ was an accurate one. Not only was tar used liberally on the wood, metal, cloth and ropes of the ship in an attempt to preserve them and keep them waterproof, but the men also used it on their clothes and hats to keep out the weather.
The same nineteenth-century printers also issued a song called ‘The Saucy Plough Boy’, which includes some of the lines of ‘The Saucy Sailor Boy’, and although the two songs are otherwise very different it is likely that the latter was written as a parody of the former.
The tunes found with this song are mostly very similar and a subgroup of these also have the distinctive dotted rhythm patterns like those sung by Emily Bishop. Frank Kidson found that ‘in all copies of the air there appears to be too much of the “Swiss” waltz character to suggest English folk-melody’ and Lucy Broadwood was of the opinion that it was ‘a German-Swiss tune imported at the beginning of the last century together with … similar foreign airs beloved by our guitar-playing great aunts’. Cecil Sharp, on the other hand, suggested that the tune was a variant of ‘Chevy Chase’ and ‘The Two Children in the Wood’ (JFSS, 4 (1913), 343–44).
18 The Silk Merchant’s Daughter
‘New York Street’, sung by J. Masters, Devon (30 May 1891); collected by Sabine Baring-Gould (Baring-Gould MSS, SBG/1/2/465).
Roud 552, Laws N10; 18 entries.
Collected fairly often in England and quite frequently in North America, but not much elsewhere, the song was common on broadsides from at least the 1820s onwards.
The theme of cannibalism at sea (or at least the threat of it) as a dramatic device is not uncommon in folk songs, and some broadsides claimed to report actual occurrences of the practice. On this topic, see Paul Cowdell’s article ‘Cannibal Ballads’ in FMJ (2010). But what has survived in the collected versions is not the whole original story. These start some way in, leaving the listener to catch up as the song progresses. The original starts with the familiar tale of an old miser taking against his daughter’s boyfriend and getting him ‘pressed to sea’. She then dresses as a sailor and follows him to America. After some adventures of her own, she finally finds herself shipping on board the same ship as her still unaware lover.
The nineteenth-century broadsides, from which all the collected texts seem to derive, present the shortened version, either starting with an explanatory verse, ‘There was a silk merchant’s daughter’ or going straight in with ‘As I was walking down New York street’, which is why many versions were simply called ‘New York Street’. The longer version was printed in garlands in the late eighteenth century, usually under the title of ‘The Silk Mercer’s Daughter’.
J. Masters’s tune, in its triple time and distinctive mid-point cadence on the lower fifth, is typical of those associated with this song. His tune is noted twice in the Baring-Gould manuscripts, both times without the F sharp in the key signature. The melodic movement in bars 15 and 23 definitely suggest that F sharp is correct, however, and a major tune is the norm in other collected versions, so it has been added here.
Sung by Tommy Morrissey, Padstow, Cornwall (c.1992); recorded by John Howson; issued on Romany Roots, Veteran VT153CD (2006).
Roud 687; 30 entries.
A widely collected song, usually set to a rousing tune, which was sung equally by seafarers (including Tommy Morrissey, a retired fisherman) and land dwellers. At sea, according to Stan Hugill in his Shanties from the Seven Seas (1961), who learnt it from his father, it could also be used as a shanty: ‘It was a homeward-bound song, sung at the capstan’ (pp. 384–7). The catalogue of place names along the English Channel is interesting, and varies little from version to version. Sabine Baring-Gould, on the authority of his sea-going cousin Alexander Baring, comments that they are the sequence of lights sighted, not land (English Minstrelsie, III (1895), p. iii).
Many people in the nineteenth century knew the song because it appeared in the novel Poor Jack, published in 1840 and written by Captain Frederick Marryat (1798–1848), who first went to sea in September 1806. He clearly thought of it as an old song:
‘Give us Spanish Ladies, Dick?’ said my father. As this song was very popular at that time among the seamen, and is now almost forgotten, I shall, by inserting it here, for a short time rescue it from oblivion.
Marryatt gives a text which is remarkably similar to Tommy Morrissey’s, recorded over 150 years later. The song also appeared on broadsides, some of which were probably printed in the 1820s or 1830s, but it may have been in circulation sometime before that. James Anthony Gardner, who entered the navy in 1782, quoted a verse in his Recollections (Naval Record Society, 1894) under the heading of ‘1794’, and this is sometimes quoted as evidence of its existence at that date. But he compiled his memoirs in the 1830s and was clearly simply quoting an ‘old song’ which seemed appropriate to the subject in hand.
The ‘Spanish Ladies’ tune is found in both major (as here) and minor tonalities. Cecil Sharp regarded the former as a ‘modernized’ and ‘far less beautiful’ form of the tune (Folk Songs from Somerset, V (1909), p. 90).
‘The Summer Morning’, sung by ‘Mr Alderson and men’, Redmire, Wensleydale, Yorkshire; collected by Mary and Nigel Hudleston; published on their Yorkshire Folk Singers (EP), and in the Hudlestons’ Songs of the Ridings (2001), p. 183.
Roud 191; 45 entries.
Several nineteenth-century editors comment on how popular this song was across the country, particularly in the northern parts. Frank Kidson noted it from the singing of his mother, who heard it sung in Leeds around 1820. The version transcribed here was sung by three or four men, and the song seems to have been a popular one for unison singing, but it appears clear it was originally a duet song, for a male and female taking alternate verses but coming together on the chorus, and was presumably first written for the musical stage in the latter part of the eighteenth century.
The song was widely printed on broadsides, although the earliest that have survived date from only the 1790s. The colour of the cockade varies – white, blue or green – and although there is unlikely to be any real significance in that in traditional versions, it has been suggested that provincial broadside printers certainly tried to match the colour with particular local regiments.
A number of different tunes have been associated with this song, including ‘The Banks of the Sweet Dundee’ (No. 58). Mr Alderson’s tune is the same as that collected by Kidson from his mother and elsewhere in Yorkshire. H. E. D. Hammond, Sabine Baring-Gould and Cecil Sharp also collected versions of this tune in the south-western counties of England. Mr Alderson and his singing companions perform this version in two parts, both of which have been transcribed here. Interestingly, the Copper family, who sing many of their songs in harmony, publish this one as a solo line, although their tune is much the same as that of Mr Alderson.
II
Down in Cupid’s Garden …
Happy Relationships
Sung by William Titchener, Stanton-in-the-Vale, Oxfordshire (c.1932); collected by James Madison Carpenter (Carpenter MSS, pp. 00677–8). We have added one verse from a similar version collected by Carpenter from William Butler of Bampton, Oxfordshire (Carpenter MSS, p. 00646; Cylinder 034 (sr252), Disc Side 067 (sr 034a)).
Roud 291, Laws O24; 58 entries.
This song was collected many times across the country, and its popularity was probably helped by its majestic tune and slightly mysterious words. It was also a favourite with broadside printers, and the earliest extant sheets date from about the 1820s. The words vary surprisingly little from version to version.
The early folk-song collectors sometimes took a leaf out of their folklorist cousins’ book by indulging in flights of fancy about the age and origin of certain songs, and ‘Bold Fisherman’ has suffered from this unfortunate tendency. Lucy Broadwood decided that the ‘three chains of gold’, the river setting and the ‘fisherman’ motif were indicative of a ‘medieval allegorical origin’ for the song, which incorporated features from Gnostic and early Christian symbolism (see JFSS, 5 (1915)). There is no evidence for this, and it seems to be wishful thinking, but the idea is often quoted by people commenting on the song. In fact, both the traditional and broadside versions make it pretty clear that it is a straight seduction narrative, of a maid by a higher-class man, but with a happy ending to prove his intentions were honourable and to make it romantic rather than sordid.
The difference between these two opposing perspectives is highlighted within the text itself. It is interesting to note that the traditional versions almost always include, in verse 4, the line ‘He pulled off his morning gown and gently laid it down’, but in the extant broadsides, which are all dated earlier, the same line is rendered, ‘He pulled off her morning gown and gently laid her down’.
There is widespread consistency among the tunes to which this song has been sung. This is of note because it is one of a small class of tunes in the English folksong repertoire sung with five beats to the bar, with an emphasis on the first and third beats. Five time is not commonly found in popular or art music, which makes its persistence in connection with this tune all the more intriguing.
‘Kilpit the Ploughing Boy’, sung by Mr W. Buckland, Lippenham, Buckinghamshire (18 September 1943); collected by Francis Collinson (Collinson MSS, COL/1/36).
Roud 986, Laws O7; 19 entries.
This song was collected a fair number of times in England, and occasionally in North America, but apparently not elsewhere. In Mr Buckland’s version the ploughboy has acquired a rather prosaic name, but in virtually all the other renderings he is known as ‘Cupid the Pretty Ploughboy’. Love across the class barrier is a regular theme in folk song, but does not always run so smoothly and end so happily as in this one. Indeed, the absence of any opposition or complication makes the storyline a little flat. But it was popular enough with singers, and appeared regularly on nineteenth-century broadsides. The song’s origin, however, seems to lie in the third quarter of the eighteenth century, when it was included in chapbook garlands and songbooks, including the Frisky Songster (c.1785), which presented songs sung in the pleasure gardens of Vauxhall, Ranelagh, and so on. It was also one of the songs that American prisoner-of-war Timothy Connor, incarcerated in Forton Prison, Gosport, copied into his songbook in 1778 (see George G. Carey, A Sailor’s Songbag (1976)).
Sung by Mrs Nation, Bathpool, Somerset (c.1916); collected by Phyllis M. Marshall (Blunt MSS, JHB/10/1).
Roud 297; 20 entries.
Cuper’s Gardens was a formal pleasure garden opened by Abraham Boydell Cuper about 1691, and until the 1750s was a well-known entertainment venue for Londoners, situated on the south side of the river, just east of the present Waterloo Bridge. Pleasure gardens like this offered eating, drinking, singing, dancing and flirting in tastefully arranged ‘rural’ walks and bowers, and Cuper’s was particularly famous for its firework displays. At different times in its career it was the resort of the moneyed classes and of the general public, but there were always pickpockets and prostitutes around, and it constantly struggled against a bad reputation with the authorities. This may have been one of its attractions. It was probably inevitable that the gardens acquired the nickname ‘Cupid’s’, and the phrase may have already existed. It is the name of a dance in Playford’s English Dancing Master published in 1686.
We have several indications that ‘Cupid’s Garden’ was an extremely popular song in the mid nineteenth century. William Chappell, for example, in his monumental Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859), wrote, ‘This is one of the most generally known of traditional songs’ (p. 727), and Sabine Baring-Gould noted in his manuscript notebook, about 1890, that it was ‘Known to almost every old singer’.
The song bears all the hallmarks of an eighteenth-century pastoral, probably originating on stage or in one of the pleasure gardens, although we cannot be sure that it existed early enough to be sung at Cuper’s itself. The earliest versions which have come to light are in printed chapbook garlands of the 1770s and 1780s, where it was usually entitled ‘Lady Who Fell in Love with a ’Prentice Boy’. It was also very popular on broadsides from about 1800, the earlier ones being often called ‘Lover’s Meeting’.
Mrs Nation’s tune exemplifies the widespread tune for the song which in turn is much the same as it appears in Chappell.
‘The Game of All Fours’, sung by Harry Westaway, Belstone, Devon (3 August 1950); recorded by Peter Kennedy. A few words in the first line of verse 4 are difficult to hear on the recording and may not be quite correct.
Roud 232; 32 entries.
A song found quite commonly in England, although nearly always in the southern half of the country, but almost never anywhere else.
All Fours was a widely popular card game in the past, and is still played in some quarters. It is one of the ancestors of whist, in that it is based on winning tricks by following suits, or by the use of trumps, and was already around in 1674 when its rules were first published. The descriptions of the game in collected versions of the song often seem a bit garbled, but this is partly because we no longer understand the rules. One recurrent phrase, for example, ‘high-low-Jack’, was an alternative name for the game.
The song is always regarded as mildly bawdy, with the game of cards as yet another euphemistic description of sex, which is certainly how many singers understood it. Nevertheless, a slightly different, and more subtle, interpretation is possible: the game of cards is part of the attempted seduction, with the girl’s virtue as the stake; because the girl wins, she escapes unscathed, which gives the ‘call again tomorrow’ parting shot a different connotation. But this is probably just wishful thinking
‘The Game of All Fours’, or simply ‘The Cards’ was reasonably common on nineteenth-century broadsides, with a text which is almost exactly the same from printer to printer and very similar to most collected versions. The song is a little older than that, however, as is shown by a chapbook in the British Library entitled The Chester All-Fours Garland, published around 1750, probably in Newcastle.
Harry Westaway’s melody is quite different from that usually found with this song, which is a triple-time tune.
Sung by Mr F. Scarlett Potter, Halford, Shipston-on-Stour, Warwickshire; published in Lucy Broadwood, English County Songs (1893), pp. 72–3.
Roud 418; 18 entries.
An inconsequential enough little piece, but immensely popular in the nineteenth century. Song collector James Henry Dixon commented in Ancient Poems (1846), ‘This is one of the most pleasing of our rural ditties. The air is very beautiful. The editor lately heard it sung in Malhamdale, Yorkshire, by Willy Bolton, an old Dales’-minstrel, who accompanied himself on the union-pipes’ (p. 226).
According to Sabine Baring-Gould in English Minstrelsie (1895), it was written by W. Upton and W. T. Parke and published in 1809, and it was popular enough to engender answer songs and sequels.
Sung by Sally Withington, Edgmond, Shropshire (c.1883); collected by Charlotte Burne; published in Burne’s Shropshire Folk-Lore (1883), pp. 552, 652. The lines in brackets were added by Burne from James Henry Dixon’s Ancient Poems (1846). Sally learnt this song as a girl in farm service (1820–30), from the singing of her young mistress.
Roud 141, Laws N20; 49 entries.
A great favourite in England and Scotland, and also collected dozens of times in North America. This is just the sort of romantic narrative in which broadsides excelled, and the song was printed by nearly every known broadside printer of the nineteenth century. But it is older than that. We know, for example, that it was already around in 1777–9, because that was when American prisoner-of-war Timothy Connor, incarcerated in Forton Prison, Portsmouth, copied the text into his songbook (see George G. Carey, A Sailor’s Songbag (1976), pp. 107–8). He called it ‘A New Song’, and his words are remarkably similar to Sally Withington’s; it was popular enough to warrant at least one ‘answer song’.
According to James Henry Dixon in Ancient Poems (1846), there was a tradition that the song was based on an incident which occurred in the reign of Elizabeth I, but that is almost certainly simply a legend.
27 Green Mossy Banks of the Lea
Sung by Mr Lockly (about eighty years old), sexton at High Ercall, Shropshire (March 1908); collected by George Butterworth (Butterworth MSS, GB/4/45).
Roud 987, Laws O15; 46 entries.
This song was widely collected in England, where Lucy Broadwood commented, ‘the words are astonishingly popular amongst country singers’ (JFSS, 2 (1906), 151), and was also well known on the other side of Atlantic. The story the song tells is most notable because the parents do not object and the course of true love runs uncharacteristically smooth.
The song was also widely printed on broadsides, at least from the 1820s onwards, in a text which is very similar to that collected from Mr Lockly (or Lockley – Butterworth used both spellings). Some writers have assumed an Irish origin, partly on the strength of the tune, but also because some broadsides give the fourth line as ‘When I left Ireland my home’, and the fifth line in the last verse as ‘So now the poor Irish stranger’. American songster printers around the turn of the twentieth century also included the song in their compilations of ‘Irish’ songs. But the song was rarely collected in Ireland, in contrast to England, and the vast majority of the earlier broadsides place the stranger’s home in Philadelphia; on present evidence it is most likely to be an English song with the American inserted into the story to give him a foreign, but not too foreign, backstory.
‘Blackbirds and Thrushes’, sung by Dicky Lashbrook, Kelly, Devon (27 May 1952); recorded by Peter Kennedy (BBC 17796).
Roud 329; 32 entries.
Regularly collected in England and Ireland, and quite widespread in North America, this song is often tangled up with ‘Sally, My Dear’ or ‘Knife in the Window’, which are usually sung to the same tune. It was already widespread when the Edwardian collectors were out in the field, but no broadside or chapbook printings have come to light, and without this evidence it is difficult to get to grips with the song’s history. But we do know that it already existed in 1837, as it was included in Samuel Lover’s novel Rory O’More, published in that year. Lover was an accomplished songwriter, so it is possible he wrote it from scratch, but a tune in George Petrie’s Complete Collection of Irish Music (Part 2, no. 821), probably collected some years before Lover’s book, is entitled ‘If All the Young Maidens were Blackbirds and Trushes [sic]’, which strengthens the idea that Lover was presenting an already existing song.
Bertrand Bronson included this song in his monumental The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, under the heading of ‘The Twa Magicians’ (Child 44, Roud 1350) and several other editors have followed suit. ‘Twa Magicians’ is a relatively rare ballad in Britain, in which a female turns herself successively into a duck, a hare, an eel, and so on, to escape from a male pursuer, but he matches her every move and gets her in the end. To confuse the magical transformations in this ballad with the similes of our song, and to assume that one necessarily derives from the other, requires a giant leap of faith, backed by nothing more than the coincidence of hares, fish, and so on. Nevertheless, it is useful to have eleven tunes brought together in one volume.
In his Erotic Muse (1992), Edward Cray found more explicit versions of the song alive and well on college campuses in the USA (pp. 301–8), and it also survives in the British bawdy sing-song fraternity.
Although Bronson does not undertake an exhaustive study of the ‘Hares on the Mountain’ tunes, he comments that ‘all the variants that I have seen are in triple time and seem at least distantly related’ (The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, I (1959), p. 350). Despite differences in their range, contour and tonality, there are certain resemblances among the tunes in terms of their distinctive rhythm, including the feminine endings at each line end, their phrase structure (AABC), the A-phrase cadence on the fifth degree of the scale and sometimes the melodic shape of the nonsense refrain. Petrie’s tune stands out as somewhat different in that it is minor in tonality and its second half is reminiscent of ‘Green Bushes’ (see Cecil Sharp’s Folk Songs from Somerset, II (1905), pp. 16–17), which, Sharp comments, ‘in varying forms and set to different words, is constantly found in English folk-song’ (p. 66).
Dicky Lashbrook’s major plagal-range tune is closely paralleled by William Bailey’s ‘Hares on the Mountains’ melody and also William Davis’s tune for ‘Sally, My Dear’ (Bronson 3 and 11). The first half of these tunes is, in turn, very similar in contour and, to some extent, in rhythm, to ‘London’s Burning’, a tune that dates back to at least 1580 (Lant MS, King’s College Library, University of Cambridge, also known as KC1). The tune also bears a close resemblance to one of those used for ‘Blackberry Fold’ (No. 131).
Sung by William ‘Jumbo’ Brightwell, Leiston, Suffolk (1975); recorded by Keith Summers; issued on A Story to Tell, Musical Traditions MTCD339-40 (2007). Jumbo’s father, ‘Velvet’ Brightwell, can also be heard singing this song on the CD Good Order! (Veteran VT140CD), recorded 1938/9.
Roud 2326; 27 entries.
Collected regularly across the country, and printed on numerous nineteenth-century broadsides, back to at least the 1820s, this song is often claimed to have been a favourite with sailors. In a candid moment, leading folk-song expert Frank Kidson wrote in Traditional Tunes (1891), ‘Many of the old sailor songs are long dreary ballads, having for their theme some naval engagement of the last century, or possibly some dismal account of a shipwreck. Others, again, like the “Indian Lass”, narrate in simple language the joys of a sailor’s life ashore’ (p. 110). His appreciation of the song did not prevent him from leaving out the verse where they ‘tossed and tumbled’, believing it to be too direct for his published book.
Folk songs are not always clear on the exact origin of ‘foreigners’ in their texts, and Jumbo’s song is ambiguous in this respect, but a verse which occurs in many other versions, right back to the earliest broadside, indicates that the lass was a Native American Indian:
This lovely young Indian on the place where she stood
I viewed her sweet features and found they were good
She was neat, tall and handsome, her age was sixteen
She was born and brought up in a place near Orleans.
‘The Indian Lass’ was also collected occasionally in North America, but on far fewer occasions than a related song, ‘The Little Mohee’ (Roud 275, Laws H8), which was very widely known there. G. Malcolm Laws sums up the latter in his Native American Balladry (1964), p. 233:
The Indian girl invites the stranger to live in her cottage in the coconut grove. He replies that he must return to his true love in his own country. They part, and he last sees her waving to him from the shore as his ship sails. The girl at home proves untrue, and the sailor longs to return to the lass of Mohea.
It is usually assumed, probably correctly, that this is a more morally acceptable rewrite of our ‘Indian Lass’, although the occasional American scholar argues that it is the other way round.
30 Just as the Tide was a-Flowing
Sung by Harry Cox, Catfield, Norfolk (18 December 1945); recorded by E. J. Moeran (BBC 17231); issued on We’ve Received Orders to Sail, Topic TSCD662 (1998).
Roud 1105; 18 entries.
This song was collected a reasonable number of times in England, and a few times in Canada, but not, apparently, elsewhere in Britain and Ireland or in the USA. It was widely available on broadsides, from about 1830 onwards.
Roy Palmer has commented that it is not the innocent pastoral song which it seems to be. After three verses of May mornings, birds singing and lambs skipping, the couple end up rolling in the grass and the girl is sufficiently impressed to give him money to spend on drink and other women. It is no wonder that it was, as Frank Kidson noted in Traditional Tunes (1891), an ‘old sailors’ favourite’ (p. 108).
Harry Cox sings a fine flowing version of the tune usually found with this song, which Sharp characterized as ‘a smooth sentimental melody’. Malcom Douglas and Steve Gardham, the editors of Frank Purslow’s Marrow Bones (2007), have located it in Aird’s Selection of Scots, English, Irish and Foreign Airs (1782) and several early nineteenth-century Irish collections. Cecil Sharp also highlights its transformation as ‘The Blue-Eyed Stranger’, a dance tune (Folk Songs from Somerset, II (1905), p. 68).
31 The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter
‘The Shepherd’s Daughter’, sung by Louise Holmes, Dinedor, Herefordshire (14 October 1952); recorded by Peter Kennedy (BBC 18691).
Roud 67, Child 110; 23 entries.
This song was fairly widely collected in England but more common in Scotland, and hardly noted at all in Ireland or North America; Francis J. Child prints twelve versions (all Scottish except one), and Bertrand Bronson only twenty-two tunes.
As it stands here, the song is a straightforward tale of a resourceful female who refuses to go away quietly after a seduction or rape, and this is the core motif across all the versions, but there are some important differences in detail and emphasis. Sometimes it turns out that she is really a high-born lady and the knight is pleased with his bargain, while in others, like Louise Holmes’s, the last verses are rueful and bode ill for the marriage. Another recurrent detail compounds the knight’s ungallant behaviour by having him try to trick her by giving a false name, or one in Latin. Nearly all versions, however, have the delightful detail of the King answering his own front door.
The earliest known version is on a black-letter broadside in the Roxburghe collection, entitled ‘The Beautiful Shepherdesse of Arcadia’, dating from the 1650s, and under this name it was regularly printed in that century and the next. But, oddly enough, few nineteenth-century printings have yet been discovered.
In Child’s accompanying commentary, he draws attention to similarities with Continental ballads which feature a high-born man being forced to marry a socially inferior, or in some cases hideous, bride to atone for his own misdeeds.
Various tunes are sung with this song, most of which feature a refrain of some kind (Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, II (1962), p. 535). Louise Holmes’s tune has no refrain, however, being the tune often thought of as associated with ‘The Banks of the Sweet Dundee’ (No. 58). This catchy tune, with the form ABBA, flattened seventh and lack of the second degree, is frequently found with come-all-ye ballads (compare ‘Captain Ward and the Rainbow’, No. 3). In his Folk Songs of the Catskills (1982), Norman Cazden suspects it is Irish in origin (p. 193).
Sung by Joseph Taylor of Saxby-All-Saints, Lincolnshire, on 78rpm record (Gramophone Co. matrix 8752e) (9 July 1908); recording organized by Percy Grainger; reissued on Come Let Us Buy the Licence, Topic TSCD651 (1998).
Roud 229, Laws O4; 21 entries.
Percy Grainger noted at least five different versions of this song, commenting that it was ‘very generally sung in Lincolnshire’, and many other collectors of his generation also came across it. It could be argued that this relatively inconsequential romantic song was probably as popular for its lively danceable tune as for its words, but Grainger’s fellow folk-song experts were distinctly cool about the tune: ‘The tune has been noted elsewhere, and to other words; I doubt it’s being “country-made” or of any great age’; ‘I have noted down this song once in Devonshire and twice in Somerset, and have always felt doubtful about its folk-origin’; and ‘it does not have the appearance of a genuine folk-air’, wrote Lucy Broadwood, Cecil Sharp and Anne Gilchrist, respectively, in JFSS, 3 (1908), 221.
The relationship between Gipsies and non-Gipsies in England has not always been an easy one, and has often been founded more on stereotype than on fact. The theme of Gipsy women being adept at telling fortunes and other arcane arts has long been a social cliché on which both sides have traded, and the motif is taken for granted here. But there is a little more to the song than meets the eye. Nearly all the nineteenth-century broadside printers issued versions, and the later ones are textually very close to the traditional ones like Joseph Taylor’s, above. But those printed in the 1820s and 1830s, such as the ones issued by James Catnach and John Pitts, give a different slant, by the insertion of two verses:
He took me to a house, it was a palace I’m sure
Where ladies were waiting to open the door
On a bed of soft feathers where I pleas’d him so well
In less than nine months after, his fortune I could tell.
My father he has got the babe, and he likes it so well
Here is twenty pounds a year for your fortune come tell
There was ladies of honour and every degree
But none to equal my pretty Betsy.
This appears to be trading on another stereotype, that Gipsy women have loose morals. Incidentally, these earlier broadsides explain that, in line 2 of the first verse, the girl’s mother teaches her some ‘cant’ words, which makes more literal sense than ‘camping’.
A new transcription of Grainger’s cylinder recording is presented here, as Grainger’s own notation is very complex and detailed. The tune is also associated with ‘The Female Cabin Boy’ (No. 6).
Sung by Mrs D. Gawthorpe, Padgate, Lancashire (22 December 1968); recorded by Fred Hamer; published in Hamer’s Green Groves (1973), pp. 68–9.
Roud 40, Child 53; 89 entries.
A very large number of versions of this Child ballad have been collected in England and Scotland and quite a few in Ireland, but it was even more popular in North America, where hundreds have been noted. Francis J. Child printed 14 versions, and Bertrand Bronson 112, under the standard Scottish title ‘Young Beichan’.
Mrs Gawthorpe’s is a good long version, of which the collector, Fred Hamer, noted, ‘Mrs Gawthorpe learnt this song when it was sung to her at the age of three by her sister who was 15 years older. As she is now 86, this would be prior to 1890.’ But some versions are even longer, as singers seem to enjoy dwelling on the details of a romantic story which, in effect, is quite straightforward.
One significant element that is missing here is an account of Lord Bateman’s trials and tribulations while in prison, which were heaped upon him primarily because he would not, as a faithful Christian, bend his knee to his heathen captors. This also makes the Turk’s daughter even more courageous because she is willing to adopt Bateman’s religion as well as to defy her father and travel halfway round the world. In some versions she does not even know that he owns half of Northumberland until she arrives there.
As Child points out, the story agrees in general outline with a well-known legend about Gilbert Becket, father of St Thomas, which was in circulation by at least 1300. This is not to argue that our song is that old, but it is likely that whoever wrote it already knew the Becket story and, probably quite consciously, adapted it for the broadside trade. In fact, we know little about its origin, as no early broadsides have survived and the first known versions are those noted by the late eighteenth-century Scottish ballad collectors. Pride of place goes to the version noted from the recitation of Mrs Anna Brown in 1783, but as she learnt most of her ballads in her youth we can speculate that it probably existed in the late 1750s. In contrast, numerous nineteenth-century printings have survived, as all the major broadside printers of the time issued versions.
Child notes that there are Norse, Spanish and Italian ballads with a similar story-line, and another, less well-known British song, often called ‘The Turkish Lady’ (Roud 8124, Laws O23) covers similar ground. Bronson notes that, despite the frequency with which this song appeared on broadsides, the tunes associated with it are remarkably similar to each other and have been so over a 200-year period (The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, I (1959), p. 409). He takes this as evidence that the song was continually popular in oral tradition even though some singers might ‘refresh’ their memory of the words using the broadsides. Interestingly, the earliest tunes are in duple time and the later ones in triple, with some of the latter in five time. Mrs Gawthorpe’s falls squarely into triple time, as transcribed.
Bronson subdivides the basic tune into groupings based on the degree of the scale on which the mid-point cadence falls. The two largest groups are the fifth and the second degree. Mrs Gawthorpe’s falls on the third degree, aligning it with just seven of Bronson’s 111 examples of the tune. Of these seven, Mrs Gawthorpe’s tune also parallels the five from Kentucky in its phrase A and C cadences on the lower fifth.
A significant feature of Mrs Gawthorpe’s tune is its third phrase, which repeats the music of the first phrase (giving it the form ABAC). This lends it a different feel from many of the other ‘Lord Bateman’ tunes, which have a varied form of phrase B at this point (ABB’A’ or ABB’C).
‘The Keys of Heaven’, sung by William Fairbanks, Retford, Nottingham (3 August 1906); collected by Percy Grainger (Grainger MSS, no. 254).
Grainger’s music notation gives the words as ‘five yards o’ bibbin’ in line 2.
Roud 573; 56 entries.
This was a well-known song in England, not so common in Scotland and Ireland, but very widely collected in North America. Several songs with a very similar format and storyline were formerly distinct, but have gradually become intertwined. The distinguishing feature is that they are dialogues, often sung as duets, between a potential lover and a female, in which he offers a range of gifts which she usually refuses, until the last, which she accepts. The gifts tend to escalate in value, verse by verse, often starting with a ‘paper of pins’ or a ‘fine beaver hat’, progressing through silk gowns and until we reach the keys to the man’s treasure chest.
But the principal difference, which sets the moral tone for the song, is whether she accepts the material gifts or waits for him to change tack and offer the key of his heart, therefore showing that it is love which matters most to her. In some versions it is the other way round: he starts with an offer of love, which she refuses, but he then offers material gifts, and he scornfully rejects her at the end when she tries to accept them.
These songs go by a variety of titles, including ‘A Paper of Pins’, ‘The Keys of Canterbury’ and ‘Madam, Will You Walk?’, and all show clear signs of originating on the stage, which is reflected in their later history. Several collectors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries noted that their informants recalled these songs being regularly performed as dialogues between two singers – sometimes in all seriousness, but in other cases as a comic turn with the performers dressing up for their parts. There was also sometimes a dance sequence between some of the verses.
Oddly enough, these songs do not seem to have been printed on broadsides, so we must rely on other sources for dating. They do appear in the nursery tradition, however, and Iona and Peter Opie provide an informative historical entry in their The Singing Game (1985). The earliest versions so far found in England appeared in James Orchard Halliwell’s The Nursery Rhymes of England (1844 and 1846 editions), but the Scottish tradition goes back further. A song called ‘The Deil’s Courtship’, collected in the late 1820s, contains the usual offers, which the girl finally accepts, only to discover that she has been bargaining with the Devil (Emily Lyle, Andrew Crawfurd’s Collection of Ballads and Songs, I (1975), pp. 104–5). It would not be too much of a surprise to find an eighteenth-century pleasure-garden or stage original for the English versions.
‘As I Walked Through the Meadows’, sung by Shepherd Haden, Bampton, Oxfordshire (11 September 1909); collected by Cecil Sharp (Sharp MSS, FW 2159–60/FT 2390).
Roud 594; 28 entries.
A rather inconsequential little piece of pastoral romance, ‘Queen of the May’ was quite common in the country tradition in England, but not collected elsewhere, and it was also widely available on broadsides in the nineteenth century. Shepherd Haden’s text follows the latter quite closely, although the printed versions usually start with verses explaining that the narrator is Johnny, a ploughboy ‘as fresh as a rose’.
Frank Purslow, in The Wanton Seed (1968), called it ‘an 18th century minor art-song’, and while the song certainly has these characteristics, it has not yet been found before the early nineteenth century. To confuse the issue, a different song, also called ‘Queen of the May’ (Roud 23454), appears in David Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs (1776) and in late eighteenth-century garlands. This song has a similar pastoral setting and romantic theme, but is a dialogue between Jockey and Jenny.
Regarding the second note of bar 11, Sharp notes in the manuscript that ‘this G was nearly always a clear [sharp], but sometimes a neutral G, never once [flat]’.
‘As Johnny Walked Out’, sung by James Parsons, Lewdown, Devon (November 1888); collected by Sabine Baring-Gould (Baring-Gould MSS, SBG/1/1/65). Baring-Gould noted that ‘he ran together verses 3 and 4 and so lost the usual burden that concludes each stanza’. We have added the last two lines of verse 3 from another version collected by him.
Roud 1437, Laws O9; 16 entries.
This eighteenth-century pastoral love song, with a similar storyline to ‘The Spotted Cow’ (No. 38), has been found fairly regularly in England and a few times in Scotland and Canada, but apparently not elsewhere.
In Songs of the West (1905), Baring-Gould identified a number of mid eighteenth-century publications which contained this song, including Six English Songs and Dialogues as they are Performed in the Public Gardens (c.1750), with music set by Mr Dunn, but it does not seem to have been printed on nineteenth-century broadsides.
In our more knowing age, it is sometimes difficult to understand the attraction of simple love songs such as this one, or to take them seriously. But when sung with dignity and conviction (providing the tune is good), they can be most effective. See, for example, the version of this song sung by George Spicer on Up in the North and Down in the South, Musical Traditions MTCD 311-12 (2001) or Topic 12T 235.
‘I’m Seventeen Come Sunday’, sung by Alfred Atkinson, Redbourne, Lincolnshire (31 July 1906); collected by Percy Grainger (Grainger MSS, no. 125).
Roud 277, Laws O17; 94 entries.
This was a very widely known song in England, and was also popular in Ireland and Scotland. It is one of those which earlier editors, such as Sabine Baring-Gould and Cecil Sharp, felt obliged to soften or rewrite for publication. It was also common on broadsides throughout the nineteenth century, with the earliest being printed about 1810 and called ‘Maid and the Soldier’. But the versions on the early broadsides have a very different ending, with the soldier leaving the girl in the lurch and going off without her, which changes the whole tenor of the song.
Sung by Charles Lolley, Yorkshire (1880s); collected by Frank Kidson; published in Kidson’s Traditional Tunes (1891), pp. 70–71.
Roud 956; 34 entries.
This popular pastoral song, collected widely in England but rarely elsewhere, bears all the hallmarks of a stage song of the eighteenth century. It was certainly in print on broadsides and in songsters around 1800, sometimes called ‘One Morning’, and it continued to appear in the broadside printers’ lists until at least the 1880s. The text varies remarkably little from version to version. The pastoral scenario of a girl looking for her animal charges, helped or hindered by a boy, is also found in the song ‘Searching for Lambs’ (No. 36), which dates from a similar period.
III
Let No Man Steal Your Thyme …
Unhappy Love
Sung by W. Buckland, Lippenham, Buckinghamshire (18 September 1943); collected by Francis Collinson (Collinson MSS, COL/1/30).
Roud 586, 54 entries.
An immensely popular song, which was so widely known in Edwardian times that the collectors did not attempt to note down every version they came across, and in English Folk-Songs (1891), William Alexander Barrett commented that the last two lines ‘are often quoted as a crumb of comfort under adversity’ (p. 80).
The song itself is something of a mystery, and it always seems as if we do not have the full story. What has the man done to deserve such an extreme and seemingly final rejection, especially as he states in the second verse that he does not know her (although in some versions the line is given as ‘Not knowing me as she passed me by’, thus implying simply that she did not recognize him). Although widely printed from at least the 1830s onwards, the broadsides do not help at all when it comes to explaining the story, as the collected and printed texts are extremely similar. It is quite feasible that it was written in this way, but it is also possible that there is an as yet undiscovered original which has verses to explain it all.
W. Buckland’s tune is a prime example of the one that seems to have been used by nearly all singers for ‘Banks of Sweet Primroses’. It also exemplifies a tune that seems to have been associated with only a few other texts (Broadwood mentions ‘Young and Single Sailor’, for which see ‘Fair Maid Walking in Her Garden’, No. 71). The relative stability of both the text and tune of ‘Banks of Sweet Primroses’ prompted Ralph Vaughan Williams and A. L. Lloyd to conclude that the song was ‘unusually memorable and satisfactory’ for singers and, in the absence of any other known stabilizing factor, such as an early commercial recording, it is hard to think of any other reason for this stability.
The collected versions suggest that some singers sang the three-syllable ‘prime-roses’ while others preferred ‘primroses’. It is not unusual to find additional consonants like this cropping up in traditional singing where voiced consonants, such as m and r, might gain enough prominence to sound like an extra syllable, especially when allied to a separate note of the tune. W. Buckland seems to have a penchant for adding and modifying syllables, as he also sings ‘to a-view’ and ‘lovelie’ (‘lovely’) in this same rendition.
The time signature in bar 7 has been changed to 2/2 in place of 4/4, to keep the beat consistent.
Sung by Charlie Wills, Bridport, Dorset (19 October 1952); recorded by Peter Kennedy (BBC 18692); issued on Topic 12T160/Rounder CD1775; also recorded by Bill Leader (1971), issued on Leader LEA4041.
Roud 54, Child 84; 111 entries.
‘Barbara Allen’ is far away the most widely collected traditional song in the English language – equally popular in England, Scotland and Ireland, and with hundreds of versions collected over the years in North America. Francis J. Child, however, took little notice of the song, devoting only four pages to it, and printing only three early texts, but Bertrand Bronson makes up for this neglect with 198 tunes.
Many people have wondered why this particular song took such a hold on the public imagination, and it has come in for its share of criticism and even scorn. It is either deeply romantic or pointlessly sentimental, depending on your viewpoint, and even Bronson had a swipe at it: ‘This little song of a spineless lover who gives up the ghost without a struggle, and of his spirited beloved who repents too late’ (The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, II (1962), p. 321. Indeed, the lover is so weak that he often does not even have a name.
In particular, singers and commentators alike have puzzled over the apparent lack of motive for Barbara’s hard-heartedness, and she has been accused of being everything from a poisoner to a witch or a prostitute, but there is no indication that there is any hidden meaning or an ancient version which has been corrupted or suppressed. All the evidence agrees: she simply took offence at him and his buddies drinking healths to the other girls and leaving her out.
A closer examination of the song would still be useful, however. Bronson, for example, noticed a gradual softening in Barbara’s character over the years, and another interesting feature is the mixture of voices – sometimes told in an impersonal third person, sometimes from one or other point of view, sometimes alternating as in a stage dialogue song.
We are fortunate to have evidence from when the song was, presumably, brand new, or at least in vogue, in the diary of Samuel Pepys. On 2 January 1666 he recorded fun and games at a New Year party: ‘… but above all, my dear Mrs Knipp, with whom I sang; and in perfect pleasure I was to hear her sing, and especially her little Scotch song of “Barbary Allen”’.
Pepys was an enthusiastic amateur musician, but Elizabeth Knip, or Knepp, was an actress, singer and dancer in the King’s Company, and therefore a professional, and it is quite possible that the song was written originally for the stage. His calling it a ‘Scotch song’ does not necessarily mean that it was actually Scottish, but that it was probably ‘in the style’ of a Scottish ballad. We also have a black-letter broadside, dating from about the same time, in the Roxburghe Collection, entitled ‘Barbara Allen’s Cruelty or The Young Man’s Tragedy; with Barbara Allen’s Lamentation for her Unkindness to her Lover and Herself’.
Bronson divides the tunes for ‘Barbara Allen’ into four groups. Charlie Wills sings the verse part of his to a tune which falls clearly into Bronson’s ‘mainly English’ Group A. Bronson also notes that many tunes in his Groups A and C (and, indeed, other groups too) are wholly or partially in five time and Charlie Wills’s rendition is no exception. In fact, he perpetually varies the length of the bar, hence the changes of time signature in the transcription. These look complicated, but in practice give Wills’s rendition an attractive lilt and movement. The 5/8 bars can easily be regularized to 3/4 by adding a dot to the crotchet, if desired.
A distinctive feature of Wills’s ‘Barbara Allen’ is his inclusion of a refrain (with which, on this recording, others join in). Wills’s refrain is made up of a number of features associated with many of Bronson’s Group C tunes, namely, their mid-stanza feminine ending on the third to fifth degrees of the scale and the melodic shape of their final phrase, which descends to the lower dominant. Only a handful of other versions include a refrain, most of these collected in Dorset and Somerset. Unlike Wills’s tune, the verse of these is sung to a melody which conforms to Bronson’s Group C and which H. E. D. Hammond dubs ‘the regular Dorsetshire tune’ (Hammond MSS, D518).
Only the tune noted by Francis Collinson, probably c.1948, ‘at the London Inn, near Bridport, Dorset’ (Collinson MSS, COL/5/47B), not included in Bronson, shares the same form as Wills’s tune. Indeed, it is almost identical to it except for its ending, which rises from the third below to the tonic, rather than repeating the tonic. It is probable that the London Inn notation is directly connected to Wills’s version or even that it is from Wills himself.
The upbeat note for Wills’s first stanza has here been altered down a tone to agree with the way it is sung in all the other stanzas. Similarly, the final note of bar 1 has been raised by a tone.
Text from William Alexander Barrett’s English Folk-Songs (1891) pp. 50–51; tune sung by William Russell, Eynsham, Oxfordshire (26 April 1909); collected by Cecil Sharp (Sharp MSS, FW 2039/FT 2185).
Roud 1185; 16 entries.
Although noted a fair number of times across the country, it is not easy to find a complete text and tune in the available collections, so we have combined a text from Barrett (who does not name his singer) with an unpublished tune from Sharp’s collection.
It is possible that Barrett took his text from one of the many broadside printings; the earliest surviving example is in a garland printed by Robertson of Glasgow in 1802. Some of the collected texts start with a verse about Napoleon. The first ‘light horse’ regiment was formed in 1745.
Sharp comments that William Russell began his rendition with the chorus and, apart from the Cs in bars 21 and 22 of the first stanza, he consistently sang a flattened seventh, making the tune in the Mixolydian mode. Other collected versions tend to be straightforwardly major or lack the sixth degree. The majority are triple-time, authentic-range melodies with similarities to each other.
The slurring in Russell’s tune has been adjusted here to fit the words from Barrett.
‘A Brave Young Sailor Courted Me’, sung by Alice Davies, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire (11 August 1954); collected by Francis Collinson (Collinson MSS COL/4/51A).
Roud 60; Laws P25; 110 entries.
This widely collected song is an example of a group of popular traditional songs, loosely categorized under the title ‘Died for Love’, which have a similar theme and often share some verses. In English Traditional Songs and Carols (pp. 123–4), Lucy Broadwood commented on the popularity of the theme in 1908:
The words of this song belong to a type of ballad which is extraordinarily popular amongst country singers both in England and Scotland. The subject (of a forsaken and broken-hearted girl, who directs how her grave shall be made), is the same in all versions, which however vary astonishingly in detail whilst having certain lines or stanzas always in common.
This song is a classic case of one of the problems of folk-song research: the so-called ‘floating verses’, which can turn up in any number of texts, but which sometimes coalesce into a recognizable song in their own right. It is only by a close comparison of a large number of versions, printed and collected, that a workable classification can be reached, but there remains the problem of where to place fragments and shorter versions. Steve Gardham has undertaken a study of the ‘Died for Love’ complex, which is so far unpublished. He maintains that there are relatively discrete, identifiably different songs within the mass, and that it is the combination of verses, and sometimes their order, that helps to differentiate different threads. Some of the main songs in this complex, with their numbers in The Folk Song Index, are as follows: ‘Died for Love’ (Roud 18828); ‘The Butcher Boy’ (Roud 18832); ‘The Tavern in the Town’, an American student song from about the 1880s (Roud 18834); ‘The Rambling Boy’ (Roud 18830); and ‘Isle of Cloy’ (Roud 23272); and in this volume, ‘Early, Early All in the Spring’ (No. 43), which contains several of these shared verses.
Our ‘Brisk Young Sailor’ was certainly around in the later eighteenth century. There is, for example, a broadside entitled ‘A New Song Call’d the Distress’d Maid’ in the Madden Collection (Slip Songs H-N no.1337) which is undated but looks late eighteenth or very early nineteenth century, and ‘The Lady’s Lamentation for the Loss of Her Sweetheart’ in Manchester Central Library, which is older. Several seventeenth-century black-letter broadsides contain elements of the ‘Died for Love’ songs, but nothing concrete enough to be confidently called their ancestor.
A note on the manuscript states, ‘Don’t add known verses. Don’t alter as given. Want to use it as it was sung in Forest of Dean.’ Also ‘Not 6/8’ is written near the time signature at the start. ‘Yes D’ is written between the staves, presumably referring to the pitch of one or more of the cross-head notes that appear on the notation. These occur in bars 1, 2, 4 and 12 and have here been changed to low D each time.
43 Early, Early All in the Spring
Sung by Mrs Hollings, originally from Lincolnshire (c.1900?); collected by Frank Kidson; published in JFSS, 2 (1906), 293–4.
273 Laws, K12; 61 entries.
This is a very widely known song across Britain and Ireland, and was even more popular in North America, but its title, like its text, varies considerably. ‘Sweet William’, ‘A Sailor’s Life’, ‘The Sailor Boy’ and ‘Father, Father, Build me a Boat’ are three of its common names, but there are many more. The core of the song usually remains the same – the girl’s search for her lover and being told that he is dead – but it has a distinct tendency to attract verses from other songs. These are often simply general ‘lamenting’ verses, but in the case of Mrs Hollings’s text, the last three verses are taken straight from a common version of the song ‘Died for Love’ or ‘A Brisk Young Sailor’ (No. 42).
The ending varies considerably but nearly always includes the heroine’s death. In some versions she throws herself into the deep, in others she deliberately runs her boat on to a rock, and, as already noticed, in some she commits suicide at home. Occasionally, however, she declares that she will go to some ‘silent shady grove’, where she will mourn for ever, and this option gave the garland songwriters an opportunity for an ‘Answer to the Sailor Boy’, in which he has survived and happens to be in the same ‘shady grove’, so overhearing her lamentation. This latter song is in a chapbook, The Calleen Fuine, printed in Limerick about 1800, so the original must have been popular before that time.
Kidson comments on the ‘curious rhythm’ of Mrs Hollings’s tune, which, as Cecil Sharp points out, moves from 3/2 (3 minims in a bar) to 6/4 (two dotted minims in a bar) in bars 3 and 5. The same tune is found with ‘The Isle of France’ (No. 12) but without these implied changes of metre.
Sung by Bob Hart, Snape, Suffolk (1969); recorded by Rod and Danny Stradling; issued on A Broadside, Musical Traditions MTCD301-2 (1998).
Hart sang ‘her eyes’ rather than ‘his eyes’ in line 2 of the final verse, presumably by mistake.
Roud 558, Laws O3; 48 entries.
This was a very widely collected song, across Britain and Ireland and North America, although the subject matter of premarital sex made the earlier collectors uncomfortable. Sabine Baring-Gould called it ‘a coarse song’ (Baring-Gould MSS, sbG/1/2/357), Frank Kidson printed only one verse (Traditional Tunes (1891), p. 167), and for the first volume of Cecil Sharp’s Folk Songs from Somerset (1904), the latter completely rewrote the words. Later collectors were not so squeamish, so a large number of versions have survived from the mid twentieth century, along with a great many broadside printings from over a hundred years before.
‘The Foggy Dew’ has suffered more than most from the attentions of the secret-meaning seekers of the folk-song world. The ambiguity of the phrase has led to a number of fanciful claims, which need not be resurrected, although the one which is on the increase – that the song is about ‘the plague’ – should be noted, and refuted. It is no real surprise that this claim is on the increase: plague explanations are particularly popular at the moment, in a range of folkloric genres – especially legends, ghost stories and explanations for odd geographical features. But there is no need for fanciful speculation, as all is made perfectly clear by reference to earlier versions of the song. In these, the girl is frightened into the man’s bed by a ghost or monster, which goes under various names such as ‘bug-a-boo’, ‘Bogulmaroo’ and ‘bogle bo’. It is worth noting that numerous dialect words for such creatures use the linguistic root ‘bug’ or ‘bog’, which still survives as ‘bogey’ in modern usage.
The earliest known text is on a broadside in the Samuel Pepys collection (5.250), entitled ‘The Frightened York-Shire Damosel, or Fears Dispers’d by Pleasure’, as ‘printed and sold by J. Millet, next door to the Flower-de-Luce, in Little Brittain’, and conveniently dated 1689. It commences:
When first I began to court
And pretty maids to wooe
I could not win the Virgin Fort
But by the Bogulmaroo.
After getting what he wants, he marries her the next day. In that text it not quite clear how the ‘Bogulmaroo’ came about, but a version collected by John Bell in Newcastle in the 1810s or 1820s makes it clear that the man had set it all up: ‘But I could ne’er her favour win till I hired the bogle bo’ – he had paid a friend to dress up in a white sheet.
There is a lot more that could be done in respect of this song, now that the fanciful explanations can be set aside. It would be interesting to know how and when the song lost its rather obvious ‘bugaboo’ and gained its not-so-clear ‘foggy dew’, for example. The many extant broadsides printed from the 1820s onwards all involve the ‘foggy dew’, but we know from John Bell’s Newcastle text that sometime in the first two decades of the nineteenth century the ‘bogle bo’ was still the main feature of at least one version. Is it simply that one broadside writer made the change – deliberately or not – and all the others followed, or is this a case of an ‘oral’ textual change being incorporated into the print tradition? The key will probably lie in the late eighteenth-century versions.
There is also much more to be done with a close comparison of orally collected texts. Sometimes the couple marry, for example, and sometimes she dies, and in the versions collected in the mid twentieth century there is great variation in the ‘tone’ of the song. In some it is quite tender, but in others it is characterized by a marked degree of offhand male bragging. These differences are sometimes brought out by performance style, but also by small differences in the words.
Contributed in 1855 by Thomas Hepple of Kirkwhelpington to the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne; published in Gwen Polwarth’s Folk Songs of Northumberland (1966), pp. 26–7.
Roud 1040, Laws P2; 73 entries.
This was an immensely popular song, collected many times across England, although not so often elsewhere. It was also very popular with nineteenth-century broadside printers.
The song was given a tremendous boost by being included in a popular melodrama, The Green Bushes, or A Hundred Years Ago, by J. B. Buckstone, which was first performed on 27 February 1845, at the Adelphi, London. In that play, which is set in Ireland and America, Nelly O’Neil, a simple but lively Irish ‘peasant’ girl, played by the 23-year-old Mrs (Ellen) Fitzwilliam, refers to the song several times, and although the published script only calls for her to sing a verse or two, the performance was popular enough for the sheet music of the full song to be issued very soon afterwards. The play lasted in the repertoire of provincial and touring companies for a long time after its initial performance, and this must have helped to keep the song before the public eye. Incidentally, the same play introduced the celebrated ‘Irish’ song ‘The Jug of Punch’.
The early collectors were all a little suspicious of the song because they sensed too much of the stage in both text and tunes. They were well aware of the influence of Buckstone’s play, but they also identified possible eighteenth-century antecedents, including a ‘Dialogue in Imitation of Mr H. Purcell – Between a Town Spark and a Country Lass’ by Henry Carey, from about 1740, and also possible connections with other traditional songs such as the Scottish ‘My Daddy is a Cankered Carle’ and the English ‘Whitsun Monday’, in which one lover waits for the other ‘Low down in the broom’ rather than ‘Among the green bushes’. Both of these date from the 1760s or 1770s, and they certainly have a similar storyline, but no real connection with our song beyond the ‘outdoor waiting’ motif.
The real early history of our ‘Green Bushes’ song has yet to be properly ascertained. It was certainly in existence in the 1820s or 1830s, because it appears on broadsides printed by Catnach and Pitts, as well as others of the time. But one broadside printed by the latter (Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads, Harding B 11(52)) introduces another confusion. On this sheet, the song called ‘Among the Green Bushes’ is a different song, although closely related to ours. It has the same scenario, but an almost opposite meaning, in which a young man walking through the meadows in May sees a maid. He offers her diamonds, gowns and silk petticoats, and his hand in marriage. She tells him to ask her father, who is a shepherd. Father gives consent and ‘To church they went without delay’. But to underline the connection, the last line in four of the six verses is ‘Among the green bushes my Jenny meets me’. However, on the same sheet is another song, ‘The False Lover’, which turns out to be our ‘Green Bushes’. Whether one of these was a parody or rewrite of the other remains to be seen, as does the question of whether they were deliberate rewrites of the earlier ‘broom’ songs.
Lucy Broadwood (JFSS, 5 (1915), 178) divides the tunes associated with this song into two broad categories. The first comprises variants of a major tune, such as that sung by Frederick Fennimore (George B. Gardiner collection), which is closely related to ‘Whistle and I’ll Come to Ye’ (James Johnson, The Scots Musical Museum, II, no. 106). Broadwood states that it is this form of the tune which is sung by Mrs Fitzwilliam in Buckstone’s play but, despite being attributed to her in the published sheet music, the tune was widespread in Britain and Ireland well before the mid nineteenth century.
The second category comprises variants of the tune made famous by Ralph Vaughan Williams in his English Folk Song Suite and also by Percy Grainger in his Passacaglia for orchestra. These crop up in both major and minor tonalities, and frequently employ one of the modes, as in Thomas Hepple’s example (which is Aeolian, although sharpening the lower seventh at one point). This is again a very widespread tune. It is found with a number of other songs in Ireland and England and is the form of the tune found in Carey’s ‘Dialogue’. As Anne Gilchrist describes (JFSS, 5 (1915), 179):
It … consisted of nine verses, eight sung alternately by the Town Spark and the Country Lass, and the last by both. The Town Spark sang his four verses all to the same tune, but the Country Lass had a different melody for each … The tune or tunes are so much of the same character as some of the traditional ‘Green Bushes’ airs (the one in Traditional Tunes especially) … which must surely have been known to the writer of ‘Green Bushes’ – or, conversely, elaborated from the ballad.
The tune collected by Hepple differs in form from most other ‘Green Bushes’ tunes in this group, being structured ABB’A rather than AA’BA. It also lacks the feminine ending cadence (from the lower seventh to the tonic) at the end of the B phrase found in other variants.
Sung by John Gregson, Burnley, Lancashire (1977); collected by Gordon Cox; published in Lore & Language, 3:7 (1982), 61.
Roud 279; 26 entries.
Very popular across Britain and Ireland, and in North America as well, this song has often puzzled commentators because it seems somehow incomplete, although this does not seem to have bothered the singers. The problem is that nowadays we expect there to be neat and tidy systems of, for example, colour and plant symbolism, but real folklore does not work that way and is always far messier. Indeed, it is a crude but useful rule of thumb that the more organized and comprehensive a system is, the more likely it is to be a recent invention, like the Victorian ‘language of flowers’ or rhymes such as ‘Monday’s Child’.
Although some plants have relatively well-known attributes – weeping willows for sadness, rue for regret, for example – others are more fluid and may even be present in a text more for the rhyme than for the symbolism. And then singers bring their own meanings. Many versions of this song have the line ‘Change the green laurel for the orange and blue’, which leads some writers to assume an Irish political origin. But in the same place, others have ‘violet so blue’, or even ‘bonnets so blue’. This is the undoing of Tristram P. Coffin’s brave but ultimately unsuccessful study of this song published in the Journal of American Folklore, 65 (1952), 341–51, because every new variation has to be fitted into a scheme which was probably bogus to start with.
The song appears, in various forms, on a few nineteenth-century broadsides, and some from the last quarter of the eighteenth century, but these do not help a great deal as they, too, seem unsatisfyingly incomplete or inconclusive. The earliest is entitled ‘Can’t You Love Whom You Please’, and starts, ‘When first in this country a stranger I came’. It includes sentiments that occur in other songs, such as ‘I often have wondered how men can love maids’ and ‘Can’t you love little and can’t you love long’. The ‘Green grows the laurel’ theme comes only in the fourth verse of five.
There is a real need for someone to undertake an in-depth analysis of the song, but only if they can avoid worrying about what the colours mean.
The tune is ‘Villikins and His Dinah’ (see note to ‘All Jolly Fellows Who Follow the Plough’, No. 91). The final note of bars 4 and 8 has been changed from a crotchet to a dotted crotchet, and the tied semiquaver has been added in bar 9 in order to make these bars rhythmically complete.
Sung by Amy Ford, Low Ham, Somerset (14 March 1974); recorded by Bob and Jacqueline Patten; published in the Pattens’s Somerset Scrapbook (1987), p. 72 and accompanying cassette.
Roud 387; 37 entries.
Frank Purslow commented in The Wanton Seed (1968), p. 131:
Still one of the most widely known songs in the English countryside. At one time many versions of the tune could have been noted but since a popular radio artist made it his signature tune some years ago, everyone now tends to sing the same form of the tune. Very few people can now remember more than the first verse.
Most of the recent collected versions have remarkably similar words, and as Purslow noted, this is mainly due to recordings and media appearances by popular singers in the post-war period, including Michael O’Duffy (1949), Josef Locke (1950) and Ronnie Ronalde, billed as ‘The Yodelling Whistler’ (1950). The song rapidly became a staple of the ‘Irish ballad’ repertoire, and the recording that started it all off was the one made by the widely popular Irish singer Delia Murphy, in 1939. All subsequent records and published sheet music credit her as the song’s author, although it was clearly around long before her time. It is tempting to assume, but without proof, that she learnt it from Colm O’Lochlainn’s Irish Street Ballads, published in the same year, which has exactly the same text as Murphy’s first recording. O’Lochlainn, in turn, noted his source as ‘Dublin street singers about 1920; and afterwards from J. M. Kerrigan’, who was a popular Irish character actor (1884–1964). It is still regarded as an Irish song, and appears regularly on ‘Celtic’ CD compilations and in popular folk circles, but at present there is no evidence that it was originally Irish – apart from the mention of Donnybrook Fair in the lyrics of some versions. Indeed, the earliest known texts were collected in the English countryside before the First World War, by George B. Gardiner, Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams. But without further evidence, it is not clear how the song got there.
A careful comparison of the tune records for this song, which come from both before and after Delia Murphy’s 1939 recording, enables a more nuanced view of the situation outlined by Purslow. It suggests that the homogenizing influence of the Murphy recording and its commercial successors is not quite as great as Purslow feared.
The pre-1939 oral recordings confirm that there is more than one tune associated with the song during this period, such as those sung by William Tucker (collected by Sharp), Mrs Krause (Carey) and J. W. Wright (Vaughan Williams), Wright’s tune being one often associated with ‘Three Maids to Milking Did Go’ (No. 87). Nevertheless, the majority of tunes from this time are clearly much the same as the one popularized by Delia Murphy. The situation is similar for the post-1939 recordings. Most use the same basic tune as Murphy but among them is still another distinct tune for the song. According to Fred Hamer, May Bradley, the singer of this version (1959), ‘likes to explain that she has heard “a modern song” like this, but she sings it “in the old way”’ (Garners Gay (1967), p. 52). This illustrates an important principle in the historical study of oral literature, namely that the date at which a version is collected is unlikely to be an accurate guide to the period from which the version itself comes.
If we look at the detail of the tune most commonly found with ‘If I Were a Blackbird’, we find that the English versions collected before 1939 have, as a group, several features which make them distinct from Delia Murphy’s version. They share the same phrase structure as the Murphy tune – ABAB’ (where B’ begins the same as B but modifies the end of the phrase slightly) – with the first B phrase cadencing on the second degree of the scale and the final one on the tonal centre. The A phrases of the traditional versions, however, cadence on the fifth degree of the scale while Murphy’s A phrases cadence on the second degree, the notes immediately leading up to them having a slightly different contour as a result.
Secondly, the ascending melodic figuration in Murphy’s penultimate bar is not found in any pre-1939 traditional versions. None of the English ones contain any chromaticism either, a feature of the Murphy tune (in bars 1, 5, 9 and 13). This gives us something of a baseline against which to assess the post-1939 traditional tunes. Some of these have features associated with the early versions while others, such as that of Caroline Hughes, collected by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger in 1962, follow the Murphy tune in these details. Amy Ford’s tune shows a mixture of these older and newer traits. The first half of her tune follows the pattern of the early English versions and the second half follows the Murphy tune in its details. This results in a phrase structure of ABA’C.
Wider comparison of the tune as manifested elsewhere in Britain and Ireland, as well as beyond, is needed to provide a complete picture, but the song makes an interesting case study of the ways in which material is appropriated within traditional and commercial song contexts. As to the origin of Delia Murphy’s version, the tune given in O’Lochlainn contains chromaticism in the B phrase but otherwise follows the pattern noted with the early English versions. Interestingly, there is some precedent in one of the earlier English notations (collected from Florence Lockett by Sharp) and one of the earlier Irish notations (collected by Sam Henry), for Delia Murphy’s distinctive A-phrase ending.
The tune for the chorus is the same as for the verse. Amy Ford sings with rhythmic freedom, which adds to her lyrical performance. The tune is the same tune as that used for the verse, but not the chorus, of ‘The Wild Rover’ (No. 88).
48 Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor
Sung by F. Wheeler, Weobley, Herefordshire; collected by Ella M. Leather and A. M. Webb; published in Leather’s The Folk-Lore of Herefordshire (1912), pp. 200–202. Leather inserted verses 2–6 from a version collected by H. E. D. Hammond, which we have decided to keep.
Roud 4, Child 73; 42 entries.
Very popular in Britain, though less so in Ireland, the huge number of versions collected in North America bring Lord Thomas into the ‘top five’ Child ballads, in terms of widespread popularity in the anglophone world. Francis J. Child printed 8 versions, and Bertrand Bronson amassed 147 tunes.
The earliest versions are black-letter broadsides entitled ‘A Tragical Ballad of the Unfortunate Love of Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor’ in the Pepys and Roxburghe collections, published in the 1680s, and a number of eighteenth-century prints have also survived, which cover the period between these and the plethora of nineteenth-century broadside printings. Indeed, we have an unusually full printed record for this song, which shows that the song has gradually got shorter but has preserved the core story intact over the centuries.
Child also detailed a number of Scandinavian ballads based on similar love-triangle scenarios, in which there are various permutations as to who kills who first, and there is an alternative telling in an English broadside, ‘The Unfortunate Forester, or Fair Elener’s Tragedy’, which may well pre-date the ‘Tragical Ballad’. It tells basically the same story, but stresses Thomas’s mother’s role in preventing his marrying for love, and ends with Elener committing suicide, and Thomas following suit.
The story of Lord Thomas was obviously a popular one, and is an example of the lack of sympathy for innocent bystanders in ballads. We should perhaps spare a thought for the ‘brown girl’ who is taunted by her new husband’s ex on her wedding day and, like the boyfriend in ‘Barbara Allen’ (No. 40), is not even given a name. Who can blame her for lashing out as she does?
As Bronson points out, the principal tunes associated with ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor’, ‘Lord Lovel’ (No. 122) and ‘The Outlandish Knight’ (No. 127) in English tradition form a well-defined family (The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, II (1962), p. 189). The renditions we have selected here are particularly close. Yet, on closer inspection, each has its distinctive features. ‘Lord Lovel’ is a five-phrase tune and lacks the seventh degree of the scale (C) in the upper octave, while ‘The Outlandish Knight’ tune has a flattened seventh and so is Mixolydian. ‘Lord Thomas’ has a range of an octave while the other two have a range of a ninth. Each has its own melodic twists and turns. They sound similar because of the closeness of their rhythm, metre and stressed pitches, their common sequence of cadence points, and their overall melodic contour. Together they form a neat example of the way in which what presumably started out as one tune can be subject to a myriad variations and yet retain its identity as it has been passed on, performed and adapted to different sets of words.
Sung by Charles Chivers of Basingstoke, Hampshire (1906); collected by George B. Gardiner (Gardiner MSS, GG/1/9/494).
Roud 922; 28 entries.
This song seems only to have been collected in England, and no further north than Warwickshire and Shropshire, but was clearly popular in the southern counties. Cecil Sharp, in the first volume of his Folk Songs from Somerset (1904), called it a ‘dainty little ballad’ (p. 60), and included a short version in his influential English Folk-Songs for Schools, which he compiled in collaboration with Sabine Baring-Gould in 1906.
But the song has a noticeable split-personality problem. The basic premise is the same in all versions – a lawyer meets a pretty girl and tries to win her with promises of riches and a high position in society – but the outcome is very different from version to version. In most, as in Charles Chivers’s song, she refuses his advances, scorns his offers and vows to marry a poor man. In others she initially refuses, but when he persists she relents and they marry.
No nineteenth-century broadsides seem to have survived, but we have three printings from the eighteenth century to guide us, and the earliest, entitled ‘The Lawyer and the Farmer’s Daughter’, was printed by John Garnet, of Sheffield, in 1745. This is presumably the original song and it solves our dichotomy by having it both ways. The lawyer is even more persistent and explicit in his advances than in the collected texts, but it turns out he was only testing her, and once convinced of her virtue goes to her parents and asks for her hand, like a proper honourable gentleman. This is something of a surprise, as usually in folk song (and in popular culture in general), lawyers have a very bad reputation for duplicity and are rarely goodies.
‘Maids, When You’re Young, Never Wed an Old Man’, sung by Sam Larner, Winterton, Norfolk (1959); recorded by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger; issued on Now is the Time for Fishing, Folkways FG3507/Topic TSCD511 (2000); published in McColl and Seeger’s The Singing Island (1960), p. 34.
Roud 210; 26 entries.
Quite commonly collected in England and Scotland, but less often elsewhere. The theme of the marriage or courtship of an old man and a young woman features in a number of songs, and often the girl is under pressure to accept him, although here there is no hint of compulsion. Sam Larner’s chorus is unusual, and in most versions the song has instead a ‘Hey down derry down’ refrain.
It has proved difficult to trace the song’s history because of gaps in the documentary record. Our song is clearly related to one from the late eighteenth century, entitled ‘Scant of Love, Want of Love’, a phrase that recurs as the second line in each verse. It is found in David Herd’s manuscript of the 1770s (published as Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs) and was also published in a number of collections of the period, with titles such as The Nightingale or Vocal Songster (1780), The British Songster (1788), The Chearful Companion (1783) and The Skylark or the Lady’s and Gentleman’s Harmonious Companion (1785) – in each case written ‘By a Lady’.
But no more is seen of the song until a text very similar to the traditional versions and called ‘Never Maids Wed an Old Man’ appeared on a broadside printed by John Harkness of Preston, probably in the 1840s. Five copies of this broadside have survived, but no other printings have come to light, which is highly unusual.
Tune records for ‘An Old Man Once Courted Me’ start appearing from the 1880s when they began to be noted from oral tradition. From this time onwards, the same basic melody has been found with this song in England, Ireland, Scotland and Canada, although it is not the only tune to which it has been sung.
Among the earliest tunes to be written down are two from North Yorkshire, one noted by T. C. Smith in Rillington in 1888 (JFSS, 2.4 (1906), 273) and the other printed by Frank Kidson in 1891. Despite differences in a number of details, both Kidson’s tune and the second strain of Smith’s show clear parallels with the melody sung here by Sam Larner. They illustrate some of the many permutations of the tune, which, nowadays, has become best-known in the variants sung by Sam Larner and Jeannie Robertson.
As so often with humorous songs, the tune is in 6/8. In performances of which there are sound recordings, it is clear that many singers feel at liberty to play with the speed and rhythm, as in Sam Larner’s rendition here, in order to put the song’s innuendo and humour across.
Sung by Lucy Woodall, Old Hill, Worcestershire (c.1976); recorded by Mike Yates; issued on It Was on a Market Day 2, Veteran VTC7CD (2006).
Roud 269, Laws K43; 60 entries.
An extremely widespread song, in Britain and America. Its potential for bawdry means that it was popular in male-centred contexts such as rugby clubs, army barracks, and particularly in the navy, where it can still be heard, but traditional versions were often collected from women as well as men. The Victorian and Edwardian collectors encountered the song regularly, but were not keen to publish it in full – Sabine Baring-Gould, for example, commented that ‘the words are objectionable’ and used the tune for one of his own compositions.
The most interesting thing about the song, however, is its versatility in terms of core meaning and emotional tone. Not only was it sung by both men and women, but it is also couched in both first- and third-person language, and sometimes the narrator is the girl, sometimes the sailor. The bawdier versions go into more detail, of course, but in many versions the girl takes the initiative, and even when she does not she is usually a willing participant.
Sung by a man, to a relatively rollicking tune, it is a devil-may-care song about a sailor with a girl in every port, who shows his heart of gold when he throws money into the girl’s apron with a debonair gesture. At the other extreme, it is a rueful lament of a girl regretting her impulsive behaviour, or a bitter complaint on the perfidy of men – although in some versions she declares in the last verse that she will ‘dry up her tears’ (or, as the broadsides say, ‘dry up her milk’ after the baby is born), and ‘pass for a maid in a new country’.
The locale of the song varies from version to version, but is most often Rosemary Lane, and this seems to have been in the original. Rosemary Lane, otherwise known as Rag Fair, was a notorious part of London, not far from the docks. It was renowned for its second-hand clothing stalls and other low-class establishments, and had a most unsavoury reputation. It was renamed Royal Mint Street in 1850.
Somehow or other, by late Victorian times, ‘Rosemary Lane’ had gathered to itself the chorus from an otherwise unrelated song variously called ‘The North Country Maid’, ‘Northern Lasses Lamentation’ or ‘The Oak and the Ash’, and it became ‘Home, Dearie, Home’ or ‘Bell-Bottom Trousers’.
A number of broadsides featured it, although not as many as one would expect, given the song’s later popularity, the earliest being from the London printers Jennings and Pitts in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. They called it ‘The Servant of Rosemary Lane’.
The singing is very slow and deliberate in the rendition in this volume, rhythmically quite free with frequent pauses at the ends of the clauses.
Sung by Mrs Baker, Hammer, Sussex (Oct 1912); collected by Clive Carey (Carey MSS, Sx265/265a).
Roud 3; 117 entries.
‘It is no exaggeration to say that this song is known to the peasant folk all over England,’ said Cecil Sharp in the first volume of Folk Songs from Somerset (1904), p. 57, and it holds a special place in the hearts of folk-song enthusiasts because it was the first song which he collected, in Hambridge, in 1903. Sharp was visiting his friend, the Revd Charles Marson, and heard the gardener, John England, singing it. We also have the authoritative word of the musical antiquarian William Chappell on the popularity of the song half a century before Sharp’s time. Writing in his Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859), he commented:
If I were required to name three of the most popular songs among the servant maids of the present generation, I should say, from my own experience, that they are ‘Cupid’s Garden’, ‘I Sowed the Seeds of Love’, and ‘Early one Morning’.
Dozens of versions have been collected, and reading them gives at first an impression of great textual variety, but closer examination shows that this is only superficial, and many are in fact very similar to each other and to the numerous nineteenth-century broadside texts, which seem to have acted as a stabilizing force.
But beyond the consensus over popularity, folk-song scholars have long disagreed about this song and its history, to the extent that a modern researcher might be reluctant to enter into such treacherous waters and offer an opinion. Even a synopsis of the argument is complex, and readers may wish to skip straight to the end.
The first problem is its relationship to ‘The Sprig of Thyme’ (No. 53) and whether or not we are dealing with two songs or one. It is quite possible to see two songs here – to oversimplify, ‘The Seeds of Love’ is couched almost entirely in the symbolism of flowers while ‘The Sprig of Thyme’ uses similar language but focuses on thyme, rue, an oak tree, and so on. There are some versions which are thus starkly differentiated, but the majority combine elements of the two – and the tunes are apparently fully interchangeable. James Reeves, in The Everlasting Circle (1960), sits on the fence, and declares the ‘impossibility of deciding whether we have one song which has developed in several directions or several songs which have coalesced in the popular tradition’ (p. 238). Frank Kidson wrote, ‘The air and words of “I Sowed the Seeds of Love” are so entangled with those of “The Sprig of Thyme” that the two ballads are often regarded as identical’ (JFSS, 1 (1902), 211), but two years later, in the notes to the first volume of Cecil Sharp’s Folk Songs from Somerset (pp. 57–8), he stated categorically, ‘“The Sprig of Thyme” and “I Sowed the Seeds of Love” are certainly one and the same ballad.’
In Marrow Bones (1965), Frank Purslow was equally insistent that the songs were originally separate and claimed that ‘The Sprig of Thyme’ was a woman’s song, while ‘The Seeds of Love’ was clearly a man’s. His argument seems to stem mainly from the idea that sowing seeds was an active occupation, whereas women’s songs are more passive. But he then ventures further on to thin ice by claiming that ‘The Seeds of Love’ is more usually sung to ‘masculine’ tunes (‘bold and strident’), while ‘Sprig of Thyme’ tunes are of more feminine character (p. 110).
Roy Palmer, in his Folk Songs Collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1983), also differentiates the two songs on gender lines, but on the safer ground that the first person ‘narrator’ in ‘Seeds’ is male, while in ‘Sprig’ she is female. He also discusses the plant symbolism, and states that ‘thyme’ stands for the womb, and by extension, virginity (p. 133).
Perhaps the earliest versions will help – or perhaps not. What we have is a broadside in the Pepys collection (5.246), published by Alexander Milbourne in 1696, headed ‘An Excellent New Song Called the Young-Man’s Answer to the Maids Garden of Tyme’, but unfortunately we do not have the song to which this a reply. This song includes the verse:
You say a young man went
Into your garden fine
And there unto your discontent
He pluckt up all your time.
So its forerunner could well be our ‘Sprig of Thyme’ song, but even if it is we do not know whether or not it included the flowers of ‘Seeds’. The ‘Answer’ is also fairly unsubtle in its sexual euphemisms, with talk of fountains and bushes, but again this is no evidence that the original had the same tone.
We are on surer ground a few decades later. Two chapbook texts, ‘The Maid’s Lament for the Loss of her Maiden-head’ of 1766 and ‘The Encouraging Gardener’ (c.1760–80), both start with verses based on the theme of ‘thyme’ being stolen and then progress to the gardener standing by, who offers flowers or herbs. Interestingly, however, these two chapbook texts, while recognizably the same song, vary a good deal more than one would expect of two songs printed so close in time.
And then there is the claim that the original song was written about 1689, by a Mrs Fleetwood Habergham (d. 1703), of Whalley, in Lancashire, in sorrow over her husband’s extravagance and vice, according to An History of the Original Parish of Whalley (1800), by Thomas Dunham Whitaker. It is very difficult to disprove local claims, for which no evidence beyond assertion is given, but it is unlikely that the song is based on a real event or personal circumstance.
Just for the record, another song, ‘The Gardener’ (Roud 339, Child 219), is sometimes thrown into the equation, in which a gardener attempts to woo a lady by offering to dress her in flowers, but is rejected. This has no real connection with our other song(s) but is occasionally confused with them in people’s minds.
Another complicating factor to its history is that ‘The Seeds of Love’ is also one of those songs which have existed in very different contexts and at different levels in the social scale, apparently at the same time. Like ‘Barbara Allen’ (No. 40) and ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’ (No. 138), it has often had something of a split personality in this respect. As ‘The Encouraging Gardener’, mentioned above, it appears in a collection called The British Harmony (Part 2), which comprises songs sung ‘this and the last seasons at both the theatres, Vauxhall, Ranelagh, Sadler’s Wells, etc.’, so there is more than a hint of the professional stage in the song’s development in the eighteenth century. Chappell mentioned a burlesque version performed at the Manchester Theatre, a little before 1839, and it was also sung, with great success, by the popular singer Mrs Honey in the dramatic entertainment of The Loan of a Lover, by J. R. Planché, at the Olympic Theatre in 1834. Lucy Broadwood commented that following the song’s appearance in Chappell’s Old Engish Ditties (1868) with piano accompaniment by Sir George Macfarren, ‘it became a favourite in Victorian drawing-rooms’. It was parodied on the music-hall stage, and in 1906 it was included in Baring-Gould and Sharp’s English Folk-Songs for Schools, and was subsequently warbled by several generations of schoolchildren in classrooms up and down the land. And in the post-war Revival it took on a new lease of life as ‘Let No Man Steal Your Thyme’. There is no doubting its enduring popularity.
Sung by Charles Lolley, East Riding, Yorkshire; collected by Frank Kidson; published in Kidson’s Traditional Tunes (1891), p. 69. In his book, Kidson puts a row of dots between verses 4 and 5, probably indicating omitted words.
The broadside texts are so similar to Kidson’s that it seems permissible to insert the missing verse here (from a sheet printed by Forth of Hull).
In Charles Lolley’s rendition, the tune is quite distinct from Mrs Baker’s ‘Seeds of Love’ tune.
See the note to ‘The Seeds of Love’, above.
54 Susan, the Pride of Kildare
Sung by George ‘Pop’ Maynard, Copthorne, Sussex (1959); recorded by Brian Matthews; issued on Down at the Cherry Tree, Musical Traditions MTCD400 (2000).
Roud 962, Laws P6; 24 entries.
This was one of Pop Maynard’s favourite songs and, when singing it, he often repeated the last two lines of some verses. ‘Pretty Susan’ was surprisingly popular in England, and collected fairly regularly in North America, but not much elsewhere. It was also widely printed on broadsides from the 1820s and possibly a little earlier.
In the catalogue of songs which are laments for faithless lovers, the female voice predominates, but there is a handful of well-known songs like this (for example ‘A Week Before Easter’, No. 56) in which it is the man who is left in sorrow.
Pop Maynard’s tune is a fine example of the tune found almost universally with this song. Lucy Broadwood notes that the melody is ‘met with in so many forms, Irish and Scottish’ and that it was used by the poet Thomas Moore for his song ‘The Meeting of the Waters’ in Irish Melodies, I (1808) (JFSS, 6 (1918), 11–12).
55 The Trees They Do Grow High
Sung by Mrs Joiner, Chiswell Green, Hertfordshire (7 September 1914); collected by Lucy Broadwood (Broadwood MSS, LEB/2/46); published in JFSS, 5 (1915), 190–91.
Roud 31, Laws O35; 77 entries.
Judging by the number of versions gathered in the major manuscript collections and later sound recordings, this song has been a firm favourite with singers in Britain, Ireland and North America for a long time. The wording varies surprisingly little across the English versions and the story is always the same, and these probably derive from nineteenth-century broadside printings, of which there were many.
The early history of the song, however, as so far known, refers to Scottish versions and is not straightforward. The earliest sighting is a two-verse fragment in the manuscript collection of David Herd, dating from the 1770s (published by Hans Hecht in 1904). Robert Burns used this fragment as a basis for his poem ‘Lady Mary Ann’, which he contributed to the Scots Musical Museum in 1792, and which also entered the tradition. Ballad editor James Maidment published a version which he called ‘The Young Laird of Craigstoun’ (North Countrie Garland, 1824) and he claimed that the song was based on the true story of thirteen-year-old John Urquhart of Craigston who in the early 1630s was married to his older cousin by her manipulative father. Over the years this explanation has been discounted as circumstantial by various editors, but in one of the latest scholarly ballad books, The Glenbuchat Ballads (2007), David Buchan and James Moreira give full credence to the story, so we must at least accept its possibility.
In a bid to claim the ballad back for England, Sabine Baring-Gould, in his Songs of the West (1905), pp. 2–3, quoted a verse from a song in Fletcher and Beaumont’s play Two Noble Kinsmen (1634) that he claimed was similar to some words in a version of ‘The Trees They Do Grow High’ he had collected in Devon. Unfortunately for his argument, the similarity is far-fetched, and the words quoted not typical of our song, so, on balance, the Scots still claim the ballad.
Broadwood marks the verse of this Dorian tune as ‘very slow and expressive’. Her dynamic markings have been omitted here. Tune variations (a) and (c) are labelled as ‘variants used very occasionally’. Of variation (d), which is stanza 6, Broadwood states that the G sharps are ‘decidedly more sharp than natural, though a little difficult to determine’. The first crotchet of bar 15 has been made into a dotted crotchet here to make the bar complete.
Sung by Harry Burgess, Glynde, Sussex (19 June 1956); recorded by Mervyn Plunkett; also issued on As Me and My Love Sat Courting, Topic TSCD665 (1998). Harry started two verses with ‘The first time’ which is why there is no ‘third time’.
Roud 154; 41 entries.
This was clearly a popular song with traditional singers, with versions appearing in most of the major collections in England and Scotland, and it was one of the songs the Northampton poet John Clare noted from his mother and father’s singing in the 1820s. The traditional texts vary more than usual and appear under a number of titles, including ‘The False Bride’, ‘The Forlorn Lover’ and ‘The Despairing Lover’.
It is surprising that, given how widely collected the song was, few nineteenth-century broadside printings have survived. But this lack is more than remedied by the survival of several eighteenth-century copies and even some dating from the late seventeenth century, housed in the Roxburghe, Douce and Euing collections. A printed ballad entitled ‘The Forlorne Lover’ was entered in the Company of Stationers’ Register on 1 March 1675. These earlier versions are far wordier than the traditional sets of the later centuries, taking sixteen verses to tell the story, and, as is usually the case, the shorter texts are far more satisfying as songs, with a much tighter emotional core.
In this recording, Harry Burgess sings the word ‘didn’t’ to the final semiquaver of bar 12. The rhythm of this bar has been slightly amended here so that ‘didn’t’ falls on the final two notes of the bar.
IV
Since Love Can Enter an Iron Door …
Lovers’ Tricks, Disguises and Obstacles Overcome
‘Blow the Windy Morning’, sung by Emily Bishop, Bromsberrow Heath, Gloucestershire (13 October 1952); recorded by Peter Kennedy (BBC 18679); issued on Topic 12T161/Rounder 11661-1776-2.
Roud 11, Child 112; 45 entries.
This was an immensely popular song in the English tradition and was also known in other parts of the English-speaking world. Francis J. Child prints five early versions, and discusses its history and connections with similar songs from Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Denmark and Germany, while Bertrand Bronson amasses thirty-nine tunes.
As it stands, Bishop’s is the central core of a much longer song which has been around since at least the early seventeenth century. Her version is perfectly viable as a short song, but does miss out a rather crucial part of the story. After her verse two, the shepherd propositions the girl and she says they would be much more comfortable at her house, or at an inn, which gives her the opportunity to fox him by locking him out.
The earliest known text is in Thomas Ravenscroft’s Deuteromelia (1609), as ‘Yonder Comes a Courteous Knight’, and numerous versions were issued on broadsides and in songbooks over the following 300 years. While the general tendency is for the oral tradition to shorten stories, print gives the opportunity for extension. In the later seventeenth century, new versions were issued which repeated the joke by describing how she baffled him again and again with different ruses, although these do not seem to have lasted in traditional singers’ minds as they have preferred to keep it simple. It is also noticeable that in earlier versions the protagonist is a knight rather than a shepherd, and the difference in social class between him and the girl adds to the humour.
Bishop’s tune, with its ‘blow the windy morning’ chorus, is an example of the ‘jolly plagal tune’ most commonly found with this song in the twentieth century (Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, I (1959), p. 547). It has a distinctive opening phrase, however, ending with an ascending figuration reminiscent of that in ‘The Shepherd’s Son’, a nineteenth-century Scottish tune for the ballad, reproduced by Bronson (II (1962), no.5, p. 550). In other details it is closer to Cecil Sharp’s version from Mrs Richards, Little Sodbury, Gloucestershire, rather than the tunes collected from West Country singers.
58 The Banks of the Sweet Dundee
Sung by Mrs Burge, Bathpool, Somerset (1916/1917); collected by Janet Blunt (Blunt MSS, JHB/10/16).
Roud 148, Laws M25; 56 entries.
In Traditional Tunes (1891), Frank Kidson wrote, ‘This has been popular in nearly every district in England, and in a number of places in Scotland as well. Though sublime doggerel, the song is even now a great favourite with the old folk who still remember it. Perhaps this is on account of the good air to which the song is set’ (p. 53). But a song needs more than a good tune to be as widely known and to last as long as this one has. It is, in fact, a good example of the strengths and weaknesses of ‘broadside ballads’: a strong melodramatic plot, told sequentially and simply, with good triumphing over evil, and love more important than money. It was often called ‘Undaunted Mary’, which also emphasizes the ‘strong heroine’ aspect of the story.
The song was collected widely and was equally popular on broadsides, with almost all the well-known nineteenth-century printers offering versions, although the earliest so far found date from only about the 1820s. Texts vary surprisingly little.
Nearly all the traditional versions, like Mrs Burge’s, as well as the broadsides, leave Mary happy in her wealth, but make no mention of William’s fate. Occasionally, however, an additional verse is found, as in the following, from W. H. Long’s The Dialect of the Isle of Wight (1886), pp. 134–5:
About a twelvemonth after, or perhaps a little more
The fleet returned to England, and William came ashore
He hastened to his Mary and who so glad as she?
They soon were wed, and happy lived, on the banks of sweet Dundee.
But the story was far too good to be left with this weak ending, and the broadside presses soon provided an ‘Answer to Undaunted Mary’ (Roud 5649) in which William takes part in a great sea battle, is wounded, but arrives home with his prize money. He hastens to Mary but first puts her through the traditional test of telling her that her William has died before revealing his identity, and they get married. This sequel does not seem to have grabbed the attention of singers in England, but some versions were collected in Scotland. Another sequel was entitled ‘The Banks of Inverness’ (Roud 3813).
Cecil Sharp dubs ‘The Banks of the Sweet Dundee’ tune ‘the stock-in-trade of every English folk-singer’, suggesting that singers often resort to it when ‘at a loss for a tune’ (English Folk-Song: Some Conclusions (1907), pp. 93–4). Norman Cazden points out that there are a number of tunes sung for ‘The Banks of the Sweet Dundee’ and cautions against ‘any reference to the tune of The Banks of Sweet Dundee as though that were a specific and identifiable entity’ (Folk Songs of the Catskills (1982), p. 183). As far as the melodies collected in England are concerned, one tune tends to predominate in association with this song but it can be divided into several subgroups, as follows.
Group I is exemplified by Mrs Burge’s tune. It is either major or Mixolydian (major with a flattened seventh) in tonality and has an A phrase beginning with a descending jump from the fifth to the first degrees, followed by a rising scale back up to the fifth degree again. Group II begins as the Group I tunes. The first B phrase in this group, however, introduces a sharpened fourth which implies a change of key (modulation) to the dominant. The Group I melodies cadence on the same degree of the scale but do not inflect the fourth. Another feature of the Group I and II tunes is the descending 4-3-1 figuration in the penultimate bar of the A phrase. In Group III this pattern is given increased prominence by appearing in the first full bar of the A phrase as well. This seems to be associated with a B phrase in which the upper tonic is approached by means of a scale or arpeggio figure, rather than a direct jump. Group III tunes are allied with Group I in that they do not modulate. They also share their characteristics with certain tune variants found in association with ‘Van Diemen’s Land’ (No. 145), such as that sung by Harry Cox (MacColl and Seeger, The Singing Island, 1960), although Cox’s tune mostly implies a minor tonality.
Cecil Sharp also uses ‘The Banks of the Sweet Dundee’ tune to exemplify the common phrase structure ABBA. As he describes, ‘the second B is often a free rendering of the first, rather than an exact reproduction of it’ and this is sometimes true of the A phrase too (Sharp, English Folk-Song: Some Conclusions, pp. 93–4). Interestingly, Benjamin Holgate’s tune, printed by Kidson, opens with the Group III form of the A phrase and varies its reappearance with the Groups I and II form of the phrase. In all cases, the ‘free rendering’ of the repeated phrases does not affect the cadence pattern usually associated with the ABBA structure, which is on the first (A phrase) and fifth (B phrase) degrees of the scale.
For more about the ABBA form, see Introduction to the Music (p. xlvii). There is no text underlay in Janet Blunt’s tune manuscript for Mrs Burge’s rendition, so that given here is conjectural. All slurring is editorial. The final note has been changed from a dotted crotchet to a dotted minim in order to complete the bar.
‘Eggs in Her Basket’, sung by Fred List, Suffolk (c.1975); recorded by Keith Summers; issued on Good Hearted Fellows, Veteran VT154CD (2006).
Roud 377; 26 entries.
This song on the theme of girl tricks boy to get her own back was quite common in England and Scotland, but rare in Ireland and North America. Collected versions often end happily, with the sailor owning up to his previous misdeeds and the couple getting married, but earlier broadside versions end with his bad temper at being outwitted. It was probably this revenge aspect which attracted singers in earlier times, and broadside versions were often called, or subtitled, ‘The Biter Bit’.
Surprisingly few nineteenth-century broadside printings have survived, but we have several eighteenth-century examples to sketch in its early history. These include ‘Luck in a Basket, or The Biter Bit’, printed for Sam Cook in Southwark, probably about 1750; and ‘The Jovial Sailor, or The Biter Bit’ in The Royal Wedding Garland of the 1760s. The song was also called ‘Eggs and Bacon’.
There are a number of distinct tunes associated with this song, some having a major tonality, others in the ‘minor’ Dorian and Aeolian modes, and still others shifting between major and minor through the singer’s inflecting of the third degree of the scale. Fred List’s is major and has a particularly wide compass, being a major twelfth.
His tune also illustrates features common to a number of those found with this song, despite their melodic diversity. One of these is that his tune ends on the fifth degree of the major scale rather than the more usual first degree. Cecil Sharp’s version from Mrs Laurence does likewise, and several other collected versions finish on the sixth degree. These can strike the modern listener as making the tune sound unfinished or open-ended because of their relative distance from the expected tonal centre.
Perhaps even more striking is the rhythmic flexibility of Fred List’s rendition, which in many bars is in five time (compare ‘Bold Fisherman’ (No. 21), with which it has some occasional melodic similarities). A number of the other tune transcriptions and recordings of this song also dip in and out of five time, including several collected by George B. Gardiner, and by Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Ewan MacColl. The emphasis always falls on the first and third beats, giving the tune a lilt all of its own.
Fred List’s ‘Basket of Eggs’ tune is much the same as tunes collected by Sharp, Percy Grainger and Vaughan Williams for ‘Lord Bateman’ (No. 33), some of which are also in five time.
60 The Blind Beggar’s Daughter of Bethnal Green
‘The Blind Beggar of Bethlem Green’, sung by Mr Rugman and Mr Lough, farm labourers, Dunsfold, Surrey (1898); collected by Lucy Broadwood; published in JFSS, 1:4 (1902), 202–3.
Roud 132, Laws N27; 15 entries.
This song tells a well-known story, although it has not very often been collected from English singers. The earliest manifestations of the ballad are found on a black-letter broadside of about 1680 and in the manuscript that Thomas Percy used for his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), which is usually dated to about 1650. But the story also appeared in prose form, and it is known that a play on the subject was performed as early as 1600, so it is often assumed that the ballad itself dates from the time of Elizabeth I. The early broadsides were much longer (over 250 lines long), and the versions collected from traditional singers all stem from a severely curtailed broadside text which first appeared in the early nineteenth century.
One detail may seem puzzling: the ‘dropping’ of the money in verses 8 and 9. In most other versions the money is thrown down, a much more dramatic gesture, and redolent of the competitive display of riches which proved that the beggar had far more money than his detractors.
Lucy Broadwood published two versions of this song from Dunsfold, each with a different melody (JFSS, 1 (1902), 202–3). These exemplify the two principal tunes to which ‘The Blind Beggar’s Daughter’ has been sung in England. Both are in triple time and feature predominantly crotchet movement. That from Mr Lough is major and has brief echoes of ‘Villikins and His Dinah’ and ‘Flash Company’ (see No. 80). That from Mr Rugman is minor in tonality (the Dorian mode) and recalls the tune of ‘The Cunning Cobbler’ (see No. 78).
Comparison of the major and modal tune traditions shows that they are not totally distinct. They share the same phrase structure (ABCD) and melodic contour and sometimes the same cadence points (in the first, second and fourth phrases) as well as some specific pitch progressions.
William Chappell prints two tunes for the song (Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859), I, pp. 158–60). These are similar to each other but distinct from the more recently collected melodies in their meter, being in common time, although they have some points of resemblance in their contour, range and minor tonality. Chappell cites Edward Rimbault’s claim that one of the tunes, under the name of ‘The Cripple’, was written by Rogers, ‘a celebrated lutenist of the reign of Charles II’. Chappell also finds a number of songs from the mid seventeenth century sung to the melody known as ‘Pretty Bessy’. The second tune he prints exemplifies how the song is ‘sung about the country’.
61 The Bonny Blue Handkerchief
Sung by F. Kitching, Guildford, Surrey (5 February 1952); collected by Francis Collinson (Collinson MSS, COL/2/27A).
Roud 378; 19 entries.
Not so well known as other ‘returned lover in disguise’ songs, ‘The Bonny Blue Handkerchief’ was nevertheless collected quite widely in England, as well as a few times in Scotland, Ireland and North America, and it appeared regularly on broadsides from at least the 1820s onwards.
Not only is blue the sign of loyalty (‘true blue’), but some versions also make it clear that the maiden’s lover was a sailor and gave her the handkerchief to match his traditional blue jacket. The connection is taken one step further on a broadside printed by James Catnach of London, dating from the 1820s, where it is paired with another song, ‘The Bonny Blue Jacket’. The latter is either an ‘answer to’ or a parody of ‘The Bonny Blue Handkerchief’ and reverses the scenario of the latter: it is the girl who meets, and tempts, the sailor boy, who is looking for his sweetheart, and the refrain line is ‘The bonny blue jacket this lad was dressed in’.
There appears to be no generally accepted tune for this song. Most are major-key, triple-time melodies, some containing echoes of other well-known tunes. The A phrase of Mrs Kitching’s tune, for example, is that of the major-key ‘Green Bushes’ tune (see No. 45) and her B phrase recalls one of the tunes associated with ‘All Jolly Fellows Who Follow the Plough’ (see No. 91).
Sung by Ernest Glew, North Bersted, Sussex (c.1958); recorded by Mervyn Plunkett.
Roud 1162, Laws M14; 21 entries.
Very widely sung in England, with a fair few versions collected in Ireland and North America, but not, apparently, in Scotland, ‘Bonny Labouring Boy’ is another treatment on the common theme of parental disapproval of young people’s choices in love. In this case it is the girl who is of the higher status as she is a farmer’s daughter falling for one of her father’s labourers, but like all true ballad heroines she stands firm against their opposition.
Ernest Glew’s version is pared down to the bone, but even the longer collected versions seem curiously truncated and do not appear to tell the full story. A seven-verse treatment, sung by Harry Cox of Norfolk, can be found in Peter Kennedy’s Folksongs of Britain and Ireland (1975), p. 346, and on Topic CD TSCD 512D. Two key verses, taken from a broadside printed by W. R. Walker of Newcastle in the 1840s (Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads, Firth c.12 (442)), fill out the text but do not advance the story a great deal:
His cheeks are like the roses red, his eyes as black as sloes
He’s mild in his behaviour wherever that he goes
He’s merry, neat and handsome, his skin as white as snow
And in spite of my parents’ malice with my labouring boy I’ll go.
This couple they got married and joined in unity
In peace and comfort to live, in love and loyalty
Her parents’ riches she disdains for her love and only joy
May prosperity attend her with her bonny labouring boy.
The description of his skin as ‘white as snow’ shows the poetic rather than the realistic nature of such songs: it is unlikely that many nineteenth-century farm labourers could have boasted such a complexion. The song was also very popular with broadside printers, dating probably from about 1830.
The widespread tune for this song is akin to the melodies used for ‘Erin’s Lovely Home’ (No. 70) and a number of other folk songs. Ernest Glew sings a different tune, a 6/8 variant of the first strain of ‘The Wearing of the Green’. His tune is distinct in having a fairly restricted melodic range of a sixth. The beginning of his B phrase thus diverges from that of ‘The Wearing of the Green’, which jumps to the octave at this point before descending with its characteristic 6-5-3-1 figure (compare ‘Brennan on the Moor’, No. 132). Anne Gilchrist traces the origin of ‘The Wearing of the Green’ to a Scottish march entitled ‘The Tulip’ (Southern Folklore Quarterly, 9 (1945), 119–26). It was composed by James Oswald as one of his Airs for the Seasons (c.1747). Norman Cazden in his Folk Songs of the Catskills (1982), pp. 317–19, provides a useful overview of the scholarship on the song’s text and tune history.
‘Bonny Green Woods’, sung by Miss Anne Hiles, Kirton in Lindsey, Lincolnshire (March 1904); collected by Mabel Peacock and Edgar C. Robinson; published in JFSS, 4 (1910), 110–16
Roud 34, Child 43; 42 entries.
This was very well known across England and Scotland, but rare in the USA; Francis J. Child printed six versions, and Bertrand Bronson presented twenty-four tunes. Texts and tunes of this song vary considerably but the basic story remains pretty constant. In Anne Hiles’s version, an unusual, perhaps unique, feature is that the girl drugs the young man, but commentators most often assume that the sleep which overcomes him is induced by the girl’s magical powers. Occasionally she visits a witch, who tells her what to do, and in some versions she strews certain herbs and flowers at his feet and head – but in the latter case he must already be asleep when she arrives, so the magic here must be merely to keep him sedated. Many versions, however, including the earliest broadside, do not bother to explain why his sleep was so deep, nor is it ever explained why, in most renderings, the knight proclaims that he was planning to kill the girl.
The earliest text so far located is probably the broadside printed by Thomas Norris in London in the Douce collection, which dates from between 1679 and 1732, or another in the same collection, by John White of Newcastle, which dates from about 1720. Attempts to link the song with earlier ones that mention ‘broom’ and ‘hills’ are unconvincing. But Child comments that very similar stories occur in Swedish, Danish and Icelandic ballads which are a little older than our English ones, and all may well derive from a tale published in the Gesta Romanorum, the collection of anecdotes and tales compiled about 1300.
Anne Hiles called her version ‘Bonny Green Woods’, and ‘hare and hounds’ in verse 4 is more usually ‘hawk and hounds’. Traditional versions most often start with the words ‘A wager, a wager’.
Although it is ‘full of charm and interest’, Bronson notes much diversity among the tunes for this song (The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, I (1959), p. 336). Accordingly, Anne Hiles’s tune is melodically closer to that noted by Lucy Broadwood in Sussex and Surrey for ‘The Bailiff’s Daughter of Islington’ (Roud 483) and ‘The Seeds of Love’ (No. 52) than it is to other ‘Broomfield Hill’ tunes (see Broadwood, JFSS, 1.4 (1902), 209). Broadwood highlights further parallels with several other English and Scottish songs, but these lack the bouncy rhythm that characterizes Miss Hiles’s tune. Bronson also notes similarities with ‘The Mermaid’ (No. 13), many of whose tunes, although authentic in range rather than plagal like that of Miss Hiles’s, have the dotted rhythm and a similar feel.
‘The Cook’s Choice’, sung by Leslie Johnson, Fittleworth, Sussex (8 November 1954); recorded by Bob Copper (BBC 22762); also published in Copper’s Songs and Southern Breezes (1973), pp. 236–7.
Roud 510; 15 entries.
Reasonably well known across England, but not so common elsewhere, this song also appeared regularly on broadsides from about 1830, under titles such as ‘Cookey’s Courtship’ or ‘Cupboard Love’.
One of the main reasons why so many employers insisted that their servants had ‘no followers’ was to safeguard their morals, but there was also a well-grounded fear that visitors below stairs would be entertained at the family’s expense or, even worse, would be strangers casing the joint for a future burglary. The young man who was sweet on the cook simply for the food he could get was thus a recognizable scenario.
Nearly all the tunes sung for this comic song are major-key tunes in a rollicking 6/8 metre. Several bear a close resemblance to Leslie Johnson’s tune, such as that sung by Walter Weller in Stubbs, The Life of a Man (1970), pp. 38–9.
65 Caroline and Her Young Sailor Bold
‘Caroline and her Young Sailor Boy’, sung by Mrs Fanny Pronger, East Grinstead, Sussex (1960); collected by Ken Stubbs; published in Stubbs’s The Life of a Man (1970), pp. 22–3.
Roud 553, Laws N17; 22 entries.
Although this song has elements of ‘family opposition to lovers’ and ‘girl dresses as sailor to accompany her lover’, these plotlines do not have the punch they usually do in traditional songs, and even the sailor lad is here decent enough to warn the young woman not to get involved with sailors. Nevertheless, the song was popular with traditional singers and was collected often in England and a fair number of times in Scotland and Ireland as well.
It was even more popular on broadsides and was issued by most of the nineteenth-century printers, and it is on one of the surviving sheets that we get a clue of the song’s origin. As mentioned elsewhere, we know very little about the people who wrote songs for the broadside trade, but the one exception is John Morgan. Thanks to the earlier writings of Charles Hindley, and the recent researches of James Hepburn, we know something of Morgan’s life and some of the songs he wrote. On one sheet, printed by Taylor of Waterloo Road, London, the song ‘Young Sailor Bold’ is actually signed by ‘J. Morgan’, and as Taylor was at that address for only a short time we can date it to about 1836. But there is another clue on this sheet, as it states that our song is an answer to ‘The Gallant Hussar’ (Roud 1146), and is probably written to that tune. This song features a ‘damsel of great beauty’ who falls in love with a soldier, and it is similar in many respects to ‘Caroline …’, but despite being equally well known on broadsides was collected much more rarely.
The melodic tradition for this song is very stable and consistent. Fanny Pronger’s rendition exemplifies the tune that is associated with most collected versions and in much the same form. The same tune is found with ‘The Gallant Hussar’, as was common with songs which claimed to be an ‘answer’ to an existing song. It is also commonly associated with ‘The Rakish Young Fellow’ (Roud 829).
‘Cloddy Banks’, sung by Archer ‘Daddy’ Lane, Winchcombe Workhouse, Gloucestershire (5 April 1908); recorded by Percy Grainger; transcribed from Grainger’s cylinder by Gwilym Davies, FMJ, 6:3 (1992), 148–9.
Inaudible lines supplied by Davies in his Grainger in Gloucestershire (1994) booklet.
Roud 266, Laws N40; 16 entries.
On the surface, ‘Claudy Banks’ appears to be one of the ‘returned lover in disguise’ songs such as ‘Fair Maid Walking in Her Garden’ (No.71). It was popular with singers in England and also regularly collected in Scotland and Ireland, and is well known in the post-war Revival from the singing of the Copper Family and others such as George ‘Pop’ Maynard. But perhaps it has been misunderstood. Evidence from the earliest broadsides, and a close reading of some traditional performances, demonstrate that this was not originally a ‘broken token’ song, in which the faithful lover returns in disguise after years abroad. In fact, Johnny has been a faithless lover (and is described so), and the girl is looking for him precisely because he has left her. This explains the ‘six long weeks’ line in many versions, including Archer Lane’s given here, which some commentators presume is a mistake for ‘six years’. She is actually being told, ‘Well, you’ve just missed him, he’s gone to sea and been shipwrecked.’ Johnny of course has a change of heart, and the story ends happily.
The song was also very popular on broadsides and most of the major nineteenth-century printers published versions, with the earliest being about 1818. It is usually assumed that the ‘Claudy’ in the song (although spelling and pronunciation varies widely) is the village in County Londonderry, and that the song is therefore Irish in origin, but there is no real evidence for this either way.
In most cases nineteenth-century broadsides did not give any indication of the tune to which the song they contained should be sung, so tunes from other songs were fitted to the words by the broadside seller or the singers who purchased the sheet. This seems to have been the case for ‘Claudy Banks’, which has been sung to a number of different tunes. ‘Daddy’ Lane’s rendition is distinct from those sung by the Copper family and Pop Maynard, for example, but resembles that collected from Joanna Slade by Cecil Sharp in Somerset. This same tune was also sung by Mrs Lock, another of Sharp’s Somerset contributors, for ‘High Germany’ (Roud 904). It is a good example of a modal tune – in this case the Dorian mode – so prized by the Edwardian folk-song collectors. Indeed, the tune (deriving from Mrs Lock) was incorporated by Ralph Vaughan Williams into his English Folksong Suite (1923).
‘Rolling in the Dew’, sung by Leslie Johnson, Rustington, Sussex (8 November 1954); recorded by Bob Copper (BBC 22762); published in Copper’s Songs and Southern Breezes (1973), pp. 238–9.
Roud 298; 50 entries.
This is a very widely collected song – Cecil Sharp alone noted fourteen versions – and very effective when sung as a male–female duet, which is how it was originally designed. No doubt it was the maid’s sassy answers which appealed in the past, as now. The refrain line in different collected versions varies from ‘rolling’ or ‘roving’ to ‘dabbling’ in the dew, and this presumably refers to the widespread notion that morning dew – especially on May Day – is good for the complexion.
The song was popular on broadsides, and was printed by most of the well-known printers in the nineteenth century. It also entered the juvenile tradition, being included in books such as James Orchard Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Tales of England (1870 edn), suitably cleaned up, of course. But its roots are much older. What is presumably the original black-letter broadside can be seen in the Wood collection in the Bodleian Library, entitled ‘A Merry New Dialogue between a Courteous Young Knight and a Gallant Milk Maid’, printed in London for W. Thackeray, about 1688. See also the Opies’ Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951), pp. 281–3 for further historical information.
The broadside is directed to be sung to the tune called ‘Adams fall, or Jocky and Jenny’, or ‘Where art thou going my pritty maid’.
Many of the tunes associated with this song in oral tradition exhibit melodic parallels which give the impression of resemblance despite differences in tonality (in terms of specific modes and overall major or minor tonality), metre (4/4 and 6/8) and specific melodic figurations. The tune sung by Leslie Johnson illustrates these common characteristics in its authentic range, the overall melodic contour and range of each phrase, and the mid-cadence on the fifth degree of the scale and first-phrase cadence on the tonic. In its specifics, it has a very close counterpart in the tune sung by the Somerset singer Samuel Weekes (Maud Karpeles, Cecil Sharp’s Collection of English Folk Songs, I (1974), p. 439).
‘Fair Phoebe and Her Dark-Eyed Sailor’, sung by Mrs Hill (old family nurse, native of Lincolnshire) (November 1893); collected by Lucy Broadwood; published in JFSS, 4 (1910), 129–30.
Roud 265, Laws N35; 71 entries.
Often called ‘Fair Phoebe and Her Dark-Eyed Sailor’, this was probably the most popular of the ‘broken token’ songs in England, and was not only noted regularly by all the Edwardian collectors, but also still being widely sung when the post-war fieldworkers turned up with their tape recorders. It is usually assumed to be of eighteenth-century origin, but so far no printed texts have been found earlier than those issued by the London printers Pitts and Catnach, which were produced sometime in the first three decades of the nineteenth century.
Many collectors comment on the persistence of the same basic tune with this song. Lucy Broadwood also points to the tune’s association with ‘The Female Smuggler’ (Roud 1200) and its similarity to the four-time melody of ‘All on Spurn Point’ (Roud 599) (JFSS, 4 (1910), 131).
69 The Daughter in the Dungeon
Sung by Jack Barnard of Bridgwater, Somerset (17 April 1906); collected by Cecil Sharp (Sharp MSS, FW 940–42/FT 871). Jack’s version lacked four important lines in the last verse, and we have supplied these from a text collected by Lucy Broadwood from Walter Searle, Amberley, Sussex (1901), published in her English Traditional Songs and Carols (1908), pp. 38–9.
Roud 539, Laws M15; 31 entries.
Under a number of evocative titles – ‘The Daughter in the Dungeon’, ‘The Iron Door’, ‘The Cruel Father and Affectionate Lovers’ – this song was particularly popular in England and Canada, but less so in Scotland, Ireland and the USA. In its somewhat pedantic, step-by-step narrative it is typical of songs written for the broadside trade, which, it must be admitted, are far better heard than read. The words are remarkably faithful to the printed versions, the earliest of which dates from about the 1820s.
Sung by John Edbrook, Bishop’s Nympton, Devon (11 January 1905); collected by Cecil Sharp (Sharp MSS, FW 167–9/FT 107).
Roud 1427, Laws M6; 38 entries.
This was a very popular song in Britain and Ireland, and regularly encountered in North America, although apparently better known in Canada than the USA. It is another treatment of the ‘family opposition’ theme, narrated by the young man who is waiting to be transported for seven years. It is never made clear what crime he has been charged with, as such details are not always thought necessary in folk-song texts. On the evidence of other songs on the same theme, he would have been framed by the father, but it is good to know that his sweetheart plans to wait the seven years for him, as sweethearts should.
‘Erin’s Lovely Home’ was also popular with nineteenth-century broadside printers, and on the evidence of surviving sheets probably dates from the 1840s.
John Edbrook’s common-time tune exemplifies the basic melody to which English versions of this song are generally sung. It is characterized by minor tonality (the Dorian or Aeolian mode), authentic range, and the common phrase structure ABBA with its associated cadences on the tonic and the fifth degrees of the scale. Versions of the song have also been collected in which the phrases of this tune are sung in a slightly different arrangement (such as that by Mrs Munday, collected by George B. Gardiner, GG/1/17/1064), or combined with further melodic material (such as Henry Hills, JFSS, 1 (1901), 117). There is at least one example of the same basic tune sung in a major tonality and with an extended overall range of an eleventh (Mrs Curling, Gardiner MSS, GG/1/8/430).
Cecil Sharp claims that ‘a large number of English Folk-tunes are modelled on the same pattern’ (JFSS, 2 (1906), 168), including ‘Young Henry the Poacher’ (Roud 221), ‘The Sheffield Apprentice’ (No. 141), ‘On Board a Ninety-Eight’ (Roud 1461), and ‘Napoleon’s Farewell’ (Roud 1626). He also suggests a possible connection with the tune of ‘Lazarus’ (Roud 477), but the resemblance is loose at best, given the distinctive cadences and differing form of the latter.
Outside England, ‘Erin’s Lovely Home’ is frequently sung to a major tune in 6/8 time.
71 Fair Maid Walking in Her Garden
‘Young and Single Sailor’, sung by Mrs Vaisey, Hampshire (September 1892); collected by Lucy Broadwood; published in JFSS, 4 (1910), 127–8.
Roud 264, Laws N42; 49 entries.
Probably the second most popular of the ‘broken token’ songs (‘Dark-Eyed Sailor’ is number one, see No. 68), this song was widely collected in England and Scotland, and even more often in North America. It also appeared on numerous nineteenth-century broadsides, with similar texts, but under a variety of titles, including ‘Sailor’s Return’, ‘Loyal Sailor’ and ‘Young and Single Sailor’, although the earliest probably date from the late eighteenth century.
It is a mark of the astonishing conservatism of the Anglo-American tradition that certain textual details, which are not obviously crucial to the story, seem to be hardwired into the song. In this case, of the 332 entries in The Folk Song Index for which we know the first line, 287 specifically set the scene in a ‘garden’.
Mrs Vaisey’s tune is a good example of that commonly associated with this song. Nearly all versions, though they differ in melodic detail, contain the distinctive feature of a large ascending leap of a seventh, here found in bars 5 and 7. Cecil Sharp commented on ‘the bold sweep and vigour of this melody’, versions of which he had often found to be in an irregular rhythm (Folk Songs from Somerset, II (1905), p. 72).
Sung by George Dunn, Quarry Bank, Staffordshire (5 June 1972); collected by Roy Palmer; published in FMJ, 2:4 (1973), 286–7, and on Chainmaker, Musical Traditions MTCD 317-18 (2002). On the day that he was recorded, George had forgotten some of the lines of the song, so we have taken the liberty of repairing the text with lines from a broadside printed by J. Russell of Birmingham (Madden collection, Cambridge University Library), designated by square brackets, as suggested by Roy Palmer.
Roud 367, Laws N14; 25 entries.
‘Polly Oliver’s Rambles’ was regularly found in England and North America, but was much rarer elsewhere in Britain and Ireland. ‘Girl dresses as soldier to follow her lover’ is a well-known theme in folk song, with plenty of examples in this book, but ‘Polly Oliver’s Rambles’ is a little different from the normal case. Instead of an open-ended commitment to soldiering, Polly has a specific practical joke in mind. The joke is tame enough, but the song caused blushes on the part of earlier editors. Both Sabine Baring-Gould and William Chappell supplied completely new words in their publications, and even Frank Kidson omitted the verses where they share a bed. The modern excuse of ‘nothing happened’ obviously cut no ice with them.
Baring-Gould noted in 1895 that it was ‘A still popular song among the English peasantry’, but Frank Purslow points out in The Foggy Dew (1974), p. 116 that its continued popularity was probably due to its regular performance on the early music-hall stage, where it was regarded as a somewhat saucy song.
The song was also widely printed on broadsides in the nineteenth century, and was included in a number of song garlands in the second half of the eighteenth, often entitled ‘The Maid’s Resolution to Follow Her Love’. Nevertheless, it may well be older, as a song called ‘The Pretender’s Army’, published in a forty-six-page collection of songs, Mughouse Diversion, or a Collection of Loyal Prologues and Songs in 1717, commences:
As Perkin one morning lay musing in bed
The thought of three kingdoms ran much in his head,
which is presumably based on ‘Polly Oliver’s Rambles’ (rather than the other way round).
The rather strange image of Polly riding a ‘green dragon’ in verse 2 of George Dunn’s song has been brought about by a mishearing somewhere down the line. The broadsides usually have ‘On her father’s black gelding like a dragoon did ride’, or something similar.
Sung by Mrs Nation, Bathpool, Somerset (c.1916); collected by Phyllis M. Marshall (Janet Blunt MSS, JHB/10/7).
Roud 186, Laws M24; 52 entries.
‘The Pretty Ploughboy’ – sometimes he was ‘Jolly’ or ‘Simple’, but mostly he was ‘Pretty’ – was a particularly popular song in England, and was also often found in Scotland and Ireland, and fairly frequently in North America. The text varies little between versions. In traditional song, one of the standard responses of parents faced with unsuitable suitors for their daughters is to threaten to bribe the press gang to take him away. It is indeed well documented that the press gang was open to bribery in this way, although it is impossible to know how often this really happened. And then we must admire her spirit in going after him.
The song was also very widely available on broadsides, with nearly all the main nineteenth-century printers offering versions for sale. Some of these may be as early as about 1800, but no definite eighteenth-century version has yet been found.
The many variants of Mrs Nation’s tune associated with this song tend to be modal, often Mixolydian, or, as with hers, Dorian. This same basic melody has also been collected in both compound time, as here, and simple time.
Sung by Mr Hale, West Kirby, Cheshire; collected by Dorothy Dearnley; published in Dearnley’s Seven Cheshire Folk-Songs (1967).
Roud 348, Laws N28; 15 entries.
One of the many simple ‘returned lover in disguise’ storylines, although here he is at least disguised as a beggar, which explains why she does not recognize him after only three years. It was only moderately popular in England, and nowhere near as widespread as others in the genre, such as ‘Claudy Banks’ (No. 66) and ‘Fair Maid Walking in Her Garden’ (No. 71), but it was collected much more often in North America.
Nearly all the main nineteenth-century broadside printers issued versions, including Catnach and Pitts in London, and Kendrew of York, but the earliest so far found seems to be by Evans, in 1794. The text varies little from version to version.
‘Billy Taylor’, sung by Clara Gillam, Adderbury, Oxfordshire (1913); collected by Janet Blunt (Blunt MSS, JHB/1A/13B).
Roud 158, Laws N11; 59 entries.
An immensely popular song in England – both Lucy Broadwood and Cecil Sharp called it a ‘favourite song’ among country singers – ‘William Taylor’ was also collected many times in North America, but less frequently in Scotland and Ireland. It was also very common on broadsides and was often included in more substantial songsters and songbooks.
The song features on one of the earliest recordings we have of an English traditional singer. Percy Grainger arranged for the Gramophone Company to record his star Lincolnshire singer, Joseph Taylor, in 1908, and that recording can be heard on the Topic CD Tonight I’ll Make You My Bride (TSCD 656). Earlier texts vary considerably, but versions collected from Victorian times onwards are more stable. In some versions William is press-ganged just before his wedding with Sally, rather than enlisting voluntarily, so it was not all his fault. The song is popular with many people nowadays because of its strong female lead, although modern sensibilities might be a little bruised by the fact that she shoots both William and his bride, which seems a little hard on the latter.
In part because there are so many extant versions, the history of the song is not quite as clear as we would like. Most traditional singers seem to have sung the song in all seriousness, but for much of the nineteenth century is was regarded in a very different light and was published and widely performed as a comic number, often under the title of ‘Billy Taylor’. At this distance it is not always easy to tell from the text alone whether the intention was comic, as the comedy seems to have relied much on the style of performance rather than on the actual words.
The comic version was already in print around 1804, and possibly before, but the earliest dated example of the song, where there is no hint of comedy, seems to be a chapbook in the British Library called Four New Songs, printed in Alnwick in 1792. The song is there called ‘Billy Taylor’, but another early broadside title is ‘The Female Lieutenant, or The Faithless Lover Rewarded’, which certainly sounds more serious.
A close reading of the many available texts, both oral and printed, might reveal more of the history of the song, but what looks likely at the moment is that a late eighteenth-century ‘serious’ song was quickly picked up and performed as a burlesque, which remained a staple of the comic-song repertoire well into the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Traditional singers then learnt the burlesque words and started to sing them ‘straight’, and in their performances it became a serious song again.
V
My Parents Reared Me Tenderly …
Lust, Infidelity and Bad Living
Sung by Ray Hartland, Eldersfield, Gloucestershire (1980); recorded by Mike Yates; issued on It Was on a Market Day 2, Veteran VTC7CD (2006).
Roud 1404; 23 entries.
An extremely widely known song, but for obvious reasons it appeared only rarely in folk-song collections until recent years, and we need to look to the few collectors who specialized in ‘bawdy’ material to piece together its history. The earliest references come from America, where the song is also very well known. Three of the singers who sang the song to Vance Randolph in the Ozarks in the 1940s claimed to have first heard the song in the 1880s or 1890s, one of them specifically at sea, and the Texan collector John Lomax mentions a cowboy version of the same vintage. The song has clearly remained a favourite of what could be called the ‘minor’ bawdy canon, that is the songs with obvious sexual meaning but innocent enough to be generally performed, by both men and women. Some versions are more explicit than others, of course, and as always it is the skill of the singer and the appropriateness of the occasion which makes or breaks any performance.
It is easy to get carried away when discussing bawdy songs and to presume either that there is a deep psychological significance to everything mentioned, or to concentrate on the physical attributes of the objects or actions mentioned and to seek sexual similarities. But both approaches often lead to some pretty silly conclusions. Perhaps the only principle to understand is that almost any human activity can be given a sexual twist, in the context and performance of a song, and it is the inventiveness of the imagery, or lack of it, which makes the song clever and interesting or just plain crude and silly. But the original imagery itself may have no intrinsic sexual reference.
Folk-song scholars have noticed some similarity between ‘The Ball of Yarn’ and an older song known to Robert Burns called ‘The Yellow Yellow Yorling’. Some of the lines are similar but the imagery in the old song is concerned with birds, rather than yarn, as ‘yorling’ is a Scots name for the yellowhammer. Bird imagery is common in songs about sex, but no one has explained how this was translated into the ‘ball of yarn’. Two of the standard commentaries on the latter are that it must refer to sailors winding up a rope (because it was sung as a shanty), or because of the context of the action it must refer to female pubic hair, because they cannot find anything else ‘stringy’ enough to be relevant. But to understand the origin of the song it is necessary to delve deeper into the art of knitting rather than fornication.
‘Winding Up Her Little Ball of Yarn’ was a pop song, with words by Earl Marble and music by Miss Polly Holmes, published in 1884, and the sheet music can be seen online in the Lester S. Levy Collection of Sheet Music in Johns Hopkins University Library. It concerns a young man courting a young lady, and its chorus, ‘Ball of yarn, ball of yarn …’, is clearly the origin of that in the bawdy version. Previous generations would have immediately understood the cultural references in the song, but most modern readers need some explanation. It refers to the days, up to the 1950s, when knitting wool (called ‘yarn’ in America) came in loose hanks and had to be wound into balls by the knitter before use. A regular task which men were usually reluctant to undertake was to sit with the wool around their outstretched hands while their mother, sister or wife wound it into a ball. Not surprisingly, the only time men did this willingly was when courting, and it was a mildly flirtatious thing to do. The picture on the front of the original sheet music shows this quite clearly.
What has happened is pretty evident. The marked sentimentality of Marble and Holmes’s song quickly attracted a bawdy parody, and whoever constructed it was probably familiar with ‘The Yellow Yellow Yorling’ or a derivative. As with all parodies, the original point would be its deliberate debunking of the innocence of the original, and would rely on the hearer’s recognition of this cultural reference. But, as sometimes happens in this kind of situation, the new ‘Ball of Yarn’ song took on a life of its own, and has long outlived its original referent.
There is one potential problem in this explanation of the origins of the song. In his book on American pop music, Lost Chords (1942), Douglas Gilbert, used the bawdy ‘Ball of Yarn’ as an example of the type of song sung in taverns in the 1870s, and if this were true it would suggest that the copyrighted song published by Marble and Holmes was a cleaned-up version of an already existing song. It is unfortunately typical of Gilbert’s imprecise style of writing that this impression is given because he does not actually say that the song existed in the 1870s, nor does he offer any evidence to support the idea. But it has been quoted as fact by many later writers.
Ray Hartland’s tune exemplifies well the melody to which this song is commonly sung in England. It corresponds fairly closely to the sheet music and, where it deviates from it, shows remarkable consistency with other versions from England and the US. Interestingly, Ray Hartland’s tune, in common with many other oral versions, has a greater melodic compass (of a minor tenth) than the sheet music (major seventh).
‘Water Rattle’, sung by Arthur Howard, Hazlehead, Yorkshire (1981); recorded by Ian Russell; issued on Merry Mountain Child, Hill and Dale HD006 (1981).
Roud 140, Laws P14; 35 entries.
This was a widely known song in England and even more popular in North America, but not apparently collected in Scotland or Ireland. The sexual symbolism of the fiddle and string are fairly transparent, although it is quite possible that the song as sung by Arthur Howard could have been a perfectly innocent romantic ballad. Other versions continue with the girl asking him to marry her, and he usually says that he is already married but ends hopefully with the idea that if he comes this way again perhaps they could hear the nightingales again.
The history of the song is strangely unclear. A ballad entitled ‘The Souldier and His Knapsack’ was registered with the Stationers’ Company on 4 November 1639, which might be our song, although soldiers and knapsacks are a rather commonplace pairing. But half a century later, the ancestor of our song was definitely in existence, as shown by surviving broadside editions of ‘The Nightingale’s Song or the Souldier’s Rare Musick and Maid’s Recreation’ dating from the 1680s and 1690s, which can be found in the Roxburghe, Pepys and Douce collections.
Many of our folk songs which go back to the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries show evidence of being rewritten and severely reduced in length about 1800, probably by the broadside printers of the day. But it is not clear if this is the case with our ‘Souldier’ or ‘Grenadier’. The problem is that after the late seventeenth-century printings, we can find no evidence of the song’s existence until about 1840, despite the online availability of so much eighteenth-century material nowadays. In addition, far fewer nineteenth-century printings have survived (only four or five) than we would expect from such a popular traditional song. So we simply do not know whether the song persisted in the oral tradition for over 140 years or was reintroduced in the nineteenth century by a broadside author and/or printer.
This song has mostly been sung to triple-time tunes with an ABBA phrase structure. Among these there is some variety in terms of range (plagal or authentic), tonality (some are straightforwardly major; others have a flattened third, giving them a minor feel) and contour. Arthur Howard’s triple-time, major-key tune stands out, having an ABCD structure and a contour quite unlike other collected versions except in its D phrase, which echoes the A phrase of one of the more widespread tunes (compare that sung by Raymond and John Cantwell in Peter Kennedy’s Folksongs of Britain and Ireland (1975), pp. 414–15).
‘The Little Cobbler’, sung by John Johnson, Reigate, Surrey (c.1954); collected by Bob Copper; published in Copper’s Songs and Southern Breezes (1973), pp. 224–5.
Roud 174; 21 entries.
Versions of ‘The Cunning Cobbler’ were noted down by several of the Edwardian collectors, including Cecil Sharp, H. E. D. Hammond, Percy Grainger and Ralph Vaughan Williams, but for obvious reasons if they published it at all it was only the tune or the first verse. Vaughan Williams commented, ‘The rest of the words are not suitable for publication and have little interest except, perhaps, in giving a modern example of the kind of rough fun which we find in Chaucer … The words are evidently modern, or modernized, since a policeman is one of the characters introduced’ (JFSS, 2 (1906), 156–7). This is one of several humorous songs in which the husband comes home to catch his wife with her lover; see, for example, ‘The Bold Trooper’ (Roud 311) and ‘The Boatswain’s Chest’ (Roud 570).
Many of the nineteenth-century broadside printers issued the song, and the text varies remarkably little between them and the traditional versions. The earliest so far located is ‘The Cunning Cobler [sic] Done Over’, printed by James Catnach in London, probably in the early 1830s, and his text, interestingly enough, already includes the policeman. As the Metropolitan Police were founded in 1829, this may well be the original of the song, but it is possible, though perhaps not likely, that the song existed before that without the policeman character.
Bob Copper collected John Johnson’s tune for ‘The Cunning Cobbler’ from his elder son, also called John, as Johnson had died eleven years previously. It exemplifies the most commonly found tune for this song. Among the collected examples, some have an even subdivision of the beat, as in John Johnson’s example, while others are sung with a bouncy, uneven subdivision. Johnson’s tune initially alternates between 6/8 and 4/4, reflecting these slightly different rhythmic manifestations of the basic melodic pattern. This latter is often minor in tonality, with flattened third and seventh degrees (the Dorian mode), though it is sometimes found in the major, with a flattened seventh (the Mixolydian mode).
The same basic tune is found with other songs, such as ‘Irish Bull’ (Roud 918), as collected by Sharp in Somerset, ‘My Father Was a Good Old Man’ (Roud 1631), as collected by Gardiner in Hampshire, and ‘O Rare Turpin, Hero’ (Roud 621). See also ‘The Blind Beggar’s Daughter of Bethnal Green’ (No. 90 in this volume).
Some performers sing the song very fast (for example Henry Stansbridge, William Short and George Smith), while Frank Purslow (Marrow Bones (1972), pp. 119–20) comments on the way George Spicer ‘commences his performance in a normal speaking voice … gradually changing to a singing voice in the course of the second line. The result is excellent, especially as Mr Spicer retains an emphasis on story-telling right through the piece, rather than on singing a song’.
79 The Devil and the Farmer’s Wife
‘The Farmer’s Curst Wife’, sung by Leslie Lawson, Southrepps, Norfolk (7 February 1955); recorded by Peter Kennedy (BBC 21903). Leslie sang the first verse differently from the others, without the refrain and repeat; we have regularized it to simplify the notation.
Roud 160, Child 278; 24 entries.
This song was collected many times in England, Ireland and Scotland, and hundreds of times in the USA, although its early history remains something of a mystery. Francis J. Child prints only two versions, with nothing earlier than Henry Dixon’s 1846 text (see below), but he comments, ‘A curst wife who was a terror to demons is a feature in a widely spread and highly humorous tale, Oriental and European’ (The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, V, p. 107). There seems to have been a Scottish song, which Robert Burns rewrote as ‘Kellyburnbraes’ (1792), but that earlier song has not been found, and Burns’s text bears little similarity to the English versions, although the story is the same.
There are surprisingly few surviving broadsides, but one was printed by John Pitts in London about 1810–20, where it is called ‘The Sussex Farmer’, and sometime in the first half of the nineteenth century it acquired a whistling chorus and was often later called ‘The Sussex Whistling Song’. Henry Dixon printed a version in his Ancient Poems (1846), pp. 210–11, and claimed that it was ‘a great favourite’. He described the way it was generally performed at that time:
This is a countryman’s whistling-song, and the only one of the kind which the editor remembers to have heard … The tune is ‘Lilli Burlero’ and the song is sung as follows: the first line of each verse is given as a solo; then the tune is continued by a chorus of whistlers, who whistle that portion of the air which in ‘Lilli Burlero’ would be sung to the words, ‘Lilli burlero bullen a la’. The songster then proceeds with the tune and sings the whole of the verse through, after which, the strain is concluded by the whistlers. The effect of the song, when accompanied by the strong whistles of a tribe of hardy countrymen, is very striking, and cannot be described by the pen.
In Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames (1923), Alfred Williams also calls it the ‘Sussex Whistling Song’, and comments that it was ‘very popular in the Thames Valley eighty years ago’ (that is, about 1840). The song often ends with the lines,
This shows that the women are worse than the men
They get taken to hell and brought back again.
A different song, ‘The Devil in Search of a Wife’, which was also popular on nineteenth-century broadsides, shares the same sentiments and occasional lines with ‘The Devil and the Farmer’s Wife’.
Bronson notes that about a quarter of the seventy-one tunes he located for this song have a whistling refrain while the others have a refrain of nonsense words. These nonsense refrains are often on lines 2 and 4 of the stanza but in some cases are extended into a fifth line. Still others have the refrain on lines 2, 5 and 6, as in Leslie Lawson’s rendition. Despite this, the tunes to which the song has been sung are very similar and Leslie Lawson’s is no exception. It is major and in 6/8 time, like many humorous songs, with a range of a tenth. It bears a particularly close resemblance to the tune sung by the Northumberland shepherd Jimmy White, collected by Peter Kennedy (see Bertrand Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, IV (1972), no. 6) and the tune from a Belfast singer noted by O’Lochlainn (see Bronson, IV, no. 7), both of which also have the nonsense refrain and the six-phrase form.
Leslie Lawson sings the final stanza more deliberately and brings the song to a rousing finish by raising the final three notes of the penultimate bar.
Sung by Cyril Poacher, Blaxhall, Suffolk (1972); recorded by Keith Summers; issued on A Story to Tell, Musical Traditions MTCD339-0 (2007).
Roud 954; 22 entries.
‘Flash Company’ was quite commonly found in England, but not much sung in Scotland or Ireland, and only one or two versions have been reported in North America. It is something of a schizophrenic song, which explains why some commentators have found it puzzling or incomplete. This is not simply a question of ‘floating verses’, which flit from song to song and seem to have no real home, but more a demonstration of how very different meanings in a song can be constructed by reordering a set of common verses linked with a couple of different ones; at bottom, two separate songs have become entwined – ‘Flash Company’ and ‘The Wandering Girl’.
The two main branches within the song’s history are distinguished by the sex of the narrator, because this is one of those songs which can be told from the male or female perspective. Probably the earliest from the female perspective is ‘The Wandering Girl or Bud of the Rose’ in which the girl is simply lamenting that she has been left holding the baby by a false young man, but in another strand the girl is in sorrow because her sweetheart/husband is being transported for some unspecified crime, hence the ‘remembrance’ motif. A third set of versions often starts, ‘First I loved Thomas and then I loved John’, and implies that the girl’s fickleness and love of a good time has brought her to ruin. In the second main category, as sung by Cyril Poacher and most singers in recent times, it is the man whose fast living has brought him to poverty.
In its different guises, the song was popular on nineteenth-century broadsides from about 1820 onwards. The striking ‘yellow handkerchief’ motif does not appear in all versions, but was certainly present in some of the earliest, and is, surprisingly, a factual detail within the fiction of the song. Yellow handkerchiefs, or more what we would call neckerchiefs, were indeed popular in flash circles – particularly those in the prize-fighting and boxing fraternities in the early nineteenth century.
There is some research to be done on the tune of this song. It seems that many of the earlier collected versions comprise the first half of ‘Green Bushes’ (see note to No. 45, especially Lucy Broadwood’s second category of tunes), while the second two phrases are much as in Cyril Poacher’s version, with the distinctive rise to the upper tonic. One wonders if the first half of Poacher’s tune, also commonly found with this song, is a more recent development. When a version was published in the JFSS, Cecil Sharp commented that it was ‘a curious medley of “Green Bushes”, “Turtle Dove”, and “Amble Town” (“The Oak and the Ash”, etc.) tunes’ (JFSS, 5 (1915), 175). The tune is found with other songs, such as ‘The Lakes of Cold Finn’ (No. 120).
‘Gipsies-O’, sung by Harry Cox, Catfield, Norfolk (1946); collected by Francis Collinson (Collinson MSS, COL/5/75); published in JEFDSS, 5 (1946), 14–15; different recordings from the same singer issued on Topic TSCD512D; BBC 22914/Topic 12T161/Rounder CD1776. In verse 5, it is not clear whether Harry sang ‘black-guarded’ (pronounced ‘blaggarded’) or ‘black-hearted’ (pronounced ‘blackarted’).
Roud 1, Child 200; 72 entries.
Definitely in the top five Child ballads in terms of widespread popularity, and possibly second only to ‘Barbara Allen’, the Gipsies stealing the lady, or, to put it the other way round, the lady running off willingly with the sexy Gipsies, has caught singers’ attention all over the anglophone world for more than 200 years. For obvious reasons the song has long been a favourite with members of the travelling community.
Francis J. Child printed eleven versions, and Bertrand Bronson reprinted 128 tunes, and most of the nineteenth-century broadside printers issued versions, so there is a great deal of material available for the comparative researcher to work on. The song goes under a wide variety of titles, including ‘The Dark-Eyed Gipsy’, ‘The Draggletail Gipsies’, ‘Seven Little Gipsies’, ‘Johnnie Faa’ and ‘Black Jack Davy (or David)’.
The basic story is nearly always the same, but the details at key points in the plot vary considerably, and these have a major effect on the moral tone of the piece. Sometimes, for example, the Gipsies cast a spell on the lady, but sometimes she just falls for them of her own volition; when her husband finds her she defiantly rejects him, or resignedly says she must stick to the choice she has made; some versions end there, but in many the last verse matter-of-factly informs us that all the Gipsies were hanged. We are rarely told what happened to her.
Despite the plethora of material, the early history of the song is still unclear and is not really helped by attempts by many commentators to link the song with events between 1541 and 1624 concerning recurrent attempts by the Scottish authorities to expel all Gipsies, and occasions when some were executed for staying. These events took place at least a hundred years before our song was known to have been in existence, and there is no reason to connect them apart from the fact they are both about Gipsies. There was also a strong local tradition that the original song referred to an incident in the life of John, sixth Earl of Cassilis and his wife, Lady Jean Hamilton (who died in 1642). The story goes that the ‘Gipsies’ were really the supporters of a rival suitor in disguise. The main supporting evidence is that many of the older Scottish versions name the Lord as ‘Cassilis’, but this is most likely an example of post-facto tinkering. Rather than being corroborative evidence for a legend’s truth, details like this are changed in the song to support the existing, or emerging, legend. Others argue more simply that ‘Cassilis’ was a mishearing or misreading of the word ‘castle’, and the legend was created to explain it. Either way, the connection with Cassilis is shown to be mythical, although we will return to this thread in a moment.
Hard facts in the history of the song are hard to come by. What is possibly the earliest version of the song is on a broadside in the Roxburghe collection, entitled ‘The Gypsy Loddie’. Commentators usually date this to about 1720, but it bears no imprint and there is unfortunately nothing to support or refute this dating. The next sighting is ‘Johny Faa, the Gypsie Laddie’ in the 1740 edition of Allan Ramsay’s collection of Scottish ballads, Tea-Table Miscellany, and after that there are several other late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century printings, often simply reprinting Ramsay’s text.
Looking more closely at the two earliest printings provides some useful questions about the song’s early development, but no definitive answers. The Ramsay text, for example, goes straight from the Lord saddling his steeds to the execution, and therefore lacks the dialogue between him and his wife which is present in ‘The Gypsy Loddie’ and virtually all other early versions. Similarly, ‘The Gypsy Loddie’ includes the decidedly peculiar lines, in verse 2:
As soon as her fair face they saw
They called their grandmother over.
But this is easily explained as a mishearing or misunderstanding of the Scottish ‘They cast their glamour (glaumry, etc.) o’er her’, meaning they cast their spell or enchantment over her. In Allan Ramsay’s version the line is ‘They coost the glamer o’er her’.
It is also highly suggestive that the first two known published versions are textually quite different. A close comparison of such details strongly suggests that neither of these is the ‘original’ text, but that there was an earlier version – or more probably versions – from which they both derive, but what or when is unknown.
Which brings us back to the putative Cassilis connection. Bertrand Bronson noticed that a tune in the Skene Manuscript, in the National Library of Scotland, dating from before 1630, is closely related to one of the tunes commonly used later for versions of ‘The Gipsy Laddie’, and is entitled ‘Lady Cassilles Lilt’. Bronson maintains that this is evidence that the song existed at that time and that the tradition linking it with the Cassilis family was already in place, although the evidence is again circumstantial. The tune may well have become associated with the song precisely because the Cassilis legend had become attached to it.
Bronson divides the many tune records for this song into three main groupings. The first of these is well documented in oral tradition over a period of more than 300 years, the earliest record being ‘Lady Cassilles Lilt’. Harry Cox’s tune is from Bronson’s second group, whose tunes open with a repeated descending melodic figure. Some of these are in a minor tonality while others, like that of Harry Cox, are major. Overall, this group is the tune most commonly found with this song in English tradition although, as Bronson notes, it is not confined to England. Harry Cox gives his own ‘twist’ to the tune by lengthening the final note of several phrases and the initial note of lines 4 and 7. Bars 6–7 (which coincide with the first of these) have here been changed from 4/4 and 2/4 respectively to one 3/2 bar in order to be consistent with bar 13 (the second occurrence).
‘There Was an Old Woman in Yorkshire’, sung by Harry Cox, Catfield, Norfolk (1953–6); recorded by Peter Kennedy; issued on English Love Songs, DTS LFX4 (1965), and Seventeen Come Sunday, Folktracks FSA032 (1975).
Roud 183, Laws Q2; 20 entries.
In folk song the battle of the sexes is usually treated humorously and direct action is often preferred to more subtle means. Wife-murder is perhaps not morally acceptable, but at least the husband can say, ‘She started it.’
The song was widely collected in England, and was just as well known in Ireland and in Scotland, under titles such as ‘The Wife of Kelso’ or ‘The Wily Auld Carl’. The main difference in the Scottish versions is that the wife is advised to give her husband ground-up marble rather than marrowbones.
‘Marrowbones’ was already in the oral tradition by about 1840, as is shown by a version in the Robert Bell manuscripts in Newcastle University Library, but for such a popular song surprisingly few printed sources have been found. Only one broadside is known, by John Pitts of London, probably from the 1820s, and another printing, called ‘There Was an Old Woman in Our Town’, in a chapbook of 1818 (in the Robert White collection in Newcastle University Library).
A similar song, ‘Johnny Sands’ (Roud 184), was written by John Sinclair about 1840 and also became popular with local singers. The plot is similar, except that the husband says he is tired of life and wants to drown himself, but in case his courage fails at the last minute she should tie his hands together and push him in. As in ‘Marrowbones’, he makes sure that she is the one to fall in, and he then declares he cannot help because his hands are tied.
Sung by Frank Cole, North Waltham, Hampshire (c.1952); collected by Bob Copper; published in Copper’s Songs and Southern Breezes (1973), pp. 268–9.
Roud 1052; 17 entries.
One of those songs whose popularity is difficult to gauge because it offended some of the people who usually provide us with evidence. The early collectors obviously came across it, but it was not to their taste and they usually noted the tune and first verse only. Sabine Baring-Gould commented, ‘rest very gross, not taken down’ and referred to a version in an ‘old garland’ in the British Museum where the page had been torn out, ‘probably for the same reason why I did not take down the ballad’ (Baring-Gould MSS, SBG/1/2/304). Three Norfolk versions of the tune were published in the JFSS, 4 (1910), with the terse comment by Vaughan Williams, ‘the words are unsuitable for this journal’. H. E. D. Hammond and George B. Gardiner, however, noted full texts, in Dorset and Hampshire respectively, although they did not publish them.
Apart from the general subject of adultery, which is, after all, dealt with in quite a few songs in a humorous way, it seems that the problem lies with the fact that the song’s imagery is too direct, and its text too explicit. But even here the evidence is lacking. To modern eyes it is pretty tame stuff. The euphemism ‘ploughing my ground’ in verse 5 is common, but it is verse 4 that causes more problems in this respect. The rhyme of sport/coat, given here, is sometimes lap/trap, but can also be frolics/bollocks or frolic/jacket. Recent singers have been known to change the line in accordance with the audience and context of performance, and there is no reason to believe that our predecessors were not capable of similar subterfuge.
No nineteenth-century broadside printings have come to light as yet, although they probably did exist. The garland with the missing pages, mentioned by Baring-Gould, is a copy of Daniel Cooper’s Garland in the British Library, published by Viner and Nailer in Bristol, and therefore dating from about 1765. According to the garland’s cover, the song was called ‘The Farmer and the Mole-Catcher’, and it also appears under that name in The Frisky Songster, a deliberately risqué collection in the Bodleian Library, dated 1776, although this is a ‘new edition’, so the original was probably published a few years earlier. This version is somewhat more explicit than any of the collected versions or indeed those commonly sung in rugby-club-type circles today.
There are several tunes associated with this song, some in simple time, others in a bouncing compound time, as here.
‘A-Nutting We Will Go’, sung by William Hands, Chipping Camden, Gloucestershire (c.1932); recorded by James Madison Carpenter (Carpenter MSS, pp.00561–2; Cylinder 130 (sr350)).
Roud 509; 35 entries.
A very widely known song in England, but not so often collected elsewhere in Britain or in North America, this was another that was encountered by many of the earlier collectors but never published by them in its full form. As Sabine Baring-Gould commented in Songs of the West (1905), p. 24, ‘The broadside ballad consists of fourteen verses, and is very gross. I have had to considerably tone down the words.’
The song is a fairly straightforward account of sex in the open air between willing partners, and can be seen as a bit of good clean bawdy fun or an exercise in male wishful thinking, depending on your viewpoint. Twentieth-century singers tended to call it ‘The Nutting Girl’, while a hundred years before it was usually ‘The Nut Girl’ for broadside printers. But the earliest versions were called ‘The Jolly Plough Boy’ or ‘The New Ploughboy’.
Two symbolic references underpin the story which would have been readily understood by rural singers and listeners in England from at least the mid seventeenth century onwards. The first is the notion of the ploughboy as the epitome of manhood – strong, handsome, direct, and irresistible to women – which occurs in many songs. The other is that ‘going nutting’ was a well-known metaphor for al fresco sexual, or at least amorous, encounters, and parents and moralists constantly warned girls against the practice. It was a widely quoted proverb that ‘a good year for nuts is a good year for babies’. So, for example, lascivious Squire Philidor, in James Howard’s play All Mistaken, or The Mad Couple (1667), when confronted by three nurses carrying his illegitimate children exclaims, ‘A very hopeful generation! Sure this was a great nut year.’
As is to be expected, the words vary somewhat, but William Hands’s version is very similar to the standard text printed and reprinted by the main nineteenth-century broadside houses, back to that of John Pitts in the 1820s. But the song was also included in song garlands of the later eighteenth century and the texts varied a little more. In one chapbook version, before the generalized moral warning to young females, the girl says to her ploughboy that if she proves with child he must marry her, but:
When twenty weeks were over, she thicken’d in the waist
She wrote to John a letter, but he had left his place …
and she is, predictably, left alone with her baby.
Frank Purslow notes that this melody cropped up with various texts during the nineteenth century and that some of these described various pastimes, of which the best known seems to have been ‘A-Hunting We Will Go’ (Roud 509) (The Constant Lovers (1972), p. 115).
‘As I Came Home So Late Last Night’, sung by Harry Scott, Eaton Bray, Bedfordshire (18 February 1958); recorded by Peter Kennedy (BBC 26071); also collected by Fred Hamer and published in his Garners Gay (1967), p. 24.
Roud 114, Child 274; 58 entries.
This was an immensely widespread song, probably known all over the English-speaking world, with the wording varying considerably but the structure and basic story remaining the same. Francis J. Child printed only two versions, almost at the end of his seminal collection, but Bertrand Bronson mustered fifty-eight versions with tunes.
The song first appears in the second half of the eighteenth century, but it is not clear whether the original was Scottish or English. A version does appear in the David Herd manuscripts of the 1770s, published as Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic Songs, etc. (1869) and the same text, with tune, in the Scots Musical Museum, 5 (1796), but these are probably pipped at the post by a London broadside, ‘printed and sold at the Printing-Office in Bow Churchyard’, entitled ‘The Merry Cuckold and Kind Wife’, which dates from about 1760. The latter is noteworthy for the fact that the man sees three horses, swords, boots, breeches, hats and heads, and that he is named, Old Witchet, rather than being simply an anonymous fool. It could be argued that these Scottish and English versions are so dissimilar that the song had probably been in circulation for some time before these printings, but this is at present pure speculation.
Child, as was his wont, listed a number of analogous ballads and tales from across Europe, with varying degrees of similarity to our song, but none seem to predate the British examples. Indeed, one of his descriptions serves as a caution not to jump to conclusions in cross-national comparisons. He gives details of a very similar German ballad, very popular on broadsides, which spread into Scandinavia and Hungary from 1790 onwards. But this ballad started as a direct translation, by Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer, of the Bow Churchyard broadside listed above.
Considering its widespread popularity with singers, it is odd that few nineteenth-century broadsides seem to have survived. If this is a true picture of the situation, and not simply an accident of survival, it demonstrates that although printed forms are considered to be crucial to the life of traditional song in general, it does not necessarily follow that all songs needed print to live and multiply.
As in many humorous songs, Harry Scott’s tune for ‘Our Goodman’ is very straightforward in both pitches and rhythm, presumably in the service of putting across the comedy of the narrative. Quite a few of the pitches are repeated up to four times in a row (for example bar 5) and melodic movement tends to be stepwise or in thirds. The rhythm often follows the rhythm of the words as they might be declaimed. Almost all the tune is restricted to the first six degrees of the scale. The chorus becomes a more rounded melody, incorporating more variety of melodic and rhythmic movement, and a greater melodic compass.
The earliest extant tune dates from 1796 (James Johnson, The Scots Musical Museum). Bronson comments on the similar feel of most of tunes sung for this song, despite their many superficial differences. They are almost all major in tonality and in two- or four-time, as is Harry Scott’s melody.
Sung by Arthur Wood, Middlesbrough, Yorkshire, on Yorkshire Folk Singers E.P. (private pressing) recorded by Mary and Nigel Hudleston; also in the Hudlestons’ Songs of the Ridings (2001).
Roud 1115; 30 entries.
Lucy Broadwood noted this as ‘a great favourite amongst country singers’, and Alfred Williams called it ‘A simple yet pleasing song, with genuine human feeling expressed within its lines’. He thought it must have been composed in Yorkshire, but Anne Gilchrist, on the other hand, thought it was originally Irish.
It is surprising to learn that some of the early collectors thought the song really was composed by the man named in the first line. So, for example, Frank Kidson wrote, after saying how popular it was with singers in Yorkshire, ‘The words are on Yorkshire ballad sheets, and no doubt they are the production of the aforesaid Spencer, some wandering ballad singer, who has not been endowed with much poetical genius’ (Traditional Tunes (1891), p. 154). It must be said that the song is better heard than read.
The earliest collected version, from ‘a Derbyshire peasant’, appears in M. H. Mason’s Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs (1878), but there are many broadside printings, from all over the country, back to sheets printed in London in the 1820s or 1830s.
Arthur Wood’s tune appears to be widespread but no other versions, as documented, contain the extensive melodic variation that he introduces into his rendition.
87 Three Maidens to Milking Did Go
Sung by Fred Hewett, Mapledurwell, Hampshire (26 July 1955); recorded by Bob Copper (BBC 21860); also published in Copper’s Songs and Southern Breezes (1973), pp. 280–81, and issued on Topic 12T317 and Who’s That at My Bedroom Window? TSCD660 (1998).
Roud 290; 32 entries.
In full versions the symbolism of birds and bushes is not particularly subtle, and although this song was noted by many of the earlier collectors, including Cecil Sharp, Sabine Baring-Gould, George B. Gardiner, H. E. D. Hammond, Frank Kidson and Ralph Vaughan Williams, it was presumably the tunes which attracted them as they were not impressed with the words and either did not publish them or edited them heavily. Indeed, Kidson writes, ‘This air my friend, Mr Holgate, remembers being sung in and about Leeds. If not very old, it is good, and it could be wished that the succeeding verses to the first (the only one which I have printed), were equally meritorious and more suitable to this work’ (Traditional Tunes (1891), pp. 72–3).
Nevertheless, Sharp collected ten different versions, so it must have been well known. Alfred Williams published an innocuous version in his Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames (1923), p. 229, which shows signs of deliberate bowdlerization, but as his manuscript text reads the same as that in the book, it may have been the singer (Eli Dawes of Southrop), or someone before him, who amended it, rather than the collector.
The song’s early history is unclear, and the broadside printings are something of a mystery. A handful of sheets have survived, from various nineteenth-century provincial presses, including Kendrew (York); Ross, Walker and Williamson (New-castle); Birmingham (Dublin); and Jackson (Birmingham); but remarkable by their absence are all the prolific London producers – Catnach, Pitts, Disley, Fortey, Such, and so on. Of the surviving examples, the earliest is probably that of Kendrew, who was in business in York from 1803 to 1838. Nevertheless, the song appears in Thomas Lyle’s Ancient Ballads and Songs (1827), with the comment, ‘From recollection – air plaintive and pastoral’. Lyle was born in Paisley in 1792, and notes to other songs in his book imply that he was remembering material from about 1810 to 1815.
The tune used for this song is is very stable. There are many slight variations in detail and occasional versions in 3/4, though often mixed with bars of two- or four-time, but the basic tune is always recognizable. Fred Hewett omits the second phrase of the tune in stanzas 2 and 3, and the first and second phrases of the tune in stanza 4.
Sung by Sam Larner, Winterton, Norfolk (1958–1960); recorded by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger; issued on Now Is the Time for Fishing (Folkways FG3507/Topic TSCD511).
Roud 1173; 20 entries.
A reasonably common song in the traditional corpus, which was probably more widely known than is indicated by the number of collected versions. Its somewhat slight storyline combines the sentiments of ‘Spencer the Rover’ (No. 86) with ‘The Green Bed’ (No. 10). ‘The Wild Rover’ is one of the songs which the post-war Revival groups made extremely famous, and it is often assumed to be Irish as a result, but it is not. Indeed, it was possibly Sam Larner’s version which was the source on which the Revival standard was based.
‘The Wild Rover’ was very widely printed by broadside houses throughout the nineteenth century, in texts which do not vary much, but it is not clear whether it was in circulation in this form before 1800. The earliest evidence so far discovered is in a twelve-page songster in the British Library called A Collection of Choice Songs, published by J. Clarke of Stockport and therefore dating from between 1778 and 1809, and the next is a broadside by J. Jennings of London from about 1815.
But the roots of the song go back much further. In the Roxburghe collection (2.200-201) of black-letter broadsides is a song written by Thomas Lanfiere entitled ‘The Good Fellow’s Resolution, or The Bad Husband’s Return from His Folly’, which was printed about 1678–80. It tells the same story as ‘The Wild Rover’, but at much greater length, and has a number of verbal similarities, such as the first two lines:
I have been a bad husband this full fifteen year
And have spent many pounds in good ale and strong beer
and the chorus:
For now I will lay up my money in store
And I never will play the bad husband no more
while the incident with the landlady is told in almost the same words as in later versions. The term ‘Wild Rover’ does not appear, but it is one of a number of ‘bad husband’ songs printed about that time. Nevertheless, we do not know how and when the ‘Bad Husband’ was turned into the ‘Wild Rover’.
It makes little difference to the song itself, but our modern view of the main character is to a certain extent coloured by the last verse, which varies considerably. In Sam Larner’s song the man determines to return to his parents, so we see him as a wayward young fellow coming to his senses. But in some he resolves to return to his wife, who has presumably been waiting patiently for his change of heart. In others he will return to his father and get himself a wife, as part of the settling-down process.
The tune used for the verse of Sam Larner’s ‘Wild Rover’ is the same as that of ‘If I Were a Blackbird’ (No. 47). Other melodies have also been collected, including one whose chorus is the same tune as ‘The Saucy Sailor Boy’ (No. 17).
Sung by James Parsons, Lew Down, Devon (25 May 1891); collected by Sabine Baring-Gould (Baring-Gould MSS, SBG/1/2/442).
Roud 171; 20 entries.
‘I remember the time when I liked a red-coat myself very well – and indeed so I do still at my heart.’ So said Mrs Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), and she was not the only one. Indeed, the fatal attractions of the soldier’s red coat for eighteenth- and nineteenth-century girls was proverbial, and young Ramble Away clearly knew it.
The name of the fair in verse 2 varies considerably from version to version, appearing as Brimbledon, Brocklesby, Burlington, Derry Down, Nottingham and others, and is often given as the title of the song, but in the broadside texts it is almost always Birmingham Street or Fair. Although the earlier collectors encountered it a fair number of times, it was not often published in full by them, unless in a cleaned-up version like Cecil Sharp’s in his Folk Songs from Somerset, III (1906).
The song was found regularly only in England, but was printed by most of the broadside houses from about the 1810s onwards, and there was even a follow-up song, ‘Answer to Young Ramble Away’, which shows that the original must have been popularly known. In this, Ramble Away learns the error of his ways and returns to marry his Nancy and claim his son.
The first note of bar 5 is unclear in the manuscript. It looks like an E and this is what is reproduced in the published version. Magnification of the page in the manuscript indicates that the notehead is on the line (D), as reproduced here.
‘The Sailor Cut Down in His Prime’, sung by Herbert Prince, Warminster, Wiltshire (6 October 1954); recorded by Peter Kennedy (BBC 21497).
Roud 2, Laws Q26; 65 entries.
Very widely known across England, Ireland and North America but less so in Scotland, this is without doubt one of the most versatile songs in the Anglo-American tradition, as it seems able to adapt itself to any group or situation. It always concerns someone who is dying (or recently dead), but this can be a ‘young soldier’ or ‘young sailor’, ‘airman’, ‘cowboy’ or ‘lumberman’, or sometimes simply a ‘young man’ or ‘young girl’. But whoever the unfortunate hero is, the military-style funeral with drums, pipes and rifles seems perfectly appropriate.
Herbert Prince’s version makes it clear that the sailor is dying of venereal disease, and while some versions include other explicit clues such as ‘Lock Hospital’, treatment with mercury, and euphemisms such as being ‘disordered’ by the girls, many versions manage to avoid or disguise this element and leave the reason for the illness unspecified. But if some singers were not aware of the song’s background, collectors were embarrassed by it. When the tune was first printed in the JFSS (1 (1904), 254) only one verse of the text was included, with the comment, ‘“The Unfortunate Lad” is a ballad that will scarcely bear reprinting in its entirety.’ But a few years later they were bold enough to print a whole text, and Lucy Broadwood commented, ‘a version of this was sung to me, inappropriately enough, by a little girl of seven, in a Sussex field’ (JFSS, 4 (1913), 326).
Despite the number and variety of collected versions, the early history of the song is still unclear, and surprisingly few nineteenth-century broadside copies have survived. This may be because the subject of the song put printers off, although they happily printed other, more explicit items, or it may simply be that the broadside collectors did not like to have copies in their collections. An undated broadside in the Madden collection, entitled ‘The Buck’s Elegy’, which concerns the death of a young man about town is clearly the earliest and appears to date from between 1790 and 1810. There is also a single verse and tune, collected in Cork in December 1848, in P. W. Joyce’s Old Irish Folk Music and Songs (1909), p. 249, collected from a man who heard it sung there about 1790. The song is probably at least half a century older than this, but at present we have no evidence to support such a theory.
VI
I Can Guide a Plough …
Rural Life and Occupations
91 All Jolly Fellows Who Follow the Plough
Sung by John Hodson of Aldbrough, Yorkshire (1972); collected by Steve Gardham; published in Gardham’s An East Riding Songster (1982), p. 15.
Roud 346; 74 entries.
One of the most widespread songs of rural life in England, perhaps only second to ‘The Farmer’s Boy’ for popularity (see No. 94), but rarely collected elsewhere in Britain or North America. Cecil Sharp wrote, ‘I find that almost every singer knows it, the bad singers know but little else. Perhaps it is for this reason that the tune is very corrupt, the words are almost always the same’ (quoted in Sabine Baring-Gould, Songs of the West (1905), notes, pp.18–19).
To some it smacks too much of rural contentment to ring true, but others recognize the pride of the farm labourer in his work, and the spark of independence shown in verses 6 and 7 greatly increases its verisimilitude. Texts vary remarkably little from version to version, and it was widely printed on broadsides in the nineteenth century. But the earliest found so far is in the British Library, printed by Evans of London in 1794.
As George B. Gardiner noted in 1909, and others have commented since, this song is commonly sung to the tune of ‘Villikins and His Dinah’ and John Hodson’s melody is no exception. This tune has been used for many English folk songs, including ‘Lord Randal’ (Child 12, Roud 10), ‘Green Grow the Laurels’ (No. 46) and ‘The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter’ (No. 117). The earliest records date from the early 1850s, when the song ‘Villikins and His Dinah’, a parody of ‘William and Dinah’, as sung by Frederick Robson (and soon after Sam Cowell), wowed theatre audiences in London, Cork, Dublin and Edinburgh (Norman Cazden, Folk Songs of the Catskills (1982), pp. 156–7). The tune began to be named on broadsides from around the same period.
The first records of the tune as sung in oral tradition for ‘All Jolly Fellows’ date from the late nineteenth century. They are rather more varied than one might imagine for a tune that is often described as ‘ubiquitous’. Most are in triple time and have similarities with the standard ‘Villikins’ tune (as printed in sheet music and exemplified by John Hodson’s tune). Several, however, have become modal (either flattening the seventh to become Mixolydian, or the third as well, making them Dorian and minor-sounding). Others adopt a different melodic contour in places and the notes on which the musical phrases cadence are not always the same as those in the ‘Villikins’. There are even a few versions of ‘All Jolly Fellows’ sung to tunes distinct from the ‘Villikins’ tune family, such as the two- and four-time examples among the Gardiner and Hammond manuscripts.
Sung by George Spicer, Copthorne, Sussex (4 February 1956); recorded by Peter Kennedy (BBC 23093).
Roud 944; 40 entries.
One of the most well known of the many cumulative folk songs, this was particularly popular, for obvious reasons, in pub sessions. In the hands of an accomplished singer like George Spicer ‘The Barley Mow’ was quite a tour de force, and it was quite astonishing how the speed and rhythm of the ever-lengthening chorus could be maintained. In the middle or end of a pub singing session, of course, it could also be seen as a test of sobriety. Some singers even elongated it and sang health to the army, the navy, the royal family, and so on, but the last verse was nearly always ‘the company’. In some versions, the wording is ‘We’ll drink out of …’ instead of ‘Jolly good luck to …’, and in this case the list often continues after the barrel with the pipe, the well, the river, the River Thames and the ocean.
Only a few nineteenth-century broadside printings have survived, which gives some support to a theory mentioned elsewhere in these notes that cumulative and highly structured repetitive texts did not need print to survive, whereas lyrical and narrative songs have needed its aid far more.
We have an unusually early text, in Thomas Ravenscroft’s Deuteromelia (1609). This is definitely our song, which goes through the sizes of drinking vessels and storage, although the actual words are quite different from modern versions. But it is the second line in each verse – ‘Sing gentle butler balla moy’ – which introduces another line of enquiry. It has been suggested that in the ‘balla moy’ phrase we have the origin of ‘barley mow’. Furthermore, a sixteenth-century drinking song, usually called ‘How, Butler How!’ after its first line, had the line ‘Gentle butler, bell amy’, which the editors gloss as ‘good friend’. The phrase ‘barley mow’ seems to fit into the song text so well that it hardly needs an ancestor, but it appears to have one all the same. See Richard Leighton Greene’s The Early English Carols (1936), p. 285, and R. T. Davies’ Medieval English Lyrics (1963), p. 276, for the sixteenth-century song.
Peter Kennedy calls this song ‘a tongue-twisting cumulative catalogue of drinking companions’ in his Folksongs of Britain and Ireland (1975). The expandable section, which carries the accumulating words (bars 9–10 of the version given here), is generally sung to a repeated note or a simple melodic figure that is repeated over and over, the singer varying the rhythm as needed to accommodate the words, before leading into the final phrase. Many tunes found with this song, including that printed by William Chappell in 1859, are in compound time, which lends itself to a rollicking performance style. George Spicer’s fine rendition has the added feature of a rapid, and seamless, shift from compound metre (6/8 in the transcription) to simple time (3/4) in the cumulative section and back again.
Sung by Bob Mills, Alresford, Hampshire (1977); recorded by Paul Marsh; published on Let This Room Be Cheerful, Forest Tracks Cassette
FTC 6025 (1991).
Roud 1635; 41 entries.
Immensely popular in England, but hardly noticed elsewhere, ‘Buttercup Joe’ is one of a host of ‘country yokel’ songs which, despite poking fun at country people, was readily adopted and sung by them. Most of the early collectors did not note it, although there is one version each in the manuscripts of Cecil Sharp (1904), George B. Gardiner (1905) and Alfred Williams (1918), and we do not know if the others deliberately ignored it or it was simply not popular enough for them to come across it. Post-war collectors have reported that it was one of the most commonly known songs in England, but much of this popularity stems from a Zonophone 78 rpm record, sung by Albert Richardson, issued in 1928.
The song is clearly a late nineteenth-century music-hall-type song, but considering how recent the song is, it has proved surprisingly difficult to pinpoint its origin. The earliest known versions are printed in the New Prize Medal Song Book, no. 9 (June 1872) and on a Pearson (Manchester) broadside, almost certainly about 1870, and both of these mention, ‘as sung by Harry Garratt’, but its author remains unknown.
Richardson’s recording seems to have led to, or at least encouraged, the standardization of the tune for this song. The two versions (collected by Sharp and Gardiner) noted before 1928 were sung to melodies which are distinct from each other and from the Richardson tune, although they are in the same metre and have much the same rhythm. Extant versions collected after 1928 are sung to more or less the same tune as Richardson’s. This is certainly true of Bob Mills’s tune, which, although rhythmically freer, has several melodic details in common with the recording, including the varied final bar of verse 2.
Bob Mills sings with a certain amount of freedom, pausing here, speeding up there, for dramatic effect. This has to some extent been regularized in the transcription for the sake of clarity.
Sung by Mark Wyatt, Enborne, Berkshire; published in Lucy Broadwood, English County Songs (1893), pp.120–21.
Roud 408, Laws Q30; 76 entries.
Extremely widely known in Britain and also in North America, ‘The Farmer’s Boy’ is for some the archetypal English folk song and was often used as a semi-official rural anthem at union meetings and harvest suppers. Most of the early collectors noted versions and they commented on how common it was. Sabine Baring-Gould, for example, wrote, ‘One of the most popular and widely known folk-songs in England. It would be hard to find an old labourer who has not heard it’ (English Minstrelsie, I (1895), p. xxx). Some later writers, however, have baulked at the rosy view of farm work and the picture of worker-farmer relations which it portrays. See Michael Pickering, ‘The Farmworker and The Farmer’s Boy’ in Lore and Language (1983) for more on this aspect of the song.
Despite attempts by several of our best researchers to pin down its early history, the origin of the song still eludes us. The earliest concrete date we can find is that the song was in existence in 1832, which is when it was included, as ‘The Lucky Farmer’s Boy’, in James Catnach’s catalogue of broadside ballads, and his rival John Pitts also printed it, at an address which he occupied from 1819 onwards. Another broadside, printed by J. Kendrew of York, is possibly earlier, as he was in business from 1808 to 1838, but it could be later, and several other printings can be confidently dated to the 1830s.
There are several red herrings, however. Robert Bloomfield (1766–1823), Suffolk farm labourer turned shoemaker turned poet, made his name with his best-selling poem ‘The Farmer’s Boy’, published in 1800. But this poem bears no relationship to our song. Then there is another, totally different song, called ‘The Farmer’s Boy’, which was printed on broadsides and in songsters at the same time as the folk song and indeed was included in the same 1832 catalogue of James Catnach. It commences:
Indeed my simple tale is true
A farm my father had
and goes on to explain that the father died, and the mother lost the farm and died, leaving the ‘farmer’s boy’ an orphan and seeking employment, the boy saying, ‘O I can drive the team at plough …’ The subject matter and sentiment are the same as our folk song, but the words are completely different. And then there is the claim from Little Leigh in Cheshire (on the C. C. Publishing website, www.cc-publishing.co.uk):
The composer was Charles Whitehead who was born [in Cheshire] in 1792, and the song concerned his brother-in-law Charles Smith who, at the age of fifteen, unsuccessfully sought employment at various local farms … A century later the story was confirmed by Whitehead’s grand-daughter who related that her aunt, Naomi, had actually been present at the time the song was written.
In the Cheshire Life magazine (February 1968), the same story is told but it is Thomas Smith who is immortalized in the song. Sources such as these, which do not provide any clue about where they got their information, must always be treated with caution. They may be true, but are more likely to be another example of the post-facto claim of authorship which often attaches itself to well-known songs. Further research into ‘The Lucky Farmer’s Boy’ is clearly necessary.
Sung by Robert Hard, South Brent, Devon (October 1888); collected by Sabine Baring-Gould (Baring-Gould MSS, SBG/1/1/82). Robert Hard’s text had two lines missing, which have been supplied from other versions. At the end of the verses in Hard’s text, Baring-Gould does not give the format of the chorus, but simply writes ‘etc.’. The format given here is that published by him in the first edition of his Songs and Ballads of the West, but even then it is not clear whether one should repeat the words he labels as the ‘chorus’ each time or change them in accordance with the words of the relevant verse.
Roud 880; 18 entries.
Apparently not noted outside England, and even there collected only in the southern half of the country, ‘Fathom the Bowl’ is one of several traditional paeans to male-bonding over alcohol, complete with the seemingly obligatory snipe at wives’ disapproval (another one is ‘O Good Ale’, Roud 203).
Frank Purslow regarded it as an ‘arty’ nineteenth-century drinking song (The Wanton Seed, 1968), and it has to be said the song has a slightly fake feel, as if it were written for a middle-class glee-club clientele, but no early sheet music has turned up and it was widely available on broadsides, where it is more commonly called ‘The Punch Ladle’. John Pitts and James Catnach both printed it, and as it is listed in the latter’s 1832 catalogue of songs it already existed by that time, but no earlier versions have yet emerged. In his English Folk-Songs (1891), however, William Alexander Barrett states that it dates from about 1770, but on what grounds is not clear.
The odd detail in verse 4 about the brothers being dead in the sea is, in nearly all other versions (including the broadsides), ‘My father is dead …’, although it makes little difference to the meaning. It has recently been suggested that this line, and the fact that the song mentions brandy and rum, indicates that the song was originally about smuggling, but it is always unwise to extrapolate thus from internal details without corroborating evidence. It probably means little more than ‘nothing in the world matters except drink and good company’.
Alfred Williams, in his Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames (1923), p. 88, offered the following toast to follow the song:
Here’s to the large bee that flies so high
The small bee gathers the honey
The poor man he does all the work
And the rich man pockets the money.
In the music notation, the last note of bar 16 is given here as in Baring-Gould’s manuscript but is written a tone higher in his printed version.
‘The Broomdasher’, sung by George Tompsett, Cuckfield, Sussex (1959); recorded by Mervyn Plunkett.
Roud 379; 44 entries.
This song was collected many times across England, with very similar texts, and was also well known on nineteenth-century broadsides. The earliest available text is in Thomas D’Urfey’s Wit and Mirth; or, Pills to Purge the Melancholy (1720 edition), where it is called ‘The Jolly Broom-Man, or the Unhappy Boy Turn’d Thrifty’, and was also printed in a chapbook as The Jolly Broomsman’s Garland. This has the feeling of a stage song, probably sung by a broom seller – a well-known character in dramas and a staple of the ‘Street Cries of London’ type of publication, popular from the mid sixteenth to the nineteenth century. The 1720 song is longer, but similar in storyline to that of the later traditional versions, although it has a very different ending: instead of the boy marrying the lady, it ends with verses praising his broom-selling trade.
Sung by Harry Wiltshire, Bampton, Oxfordshire (c.1930); collected by James Madison Carpenter (Carpenter MSS, pp. 00538–9; Cylinder 104 (sr323), Disc Sides 229 (sr117a), 230 (sr117b), 311 (sr158a)).
Roud 164; 75 entries.
This was a very widespread traditional song indeed, which Alfred Williams said was ‘everywhere popular’ (Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames (1923), pp. 246–7) and Lucy Broadwood dubbed ‘a constant favourite’, across Britain and Ireland but more particularly in England (JFSS, 6 (1918), 27–8). It was perhaps inevitable that this song would attract the ritual-origins theorists, who claimed that it was all to do with corn spirits and resurrection, but it is now generally agreed that such notions were romantic wishful thinking and there is no evidence either for the theories themselves or for this song to be anything but a clever allegory.
If we stick to what we do know, a ballad called ‘Sir John Barleycorne’ was entered into the register of the Stationers’ Company on 14 December 1624. Several printings of a black-letter broadside entitled ‘A Pleasant New Ballad to Sing Eve’ning and Morn, of the Bloody Murder of Sir John Barley-Corn’, from later in the seventeenth century, have survived in the major collections, such as Douce, Euing, Pepys and Roxburghe, and it is likely that this is the song which was registered. This is recognizably the ancestor of our song, but is much longer. By the mid eighteenth century, however, somebody had taken the ‘Pleasant New Ballad’ and rewritten it in much shorter order as ‘Sir John Barleycorn’, and this was repeatedly printed in chapbook garlands and subsequently on a wide variety of broadsides in the nineteenth century.
However, these were not the only items that relied on a personification of John Barleycorn, and he was clearly a well-known character. A number of prose chapbooks, for example, were issued during the eighteenth century with titles such as The Dying Groans of Sir John Barleycorn: being his Grievous Complaints Against the Brewers of Bad Ale (1790), and The Arraigning and Indicting of Sir John Barleycorn, Knt., newly composed by a Well-Wisher to Sir John and all that love him (1770?). There is also another, much less well known, traditional song called ‘John Barleycorn Is a Hero Bold’ (Roud 2141), written by Joe Geoghegan about 1870, which appears half a dozen times in the folk-song collections.
But if our ‘modern’ ‘John Barleycorn’ song is a rewrite of the early seventeenth-century ‘Pleasant New Ballad’ broadside, it is also possible that that in its turn was a rewrite of an earlier Scottish song called ‘Allan-a-Maut’, which certainly existed before 1568 and which covers something of the same ground. Anyone interested in a more detailed examination of the history of the song is recommended to read Peter Wood’s article in FMJ, 8:4 (2004).
Sung by John Taylor, Sheffield, Yorkshire (27 March 1970); recorded by Ian Russell; printed in FMJ, 5:3 (1987), 348–9.
Roud 1088; 25 entries.
In a very real sense, carters, waggoners and carriers were the life’s blood of the rural community before the coming of the railways and for a long time afterwards, carrying equipment, materials, produce, animals and people around the farm, the village, and to and from the towns. Several songs featured waggoners, but ‘The Jolly Waggoner’ (sometimes ‘The Warbling Waggoner’) was one of the most popular. Alfred Williams commented in 1918, for example, ‘Formerly a great favourite throughout the Thames valley. I have met with it in many places’ (Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames (1923), p. 157). It was also widely available on broadsides, and the earliest surviving copy is dated 1794.
John Taylor’s version has three of the usual four verses, but the other verse adds little to the song, which is somewhat inconsequential. Sabine Baring-Gould noted that it was sung about 1835 by the singer and comedian Paul Bedford (1792–1871), in costume, and that he had added topical verses about the coming of steam threatening to ruin the waggoning trade (A Garland of Country Song (1895), pp. 34–5). But these verses were already present in the earliest known broadsides. It was also a hit for other professional singers, including Sam Cowell (1820–64).
‘The Ploughboy’, sung by Lily Cook, North Chailey, Sussex (September 1955); recorded by Bob Copper (BBC 22736).
Roud 151; 28 entries.
According to the documentary record, this song was quite common in the English tradition, but it was probably even more popular than the collected versions indicate. ‘This song is a favourite throughout England,’ wrote Sabine Baring-Gould, but he also noted that it had ‘two or three objectionable stanzas’ (A Garland of Country Song (1895), pp. 58–9). There is something schizophrenic about ‘The Lark in the Morning’, as it exists in three rather different forms, which we can separate sufficiently for discussion, although in the real world the picture is less clear-cut.
What we have here from Lily Cook is perhaps the core of the song: the pastoral image of the lark ascending and the conventional praise of the ploughboy. But in the earlier broadsides the tone of the rest of the song is quite different. When the ploughboy and his ‘sweet lass’ return from the country fair:
Where the meadows is mowed and the grass is cut down
If they chance for to tumble among the green hay
It’s ‘Kiss me now or never’ the damsel will say.
And later on:
Come Molly and Dolly let’s away to the wake
There the plow boys will treat us with beer, ale and cake
And if in coming home they should gain their ends
Never fear but they’ll marry and make it amends.
It is to be hoped that their faith in their ploughboys was not misguided. But the story in the nineteenth-century broadsides progressed differently:
And as they return from the wake to the town
The meadows being mown and the grass cut down
We chanc’d to tumble all on the new hay
It’s ‘Kiss me now or never’ the maiden did say.
When twenty weeks were over and past
Her mamma ask’d her the reason why she so thicken’d in the waist
‘It was the pretty ploughboy,’ the damsel did say
‘That caus’d me to tumble on the new-mown hay.’
No mention of marriage here.
Traditional versions collected from singers either miss out the sex altogether, or tend towards the nineteenth-century broadside texts, but they occasionally show the influence of the earlier broadsides. But our picture is incomplete because the early collectors were not keen on the sexual encounters and noted down, or published, only the safe pastoral verses.
The oldest known versions date from the last quarter of the eighteenth century and tend to be called ‘The Plowman’s Glory’. The earliest is in Four Excellent New Songs, a garland printed in Edinburgh in 1778.
‘The Miller and His Sons’, from J. Collingwood Bruce and John Stokoe, Northumbrian Minstrelsy (1882), pp. 94–5.
Roud 138, Laws Q21; 19 entries.
Reasonably widespread in England, but hugely popular in North America, this song relies on the traditional distrust of millers, which was endemic in British popular culture for centuries. In feudal times, the lord of the manor owned the mill and locals had no choice but to use its services and pay the stipulated toll. In later periods the miller was independent, but still took his payment in kind as a proportion of the flour he produced for each individual customer, and this system was wide open to abuse. The song is also interesting for the motif of three sons, each addressed individually, which is a common feature of many traditional folk tales.
Although not published till 1882, this version was probably collected in the 1850s, when the Newcastle Society of Antiquaries launched their project to note local songs and tunes. The history of this song is a bit of a mystery. At least two different printings have survived from the mid eighteenth century, and it was included in the catalogue of ‘old ballads’ issued by William and Cluer Dicey of London, in 1754, under the title of ‘The Miller’s Advice to his Three Sons in taking of Toll’. But no other broadside prints have survived. It is, of course, possible that the song survived in oral tradition without the aid of print, and its simple repetitive nature would have helped, but it is unlikely that this is the true case, and nineteenth-century printings will probably turn up one day.
Sung by Robert Metcalf, Ilkley, Yorkshire (5 December 1909); collected by T. S. Carter and F. Ferguson (Lucy Broadwood MSS, LEB/5/114).
Roud 355; 23 entries.
The importance of farming to the health and stability of the nation is a regular theme of songs of previous centuries, and ‘The Painful Plough’ was a well-known example. James Henry Dixon, in his early collection Ancient Poems (1846), noted its popularity:
This is one of our oldest agricultural ditties, and maintains its popularity to the present hour. It is called for at merry-makings and feasts in every party of the country. The tune is in the minor key, and of a pleasing character.
It is probably not quite as ancient as he seemed to think, as it cannot be shown to be older than the later eighteenth century. The earliest known version is in an eight-page chapbook entitled The Ploughman’s Garland, printed at Darlington in 1774 (Bodleian Library, Harding A36/11), where it is described as ‘an Excellent New Song’, which takes twenty-two 8-line verses to tell the story. It was presumably cut down to a manageable length by a broadside printer in the early nineteenth century, and most of the later printers issued the shorter text at one time or another. The collected traditional versions follow the broadsides quite closely. It should be explained that ‘painful’ in this context signifies painstaking, diligent, or hard-working.
In the music notation, a dot has been added to the final minim to complete the bar. The melodic variation is indicated in the manuscript by means of a note ‘Sometimes sung E’ beneath the final note of bar 6, and a notated E above the D on the first beat of the next bar. It is possible that the written indication refers to the same thing as the music notation, but I have interpreted them here as referring to separate notes.
Sung by Gabriel Figg, West Chiltington, Sussex (4 July 1965); recorded by Joy Hyman (BBC 29821).
Roud 2409; 17 entries.
This song has been a puzzle to song enthusiasts ever since it was first collected in the Victorian and Edwardian period. Who was old Cole and young Cole (or Coal?), for example, and what is meant by ‘Twankydillo’? Where evidence is tangled and inconclusive it is usually replaced by speculation, which invariably starts the investigation off in the wrong direction. It is often assumed, for example, that this song is indelibly linked to the blacksmith’s trade, and that it is a remnant of some ancient ritual to do with the craft. But this is a prime example of the tendency in folklore writing to assume that things which are connected at one point in time have always been so, and that everything goes back a very long way. In this case it seems that neither is correct. An example here is Lucy Broadwood’s assertion that the reference to bagpipes should be read as ‘blowpipes’, as this is more relevant to the smithy setting of the song (English County Songs (1893), pp. 138–9), but in fact the bagpipe reference is one of the few constants in the song’s tangled history.
An article by Frederick Sawyer, ‘Sussex Songs and Music’, in the Journal of the British Archaeological Association 42 (1886), 306–27, firmly places the song in the ‘Old Clem’ celebrations of local blacksmiths which took place on St Clement’s Day (23 November) every year, and other singers over the next couple of decades confirm the connection with the trade, beyond the simple mention in the text. But in piecing together the history of the song, the connection with Old Clem may well be a red herring anyway. The song actually makes no reference to Clem at all, and the connection between blacksmiths and St Clement in Britain seems to date only from the early nineteenth century. So perhaps it had been adopted (and adapted) by the blacksmiths at a relatively late date.
Three extant broadsides (Jennings, Catnach and Pitts) dating from around 1810– 30 have texts similar to ours but are called ‘The Bold Farriers’ and make no mention of blacksmiths as such. And in these, the word ‘Twanky Dillow’ appears just once at the end of the chorus rather than being repeated. Another sheet printed by Hurd (Shaftesbury) around 1830 has the ‘blacksmith’ words, but the chorus is given as ‘Twang dillo …’, a small but significant difference, to which we will return.
An undated broadside in the Madden collection, probably from the turn of the nineteenth century, entitled ‘The Envied Shepherd’, makes no mention of blacksmiths at all but is about shepherds and is clearly related to our song, including the lines:
Green willow, green willow, green willow, willow, willow
And he plays upon his bagpipe made of the green willow.
This ‘shepherd’ version of the song lasted into the twentieth century, as it was collected by H. E. D. Hammond from John Hallett in Dorset in June 1906 (Hammond MSS, HAM/4/21/11) and appears in his collection as ‘Twankydillo’.
Before the turn of the nineteenth century we can find no mention of the song, but there are numerous references in the eighteenth century to the words ‘twangdillo’ and ‘tangdillo’, meaning the twanging of a stringed musical instrument, often in a derogatory sense (see OED). In addition, these words appear in choruses to several songs, including a nursery rhyme, ‘The Goose and the Gander’, and ‘Twangdillo’, a rather risqué song in D’Urfey’s Wit and Mirth (1719), and in each case the word is repeated in the same way as the ‘twankydillo’ in our song.
To sum up: the connection with blacksmiths gets weaker and disappears as we move further back in time. The ‘twankydillo’ is usually a semi-onomatopoeic reference to music and was used as a generic chorus line in a number of songs. There is no evidence for any ritual origin for the song.
VII
The Sons of Harmony …
Animals and Nonsense
‘Brian O’Flynn’, sung by Mrs Todd, Chesterfield, Derbyshire (1960s); recorded by Fred Hamer; published in Sam Richards and Tish Stubbs, The English Folksinger (1979), p. 61.
Roud 294; 23 entries.
Alfred Williams, who prints a similar text, commented that ‘Bryan O’Lynn’ was a favourite along the Thames side, from Malmesbury to Faringdon and in the neighbouring villages as far as Aldsworth (Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames (1923), p. 181), and versions were collected all over Britain, Ireland and North America. It is often the case that the songs which make little sense turn out to be some of the oldest, and this one goes back at least 500 years. It seems to have been a popular song in the mid sixteenth century, with three separate printed references: ‘Thom of Lyn’ is mentioned in the Complaynt of Scotland (1549) and a ‘Ballett of Thomalyn’ was entered in the register of the Stationers’ Company in 1557/8. What seems to confirm these as our song is the verse about the bridge, and the character Tom a Lin, which occur in a play by W. Wager, The Longer Thou Livest the More Fool Thou Art (c.1560). The song was printed regularly in chapbooks and garlands throughout the nineteenth century, and it also entered the children’s song repertoire, as shown in James Orchard Halliwell’s important collection The Nursery Rhymes in England, in 1843.
It is sometimes assumed that this is an anti-Irish song, and it probably was in some singers’ minds, but it was widely sung in Ireland, and the first verse often started ‘Tommy Linn was a Scotchman born’, or ‘… a Dutchman born’, and so on. On balance, it seems more often to have been thought to concern a ‘village idiot’ rather than an ethnic one.
This is a simply constructed tune based on a stepwise ascending motif, each time with a different twist at the end. This results in an AA’A structure. The majority of tunes associated with this song revolve around 1-3-2-1 figurations, or sequences based on this pattern. In terms of range, Mrs Todd’s tune and most other versions are confined to the first five degrees of the scale, plus the lower fifth, which is usually employed as an upbeat. The simplicity of the tune and its pretty much ubiquitous compound metre allow the song to be performed at a gallop, as in Mrs Todd’s performance. A number of singers, including Mrs Todd, momentarily hold up the gallop with a sustained note or deliberate gap at strategic points in the text, such as the ends of the first or final phrases, or immediately before the chorus, adding to the comic effect.
‘Bryan O’Lynn’ was printed in The Dublin Comic Songster, where it is reported as ‘sung by Mr Purcell the celebratd [sic] Irish Vocalist, with unbounded applause’ (Dublin: James Duffy, 1845, p. 17).
Sung by Charlotte Renals, Cornwall (1978); recorded by Pete Coe; issued on Catch Me If You Can, Veteran VT119CD (2003).
Roud 149; 20 entries.
A very widely known song across the English-speaking world, and much more popular than the number of entries implies, because the ‘coarse’ nature of its humour kept it out of most earlier collections and publications, although Cecil Sharp did publish a cleaned-up version for the sake of its tune. It is still widely sung and is found under a variety of titles, including ‘The Lobster’, ‘The Sea Crab’ and ‘The Codfish’, and it nearly always has a lively, nonsense-sounding chorus.
The earliest reference in the English tradition is in the manuscript on which Thomas Percy based his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which dates from about 1650, but the basic story is much older and can be said to be almost worldwide in its reach. Roger deV. Renwick’s excellent book Recentering Anglo/American Folksong (2001) identifies numerous versions from around the world, as a prose tale, a song, poem or jest, with the earliest documented example being an Italian literary retelling by Franco Sacchetti (1330–1400).
In English versions the humour is sometimes extended by the crab grabbing the husband’s nose with its other claw, or by the couple chasing it around the room armed with shovel and broom. Sometimes the song ends with a baby being born, which has confused some commentators, but this is easily explained by reference to earlier versions where the wife is pregnant at the start, and the reason why the husband is so keen to buy a crab or lobster is that it is one of her ‘cravings’. It was formerly very widely believed that an expectant mother’s cravings must be satisfied for the sake of the baby’s well-being. Another element here is that it was (and still is) also widely believed that any fright or sudden shock to the mother would result in a birthmark or other ‘defect’ on the baby, so in this case the child would expect to have, at the very least, the shape of a crab or lobster on its private parts.
As one would expect in a comic song, the rhythm is quite punchy, particularly the simple time versions, such as the one in Charlotte Renals’s rendition.
Sung by Joseph Taylor, Saxby, Lincolnshire (9 July 1908); collected by Percy Grainger; issued on Gramophone 2-2974 (matrix 8751e).
Roud 1012, Laws Q23; 25 entries.
Quite widely recorded in England, but rarely elsewhere, ‘Creeping Jane’ was also printed on numerous broadsides from the 1830s onwards or perhaps a little earlier, but little more is known of its history. Song researchers have spent some time trying to find out if there is any factual basis to the song, but most have reluctantly concluded that it is purely fictional. One problem is that ‘Creeping Jane’ was quite common as a racehorse name, and there were many so called throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Something of a red herring is thrown up by a song headed ‘The Ballad of Jenny the Mare’ that appears in Edward Fitzgerald’s novel Euphranor (1851), which reproduces much of the ‘Creeping Jane’ text but credits it to the horse ‘Yorkshire Jenny’. This novel certainly post-dates the earliest broadsides, but the author implies that the song is old.
Of Joseph Taylor’s performance on this recording, Patrick O’Shaughnessy writes, ‘The flexibility of his seventy-five-year-old voice and the rhythmic vitality of his singing are remarkable’ (21 Lincolnshire Folk Songs (1968), p. 28). The tune is close to many of the others associated with this song, which are either transcribed in 6/8 time or a (‘lazy’) dotted rhythm, as here. Joseph Taylor’s verse moves immediately into the chorus without a sustained note and also finishes with this little melodic twist, in common with versions collected by Frank Kidson and Cecil Sharp. The tune is reminiscent of ‘All for the Grog’ (Roud 475), especially as sung by Sharp’s contributor, Louie Hooper.
‘The Old Tup’, sung by Mr L. Colbeck and Mr E. J. Houghton, Braithwell, Yorkshire (8 November 1945); collected by Ivor Gatty; published in JEFDSS, 5:1 (1946), 24–6. See the same article for other versions from the Sheffield area.
Roud 126; 53 entries.
‘The Derby Ram’, or ‘The Old Tup’, was widely sung all over England and North America, but collected only a few times in Scotland and Ireland. The earliest known version is entitled ‘The Old Ram of Derby’ and was included in A Garland of New Songs, printed by Angus of Newcastle about 1790, and the text given there is very similar to later collected versions. Local writer Llewellyn Jewitt, in his Ballads and Songs of Derbyshire (1867), p. 115, claimed that the ram (if not the song) had been famous before that time: ‘Derby people have, I know by allusions to it, been fond of their Ram for more than a century’. But the earliest known ‘collected’ version is, in fact, Scottish: ‘The Ram of Diram’, published in George Ritchie Kinloch’s Ballad Book of 1827.
It is difficult to know what to make of songs like this and ‘The Herring’s Head’ (No. 109) and ‘The Cutty Wren’ (Roud 236), which involve hyperbolic descriptions of animals. Over the last few generations it became commonplace to assert that they had an ancient ritual basis, despite the complete lack of evidence to support such a notion. But many people still want to believe that such a song must have a more interesting origin than the fact that somebody just wrote a nonsense song.
The ‘Derby Ram’ song is sung all over the country, but in certain areas – particularly around Sheffield – it was also known as an annual custom, usually called the ‘Old Tup’. Sometime over the Christmas period, lads of the village would dress one of themselves as the ram and go round pubs and houses singing the song and enacting its main story. They would then collect money or food and move on. This puts it squarely into the category of seasonal customs, which have also been assumed to be ancient and pagan, but again there is no evidence for the ram or tup custom before the mid nineteenth century. It is likely that the custom evolved from the song and not the other way round, and it is interesting that Jewitt makes no mention of the custom.
Certainly, the ram is popular in Derby. It features heavily as the emblem of the city and the county football club, and appears often in local public art; a real ram was adopted as the official mascot of the 95th Derbyshire Regiment in 1858. But it is not even clear whether the emblem was suggested by the widespread song, or the song was written about an already existing local icon. Much more research is needed.
‘My Father Died and I Cannot Tell How’, sung by Mrs L. H. Haworth, Huddersfield, Yorkshire (1940s); sent to Francis Collinson (Collinson MSS, COL/4/26A).
Roud 469; 28 entries.
This was a widely collected ditty, even more common in North America, and was often called ‘The Swapping Song’; many people remembered it from their childhood but continued to sing it in adulthood. The verses vary little between versions, although in some a few more animals or items are added to the list, but the choruses vary widely in terms of words, if not in sounds. In the classic children’s rhyme book Gammer Gurton’s Garland (1810), which contains the earliest printed version of the song, it is recorded as:
With my wing wang waddle oh
Jack sing saddle oh
Blowsey boys bubble oh
Under the broom.
That the song was already in circulation at that time is confirmed by the Cumberland poet John Woodcock Graves, who wrote the original ‘John Peel’ song; he remembered ‘The Foolish Boy’ from his childhood and he was born in 1795.
The song seems to have survived without the aid of broadside versions, although printed nursery-rhyme collections will have served a similar purpose. Mrs Haworth’s text is uncannily close to an Isle of Man version published in the 1843 edition of James Orchard Halliwell’s 1843 edition of The Nursery Rhymes of England, and one suspects that she, or the person who taught her, learnt it from print, although as that book did not have music, somebody must have added the tune on the way. The motif of the series of foolish bargains is not uncommon in traditional tales.
Mrs Haworth notes in the manuscript, with reference to note 4 of bar 4, ‘I am uncertain whether the last note goes up or down. It might be down.’ The dotted rhythms she gives in bars 5, 6 and 8 feel too slow for the character of the tune (and in bar 5 lead to a five-beat bar) so have here been changed to a dotted quaver-semiquaver pattern in each case. The penultimate note of bar 4 is unclear on the manuscript, so may be an E rather than the D given here.
‘The Frog’s Wooing’, sung in the Mitford Family, Mitford, Northumberland; published in M. H. Mason, Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs (1878).
Roud 16; 37 entries.
Very widely known across Britain and Ireland, and even more so in North America, this is a good example of a song which was found even more commonly in the nursery tradition than in adult circles and was therefore much more widely known than the number of collected instances would suggest. It is probably true to say that in the nineteenth century, at least, everybody in the country would have known it, and most people still do in some form or other.
In addition to appearing regularly in nursery literature, the song was kept in the public eye by becoming a popular comic song in the stage routines of performers such as Grimaldi and John Liston, as a dance tune (‘Lord Frog’) on numerous popular prints and broadsides, and in other forms of popular culture. Influential publications such as Sabine Baring-Gould and Cecil Sharp’s English Folk-Songs for Schools (1906) and Revival recordings by Burl Ives (1954) and others ensured that each succeeding generation could learn the song anew.
A song called ‘The Frog cam to the mil dur [mill door]’ was mentioned in The Complaynt of Scotland (1549), and ‘A Most Strange Weddinge of the ffrogge and the mowse’ was registered with the Stationers’ Company on 21 November 1580, but the earliest extant text was published in Thomas Ravenscroft’s Melismata (1611). The early history is thus well documented, but the song’s later development would certainly repay close scrutiny, precisely because it was so well known, and would be an ideal candidate for a study of long-term continuity and change. Until about fifty years ago, for example, versions for children as well as adults nearly always ended up with the frog, mouse and rat being chased and eaten by local cats and ducks, but nowadays it is less acceptable to interest children in cute little animals and then kill them off. It is also intriguing to see how different words have been used over the years to tell the same story. But the most obvious marker for different strands within the song’s development is the range of refrain and chorus lines, such as ‘Roley Poley gammon and spinach’, ‘Kitty alone’ and ‘Uh huh’, which help to reveal the genealogy of each particular manifestation of the song.
Sung by Jack Elliott, Birtley, County Durham (1960s); published in Gwen and Mary Polwarth, North Country Songs (1969); issued on Jack Elliott of Birtley, Leader LEA4001 (1969).
Roud 128; 43 entries.
Jack spoke and sang with a broad Durham accent, which does not translate well to the written page, and anyone thinking of singing the song should do so in their own accent anyway. We have decided to give the text in ‘standard’ English. The first verse of the Polwarths’ rendering of Jack’s accent is as follows:
What’ll I do wi’ me harrin’s heid
Oh what’ll I do wi’ me harrin’s heid?
We’ll mak’ ’em into loaves of breid
Harrin’s heid, loaves o’ bried
An’ aal manner o’ things
Of aal the fish that live in the sea
The harrin is the one for me
How are ye the day, how are ye the day
How are ye the day, me hinny O?
It was an extremely widespread cumulative nonsense song that varies widely from version to version but is always based on making unusual things from bits of the herring – things that are seemingly chosen to serve the rhythm and rhyme, rather than from any intrinsic meaning. Enthusiasts of the ‘secret meanings’ school like to think that songs which detail animal parts, such as this one, ‘The Derby Ram’ (No. 106) and ‘The Cutty Wren’ (Roud 236), must have ancient ritual origins, but there is not the slightest evidence that this is the case, or that the songs are based on anything more than a love of hyperbole and nonsense.
Frank Purslow, interestingly enough, suggests that this might have previously been a ‘forfeit song’, the leader or chairman addressing his questions to different members of the company, who must improvise a verse or pay a penalty – probably a round of drinks (The Wanton Seed (1968), p. 130). James Madison Carpenter noted that one of the versions he collected about 1932 in Oxfordshire was ‘a drinking song, learned in a pub’. There is evidence that other cumulative songs – for example ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ – started life as memory-game songs.
That said, it is difficult to gauge the age of a song like this, simply because it does not seem to have appeared on broadsides, so we have no datable printed sources to guide us. It was clearly in circulation in late Victorian times: Sabine Baring-Gould noted a Devon version in 1891, and another was printed in Sarah Hewett’s The Peasant Speech of Devon in 1892, but oral testimony takes us back even further. James Olver, one of Sabine Baring-Gould’s singers, claimed that he had ‘learned it in 1810 from Jan and Tom Hive, two old men in Liskeard’ (Baring-Gould MSS, SBG/1/2/338), and there is a version in the manuscripts of Scottish collector Peter Buchan from about 1840.
The singing becomes slower in bars 9–14, possibly due to the fact that in this recording the audience join in with the chorus.
‘The Fox’, sung by Bob and Ron Copper, Rottingdean, Sussex (1963); recorded by Peter Kennedy.
Roud 131; 53 entries.
A very widely known song across Britain and Ireland, and also in North America, it was previously thought highly appropriate for children and included in numerous nursery-rhyme books, as well as in the adult folk-song collections. Collector Fred Hamer commented, ‘My mother used to sing me to sleep with her Irish version of this song and wherever I go I seem to pick up another version’ (Garners Gay (1967), p. 75).
The story remains the same from version to version, although there is a fair amount of variation in the actual text, and in performance the Coppers’ version is unusually complex in the rhythm of its words and tune. The earliest reference is a single verse (‘Old Mother Widdle Waddle jumpt out of bed …’) in Gammer Gurton’s Garland, a small book devoted to nursery rhymes, published in 1810. It does not seem to have been popular with broadside printers, and only one, issued by Disley of London in the 1860s or 1870s, has so far turned up.
Both parts of the Coppers’ two-part rendition have been transcribed here.
Sung by Sam Bennett, Ilmington, Warwickshire; collected by Cecil Sharp (12 January 1909) (Sharp MSS, FW 1919–20/FT 2052), and James Madison Carpenter (c.1930) (Carpenter MSS, pp. 00563–00564). This version is a combination of the two sources.
Roud 1519; 17 entries.
This song has been collected a fair number of times from traditional singers in England and occasionally in the USA, but it achieved a much wider circulation after the 1920s by being included in the campfire and community-song repertoire of certain youth organizations and other societies. Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth, Henry Hammond and Sabine Baring-Gould collected the song, but the latter published a severely bowdlerized text. He described the text as ‘gross’ or ‘coarse’ and declined to note down all the verses, even in his manuscript notebooks.
To be frank, even the broadsides and the one or two collected texts in the manuscripts which have not been ‘edited’ are hardly ‘gross’, although they do obviously refer, somewhat clumsily, to men chasing women. Examples from the ‘Frolicksome Keeper’ broadside are:
The seventh doe she prov’d with fawn
And to the Keeper she made great moan
Wishing he had but let her alone
Among the leaves so green O.
The one [doe] cryed out to the other
I am serv’d as my father serv’d my mother
And at least two of the traditional singers from whom the song was collected were women.
Cecil Sharp noted that ‘This is one of the few two-men folk-songs’ (English Folk Songs, II (1920), p. xvii). Evidence is coming to light, however, that quite a few traditional songs were designed to be sung by more than one person. Alfred Williams, for example, includes a number of duets in his Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames (1923), although these were usually sung by a male and a female (or a man pretending to be a female), but perhaps it was the ‘call and response’ of the chorus which interested Sharp.
No nineteenth-century broadside of ‘The Keeper’ seems to have survived, but we have some evidence of the song’s earlier history. The earliest known texts are on black-letter broadsides from the 1680s, in the Pepys, Douce and Roxburghe collections. These are entitled ‘The Huntsman’s Delight, or The Forester’s Pleasure’ and were by J.M. (presumably Joseph Martin), and there is no reason to doubt that one of these was the original. A shorter version, called ‘The Frolicksome Keeper: A New Song’, which is much closer to the traditional texts, appeared on a late eighteenth-century sheet. The originals can be seen on the Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads and the English Broadside Ballad Archive websites.
In Sharp’s manuscript the call-and-response section is transcribed in 2/4 but here the 4/4 time signature has been retained throughout.
Sung by Charles Lay, Bampton, Oxfordshire (c.1931); recorded by James Madison Carpenter (Carpenter MSS, pp. 00647–8; Cylinder 033 (sr253), Disc Side 071 (sr036a)).
Roud 1164; 20 entries.
This falls into one of the categories of song in which the number of entries in The Folk Song Index is relatively meaningless because it has long been in the general nursery-rhyme tradition and nearly everybody in the nation knows at least a bit of ‘Old King Cole’. The investigations of Iona and Peter Opie (The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (1951), pp.154–5) turned up a reference in William King’s Useful Transactions in Philosophy (1708–9) where the author quotes a few lines and speculates on the original identity of ‘Old King Cole’, so it was clearly already well known by that time. The song was printed regularly throughout the eighteenth century, particularly in Scottish songbooks.
Although texts vary considerably, they seem to fall into a handful of categories. The most common, which appears to be the original pattern, is to enumerate musicians and the noises their instruments make, but other versions introduce a different trade in each verse, followed by characteristic sounds, actions or words. There are also versions specific to a particular community, in particular army ones, which are often extremely bawdy, and there have been many parodies. As with all such cumulative songs, it can be sung solo, in unison or in a group with different people taking parts.
There are also different endings to each chorus. Charles Lay, above, offers one common set invoking the ‘sons of harmony’, but the earliest version has:
For ’twas my lady’s birth-day
Therefore we keep holy-day
And come to be merry.
And Scottish versions often have:
There no lass in a’ Scotland
Compared to our sweet Marjorie.
A great deal of ingenuity has been devoted to pinning down the original Old King Cole, although none have any evidential backing. The fact that he can be called Coul, Coal, Coil, and so on, provides plenty of scope for invention, but the real problem is with the original assumption that he must have been a real or at least a well-known fictional person before the song was composed. This in itself is at best speculative.
Carpenter’s recording contains the first and last stanzas only. As sung on this occasion, the end of line 1 is omitted and conflated with the beginning of line 2 so we have mended this here by incorporating the first two bars from the final-stanza tune.
Version 1: ‘King Arthur’s Servants’, traditional in the Mitford family of Northumberland; published in M. H. Mason, Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs (1878).
Version 2: ‘When Good King Arthur Ruled this Land’, from James Orchard Halliwell, The Nursery Rhymes of England (1842), p. 1.
Roud 130; 30 entries.
This was a widely known song in North America as well as in Britain. It often features King Arthur, but the king’s name is not significant: different versions have Henry, Edward and George, while in America it usually starts ‘In good old colony times’. Whatever the historical period, the characters are often ‘three sons of rogues’. It appears, however, that this may be a euphemism for ‘three sons of whores’, as we shall see.
For such a small innocuous ditty, its history is something of a tangle. The first version given above, from the Mitford family in the 1870s, is perhaps the standard version and the one which appears in most collections, although with some variations. It rarely appeared on broadsides, but there are plenty of other nineteenth-century sightings: John Bell collected a version in Newcastle, probably in the 1820s; it is printed in the hardback songster The Quaver (1844), and James Orchard Halliwell’s The Nursery Rhymes of England (1842); while Thomas Hardy included a verse in Part 4, Chapter 2 of his novel Under the Greenwood Tree (1872).
However, the earliest version so far found is in the Bodleian Library on a broadside dated 12 December 1804 and published by Laurie and Whittle of London, who specialized in sheets with large illustrations and short songs. The picture shows a fearsome devil carrying off a tailor (with a roll of cloth under his arm), and the title is ‘Miller, Weaver and Little Tailor: A Much admired Song sung by Mr Chas Johnston, & proper to be sung at all Musical Clubs’. If this is the original, which is likely, it strongly suggests that the song started its life as a comic stage song.
The second text, which can be sung to the same tune, is clearly related to the first but was much less widely known. It was already in circulation in the early 1840s when Halliwell compiled his Nursery Rhymes of England and Flora Thompson mentions it being sung heartily by villagers in her childhood on the Northamptonshire–Oxfordshire border in the 1880s. She describes it as a rousing chorus song, and also adds her child’s-eye view of the matter: ‘Every time Laura heard this song she saw the queen, a gold crown on her head, her train over her arm, and her sleeves rolled up holding the frying-pan over the fire. Of course, a queen would have fried pudding for breakfast: ordinary common people seldom had any left over to fry (Lark Rise (1939), Chapter 4).
But then there is a third text, also published in hardback songbooks in the early nineteenth century – for example The Vocal Library (1820) – which starts with ‘When Arthur first in court began’ and features three thieves: an Irishman, a Scotsman and a Welshman. This was composed by prize-winning glee writer John Wall Callcott (1766–1821). Callcott’s heyday was in the 1790s, so it is possible that this song predates the Laurie and Whittle song, which may turn out to be a parody after all.
It seems that the song has existed in different forms in different contexts almost from the beginning – stage song, children’s ditty, pub song, and in glee clubs and urban sing-song societies.
And the whores? Well, the Laurie and Whittle broadside refers to them as ‘Three sons of whores’, while the other published texts speak of rogues. But Thomas Hardy, in a letter dated 1889, makes it clear that he regarded ‘whores’ as the proper reading. So perhaps it is an example of a song which changes with the company it keeps.
The minims in the original notation have been changed to dotted crotchets tied to a quaver to conform to the time signature.
Sung by John Thornber, Burnley, Lancashire (20 November 1914); collected by Cecil J. Sharp (Sharp MSS, FT 3068).
Roud 129; 38 entries.
This was a very popular cumulative song which was equally well known in North America and is still widely sung. Versions have also been collected in Ireland and Scotland, where it is sometimes called ‘The Bog Down in the Valley’. Although the actual words vary somewhat, the structure is always the same – in order of diminishing size – hill, tree, branch, twig, nest, bird, egg, and so on – which is much easier to remember than many other cumulative sequences.
Many writers comment on how close our song is to other European songs – in Breton, Welsh, Danish, Swiss, French, Dutch, for example – but until someone carries out a thorough international investigation it is not clear which came first. The history of the song in Britain is certainly unclear. Only a couple of nineteenth-century broadsides have so far been found, with one of the earliest, called ‘The Tree in the Wood’, printed by John Pitts in London sometime around 1820. But an earlier version, ‘The Tree on the Hill’, was included in Two Excellent New Songs, a chapbook printed in London, probably in the 1790s. Then there is silence in the printed record. Perhaps it is simply that straightforward cumulative songs do not need the help of print to last in singers’ repertoires.
Nor is the song found in the Victorian or Edwardian nursery literature or child-lore collections in England, where it would be expected, apart from John Hornby’s Joyous Book of Singing Games (1913), p. 110, where it is given as a cumulative song without actions. William Wells Newell included it in his Games and Songs of American Children (1903 edition), but he implied that it was not widely known and that the song had been adapted from a French game. These two publications came out at exactly the same time as our major collectors were finding numerous versions being sung in the English countryside.
As is often the case, it is interesting to compare the modern versions with the earliest ones. The similarities are more common than the differences, but in the chapbook text dating from the 1790s, the repeated lines at the end of the cumulation are intriguing:
And the tree on the hill
And the hill stand still
And evermore will
By the side of a gill
While my name’s John Hill!
And the song goes further than the chick in the egg, which puts a very different complexion on the matter:
And in that feather there was a bed [sic], etc.
And in that bed there was a lass, etc.
And in that lass there was a lad, etc.
The song is nowadays often described as being concerned with the natural life cycle and that subject so beloved of those looking for hidden symbolic meaning: fertility. This theory is based almost entirely on a rare, possibly unique, version entitled ‘The Everlasting Circle’ in Sabine Baring-Gould’s manuscripts (see VWML website, Baring-Gould MSS, SBG/1/1/491), and reprinted by James Reeves in the book of the same name, in 1960. In this version, the maid and the man verses are followed by a baby, who grows up and plants an acorn. Neat, of course, but unconvincing, and doubly so because the last verses have such a different textual feel that it is quite likely the collector added them himself.
VIII
Cruel Death Has Put an End …
Songs of Death and Destruction
Sung by Mrs Fred Nation, Taunton, Somerset (c.1916); collected by Janet Blunt (Blunt MSS, JHB/9/8). The second line of verse 5 is missing in Mrs Nation’s version, so we have supplied it from a Hampshire version in the George Gardiner MSS (GG/1/17/1104).
Roud 675, Laws M33; 27 entries.
Regularly collected in England and North America, but more rarely in Scotland, ‘The Constant Farmer’s Son’ was also widely available on broadsides, with similar texts, from about the 1820s onwards. It tells more or less the same story as another traditional song, ‘Bruton Town’ (Roud 18, Laws M32), but the latter was much less frequently found. The storyline of ‘Bruton Town’, or ‘The Bramble Briar’, follows quite closely part of a tale included by Boccaccio in his Decameron (c.1358), 4th Day, 5th Story, which was in turn used as a basis for four different works by the German poet Hans Sachs (1494–1576) and again in Britain by Keats, Isabella or The Pot of Basil (1820). The basic theme of brothers plotting to get rid of their sister’s sweetheart is also treated in ‘The Bristol Garland’, a song which appeared on a number of broadsides and chapbooks in the second half of the eighteenth century. These three songs – ‘The Constant Farmer’s Son’, ‘Bruton Town’ and ‘The Bristol Garland’ – often include textual echoes of each other, as well as sharing general plot similarities, but it still remains unclear which takes precedence and in which direction any potential influences operated.
Frank Purslow comments that ‘the tunes to which [‘The Constant Farmer’s Son’] is sung are usually of the “street ballad” variety’ (in Gardiner MSS, GG/1/15/955). Among these various melodies is a group of tunes which not only resemble each other quite closely in their melodic outline but share certain distinctive characteristics. Mrs Nation’s tune illustrates these characteristics well. Whereas most folk-song tunes are eight or sixteen bars in length, depending on whether they comprise two or four 4-bar phrases, Mrs Nation’s tune and the others of its kind are eighteen bars long, the final phrase consisting of six bars. This phrase is essentially a repetition of the first phrase of the tune but with two bars added to the middle of it. Another distinctive feature, found in Mrs Nation’s tune and most of the others in the group, is the three-note slurred figuration which occurs on the final word of line 3 in each verse (bar 12).
Mrs Nation’s tune is in simple time but others in the group, such as that collected by Gardiner from James Channon, are in compound time, and one (collected by Cecil Sharp from Mrs Edbrook) mixes the two. Purslow suggests that Channon’s tune has ‘something of “The Verdant Braes of Skeen” about it’ (Gardiner MSS, GG/1/15/955) and there is certainly a strong resemblance in the opening phrase of each.
This rendition finishes on the third degree rather than the expected first degree. The pause indicated on the penultimate beat of phrases 1 and 2 is also unusual.
Sung by Cecilia Costello, Birmingham (1951); recorded by Marie Slocombe and P. Shuldham-Shaw; published in Roy Palmer, Songs of the Midlands (1972), p. 67; issued on Leader LEE4054.
Roud 9, Child 20; 27 entries
Widely collected across Britain and Ireland, and in North America, ‘The Cruel Mother’ has clearly struck a chord with singers over a number of generations. We will never quite know why, of course, but in performance the combination of the matter-of-fact handling of a difficult subject and the repeated rhythmic refrain often creates a stark and hypnotic tale, which is extremely effective. Many versions omit even the first verse(s) which explain that the woman is not only expecting illegitimate children, but that the father is of a lower status and the shame thereby doubled.
Nevertheless, there have also been parodies and even children’s versions over the years. One of the latter, called ‘Old Mother Lee’, which was still widely sung over the last fifty years, progresses at a rapid pace through the story, in successive verses: ‘There was a woman called Old Mother Lee’, ‘She had a penknife long and sharp’, ‘She stuck it in the baby’s heart’, ‘The forty police came running up’, ‘The Magistrate said you must die’, ‘That was the end of Old Mother Lee’, and so on.
Francis J. Child printed thirteen versions, mainly from Scotland, and Bertrand Bronson published fifty-six tunes. The earliest evidence of the song being in traditional circulation is in David Herd’s manuscripts of the 1760s, and this is one of the relatively rare songs which seem to have been popular without the aid of the broadside presses, as no printed copies from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have yet turned up. But the song was printed at least once, in London about 1690, and this broadside might well be its original form. Entitled ‘The Duke’s Daughter’s Cruelty, or the Wonderful Apparition of Two Infants whom she Murther’d and Buried in a Forrest, for to hide her Shame’, the broadside already has many of the structural and verbal features of later collected versions, including the second- and fourth-line burden in each verse.
Although the subject matter of infanticide might seem unusual or even unpleasant to modern sensibilities, our song was only one of several treatments of the theme in the seventeenth century. A prose chapbook entitled ‘The Cruel Mother’, for example, with the subtitle ‘being a true relation of the bloody murther committed by M. Cook, upon her dearly beloved child …’, was printed by W.R. in London in 1670, and another broadside, ‘No Natural Mother, but a Monster’, which was written by Martin Parker, was licensed in 1634 (reprinted by Hyder E. Rollins, A Pepysian Garland (1922)). Other Child ballads, such as ‘The Maid and the Palmer’ (Child 21, Roud 2335) and ‘Mary Hamilton’ (Child 173, Roud 79), also include the theme.
In the real world of the seventeenth century, the authorities were increasingly aware of the problem of the killing of babies, and infanticide was distinguished from other forms of murder in 1624. It was also illegal to ‘conceal a birth’ because it was usually impossible at a later date to distinguish a stillbirth from the victim of a murder. For more on this song, and on infanticide in general, see David Atkinson, ‘History, Symbol, and Meaning in The Cruel Mother’, FMJ, 6:3 (1992) and Vic Gammon, ‘Folk Song Collecting in Sussex and Surrey’, History Workshop Journal, 10 (2008).
Cecilia Costello’s haunting tune, with its first-half minor tonality and second-half suggestion of the major, seems well suited to the ‘Cruel Mother’ story. It is not particularly close to any of the examples in Bronson’s Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, which themselves are wide-ranging (although see Bronson addenda, p. 456). As Bronson discusses (I (1959), p. 276), what gives these tunes a certain unity is the rhythm of the refrain lines (2 and 4), which is essentially the same in nearly all versions. This is certainly true of Costello’s tune, although the rising melodic contour with which hers ends is very much a feature of her version. She learnt the song from her father, of Ballinasloe, County Roscommon. According to Marie Slocombe, Costello had vivid recollections of her father singing it: ‘“He sang it”, she told us, “with his eyes closed, hands clasped, bending over, with great emphasis and drama, very slow – he used to frighten us children with it”’ (JEFDSS, 7:2 (1953), 96).
117 The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter
‘Polly’s Love’, sung by Henry Burstow, Horsham, Sussex (1893); collected by Lucy Broadwood; published in JFSS, 1:4 (1902), 172–73.
Roud 15, Laws P36A/B; 39 entries.
This song was very widely collected in Britain and Ireland, with a huge number of versions found in North America, where it is one of several songs regularly called ‘Pretty Polly’.
In some murdered sweetheart ballads, the crime is seemingly carried out on the spur of the moment and is described in an almost matter-of-fact way. But in others, like ‘The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter’ here, the symbol of premeditation is the open grave ‘with the spade lying by’.
Our song derives directly from a mid eighteenth-century garland entitled ‘The Gosport Tragedy, or The Perjured Ship’s Carpenter’, which includes a very much longer text that someone (presumably a broadside printer) cut down to manageable size around the year 1800. The shorter version, usually called ‘Polly’s Love, or the Cruel Ship Carpenter’, is a much tighter text and a better song, and was in turn widely printed in the nineteenth century. The text produced by John Pitts about 1820 and Henry Such about 1870 are very close to each other and are also very similar to collected versions such as the one given here from Henry Burstow. The song was sufficiently popular to attract a burlesque, ‘Molly the Betrayed or The Fog-Bound Vessel’.
Tunes for ‘The Cruel Ship’s Carpenter’ are almost always in triple time. Those in the major key sometimes incorporate echoes of the widespread ‘Villikins and His Dinah’ tune or ‘All Jolly Fellows Who Follow the Plough’ (No. 91) while retaining their own identity. Henry Burstow’s tune, on the other hand, comprises the ‘Villikins and His Dinah’ tune in its entirety. A handful of other versions use the Dorian-mode tune associated with ‘The Blind Beggar’s Daughter of Bethnal Green’ (No. 60). Its minor tonality seems more in keeping with the tragic narrative and it may be for this reason that Frank Purslow commented, ‘I think this is the best tune I have heard to the “Cruel Ship’s Carpenter”’ (in Hammond MSS, HAM/5/34/26).
‘Young Edmund’, sung by Harry Cox, Catfield, Norfolk, recorded by Peter Kennedy (9 July 1956); also recording in Ewan MacColl collection (National Sound Archive), issued on It Fell on a Day, a Bonny Summer Day, Topic TSCD667 (1998).
Roud 182, Laws M34; 21 entries.
Harry Cox was recorded singing this song a number of times, and it would be an interesting project for someone to compare his different renditions. Certainly, there are a number of verbal differences, and he did not even always sing all the verses. An example of the difference is the second line of the first verse, which he sang as either
Concerning gold as we are told that leads so many wrong
or
Whilst I unfold concerning gold that leads so many wrong.
It is even extraordinarily difficult to distinguish ‘lowlands low’ from ‘lowland low’; he definitely sings both, but it was not uncommon for his Norfolk accent to miss out the ‘s’ in plurals. The text given here is an amalgamation of four performances.
This was an extremely widespread song in England, Scotland, Ireland, and even more so in North America, where dozens of versions have been collected. Collected texts are often full, and it was clearly a story which kept singers’ attention. The song was also printed by everybody who was anybody in the broadside trade, but, on present evidence, only from the 1820s onwards. The plot would seem a natural for the melodrama stage or the cheap nineteenth-century ‘shocker’ novel, and a number of somewhat similar stories had appeared on the Continent and in Britain, which usually told of a man (often a soldier) coming home in disguise, or simply unrecognized, after many years and his parents unwittingly murdering him. Versions of this tale appeared in Britain in chapbooks such as News from Perin, Cornwall (1618) and The Liverpool Tragedy (c.1760s), and in a play by George Lillo called Fatal Curiosity (1736), but no direct parallels to our song have yet come to light. It is possible it was deliberately adapted from the older tales by a nineteenth-century broadside writer, but this at present is conjecture.
‘Sir Hugh’, sung by James Pike, Portsmouth, Hampshire (August 1907); collected by George B. Gardiner (Gardiner MSS, GG/1/14/842).
Roud 73, Child 155; 33 entries.
This song was widely collected in England and Scotland and was even more common in North America, but less well known in Ireland. It was one of the songs included in Francis J. Child’s classic ballad collection, and he printed eighteen versions of the text, while Bronson presented sixty-six tunes from the Anglo-American tradition.
The subject matter, however, is disturbing, and reminds us that folklore is not always nice and cosy. Indeed, racists, xenophobes, political zealots and religious fundamentalists have always used legends, rumours, songs, jokes and other lore to support and spread their beliefs and to indoctrinate their young, and in particular to denigrate and stereotype outsiders and the victims of their bigotry.
Probably the longest-running and most pernicious of all racial or religious prejudice is the virulent anti-Semitism which lurks just below the surface in the Christian West. The direct roots of our song lie in a report of an incident which supposedly took place in Lincoln in 1255, although that in its turn was simply the latest manifestation of a legend which was already centuries old. Based on the idea that Jews kidnap Christian children and crucify them in contempt of Christ, and/or use the child’s blood in their own rituals, the report declared that a young boy called Hugh, who lived in Lincoln, had been murdered in this way by Jews, and to really bring the moral home, it was made clear that this was not an isolated incident but a regular practice, and that delegates had gathered from Jewish communities all over the country to take part. Like all good legends the story had corroborating detail, such as that when the Jews tried to dispose of the body the river refused to accept it, as did the earth, and when the boy’s mother was seeking him his body (or his ghost) called out to her. Bells rang, heavenly light flooded the scene, a blind woman who touched the body had her sight restored instantly, and so on. The Jews were all rounded up and executed.
The story had the multiple propaganda purpose of giving believers a common enemy to scapegoat, of showing how despicable our religious enemies are, and how wonderful our own religion is. Lincoln Cathedral did very well out of the hordes of pilgrims who flocked there because of stories of Hugh’s miracles, and the establishment therefore had another vested interest in keeping the legend going. The story has never gone away, and surfaces regularly. Child, for example, cited numerous similar legends across Europe, from medieval times onwards, together with persecutions and murders of local Jews as a result of people believing such stories, right into the 1880s. In Britain we are constantly reminded of the story because it forms the basis of the Prioress’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
It is not known quite how this traditional song came into being. It suddenly seems to spring into life in the 1760s, in Scottish sources, and although it appears in various ballad manuscripts and literary collections, it is decidedly odd that no eighteenth-century garlands or nineteenth-century broadside printings of the song seem to have survived.
James Pike’s tune exemplifies the central tune tradition of this ballad, which Bertrand Bronson finds to be concentrated in the Appalachians as well as in Pennsylvania, Indiana, New York, Ohio, and in one example from Somerset (The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, III (1966), p. 73). The tune is characterized by major tonality, authentic range and 6/8 time, with a mid-cadence on the fifth degree. Unlike most of the other ‘Sir Hugh’ tunes in this group, Pike’s melody does not repeat the final line to make a refrain. All these tunes clearly comprise the same basic tune as that associated with ‘Lord Lovel’ (No. 122) and ‘The Outlandish Knight’ (No. 127) and Pike’s is particularly reminiscent of Fred Jordan’s rendition of the latter (for example, as recorded on A Shropshire Lad, Veteran VT148CD (2003)).
Sung by Arthur Nightingale, Didbrook, Gloucestershire (c.1932); recorded by James Madison Carpenter (Carpenter MSS, p.00638; Disc Side 307 (sr156a)). Carpenter wrote, ‘Learned from Grandmother, Mrs Davis, 50 years ago.’
Roud 189, Laws Q33; 28 entries.
Widely known in England, but also collected regularly in Ireland, Scotland and North America, ‘Willie Leonard’ or ‘The Lakes of Coolfin’ is particularly interesting for the matter-of-fact way in which the story of a relatively minor domestic tragedy is related. It has fascinated song commentators, who find it tantalizing because it does not seem to be the sort of song a broadside songwriter would invent out of the blue, and one cannot help wondering what prompted it.
It does not seem to be very old, and it is noticeable that the surviving English broadsides are not from the early printers but from what could be called the third generation of nineteenth-century printers such as Fortey, Disley and Pearson, who were active around the middle of the century. Nevertheless, one sheet printed by Haly of Cork, and lodged in the Bodleian Library (Harding B 26(681)), could possibly be as early as the late 1820s. The song is there entitled ‘A New Song Called Willie Leonard’, and the lake is ‘Colfin’, and this seems to support the general assumption that the song was originally Irish. But apart from the place name in the song, which varies widely, there is no real evidence to tell us where the song originated, and efforts by Irish song-researcher John Moulden to pin down the place or to find a real event behind the story have so far proved negative.
Some American researchers of a previous generation were fond of the idea that Willie was not drowned but carried away by some sort of water-fairy. This is simple wishful thinking typical of the ‘secret meanings’ school, but one cannot help thinking there is more to be discovered about the song, somewhere.
The tune is a variant of ‘Flash Company’ (No. 80).
‘The Ballad of Cruel Lambkin’, sung by Mrs Lines, Adderbury, Oxfordshire (April 1916); collected by Janet Blunt (Blunt MSS, JHB/3/5). Blunt wrote, ‘Mrs Lines would sing through the ballad fairly fast and cheerfully, with a great relish for verses 5 and 6, 15 and 19.’
Roud 6, Child 93; 22 entries.
‘Lambkin’ is not one of the major-league Child ballads in terms of popularity, but it was widely known in England and Scotland, and even more so in North America. Francis J. Child printed twenty-two versions and Bertrand Bronson presented thirty tunes. The central character’s name varies considerably, including, in just the English versions, ‘Lamkin’, ‘Lankin’, ‘Lincoln’ and ‘Limkin’, and he is variously referred to as ‘Long’, ‘Bold’, ‘Cruel’ and ‘False’.
There is plenty of violence in Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads, but this is the song which really grabs attention in this respect, and this is especially true of the versions like Mrs Lines’s which offer no clue about the reason for Lambkin’s animosity to the Lord’s family. The oldest versions, and those collected in Scotland, have a more coherent narrative, and the first verse usually declares Lambkin to be a mason who has built a castle for the Lord (whose name also varies), but has been cheated out of his payment, or otherwise slighted. In her study of the ballad (‘Lambkin: A Study in Evolution’, JEFDSS, 1 (1932), 1–17), Anne Gilchrist identified two threads to the song’s history – one Scottish and the other Northumbrian. In the latter tradition, she argued, the early loss of the ‘mason’ verse forced successive singers to introduce other elements to fill in Lambkin’s back-story. Hence, there are versions where he is a rival lord, a border ruffian, or even the slighted suitor of the Lady’s daughter. Most versions collected in England stem from this Northumbrian ancestor.
Gilchrist also identified a confusion of characters in the centre of the action, especially in the supporting female roles. In many, as here, the Lady somewhat unheroically offers Lambkin her daughter, but in other versions the daughter, or a faithful servant, offers their life to save the Lady, and it is sometimes a daughter and sometimes a maid who greets the Lord with the bad news at the end.
Unusually for Child’s chosen ballads, there are no known European analogues to ‘Lambkin’, and this is often taken as an indication that the ballad is based on a real event. Quite naturally, both Scotland and Northumberland claim the story, and have locations such as Ovingham and Balwearie Castle where local tradition insists that the events took place. Unfortunately there is no evidence to even suggest that the story was ever real, let alone where it happened.
The earliest known versions, reprinted by Child, date from about 1775, but unusually for a widely known song only one nineteenth-century broadside copy of it has so far turned up, printed by John Pitts of Seven Dials in London in the 1820s or 1830s. Various wild theories about fairies (Lambkin was a supernatural being employed to build the castle), lepers (because of the blood in a silver basin), and other flights of fancy, can be dismissed as just that – flights of fancy.
The tune tradition for ‘Lambkin’ is quite diverse and Bronson makes nine groupings from the thirty tunes he locates for the song. Apart from its triple time and metrical pattern – similar, as Bronson notes, to that of ‘The Cherry-Tree Carol’ and ‘A Virgin Unspotted’ (see Nos. 147 and 151 in this volume respectively) – Mrs Lines’s tune is quite distinct. It is minor in tonality and may be heard as plagal, with its tonal centre on A; or authentic, with its tonal centre on E. The F natural preceding bar 1 reflects what is noted in the manuscript, but may be sung as an F sharp if preferred.
Sung by Emily Bishop, Bromsberrow Heath, Gloucestershire (13 October 1952); recorded by Peter Kennedy (BBC 18678).
Roud 48, Child 75; 34 entries.
Immensely popular in England and Scotland and even more widely collected in North America, ‘Lord Lovel’ has obviously taken singers’ fancy for over 200 years. Francis J. Child cited nine versions from England and Scotland, while Bertrand Bronson presented seventy-one tunes, drawn from both sides of the Atlantic. The earliest versions to come to light so far are those given by Child, and date from about 1770, and the song was also widely available on nineteenth-century broadsides.
Many of the great ballad scholars have had trouble with ‘Lord Lovel’, which they felt gets perilously close to the line between simplicity and silliness, and it has been mercilessly parodied down the years. This uneasiness caused Child to defend simple songs (The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, II, p. 204):
It can scarcely be too often repeated that such ballads as this were meant only to be sung, not at all to be recited. As has been well remarked of a corresponding Norwegian ballad, ‘Lord Lovel’ is especially one of those which, for their due effect, require the support of a melody, and almost equally the comment of a burden. No burden is preserved in the case of ‘Lord Lovel’ but we are not to infer that there never was once. The burden, which is at least as important as the instrumental accompaniment of modern songs, sometimes, in these little tragedies, foreshadows calamity from the outset, sometimes, as in the Norwegian ballad referred to, is a cheerful sounding formula, which in the upshot enhances by contrast the gloom of the conclusion.
Bronson called it a ‘too too insipid ballad’, and also commented on the music as its saving grace: ‘its great popularity for at least a hundred years is powerful testimony to the life-giving energy of a memorable tune’ (The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, II (1962), p. 189); and Frank Kidson also had reservations: ‘This song was very popular in the forties and fifties of the nineteenth century from its use by such comic singers as Sam Cowell … I have always looked upon the ballad as a mock-pathetic travesty or burlesque of some serious original (JFSS, 6 (1918), 32). Steve Gardham, one of the best of our current crop of song researchers, writes, ‘To me, “Lord Lovel” is a burlesque of a lost ballad or just a skit on the whole genre’ (private communication).
Nevertheless, there is no evidence that the dozens of singers whose versions were annotated and recorded in the twentieth century regarded it as a comic song. It is interesting to note that the versions which were published as ‘comic’ are almost word-for-word the same as the ‘straight’ versions collected from traditional singers, except for one interpolated verse, and it was clearly the way it was sung which provided most of the comedy. Davidson’s Universal Melodist (1848), for example, directs the song to be sung in a ‘Mock pathetic’ style’, and the give-away extra verse is:
Then he flung his self down by the side of the corpse
With a shivering gulp and a guggle
Gave two hops, three kicks, heav’d a sigh, blew his nose
Sung a song, and then died in the struggle.
Bishop’s version is even simpler than most, as it leaves out the final verses which are included in most other texts. In these verses, Lovel meets the funeral, asks who is dead, asks for the coffin or grave to be opened, and, as in ‘Barbara Allen’ (No. 40), dies; the lovers are then buried together. It could be argued that this formulaic ending, which occurs in so many other ballads, adds to the stereotypical nature of ‘Lord Lovel’, and that Bishop’s song gains by their omission.
Child also provides references to a number of Scandinavian and Germanic ballads which are closely analogous to our ‘Lovel’. Some are as simple as the British song, but others have a little more incident and a harder edge in that the girl is pregnant and the man’s departure more reprehensible, and in some cases she even dies in childbirth.
The fascination of this song’s melody is its remarkable consistency across the many oral versions collected in England, Scotland, Ireland and the USA (Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, II (1962), p. 189). Emily Bishop’s tune is no exception though she gives it her own twist by holding the final word of lines 3 and 4. This adds an extra beat to bars 6 and 8 and momentarily confounds the listener’s expectation of a regular metre throughout. The tune is also associated with ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor’ (No. 48) and ‘The Outlandish Knight’ (No. 127).
Sung by Robert Feast, Ely, Cambridgeshire (11 September 1911); collected by Cecil Sharp (Sharp MSS, FT 2659/FW 2211).
Roud 215; 22 entries.
Whenever a high-profile murder took place the broadside printers and sellers had a field day. They issued a succession of sheets that, typically, covered the discovery of the crime, the hunt for the perpetrators, the arrest, the trial, and so on. And before 1868, when public executions were abandoned, broadsides were printed that contained the ‘last dying speech’ of the criminal (written of course by the broadside hacks), which were sold at the foot of the gallows to the crowds who had gathered to watch the spectacle.
These ‘last dying speeches’ often included a song, which typically gave details of the crime, the murderer’s remorse and a warning to others not to follow the paths of crime. These songs were mostly too topical and ephemeral to survive long in singers’ repertoires, but ‘Maria Marten’ was the exception, as it was still being sung 150 years after the event.
In May 1827, in Polstead, Suffolk, William Corder was courting Maria Marten, the daughter of a local molecatcher. Not long before, she had given birth to William’s baby (her third, by different fathers), but the baby had died. On the pretence of taking her away to get married, Corder met Maria at a local barn (soon to be dubbed ‘the red barn’ by the media), murdered her and buried her under the floor. He gave out that she had gone away and, after a while, he also left the village. Eleven months later, Maria’s father discovered her body, and rumour had it that he was guided to the spot by a recurring dream reported by his wife. Corder was found, in Ealing, married to a schoolmistress, and he was eventually tried, convicted and executed. See Judith Flanders, The Invention of Murder (2011) for more details of the crime and the way it was handled in the media of the time.
Sung by Mr Holgate, Yorkshire; collected by Frank Kidson; published in Kidson’s Traditional Tunes (1891), pp. 77–8.
Roud 155, Laws P21; 17 entries.
‘Mary Across the Wild Moor’ was probably much more popular than the number of index entries would imply, because many of the early collectors would probably have passed it by as too redolent of Victorian popular culture. Both Frank Kidson and Alfred Williams, who published versions, commented on its relatively recent origin, but in his English Folk-Songs (1891) William Alexander Barrett remarked that it was ‘Popular throughout the country’. The picture is very different in North America, where versions appear in nearly all the major folk-song collections.
The young woman with baby at the mercy of the elements is a common enough motif in nineteenth-century song and drama, but in Mary’s case we are not told whether she has been shunned by her family because her child was illegitimate or because she had married against her parents’ wishes and had been abandoned by her husband.
Judging by the numerous broadside printings, the song probably originated in the 1820s. Kidson comments, ‘I have found that the song is known in the North and East Ridings to the same tune. Both air and song appear to be not much earlier than the beginning of the present century’ (Traditional Tunes (1891), p. 77).
Sung by Jane Gulliford, Combe Florey, Somerset (8 September 1908); collected by Cecil Sharp (Sharp MSS, FW 1704-1705/FT 1858).
Roud 561, Laws O37; 17 entries.
In the standard ‘murdered sweetheart’ ballad scenario, it is the girl’s young man who turns nasty and murders her, but in this case, while she is, as usual, innocent, the perpetrator is very different. The story is suitably melodramatic: Mary is goodness personified, the Captain is likewise bad, and it is Henry’s lot to find the body, with the help of a dream. But traditional singers apparently took it perfectly seriously, and it would not be surprising to learn that some thought it a true story. Nevertheless, the real moral for the modern reader seems to be that when trussing up your victim, never use a monogrammed handkerchief.
Most of the main nineteenth-century broadside printers issued the title, and as is often the case, the sheets printed by Catnach and Pitts, dating probably from the 1820s, provide the earliest evidence so far recorded of the song’s existence.
Sung by Freda Palmer, Bampton, Oxfordshire (26 February 1978); recorded by Steve Roud.
Roud 2336; 14 entries.
This was another immensely popular song, which the Victorian and Edwardian collectors largely ignored because of its recent origin. The song was written by Thomas Haynes Bayly, probably early 1830s, with music by Sir Henry Bishop.
Bayly (1797–1839) was one of the most prolific popular songwriters of his day and he also wrote drama and poetry, but he did not invent the story itself. He based his song on ‘Ginevra’, a poem by Samuel Rogers, published in his book Italy in 1823. This tells of seeing a portrait of Ginevra in Modena, and an old chest placed beneath it. She was the fifteen-year-old bride of her childhood sweetheart, Francesco Doria, and she had playfully hidden in the chest during her wedding feast, with tragic results. But it was Rogers himself who had introduced the Italian setting; as he wrote: ‘This story is, I believe, founded on fact, although the time and place are uncertain. Many old houses in England lay claim to it.’ So it was already known over here, although earlier versions have not yet come to light.
It was a stroke of genius of Bayly to introduce the Christmas setting, if it was he who did so, because it ensured its revival at concerts, theatres and home entertainments every year at that season, and there could have been few Victorians who did not know it well. There is no doubt that many singers of ‘The Mistletoe Bough’ believed it to be a true story, and even now many houses in England claim to be the spot where the tragedy took place. Some possess the very chest in which she hid herself, while others base their claim on the fact that the name Lovel occurs locally. Contenders include Minster Lovell (Oxfordshire); Bramshill House, Marwell Old Hall and Malsanger (all in Hampshire); Brockdish Hall (Norfolk); and Bawdrip and Shapwick (Somerset); see Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson, The Lore of the Land (2005), pp. 302–3.
The broadside printers were not slow in picking up the song, and it was available in this form from the 1830s onwards. Broadsides rarely give information about sources, but an early sheet by Catnach reprints the explanatory commentary from Rogers’s Italian book.
The singer begins a little shakily in this performance so the first bar of stanza 2 has been substituted in the transcription.
Sung by Mrs Sarah Phelps, Avening, Gloucestershire (c.1930); collected by James Madison Carpenter (Carpenter MSS, pp. 06997–8; Cylinder 131 (sr 351), Disc Side 310 (sr 157b)).
Roud 21, Child 4; 116 entries.
In the timescale covered by this book, about half a dozen of the ballads chosen by Francis J. Child have proved in a class of their own as regards widespread popularity, and ‘The Outlandish Knight’ is up there with ‘Barbara Allen’ and ‘The Gipsy Laddie’ (see Nos. 40 and 81) in being collected time and again all over the English-speaking world. Bertrand Bronson called it ‘one of the most impressive of all ballads for the geographical sweep of its popularity and vital tenacity’ (The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, I (1959), p. 39).
The song goes by many names, including ‘False Sir John’ and ‘May Colven’ in Scotland, but ‘The Outlandish Knight’ is the nearest we get to a standard title in the English tradition. Influenced by foreign ballads, Child, rather confusingly, called it ‘Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight’.
Child himself only printed six versions, but provided a wealth of background material, and Bronson amassed 141 tunes. Much of Child’s discussion is concerned with the many Continental analogues, and he shows that similar ballads exist in the traditions of Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, Serbia, France, Spain, Portugal and others. The British ballad is particularly close to the Dutch ballad ‘Heer Halewijn’, and it seems pretty clear that the British ballad was not an indigenous growth but was originally imported from the Continent, and probably not that long ago.
Despite its archaic feel and close foreign relatives, the song does not seem to be very old, at least in Britain. An undated broadside in the Roxburghe collection, entitled ‘The False Knight Outwitted’, is almost certainly from the second half of the eighteenth century, and ‘May Colvin’ is published in David Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic Ballads, etc. (1776), but no earlier versions have yet been located.
The song was also very common on later broadsides, and many of the collected texts, including Sarah Phelps’s, are remarkably similar to those printed in the nineteenth century, from Catnach and Pitts in about 1820 to Henry Such sometime after the 1860s, even down to the puzzling line in verse 13, ‘Although it is made of a tree’. Indeed, these texts are also very similar to the eighteenth-century example already mentioned, except for one key element in the plot. In most versions the girl tells the knight to turn his back while she takes off her dress, but in some, including the Roxburghe broadside, she demands that he cut down the nettles which are growing on the brim, and while engaged with his sickle he is thrown in. On present evidence the song seems to have been more than usually influenced by printed texts in its history.
It is a great disappointment to many that the song as found in Britain, in contrast to many of its Continental cousins, has no obvious supernatural element (apart from the talking parrot, of course), and it is usually assumed that these motifs have been lost, rather than they were never there. It has been suggested, for example, that because the False Knight drowns his victims he must originally have been some form of water-monster, but why such a being can be killed by throwing him in the water is never explained.
Carpenter’s cylinder recording contains four verses of the song whose melody is the same as that of ‘Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor’ and Lord Lovel’ (see notes to Nos. 48 and 122 respectively).
Sung by Freda Palmer, Witney, Oxfordshire (1973); recorded by Mike Yates; issued on Up in the North and Down in the South, Musical Traditions MTCD311-2 (2001).
Roud 218, Laws P30; 51 entries.
A straightforward tale of tragic love. Under various titles, such as ‘Jealousy’ and ‘Poison in a Glass of Wine’, this song was widely collected across Britain and Ireland and in North America. It also widely printed on broadsides, with the earliest sheets so far identified being from the Pitts and Catnach era, around the 1820s, and texts vary little from version to version.
The upbeat notes to stanza 1 have been changed to D from E as E only occurs in stanza 1. The notated rhythm is somewhat approximate as the singing is fairly free in places.
‘Ekefield Town’, sung by Harry Cox, Catfield, Norfolk (12 June 1960); recorded by Mervyn Plunkett.
Roud 263, Laws P35; 25 entries.
Widely sung in England, not quite so common in Scotland and Ireland, but with numerous North American versions, this song was one of the most popular ‘murdered sweetheart’ accounts in the tradition. It goes under many names, often based on the place concerned – ‘The Oxford Girl’, ‘The Wexford Girl’ and, in the USA, ‘Expert Town’, ‘Lexington Murder’, ‘Knoxville Girl’ – or focusing on the perpetrator as ‘The Cruel Miller’, ‘The Bloody Miller’, and so on.
It was widely available on broadsides in the nineteenth century, and collected versions are usually quite close to these printed texts, but these later broadsides were in turn based on a widely printed eighteenth-century account entitled ‘The Berkshire Tragedy, or The Wittam Miller’. This was a much longer and wordier treatment of the story, and, as happened with many other songs of the period, was deliberately cut down to suit the fashion for shorter songs sometime soon after 1800.
The song may have the hallmarks of a ‘generic’ murder ballad, but there is some evidence that it may have started as a report of a real crime, although we have two potential ancestors. The first, a black-letter broadside in the Pepys collection, entitled ‘The Bloody Miller’, dating from 1684, claims to record how Francis Cooper, a miller’s servant of Hocstow, near Shrewsbury, murdered his pregnant sweetheart, Anne Nicols. But beyond the general similarity, the details of the crime and the text of the song itself bear little relation to our song, although there is a curious coincidence in the mention of a nosebleed, which occurs when Cooper hears his sentence passed by the judge.
The second candidate is much closer. We have seen that the ‘Berkshire Tragedy’ broadsides show clear textual similarities to the collected versions of the song, and the two earliest printings to come to light so far are chapbooks, published in York and Edinburgh respectively, which claim that the song reports a real and recent crime. They both end with ‘The Last Dying Words and Confession’ of the murderer, John Mauge, a miller, who was executed at Reading for killing his sweetheart, Anne Knite. ‘Wittam’, which appears in the titles of both versions, is presumably Wytham, near Oxford, and they are dated 1744. It is possible that they are telling the truth, but street literature such as this is notoriously untrustworthy, and as it has proved impossible to find any independent corroboration of the facts of the case so far, it may well be fiction after all.
‘Cold Blows the Wind’, sung by Jane Jeffrey, Dunterton, Devon (1893); collected by Sabine Baring-Gould (Baring-Gould MSS, SBG 3/1/42).
Lucy Broadwood also collected a version from the same singer in 1893 and published it in her English Traditional Songs and Carols (1908), p. 119.
Roud 51, Child 78; 89 entries.
An immensely popular song in England, but much rarer in Scotland and North America. Cecil Sharp called it ‘a great favourite’ with his Somerset singers, and Sabine Baring-Gould commented that ‘there are few old singers who do not know it’. Francis J. Child gives five versions, including one from Scotland, while Bertrand Bronson musters forty-three tunes. Folklorists tend to follow Child in referring to the song as ‘The Unquiet Grave’, but most singers seem to have simply called it ‘Cold Blows the Wind’, after its common first line.
For such a simple song, ‘The Unquiet Grave’ has attracted a fair amount of commentary; partly because it was included by Child in his seminal ballad collection, but also because it has a marked supernatural element, which is surprisingly rare in English songs. The identification of the song as an old ballad has in itself coloured the way it is handled. Child started it all off with the comment, ‘this may suggest a suspicion that this brief little piece is an aggregation of scraps. But these repetitions would not strike so much if the ballad were longer, and we must suppose that we have it only in an imperfect form.
Later writers have taken as read the idea that what we have is incomplete and have hoped to find a more satisfyingly complex predecessor, but to achieve this they have had to look abroad. There is no doubt that the central motif – that immoderate or too-lengthy mourning by the living disturbs the rest of the dead – existed across Britain and Ireland independently of the song and was a widespread motif in folklore across Europe, particularly in Scandinavia and Germany, where ballads on the subject can also be found. But as often happens in ballad study, it requires a substantial leap of faith to square this particular circle. Ruth Harvey, for example, in an otherwise useful study of the song published in the JEFDSS, automatically assumes it to be ‘a song which certainly goes back to pre-Christian traditions’ (4 (1941), 49–66), despite the fact that there is no evidence of its existence before the nineteenth century. Put simply, the problem with ‘ancient’ motifs which have remained current in society, as this one had, is that they are available for incorporation into a song at any given time in their history, not just at the beginning of it, and their presence is therefore no proof of antiquity.
To complicate matters, however, some versions include another well-known ‘ballad’ motif, the setting of impossible or difficult tasks, but it is not clear whether these formed part of the ‘original’ ‘Unquiet Grave’ song or were grafted on later. For an investigation of this aspect, see David Atkinson, ‘The Wit Combat Episode in The Unquiet Grave’, Lore & Language, 12 (1994).
There is one small straw at which those who hope to find an ancient history for the song can grasp in Richard Leighton Greene’s The Early English Carols (1935), pp. 127–8. He published the text of a carol, written down about the end of the fifteenth century, which starts with the two lines:
There blows a cold wynd todaye, todaye
The wynd blows cold todaye
And although the carol has no other similarity to ‘The Unquiet Grave’, Bertrand Bronson thought these lines close enough to the latter to suggest its existence in that period.
But what we do know of the song’s history is more prosaic, and inconclusive. In Songs of the West (1905), Sabine Baring-Gould seems to say that he first came across the song from someone who had learnt it from an old nurse about 1830, so it was already in ‘oral’ circulation at that time.
However, surprisingly few broadside printings of the song have survived. Of the six known sheets which have printers’ names, four of them were produced in Birmingham, while the others are from Portsea and Liverpool. Two of these printers were in business from 1820, the others much later. Nevertheless, two slip songs in the Madden collection, which unfortunately have no imprints, look to be from about 1800, or just before, but efforts to find a definite eighteenth-century printing have so far been in vain. The most noticeable thing, however, is that as yet there is no evidence of the song being printed by any of the most prolific London businesses, or others from Manchester, Preston, and so on. This may simply be an accident of history, but it is decidedly strange that such a widely known traditional song has left such a limited paper trail.
Lucy Broadwood commented, ‘Mrs Jeffreys’ great age and ill-health made it impossible to note more than the tune and the two beautiful concluding verses here printed. The other verses were so much the same as in the Shropshire version … that the latter has been re-printed here, up to the point where Mrs Jeffreys’ materially differed.’
The music transcriptions by Broadwood and Frederick Bussell, Baring-Gould’s collaborator, are almost identical. Bussell’s first-bar notation is ambiguous, the stem direction of the second note appearing to imply an alternative pitch but without supplying a corresponding note to which it would form the alternative. Broadwood’s transcription gives a B at this point so this has here been taken as the missing note which completes the bar while Bussell’s alternative notations are presented below.
Jane Jeffrey’s tune is unusual among those for ‘The Unquiet Grave’ in being triple time, but its melodic contour is akin to the tunes with authentic range in Bronson’s principal melodic grouping, that is, his group Ab (see The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, II (1962), p. 234). The Baring-Gould manuscript notes ‘compare with Chevy Chase’ beside the tune notation, and it certainly appears that Jeffrey’s tune is a close analogue of the ‘O Ponder Well’ tune tradition associated with ‘Chevy Chase’ (Child 162, ‘The Hunting of the Cheviot’; Roud 223), particularly in Northumberland (J. Collingwood Bruce and John Stokoe, Northumbrian Minstrelsy (1882), p. 2). The same tune appears in The Beggars’ Opera (1728) and is associated with the song ‘Children in the Wood’ (Roud 288). According to William Chappell, the tune goes back to Elizabethan times (Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859), I, p. 200).
Bar 1 of the manuscript is ambiguously notated in that the second quaver stem appears to suggest a melodic alternative. It is here given as part of the main tune, however, as two quavers at the start of the bar is characteristic of the tune elsewhere.
IX
Me and Five More …
Poachers, Highwaymen and Other Criminals
Sung by Eve Champion, Slough, Buckinghamshire (1 November 1950); collected by Francis Collinson (Collinson MSS, COL/2/46B). Last two verses from Harry Cox, Catfield, Norfolk, recorded by Peter Kennedy (19 July 1956) (BBC 22914).
Roud 559, Laws O10; 25 entries.
This was a popular enough song in its own right, but nowhere near as widespread as ‘The Banks of the Sweet Dundee’, which has a similar storyline (see No. 58). Eve Champion’s version stops short of what is the usual denouement, so we have taken the liberty of adding the two last verses from the singing of Harry Cox of Norfolk. Nevertheless, it must be said that only in the fantasy world of song would it be deemed a happy ending that Betsy marries the man who had tried to rape her at sword point.
There are other aspects, below the surface, which to the modern eye change the tenor of the narrative. In the common broadside text, for example, it is Betsy who draws ‘her own dagger knife’, rather than using his sword, and the last line was often ‘He’s made her his lady instead of his whore’, which is certainly more direct and realistic about the squire’s motives, but mars the romantic ‘happy ending’ a little.
Broadside texts have survived from various times in the Victorian era and the earliest date from the first two decades of the nineteenth century, the printers often calling the song ‘The Squire and the Milkmaid’ or ‘Young Squire’. But the song was not quite brand new at that time. It is a deliberate rewrite of an older broadside ballad, ‘The Virtuous Milk-Maid’s Garland’, dating from sometime between 1765 and 1780, which takes over 130 lines to tell the same story. A number of other songs that entered the tradition in the early nineteenth century were the result of a similar cutting-down treatment, and in every case, including this one, a much better song was created in the process.
The tunes associated with ‘Blackberry Fold’ are always, it seems, in triple time and for the most part are major. A range of distinct melodies is evident in the tune tradition, a handful of which contain an echo of the ‘Villikins and His Dinah’ tune in one or another feature, such as the thrice-repeated note which ends the first, second and fourth phrases (see Jacob Baker’s tune, collected by H. E. D. Hammond, Hammond MSS, HAM/5/34/26). A few other tunes are a version of the full ‘Villikins’ tune (for example Florrie Coomber’s, collected by Anne Gilchrist, and Miss E. Bull’s, by Lucy Broadwood). None of this is enough evidence to support Frank Purslow’s claim that ‘most collected versions of the tune have apparently been affected by contact with the ubiquitous “Villikins”’ (The Foggy Dew (1974), p. 104).
Eve Champion’s tune is one of a group of related tunes for the song characterized by the phrase structure AABC. Some of these have a compass as wide as an eleventh, but the bulk of the tune in each case tends to emphasize the first five degrees of the scale. Interestingly, the Dorian tune collected by E. J. Moeran from George Hill in Suffolk is similarly formed in terms of its phrase structure and compass so one must disagree with Gilchrist that this tune is ‘quite different’ from the major ones of this group (JFSS, 8 (1931), 269). Likewise, Purslow’s view that this is ‘a decidedly strange tune which is not at all representative of English folk song’ seems misplaced (The Foggy Dew, p. 104). Gilchrist also points to a resemblance between the major tunes in this group and the tune commonly associated with ‘Spencer the Rover’ (JFSS, 6 (1918), 36; see No. 86) but although there is a general similarity, the latter does not emphasize the first five degrees of the scale in the way so characteristic of the ‘Blackberry Fold’ tune. The first note of bar 9 in Collinson’s notation of Champion’s tune has here been changed from a dotted crotchet to a minim to make a complete bar.
Sung by Charlie Wills, Bridport, Dorset (19 October 1952); recorded by Peter Kennedy (BBC 18693); also in Kennedy’s Folk Songs of Britain and Ireland (1975), pp. 697–8.
Roud 476, Laws L7; 22 entries.
This song was very widely sung in Victorian times, as shown by Frank Kidson’s comment in Traditional Tunes (1891) that it ‘is, or was, sung all over England’. William Brennan really did exist, and was one of the most famous Irish criminals of the period. It is not easy to get authoritative information about him, mainly because legend quickly obscured fact, and even his date of death is not known for sure; 1804 is most regularly cited, but there are other references to 1809 and even 1812, and while most sources claim that he was taken by the authorities and formally executed, there is also a tradition that he was killed by one of his potential victims in a highway robbery which went wrong.
The song is typical of outlaw ballads in that it portrays the miscreant as some sort of hero. ‘Robbing from the rich’ is, of course, one of the most common motifs in songs of this kind, and the mention of Dick Turpin brings in another romantic hero. Even being outsmarted by the pedlar is probably drawn from a similar episode in the Robin Hood cycle.
The song was widely available on British and Irish broadsides, which are typically undated, but on present evidence the earliest of these date from the 1830s, so the song was probably written several decades after the real Willie Brennan’s exploits were over, and it is mentioned in an article in Chambers’s Journal in 1863 as typical of the street ballads of the time. The traditional texts, like Charlie Wills’s given here, follow the broadsides quite closely.
There are a number of tunes associated with this song, including ‘Villikins and His Dinah’, ‘The Banks of the Sweet Dundee’ (No. 58) and ‘The Wearing of the Green’. Although different, they contain rhythmic similarities, especially the use of the ‘Scotch snap’ pattern (as on the first beat of bar 7 in Charlie Wills’s rendition). The rhythmic resemblance is particularly noticeable in the chorus on the words ‘Brennan’s on the moor’, which in just about all versions is realized by the same rhythm, if not the same pitches. Even when the tune for the verse is in 6/8 time, it changes to simple duple time to make the characteristic rhythm of the chorus (see the tune sung by J. Halls in Roy Palmer’s Folk Songs Collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams (1983), for example).
Charlie Wills’s tune is particularly close to that collected by Francis Collinson from an unnamed singer (Collinson MSS, COL/4/33) and it is very likely that the Collinson notation is another transcription of Wills himself. Like several other ‘Brennan’ tunes, the final phrase of Wills’s verse and chorus is the same as the B phrase of ‘The Wearing of the Green’. Except in stanzas 8 and 9 on this recording, Charlie Wills habitually prolongs the second beat of the penultimate bar of the verse (bar 7 in the transcription) to make a 5/4 bar at this point, whereas at the corresponding place in the chorus he keeps to the regular 4/4 metre.
For more on ‘The Wearing of the Green’ melody, see ‘Bonny Labouring Boy’ (No. 62).
Sung by David Belton, Ulceby, Lincolnshire (26 July 1906); collected by Percy Grainger (Grainger MSS, no. 181).
Roud 621, Laws L10; 31 entries.
By far the most popular of several traditional songs about the famous highwayman’s exploits (see also Roud 620 and 856), this was collected widely in England under titles such as ‘Turpin Hero’ and ‘O Rare Turpin’, but rarely elsewhere.
The real Turpin was born in Hempstead, Essex, about 1705, and died on 7 April 1739. He started as a butcher’s apprentice, but soon progressed to a life of crime, which included receiving, deer poaching, horse stealing and burglary as well as the highway robbery for which he later became famous. Turpin’s fictional fame began to take shape in chapbooks published around the end of the eighteenth century, but was given a huge boost by the best-selling novel Rookwood by William Harrison Ainsworth (1834), which presented a romanticized notion of highwaymen as ‘gentlemen of the road’. In the course of this process of literary romanticizing, legends which had been told of previous criminals became attached to Turpin. The death-defying ride to York to provide himself with an alibi, for example, had previously been told of William (John) Nevison (d. 1684) and others.
It is interesting to note that on top of the fiction underlying the story as sung by David Belton, the last verse includes a historical reference to the suitably ignominious end to Turpin’s sordid criminal career. Too well known to operate around London, he moved to Yorkshire, where he lived under the name of Samuel Palmer. Instead of lying low, he created a scene by shooting his neighbour’s cockerel and threatening to shoot the man as well. He was arrested for disturbing the peace, and while in custody was linked to some local horse theft, then recognized, tried and executed at York.
Jack Catch in the last line refers to Jack Ketch, who was the public executioner in the late seventeenth century. He became so well known in his time – partly through ballads and other printed sources – that his name lived on long after his death as the generic name for any executioner or hangman.
The earliest example of the present song is as part of a much longer text, detailing several of Turpin’s fictional exploits, which appeared in a late eighteenth-century chapbook entitled The Dunghill Cock, or Turpin’s Valiant Exploits, but it was later printed as a separate song by many of the nineteenth-century broadside firms.
‘Cecilia’, sung by Mabs Hall, Horsham, Sussex (1980s); recorded by Mike Yates; issued on As I Went Down to Horsham, Veteran VT115CD. The last three verses are added from the singing of Hall’s son Gordon on Good Things Enough, Country Branch CBCD095 (2001).
Roud 7, Laws N21; 42 entries.
Hall’s version is perfectly good the way it stands, but we could not resist adding the last three verses from Gordon’s singing, just to round things off nicely. It was a very widely collected song, also popular on broadsides, from at least 1800 onwards and probably a little earlier. Despite widespread transmission, texts of the song do not vary a great deal, and Hall’s words are uncannily close to a broadside printed by John Pitts about 1820. But the girl’s name varies considerably, most commonly as Sylvia or Sylvie, but sometimes Sovie, and so on. The broadsides often had the more formal title of ‘Sylvia’s Request and William’s Denial’.
There is more than a handful of ‘strong women’ in the English folk-song tradition, but with one or two exceptions they are permitted to step outside their female roles only to a certain degree. As with the female tar songs, their motives are still circumscribed by gender conventions, and Cecilia cannot become a highwayman just for the hell of it. She can only do it to test her sweetheart’s love. A further last verse, where she says that she would have shot him if he had given up the ring, so popular with Revival singers, does not seem to appear in traditional or broadside versions. What usually happens, as in verse 7 above, is that he worries about what would have happened if he had fought back and shot her, or she had accidentally shot him.
The first half of the tune seems to become stable in this rendition only in stanza 3, so that stanza has been used in the transcription given here. The performer sings the rhythm fairly freely, and there has been some attempt to show this in the transcription, hence the several time signatures.
‘The Gallant Poacher’, sung by Henry Adams, Sturminster Newton, Dorset (August 1905); collected by H. E. D. Hammond (Hammond MSS, HAM/2/6/7).
Roud 793, Laws L14; 17 entries.
Collected regularly across England, but rarely elsewhere, ‘The Gallant Poachers’ is one of the liveliest of our many poaching songs, but with a tragic storyline. Henry Adams’s text is remarkably similar to the earliest known broadside, by James Catnach of London, dating from the 1820s, but it is more likely to have been derived from sheets printed later in the century (for example by Henry Such) which used the same words.
A. L. Lloyd (in Folk Song in England (1967), p. 243), and Roy Palmer (in Everyman’s Book of English Country Songs (1979), pp. 98–100) have both noticed that a Luddite song, ‘The Croppers’ Song’ of about 1812, is clearly based on ‘The Gallant Poachers’. It starts:
Come cropper lads of high renown
Who love to drink strong ale that’s brown
And strike each haughty tyrant down
With hatchet, pike and gun.
‘Spare Me the Life of Georgie’, sung by Mary Hayes, Hartlebury, Worcestershire (30 November 1908); collected by W. K. Clay; published in his Four Folk Songs from Hartlebury, Worcestershire (1908?). Clay writes that Hayes ‘had learnt it from a dairy maid in Upton Warren parish fifty-seven years before’.
Roud 90, Child 209; 48 entries.
Extremely well known in England, Scotland and North America, but apparently rarer in Ireland, ‘Geordie’ is one of those Child ballads which has distinct English and Scottish traditions, almost to the extent of being two different songs. Francis J. Child printed fourteen traditional Scottish versions, plus two English broadsides from the seventeenth century, while Bertrand Bronson presented fifty-eight tunes from the Anglo-American traditions. It is noticeable that the American versions are much closer to the English, rather than Scottish texts.
Ballad aficionados strongly favour the Scottish ballad. As Child himself commented in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, IV (1972), p. 126, ‘The Scottish ballads have a proper story, with a beginning, middle and … a good end, and they are most certainly original and substantially independent of the English.’ In these, Geordie is a nobleman and his lady’s pleading is successful, while in the English he is a confessed criminal (albeit a noble one), of one sort or another, and his lady is too late to save him so he dies. Scottish versions are most often called some variant of ‘Geordie’, but other titles include ‘Gight’s Lady’ and ‘The Laird o’ Geight’, and it is often claimed – on slim evidence – that the story is based on a real-life character, identified by some as George Gordon, Earl of Huntly in the 1550s.
There are sufficient similarities between the two national traditions to suggest either a common ancestor or a major influence one way or another, and if the latter, on present evidence the English must take precedence. Scottish versions were first recorded in the later eighteenth century, at least a hundred years after the earliest evidence south of the border.
The earliest version of the English ‘Geordie’ to come to light so far is a black-letter broadside in the Pepys collection, ‘The Life and Death of George of Oxford’, printed in London between 1672 and 1696. It has all the key elements of the later song – London Bridge, Lady Gray, conversation with judge, hanging on a silken string – although the actual wording has changed over the years. But there is an even earlier broadside, preserved in the Roxburghe collection and dating from between 1601 and 1640, with the long title typical of the period, ‘A Lamentable New Ditty Made Upon the Death of a Worthy Gentleman, named George Stoole, dwelling sometime on Gate-Side Moore and sometime at Newcastle in Northumberland, with his Penitent End’. This has a rhythm and rhyming scheme which connects it to ‘Geordie’, and includes some key verbal similarities, such as the lines:
I never stole no oxe nor cow
Nor never murdered any.
This ballad has a chorus in which ‘heigh-ho’ is repeated several times, and a ballad registered with the Stationers’ Company on 1 June 1629, entitled ‘Hey Hoe George’, may well be the same.
It is likely that the ‘George of Oxford’ ballad in the Pepys collection was either based on or influenced by ‘George Stoole’, and it is usually assumed that this is the case. It is further assumed that the events described in ‘George Stoole’ are true, and it is confidently stated that they took place in 1610 (which seems to derive from the ‘estimate’ put forward by Joseph Ritson, an eighteenth-century ballad scholar). But there is no independent evidence to confirm or deny the existence of Stoole, or his trial and execution, so we must reserve judgement on whether the song is ‘truth’ or ‘fiction’.
But to return to the song as it was collected from late nineteenth- and twentieth-century singers. Most of the leading nineteenth-century broadside producers issued the song, and despite being widely dispersed in time and place, the collected versions are textually very similar, and have probably been stabilized by these printed editions.
The most common tune for this ballad among English singers is minor in tonality. It is also employed for many other songs as well (see Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, III (1966), p. 268). The ‘Geordie’ versions sung to this tune have textual connections with the ‘George of Oxford’ broadside. Whether this is the same tune as that named on the broadside as ‘a pleasant New Tune, called, Poor Georgy’, however, is debatable because the broadside has a fairly extensive chorus or ‘burden’ which is not preserved in the extant oral texts or tunes of this group. The ‘George Stoole’ broadside is directed to be sung ‘To a delicate Scottish Tune’.
Mary Hayes’s tune is major in tonality and, in its first phrase and rising fourth in the final bar, sounds very like the widespread minor tune transformed into the major (compare Bronson’s note to ‘Geordie’ as sung by Mrs Glover, Huish Episcopi, no. 43). All slurs in the melody are editorial.
‘The Yorkshire Boy’, sung by Sam Fone, Mary Tavy, Devon (4 October 1892); collected by Sabine Baring-Gould (Baring-Gould MSS, SBG/1/2/633).
Roud 2637, Laws L1; 29 entries.
This will have to stand as representative of three very similar songs, each concerning a highwayman being tricked by someone carrying money on their way home from market. In ‘The Farmer in Cheshire’ or ‘The Highwayman Outwitted’ (Roud 2638, Laws L2) the protagonist is a girl, and while the robbery is taking place, the highwayman foolishly demands that she hold his horse. She leaps on the horse and rides off home. In the least well-known of the three, ‘The Crafty Farmer’ or ‘Saddle to Rags’ (Roud 2640, Child 283) it is the farmer himself who is stopped on the highway. He throws his saddlebags over the hedge, and while the robber goes to retrieve them, rides off with his horse.
All three first appear on broadsides and chapbooks in the second half of the eighteenth century, and were perpetuated by many broadside printers in the nineteenth. Our one is often called ‘The Yorkshire Bite’ and more often than not concerns a boy from Yorkshire, relying on listeners understanding that people from that county are famous for their shrewdness.
The music manuscript includes the symbol for a turn in bar 4 and a mordent in bar 10. Suggested interpretations have been added to the notation here. The text underlay of the refrain as given in the source does not fit the notation in any obvious way so this wording has been slightly reworked here and several notes subdivided so that the text scans well.
‘Gloucestershire Poacher’, sung (probably) by Mrs Williams, Sonning-on-Thames, Berkshire; collected by Clive Carey (Carey MSS, Gl.227). Two short pieces of text missing from Mrs Williams’s version, have been supplied from a Gloucestershire version printed in Alfred Williams, Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames (1923).
Roud 299; 23 entries.
This song was very widely known in traditional forms but was also extremely popular in other milieux such as the stage and the concert hall as an accredited ‘old English song’. Clearly, when sung by a village labourer or other worker it would have meant something different than to a concert professional or a middle-class parlour singer, but the latter presumably sang about poaching in the same way as they did about being Gipsies or shepherdesses. The repeated line ‘For it’s my delight on a shiny night in the season of the year’ was particularly well known, and became almost proverbial.
William Chappell commented, ‘This song is rather too well known among the peasantry. A friend informed me, twenty years ago, that he had heard it sung by several hundred voices together, at Windsor, on the occasion of one of the harvest-homes of King George IV’ (Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859), p. 732). But Alfred Williams implied that by 1918 it was more ‘known’ than sung at village level: ‘This was once very popular. It is to be met with in most collections of folk-songs. I had known part of it from childhood, and heard it spoken of in many places, but I was a long time in finding one who really included it in his list of “live” songs’ (Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames (1923), p. 175). Versions are often localized in the first verse – Lincolnshire is the most common, but Gloucestershire, Yorkshire, Somersetshire and others are also found.
For such a well-known song, its origin is strangely obscure. Sabine Baring-Gould (English Minstrelsie, III (1895), p. ii) states that it was William Thomas Moncrieff who introduced the song to public notice. He quotes from that author’s Original Collection of Songs (1850): ‘The writer first heard the old part of this song sung at a small roadside public-house in the little village of Lillishal, Warwickshire and was so pleased with the humour of it, that he was induced to add half-a-dozen new verses to it.’ He presumably meant Lillishall, in Shropshire. Moncrieff (1794–1857) was a major force in the London theatrical world for many years. He wrote over 200 dramatic pieces, and his speciality was adapting current novels for the stage, but many of his dramas were too ephemeral to have been published. He also produced poems, guidebooks and countless other written works, and was a theatre manager and general theatrical fixer. He was certainly in just the right position to introduce a new hit song.
The song was extremely widely disseminated on broadsides and in more substantial songsters during the nineteenth century. These publications are rarely dated, but the song collection called The Evergreen, printed by James Catnach, was already in print when he issued his catalogue in 1832, and the song there is described as ‘sung by Mr Richards’. In the London Vocalist (c.1840) it is described as ‘A Celebrated comic song, sung by Mr Howell, at the Surrey Rotunda’.
Given these scraps of information, if Moncrieff’s claim is correct, he probably launched his ‘new’ song in the late 1820s, and it must have been clear to everyone of his generation that it was a ‘playhouse’ song – which makes it particularly puzzling that William Chappell, the most knowledgeable of the song antiquarians of his generation, should include the song in his section entitled ‘Traditional songs of uncertain date’, as if he were unaware of its provenance. Added to this, in Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England (1857), Robert Bell’s revision of James Dixon’s work, the editor clearly states that the oldest copy he had seen was printed at York and dated from about 1776.
Perhaps this was the original on which Moncrieff worked his magic, or perhaps he was claiming credit that was not his due. Either way, there is clearly much more to be learnt about ‘The Lincolnshire Poacher’.
A final repeat mark is given in the Clive Carey manuscript, along with a note that reads, ‘This does not indicate which portion of the tune is to be repeated; probably the final 4 bars.’ This is how the repeat has been interpreted here.
Sung by Mrs Hill of Stamford, Lincolnshire (1893); published in Lucy Broadwood, English Traditional Songs and Carols (1908), pp. 86–91. Lucy Broadwood noted, ‘Mrs Hill, an old family nurse, and a native of Stamford, learned her delightful song when a child, from an old cook who danced as she sang it, beating time on the old kitchen-floor with her iron pattens.’
Roud 901, Laws Q31; 43 entries.
The song’s story does not quite ring true. The woman who is abducted by the Gipsies is not a child but an adult, and seems to have made no effort to free herself, find her way home, or tell anyone in Dublin of her plight. But this does not appear to have worried the singers, and its popularity is indicated by the number of times it was collected. Many broadside printers, from about the 1820s onwards, included it in their stock, with very similar texts, and Lucy Broadwood has clearly completed Mrs Hill’s text from a sheet printed by Such, of London.
Several different tunes are sung to this song and even similar tunes show variety in their length, structure, mode, tonality and range, although all seem to be in triple time. Mrs Hill’s melody has an AA’BA phrase structure, authentic range and is Dorian. Lucy Broadwood notes that ‘the tune should be compared with that of “The Lament of the Duchess of Gloucester” (words modern), in Gill’s Manx National Songs (Boosey & Co.), and with certain Dorian versions of “Green Bushes”’ (English Traditional Songs and Carols (1908), p. 123).
‘The Orphan Boy’, sung by Jack Barnard, Bridgwater, Somerset (16 April 1906); collected by Cecil Sharp (Sharp MSS, FW 963–4, FT 893). We have taken the liberty of tidying up the tenses of some of the verbs in Mr Barnard’s rendering to make a little more literal sense of the story.
Roud 618; 18 entries.
The song was quite widely known in England, but not, apparently, elsewhere. The theme of a poor boy or girl (usually an orphan) begging in the street and being taken in by a kind lady or gentleman was clearly a popular one in nineteenth-century England, and several songs were devoted to the subject, including ‘The Farmer’s Boy’ (No. 94) and ‘The Poor Fisherman’s Boy’ (Roud 912). In ‘The Poor Smuggler’s Boy’ the father’s calling seems to be no obstacle to our pity, presumably because smuggling, like poaching, was widely thought of as no crime at all.
The song was also popular on broadsides from about 1830 onwards, and often had a chorus:
‘Oh pity I crave, or give me employ
For alone I must wander,’ cried the poor smuggler’s boy.
Jack Barnard’s tune contains echoes of ‘Flash Company’ (No. 80). The final note of bar 11 is unclear in the manuscript and may be an E rather than a D as given here.
‘Died for Love of You’, sung by Charles Pottipher, Ingrave, Essex (4 December 1903); collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams (VW MSS, British Library 54188, 4 to 1 MS bk, p. 8).
Roud 399, Laws O39; 31 entries.
This was clearly a popular song, with numerous versions appearing in the major English collections, although it was not so often published by the collectors; it was also well known in Scotland and in North America.
In the world of traditional song, love across class lines is relatively common, and although it rarely runs smooth it usually has a happy ending. But where the love (or lust) is unreciprocated, it is almost always the higher-class character who turns out to be bad – such as the squire in ‘The Banks of the Sweet Dundee’ (No. 58) – and the ‘lady’ in ‘The Sheffield Apprentice’ runs true to form.
The song was widely printed on broadsides, with the earliest dating from the 1790s, and traditional texts follow the broadsides closely.
Sung by Sam Bennett, Ilmington, Warwickshire (23 August 1909); collected by Cecil Sharp (Sharp MSS, FW 2114–18/FT 2320); also collected from the same singer by James Madison Carpenter (early 1930s) (Carpenter MSS, pp. 00569–70, 00573).
Roud 222; 28 entries.
One of the most widespread of poaching songs. The spelling of the locality in which the song is set naturally varies considerably from version to version, but there are two main contenders in the real world. One is Thorney Wood Chase, near Nottingham, and the other Thornehagh Moor Woods, near Newark. Roy Palmer, who knows more about such things than most, plumps for the latter (Everyman’s Book of English Country Songs (1979), pp. 96–7).
It is not usual for poachers in songs to be let off by the magistrates, and it is perhaps this incident which led to the unlikely notion, reported by James Henry Dixon in his Ancient Poems (1846): ‘There is a prevalent idea that the song is not the production of an ordinary ballad-writer but was written by a gentleman of rank and education, who, detesting the English game-laws, adopted a too successful mode of inspiring the peasantry with a love of poaching.’
The song is sometimes assumed to be of late eighteenth-century origin, but the earliest broadsides so far found date only from around 1800. Most of the later printers also issued versions, but it was already in oral circulation by the early 1840s, being collected by John Broadwood’s Old English Songs in 1843 as well included in Dixon’s Ancient Poems.
‘Two Jolly Butchers’, sung by Walter Pardon, Knapton, Norfolk (1975); recorded by Mike Yates; issued on A World Without Horses, Topic TSCD514 (2000).
Roud 17, Laws L4; 43 entries.
‘Three Butchers’ was a very widely known and popular song in England, Scotland and North America, and most of the major collections include versions. Details vary: there may be two or three butchers, sometimes they are ‘merry’, sometimes ‘jolly’, and occasionally they are ‘sportsmen’ or ‘huntsmen’ rather than butchers. Their names also vary somewhat, Ips and Gips, for example, or Wilson and Gibson, but the hero is almost always called Johnson.
The song has lasted well for at least 300 years. Several black-letter broadsides from the late seventeenth century have survived, dating from as early as 1672, and one of them is signed by its author, Paul Burges. But although the different printings tell basically the same story, there are significant differences and they are clearly not simply copied from each other. In one, for example, after attacking Johnson from behind, the treacherous woman cold-bloodedly murders his two companions (who had been tied up by the robbers) and then all the surviving villains avoid justice by taking ship and going abroad.
Most of the nineteenth-century broadside printers also offered this song for sale, but, as is usually the case, these versions are much shorter and textually tighter. There is no real trace of the seventeenth century in the wording of the collected traditional renditions, which are clearly derived from the later sheets.
Walter Pardon sings the final phrase more slowly than the other phrases, sometimes close to half speed. In general, his tempo and metre are quite elastic so the rhythm as transcribed is somewhat approximate.
Sung by Mrs Philip Castle, West Adderbury, Oxfordshire, (1915); collected by Janet Blunt (Blunt MSS, JHB/1/8). First verse taken from version sung by Henry Potter, Standlake, Oxfordshire (c.1918); collected by Alfred Williams; published in Williams’s Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames (1923), pp. 280–81.
Roud 289, Laws L3; 53 entries.
Mrs Castle’s song is perfectly good as it is, but it does lack the introductory verse which most versions start with. We have inserted the first verse from another Oxfordshire version, but it is not strictly necessary. Alfred Williams commented about this song: ‘Formerly a very special favourite in the Vale [of the White Horse] I have been offered it at least twelve times.’
Often called ‘The Box on Her Head’, this is one of several songs which started life as a long broadside ballad in the mid eighteenth century – in this case called ‘The Staffordshire Maid’, ‘The Staffordshire Maid’s Garland’ or, in The Swimming Lady’s Garland, ‘The Jolly Young Stratford Maid’ – which were cut down to manageable size, for the broadside trade, sometime around the turn of the nineteenth century. There are several copies of the eighteenth-century original in the Bodleian and Madden broadside collections, along with many sheets with the shorter text, with words very similar to Mrs Castle’s.
Mrs Castle’s tune is that found with ‘The Banks of the Sweet Dundee’ (No. 58).
‘The Gallant Poachers’, sung by Henry Burstow, Horsham, Sussex (1893); collected by Lucy Broadwood (Broadwood MSS, LEB/2/11); published in JFSS, 1:4 (1902), pp. 142–3.
Roud 519, Laws L18; 21 entries.
There are many songs about poaching in the English tradition, but of the songs that focus on the punishment, this is the most widespread. Transportation to the colonies had been regularly used as a legal punishment since the seventeenth century, but the American Revolution forced the British authorities to find another destination. The First Fleet departed for Australia in 1787, and from then until 1868 about 162,000 convicts were shipped there. The scene where this song is set is the notorious Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) colony, which was founded in 1803.
In the Folk Music Journal, 3:2 (1976), Roy Palmer argues persuasively that this song was probably written and first printed in or soon after 1828, when the already tough Game Laws were further tightened and it was decreed that if three men were found in a wood, and one of them carried a gun or bludgeon, all were liable to be transported for fourteen years. Two high-profile trials of poachers, which bear some resemblance to the circumstances reported in the song, took place in Warwickshire in 1829, and it is feasible that the author consciously drew on these. But the author was clearly not writing from experience, unless the ‘tigers’ in verse 3 is simply poetic licence.
The song was widely disseminated on broadsides and was certainly in print by 1832, as it was listed in the catalogue of songs available from the London printer James Catnach in that year.
Many of the tunes to which ‘Van Diemen’s Land’ is sung resemble each other. Like Henry Burstow’s melody, they tend to be in a minor tonality with natural third and seventh degrees (Dorian mode). An exception to this is Mr Broomfield’s melody, as noted by Ralph Vaughan Williams, which is a major form of the tune.
A feature of Burstow’s melody is the distinctive cadence on the seventh degree of the scale in the penultimate phrase. This results in the form ABB’A, cadencing on the first, fifth, seventh and first degrees. Mr Broomfield’s major version does likewise. The third-phrase cadence is also found in Marina Russell’s tune, collected by H. E. D. Hammond (Hammond MSS, HMA/5/33/45), which is in many ways parallel to Burstow’s but with the first two phrases in reverse order. Harry Cox sings another tune which resembles that of Burstow but with a straight ABBA structure, thus cadencing 1, 5, 5, 1 (Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, The Singing Island (1960); compare Collinson (Collinson MSS, COL/6/86); see also the commentary on ‘The Banks of the Sweet Dundee’, No. 58). Benjamin Arnold’s tune flattens the sixth (Aeolian mode) and demonstrates yet another shaping of this same melodic material. It comprises the structure BBBA in terms of Burstow’s melody, prompting George B. Gardiner to comment ‘the tunes are similar towards the end’ (Gardiner MSS, GG/1/11/637). George Petrie refers to a 6/8 ABBA variant of this tune as ‘a Donegal melody’ which he acquired from William Allingham (The Complete Collection of Irish Music (1902–5), no. 808).
‘The High-Way Man’, sung by James Townsend, Holne, Devon (May 1890); collected by Sabine Baring-Gould (Baring Gould MSS, SBG 1/2/153).
Roud 490, Laws L12; 36 entries.
A widely known song in England and North America, but much rarer in Scotland and Ireland, this song goes under a variety of titles, including ‘Adieu Adieu’, ‘The Flash Lad’, ‘The Highwayman’s Fate’ and ‘The Robber’. Although the verbal details of the song vary considerably, the core story of the young man’s descent into criminality and his final regretful fate remains the same from version to version, and is typical of a type of song which is often termed a ‘goodnight ballad’. These ballads are closely related to the ‘Last Dying Speeches’ of the broadside presses, which purported to be the actual confessions of particular convicted criminals, and have prompted some writers to assume that there are real-life criminals behind these songs, but there is no evidence of that.
James Townsend’s version lacks the first verse found in most of them, which usually goes something like this:
In Newry Town I was bred and born
In Stephen’s Green I died with scorn
I served my time to the saddling trade
And always was a roving blade.
Although the place in the first line varies considerably, including Dublin, Norwich, Kerry, Newbury and London.
Commentary on this song has been skewed by claims that it refers to an Irish highwayman called Charles Reilly, but this stems largely from a misreading of earlier writings which were concerned with tunes, and extrapolating these on to the texts. John Moulden, the leading expert on Irish traditional songs and their broadside manifestations, can find no Charles Reilly and, indeed, believes that the evidence points to the song being of English origin (private communication).
Confusion is further compounded by the appearance of Irish place names in many versions of the song, but these are usually followed by London landmarks, such as Grosvenor Square and Covent Garden, and again it is clear that although the young man is portrayed as an Irishman, the song takes place on this side of the Irish Sea. Nevertheless, the two earliest known printed texts were both produced in Ireland and date from the 1780s and 1790s, and it was subsequently issued by all the major English printers in the nineteenth century.
X
What Is the Life of a Man …
Traditional Religious Songs
First verse and tune sung by Mary Anne Clayton, Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire (13 January 1909); collected by Cecil Sharp (Sharp MSS, FT 2069). The rest of the text taken from version sung by Anne Roberts, Winchcombe, Gloucestershire; collected by Sharp (Sharp MSS, FW 2018/FT 2151). Published in this composite form in Sharp’s English Folk Carols (1911).
Roud 453, Child 54; 21 entries.
‘The Cherry-Tree Carol’, often called ‘When Joseph Was an Old Man’, was extremely well known in England and also very popular in North America, but not collected often in Ireland or Scotland. Francis J. Child printed four texts, and Bertrand Bronson gives thirty-two versions with tunes.
The incident of Mary and the fig tree was first recorded in the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, one of the New Testament Apocrypha texts written to fill out the details of Christ’s early life, which was probably compiled about ad 600. The story was already in circulation in England in the late fourteenth century as it is featured in the Mystery play from Coventry, with the tree being localized as a cherry. On present evidence, however, our song dates only from the later eighteenth century, when it started to appear on broadsides and in printed garlands. Child also gives references to the story as it appeared in songs and tales on the Continent.
Tunes for this carol have been collected in oral tradition since the early nineteenth century and are broadly similar, with a few exceptions. Mary Anne Clayton’s tune is an example of what Bronson regarded as the core melodic tradition. It is in triple time and has the distinctive first-half rhythm, found in many of the ‘Cherry-Tree Carol’ tunes, which echoes that of another popular and long-lived song, ‘Love Will Find Out the Way’ (see William Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time (1859), I, pp. 305–6). Unlike the latter, the carol tune is plagal in range, often cadencing on the second or fifth degree midway through. Mary Anne Clayton’s tune is unusual in cadencing on the fourth, and also in having a refrain created by repeating the second two lines of text and, with a slight change, tune.
‘The Nine Joys of Mary’, sung by James Thomas, Camborne, Cornwall (August 1915); collected by T. Miners and H. E. Piggott; published in JFSS, 5 (1916), 319–320.
Roud 278; 25 entries.
One of the most popular religious folk songs in England, it was also collected in Ireland, but not, it seems, in Scotland. It was also widely known in North America.
‘The five joys of Mary’ were popular in medieval Roman Catholic devotional art and literature, and symbolized the ‘joyous’ events in Christ’s life: Annunciation, Nativity, Adoration, Resurrection and Ascension. They were later extended to seven, nine or even twelve, and there were also the ‘seven sorrows of Mary’ for more sombre occasions.
The popularity of the theme in medieval and early modern England is attested by a number of literary references, including the famous fourteenth-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In this, the pentangle on Gawain’s shield is explained in terms of his five senses, five fingers, the five wounds of Christ, and ‘when he fought his courage came from the five joys the high Queen of Heaven had of her child’ (Part 2, sections 27–8). In a selection of Christmas carols in the manuscript known as Richard Hill’s Commonplace Book, compiled in the first quarter of the sixteenth century but probably copied from an earlier written source, another song on the theme appears, which starts ‘Mary, for the love of thee’ and continues through the five joys:
The fyrst joy was sent to thee
Whan Gabryell gretyed thee
And sayd ‘Hayle, Marye, in chastite!
Officiaris gravida.’
But although the underlying theme and structure is medieval, this is not to argue that our current song is quite that old. It is most likely to have been written much more recently, based on the earlier traditions or drawn from contemporary Catholic belief elsewhere. Our first record of the song is in 1764, as ‘The First Good Joy Our Mary Had’, which was one of the Christmas carols included in the catalogue of the printers Dicey and Marshall, of Aldermary Churchyard, London, issued in that year. ‘The Joys of Mary’ continued to be popular on nineteenth-century broadsides, both as an ordinary sheet and also on the special extra-illustrated large format collections of carols printed each year for the season.
Sung by George Townshend, Lewes, Sussex (7 February 1960); recorded by Brian Matthews; issued on Come Hand to Me the Glass, Musical Traditions MTCD304 (2000).
Roud 848; 27 entries.
Regularly collected in England, and mostly in the southern half of the country, this song does not seem to have been popular anywhere else, apart from Canada, where a couple of versions have been reported.
It may not be the thing nowadays to go around reminding people of their inevitable end, but our Victorian ancestors did not shrink from dwelling on death, and all brands of religion of the time included plenty of reminders. As many commentators have pointed out, the comparison of human life to flowers or trees is at least as old as Homer and the Bible, and is homely enough to appeal particularly to rural folk.
The song appeared on plenty of broadsides, usually under the title of ‘The Fall of the Leaf’, and surviving prints date perhaps from about 1810 onwards. The broadside texts tend to be longer and more stiffly formal, and the versions collected from singers have definitely been improved by having the corners knocked off over the years.
The upbeat to stanza 1 is sung as an E in this rendition but has here been changed to a D in line with the later verses. The singing style is very deliberate and slow in this performance, with additional slowing down on the final line of the chorus.
Sung by Emily Bishop, Bromsberrow Heath, Gloucestershire (13 October 1952); recorded by Peter Kennedy (BBC 18685).
Roud 702; 32 entries.
One of the most popular of ‘folk carols’, ‘The Moon Shines Bright’ was a particular favourite with parties of both Christmas and May Day carollers, and even when it entered the mainstream official carol literature it still retained this link with institutional singing. In William Henry Husk’s Songs of the Nativity (1868), for example, it is entitled ‘The Bellman’s Song’, which the author explains: ‘The functionary known in bygone times as the Bellman was a kind of nightwatchman, who, in addition to his staff and lantern, carried a bell, and at a certain period of the year was wont to arouse the slumbering inhabitants of the town to listen to some such effusion as [this]’ (p. 62). In Henry Ramsden Bramley and John Stainer’s Christmas Carols New and Old (1871) it is ‘The Waits Song’. The Waits had previously been musicians on the municipal payroll of particular towns, but by the nineteenth century were more usually semi-official carollers active at Christmas.
The song appeared regularly on broadsides issued each year specifically for the Christmas market, from the late eighteenth century onwards.
Sung by Emily Bishop, Bromsberrow Heath, Gloucestershire (13 October 1952); recorded by Peter Kennedy (BBC 18684).
Roud 1378; 26 entries.
Frank Kidson commented that ‘This carol appears to have been popular, at one time, in almost every English county. Gentility has in some cases altered the term “unspotted” to “most pure”, but otherwise the words have generally adhered to an accepted version pretty closely’ (JFSS, 5 (1916), 324).
It was printed at various times in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries on broadsides, chapbooks and collections of carols, but the earliest version of the words appears to be in New Carolls for this Merry time of Christmas (London, 1661) in the Bodleian Library.