English Riddle Ballads- Chapter 3: The Elfin Knight- 1985 Edmunds
The English Riddle Ballads
by Susan Edmunds
[This is an excerpt from Susan Edmunds, (1985) The English riddle ballads, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7574/
Some of the old English letter characters have not reprinted properly as they were hand drawn. I've corrected minor spelling errors.
Appendix B: Description of Texts is added at the end.
R. Matteson 2014]
Chapter Three: The Elfin Knight
The many texts identified under this title, few of them having anything to do with elfin knights, fall into four groups, distinguished by their refrain type:
Group A: 'Blow, blow, blow, ye winds blow' and/or 'The wind blew the bonny lassie's plaidie awa'
Group B: Herb refrains, most frequently, 'Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme'.
Group C: Nonsense refrains.
Group D: 'Sing ivy' refrains.
(For details, see Appendix B.)
Each group will be treated separately.
Group A.
Texts in this group are predominantly Scottish, with some American and Canadian relations; they date from the earliest example of the ballad, the broadside (i) of 1670, to the most recent versions collected by the School of Scottish Studies in North-East Scotland.
Text (i) is a black-letter broadside, bound with an Edinburgh edition of Blind Harry's 'Wallace', and tentatively dated 1670. Although there is no evidence of the ballad's existence previous to this[1], a number of peculiarities in the text suggest that the author was working from a known version. One of these is the attempt to rationalize the burden and refrain, in the last two stanzas, as pointed out by Bronson:[2]
'I'll not quite my plaid for my life;
It haps my seven bairns and my wife'
The wind shall not blow my plaid awa'
'My maidenhead I'll then keep still,
Let the elphin knight do what he will'
The wind's not blown my plaid awa'.
As Bronson says, this makes little sense, as well as being out of keeping with the tone of the rest of the ballad; singers of the song have evidently been of the same opinion, for the stanzas do not appear in any subsequent oral text.[3] Bronson argues that the author of the broadside, the 'demi-poet,' was making an original attempt to graft an existing text onto a separately existing tune and refrain, but it is also possible that this grafting had already occurred before the ballad was printed. It may be that the 'demi-poet's contribution was to confuse the ballad with the type of song in which a man refuses a request from his sweetheart by admitting that he is already married, as in the song, 'The Nightingale'.[4]
The refrain and burden of (i) are themselves a conglomeration; they combine four elements, each of which could, and in some cases does stand alone as a refrain line: they are the plaid, the reference to Norway, the lines, 'Ba, ba, ba lillie ba', and 'over the hills and far awa' '. Together, these hardly make a coherent whole, and it seems likely that it is their rhymes, rather than their meanings, which have drawn them together. Bronson suggests that the line 'Ba, ba, ba lillie ba,' which becomes in later versions, 'Blow, blow, blow ye winds blow', is an imitation of the elfin horn of the first stanza; he argues that it is closely linked in the oral tradition with a certain type of musical phrase which could be said to represent the blowing of horns. However, ballad texts are not usually given to such self-conscious use of sound effects,: and it seems more likely that is is the distinctive rhythm of the line which has affected the musical habit of the tune. The original, 'Ba, ba, ba lillie ba' is a lullaby formula; it appears also in the Shetland ballad, 'Great Silkie of Sule Skerrie' (Child 113):
An earthly no uris sits and sings, [5]
And aye she sings, 'Ba, lily wean! '
The two lines, 'Ore the hills and far awa' and 'The wind hath blown my plaid awa' ' both have strong independent traditions. The inclusion of the former in Gay's Beggar's Opera in 1728 probably contributed to its popularity; it appears there with the lyrics, 'Were I laid on Greenland's coast'. It is best known today with the nursery rhyme, 'Tom he was a piper's son'[6]. However, the tunes associated with the line have no more than a very slight resemblance to any Elfin Knight tune, and even this is probably due to the refrain rhythm; no existing text of 'The Elfin Knight' could be sung to any of them. The line, 'The wind hath b1awn my plaid awa', which is the one most commonly found with texts in this group, has a song of its own, 'The wind blew the bonny lassie's plaidie awa',[7] in which its meaning as the loss of virginity is made clear. It appears also with other songs with the same meaning, such as the bothy ballad:
Frae a butcher laddie that lived in Crieff,
A bonnie lassie cam' to buy some beef;
He took her in his arms and down she did fa'
And the wind blew the bonnie lassie's plaidie awa'.[8]
The two lines, '0ver the hills and far away' and 'The wind has blawn my plaid frae me' are found together also in a Jacobite song, where the plaid is used as a symbol of national independence, which has been blown away by the wind from the south:
Over the hills, an' far away,
It's over the hills, an' far away,
Over the hills, an' over the sea,
The wind has blawn my plaid frae me.
My tartan plaid, my ae good sheet,
That keepit me frae wind and weet
An' held me bien baith night and day,
Is over the hills, an' far away.[9]
The sexual meaning of the plaid seems to have been known by most of the transmitters of the 'Elfin Knight' texts in which it occurs, and was probably known also by the broadside demi-poet, although he muddled the sense in the penultimate stanza. In some versions, the exact wording is altered with each stanza to conform to the senses, as in (xviii). Of the four refrain lines, this is the most relevant to the sense of the ballad, and its relevance presumably explains its survival. The line, 'And far awa to Norrowa' is not entirely out of place either, if the male character in the ballad is taken to be supernatural, for, as is pointed out by Dr. Leba Goldstein, witches and supernatural beings were thought to come from Scandinavia. Dr. Goldstein cites Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy which speaks of:
Witches and sorcerers, all over Scandinavia, to sell winds to mariners, and cause tempests. . .which is familiarly practised by witches in Norway. [10]
This was not mere xenophobia, but reflects an actual Scandinavian belief, which persisted in parts of Iceland until the early years of tl:ue present century and which found expression, for example, in Snorri Sturluson's Olafs saga Tryggvasonar, in which a magician, Rauer, tries to defend himself from Christian missionary activities by creating fog and winds. [11] Supernatural beings in other ballads are associated with the North: the outlandish knight in 'Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight' (Child 4E, F) comes from the North, and so does the witch Allison Gross (Child 35).
As for the form of the burden and refrain, 'The Elfin Knight' is often quoted as the exception to the rule that ballads do not have external burdens like this one. Various statistics have been produced on the subject of the ballad refrain: G.H. Gerould, for example, estimated that roughly half the ballad corpus, including twentieth century versions, have been sung with refrains. Of the Child collection, however, F.B. Gummere estimated that one third have refrains in some version, and most of the couplet texts have an internal refrain, or the traces of one.[12] To these figures, R.L. Greene adds that the 'Elfin Knight' type of burden, which is the normal external burden of the early English carol, appears in only one in sixty of the Child texts.[13] The others of this type quoted by Greene have various sorts of external burden, ranging from a regularly repeated line, as in 'Robin and Gandelyn' (Child 115), to the irregular conglomeration of repeated lines and 'diddling' in 'The Bonny Birdy' (Child 82). 'The Elfin Knight', however, is the only ballad in Child's corpus which has both a regular internal refrain and an external burden. It seems unlikely that the burden, which is printed at the end of the Pepys broadside (i) and at the head of the Webster text (ii), was sung between every stanza in addition to the normal refrain. It was possibly sung either at the beginning or the end, or both, this being a common device of folksong, which may well have been used for ballads too. The song, 'The trees they grow high', for example, which is arguably a ballad anyway, though not included in Child's collection, has a one-line internal refrain, 'The bonny lad was young but a-growing', and also a semi-lyrical opening stanza which is often sung also at the end of
the song.
The trees they do grow high and the leaves they do grow green;
The time is gone and past, my love, that you and I have seen:
It's a cold winter's night, my love, when you and I must bide alone;
The bonny lad was young but a-growing. [14]
There is a parallel for this in the Danish ballad tradition, where refrains and burdens are much more common, at least according to the written record, than in English and Scottish balladry. Axel Olrik describes the performance of a dance-ballad in which the leader sets the dance going with a lyrical introductory stanza which sets the mood of the song, of which one or two lines are then sung as a part of each stanza. This refrain is then 'invariably found with the ballad', although the lyrical introduction may not survive.[15]
(Hodgart uses this example as a demonstration of the evolution from lyrical carol to narrative dance-song.) It may be that the practice demonstrated in the broadside 'Elfin Knight' was more than an isolated example, and that burdens with little narrative relevance were sung at the beginning of Scottish ballads as well as Danish ones.
The Ballad Introduction (A) (See Appendix B).
Child assumed that the elfin knight was an intruder in this ballad, and that his proper place was in 'Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight', (Child 4), where the Buchan and Motherwell texts give a similar introduction: Lady Isabel, in her bower, hears the horn of the elf-knight; she voices a wish for his company and his horn, at which the knight appears, complaining:
'It's a very strange matter, fair maiden', said he,
'I canna blaw my horn but ye call on me'.
This is slightly more explanatory than the corresponding stanzas of 'The Elfin Knight', but since the texts of Child appear a hundred and fifty years after the Elfin Knight featured in the Pepys broadside, since elves do not occur in any other of the very large number of variants of Child 4, and since the authenticity of the Buchan text has been called into question, the borrowing is clearly in the other direction.
Supernatural lovers are, of course, not without parallels in other ballads: the common motif of a lady impulsively leaving her bower to pick a flower, upon which action a fairy lover appears, is very reminiscent of the Elfin Knight; it occurs in 'Tam Lin' (Child 39), 'Hind Etin' (4l) and 'The King's Dochter Lady Jean' (52) without specifically referring to a fairy, but still using a supernatural motif, it occurs also in 'Gil Brenton' (5), 'Babylon' (14) and 'Jellon Grame' (90). The two motifs of horn and flower are found together in texts of 'Hind Etin' (41A,B), where, as Wimberly has pointed out, the 'note' which Lady Margaret hears in the A text becomes in B the 'nuts' that she picks in the mulberry wood. Wimberly also provides several examples of elfin horns, harps and songs in Dutch, German and Scandinavian balladry as 'modes of enchantment'[16]. Like the flower or nut-picking motif, which is also associated with attempts to abort a child, (in 'Tam Lin' and 'Mary Hamilton', Child 173), the horn has a sexual symbolism which ties in with the symbolism of the tasks which follow it. The horn was well-established as a male sexual symbol by the fifteenth century, when it featured in such pieces as 'Come blowe thy horne huntere' [17]. The descriptive phrase 'loud and shrill', which is common in ballads (such as 'John Thomson and the Turk', Child 266, and 'Johnie Scot', 99E,G) occurs also in fifteenth century lyric, though in a different context, the morality lyric:
I hold hym wyse and wel I-taught,
Can bar a horn and blow it naught, ...
Hornes are mad both loud and shyll,
Whan tyme ys, blow thou thi fyll,
And whan ned ys, hold the styll .... [18]
Horns also have supernatural connotations: witches were supposed to blow horns as they joined the wild hunt, and the ballad witch Allison Gross (Child 35) blows three times on a 'grass-green' horn; the witch in 'The Laily Worm and the Machrel Fish' (Child 36) blows 'loud and shrill' to summon the fish. In medieval romance, the 'King o fairy' in Sir Orfeo comes hunting 'wip dim cri and bloweing'.[19]
Fairy lovers, though usually female, were a part of the stock-in-trade of medieval romance, especially the Breton lais, and were even accepted in the sixteenth century as an actual possibility; Margaret Murray, in her book The God of the Witches, quotes items from the Spalding Miscellany of this period which refer to fairy lovers and spouses among the Plantagenets, the French nobility and the common people of Aberdeen, namely Andro Man, who was said to have lived with 'The Queen of Elphen' for thirty-two years and had several children by her.[20]
The Elfin Knight of the ballad becomes a devil in texts from Newfoundland (xvii, xviii)and in the Scottish texts (xxi), (viii) and (iv), where the sinister 'auld, auld man' with a bonnet in his hand is assumed to be the Devil in Scottish dress. There seems to be some influence of 'Riddles Wisely Expounded' (Child 1), and possibly also of 'The False Knight upon the Road' (Child J), since in this last text, the 'auld man' is defeated by the answers to his tasks, and leaves with a curse:
'My curse on those wha learned thee;
This night I weend ye'd gane wi me'
In Andra Stewart's text (xvi), which is only two stanzas, the identity of the characters is not specified, but when questioned on the end of the ballad, the singer said, 'He says something about the Lord to him; he went away in a ball of fire, the devil, on this hill. That's why he knew he was talking to the devil'. This is very close to the endings of Child 1, where on the mention of the Devil's name he flies away in a 'flame of fire', but the gender of the human character is changed, and the use of a holy name, rather than the Devil's own, is not found in contemporary texts of Child 1, although it is a common device of folktale and exempla.
In the Newfoundland texts (xvii, xviii) the Devil is likely to have come rather from 'The Farmer's Curst Wife' (Child 278), since this seems to be the source of the opening stanza (A3), the old woman living under a hill; in Child 278 the opening lines are: in which the opening stanza has 'Three trumpeters on yon hill', although the narrative returns to the singular in the second stanza, and is in most respects close to the broadside text.
The Woman's Tasks (G)
The absence of tasks G3 and G4 from the broadside text, together with the fact that they occur in nearly all the complete oral versions, is further indication that the song was known before the 1670 printing. All three of the most frequently occurring tasks, G1,3, 4 , (the sark, the well and the thorn), call upon widespread and venerable symbolic responses. The sewing of a shirt has numerous parallels in folklore and literature as a symbol of a woman's commitment to a man. In the G1sla saga, for example, the older version of Chapter Nine tells of Asgerd asking Aud to cut out a shirt for Thorkell, Asgerd's husband, to which Aud replies:
'I could not do it better than you. . .and you would not ask me if you had to make a shirt for my brother Vestein'
'That is another story', says Asgerd, 'and I shall feel like that for a while'[22]. Peter Dronke, commenting on this, refers to the Danish ballad, 'Marsk Stig' (Grundtvig 145), where the Danish King attempts to seduce Marsk Stig's wife:
'Here you sit, fair lady Ingeborg;
If you will be loyal to me,
Then sew for me a shirt
With gold embroidery'
'Should I sew a shirt for you
With gold embroidery,
Then men would know, Danish King,
I was disloyal to Lord Marsk'. [23]
Sarks occur in other Scottish ballads as love-tokens: the treacherous mermaid in 'Clerk Colvill' (Child 42) washes her sark of silk saying 'it's a' for you. . ., and a strip of it, bound round Clerk Colvill's head, increases his pain. In 'Johnie Scot' (Child 99), a silken sark is sewed by Johnie's lady as a love token and then sent back to her to summon her. May Margaret in 'Jellon Grame' (90) is bidden to 'come to good greenwood, to make your love a shirt', although she claims she has already made him three every month. The sark can also be a shroud, and a seam-less shirt is particularly suggestive of the winding-sheet. At the news of his death-sentence, Geordie (Child 209C} sends word to his lady:
'He bids ye sew his linen shirts,
For he's sure he'll no' need many'.
The shroud and the seamless garment may also have associations with the seamless robe of Christ. There is a tale in the Gesta Romanorum which uses the miraculously made shirt as a symbol of Christ's incarnation, although the tale itself is not a specifically Christian one:
Archilaus, a wise Emperor, desires a shirt made by a virgin. This request poses a problem, until a secretary approaches Archilaus, saying that he knows a suitable maiden. They send her three square inches of linen, and a vessel to put it in, and she miraculously accomplishes the task. The moral explains that the shirt is Christ, [24] and the virgin is Mary.
There are various customs associated with sarks and courtship: William Henderson gives an example from the Border region, where, at Hallowe'en or New Year's Eve, young girls wash their sarks and hang them over a chair to dry overnight. If they stay awake, they will see their future husband enter the room and turn the sark over.[25] The further detail that the sark must be washed in a south-running stream, or at a ford 'where the dead and the living crossed', provides another link with the ballad tasks. Although not an impossible clause, it combines two concepts which are found also in the impossible tasks of the ballad: the concept of a boundary, a crossing-place, is found in the land which must be between the sea and the sea-strand; and the meeting of opposites, the living and the dead, is at the heart of the impossible task itself, which unites the opposites of positive and negative; the thing must be done, but it cannot be done. These two concepts, which attack the normal categories and assumptions of rational thinking, thus make way for the supernatural and the symbolic. (See Chapter 8). The symbolism of the sark cannot be formulated in any precise allegorical terms because, like any symbol, it will shirt its 'meaning' according to its context; more accurately, it does not 'mean' in normal semantic terms at all, but exists rather in a non-semantic association of ideas.
It is natural enough that the making of a shirt for a man should be taken as a sign of commitment, since this is what wives did for their husbands. Through this association, the sark has become identified with marriage, and thus with the loss of virginity; and because of its obvious similarity to the shroud, it has also been identified with death. On the simplest level, then, by making this task logically impossible, the elfin knight is making it clear that union with the girl is out of the question. On a less specific level, the task evokes a symbolic response, touching on the concepts of marriage and perhaps death. As the exemplum of Archilaus shows, this response can be used to illustrate a religious concept; without an allegorical explanation, however, it still creates a resonance and a sense of mystery which, to judge by the widespread occurrence of the task, has a general appeal.
There are also several riddles in the oral tradition which involve cloth neither woven nor spun, or patches sewn without needle or thread[26], but these usually have concrete, mundane answers, such as 'beehive' and 'Chink in the wall' . Another riddle, from the Southern States of America, echoes the remaining two tasks given to the woman in the ballad:
She washed her hands in water
Which neither fell nor run;
She dried her hands on a towel
Which was neither woven nor spun. [27]
The answers to this are given as 'dew' and 'sun'. Combinations of washing linen and drying it on a bush by a well are commonly found in the rites which are associated with holy wells and pin-wells. The normal pattern of these rites is for the afflicted person, often an infertile woman, to dip a linen rag in the well, stroke it on the affected part of the body and hang it on a thorn-bush.[28] Sometimes a pin or a button was left as an offering, and in some cases the rag has itself become this offering, and the washing ceremony lost. These rituals were recently common in all parts of Scotland and England[29], and a similar custom is recorded in the Frank C. Brown collection of folklore from North Carolina: if a person washed a handkerchief and leaves it on a sage-bush to dry, the initials of their future spouse will appear on it the next morning.[30]
In medieval Christian tradition, the grouping of the symbols of well, thorn and maiden is a feature of several Marian lyrics and carols, such as the fifteenth century lyric from MS Sloane 2593:
Out of the Blosme sprang a thorn
Quan God himself wold be born. . .
Ther sprang a well al at her fot
That al this word it turnyd to good . . . [31]
The Virgin herself is often referred to as 'well of pity' and similar phrases, as in Chaucer's 'ABC' to the Virgin:
Zacharie yow clepeth the open welle
To wasshe sinful soule out of his gilt.[32]
She is also commonly referred to as the 'burning bush' in which the Holy Spirit is revealed, and Chaucer uses this symbol in the same poem:
Thou art the bush on which ther gan descende
The Holi Gost, the which that Moyses wende
Had ben a-fyr; and this was in figure.[33]
The thorn symbol is also linked with the flowering thorn of Joseph of Arimathea, and with the tree of Jesse motif, as in the sixteenth century Epiphany carol:
Ther ys a blossum sprang of a thorne
To save mankynd, that was forlorne,
As the profettes sayd beforene;
Deo Patri sit gloria.
Ther sprang a well at Maris fate
That torned all this world to bote;
Of her toke Jhesu flesshe and blod
Deo Patri sit gloria.[34]
Even closer to the ballad, as David Fowler has pointed out, is the 'Corpus Christi Carol', which was still current in the oral tradition in the nineteenth century. The Staffordshire version of 1862 contains the lines:
At that bed there grows a thorn
Which was never so blossomed since Christ was born. [35]
The wording of this is so similar to that of the ballad that it seems certain that there was a mixing of the two texts, and the fact that the ballad tasks G3, 4, which include the thorn, do not appear until the nineteenth century makes it most likely, as Fowler suggests, that the ballad adopted the motif from the carol, rather than the other way round. However, Fowler's argument that the appearance of these motifs in the ballad is purely 'whimsical', in contrast to the resonant symbolism of the carol, overlooks the fact that these symbols are not confined to medieval Christianity, and have a resonance even when dissociated from the religious context. It seems unlikely that the grouping of thorn, spring, or well, and maiden, which has no Biblical authority behind it, should suddenly have arisen in association with the Marian cult, and the fertility rituals at holy wells, described above, seem to have little connection with Christianity. There are, moreover, examples of similar groupings in non-Christian sources such as the Old Norse Voluspa, where the three wise maidens, Uror, Verandi and Skuld, come from the well of Uror,which stands beneath a tree. (Prior or peim sae, er und folli stendr). In this case, the tree is Yggdrasil, the tree of life; the well, with its deep waters, is a symbol of wisdom; and the maidens ordain the fates of men[36]. Mircea Eliade[37] writes that the most primitive of sacred places constituted a microcosm of stone, water and tree, these three representing the natural world, while the presence of a goddess near to a plant symbol enforces the symbolism of cosmic fertility. The ballad texts cannot be said to give an impression of cosmic fertility; neither, however, are they purely 'whimsical'; like the motif of the sark, the thorn and well motifs prepare the way for a symbolic response to the text, and provide opportunities for association with mysterious fertility, either through the medieval Christian tradition or through a less specific, folkloric tradition.
J.B. Toelken has suggested that the well motif is an example of a 'death-sex oxymoron', like the red rose in 'Babylon' (Child 14), which portends both a sexual encounter and murder. In the case of the Elfin Knight, the well where no water flows could indicate the grave, and Toelken compares this with the 'earthen lake' in 'The Three Ravens' (Child 26), which certainly means a grave. Toelken also writes that 'Yonders town', which appears in several Group B texts, is a euphemism in the Southern states for the graveyard. However, these are very slight hints, and none of the texts in question have any other suggestion of anything other than a courtship song.
The Man's Tasks (K).
In many texts, the tasks given to the male protagonist greatly outnumber those given to the female, presumably because the tasks associated with ploughing and cultivating land give more scope for the imagination than those associated with washing clothes. In the earliest texts, the tasks are clearly sexual metaphors: rather than asking the man to procure her the acre of land, the girl in the broadside says, 'I have an acre of good ley-land' which the man must plough, or 'eare', with his 'horn' and 'sow it with his corn'. As the later tasks grew more whimsical and detailed, this symbolism was often obscured, although in some versions, the woman prefaces the tasks with the formula, 'My father has ... ' (iii), which is a standard preface to a riddle in both American and British traditions, and which is found also in many versions of 'Captain Wedderburn's Courtship' (Child 46B):
'My father has some winter fruit that in December grew;
'My mother has a silk mantil the waft gaed never through.'
The formula often heralds a sexual metaphor, and would be an indication in the ballad that the following phrase was not to be taken at face value.
There are many other examples of ploughing, with its obvious association with fertility, being used as a motif in fertility rites. Both Eliade and Frazer give a number of instances of the identification of the woman with the soil in erotic agriculture magic; a recurring practice, of which there are British records from well into the twentieth century, is the ritual mating in the first furrow of the new year's ploughing. The same symbolism is found in another folksong, 'The Wanton Seed', which was often omitted from early English folksong collections:
As I walked out one spring morning fair,
To view the fields and take the air,
There I heard a pretty maid making her complain,
And all she wanted was the chiefest grain . . .
I said to her, 'My pretty maid,
Come tell me what you stand in need'.
'Oh yes, kind sir, you're the man to do my deed,
For to sow my meadow with the wanton seed . . .' [38]
The Conclusion.
There is a discrepancy in the ballad conclusions in Group A, as to whether the girl is evading or wooing the male. The broadside text is logical as far as stanza 17, where the ending is the one which became most common, particularly for Group B texts: when the Elfin Knight has finished his tasks, he can come and get his sark. The extra two stanzas which follow this, in which the Knight says he will not 'quite his plaid' and the maiden responds by saying she will keep her maidenhead, 'let the elphin knight do what he will', contorts the meaning. In John McWhinnie's text (iv), the girl is evading the Devil and the conclusion is his curse on her teachers; the same idea lies behind Andra Stewart's explanation of his text (xvi). The two texts from New Hampshire (xii and xiv) see the woman's reply as a correct one which is rewarded by marriage:
'And now you have answered these questions aright
I will make you my bride this very night'
Another peculiarity is Martha Reid's text (xv), where both sets of tasks, G and are set for the first character, who is not identified, and who responds with the questions, 'How many ships sails in my forest? How many strawberries grows on the salt sea?', which are borrowed from the wider folksong tradition and appear in the song, 'I once loved a lass' [39]. In all other versions, where a conclusion is given, the tasks balance each other and express the impossibility of the union; and this would seem to be the intent of the broadside text. However, if the tasks are read as sexual metaphors, their impossibility is resolved and the union is thus possible. It may be that there were versions of the ballad in circulation before the printing of the broadside text, in which this was the intent of the tasks. A supernatural character would then have been added in a mistaken attempt to make sense of the apparent impossibility of fulfilling the conditions for a union of the male and female characters.
The Tunes.
The American tunes in Group A are recognizably related; the two Decker versions from Newfoundland (xvii and xviii) are, not surprisingly, especially close. The opening phrase of the Rosa Allen tune (viii) is identical to the opening of these two Newfoundland versions, and a resemblance can also be seen in the third line phrases. Belle Richards' version (xii), from New Hampshire, is less close, but the opening phrase is identical except for the last note, and the contour of the third line roughly follows the more complex pattern of the Decker tunes.
The Scottish tunes are in general more free, particularly Martha Reid's, (xv), which is essentially a set of variations on one phrase. There is no real resemblance between any of the Scottish tunes, except for a slight similarity in the first refrain line of (xvi), from Andra Stewart in Perthshire, and (xx), from Margaret Tait in Shetland. Otherwise, the Shetland tune is more regular than the others, and its opening line is very different, bearing a passing resemblance to the song, 'Were you ever in Quebec?'. The regularity of the tune seems to be a feature of Shetland music, which is perhaps due to influence from the Norwegian folksong and dance music traditions.
Analogues.
Impossible tasks, euphemistic or otherwise, are a common feature in the oral tradition all over the world, as Child testifies in his examples, given in the headnote to Child 2, from Grimm, the Gesta Romanorum, and tales from Turkey and Tibet. Nearly all of these are connected with courtship, often with the intermediate figure of the girl's father, who may set the tasks, if he is a King, or, if he is a peasant, he is set tasks and saved only by the ingenuity of his daughter. The tasks are often solved by cunning, as practical riddles, as in the Gaelic story of Graidhne and Diarmict[40] ; or they can be countered by equally impossible demands, as in the ballad, and in the Turkish tale from Radloff's Proben der Volkslitteratur der turkischen Stamme Sud Sibiriens [41]; or, as in the Mabinogion story of Kulhwch and Olwen, in which one of the tasks concerns ploughing, the hero may simply be super-human and accomplish the tasks literally.[42]
Analogues in the folksong tradition include the Swedish ballad, 'De omojliga uppgiftena,' [43] in which a young man offers to make shoes for a girl, but the materials are not yet ready, and the implements are in places far away. She replies that she will wash his hair, but the water is still in the well, and the comb has to be made from the horns of a deer which has yet to be shot by a King's son whose parents are not yet born. In conclusion, he asks her to marry him. The same conclusion is found in a Yiddish folksong, 'Nem aroys a ber fun vald' ('Lead a bear out of the woods') [44], which includes the task of sewing seven shirts without needle or silk. The exchange of tasks in these two songs seems to be a verbal tour de force, each partner proving his or her cleverness and thus their suitability for each other.
Group B: Herb Refrains.
This is the largest group, of eighty-three texts, many of them being American, although the record is probably distorted by the sudden enthusiasm for song collecting in the 1930's and in particular by the large number of New England texts which were collected for the Helen Hartness Flanders collection, many of which are almost identical. While existing side by side with the Group A tradition, the distinctive refrain and tune of the 'herb' group seems to have kept the two separate; the narrative setting and the supernatural elements of Group A are not to be found in any Group B version, except, curiously, in one of the very latest collected, the text lxxvii from Mrs. Belle Kettner, of Park Hill, Ontario, which is the single stanza:
On yonder hill there sits a noble knight.
Say to the fairest damsel you sight,
Summer sea, a merry of time,
And then she will be a true lover of mine.
This sudden reappearance of the knight on the hill, who was last seen in 1908 in Alexander Robb's text (A ix), is all the more out of place as the lines scan very badly with the music, which is rhythmically more suited to the normal Group B opening, being in triple time. As it stands, the lines must be scanned as follows:
On yonder hill there sits a noble knight.
Say to the fairest damsel you sight . . .
Unless this is coincidence, the most likely explanation seems to be a knowledge of one of the earlier printed texts from Group A.
The more normal openings in this group are either the direct demand, 'I want you to make me a cambric shirt', or the 'As I walked out' type, borrowed from the wider folksong tradition, in which the singer either meets the girl herself, or a messenger who will take his requests to Cape Ann, Rosemary Fair, or wherever the girl is to be found; the place-names naturally vary according to the locality of the text. The Kinloch manuscript text (iii) asks, 'Did you ever travel twixt Berwick and Lyne?', the two names signifying a large stretch of country. This is rather out of place in the ballad and is found more suitably in other contexts, such as the poem, 'How Dunbar was desyred to be ane Freir', in which Dunbar is commanded to travel 'frome Berwick to Kalice' (Calais, which was then English). [45] 'Lyne', which here must be King's Lynn in Norfolk, a major port, appears in American texts as 'Lynn', and there are towns of that name in several states.
The tasks themselves are little altered from the basic pattern of Group A texts, with numerous small variations and improvisations, particularly in the tasks given to the man. A bizarre set of 'additional verses' was published in the New Zealand journal, English Folklore in Dance and Song (No.3, 1939, p. 4):
Say can you paint me a portrait fine
Without any canvas paints or time
Yes, if you can draw a straight curved line
And mix oil and water without any lime.
The most curious of the texts in this group, however, is the version produced by Sabine Baring-Gould as a 'play' from Camelford in Cornwall. Baring-Gould found several 'normal' texts of the ballad in Cornwall, and was not averse to combining versions to give a more satisfactory whole, although he usually indicates when he has done so. The text (xii)is a composite text, and has the note, 'Sent me from Cornwall ... enacted in farmhouses'. The text that he sent to Child (viii) is the same, with additional features. Firstly, the descripticn of the enactment of the ballad is in fuller detail:
This used to be sung as a sort of game in farmhouses, between a young man who went outside the room and a girl who sat on the settle or a chair, and a sort of chorus of farm lads and lasses. Secondly, Baring-Gould gives four additional stanzas at the beginning of the song, and one at the end, which have the new, and suspiciously literary-sounding refrain:
The wind is blowing in forest and town
And the wind it shaketh the acorns down.
The narrative framework provided by these supplementary stanzas is similar to that of 1The Unquiet Grave' (Child 78), which was also known in Cornwall, so that a straight forward borrowing is likely. Baring-Gould himself collected several versions of Child 78 with the impossible task stanza:
Go fetch me a nut from dungeon deep
And water from a stone,
And white milk from a young maid's breast
That never babe bore none.
This is the most obvious connection between the two ballads, although the story of 'The Unquiet Grave', in which a dead lover is disturbed by. the tears of his mistress as she sits on his grave, craving 'one kiss, one kiss from your lily-white lips', is quite different to that of any of the 'Elfin Knight' texts. Baring-Gould's text (viii) also bears the marks of influence from the Group A tradition, in that the maiden voices a wish for her dead lover, who instantly appears; this provides another link with the revenant ballad. In the final stanza, he reveals for the first time that, had she not answered correctly, 'thou must have gone away with the dead', which makes no sense in conjunction with the main body of the text, in which the condition has been clearly stated:
And when that these tasks are finished and done
I'll take thee and marry thee under the sun.
Again, there is a possible influence here from the Group A tradition, in particular from John McWhinnie's version (iv), where the male character is the Devil, who threatens to carry off the maid if she answers incorrectly. It seems not unlikely that there is a direct influence from the publication of Child's collection, which first appeared in print in 1882; Baring-Gould's text is dated 1886.
Moreover, by the time of the publication of Baring-Gould's own book, Strange Survivals, in 1892, further changes have been made to the text. This time it is not given in full, but the narrative introduction gives the story of the extra stanzas, with the further details:
A girl is engaged to a young man who dies. He returns from the dead and insists on her fulfilling her engagement to him and following him to the land of the dead. She consents on one condition, that he will answer her riddles, or else she pleads to be spared, and the dead lover agrees on condition that she shall answer some riddles he sets ... [46]
Again, as an after-thought, in discussing the coming of sunrise in Alvissmal later in the same book [47] Baring-Gould gives another twist to the plot, and another extra stanza:
Precisely so in the Cornish version of the Elfin Knight. Unable to accomplish the task, the dead man is caught by the sunrise and says,
'The breath of the morning is raw and cold,
The wind is blowing on forest and down,
And I must return to the churchyard mould,
And the wind it shaketh the acorns down.'
The analogy with the incident in Alvissmal is in any case not a precise one, since in the ballad, as in the analogues ballad, 'The Wife of Usher's Well' (Child 79), the revenant is called back to the dead by the coming of day, not 'caught' as the dwarf in Alvissmal is. There seems no reason to doubt the fact of the ballad being sung in Cornwall as a game-song, and there is another text (A xii) which was sung as a duet, but it seems clear that the texts which appear in Child's Volume IV and in Strange Survivals are heavily edited by Baring-Gould, and it must be remembered that he was not a first-hand witness in this case; the ballad was noted by F.W. Bussell. Cecil Sharp said of Baring-Gould that 'after he had altered or added to the original words, as often happened, because they were 'outway rude' or fragmentary, he was apt to forget that his alterations were not part of the real song'.[48] It seems probable that the extra stanzas and refrain lines not found in the composite text (xiii) are inventions by the editor, who was following common editorial practices of the time. It is, however, possible that the two ballads, Child 2 and Child 78 were mixed in the Cornish tradition, if not elsewhere.
The Herb Refrain.
The refrain itself, while retaining its general shape from the 1810 text in Gammer Gurton's Garland, (i), produces several variants, most of them keeping some form of the 'true lover of mine' formula, but using different herbs or corruptions of the same ones. Many attempts have been made by singers to rationalize the herb names, so that 'Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme' has become 'Every rose grows merry in time' {xxx); 'Every grave grows merry by time' (xxxiv); 'Every leaf grows many a time' (xix) and many other variations. The most frequent of additions is the herb 'savoury' in the place of 'rosemary'. Several attempts have been made to explain the presence of these herb refrains as incantations against evil spirits. There is certainly a considerable body of folklore surrounding each of the herbs mentioned: parsley, in particular, was widely used as a cure-all.
The Middle English Macer Floridus de Viribus Herbarum (c.1400) gives seven healing properties associated with the herb;[49] John Trevisa's Bartholomaeus Anglicus advises its use as a remedy for almost every conceivable ailment.[50] It also has strong associations with death and the Devil, so that its medicinal qualities may be derived from a system of sympathetic magic. Thiselton Dyer, in his collection of Folklore of Plants, cites several beliefs concerning its unlucky qualities: [51] in Hampshire, for example, it is considered bad luck to give it away; and there is a gloomy Surrey proverb, 'Where parsley's grown in the garden there'll be a death before the year's out.' Because germination is extremely slow, it was said that the plant went nine times to the Devil and back before growing, and that the Devil kept some of it for himself. Lucy Broadwood, in her notes on herb refrains,[52] observes that parsley was used in ancient Greece as a funeral herb, and that it was used magically in Germany.
Lucy Broadwood also notes that rosemary is known in Spain and Portugal as 'the elfin plant'. Parkinson's Parradisus Terrestris of 1629 mentions that 'Rosemary is almost of as great use as bayes - as well for civil as physical purposes: for civil uses as all doe know, at weddings, funerals, etc., to bestow among friends.' Similarly, Herrick's Hesperides of 1648 says of rosemary:
Grow for two ends, it matters not at all
Be' for my bridall or my buriall.
The association of rosemary with longevity and prosperity is perhaps due to the fact that it is an evergreen. It is also credited with the medicinal qualities of helping the memory and the head in general, according to Hackett's Marriage Present of 1607.[53] Dyer notes the use of rosemary and thyme in St. Agnes' Eve rituals, to determine a girl's future husband, and he quotes the Spanish proverb:
Who passeth by the rosemarie
And careth not to take a spraye
For woman's love no care has he
Nor shall he, though he live for aye. [54]
Thyme, according to Lucy Broadwood's notes, is said in England to bring death into the house; it also has associations with virginity, as in the folksong:
Oh, when my thyme was new,
It flourished both night and day,
Till bye there came a false young man
And he stole my thyme away.[55]
Traces of another herb refrain including thyme are to be found in Burns' version of 'The Devil and the Ploughman', which is entitled 'Kellyburnbraes':
Hey, and the rue grows bonnie wi thyme ...
And the thyme it is withered and rue is in prime. . [56]
Sage has fewer folkloric associations, although Lucy Broadwood notes that it is used to ward off evil in Spain and Portugal, and that Pepys observed the use of sage on graves in Southampton. It also has medicinal properties, as its Latin name, salvia, implies. Thus for each of the herbs in the ballad refrain, there are popular associations with warding off evil, with death, or with marriage, and these associations may account for the popularity of the herb refrain in combination with 'The Elfin Knight', although these are not the only herbs to have such associations. It is unlikely that singers of the Group B texts actually thought of the refrain as an incantation, for the characters of the Elf and the Devil do not appear in these texts. The earliest example of the 'Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme' refrain is dated 1810, unless 'Kellyburnbraes' is taken to be a relation. From about the same date there is an interesting parallel, which is supplied in a footnote of Sir Walter Scott's, from Dr. Leyden:
The herb vervain, revered by the Druids, was also reckoned a powerful charm by the common people, and the author recollects a popular rhyme supposed to be addressed to a young woman by the devil, who attempted to seduce her in the shape of a handsome young man:
'Gin ye wish to be leman mine,
Lay off the St.John's wort and the vervine.'
By his repugnance to these sacred plants, his mistress discovered the cloven foot. [57] Robert Chambers, who prints this note, adds that 'the same idea must have prevailed in Sweden, for one of the names given to the Hypericum Perforatum (St.John's wort) is Fuga Daemonum'. Likewise, Grimm quotes an English rhyme:
Marjoram, John's Wort, heather white,
Put the fiend in a proper fright.[58]
Similar traditions associated with St.John's Wort are found in the Isle of Man, where 'the white herb' is the national plant. Vervain has a number of charms, such as the English one of 1608:
Hallowed by thou, Vervein, as thou growest on the ground,
For in the Mount of Calvary, there thou wast first found.
Thou healest our Saviour Jesus Christ, and staunchest his wound;
In the name of (Father, Son, Holy Ghost), I take thee from the ground. [59]
The tradition is a medieval one, as is shown by a Stockholm medical manuscript of c. 1400, which describes vervain:
I£ it be on hym day and nyth
And he kepe fro dedly synne aryth,
The devel of helle schal hawe no myth
To don hym neyther fray ne fryth. . . [60]
From these rhymes about vervain and St. John's Wort, there appears to have been a popular tradition of herb rhymes, derived from the use of herbs as charms. Even if the 'Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme' line had no previous existence as such, it is likely that it was from this tradition that the line was drawn into the ballad, rather than from the carol tradition from which the herb refrain of Child 1 seems to have derived (see Chapter 2). The influence of the carol refrain, however, cannot be excluded altogether, and may well have provided a model.
The Tunes
Despite the relative constancy of the texts in Group B, the tunes show a wide variety, although the distinctive compound duple time gives them an appearance o£ similarity. Group (a) (see Appendix of Tunes) is a cohesive group found in the English tradition of the nineteenth century, which extends into the early twentieth century. Most of these are from Yorkshire, and they are characterized by the shape of their opening phrase, ending in nearly all cases on the supertonic, and by the overall contour of the tune. Most (a) tunes finish on the tonic.
Group (b) is less clearly defined, the most distinctive characteristic being an upward movement at the end of the first line into the second 0 which is in several cases an octave leap; from this point, the tune makes its way rapidly back to the lower tonic. The tune of (xxxviii), from Mrs. Williams of Iowa, begins with a phrase very much like the music-hall ballad, 'Villikens and his Dinah', which had numerous versions and was widely popular, so there may be a direct borrowing here.
The tunes classed (c) show an unusually clear case of an orally transmitted tune traveling across the Atlantic. The Scottish tunes collected in the 1930s by Carpenter come from a geographically compact area in the North East, and their close similarities are therefore not surprising. However, the tune, with its distinctive insistence on the minor third interval, which keeps the modality hovering between between F major and D minor (as written) appears also in three isolated American texts, from Maine, Vermont and Wisconsin (lxv, lxvi, xxxii). None of the American sources, the earliest of which is dated 1914, mentions direct Scottish descent. Unless we assume an untraced printed source, this is a tribute to a distinctive and attractive melody.
The three (d) tunes are similar to the (c) group, but have more emphasis on the Dorian mode. Bronson thinks that (xvii) may have originally been entirely Dorian. The tunes share features wi~h other Irish tunes, such as 'Rolling in the Dew'. The two tunes (e) also have an Irish flavour, and share an insistence in the first two lines on the perfect fourth interval.
The remainder of the tunes, although many have the appearance of family resemblances either to each other or to the other groups, have no really distinctive linking features; the majority are structured simply in the Aeolian mode.
Group C: Nonsense Refrains.
This smaller group is wholly American, with a handful of nineteenth century tunes and a steady flow of twentieth century ones. Tunes and refrains are mostly in common time, with some variation of the line, 'Fluma-lum-a link supa-loo my nee'. There is a tendency to break up long notes by regular repetitions of the same note with different syllables. Belden suggests that the words may show Hawaiian or Malayan influence: Such influence might come about if any of the singers' ancestors or relatives had ever been on a whaling voyage.[61]
However, similar types of mouth-music occur in many cultures, from the Elizabethan song-book's 'Hey ding-ading-a-ding' to the virtuoso 'diddling' of the Scottish bothy singers; it seems unnecessary to search for specific linguistic sources.
There are three exceptions to the general pattern of the refrain: the first is the early text printed by Child (i) from Massachusetts; the informant traces this back to a 'rough, roystering character in the town'. The refrain rhythm is unclear for the first line, but the second line suggests a common time tune, and echoes of syllables from other versions indicate a common tradition. The same can be said of the other two exceptions, which are the text from Ola Leonard Gray (vi) and the one from Moses Ayers (iv). These two have identical tunes, but the texts vary slightly, there being several more verses in (vi). The refrains are nearly identical, and distantly related to the normal pattern. The main difference between these and the other versions is that the tunes are in compound duple time, while preserving the basic contour of the common time tunes. The tunes could have developed from a Group B tune, and the stanza texts and tunes show no common distinguishing features from Group B.
Group D: 'Sing Ivy' refrains.
With the exception of the very suspect Niles text (xx), this group is entirely English, with a concentration of texts from the South Western counties. Although based on the male tasks from Group A, the tradition of this group runs separately from other groups; the narrative setting and the female character are omitted, and the tasks are added to indefinitely, with no indication of the sexual symbolism of the ballad proper (unless this is implied in the unrecorded 'ribald versions' mentioned by the Hudlestons). However, the phrase, 'My father had . . .' is a common introduction to riddles, and specifically to riddles which have sexual overtones; this can be seen in Child 46 with the riddle answer, itself a riddle, 'My father had a winter fruit. . .' (See p.187) The phrase was probably adopted from Group A texts (K1 b) without an understanding of the symbolism of the acre of land.
The tasks themselves present a nursery-rhyme-type world in which human tasks are performed by small animals, or with fantastic implements, a feather, or the sting of an adder. One at least of the tasks had a previous existence in adynata literature, in the anti-feminist poem, 'Whane Nettuls in Wynter,' from the late fifteenth century. This is a lengthy catalogue of unlikely events, which, the poet says, are the only conditions in which women could be trusted. These events include whitings stalking harts in the forest, apes sitting in Parliament, and wrens carrying sacks to the mill. Although wrens do not carry grain to the mill in any of the ballad texts, they do carry it home (K 16c).
The refrain, which normally includes both holly and ivy, seems to have been taken from the carol tradition. Several of the early carols in Greene's collection have similar holly and ivy refrains, such as No. 448:
Greene growith the holy,
So doth the ive
Thow wynter blastys blow never so hye,
Grene growth the holy.
The 'Laetabundus' carol (Greene No.14a) has at its head and its end the burden:
Holy holy holy holy holy and yffy yffy
Holy holy and yffy yffy holy yffy holi.
Both plants have the associations of strength and constancy often attached to evergreens, illustrated for example in a late medieval song from the Welsh Trystan:
There are three trees that are good,
Holly and ivy and yew,
They put forth leaves while they last,
And Trystan shall have me as long as he lives.[63]
As a pair, they are also traditional male-female symbols, holly being the male, and there are Shrovetide 'Hollyboy' and 'Ivy-girl' ceremonies recorded in Kent.[64]
Medieval games and debate poems feature a battle for 'maistrie' between the two, as in the lyric from the Bodleian MS. Eng. Poet. e1, 'Holyvr and Heyvy mad a gret party' . From the same manuscript come two other holly and ivy lyrics: 'Her commys holly tat is so gent' and 'The most worthye she is in towne'.[65] These pieces are probably of folk origin, over-worked by learned writers, who evidently knew the sexual symbolism of the two plants, for religious refrains are added which fit the sex of the plant: the holly lyric has the word, 'Alleluia', referring to the Resurrection of Christ, and the ivy lyric has the words, 'Veni coronaberis', referring to the Coronation of the Virgin). Another attempt to Christianise the symbols can be seen in the carol, 'The Holly and the Ivy':
The holly bears a blossom,
As white as the lily flower,
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
To be our sweet Saviour.[66]
Holly also appears as a refrain for the ballad, 'The Wife wrapt in Wether's Skin' (Child 277A, B):
Hollin, green hollin,
Bend your bow, Robin.
The Tunes (Group D)
Once again, there is no firm tune tradition with the song, although all the variants have a faint resemblance of contour and melodic habit. Many of them share phrases with other songs, such as 'Uncle Tom Cobleigh' (see v) and 'The Mountain Dew' (see xxiii). Henry Hills' tune (iii), which is the earliest recorded, is very like the Group B(a) tunes in its opening, and, like them, is reminiscent of the carol, 'I saw three ships come sailing in'. An echo of this carol has also entered the refrain of (vi): 'On Christmas Day in the morning', although the tune with this text does not have such a marked resemblance to the carol. It would seem that the majority of singers construct their tunes from a combination of set phrases common to many folksongs, and following a simple melodic habit, based on the major triad, and aiming to finish on the tonic.
NOTES TO CHAPTER THREE. (CHILD 2)
1. However, there is a song, 'Sal i go vitht jou to rumbelo fayr', alluded to by Robert Wedderburn, The Complaynt of Scotland (1549) p. 51 (fol. 52r). Since the first 'Elfin Knight' texts with this opening occur in the 19th century, it is far from certain that this is the same song, although it is just possible that the broadside author was working from a popular model of this type, preserved in the oral tradition concurrent with the 'Elfin Knight' text. However, it is probable that there were other songs with this opening, and the Complaynt, which lists the song among songs and ballads sung by shepherds, gives no more than the one line.
2. Bronson, The Ballad as Song, pp.257 ff.
3. Child 2B, (ii), is derived partly from the broadside, partly from the recitation of a nameless 'old lady'.
4. Sharp & Karpeles, Eighty English Folk Songs, No.47.
5. Cp. Skelton's poem, 'With lullay, lullay, like a child', which uses the lullaby words, 'Ba, ba, ba'. John Scattergood, ed., John Skelton; The Complete English Poems (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1983) p.42. Scattergood glosses 'ba(s)' as a possible variant of 'baiser' (Fr.), •to kiss', a meaning used by Chaucer in The Wife of Bath's Prologue (Works, p.80, 1.433): 'Com neer, my spouse, lat me ba thy cheket'
6. See Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, I p.15. For the text, see Iona & Peter Opie, The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, p.3.
7. Recording from Jeannie Robertson, Topic 12T96, 'My plaidie's awa'.
8. David Kerr Cameron, The Ballad and the Plough, pp. 131-2.
9. James Hogg, The Jacobite Relics of Scotland (Blackwood, Edinburgh, 1821) II p.401.
10. Cited in Dr. Leba Goldstein, 'The Elfin Knight: Another examination', Folk Review Sept.1976 pp.4-6.
11. Olafs sagaTryggvasonar (Snorri Sturluson, Is. forn. XXVI, Reykjavik 1941, pp.325-6).
12. F.B.Gummere, The Popular Ballad, p.74 n.2; cited in G.H.Gerould, The Ballad of Tradition!. pp.117-118.
13. Greene, Early English Carols p.lxviii.
14. Matthew Hodgart, The Faber Book of Ballads, pp.147-8.
15. Axel Olrik, cited in Hodgart, The Ballads, p.81.
16. L. C. Wimberly, Folklore in the English and Scottish Popular Ballads, pp.293-8.
17. By W. Cornysh, in 'Henry VIII's MS', British Library Add. 31922, ff.39-40. Printed in Musica Brittanica: A National Collection of Music, Vol.XVIII, 'Music at the Court of Henry VIII', ed. John Stevens, p.29. (stainer & Bell Ltd, London 1962).
18. Bodleian MS English Poetica e.l, xviii. Thomas Wright, 'Songs and Carols of the 15th Century', in Early English Poetry XXIII, pp.23-4.
19. Sir Orfeo: Auchinleck MS, 1.285 (ed. A. J. Bliss, Oxford University Press, 1952, p.26).
20. Spalding Club Miscellany I, ed. 1941. In Margaret Murray, The God of the Witches (Daimon Press, Essex 1962), pp.30ff.
21. Mrs. J. Rohrbaugh, 1942, in Marie Boette, Singa Hipsy Doodle, p.5 (A).
22. Translation by George Johnston, The Saga of Gisli, p.7. For the original see Gisla Saga Surssonar, ed.Bjorn K. porolfsson and Gunni Jonsson, p.30:
'Pat kann ek eigi betr en :l>u. · .. ok myndir .t>u eigi
mik til bi~ja, ef ~u skyldir skera Vesteini br~ur
m1" num skyrtuna'.
'Eitt er ~at ser 1 ' segir AsgerBr, 1 ok sva mun mer
pykkja nQkkura stund'.
23. Translation by Peter Foote, in Johnston, op.cit. pp.71-2.
24. Sidney J. H. Herrtage, The Early English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum, pp.170-2.
25. William Henderson, Folklore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders, p.79.
26. Archer Taylor, English Riddles from Oral Tradition, p.512.
27. Ibid., p.463.
28. J. M.MacPherson, Primitive Beliefs in North East Scotland, p.49.
29. For examples, see Walter Gregor, Notes on the Folklore of the North East, p.40; W. Henderson, op.cit.,pp.193-5; E. Sidney Hartland, 'Pin-Wells and Rag-Bushes', Folklore IV (1893) pp.451-70; E. K. Chambers, The Medieval Stage, I pp. 122-3.
30.The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore VI p.621.
31. British Library Sloane 2593 ff.12-23v. Carleton Brown, Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century, p.88.
32. Chaucer, Works, p.526, lines 177-8.
33. Ibid, lines 92-4 (Exodus iii 2-4).
34. R. L. Greene, The Early English Carols, No.132A (Balliol College, Oxford 354, f. 222v).
35. According to early Christian apocryphal writings, the annunciation took place at a fountain by a thorn-bush; see Peter Dronke, The Medieval Lyric, p.70.
36.David Fowler, Literary History of the Popular Ballad, p. 21 Valuspa, ed. Sigur~ur Nordal, p.39, st. 20. VQluspa is arguably influenced by Christianity, but only by the central mysteries, and an obscure apocryphal symbol would not have been known by the poet.
37. M. Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, pp.266 ff.
38. A. L. Lloyd, Folksong in England, p.186.
39. 'I once loved a lass', in for example The Irish Songbook (ed. The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, Oak Publications,
New York 1979) pp.16-17.
40. Child, I p.8.
41. Child, I p.10.
42. The Mabinogion, transl. Jeffrey Gantz (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1976) pp.135-76.
43. A. Noren, H. Schuck, J. A. Lundell, A. Grape, eds., 1500- och 1600-talens visbocker (stockholm & Uppsala, 1884-1925) II pp.25-7. Reference from B. R. Jonsson et al, The Types of the Scandinavian Medieval Ballad.
44. Ruth Rabin, 119th Century Yiddish Folksongs', JAF LXV (1952) pp.227-54 (c).
45. The Poems of William Dunbar, ed. J. Kinsley, No.55, p. 166. Cf. Chaucer, 'General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales' (works p.23, 1.692) ,'fro Berwyk into Ware'. King's Lynn, Norfolk, is referred to as 'Lynn' in The Paston Letters A.D. 1422-1502 (6 vols., ed. James Gairdner. London, Chatto & Windus, 1904), e.g. VI p.60.
46. Sabine Baring-Gould, Strange Survivals, pp.225-6.
47. Ibid., pp.232-3.
48. Miss Priscilla Wyatt-Edgill, a friend of the Baring Gould Family, cited in Maud Karpeles, Cecil Sharp: his Life and Work, p.5l.
49. G~sta Frisk, ed., A Middle English Translation of the Macer Floridus de Viribus Herbarum, pp.137-8.
50. M. c. Seymour, ed., On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa's translation of Bartholomeus An licus, De Pro rietatibus Rerum: A Critical Text Oxford, 1975 II p. 102.
51. T. F. Thiselton Dyer, The Folklore of Plants, pp. 107-8.
52. JFSS III (L907) No. 10 pp.6-38.
53. All these from W. C. Hazlitt, Dictionary of Faith and Folklore, p.598.
54. Thiselton Dyer, op.cit., p.97.
55. Ibid. , p .160, 'The Willow Tree'.
56. 'Kellyburnbraes 1 , 1792; J. Kinsley, ed., The Poems and Songs of Robert Burns, II p.644.
57. Cited in R. Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland, pp.286-7.
58. J. Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, transl. J. s. Stallybrass, III (4 vols, George Bell & Sons, London 1883)p. 1214.
59. F. Ohrt, 'Herba, Gratia Plena', FFC XXVIII (l929)p.17.
60. Geoffrey Grigson, The Englishman's Flora (Paladin, St. Alban's 1958) p.336.
61. Belden, cited in H. H. Flanders, Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New England, I p.70.
62. Greene, op.cit., No.402A .. Bodley MS Eng. P6etica e.1 ff 43v-45.
63. Kenneth H. Jackson, ed., A Celtic Miscellany, p.98.
64. Greene, op.cit., xcviii ff. From Gentleman's Magazine.
65 Respectively, R. H. Robbins, Secular Ltrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, pp.45-6; p.46; pp. 6-7.
66. The Oxford Book of Carols, No.38.
---------------------
APPENDIX B: CHILD 2, 'THE ELFIN KNIGHT': DESCRIPTION OF TEXTS.
Key to Description of Texts.
A. Elfin Knight (or three trumpeters) sits or stands on a hill, blowing his horn loud and shrill. Woman wishes the horn were in her 'kist' (chest) and the Knight in her arms; he immediately appears at her bedside. He tells her she is too young to marry; she replies that her younger sister was married yesterday. (Or, she tells him her eleven-year old sister 'to the young men's bed has made bauld' and that she herself, who is nine, would fain be his).
A1. On yonder hill sits a noble Knight. 'Say to the fairest damsel you sight. . . '
A2. Lady dwells on yonder hill, with music at her will. 'Auld, auld man' appears with blue bonnet in hand; he says she must answer three questions or go with him.
A3. There was an old woman lived under a hill;
if she isn't gone, she's living there still.
There was an old woman lived over the sea.
Devil comes to woman one night in bed.
Fair maid goes walking between the salt sea and the sea strand. She meets Devil, who gives her a task.
B. As I was walking down by the seashore, I met a maid
I'd never seen before, and I said, 'Will you be a true lover of mine?'
B1. As I gaed up to yon hill/dell (or, Bonny Moor Hill),
I met my mistress/a wee lass/a fair damsel whose name is Nell.
B2. As I roved out by the sea side, I met a little girl
and gave her my hand.
B3. As I roved out through a green bank's side, I met
a fair maid who wore a green gown.
B4. As I walked out a fair maid.
in a shady grove, 'twas there I spied
B5. As I went walking one morning in May, I met a fair damsel.
B6. As I roved out one fine summer's morn,
I met a man whose name was John.
B7. I saw a young lady walking in yonder green field
(or, As I was walking in yonder green field);
remember me to yonder young maid.
C. Are you going to London ? Give my love to a girl
there.
c 1 . As you go up to yonders/Yandro 1 s town, give my
respects to that young girl (or, tell the fairest
girl) ...
C 2. Where are you going? -I'm going to Lynn
(or, Do you know the way to Selin ? Give my love to
the lady therein).
C 3. Now you're going to Cape Ann/Earl, remember me to some young girl .
C 4. You may go down to Rosemary Fair (or, As you go down
Rosemary Lane), pick me out the finest boy/girl there.
C 5 . As you are going down (or, As I was walking up)
Strawberry Lane, it's there you will meet (or, I
chanced for to meet) a pretty young maid.
C 6 . Were you ever down at the tri-coloured house?
It's there you will meet a neat bonny lass.
C 7. Did you ever travel twixt Berwick and Lyne? It's there you will meet a handsome young dame.
C 8. Where are you going? - to Scarborough Fair/to Whittingham Fair. Remember me to one who lives there.
C 9. Where are you going? to Cadrian? If you see that nice young man . . .
C 10. Where are you going ? Are you going to the fair? Tell my true love if you meet her there ...
C 11. O don't you remember on Newcastle Hill ... don't you remember a pretty young girl ?
D. Come, pretty Nelly, sit thee by me, and I will ask you questions three.
E. Carry a lady a letter from me.
E 1. If you go up to town tonight, just hand this note to that young miss.
My father left me (had) three acres (an acre) of land.
My mother gave me an acre of land.
My mother made me a cambric shirt.
My father kept a tealil of rats.
G. Tasks given to the woman.
1. To make (fetch, send, buy) a cambric shirt (sark, smock, Holland/Highland shirt, spider-work shirt), without any seam or needlework (free from woman's work; with very fine needle and very coarse wool; with an eyeless needle wanting a thread).
1a. To make a sark without cut or hem, shaped without knife or shears, sewed without a needle.
1b. To wash three holland shirts between the sea and sea-strand.
1c. To buy a yard (three yards) of broadcloth (tow-cloth, two cloth, white cloth) and make a shirt without a seam; or, to buy three yards of silk and make a cambric shirt; or, to make it out of an old cotton sheet.
1d. To stir it along with roses so fine.
2. To sew it with a gold ring (with every stitch a foot between).
2a. To cut (sew) it with a goose quill (white thorn).
3. To wash it in a well (a dry well, draw-well, yonders well, Yandro's well, a spring, cistern, stream or brook) where there is no water since Adam was born.
3a. To wash it in yonder strand, where wood never grew and water ne'er ran.
3b. To wring it out of a dry well.
3c. To wash it where water never ran.
4. To dry it on a thorn (sweet thorn, green thorn, hawthorn, buck-thorn, white thorn, whin bush), where there is no leaf (blossom; or, where the sun never shines; or, that never grew) since Adam (man) was born.
4a. To hang it on yonder stone that never grew moss since Adam was born (or, on yonder great rock).
5. To bleach it on yonder green where there are no flowers or grass (or, where never a foot or a hoof did pass).
6. To iron it on/with an old flat rock, 'one ne'er cold nor one ne'er hot'.
6a. To iron it with a mill stone.
6b. To iron it against the house back (Church back)
without looking down or getting it black.
6c. To iron it with a hot iron and plait it in one plait
around (or, without letting a stitch burn).
6d. To iron it with a cold flint stone, and put a gloss
on it for me to be married in.
7. To line it with elephant's fur, and iron it smooth
with a chestnut burr.
H. Woman tells man/elf/Devil that since he has set tasks for her, she will set one/some for him.
H1. 'Tell this young lady when she's finished her work, she can come to me and I'll give her a kiss' (or, we'll be married).
I. 'When you go back to Yonders town, give my respects
to that young man'.
I1. 'As I was walking in yonder green field, remember me to yonder young man' (or, 'I saw a young man a-walking in yonders green field').
I2 . 'Don't you remember on Newcastle Hill . .. a gentle young man?'
I3. 'Tis now you're going to Cape Ann, remember me to yonder young man'(or, that same young man): or, 'Where are you going? -I'm going to Cape Ann ... '
I4. 'So as you are going down Strawberry Lane, it's there you will meet a pretty young man'.
I5. 'As you will go down Rosemary Lane; pick me out the finest boy there.
I6. 'Were you ever down at the tri-coloured house? It's there you'll meet a neat bonny lad'.
I7 . 'Are you going to New York/Boston? Give my love to a young man/an old man there.
I8. 'Did ye ever travel twixt Berwick and Lyne? There ye'll meet a handsome young man'.
I9 . 'Do you know the way back again? Remember me to a young man therein'.
I10. 'Where are you going? -I'm going to Japan-
Give my respects to the same young man.'
I 11.'Where are you going? -To Scarbro' Fair- Remember
me to a lad who lives there.
I 12. 'Are you going to the fair ? Tell my true love if you see him there'.
J. 'If you go down to town tonight, hand this letter to that young gent.' (or, 'Carry that gent a letter from me').
K. Tasks given to the man (In the 'Acre of Land' type text, these are said to have been performed by the singer or his father.)
L. Woman says she has an acre/rig of good ley-land/ bonnie land that lieth low by the sea strand.
L a. Man is to plough (get, buy, hire, find, till, fence) her an acre of land (2, 3, 5, 10, t acres), or, a farm; between the salt water and the sea sands, (or, with ne'er a bush or rock to be found)
L b. To plant an acre of corn.
2. To plough it with a sickle of leather (plough of leather).
2a. To ear (till, plough) it with his horn (double ram's horn, Adam's horn, bear's horn, ox's horn, turtle's horn, hog's horn, goat's horn, Indian horn, old cow's horn, muley cow/sheep's horn, cuckold's horn, Devil tap's horn, horse horn, horse bone, hand, big thorn).
2b. To plough it with two tom-cats/a team of rats(or mice)/ an old stack plod.
3. To harrow it with a comb/small tooth comb/curry comb.
3a. To harrow/tend it with a tree of black thorn (thorn, bramble bush, bunch of briars).
3b. To harrow it with his big toe-nail (fingernails).
3c. To harrow it with a pig's horn (harrow pin, thread, harrow tine, scroll, tail of his shirt).
3d. He worked it down with a team of rats.
4. To dig (cut, thrash, plough) it with a goose quill.
4a. To roll it with a rolling pin (treacle tin, the heel of his shoe, sheepshank bone, team of rats).
5. To sow it with his corn (one grain/peck of corn, a handful of corn, without a seed, with pepper-corn, with caraway seeds, with wild oats, with a thimble, with a paper quirn, hen's gizzard, teaspoon or a little sidlip).
5a. To plant it with ten acres of corn, and harrow it with a muley cow's horn.
5b. To work it in with a team of rats.
6. To ripen it with one blink of sun.
7. To open it out with a razor blade.
8. To reap (mow, cut, shear) it with his knife (case-knife, pocket-knife, without a scythe)
8a.To reap (mow, cut, shear) it with a strap/ shaving/whang/ sickle of leather (or, old stirrup leather).
8b. To reap (mow, cut, shear) it with a peahen's/sea-fowl's feather (goosequill).
8c. To reap (mow, cut, shear) it with a nook tooth (ram's horn, sheep's shankbone, thumbnail, royal rush, wing of a flea, shoemaker's awl).
8d. To reap (mow, cut, shear) it into a trice (on the ice).
9. To rake it up with a humming bird 1 s feather (or, to hoe it with a peacock's feather).
10. To bind it (stook, shock, thresh it) with the tong/sting of an adder/arrow (on the blade of a knife; in nine little shocks; with the song of another)
10a. To bind it with a tom-tit's feather (hummingbird's, peacock's feather),
10b. To bind it without strap or tether (with strappings of leather).
10c. To bind it 'just as his life'.
10d. To thatch it with midge's claws and rope it round with pismire's paws.
11. To barn/stack/crush/pack, it in a mousehole (eggshell).
11a. To haul it in with a yoke/span of mice (with a team of rats; with a chicken's feather; on a shoe sole).
11b. To thresh/put it in yonder (yonder dry/high)barn, never built since Adam was born.
11c. To put it into a horn never seen since Adam was born.
11d. To stack it in the sea (and bring the stale home to me).
11e. To stack it in an old box hat.
12. To dry it in yon ribless kiln and grind it in yon waterless mill(or, to dry it without candle or coal and grind it without quirn or mill).
13. To thresh it in the sole of his shoe (in a sparrow's nest, in an egg shell, in his lufes).
13a. To thresh it with a hazel twig (beanstalk, cabbage stalk, pair of sticks, walking stick, wooden leg, leg of a louse,
needle and thread, wimble straw, mouse's tail, little flail, cobbler's awl, knives).
13b. To thresh /stack it against the wall (castle/Church/house/Yondo's wall; in the corner of the house) and not let a grain fall.
13c. To flay it with a butterfly's wing.
13d. To thresh it on the sea and not get it wet.
13e. To thrash it in yonder barn that hangs to the sky by a thread of yarn.
14. To winnow/wim/dight it in his loof (nieves, lives, crown of his hat, tail of his shirt, handkerchief, wings of a fly, eggshell, little fan).
14a. To fan it up in an oyster shell (the skin of an egg; an eggshell never laid since Adam was born; in his luves).
15. To sack it between his thighs (in his gloves, in a mouse's/worm/s skin).
15a. To gather it up in a bottomless suck and bring it home on a butterfly's back.
15b. To pick it all up (shake it all out, knock it all out) with a cobbler's awl.
16. To carry it home just into his loof (bind it all and carry it home).
16a.To carry it home in a pismire rigg (walnut shell, mouse's back, bumblebee 1 s/snail 1 s back).
16b.To make a waggon/cart of stone and lime (hair and lime).
16c.The wren(six Jenny wrens; Robin Redbreast and the wren; Robin Redbreast; two sparrows yoked to a matchbox) will
bring it home.
16d.To cart/pack it on a cake of ice (in a snuff- box).
16e.To build a ship of brick and sail home with it (dry).
16f.To bring it home with a team of rats.
16g.To cover it with a rainbow for a thack.
17. To take it to mill with a team of rats (with the cat; in a fieldmouse rigg) .
17a. To take it to mill, every grain to fill one barrel (or, to raise a barrel crirn from it).
17b.To grind it on yonder hill, where never yet stood a mill.
18. To measure it with a thimble/walnut shell.
19.To take it to market on a louse (with a team of rats; on a hedgehog's back; in a thimble; on a mouse's back).
19a. To sell it in a town/market where nobody lives.
19b. To go to market and bring me back the money.
20. How many ships sail in my forest? How many strawberries grow on the salt sea?
21. 'I made a cake for all the King's men'.
L. 'Now you have answered these questions, I'll make you my bride'.
M. 'When you've finished your work, come to me and you'll get your shirt/sark'.
M1 . 'Tell the old fool, when he's finished his work, he
can come to me and get his shirt'.
M2. 'Tell the young man, when he's finished his work, he can come to me for a kiss (to be married)'.
M3. 'Tell her, when she's finished, she can come to me with the shirt'.
N. 'I'll not quit my plaid for my life, it haps my bairns and my wife.' - 'My maiden-head I'll then keep still, let the Elphin Knight do what he will'.
O. Devil curses those 'wha learned thee; this night I ween'd ye'd gane wi' me.'
P. The miller swore he'd have her paw (take a toll);
the cat swore she would scratch his face/poll.
P1. The cat carried it to the mill; the miller said he'd work with a will.
P2 . The rats (mouse, thower, louse, jockey, cat) broke
their back (crown, rigg).
P3. The team of rats came rattling back (with 50 guineas and an empty sack).
P4 The carter brought a curly whip; the whip did pop
and the waggon did stop.
P5. I broke my back for want of a gill.
P6. He sold the lot for 18 pence; now the old man is dead, we buried him with his team of rats and his tools by his side.
Q. I sold it all for one pound ten: what a rare deed my father and I had.
Q 1. My song is at an end; I hope I've offended none.
Description of Texts.
(Unless otherwise stated, the text has no recorded tune)
GROUP A: Refrain Type 'Blow, blow, blow ye winds blow'.
(i) 'The Wind hath blown my Plaid away, or, A Discourse betwixt a young (wo)man and the Elphin Knight'.
Place: ? Edinburgh
Date: c.l670
Source: Blackletter broadside, bound in the end of a copy of Blind Harry's 'Wallace', Edinburgh 1673. (Pepysian Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge)
Child 2A.
Description: 19 stanzas + external burden.
A Gla H Kl,2a,5,16b,16c,11,13,14,15,16e M N.
External burden: My plaid awa, my plaid awa,
And ore the hill and far awa,
And far awa to Norrowa,
My plaid shall not be blown awa.
Internal refrain: Ba, ba, ba, lilli ba
The wind hath blown my plaid awa.
(ii) 'My plaid awa'
Place: Edinburgh
Date: 1824
Source: Partly from a blackletter copy, partly 'from the recitation of an old lady': David Webster, A Collection of Curious Old
Ballads, Edinburgh 1824, p.3
Description: 20 stanzas+ external burden as in (i).
A Gla H Kl,2a,5,Ja,8,11,13,14,15,16e M N.
Internal refrain as in (i) above.
(iii) 'The Elfin Knight'
Place: Scotland
Date: c.l825
Source: Motherwell's MS. p.492.
Child 2E.
Description: 4 stanzas: A(fragmented) Gla.
Refrain: Ba ba lilly ba
And the wmd has blawn my plaid awa.
(iv) 'The Deil's Courting'
Place: Newton Green, Ayrshire, Scotland.
Date: c.1825
Source: John McWhinnie, collier, of Newton Green.
Motherwell's MS., p.103.
Child 2I
Description: 2 1 la J 4 15 stanzas: A G ' ' ' H K 1, 2a,3c,8a,10b,11d,16b,13,15
Refrain: Hee ba and balou ba,
And the wind has blown my plaid awa.
(v) 'The Elfin Knicht'
Place:Angus, Tayside
Date: 1826
323.
Source: Recitation of M.Kinnear. G.R.Kinloch,
Ancient Scottish Ballads, London &
Edinburgh, 1827, p.l45.
Child 2C.
Description: 18 stanzas:
A Gla,3,4 H Kla,2a,5,3c,8,11,13,14a, K15,16e M.
Refrain: Oure the hills and far awa
The cauld wind's blawn my plaid awa.
(vi) 'The Fairy Knight'
Place: North (?) Scotland
Date: c.1828
Source: Peter Buchan, Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, p.296.
Child 2D
Description: 17 stanzas
A Gl,3,4 H Klb,2a,5,3c,8c,l6e,ll,l3,
Kl5,14,12,16b,l6c, M.
Refrain: Blaw, blaw, blaw winds, blaw,
And the wind has blawin my plaid awa.
(vii) ('There was a Knight')
Place: Portlethen, Aberdeenshire
Date: 1893
Source: Sent to Child by Mr. Walker, of Aberdeen,
as sung by John Walker, who learned it
from his father over 50 years before.
Child Vol.V pp. 205-6.
Description: 9 stanzas:
A (frag.) K1a,2a,5,8C G1,3,4 M
('Come in, Jock Sheep, and ye'll get your sark' )
Refrain: Blow, blow, blow the wind, blow.
(viii) 'Blow, ye winds, blow'
Place: Medfield, Massachusetts
Date: 1899
Source: 'Family Songbook compiled by Rosa Allen',
p.14, from long-standing family tradition.
Philips Barry, JAF XVIII (1905) pp. 212; 49-50.
E.H. Linscott, Folksongs of Old New England, 1939, p.170-1.
Bronson 2.2
Description: 8 stanzas:
G1,3,4 Klb,4,5,8c,13d,l7b, M.
Refrain: Blow, blow, blow ye winds, blow,
Blow, ye winds that arise, blow, blow.
Tune: Group Aa
(ix) 'The Laird o' Elfin'
Place: New Deer, Aberdeenshire
Date: 1908
Source: Sung by Alexander Robb, Greig MSS III p.l39
and Bk.739, XXIX, p.6o. G.Greig and A.Keith,
Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads and
Ballad Airs, 1925, p.2 (1).
Rymour Club Miscellanea, I (1910), p.201
Bronson 2.1
Description: 13 stanzas:
A Gla, H K1,2a,5,8,10c,13,15,11d,16c M.
Refrain: Ba-ba-ba leelie ba
And the wind blaws aye my plaid awa
Tune: unclassified
(x) 'The Elfin Knight'
Place: New Pitsligo, Aberdeenshire
Date: c. 1910
Source: Bell Robertson. Greig, Folksong of the North-East, Text A. (No. 100)
Description: 15 stanzas:
A G1,3,4 H K1b 2a,5,4a,8a,10a,11d,14,15M.
Refrain: Blow, blow, blow winds blow
And the wind blows aye my plaid awa.
(xi) 'The Elfin Knight'
Place: Lambhill, Insch, Aberdeenshire
Date: c.1931
Source: Bell Duncan. Carpenter MSS., Reel h, Box 2.
Description: 9 stanzas
G1, 3, 4 K2a, 5, 8, 10,13a, 14, 15 M.
Refrain: Over the hills and far away
For the wind blaws aye my plaid awa
Tune: unclassified
(xii) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Colebrook, New Hampshire
Date: 20 November 1941
Source: Mrs. Belle Richards. Collected by M. Olney.
H. H. Flanders, Ancient Ballads Traditionally
Sung in New England, I pp.7J-5 (L).
Description: 7 stanzas
G1,3.4 H K1a, 2, 9 L.
Refrain: Blow, blow, blow ye winds 0!
For the winds may blow your plaid awa
Tune: Group Aa
(xiii) 'Blow ye Winds'
Place: Haymarket, Virginia
Date: 18 June 1942
Source: Sung by Maud Ewell (learned from her grandfather,
who learned it as a boy in Dumfries). Collected
by Susan R. Morton, University of Virginia
Library Collection 1547/20.
Description: 8 stanzas (sung as a duet)
G1,3,4 K1b,4,5,8c,13d,17b M.
Refrain: Blow, blow, blow ye winds
Blow, blow, blow ye winds
(xiv) ('The Elfin Knight')
Place: Pittsburg, New Hampshire
Date: 21 April 1942
Source: Maynard Reynold (born Maine); collected M. Olney.
Flanders, Ancient Ballads I p.79 (P).
Description: 7 lines + irregularly placed refrain
Klc,2a,8d,16dL.
Refrain: Blow, blow, blow ye winds 0
Where the wind may blow and your blood-lay-wa.
(xv) 'The Elfin Knight'
Place: Birham, Perthshire
Date: 1955
Source: Mrs. Martha Reid ('Peasie')
H. Henderson & F.Collinson, 'New Child Ballad Variants', Scottish Studies IX (1965) Pt.l,
pp.7-8 (B).
Bronson Addenda 2.23.1
Description: 6 stanzas:
Gl,J,4 Kla,2a,5,6,8b,l0,16c H K20.
Refrain: An' it's ho, ho, the wind'll blow
Tune: unclassified
(xvi) 'The Elfin Knight'
Place: Blairgowrie, Perthshire
Date: July 1956
Source: Andra Stewart (learned from his mother)
Henderson & Collinson, op.cit., p.6.
Bronson Addenda 2.2.2
Rescription: 2 stanzas:
G4 (and for your life let one drop fall)
Refrain: Blow, blow, blow the wind blow,
And the weary wind blows my plaidie awa
Tune: unclassified
(xvii) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Rocky Harbour, Newfoundland
Date: July 1959
Source: George Decker. Kenneth Peacock, Songs
of the Newfoundland Outports, 1965, I p.6
Description: 9 stanzas
AJ A5 G1,3,4 H K1a,3c,5 M.
Refrain: Blow, blow, blow the winds blow
While the winds do blow my flood o 1 woe
Tune: Group Aa
(xviii) 'The Elfin Knight'
Place: Parson's Pond, Newfoundland
Date: 1966
Source: Mrs.Charlotte Decker, aged 89. Collected
by H.Halpert and J.Widdowson, Memorial
University Folklore Archive (MUNFLA)
66-24, C. 261 R.
Description: 6 stanzas:
A5 G1, 3 K1a,2a,5 M.
Refrain: Blow, blow, blow the wind blow
And the wind 'll blow my plaid awa
Tune: Group Aa
(xix) 'The Elf Knight'
Place: Letham, Tayside (formerly Angus)
Date: 1975
Sources: Sung by John MacDonald, a Perthshire
traveller. Collected by Linda Headlee,
Tocher (School of Scottish Studies) XX
pp. 13809. The opening (A6) is given in prose: a second recording, with verse opening, was made by Ewan MacColl and
Peggy Seeger, Travellers' Songs from England and Scotland, 1977, pp.47-9.
Description: 9/11 stanzas:
A6 Gl,J H Kla,2a,Ja,6,8b,l0,16c M.
Refrain: Blaw, blaw, blaw ye winds blaw,
And the dreary wind's blawed my plaidie awa.
(Second line varies according to context, e.g.
'And the dreary winds did blaw her plaidie awa' )
Tune: unclassified
(xx) 'The Elf Knight'
Place: Whiteness, Shetland
Date: 1975
Source: Sung by Mrs.Margaret Tait, learned from her mother, Mrs. Jemima Robertson, of the Westing, Unst. Collected by Alan Bruford.
Tocher, XX (1975) pp.141-2.
Description: 4 stanzas:
G1 K1a,3,11 M.
Refrain: Blaa, blaa, tear da wind, blaa
And da wind is blaan me plaidie awaa
Tune: unclassified
(xxi) 'The Elf Knight'
Place: Pitlochry, Perthshire
Date: 1975
Source: Sung by Alexander Reid ('Shells'), collected by Linda Headlee.
Tocher XX (1975) pp.140-1.
Description: 8 couplets, irregular placing of refrain:
G1,3,4 H K1a,2a,5,8b,10,16c.
Refrain: And the dreary, dreary wind blaw my
plaidie awa.
Tune: unclassified
GROUP B: Herb Refrains.
(i) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: published in London
Date: 1810
Source: Gammer Gurton's Garland, 1810, p.J.
Child 2G
Description: 8 stanzas:
G1,J,4 H K1a,2a,5,8a,10a M.
Refrain: Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
And you shall be a true lover of mine.
(ii) 'The Deil's Courtship'
Place: West Scotland
Date: c.1825
Source: Motherwell's MS. p.92
Child 2H
Description: 10 stanzas:
D G1,3a,4 H K1a,2a,5,8a,11d M.
Refrain: Every rose grows merry wi thyme
And then thou wilt be a true lover of mine
(iii) 'Lord John'
Place: Scotland
Date: c. 1826
Source: Kinloch's MS. I, p.75. From Mary Barr.
Child 2F. c td
(iii) ctd,
Description: 12 stanzas:
C7 Gl,3,4,6c I8 Kla,5,3c,8c,l6,11,12 M.
Refrain: Sober and grave grows merry in time
And syne we'll be true lovers again.
(sts.l & 7, Ance she /he was a true love o mine)
(iv) 'Scarborough Fair'
Place: Whitby, Yorkshire
Date: c.l86o
Source: Collected by Frank Kidson from 'a ballad
singer'. Kidson, Traditional Tunes, 1891,
pp.43;172. Bronson 2.1~.
Description: 8 stanzas:
C8 Gl,J,4 Kla,2a,5,8a,l0a M.
Refrain: Savoury sage, rosemary and thyme
For once (and then) she 1 11/he 1 ll be a
true love of mine.
Tune: Group Ba
(v) 'Whittingham Fair'
Place: Northumbria (N.B.Whittingham is near
Alnwick, Northumberland)
Date: 1882
Source: J.C.Bruce and J.Stokoe, Northumbrian
Minstrelsy, 1882, pp.79-80.
Bronson 2.22
Description: 9 stanzas:
C8 G1,3,4 H Kla,2a,5,8a,10a M.
Refrain: Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
For once she/he was a true love of mine
Tune: Group Ba
(vi) 'Scarbro Fair'
Place: ? Yorkshire
Date: 1884
Source: Sent by Frank Kidson to Child. Child MSS.
XXI No.18.
Bronson 2.17
Description: 10 stanzas + a separate fragment of
4 stanzas:
C8 Gl,3,4a Hl Ill Kla,2a,5,8a,l0a M.
C8 Kla,5,8a,l0a G3,4.
Refrain: Savoury sage rosemary and thyme
For once she was a true lover of mine
Tune: Group Ba
(vii) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Missouri
Date: 1886
Source: From Leroy Kinkade. H.M.Belden, Ballads
and Songs Collected by the Missouri
Folklore Society, 1940, pp.l-2.
Description: 8 stanzas:
G1,3,4 K1a,2a,5,8a,10a,13b,17a.
Refrain: Rosemary and thyme
(viii)('The Elfin Knight')
Place: Camelford, North Cornwall
Date: 1886
Source: Sent to Child by Rev.Sabine Baring-Gould,
Child IV pp.4J9-40. Baring-Gould, Strange
Survivals, 1892, pp.225-6; 232-3.
Description: Baring-Gould reports that this was enacted as a game-song in farmhouses. The narrative introduction (versified in Child IV; in prose in Strange.·Survivals) tells of a revenant lover, who appears in response to his mistress's wish that he
might be with her, and then sets her questions. (In Strange Survivals, this is elaborated: the lover insists that his mistress follows him to the grave; either she pleads to be spared, which he allows, on condition that she answers riddles, or, she consents, on condition that he answers her riddles).
There follows the text:
G1,3,4 H1 H Kla,2a,5,8a,10a M2.
Additional conclusion in Child IV:
'Now thou has answered me well', he said
'Or thou must have gone away with the dead'.
Refrain: The wind is blowing in forest and town
And the wind it shaketh the acorns down
(Child IV)
or: Whilst every grove rings with a merry an tine
O, and thou shalt be a true lover of mine.
(strange Survivals)
(ix)('The Tasks')
Place: Post Bridge, Cornwall
Date: 1890
Source: Sung by John Hext, noted by F.W.Bussell.
Baring-Gould MSS CXXVIII (1) and (B).
And almost identical version printed in
Baring-Gould & Sheppard, Songs of the West,
1905 ed., p.96, as from P.Symonds,
Jacobstow, John Hext and James Dyer of
Mawgan. Bronson 2,JJ
Description: 9 stanzas:
G1,3,4 H1 H Kla,2a,5,8a G5 KlJe.
Refrain: Whilst every grove rings with a merry antine,
0 and then thou shalt be a true love of mine.
Tune: Group Ba
(x) 'Old Norfolk Song'
Place: Norfolk
Date: c.1890
Source: F. Hamond, 'from a book in Norfolk':
Broadwood MS. pp.497-8. Walter Rye,
Songs and Sayings of Norfolk, 1897,pp.7-8.
Description: 6 stanzas:
Gl,J,4 Kla,2a,5,15b,ll.
Refrain: Savory, sage, rosemary and thyme
And then you shall be a true lover of mine
Tune: 'Robin Cook's Wife' (not given)
(xi) 'Scarborough Fair'
Place: Goathland, Yorkshire
Date: 1891
Source: A.Wardill, F.Kidson, Traditional Tunes,
1891, p.172. Bronson 2.29
Description: one stanza: c 8
Refrain: Rue, parsley, rosemary and thyme
For once she was a true love of mine
Tune: Ba
(xii) 'Scarborough Fair'
Place: Whitby, Yorkshire
Date: 1891
Source: Sung by William Moat, a fisherman.
Lucy E. Broadwood & J.A.Fuller Maitland,
English County Songs, 1893, pp.l2-l3.
Child V p.206: Bronson 2.20
Description: lO stanzas:
Ill K1a,2a,5,8a,10a H C8 G1,3,4 H.
Refrain: None
Tune: Ba
(xiii) 'The Tasks'
Place: St. Mowgan-in-Pyder, Cornwall
Date: 1891
Source: Sung by Joseph Dyer, with extra stanza
from John Dyer. Noted by F.W. Bussell.
Baring-Gould MSS. CXXVIII (2) and (A).
Bronson 2. 14
Description: 9 + 1 stanzas:
G1,3,4 H1 H Kla,2a,5,8a,10a M2.
Refrain: Whilst every grove rings with a merry an tine
O and then thou shalt be a true love of mine.
Tune: Ba
(xiv)('The Elfin Knight')
Place: Boston, Massachusetts
Date: 1894
Source: Sung by Gertrude Decrow, from family
tradition. JAF VII (1894) p.228.
Child V p.284: Bronson 2.46
Description: 9 stanzas:
Bl Gl,3,4 H Kla,2a,5,9,lO.
Refrain: Let every rose grow merry in time
And then you shall be a true lover of mine
Tune: unclassified
(xv)('The Elfin Knight')
Place: Beverly, Massachusetts
Date: 1894
Source: From Mrs. Sarah Bridge Farmer, learned
from an elderly lady. JAF VII (1894) p.229
child v p. 284
Description: 9 stanzas:
C1 G1,3,4 H Kla,2a,5,9,10 M.
Refrain: Parsley and sage, rosemary and thyme
In token she's been a true lover of mine
(xvi) 'As you go up to yonders town'
Place: Columbia Co., Georgia
Date: 1900
Source: From Mrs. E.M. Backur, from recitation.
William Wells Newell, 'Early American Ballads', JAF XIII (1900) pp.l20-2.
Description: 10 stanzas;
C1 G1,3,4 I K1a,5,2a,8a,10a,17a M.
Refrain: Rosemary and thyme
And then you shall be a true lover of mine
(xvii) ('The Elfin Knight')
Place: Providence, Rhode Island
Date: 1904
Source: Sung by Mrs. S. A. Flint. Phillips Barry,
JAF XVIII (1905) pp.213; 50-1.
Bronson 2.26
Description: 7 stanzas:
G1 3,4 H K1a,2 ,5,8a,10a
Refrain: Parsley and sage, rosemary and thyme
And then you shall be a true lover of mine
Tune: Bd
(xviii) 'The Six Questions'
Place: ? N.E. United States
Date: c.1904
Source: Sung by O. F. A. Conner. Barry MSS I vn.E
(IV, No.123). Bronson 2.25
Description: 8 stanzas:
G1,J,4 H Kla,2a,5,8b,10 M.
Refrain: Every Rose grows merry in time
And then you can be a true lover of mine.
Tune: Bd
(xix)('The Lover's Tasks')
Place: England
Date: 1904
Source: Sent by Mr.Gilbert to Cecil Sharp:
Sharp MSS219/J06. Bronson 2.16
Description: 6 stanzas:
G1,3,4 Kla,2a,5,15a.
Refrain: Every leaf grows many a time
And you shall be a trw lover of mine
Tune: Ba
(xx)('The Lover's Tasks')
Place: Rowbarton, Taunton, Somerset
Date: 1906
Source: Sung by William Huxtable, with tune variants
from Bessie Huxtable, Minehead, 1906.
Sharp MSS. 763/826. Sharp and C.L.Marson,
Folksongs from Somerset, Jrd Ser. 1906,
pp.26-7.
Sung on record by Clive Carey, English
Columbia reo. WA 10685 (DB 335)
Bronson 2.36
Description: 6 stanzas:
G1, 3 Kla,2a,5,8a,10a,15a
Refrain: Sing Ivy Leaf, Sweet William and Thyme
And you shall be a true lover of mine
Tune: Bb
N.B. A similar version is noted in Sharp's MS from Robert Pope and appears to be assigned to the Huxtable tune: Bronson believes this may be an error as Pope belonged to Devon, while the text is recorded from Rowbarton.
Description of this text: 8 stanzas:
Gl,J,4 Kla,2a,5,8a,l0a,l5a,ll,l5b.
(xxi) 'The Sea-side, or, The Elfin Knight'
Place: Waterford, Ireland
Date: 1906
Source: Sung by Miss Bridget Geary, collected by
Lucy E.Broadwood. FSJ III (1907) X pp.6-38.
Bronson 2. 31
Description: 9 stanzas:
B2 Gl,J,4 H Kla,2a,5,13,15b M.
Refrain: Every Rose grows merry in time
And it's then you will be a true lover of mine
Tune: Be
(xxii) 'Love's Impossibility'
Place: California
Date: 1906
Source: Mrs.R.F.Herrick, learned from her father
(B.l807) JAF XIX (1906) pp.130-1.
Description: 9 stanzas:
B7 Gl,J,4 Il Kla,5,2a,8a,l0a M.
Refrain: Savory, sage, rosemary and thyme
And she shall be a true lover of mine.
(xxiii) 'The Lover's Tasks'
Place: Upway, Dorset
Date: 1907
Source: Mrs.Marina Russell. Hammond MSS Notebook
D VII p.45; D 760.
Description: 6 stanzas:
ell Glc,Jc I2 Kla,2a,5.
Refrain: Let every circle go merry and twine
And then she shall be a true lover of mine
Tune: unclassified
(xxiv) 'The Parsley Vine'
Place: Kentucky (?)
Date: 1908
Source: J.J.Niles, Ballad Book, 1961, pp.l8-l9.
Sung by Carter Patterson.
Description: Apparently a composite improvisation
from the herb refrain and the 'Acre of Land' (D) type. Describes various gifts from an uncle, including an acre of ground, and a 'linny smock' from a lover. Possible invention of Niles.
Refrain: Where the parsley hangs upon the vine.
Tune: unclassified
(xxv) 'The Shirt of Lace'
Place: Kentucky
Date: 1908
Source: Niles, ibid. , pp.l8-l9. Patterson's brother.
Description: Another doubtful text, based on G1,3,5 K1 , and beginning, 'Oh, water where there is no well, what name will my true love tell?'
Refrain: Viny flower and rosemary tree
Tune: unclassified
(xxvi) 'Then you shall be a true lover of mine'
Place: Ireland
Date: 1909
Source: Patrick Joyce, Old Irish Folk Music and
Songs, 1909, pp.59=60. Bronson 2.27
Description: 2 stanzas: Kla, 2a,5.
Refrain: As every plant grows merry in time
And then you shall be a true lover of mine
Tune: Bd
(xxvii) 'Every Rose is bonny in time'
Place: Coleraine, Ulster
Date: 1910
Source: Mrs.Houston JIFSS VIII (1910) p.17.
Bronson 2.28
Description: 12 stanzas:
Bl Gl,3,5,4 H Kla,2a,5,8b,l0,11d M.
Refrain: Every rose grows bonny in time
She was longing to be a sweet lover of mine
Tune: unclassified
(xxviii) 'The Elfin Knight'
Place: Aberdeen
Date: c.l910
Source: From William Walker. Greig, Folksong of the
Northeast, Text C.
Description: 10 stanzas:
B1 G1,3 H K1a,2a,5,8a,10a, 15b, 11 M.
Refrain: Saffron, sage, myrrh and thyme
And that ye'll be a true lover of mine
(xxix) 'Scarborough Fair'
Place: Stoup Brow, Yorkshire
Date: Sept. 1911
Source: R.Beadle. Carey MSS YN 109 (Notebook III
p.29):Clive Carey, Ten English Folk-Songs,
1915, pp.20 ff. E.K.Wells, The Ballad Tree,
1950, p.171. Bronson 2.44
Description: 9 stanzas:
C8 G1,3,4 H K1a,2a,5,8a,10a M.
Refrain: Parcil, sed, romary and thyme
For once she was a true lover of mine
Tune: Bb
(xxx) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: San Antonio, Texas
Date: 1913
Source: Miss Adina de Zavala, from Dublin area.
G.L.Kittredge, 'Various Ballads', JAF XXVI
(1913) pp.174-5.
Description: 9 stanzas:
B3 Gl,3,4 H K1a,2a,5,13,19a M.
Refrain: Every rose grows merry in time
Before she could be a true lover of mine.
(xxxi)'Scarborough Fair'
Place: Goathland, Yorkshire
Date: July 14, 1913
Source; Richard Hutton (65). Sharp MSS 2868.
Bronson 2.21
Description: 2 stanzas: c 8 Gl'3.
Refrain: Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
For once she was a true lover of mine
Tune: Ba
(xxxii) 'Strawberry Lane'
Place: Maine
Date: 1914
Source: Sung by E.R.Davis, from his grandfather,
William Henry Banks (b.1834) of Maine.
Kittredge, JAF XXX (1917) pp.284-5.
Bronson 2. 23
Description: 7 stanzas:
C5 Gl,3 ... H Kla,2a,5,l3,l8.
Refrain: Every rose grows merry and fine
Before you can be a true lover of mine
Tune: Be
(xxxiii) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Fairfax Co., Virginia
Date: 1915
Source: From an old negro woman, collected by
Corita Sloane. A.K.Davis, More Traditional
Ballads of Virginia, 1960, p.13 (c).
Description: 13 lines: E Gl,3, 6 d J Kla,5,l7a.
Refrain: And I'll be (he can be) a true lover of hers
(mine)
(xxxiv) 'The Lover's Tasks'
Place: Beattyville , Kentucky
Date: 1917
Source: Sung by Francis Carter: Sharp MSS 3996
Bronson 2.37
Description: 2 lines:
Refrain: Every grave grows merry by time,
And you shall be a true lover of mine
Tune: unclassified
(xxxv)('The Elfin Knight')
Place: Manchester, Kentucky
Date: 1917
Source: Sung by Mrs. Cis Jones. Sharp MSS 3908/2847
Sharp & Karpeles, English Folksongs from
the Southern Appalachians, 1932, I p.l
Bronson 2.30
Description: 7 stanzas:
K1a,2,9,5,8c,11d G1,3,4.
Refrain: Sether wood, sale, rosemary and thyme
And then he'll be a true lover of mine
Tune: unclassified
(xxxvi) 'The Elfin Knight'
Place: Burnsville, N.Carolina
Date: 1918
Source: Sung by Mrs. Polly Mitchell. Sharp MSS
4661/3244. Sharp & Karpeles, op.cit. ,I p.2
Bronson 2. 48
Description: 12 stanzas:
B7 G1,3 Il Kla,2a,lla,ll,l3b.
Refrain: So sav'ry was said come marry in time
And she shall be a true lover of mine
Tune: unclassified
(xxxvii) 'A True Lover of Mine'
Place: Hazeltown, British Columbia
Date: 1920
Source: Marius Barbeau, Arthur Lismer, Arthur
Bourinot, Come a Singing, 1947, p.33:
Edith Fulton Fowkee & Richard Johnston,
Folksongs of Canada, 1954, pp. 138-9:
Bronson 2.32
Description: 7 stanzas:
K1a,2a,5,8a,10a H G1,3,4.
Refrain: Savory sage, rosemary and thyme, etc.
Tune: Bb
(xxxviii) 'I want you to make me a cambric shirt'
Place: Iowa City
Date: Jan/Feb. 1922
Source: Sung by Mrs. John Williams, learned in 1865-
1870, Penn Township, Iowa. Recorded by
Mrs. Brennan, sent to Bronson: Bronson IV
p.440 (Addenda 2.J8.l)
Description: 4 stanzas:
G1, Kla,2a,5,8a,l0a.
Refrain: Green grows the male thyme, etc.
Tune: Bb
(xxxix) 'True Lover of Mine'
Place: Rothes, Aberdeenshire
Date: c.1931
Source: Alexander Brown, learned c.l870 at Bogbain
(between Keeth and Fochabers); Carpenter MSS
Reel 4 Box 2 Packet II; tune, Reel 7 Box v.
Description: 7 stanzas
B5 Gl K2a,5,8,l0 M.
Internal refrain: Where every rose sprung bonnie and thyme,
And fain wid she be a true lover of mine.
External refrain: True lover of mine, true lover of mine
And fain wid she be a true lover of mine.
Tune: Be
(xl) 'The Lovers Task'
Place: Fochabers, Aberdeenshire
Date: 1931
Source: Mrs. Watson Gray, learned 50 years earlier from
William Stuart of Glenlivet. Carpenter MSS,
Reel 4 Box 2 Packet II; tune Reel 7 Box V.
Description: 4 stanzas:
K2a,5,8,10,16a,16g.
Refrain: Every rose blooms bonnie in thyme, etc.
(xli) 'True Lover of Mine'
Place: Scotland
Date: 1931
Source; Carpenter MSS, Reel 4, Box 2 Packet II;
'John Ross heard it at a wedding'
Description: 3 stanzas
Gld,3,5 K5.
Refrain: Ev'ry rose blooms bonny and thyme, etc.
(xlii) 'True Lover of Mine'
Place: Kintore, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Date: ?1931
Source: Robert Nicol. Carpenter MSS, Reel 4, Box 2,
Packet II; tune, Reel 7 Box V.
Description: 10 stanzas
B1 G1,3,5,4 K2a,5,8,10,16e M.
Refrain: Where every rose grew bonny and fine
She longed to be a true lover of mine
Tune: Group Be
(xliii) 'True Lover of Mine'
Place: New Deer, Aberdeenshire
Date: 1931
Source: Alexander Stephens, learned from Robert Nicol
(see xlii)
Description: as {xlii)
(xliv) 'True Lover of Mine'
Place: Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire
Date: ? 1931
Source: Peter Christie, from his mother (who died in 1919 aged 93). Carpenter MSS. Reel f, Box 2,
Packet II; tune, Reel 7 Box Y.
Description: 8 stanzas
G1,3,5,4 K2a,5 Mo
Refrain: An every rose maun smell o yon thyme
Before he can be a true lover o mine
Tune: Group Be
(xlv) ('True Lover of Mine')
Place: Evanton, near Inverness, Scotland
Date: 1931
Source: George McDonald, Carpenter MSS Reel 4, Box 2, Packet II.
Description: 3 fragmented stanzas
G5 K8.
Refrain: As every rose grows bonny in time, etc.
(xlvi) (Elfin Knight)
Place: 14 Union Street, Camborne, Cornwall
Date: ?1931
Source: Jim Thomas MS., in Carpenter MSS Reel 4 Box 2 Packet II.
Description: 22 lines, as follows:
In the days when the Saxon Kings invaded England,
Each one taking up their sections for to rule,
Ethelred farther north,(Diddimus) here in Cornwall,
The King approached a cheeldvean (little child) and
'Good morning, fair maid'
'Good morning Sir', she said.
'Can you make a shirt without a needle?
'Can you sew without a seam?
said:
'Can you wash in a well where the water never stream?
'Can you dry in a hedge where the sun never shine?'
'Yes Kind Sir I can'.
'Can you plough with a rams horn?
'And harve with a bush thorn?
'Saw it with a pepper dreadge
'In a field without a hedge?
'Then maw it with a sheepshiers
'And bind it up in seven years?
'And mow it in a mouse's hole,
'And thrash it with a shoe sole?
'Do it all and not comp1ain; .
'Then come to me again
'And you shall have your shirt made.
(xlvii) (The Elfin Knight)
Place: ? Scotland
Date: ?1931
Source: Mrs. Annie Morrison. Carpenter MSS Reel 7, Box v.
Description: Refrain, with tune
Every rose grows bonnie and thyme, etc.
Tune: Group Be
(xlviii) (The Elfin Knight)
Place: ? Scotland
Date: ?1931
Source: Mrs. T. Durward. Carpenter MSS, Reel 7 Box V.
Description: l stanza, repeated, with tune.
G1a.
Refrain: Elka rose gro~bonnie wie thyme, etc.
Tune: Group Be
(xlix) 'O where are you going?'
Place: Rutland, Vermont
Date: 1931
Source: Sung by Cleon Perkins, from family tradition.
H. H. Flanders collection, C27, Middlebury College, Vermont.
Description: 15 stanzas
C2 G1c,3,4,6 H1 I3 K1a,2a,5,8a,10a,16d,11a, K11b, 13a,l4a M2.
Refrain: Every gr~ve goes merry in time, etc.
(l) 'True Lover of Mine'
Place: ? Scotland
Date: 1932
Source: Mary Stewart Robertson, from Mrs. Christina
Stewart Robertson, 50 years previously.
Carpenter MSS Reel 4, Box 2, Packet II.
Tune, Reel 7 Box V.
Description: 6 stanzas
Gl,3,4 K2a,5,8,10.
Refrain: Come a• you young maids that's sitting by me
Let every rose grow merry in thyme
Tune: Group Be
(li) 'Strawberry Lane'
Place: Canada
Date: 1932
Source: Elmore Vincent, Lumberjack Songs~ p.l9.
Bronson 2.35.
Description: 7 stanzas
c5 Gl,3 H Kla,2a,5,13,19a.
Refrain: Ev'ry rose grows merry and fine
Tune: unclassified
(lii) ('The Elfin Knight')
Place: Roanoke, Virginia
Date: 1932-5
Source: Mrs. W.Horton, collected by Alfreda Peel.
Davis, More Traditional Ballads of
Virginia, 1960, pp.ll-12 (BB)
Description: 2 separate fragments:
G2a,2a A4 Glc,2a Kla,4,4
Refrain: Saver a rose that grows merry in time, etc.
(liii) 'Go buy to me an acre of land'
Place: Back Creek, Virginia
Date: 1932-5
Source: Sung by Minter Grubb, collected by Alfreda Peel. Davis, op.cit., pp.10-11 (AA)
Description: 6 stanzas:
K~a,2a,5,4,11 H Gl'3.
Refrain: Let every rose grow merry in time, etc.
(liv) ('The Elfin Knight')
Place: N .Calais, Vermont
Date: Aug 24, 1933
Source: Mrs. Ella Doten. Flanders, ABTSNE I pp.61-2
Description: 7 stanzas:
C2 Glc,2,3,4a I3 Kla,2a,5 Ml.
Refrain: Every word goes merry in time, etc.
(lv) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: N.Calais, Vermont
Date: July 29, 1933
Source: Mrs. Alice Sicily. Flanders, ABTSNE I pp.62-3
(E)
Description: 2 stanzas:
C 2 G lc, 2.
Refrain: Every word goes merry in time, etc.
(lvi) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: E.Calais, Vermont
Date: Oct. 8, 1934
Source: Sung by Mrs. Myra Daniels. Flanders,
ABTSNE I pp.65-7 (G)
Description: 11 stanzas:
C3 Glc,2,3,4 I3 Kla,2a,5,8a,9,16d,lla Ml.
Refrain: For ev'ry grove is merry in time, etc.
Tune: unclassified
(lvii) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Vermont
Date: 1934
Source: Sung by H.Luce, learned from E.A.Luce.
Flanders, A Garland of Green Mountain Song
1934, pp.58-9. Flanders, ABTSNE I (F)p.64.
Bronson 2. 45
Description: 11 stanzas:
B4 G1,3,4 H Kla,2a,5,3c,lla,ll,4,14 M.
Refrain: Every rose grows merry in time, etc.
Tune: unclassified
(lviii) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Dallas, Texas
Date: c.1934
Source: Sent by Miss Ruby Lawrence, remembered
from her mother's singing. H.H.Flanders
collection, Vermont.
Description: 3 fragmented stanzas: c1 G1, 6b.
Refrain: Rosemary and thyme, etc.
(lix) 'A True Lover of Mine'
Place: Alger, Michigan
Date: 1935
Source: Sung by Otis Evilsizer. E.E.Gardner &
G.J. Chickering, Ballads & Songs of
Southern Michigan, 1939, pp.l37-8.
Bronson 2.38
Description: 9 stanzas:
B5 Gl,3,4 H Kla,2a,5,8a,l0a M.
Refrain: May ev1 ry rose bloom merry in time,etc.
Tune: Bb
(lx) 'Rose de Marian Time'
Place: Norton, N.Carolina
Date: 1935-6
Source: Sung by Mrs. Fannie Norton. Frank C. Brown,
Collection of North Carolina Folklore II
1952 p.14 (B); Richard Chase, Old Songs & Singing Games, 1931, p.18 (composite text);
Winston Wilkinson MSS., 1935-6, pp.l-2,
University of Virginia; Frank Brown MS 16a
12, Library of Congress.
Bronson 2.41
Description: 4 stanzas:
Refrain: Rose de Marian time, etc.
Tune: Bb
(lxi) 'The Two Lovers'
Place: Princeton, Indiana
Date: 1936
Source: Mrs. Dora Ward. P.G.Brewster, Ballads &
Songs of Indiana, 1940, pp.23-4 (A)
Description: 7 stanzas:
G1,3 Kla,2a,5,8a,l0a,l6 Ml.
Refrain: Rivers and seas are merry in time, etc.
(lxii) ('The Elfin Knight')
Place: Evansville, Indiana
Date: 1936
Source: Mrs. Thomas M. Bryant. Brewster, op.cit., pp . 23-4 (B)
Description: 7 stanzas:
Cl G1,3, 4 I K2a, 2, 8a, 10a.
Refrain: Every rose grows merry in time, etc.
(lxiii) 'The Elfin Knight')
Place: East St. Louis, Illinois
Date: 1936
Source: Mrs. Mary Shriver. Brewster, op.cit.,
pp. 27-8 (E).
Description: 3 fragmented stanzas:
Gl Kla,5.
Refrain: Rose merry and time, etc.
(lxiv) 1 Save Rosemary and Thyme'
Place: Newberry, Florida
Date: 1937
Source: Mrs. G.A.Griffin, Learned from her father,
of Adel, Georgia (b.l863). SFQ VIII (1944)
pp.l35-6. Bronson 2.42 ---
Description: 9 stanzas:
Gl,3,4,6b Kla,5,2a,8a,l0a,l3b M.
Refrain: Save rosemary and thyme, etc.
Tune: Bb
(lxv) 1Scarborough Fair'
Place: Bellows Falls, Vermont
Date: 1938
Source: Mrs. Florence Underhill & Misses Young.
Flanders, ABTSNE I pp.57-9 (B).
Description: 15 stanzas:
C2 Glc,2,3,4,7 I3 Kla,2a,5,8a,l0a,llb,l4a M2.
Refrain: Ev'ry grove grows merry with time, etc.
Tune: Be
(lxvi) 'Go and make me a Cambric Sh'irt 1
Place: Wisconsin
Date: 1939
Source: Pearl Jacobs Borusky & Maud Jacobs. Learned
in Kentucky. Asher E. Treat, JAF LII (1939)
pp.l5-l6.
Bronson 2.24
Refrain: Then you can be that true lover of mine
(twice)
Tune: Be
(lxvii) 'True Lover of Mine'
Place: San Jose, California
Date: Dec. 1938
Source: Sung by George Graham: L.C.Archive of
American Folksong, Rec. 3812 Al.
(Sidney Robertson). Bronson 2.49
Description: 5 stanzas:
C9 Kla,5,llb Gl,6c.
Refrain: Green grows the merry antine, etc.
Tune: unclassified
( lxviii) ('The Elfin Knight' )
Place: Ohio
Date: 1939
Sourcei Sung by Mary E. Lux, from family tradition.
M. Eddy, Ballads and Songs from Ohio, 1939,
pp.4-5. Bronson 2.43
Description: 10 stanzas:
c1 G1 I Kla, 2a• 5 (and cover it all over with
one big sheet)
K8a,l0a,l3b,l7a M.
Refrain: Rose Mary in time, etc.
Tune: Bb
(lxix) 'Rosemary and Thyme'
Place: Perrysville, Ohio
Date: 1939
Source: Annie Byers: Eddy, op.cit., pp.3-4.
Bronson 2.39
Description: ll stanzas:
C1 Kla,5a,8a,10a13b,l7a I G1,3 M3.
Refrain: Rosemary and thyme, etc.
Tune: Bb
(lxx) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Rutland, Vermont
Date: 1939
Source: Amy Perkins, learned from Emery T. Fisher.
Flanders & others, The New Green Mountain
Songster, 1939, pp.S-10.
Bronson 2.47
Description: 15 stanzas: C2 Glc,J,4,6 H1 Kla,2a,5,8a,10a,16d,11a,
KlJa,l4a M2.
Refrain: Every globe goes merry in time, etc.
Tune: unclassified
(lxxi) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Farmington, Arkansas
Date: 1941
Source: Wiley Hembree, learned from his father in
1896. Vance Randolph, Ozark Folksongs,
1946, I pp.35-9 (A).
Bronson 2.40
Description: ll stanzas:
Cl Gla,J,4 I Kla,2a,5,8a,lOa,lJb,l7a M.
Refrain: Raze-marrow and time, etc.
Tune: Bb
(lxxii) 'Rosemary'
Place: Spring Valley, Arkansas
Date: March 1951
Source: Sung by Mrs. Rachel Henry, learned from 'Little Sam' Johnson of Goshen, Ark., as
a child. Collected by Irene Carlisle.
University-of Arkansas Library, Reel 97,
transcribed by M.C.Parler.
Description: Irregula~,28 lines:
Cl Gl,J,4 I Kla,5,Ja,l7a M.
Refrain: Rosemary went on.
(lxxiii)- ('The Elfin Knight')
Place: Mohill, Leitrim, Ireland
Date: 1954
Source: Sung by Thomas Moran, collected by Seamus
Ennis. JFDSS Vol VIII (1956) No.l p.26.
Topic, 'The Child Ballads I 1 (Vol. 4 of
The Folksongs of Britain series).
Description: 11 c 5 G(to K13b M.
stanzas: man 1,3,4 Kla,2a,5,8a,l0a,l6c,l0d
Refrain: Every grows merry betimes, etc.
Tune: unclassified
(lxxiv) 'Make me a Cambric Shirt'
Place: Dutton, Arkansas
Date: Dec. 14 1958
Source: Billie Lou Ratcliff 'from my grandmother's scrapbook'. University of Arkansas Library.
Description: 5 stanzas:
Gl,J,4 Kla,2a,5,8a,lOa,lJb,l7a.
Refrain: Rosemary and thyme
(lxxv)'Rosemary and Thyme'
Place: Hog Scald Holle~, Arkansas
Date: April 7 1958
Source: Sung by Mrs. Allie Long Parker. M.C.Parler,
An Arkansas Ballet Book, 1975
Description: ll stanzas:
C1 G1,3,4 I K1a,2a,5,8a,10a,13b,17a M.
Refrain: Rosemary and thyme, etc.
(lxxvi) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Bellburns, Newfoundland
Date: 1959
Source: Sung by Mrs. Clara Stevens. K.Peacock,
Songs of the Newfoundland Outports, 1965
Vol.I pp.7-8. Another recording of Mrs.
Stevens, by H. Halpert & J. D.A.Widdowson,
M.U~N.F.L.A. 66-24, C27J R., is essentially
the same, with st.4 omitted and variations
in tune at lines l and 4. (1966)
Description: 9 stanzas:
B6 G1,J,4 H Kla,2a,5,ll,l5b M.
Refrain: Early rose grow merry and dine, etc.
Tune: unclassified
(lxxvii) 'The Cambric -shirt'
Place: Park Hill, Ontario
Date: 1964
Source! Mrs. Belle Kettner. E. & C.O.Moore,
Ballads and Folksongs of the Southwest,
1964, pp.9-lO (c).
Description: 1 stanza: A1
Refrain: Summer sea, a merry of time, etc.
Tune: Be
(lxxviii) 'Cambric Shirt'
Place: Moore, Oklahoma
Date: 1964
350.
Source: Mrs. Martha Allen. Moore, Ballads and
Songs of the Southwest, 1964, p.lO (D).
Description: 'stanza: c '
Refrain: Rosemary and thyme, etc.
Tune: Bb
(lxxix ) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Tulsa, Oklahoma
Date: 1964
Source: Mrs. Susie Evans Daley. Moore, op.cit., pp. 7-8 (A) .
Description; 7 stanzas:
Cl Kla Gl K2a,5 G3 Kll,l3 M.
Refrain: Rosemary and I, etc.
Tune: Bb
(lxxx) 'Every Rose grows merry in time'
Place: Brant Lake, New York
Date: June 1965
Source: Sara Cleveland. Collected by Sandy Paton.
Bronson IV p.44o (Addenda 2.34.1)
Description: ll stanzas:
B Gl,3,4,6 H Kla,2a,5,8a,l0a,l3b,l5b M.
Refrain: Every rose grows merry in time, etc.
Tune: unclassified
(lxxxi) 'strawberry Lane'
Place: Leitrim, Ireland
Date: ? 1972
Source: Michael Moran (son of Thomas, see lxxiii
above). Collected by Tom Munnelly.
University College Dublin, Tape 3/52/13.
Description: ll stanzas:
C5 Gl,3,4 I4 Kla,2a,5, 8a,l0a,l3b,l6c,ll M.
Refrain: Every rose grow merry betime
(lxxxii) 'Rosemary Lane'
Place: Kilmore, Wexford
Date: Dec. l2 1972
Source: Mrs. Elizabeth Jeffries, collected by
Tom Munnelly; University College, Dublin
Tape 98/A/5.
Another recording, collected by Mary and
Nigel Hudleston and printed in Colm
O'Lochlainn, More Irish Street Ballads,
Dublin 1965, without Mrs. Jeffries'
knowledge and altered slightly by the editor.
Description: ll stanzas:
C4 Gl,3,4 I5 Kla,2a,5,8a,l0a,l6a(snail) Kl3a' M
Refrain: Every rose grows merry and fine, etc.
(lxxxiii) 'The T i coloured Honse'
Place: Leitrim
Date: July l8 1973
Source: Mrs. Mary Kate McDonagh (45), a settled traveller, learned from her father.
Collected by Tom Munnelly. University
College, Dublin, Tape l9l/2.
Description: 9 stanzas:
C6 Gl,3,4,6a I6 Kla,5,2a,l3b.
Refrain: Where every rose grows merry and fine,
etc.
GROUP C: Nonsense Refrains.
(i) ( 'Now you are going to Cape Ann')
Place: Hadley, Mass.
Date: 1828
Source: Sent to Child by Rev. F.D. Huntingdon,
Bishop of Western New York, as sung to
him by his father; learned from a 'rough,
roystering character' in the town.
Child 2J.
Description: 7 stanzas:
C3 Kla,2a,5,8a,16c,4,14a M.
Refrain: Followingkathellomeday, etc.
(ii) ('The Cambric Shirt')
Place: Brownington, Vermont
Date: 1910
Source: From Fred Wilkinson, West Plains, Missouri, from a manuscript collection made by his grandmother in Vermont.
Henry Belden, JAF XXIII (1910) p.4JO
Flanders, ABTS I pp.70-l (J)
Description: 6 stanzas:
Gl,J,4 Kla,2a,5,11c.
Refrain: Fluma luma lokey sloomy, etc.
(iii) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Knox Co., Missouri
Date: 1921
Source: From Mrs. McKay, from her husband, who learned it from a wandering hired man, 20 years previously. Belden, Ballads and Songs collected by the Missouri Folklore Society, 1940, p.2
Description: ll stanzas:
C G1,J,4 I7 Kla,2a,5,8a,11a,11b, 16e M1.
Refrain: Fum alum la castle any, etc.
(iv) 'O Where are you going? I'm going to Lynn'
Place: Calhoun Co., West Virginia
Date: 1924
Source: Sung by Moses Ayers; collected by Patrick Gainer. Gainer, Folksongs from the West Virginia Hills, 1975, pp.4-5.
Description: 8 stanzas:
C2 G1,3,4 H K1a, 2a, 5, 10a, 10.
Refrain: Follow rna la cus lonelee, etc.
Tune: Cb (like Bb)
(v) 'Redio-Tedio'
Place: Brewer, Maine
Date: 1929
Source: Sung by Mrs. Susie Carr Young, learned 1882 from Sybil Emery. Barry, Eckstarm & Smith, British Ballads from Maine, 1929; pp. 3-4.
Bronson 2.3
Description: 6 stanzas:
Gl Kla,2a,5,lOa,lO,l3a,l6a M.
Refrain: Fum-lum-a-link, sup-loo-my-nee, etc.
Tune: unclassified
(vi) 'Scarborough Fair'
Place: E. Calais, Vermont
Date: 1931
Source: Sung by Ola Leonard Gray, from family
tradition. Flanders, ABTSNE I pp.59-6l (c);
Flanders & Brown, Vermont Folksongs &
Ballads, 1931, pp.l94-6. Bronson 2.6
Description: 10 stanzas:
C2 Glc,2,3,4 IlO Kla,2a,5,8b,l~a M.
Refrain: Follow ma la cus lomely, etc.
Tune: Cb (like Bb)
(vii) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Manchester, Vermont
Date: Nov. 13 1932
Source: From Paul Lorette; published in the
Republican, Springfield, Mass. Flanders,
ABTSNE I p.76 (N)
Description: K( 1They told me to plow ... ') 1a, 2a,3,5, K8a,11a,11b.
Refrain: Luma tisell, luma tasell, luma tusell, etc.
(viii) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Quanah, Texas
Bate: 1932
Source: Sung by Mrs. J.C. Marshall. Mabel Major,
Publications of the Texas Folk-lore Societ ,
X 1932 pp.137-8.
J.F. Dobie, Tone theBell Easy, 1932/1965, p.l37
Bronson 2.5
Description: 7 stanzas:
Gl,3,4 Kla,2a,5,8a,lla M.
Refrain: Keedle up, a keedle up, a turp, turp tay,
etc.
Tune: unclassified
(ix) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: St. Albans, Vermont
Date: ?1933
Source: Sung by Lillian Mason Morton. Flanders,
ABTSNE I pp.68-70 (I)
Description: 8 stanzas, fragmented:
C2 Gl,3,4 I3 Kla,2a,5 Ml.
Refrain: Bum, bum-a-linktum-a slum-a-lay, etc.
Tune: unclassified
(x) 'Tell her to make me a holland shirt'
Place: Cadyville, New York
Date: ?1933
Source: Sung by Lily Delorme. Flanders, ABTSNE
I pp.71-3 (K)
Description: 5 stanzas:
Gl,3 Kla,2a,5 Ml.
Refrain: Slum-alum-may-cree, slo-mun-nil, etc.
Tune: unclassified
(xi) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Wallingford,Vermont
Date: 1934
Source: Sung by Charles Wade. Flanders, ABTSNE
I pp. 75-6 (M)
Description: 7 sung stanzas + 1 spoken stanza:
Kla,2a,5,8a,l6d,4,11 Glc,3
'When your work is all done, your shirt
you can put on' .
Refrain: Slum-alum-a linktum, slow me, etc.
(xii) 'Mother, make me a cambric shirt'
Place: Aurora, Indiana
Date: 1936
Source: From Mrs. John W. Wright. P. Brewster,
Ballads & Songs of Indiana, 1940, pp.27-8
Description: 6 stanzas:
G1 ' 3 ' 4 K ('Mother, buy me. . ') la,5,2a Ql.
Refrain: From a nomanee, cast nomanee, etc.
(xiii) ('The Cambric Shirtt)
Place: Doolittle Mills, Indiana
Date: 1936
Source: Sung by Mrs. Earl Underhill; collected by Dr. Claude Lomax. Brewster; Ballads
and Songs of Indiana p.25
Description: 11 stanzas:
El G1c,2,3,4 J K1a,2a,5,8a,lla,llc M.
Refrain: Ly flum a lum a licker sloma, etc.
(xiv) 'O say, do you know the way to Selin?'
Place: Carthage, Maine
Date: 1937
Source: Sung by 'Aunt Fannie' Parker. L.R.Ring,
New England Folk Songs, 1937, pp.l2-l3.
Bronson 2.4
Description: 12 stanzas:
C2 Glc,3,3b,4 I9 Kla,2a,5,8b,l4,8d,lla,llbM.
Refrain: Hickalack, tickalack, farmalack-a-d~y, etc.
Tune: unclassified
(xv) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Miller's Falls, Mass.
Date: 1939
Source: From Herbert J. Ward. Flanders, ABTSNE
I p.77 (o)
Description: 3 stanzas: Kla,2a,5 M.
No refrain.
(xvi) 'Are you going to the Fair'
Place: Newport, Rhode Island
Date: Oct. 1945
Source: Spoken by Elizabeth Genders, sung to her
as a child by her family, who were early
Rhode Island settlers. Flanders, ABTSNE
I pp.67-8 (H)
Description: 9 stanzas:
ClO Gl,3,4 Il2 Kla,2a,5,8b,ll Ml.
Refrain: Fum-alum-a-lie, fum-a-lie-low-lee, etc.
(xvii) 'Tom, lorn, make a slomingey'
Place: Hill Top, Arkansas
Date: 1958
Source: Lavada Abney, learned from her father, who learned it from an uncle. University of Arkansas Library
Description: 10 stanzas:
C G1c,3,4 I7 Kla,2a,5,8,11a M.
Refrain: Tom, lorn, make a slomingey, etc.
(xviii) 'The Cambric Shirt'
Place: Tulsa, Oklahoma
Date: 1964
Source: Sung by Mrs. Mary Ann McFarland. Moore,
Ballads & Folksongs of the Southwest, 1964, pp.8-9
Description: 6 stanzas:
G ('My mother made me ... ') 1, 3, 4 K('My father gave me... ')1,5,2a Q1 .
GROUP D: 'Sing ivy' refrains
(i) 'My father left me three acres of land'
Place: England
Date: c.1850
Source: J. 0. Halliwell, Nursery Rhymes of England,
6th ed. p.l09, No.l71. Collected mainly
from oral tradition.
Child 2K
Description: 5 stanzas:
F K2a,5,3a,8,11a4,17 P.
Refrain: Sing ivy, sing ivy
Sing holly, go whistle and ivy.
(ii) 'My father gave me an acre of land'
Place: England
Date: 1853
Source: Notes & Queries, 1st Ser.VII p.8 (1853)
Child 2L
Description: 7 stanzas:
F K2a,3a,5,8,17, 1.
Refrain: Sing ivy, sing ivy,
Sing green bush, holly and ivy
(iii) 'Sing Ivy'
Place: Shepperton, Surrey
Date: 1899
Source: Sung by Henry Hills; learned at Petworth,
Sussex, 1840-50. JFSS I No.3 (1901) p.83
Bronson 2.52
Description: 14 stanzas:
Fl K2a,5,3a,8,ll,l3a,l4,18,17 P.
Refrain: Sing ivy, sing ivy,
Shall I go whistling ivy ?
Tune: D ( Cp. Group Ba)
(iv) 'An acre of land'
Place: Coombe Bisset, Wiltshire
Date: 1904
Source: Sung by Frank Bailey.
JFSS II (1906) p.212.
Description: 6 stanzas:
R.Vaughan Williams,
Bronson 2.53
F K2a,5,3a,8,16a,l3a,l7 P4.
Refrain: There goes this ivery,
And a bunch of green holly and ivery.
Tune: D
(v) 'Sing Ivy'
Place: England
Date: 1906
Source: A. Moffat & Frank Kidson, Children's Songs
of Long Ago, n.d., p.48; tune also in
JFSS II (1906) p.213. Bronson 2.54
Description: 5 stanzas:
F K2a,5,3a,8,11a, 4, 17 P1.
Refrain: Sing ivy, sing ivyt
Sing holly, go whistle and ivy
Tune: D
(vi) 'Yacre of Land'
Place: S.W.England
Date: c. 1906
Source: Sung by Mr. Greenwood, schoolmaster;
Vaughan Williams MSS Vol III pp.l0-11
Description: 10 stanzas:
F K2b,3a,5,8c,16a,13a,l3c Q.
Refrain: Yacre of land
On Christmas Day in the morning
Tune: D.
(vii) 'Sing ivy'
Place: Catherington Workhouse, Hampshire
Date: c. 1906
Source: Sung by William Hill (79). Gardiner MSS
Notebook 15 p.12
Description: 11 stanzas;
F K2a, 5, 3a, 4a, 8, 17, 13a, 14, 17 P2.
Refrain: Sing ivy, sing ivy,
Sing haricot, whiskey and ivy
(viii) 'Sing Ivy'
Place: Hampshire
Date: c.l906
Source: William and George Cole. Gardiner MSS
H 1226; H 1295
Description: 1 stanza: F.
Refrain: Sing ovy and sing ivy (or, Sing holly and sing ivy)
With a bunch of green holly and ivy
Tunes: D
(ix) 'Sing Ivy'
P1lace: Dorchester Union, Dorset
Date: Dec. 1906
Source: Sung by Mrs. Seale. Hammond MSS D718
(Notebook DVII 46)
Description: 7 stanzas:
K13a F Kl8, 16f,2a,5 PJ.
Refrain: Sing holly, sing ivy
(x) 'Sing Ivy'
Place: Easton, Winchester
Date: November 1906
Source: Sung by William Masoa. Gardiner, JFSS No.XIII
(1907) pp.274-5. Bronson 2.55.
Description: 9 stanzas
F K3a, 5, 4a, 8, 11, 13a, 17 P4.
Refrain: Sing ovy, sing ivy
A bunch of green holly and ivy
Tune: D
(xi) 'Sing Holly, Sing Ivy'
Place: Axford, Basingstoke, Hampshire
Date: 1907
Source: Sung by Mrs. Goodyear. Gardiner MSS Notebook
XI p.85.
Description: 1 stanza: F.
Refrain: Sing ovey and sing ivy
With a bunch of green holly and ivy
Tune: D.
(xii) 'A Bunch of Green Holly and Ivy'
Place: Addebury (Adderbury?), Oxfordshire
Date: c. 1907
Source: Sung by Rev. c. F. Cholmondely, at Harvest
Suppers, collected by Janet Blunt. Foxworthy,
Forty Long Miles, n.d.
Description: 8 stanzas
F K2b,Ja,5,8,16f,l3a P5.
Refrain: Sing hey, sing ho, sing hidee-o
With a bunch of green holly and ivy
Tune: D
(xiii) ('Sing Ivy')
Place: England
Date: Dec. 1922
Source: Sharp MSS 4933o Bronson 2o51. Singer not given.
Description: 1 stanza: Fo
Refrain: Sing hey sing ho sing ivy
And a bunch of green holly and ivy
Tune: D
(xiv) 'Holly and Ivy'
Place: Purton, Wiltshire
Date: published 1923
Source: From Mrs. Hedges. Alfred Williams, Folksongs
of the Upper Thames, pp.22l-2.
Description: 9 stanzas
F Kl6b,3a,5,8,13a,14,l7 P3.
Refrain: Sing holly, sing ivy
And a bunch of green holly and ivy
(xv) 'A Bunch of Green Holly and Ivy'
Place: ? England
Date: ? 1930s
Source: W. Belcher. Carpenter MSS, Reel 4 Box 2,
Packet II.
Description: 12 stanzas
F5, 3a, 8,10, 11, 13a, 14,19 P3.
Refrain: Sing ovey, sing ivey,
With a bunch of green holly and ivy
(xvi) 'A Bunch of Holly and Ivy'
Place: Weston (Avon?) England
Date: ? 1930s
Source: Daniel Fisher, learned as a lad in the village
50 years previously. Carpenter MSS, Reel 4
Box 2 Packet II.
Description: 22 stanzas
(xvii) 'Green Holly and Ivy'
Place: ? England
Date: ? 1930s
Source: Edward Newitt. Carpenter MSS, Reel 4 Box 2
Packet II.
Description: 5 stanzas
F2b,5,8c,16a.
Refrain: Sing inc, sing inc, sing ivy,
With a little green holly and ivy
Tune: D
(xviii) ('Sing Holly and Ivy')
Place: Hamptonfields, Minchenhampton, Gloucestershire
Date: ? 1930s
Source: Jim Cox. Carpenter MSS, Reel 4 Box 2 Packet I~
Description: 13 stanzas
F2 K2b,3d,5,5b,4a,8,11,14,lle,l9 P3.
Refrain: Sing ovey, sing ivy,
With a bunch of green holly and ivy
(xix) ('The Elfin Knight')
Place: ? England
Date: ? 1930s
Source: Daniel Price. Carpenter MSS Reel 7, Box V.
Description: 1 stanza, with tune: F.
Refrain: Sing ivy, sing ivy
With a bunch o' green holly and ivy
Tune: D
(xx) 'My father gave me an acre of ground'
Place: Hamblen Co., Tennessee
Date: 1934
Source: J. J. Niles, Ballad Book, pp.13-15
Sung by Simeon B. Coffee.
Description: 3 stanzas following the normal pattern, concluding with 5 stanzas from Groups A
('Plaid or not plaid, married we'll be') and B (I'll wear my shirt in yonders town') and with both ivy and herb refrains. Since this is the only American text in Group D, its authenticity is extremely dubious.
Tune: D
(xxi) 'Evie and Ivy'.
Place: Bedfordshire
Date: ?c .1950
Source: Sung by Mr. Salisbury, collected by Fred Hamer.
Hamer, Green Groves, 1973, p.27.
Description: 5 stanzas
F K2a,5,3,8a ..
Refrain: Evie and Ivy
With a bunch of green holly and ivy
Tune: D
(xxii) 'An Acre o• Land'
Place: Barrow-on-Humber
Date: 19.57
Source: Sung by Luther Stanley; collected by
Mrs. E. H. Rudkin. Patrick O'Shaughnessy,
More Folk Songs from Lincolnshire, 1971, p.l.
Description: 7 stanzas
F K.5,3b,8,13a,l9 P2.
Refrain: Sing, sing Ay, sing izey
And a bunch of bonny green ivy
Tune: D
(xxiii) 'Yacker a' Land'
Place: Swinton, Maltby, Yorkshire
Date: 20 Jan. 1958
Source: Sung by Eric Race (aged about 28); collected
by N. A. & M. Hudleston. Vaughan Williams
Memorial Library, MPS .50(3l)II 1-7; English
Dance & Song XXXV No.1 (1973) p.2.5: 'Sung especially after harvest. A version sung in Rillington, 'Me father he took a yacre of t' sands' - Rillington Sands were enclosed 1780 and made into allotments, 1828. At least one ribald version'.
Description: 6 stanzas
F K2b,3b,4a,.5,7,8,16a,l3a,l7 P2.
Refrain: Sing 0 sing 0 sing evy,
With a brunch a' green holly and ivy
Tune: D
(xxiv) 'Acre of Land'
Place: West Chiltington, Sussex
Date: 196.5
Source: Sung by Gabriel Figg (83); collected by
Joy Hyman. English Dance & Song XXX No.2 (1968) p.58.
Description: 11 stanzas
F K16f,4a, 5,8,13a, 14,15,19 P2.
Refrain: For ee-i-o sing ivy
And a bunch of green Hollamanos ivy
Tune: D
Plus a coda: 'And that is the misfortune and end of me
farm and all, And a bunch of green
Hollaman's ivy'.
(xxv) 'Heigh-ho, sing ivy'
Place: Rottingdean, Sussex
Date: published l97l
Source: Bob Copper, A Song for Every Season, pp.206-7.
Description: l4 stanzas
F K2b,5,3,4a,l6a,l3a,14,l8,l9.
Refrain: Heigh-ho, sing ivy
With a bunch of green holly and ivy
Tune: D
(xxvi) 'An Acre of Land'
Place: Shedfield, Hampshire
Date: unknown
Source: Sung by George Privett, learned from an old
soldier. Gwilym Davies, A Hampshire Collection,
n.d.
Description: 8 stanzas
F K2a,5,3c,8,l5,17 P2.
Refrain: Sing over and sing ivy
With a bunch of green holly and ivy
Tune: D