A Gentleman of the Courts of England- (Ark.) 1946
[From: Some Survivals of British Balladry among Ozark Folk Songs by Theodore Garrison; The Arkansas Historical Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Autumn, 1946), pp. 246-262. His notes follow.
R. Matteson 2012, 2014]
"A Gentleman of the Courts of England", known to most ballad singers as "Lord Bateman", is one of the best preserved British ballads among American folk songs. Texts of it have been recorded by collectors from Nova Scotia to South Carolina. The following Arkansas version differs but little from other American texts or even from those in the Child collection.
A Gentleman of the Courts of England- Sung by Mrs. Daisy Turner; Marshall, Ark. 1941
A gentleman of the court of England,
A gentleman of the high degree,
He seemed to grow more discontented
Till he taken a tantrum out on the sea.
He sailed east and he sailed west
Until he came to the Turkish shore,
And there he was caught and put in prison,
No hope of freedom anymore.
The old jailor had a very nice daughter,
A daughter of the high degree;
She stole the keys of her father's prison
And said Lord Bateman she'd set free.
"Have you gold or have you silver?
Have you money at a high degree?
Could you afford to give it to a lady,
One that would now set you free?"
"I have gold and I have silver;
I have money at a high degree,
And I can afford to give it to a lady,
One that will now set me free."
She takened him down to her father's cellar,
Drawed glasses of old port wine;
And every health that she drank to him
She'd cry, "Lord Bateman, I wish you were mine."
Seven long years had passed and over,
Seven long years and two or three;
She gathered up her gold and diamonds
And said Lord Bateman she'd go see.
She rode and she rode till she came to his castle;
She knocked so loud she made it ring;
And none was so ready as his bold, bright porter
To rise and see who wanted in.
"Sir, is this Lord Bateman's castle,
Or is he within?"
"Oh yes, oh yes, he has just this day
Gone and brought a new bride in."
"Go tell him I want a slice of his bread,
A bottle of his wine so strong;
And tell, him he must never forget the lady
That freed him from his prison bond."
"Sir, stands at your gate a fair damsel
As ever my two eyes did see.
She wears a gold ring on her little finger,
And on her others two or three.
"She said she wanted a slice of your bread
And a bottle of your wine so strong,
And tell you you must never forget a lady
Who freed you from your prison bond."
Up rose Lord Bateman from the table
And sliced his bread in pieces three,
Saying, "Fare you well to the land of the living,
Since my Susannah's crossed the sea.
"Sir, today I've married your daughter,
And she is none the worse by me.
She rode here a horse and saddle,
And she may return in a coach with thee."
This ballad seems to stem from an early fourteenth century "metrical romance" whose hero is Gilbert Becket, father of St. Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was murdered at the instigation of Henry II in 1170. According to this legend, which is entirely without historical foundation, Gilbert Becket made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land when he was a young man and fell into the hands of a band of Turkish slave traders. He later became a house servant in the home of a wealthy Mohammedan whose daughter fell in love with him, although she had nothing to do with his subsequent escape. A few years later she followed him to London, embraced Christianity, and married him.
The addition of the melodramatic touches of the heroine's assisting the hero to escape and of her reaching him in England on the very day of his marriage is typical of the traditional plot development of the earliest English ballads.