Bluegrass Messengers

Beaulampkins- (NC) c.1940 Brown 4-A2

[From Brown Collection, volume 4. Their notes follow. Title named after version A, contributed by Thomas P. Smith.

R. Matteson 2015]
 

29. Lamkin  (Child 93)
[See music below]

This gruesome little ballad is traced no further back than the  latter eighteenth century, but was widely known and sung a hunred and fifty years ago; Child has twenty-six versions of it (some of them merely fragments). And it is still not forgotten. It has  been reported since Child's time from Aberdeenshire (LL 71-2),  Cambridgeshire (JFSS v 83-4), Surrey (JFSS i 212-13), Hampshire (JFSS II III), and Somerset (JFSS v 81-2), and on this  side of the water from Newfoundland (FSN 17), Maine (BBM 200-6, JAFL Lii 70-4), Massachusetts (FSONE 303-5), New York  (JAFL XIII 117-18), Virginia (TBV 354-9). Kentucky (SharpK I 202-7), Tennessee (FSSH 91-3, BTFLS viii 75), North Carolina (JAFL xiii 118, SharpK i 201-2, SSSA 62-4, FSRA 76,  SFLQ V 137-8), Arkansas (OFS i 141-2), Ohio (BSO 59-60,  Indiana (BSI 122-4), and Michigan (BSSM 313). The name  Lamkin (which takes in tradition a variety of forms, some of them scarcely traceable to that original) is explained by Miss Gilchrist (JEFDSS I 1-17) as a Flemish form of the name Lambert; Flemings were famous for their skill as masons and were sometimes brought to England as builders. The motivation of Lamkin's  savagery, in many texts, is that he has not been paid by the lord  for the building of his castle, but in many other texts no motive is offered. The daughter Betsy appears in two of Child's versions  and frequently in American texts. The false nurse, with her bitter  hatred of her mistress, is a persistent figure. The macabre humor of Lamkin rocking the cradle in which the baby is screaming its  life away while the nurse carries on a long dialogue with the lady  upstairs marks most of the Child versions and is retained in many  of the American texts.

A(2)  'Beaulampkins.' Sung by anonymous singer. Recorded, but no date or place  given. Excepting one minute difference, this tune, beginning with the third  measure, is identical with 29B. In contrast to the preceding two versions, both  the first and second cadences in this and the following version are alike.

For melodic relationship cf. *BMFSB 20, last two measures. Scale: Hexatonic (4), plagal. Tonal Center: f. Structure: aba1b (2,2,2,2) =  aa1 (4,4).