The Fause Knight upon the Road: A Reappraisal
by John Minton
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 98, No. 390 (Oct. - Dec., 1985), pp. 435-455
[Proofed once.
The Fause Knight Upon the Road: A Reappraisal
JOHN MINTON
"THE FAUSE KNIGHT UPON THE ROAD," that strange little Scottish ballad, presumably from Galloway, in which a child on the way to school is stopped and questioned by a mysterious adult, is certainly something of a paradox, or rather a set of paradoxes. Although it enjoys the privileged and magically charged position of Number 3 in Francis James Child's canon of English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1956 [1882]) and is, accordingly, linked by association to some of the oldest and most widely distributed ballads in this collection, "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" is neither common nor demonstrably old; it is one of the rarer of the Child ballads, and there is no really convincing evidence for placing its origins far distant from the date of its first publication in William Motherwell's Minstrelsy: Ancient and Modern of 1824 (lxxiv; Appendix, xxiv).
In addition to Child's placement of this ballad within his collection, two other factors have obviously contributed to scholars' penchant for labeling "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" as "ancient" (cf. Moffat 1933:24; Manny and Wilson 1970:15; see also Phillips Barry's remarks quoted in Creighton and Senior 1950:1). First, the ballad has become associated in the minds of both singers and scholars with narratives in which the devil or some other supernatural being attempts to entrap a mortal with riddles. Second, it is also associated with the riddle ballads in Child's collection that are likewise connected to such narratives, these tales and ballads both being very old and widespread.
In a recent paper entitled "Four Black Sheep Among the 305," Tristram Coffin admirably questions the chronology usually attributed to the former association. He argues that four of the Child ballads-"Riddles Wisely Expounded" [Child 1] "The Elfin Knight" [Child 2], "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" [Child 3], and "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" [Child 46], "derive from 'love joust' songs and not from the places that balladry normally derived its stories" (Coffin 1983:32). Accordingly, these four "are no closer to being narrative songs than many of the American love lyrics such as 'Green Grows the Laurel' or 'Birmingham Jail' " (1983:30-31). Coffin concludes that the "Four Black Sheep" did not originate as "old fairy lover or Devil tales which have ultimately been rationalized into everyday jousts between everyday couples," proposing instead "the other possibility, that the everyday love-joust is the oldest theme in these songs and accounts for the presence of the sexual riddles, that as they came in contact with balladry and balladeers these challenge songs developed along more complex story lines of elfin seductions
and churchly struggles" (1983:35-36). I quote Coffin's specific observations concerning "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" at some length, as they are quite pertinent to my own argument:
This too is a riddle ballad, although it is sometimes not recognized as such. It is always homiletic, all texts describing a contest in which a devil or "fause knight" (elf-knight?) is thwarted by a witty child. . . . One certainly does not have to stretch one's thoughts to conclude that "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" may also once have been a riddling contest ballad. [Coffin 1983: 35]
While I totally agree with Coffin's general view, adumbrated by J. Barre Toelken (1966), that these ballads derived from everyday behavior and only later became associated with stories about riddle contests between humans and supernatural beings, I am in equally strong disagreement with his specific conclusions for Child 3. First, I find that in its earliest form "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" possesses an extremely unified narrative structure, and that over time the song has undergone what Coffin himself (1957) has suggested as a common evolution for ballad narratives; it has evolved into a lyric with the idea of the devil's failure to entrap a pious Christian providing the "emotional core" around which this lyric coheres. Second, while I believe that the kinds of speech behavior represented in this ballad are very closely related to riddling- and I think it is this relationship that has caused both singers and scholars intuitively to associate this ballad with riddling- I feel that it is a serious misnomer simply to label this a "riddle ballad." Certainly it did not originate in the sexually connotative riddling used in courtship.
With regard to this latter assertion, I wish to point out what no one else, so far as I know, has made explicit: except for two very recent versions (Creighton 1933: 1-2; Manny and Wilson 1970:199-200), texts of this ballad do not contain riddles or, more specifically, wisdom questions, the type of riddle found in the other Child ballads (Abrahams and Dundes 1972:137). And below I shall argue that these two later texts result not from the conjunction of lyric elements but rather represent a logical stage in the development of a narrative tradition. This returns us to my first assertion and the onset of my argument. I hope to show that narratives can be constructed through the representation of speech acts in and of themselves as well as through the representation of speech acts that report on physical acts or events. It can hardly be charged that previous scholarship has failed to attend to the role of speech in balladry, and most ballad scholars since Child have recognized that dialogues, flytings, and debates can tell a story. However, while previous scholars have analyzed first-person, direct speech as the medium through which physical acts and events are portrayed, in this essay I will focus on types of speech themselves as the narrative elements, or constituent parts, of the story. In the former case, action (story) is communicated by, or mediated through, speech; in the second, action (story) is speech. [2]
I propose that the makers of Child 3 created a well-defined, although very basic, narrative structure through the representation of different ways of speaking drawn from the community's everyday experience and that this narrative was presented to children as a basic model of these larger patterns of conversation, conversation in which children could begin to participate by learning and performing this ballad. As indicated above, I concur with Coffin's identification of the general resources exploited in creating this song (everyday speech behavior) but not with his conclusions on the specific type of speech behavior involved (flyting) nor his views on the ballad's original structure (lyrical). What, then, are the ways of speaking involved in this ballad's textual tradition? In answering this I need first to specify the natural context of performance for "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" and then to tie this situation to the other contexts where adults and children might converse with each other in this manner.
This song is often identified as a "nursery ballad" or related to nursery literature and locales (Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth 1929:14; Chambers 1841: 63-64; Henderson and Collinson 1965:12; Moffat 1933:24; Wells 1950: 160-161, 164), usually with little specific elaboration on this intriguing suggestion. Can we elaborate?
Of the 28 texts in my sample-- an almost complete accounting of the known texts of this ballad-- 13 are accompanied by information concerning where, when, and from whom the informant learned the song.[3] I am concerned here with the "when" and "from whom." Three of the examples specify unequivocally that the singer learned the song as a child, usually at a very early age (Barry 1929: 11-13; Flanders and Olney 1953: 46; MacSweeney 1917: 203). For six other texts the evidence is less conclusive but still convincing. [4] So, of the 13 examples that give some information concerning the song's transmission, nine indicate, with relative degrees of certainty, that the song was learned in childhood.
Again in regard to the 13 texts for which there is information concerning transmission, 5 singers learned their versions from a relative of a preceding generation (Belden 1955:4, from an uncle who learned it from a grandmother; Bronson 1959:37, from a mother; Kennedy and Lomax 1961:2, from a grandfather; Manny and Wilson 1970:200, from a father; Roberts 1974:313, from a father). [5] There is, incidentally, an interesting parallel to this process provided by the texts that the folksong collectors William MacMath and Joseph MacSweeney obtained from an aunt and a mother respectively (Child 1956 [1882]:485; MacSweeney 1917:204).
So, of the 13 texts that specify when or from whom the singer learned the ballad, there is evidence for all save one to indicate that the song was learned in childhood, learned from an adult relative of a preceding generation, or both. (This constitutes 12 texts, or almost half of my total sample of 28.)
These data regarding transmission lend themselves to two complementary perspectives: Richard Bauman's theory of "differential identity as the social base of folklore" (1972: esp. 37) and Kenneth Goldstein's concepts of "active and inactive traditions" in a singer's repertory (1972:esp. 65), formulated specifically in regard to Goldstein's fieldwork with Scottish and North American folksingers. Concerning "The Fause Knight Upon the Road," I believe that this ballad's natural context was in interaction between children and their adult relatives, almost exclusively in the home, and that the presence of differential identity based on age was essential for continued performance. So as children grew older, the ballad became inactive in their repertory, usually about the time they started school, and became active again only when the children were grown and had children of their own or reached such an age as to be considered superordinate to children. As a corollary, the ballad remained active in an adult's repertory only so long as there were small children present in the home. In other words, the situation that provides the natural context for performing the ballad, the interaction of an adult and a child, is identical to the situation present in the ballad itself. These patterns of activity and inactivity probably also influenced whether a given singer's text was full or fragmentary at the time it was elicited by a collector. As Mrs. James McGill, an emigrant from Galloway to New Brunswick, told the editors of British Ballads From Maine:
"I've known it since I could speak; and allow me to say, it is not a song-- it is only an old Galloway rhyme, and it is a very common one at home, too" (Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth 1929:13).
Admittedly, it is not particularly surprising that Child 3 was most naturally performed and transmitted in a domestic setting in interaction between family members, nor that most singers learned this piece, and probably most of their repertory, during childhood, since such occurrences are extremely common, perhaps preponderant, in Anglo-American ballad culture. The point here is that analysis must attend to those instances (and certainly Child 3 is not alone) where there is a correspondence between the identities of characters and the structure of their interaction within the ballad text and the identities of the participants and the structure of their interaction within the situational context. (Such a view is obviously congruent with analyses of ballads portraying "love jousts" that were sung during actual courtship.)
Before elaborating the exact nature of these interactional structures as regards Child 3, let me return briefly to the idea that this ballad represents the attempts of the Evil One to entrap a human with puzzling questions. What sorts of questions does this menacing figure pose to ensnare the poor mortal? "Where are you going?"; "What is that upon your back?"; "What's that you've got in your arm?"; "Whose sheep are those?" Are these the kinds of questions by which you trick someone out of a soul? I think not. These are the kinds of questions that an adult asks a child of two or three: questions that the child will almost certainly be able to answer and that will, accordingly, allow the child to "show off," to perform. How are these very basic questions related to riddling and other more serious ways of speaking, and why have they caused scholars and some singers intuitively to associate this song with riddling?
Richard Bauman (1977) and John McDowell (1979) have very forcefully demonstrated that the ability to answer such simple questions is essential to the development of riddling competence. Children must first be able to interrogate and be interrogated at a literal level before they can move to a poetic and metaphoric plane of riddling. True riddling requires what McDowell (1979) has termed a "ludic transformation"; the interrogation is framed so that its purpose is understood to be playful (i.e., ludic) rather than referential. Children move through a series of stages, referred to as "preriddling," in which the referential content of interrogation is gradually diluted, finally arriving at the ability to understand and participate in ludic transformations-for most,
around the time they start school. One common type of preriddle is the descriptive routine (Bauman 1977:26-27; McDowell 1979:33-41) which occupies a position somewhere between referential and ludic interrogation. Bauman offers the following example of a descriptive routine: "What's big and has black and white stripes?" ("a zebra") (1977:26). This example suggests the popular riddle "What's black and white and red all over?" When the answer is "a newspaper" ("read all over") this riddle provides ample illustration of how the ludic transformation involves the negotiation of a "block element," in this case paranomasia; when the answer is "a wounded nun" this riddle reveals how parody can highlight the discrepancy between the literal and ludic levels of interrogation. In other cases the block element may be an enigmatic metaphor (for example, how is an "x" like a "y"?).
Clearly, the descriptive routine is not far removed from purely referential interrogation; in any case, there is no "block element" that requires a metaphoric leap to realize the answer as in the riddling. According to Bauman "descriptive routines are largely about the encoding and conveying of information in communicatively effective ways" (1977:26). This is exactly the process that occupies the first section of "The Fause Knight Upon the Road," if anything, at a more basic level than the descriptive routine.
Although I know of no accounts of riddling in 18th and 19th century Galloway, where this ballad apparently originated, Kenneth Goldstein's article on "Riddling Traditions of Northeastern Scotland" (1963) demonstrates that, in 20th century Aberdeenshire at least, there is the same sort of gradual progression from referential to ludic interrogation that McDowell and Bauman have found in 20th century North America. In distinguishing incidental riddling from riddling sessions or contests Goldstein writes that:
True riddles make up almost the entire subject matter of the riddling session though, on occasion, some persons, usually younger members of the group, will pose other types of enigmas. . . . It should be noted that one of the northeastern Scots' criteria for a "good" riddle is that it contain a rhyme or a formulaic opening or ending. When a riddle does not contain such textual devices (as, for example, when it is posed as a simple interrogative form: who . . ., how . . ., what . . . why .. .) it is ranked as poor, or treated as a "joke". . While adults will generally perform any kind of enigmatic questions, children usually pose any overwhelming number of "joke" riddles (as defined earlier in this paper). .. . [My informants'] comments on riddling sessions in the past indicated that while the present contexts for riddling existed earlier, riddling occurred in at least one additional context, an educational one, in which parents put riddles to their children in order to teach them similarities and differences and the ways to express these. Such sessions were also conducted by country school teachers in the local grade schools, students being encouraged to bring in riddles to pose before the class. [Goldstein 1963:332-333]
Although the area in which Goldstein is working is admittedly remote, both spatially and temporally, from the presumed Galloway origins of"The Fause Knight Upon the Road," Goldstein's observations are very suggestive. Here is another situation in which the age differences of the participants are an important feature, with the children providing "an overwhelming number of "joke" riddles," questions "posed as a simple interrogative form: who . . ., how..., what..., why...." It is interesting that only six versions of "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" have been collected in Scotland since the three texts published by Child, and that of these six, five are from the Northeast: three from Blairgowie in Perthshire and two from Aberdeen (Henderson and Collinson 1965:9-12 [A-D]; Bronson 1972:442 [9.1]). The location where the sixth (Henderson and Collinson 1965:13 [El) was collected is not given. Significantly, all but one of these latter day texts (Henderson and Collinson 1965:13 [El) were collected from travelers. While Goldstein's essay deals with both the country folk and landed tinkers in the Buchan district of Aberdeenshire, he notes that:
There appears to be only one important difference in their respective riddling traditions. Though everyone in the community knows and poses riddles, regardless of sex, age, or social class, there is a difference in the riddling relationships between children and parents for the two groups. The children of country folk do not, as a rule, get involved in riddling with adults; tinker children, on the other hand, will frequently take part in riddling sessions with adults. [1963:332, see also 334]
And, according to Goldstein, "riddling is considerably more vital among the tinkers" (1963:334).
Goldstein's description points to another important consideration, the relationship between basic interrogation, riddling, and school, another context in which adults ask children questions. I think that this has an obvious relevance in considering a song about a child on his way to school who is stopped and questioned by an adult. In their article "Riddles: Expressive Models of Interrogation" John M. Roberts and Michael L. Forman (1972) find a direct correlation between the presence of institutionalized interrogational settings (such as schools and legal courts) and riddling in a number of societies. Interrogation in these settings and riddling are mutually reinforcing even though one is primarily serious and referential and the other playful. The overlap between these two contexts is especially pronounced when the riddling is put to educational uses in interaction between parent and child, a definite hierarchical arrangement, as seen in Goldstein's example of parents teaching with riddles in the home and teachers playing with riddles in the school. And just as learning to respond to basic interrogation at home and in the school enables children to begin riddling, it also enables them to begin asserting themselves in less playful situations, situations in which their well-being may depend on their ability to ask and answer questions. I think it is no coincidence that a ballad that invariably deals with a child's trip to school should first appear at the end of the period from 1750 to 1830 when, as David Buchan so emphatically illustrates in his book The Ballad and the Folk (1972:177-201), all of Scottish life, including balladry, was revolutionized by social changes like the phenomenal growth of public education. [6]
To sum up: "The Fause Knight Upon the Road," like riddles that function as "expressive models, or representations, of the serious and even formal interrogation of subordinates by superordinates," is structured after "such interrogation [as] occurs when a parent questions a child, a teacher, a pupil . . . and so on" (Roberts and Forman 1972:184) and was performed by just such individuals in situations where they were likely to interact with each other in just such a manner.
I return now to my initial claim that "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" constitutes a narrative constructed of speech acts. Viewed from this perspective, the texts in my sample fall into four distinctive types, three of them narrative, one lyrical. The first type, the oldest known form of the ballad, is represented by six texts.[7] Five of these are from Scotland, four of those from Galloway.[8] Five of the texts were clearly learned in the 19th century; three were collected before 1850. Child's A text, from Motherwell's Minstrelsy (1824) is representative.
1 'O whare are ye gaun?'
Quo the fause knicht upon the road:
'I'm gaun to the scule,'
Quo the wee boy, and still he stude.
2 'What is that upon your back?' quo etc.
'Atweel it is my bukes,' quo etc.
3 'What's that ye've got in your arm?'
'Atweel it is my peit.'
4 'Wha's aucht they sheep?'
'They are mine and my mither's.'
5 'How monie o them are mine?'
'A' they that hae blue tails.'
6 'I wiss ye were on yon tree:'
'And a gude ladder under me.'
7 'And the ladder for to break:'
'And you for to fa down.'
8 'I wiss ye were in yon sie:'
'And a gude bottom under me.'
9 'And the bottom for to break:'
'And ye to be drowned.' [Child 1956 (1882):22]
What is it, then, that "happens" to speech in this type of the Child 3 tradition? To repeat: a child on his way to school is stopped and questioned by an adult. As long as the topic is school, the child responds in a manner appropriate to a school context, that is, he provides the "correct" answer-a literal, denotative statement, unmotivated by anything other than giving factual information to a similarly literal, empirical question.[9] But when the knight begins to ask the child about a non-school context, specifically about his family's personal property, the situation changes, and the child's reaction is impertinence. His reply that the knight may have the sheep with blue tails impresses me as a relative of the various formulas of impossibilities-for example, the "sow me an acre without any seed" [Child 21 task and the "when seas run dry and fishes fly" [Child 248 and 299] hyperbole for "never." The child has made his first ludic transformation. Having learned the skills of basic interrogation at home and in school, the child is now able to play with words, at least at a very basic level. But he is also ready to do much more, and his subsequent behavior, in keeping with the seriousness of the knight's challenge, is anything but playful. Wool was one of the most important economic resources in Galloway during the 18th and 19th centuries, a fact that children were apparently expected to appreciate; two of the rhymes in Robert Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland (1841:114, 236) celebrate Galloway's wool production. Obviously relevant in this regard is Roberts and Forman's examination of the consistent association of riddling not only with formal settings of interrogation, like schools, but also with responsibility training for chores and the presence of large domestic animals (1972: cf. esp. 191).
The child's impertinent response, which comes at the ballad's midpoint, totally redefines the speech event, and the knight no longer asks questions but instead makes aggressive and threatening statements to which the child offers more aggressive and even abusive counter-statements. The child is putting himself above the knight, or rather, putting the knight down, and in a very literal way-knocking him out of trees, drowning him in the sea, and, in three texts (Child 1956 [18821:485; Brewster 1940:29-30; Moore and Moore 1964:11-12), telling him to go to hell:
'I wish you were in yonder well'
says the false knight upon the road:
'And you were down in hell,
says the child as he stood. [Child 1956 (1882):485]
This final stanza strikes me more as a rhetorical curse than as an explicit identification of the knight's domicile, as similar stanzas admittedly are in latterday texts. And, although demonic seducers are sometimes named as the "false knight" in other ballads, for example, in Child's F text of "Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight" [Child 4], I would argue that if the knight is a supernatural being here (which is certainly not a necessity since false knights can also be human), then he is an example of the devil in his comic aspect and therefore subject to abuse from humans, as in "The Farmer's Curst Wife" [Child 278], or a half-human bogeyman.[10]
As my treatment suggests, I believe that the ballad's images are neither sexual metaphor nor religious allegory, as some would have it, but are to be taken quite literally, providing the structure for a ballad directed primarily at young children who do not yet have a firm grasp of abstract processes like metaphor. Even the elliptical formula of impossibilities (the sheep with blue tails) that alludes to riddling in the ballad is not a true riddle or even a wisdom question, since the youngest members of the ballad's audience, those to whom the ballad's message is primarily directed, cannot yet riddle, although they are beginning to realize that funny things can happen to speech and that learning to answer questions has something to do with it.
This ballad's narrative is quite clearly structured as a rite of passage in which the child's status as a speaker changes. His character is developed, tested, and transformed in a story that shows the different ways in which adults, young people, and children are able to talk and how a person moves from one category to the next. The ballad portrays the speech contexts in which the child interacts with adults as a child-speech contexts in which the ballad is in fact being performed-and foreshadows the speech contexts in which he will later interact with adults as an equal or, if he learns well, as a superior. The ballad child travels to school and then out into the world, revealing the kinds of speech appropriate to and necessary for these contexts and revealing by implication that the home is the appropriate context for beginning to rehearse these different approaches to getting along with people. The ballad instructs that children in school should answer questions but adults in the outside world should be forthright and even verbally aggressive when challenged on matters like personal property, the former activity providing competence for the latter. And, in addition to these very serious and quite obvious rationales behind learning to speak well, there may be associated seemingly playful activities that nonetheless fulfill integral and profound functions in cognitive, linguistic, and social development.
The second type of "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" accounts for eight of the known texts.[11] All eight were collected in the 20th century, the earliest (Sharp 1932:3 [4]) in 1916. Only two texts (Bronson 1972:442 [9.1]; Henderson and Collinson 1965:11 [Bi) are from Scotland, the rest coming from the southern and western United States. Sharp's A text, sung by Mrs. T. G. Coates at Flag Pond, Tennessee, 1 September 1916, is typical:
1 The knight met a child in the road
O where are you going to?
Said the knight in the road.
I'm a-going to my school,
Said the child as he stood.
He stood and he stood
And it's well because he stood.
I'm a-going to my school,
Said the child as he stood.
2 0 what are you going there for?
For to learn the Word of God.
3 0 what have you got there?
I have got my bread and cheese.
4 0 won't you give me some?
No, ne'er a bite nor crumb.
5 I wish you was on the sands.
Yes, and a good staff in my hands.
6 I wish you was in the sea.
Yes, and a good boat under me.
7 I think I hear a bell.
Yes, and it's ringing you to hell. [Sharp 1932:3]
These variants are not quite as uniform as the first group, but they still form a discernible type. The original narrative structure as embodied in the dialogue (question/answer-challenge/response-threat/counter-threat) has been maintained, and again the child uses the appropriate speech strategies for the different contexts, that is, school or the outside world. In most of the texts, as in Mrs. Coates's, the knight's challenge is a request for some of the food that the child is eating, usually bread and cheese, a request the child refuses; while the child here, as in Type I, says "no" to an adult, there is nothing at all playful about his response, nor about the verbal dueling, shared with Type I, that follows. (The detail of the sheep could not be expected to remain meaningful outside of wool-producing regions like Galloway.)[12]
Mrs. Sarah Finchum's text, however, contains a challenge of a very different sort, revealing the most important distinction between Types I and II: the latter has taken on an element of religious homily:
"Are you a child of God?" said the false, false knight,
Said the false so rude.
"I say my prayers at night," said the child;
And still it stood. [Davis 1929:61]
Despite the homiletic tone of a number of these texts, they still, nevertheless, maintain the original narrative structure. Jim Couch actually identifies the false knight as the devil in the title that he gives to his rendition; the character is named "the proud porter gay" in the song itself (Roberts 1974:89-90, 312- 313).[13]
This homiletic drift is fully realized in the ballad's Type III, a lyric type represented by 11 variants divided into two sub-types. The first sub-type is epitomized by Frank Quinn's text:
1 'What brings you here so late?' said the knight on the road.
'I go to meet my God,' said the child as he stood.
And he stood, and he stood, and 'twere well he stood.
'I go to meet my God,' said the child as he stood.
2 'How will you go by land?' said the knight on the road.'
With a strong staff in my hand,' said the child as he stood.
3 'How will you go by sea?' said the knight on the road.
'With a good boat under me,' said the child as he stood.
4 'Methinks I hear a bell,' said the knight on the road.
'Aye, it's ringing you to hell,' said the child as he stood. [Kennedy and Lomax 1961:2]
The six texts of the first subtype are maximally lyrical and homiletic.[14] They were all collected in the 20th century, two from Ireland (MacSweeney 1917:204; Kennedy and Lomax 1961:2), one from Nova Scotia (Creighton and Senior 1950:1), one from Vermont (though learned in Ireland; Flanders and Olney 1953:46-47), two from Scotland (Henderson and Collinson 1965:10 [Al, 13 [D]). No motivated shift develops in the speech strategies employed by the child and the knight and hence no narrative structure based on speech acts. Similarly, there is no shift in the relative status of the knight and child, and rather than narrating the process through which the child's status as a speaker is elevated, the ballad merely illustrates a child's faith and perseverance in response to testing. While in most texts of this type there is a shift from the prevailing question/answer structure to a threat/counter-threat pattern in the final stanza, this shift does not involve the kind of invective found in the narrative types. The child and the knight merely espouse opposing doctrines, or, as in Quinn's version, indicate that the child has successfully withstood the test, in which case we might be justified in positing a weak narrative structure for the ballad, although this structure is really supplied by an external frame story and is not revealed in the structure of speech strategies within the ballad itself. In fact, stanzas that are characteristically cast in the threat/counter-threat form retain the question/answer structure in the Quinn text (stanzas 2 and 3).
Compare, for instance, the structure of speech within Quinn's version to the clearly delineated rite-of-passage in the preceding text from Mrs. Coates, which ends with a practically identical stanza.
Quinn's variant is instructive in this regard. The editors preface the text with the remark that "an old fisherman told Quinn that 'the knight was some kind of emissary of the devil, some sort of spectre or ghost like, that inhabited a certain part of the road. It was fatal for a person to move confrontin' this thing and this dialogue was a test of the child, to see if he was well fortified for the ultimate end' "(Kennedy and Lomax 1961:2). Quinn's song performance, then, is accompanied by a legendary narrative, a legend that seems to have been passed down from an older generation, like the ballad, which Quinn learned as a boy from his grandfather. His explanation of the song's meaning satisfies a number of the criteria for legend established by Degh and Vazsonyi (1976 [1971]); it is told with brevity, in past tense, revealing a communal belief system and a territorially oriented social reality. Likewise, Henderson and Collinson note that "the identity of the 'False Knight' is never explicitly stated in the Scots variants, but the singers nearly all, when asked to talk about the song, and its meaning, explain that he is meant to be the devil" (1965:9), perhaps an implicit confirmation of Degh and Vazsonyi's definition of legend as an emergent, conversational genre.[15] In this form, the original narrative structure from Galloway has completed its evolution to a lyric on piety, with the devil tale (which may be co-performed as a prose narrative) containing the emotional core.
The second sub-type of Type III is an admittedly residual category, accounting for the various one and two stanza fragments, which could conceivably derive from any of the previous categories. 1 Either the song has devolved because of inactivity in the singer's repertory or it has possibly been transformed into a nursery rhyme.
Before proceeding to a discussion of the fourth and final type of the ballad, I wish to emphasize two facts. First, the ballad is not, as Coffin claims, "always homiletic." Despite Roberts's observation that "the homiletic theme of the piece seems to have appealed to the Scottish people" (1974:312-313), the Scottish tradition for this ballad is decidedly secular, or religious only in a very circumstantial sense, as the Scottish Kirk played an instrumental role in universalizing public education (Buchan 1972:190-192). Neither of the Scottish texts included in Type II develops the moralistic theme and, as noted, the two Scottish texts in Type III, sub-type 1, are the least pious of this group. Clearly the homiletic branch of the Child 3 tradition is an Irish and North American development. Second, the information for performance context and transmission summarized earlier is fairly evenly distributed throughout the types. No matter what its form, this seems to have always been a ballad performed by adults for children, although it may be used to convey radically different meanings.
Type IV consists of two texts from maritime Canada, mentioned earlier in this paper, which actually contain wisdom questions that appear in some riddle ballads, notably "Riddles Wisely Expounded" [Child 1], and a third related text. The earliest specimen of this type was published by Helen Creighton in Songs and Ballads From Nova Scotia (1933:1-2), with the following introductory remark: "Sung in part by Mr. Faulkner, Devil's Island, and completed by Mr. Ben Henneberry. The singer dances to the chorus."
1 "Oh, what have you in your bag? Oh, what have you in your pack?"
Cried the false knight to the child on the road.
"I have a little primer and a bit of bread for dinner,"
Cried the pretty little child only seven years old.
Chorus: Hi diddle deedle dum, deedle diddle deedle dum,
Deedle deedle deedle diddle, deedle deedle dum,
Diddle diddle diddle dee, deedle deedle deedle dum,
Diddle diddle diddle deedle diddle dee de dum.
2 "What is rounder than a ring? What is higher than a king?"
Cried the false knight to the child on the road.
"The sun is rounder than a ring. God is higher than a king,"
Cried the pretty little child only seven years old. Cho.
3 "What is whiter than the milk? What is softer than the silk?"
Cried the false knight to the child on the road.
"Snow is whiter than the milk. Down is softer than the silk,"
Cried the pretty little child only seven years old. Cho.
4 "What is greener than the grass? What is worse than women coarse?"
Cried the false knight to the child on the road.
"Poison is greener than the grass. The devil's worse than women coarse,"
Cried the pretty little child only seven years old. Cho.
5 "What is longer than the wave? What is deeper than the sea?"
Cried the false knight to the child on the road.
"Love is longer than the wave. Hell is deeper than the sea,"
Cried the pretty little child only seven years old. Cho.
6 "Oh, a curse upon your father and a curse upon your mother,"
Cried the false knight to the child on the road.
"Oh, a blessing on my father, and a blessing on my mother,"
Cried the pretty little child only seven years old. Cho.
When Traditional Songs From Nova Scotia (Creighton and Senior 1950) appeared 17 years later, Creighton prefaced a second moralistic and lyrical text of Child 3 (see under Type III above) by referring back to Mr. Faulkner and Ben Henneberry's earlier rendition, writing that:
After it was published the following letter came to me from Mr. Phillips Barry, archivist, the Folk-Song Society of the Northeast, Cambridge, Mass.: "Your variant of the False Knight is one of the most interesting and important versions that has ever been recorded anywhere. ... It is not one ballad but two; perfectly blended. Stanzas 2 to 5 are from 'Riddles Wisely Expounded,' the ballad under No. 1 in Child's collection. Only once has a version of 'Riddles Wisely Expounded' been taken down in America. As the blending of the ballads is so perfect there is no doubt it was done a long time ago. Your version may be one of the oldest versions of any traditional English or Scottish ballad." [Creighton and Senior 1950:1]
I concur with Barry's observations on the importance of this text for understanding the tradition of "The Fause Knight," particularly its relation to riddle ballads, though not with his hyperbolic estimate of the text's age, (indeed, as shown below, one of the singers apparently felt that the blending of the two texts was not quite perfect, at least not in the form exhibited in Songs and Ballads From Nova Scotia). Below Barry's comments, Creighton publishes an "additional stanza recalled by Mr. Ben Henneberry. It should be the second verse" (Creighton and Senior 1950:1), that is, preceding the riddle sequence. It is an obvious, if unique, variant of the food challenge from Type II:
"Would you sit down and share, or would you sit down and dine?"
Cried the false knight to the child on the road.
"I would divide my dinner if I thought you were in need."
Cried the pretty little child only seven years old. [Creighton and Senior 1950:1]
The second text in this type has an equally fascinating history (see Renwick 1977:211). In August 1962, Lee B. Haggerty and Henry Felt collected the following version from Alan Kelly in New Castle, New Brunswick:
What have you got in your basket?
What have you got in your basket?
Says the fol-fol-follies at the road.
I have bread for me-self to eat,
Said the little boy of seven year old.
What have you got in your bottle?
What have you got in your bottle?
Says the fol-fol-follies at (?) the road.
I have tea for me-self to drink
Says the little boy of seven year old.
Why don't you give a drop to my dog?
Why don't you give a drop to my dog?
Says the fol-fol-follies at the road.
I'd sooner see your dog choke with the bottle down his throat'
Said the little boy of seven year old. [Bronson 1972:442 (10.1)]
In this form, Kelly's version belongs to the second sub-type of Type III. A year later, however, in 1963, Kelly performed a radically expanded text, which he attributed to his father:
1 "Where are you going, my little boy?
Where are you going, my little boy?"
Says the false, false knight upon the road.
"I am going to school for to learn my lessons, sir,"
Said the little boy not seven years old.
2 "What have you got in your basket?
What have you got in your basket?"
Says the false, false knight upon the road.
"I have bread for meself to eat,"
Says the little boy not seven years old.
3 "Why don't you give a bite to my dog?
Why don't you give a bite to my dog?"
Says the false, false knight upon the road.
"I'd sooner see your dog choke with the basket down his throat,"
Says the little boy of seven years old.
4 "What have you got in your bottle?
What have you got in your bottle?"
Says the false, false knight upon the road.
"I have milk for meself to drink,"
Says the little boy of seven years old.
5 "Why don't you give a drop to my dog?
Why don't you give a drop to my dog?"
Says the false, false knight upon the road.
"I'd sooner see your dog choke with the bottle down his throat,"
Says the little boy of seven years old.
6 "What is higher than the sky?
What is higher than the sky?"
Says the false, false knight upon the road.
"Heaven is higher than the sky,
Heaven is higher than the sky,"
Says the little boy of seven years old.
7 "What is deeper than the sea?
What is deeper than the sea?"
Says the false, false knight upon the road.
"Hell is deeper than the sea,
"Hell is deeper than the sea,"
Says the little boy of seven years old.
8 "You're on your knees, my little boy,
You're on your knees, my little boy,"
Says the false, false knight upon the road.
"I am praying my Lord to send the devil back to Hell,"
Says the little boy of seven years old. [Manny and Wilson 1970:199-200]
The Faulkner and Henneberry text as well as the Kelly text retain the allusion to school, sharing some features with the lyric variants covered by Type III. Both include the detail that the child is seven years old, and both end with a moralistic stanza found in texts of Type III. Could the frame story of Type III, the legend of the riddle contest with the devil which provides the emotional core of the Type III variants, have suggested the inclusion of riddles?
The wisdom questions in Kelly's text and in stanzas 2, 4, and 5 of Faulkner and Henneberry's text are appropriate for a homiletic piece and contain images of hell and the sea that also occur in most variants of Child 3, moralistic or otherwise. These forces could certainly be operative here, but that does not preclude the possibility of other, simultaneous influences. I believe that as the ballad evolved toward lyric, some singer or singers, recalling the song's original narrative structure, tried to reverse the course of development in a logical manner.
The way in which both Henneberry and Kelly have reconstructed their texts, or the stages in which they have recollected them, certainly calls attention to the challenge and the pivotal role it plays in the ballad's narrative structure. For Henneberry, the text seemed incomplete without some form of the challenge before the riddles; for Kelly, the text seemed incomplete without riddles after the challenge. Recall: what is it that children learn to do at about the same time they start school and become more adept at responding to serious challenges from adults? They learn how to riddle! The child, then, has progressed to the next stage in his verbal development.
The texts in Type IV realize what has always been a latent, and logical, possibility for "The Fause Knight Upon the Road," a possibility alluded to by the elliptical formula of impossibilities in the original form. In 20th-century Canada, two variants of"The Fause Knight Upon the Road" have finally become riddle ballads, not just in the strictly narrow sense of representing a single riddle contest, but in the broader sense of showing how a child learns to riddle. These variants have maintained the outlines of the original narrative structure while altering the second half of its content.
I can only speculate on the exact relationship between these variants. While the different sets of wisdom questions and other contrastive features suggest that any influence between them is indirect, the proximity of their collection sites and their novelty in the tradition of the ballad seem to argue against totally independent invention. In any case, they confirm what I have suggested in the earlier part of this paper: the section in the earlier forms of "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" (i.e., Types I and II) that is analogous to riddling is not the initial question/answer sequence but the verbal duel in the second half.
There are really two narrative structures co-existing in Type IV: the story of the riddle contest with the devil and the child's rite of passage as a speaker. Ben Henneberry, or whoever transformed the challenge stanza that Henneberry gives, has recognized, consciously or unconsciously, that both the kind of verbal dueling found in the second half of Types I and II and riddling stand in an analogous relation to the kind of basic interrogation in the first half in some respects, since both evolve out of such interrogation and both are contestive. The singer has also recognized, however, that while verbal abuse is individualistic and divisive, riddling is collective and cooperative, and he has changed the challenge stanza accordingly.[17] The interaction between the knight and child has become congenial, almost festive, and the performance itself, with one singer dancing the chorus, apparently a form of"mouth music" and a singular occurrence within the sample, has become rather ludic indeed. In this context, the curse in the final stanza seems either playful or incongruous. Is this variant, while in one sense "devolving" to a more balladlike piece, evolving away from the pragmatic and homiletic messages embodied in the first three types to a celebration of the ludic for its own sake? Similar logic may be at work in Kelly's text, where the challenge has also been expanded to twice its normal length and altered, with the dog, whose presence is somewhat bizarre if not ludic, muting the tension between the knight and child. The knight really demands nothing for himself, and the child's aggression is directed at the dog, not the knight. [18]
Kelly's text represents perhaps the most complete narrative development in balladry of the story of riddling with the devil. It not only narrates the contest and its outcome but also how a child learns to riddle in the first place, and the position and content of the riddles are compatible with both of these narrative structures. Kelly's text is one of the last variants of "The Fause Knight" to be collected, perhaps the last.[19] The ballad has certainly traveled a long road-in time and in space-from Galloway, tested and changed in the minds of its singers.
Let me conclude by again remarking on what has been the dominant trend in ballad studies, the tendency to treat incremental dialogue-the structure of speech acts-as a superficial dramatic technique through which the climax of the narrative is forestalled or through which the actual narrative structure of the ballad-the structure of physical acts or events-is revealed; nonetheless, such work does call attention to the ascendancy of speech as one of the primary narrative techniques in balladry. I hope to have demonstrated here that types of speech themselves constitute meaningful categories of action and, accordingly, are part of the resources from which narratives can be constructed and structured.
Notes:
1. An abbreviated version of this paper was presented at the 1984 meetings of the American Folklore Society in San Diego, California. I wish to express my thanks to the numerous individuals who have helped me along the way: Roger D. Abrahams, Richard Bauman, Thomas A. Green, Frank Proschan, Roger de V. Renwick, Patricia Sawin, and my wife, Linda, who typed or commented on successive variants, and who taught Frank Quinn's version, via Tim Hart and Maddy Prior's folk-rock rendition, to my daughter, Janet, whose influence should be obvious.
'See, for example, Coffin (1977:25), where he notes that "the central situation [of "The Fause Knight"] is similar to the tales classified under Mt. 921-922 by Aarne-Thompson." Coffin has obviously rethought this position somewhat. See Coffin (1983) and below.
'This aspect of my argument, which I had originally cast simply in terms of a contrast between the representation of speech acts and physical acts, has profitted immensely from the criticisms and insights of Roger de V. Renwick, whose further comments and suggestions are incorporated throughout this paper in instances too numerous to cite individually.
3. The following texts are included in this sample: Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth (1929:11-13; single stanza, 13) "The Fause Knight and the Wee Boy;" Belden (1955:4) "The False Knight;" Brewster (1940:29-30) "The False Fidee; "Bronson (1959:37[7])" The FalseK night upon the Road," (1972:44219.1]") FalseK night Upon the Road," (1972:442[10.1]) "The False Knight;" Child (1956 [1882]:22 fA]) "The Fause Knight Upon the Road," (1956 [18821:22 [B], 485 [C]) "The False Knight;" Creighton (1933:1-2) "False Knight Upon the Road;" Creighton and Senior (1950:1 [B]) "False Knight upon the Road;" Davis (1929:61) "The False Knight on the Road," (1960:15) "The Boy and the Devil;" Flanders and Olney (1953:46-47) "The False Knight On the Road;" Henderson and Collinson (1965:10 [A], 11 [B]) "False Knight," (1965:11 [C]) "False Knight," (1965:12 [D]) "False Knight," (1965:13 [El) "The False Knight In the Wood;" Kennedy and Lomax (1961:2) "The False Knight On the Road;" MacSweeney (1917:204) "The Fause Knight Upon the Road;" Manny and Wilson (1970:199-204) "The False Knight Upon the Road;" Moffat (1933:24) "The False Knight and the Wee Boy;" Moore and Moore (1964:11-12) "The Fause Knicht On the Road;" Roberts (1974:89-90) "The Devil and the School Child;" Sharp (1932:3 [A], 4 [B]) "The False Knight Upon the Road." Creighton and Senior indicate that the single stanza that they print (1950:1 [A]) should be the second stanza of the text in Creighton (1933:1) and is treated accordingly. This listing does not account for multiple printings of single texts. This sample includes all except a half dozen of the sources listed by Coffin (1977:24-25) and Renwick (1977:210- 211). At least one of these, however, is not really from the Child 3 tradition. Coffin (1977:24) follows Barry (1929:14) in relating the following stanza from The Only True Mother Goose Melodies(1905 [1833]) to Child 3:
The man in the wilderness asked me
How many strawberries grew in the sea?
I answered him as I thought good:
"As many red herrings as grew in the wood."
(The stanza apparently appears on page 6 of the original 1833 edition [cf. Coffin 1977:24; Barry 1929:14]; it appears on page 14 of the 1905 reprint to which I have had access.) While this verse has obvious affinities to "The False Knight Upon the Road" in its cast of characters, question and answer structure, and use of formulas of impossibilities, it does not appear in texts of Child 3, being a common part of the Scottish-though not English-branch of the tradition of a popular British lyric song "The False Bride" or "The Week Before Easter" (Roger deV. Renwick, personal communication). The "Strawberrieso n the Sea" line also occurs in at least one Scottish text of"The Elfin Knight" [Child 2] (Henderson and Collinson 1965:8).
4. It is fairly obvious that James McPherson learned his variant before he left Inverness in 1867 when he was six years old (Moore and Moore 1964:11-12; see Renwick 1977:211 for a discussion of this "emigrant text"). Frank Quinn "had this song from his grandfather who came to live on Coalisland in Lough Neagh, when he was a boy" (Kennedy and Lomax 1961:2). Child's C text was "obtained by Mr. MacMath from the recitation of his aunt . . . who learnedi t many years ago" (Child 1956 [1882]:485). Jim Couch told Leonard Roberts" I heared my father sing this a long time ago-about the Devil and the school child. I got up there to ask him about a week or two ago and he plumb went through it" (Roberts 1974:313). In addition to a full text, Barry has a single stanza from a French girl (Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth 1929:13). Finally, while Belden's immediate informant, Miss Jane D. Johns, does not specify when she learned the song, "she learned it from her uncle, Douglas Voss Martin, who learned it in his boyhood in Virginia from his grandmother, Eleanor Voss, a Scotchwoman" (Belden 1955:4).
5. Although there is no such evidence for Alan Kelly's 1962 version (Bronson 1972:442) the next year when he again performed for collectors he specified that he learned the song from his father (Manny and Wilson: 1970:200), where the singer is listed as Allan Kelly. See also Renwick (1977:211). As an intermediate case, Barry's French girl "learned this song from an illiterate Irish family" (1929:13) revealing here, too, interaction between parents and children.
6. Although Buchan is interested specifically in the Northeast, he indicates that his observations are generalizable for Scotland during this period. On the growth of education see Buchan (1972:esp. 190-193).
7. Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth (1929:11-13); Brewster (1940:29-30); Child (1956 [1882]:22[A], 4851C]); Moffat (1933:24); Moore and Moore (1964:11-12).
8. James M cPherson'sv ersion, while collected in Oklahoma, is from Inverness (Moore and Moore 1964:11-12. See Note 4 above). Brewster's informant, Mrs. Lucille Wilkins, learned her version in Indiana (Brewster 1940:29-30).
9. While the relationship of stanza 3 to a school context may be obscure, Child notes that "the peit(peat) in St. 3, as I am informed by Dr. Davidson, is the wee boy's contribution to the school's firing" (1956 11882]:21).
10. See Henderson and Collinson (1965:13) for a similar observation on a latter-day variant. Roger Abrahams has helped me to clarify my thinking on this point.
11. Belden (1955:4); Bronson (1959:37 [7]; 1972:442 19.11); Davis (1929:61); Henderson and Collinson (1965:11 [B]); Roberts (1974:89-90); Sharp (1932:3 [A], 4 IB]).
12. The knight's request and the child's refusal do not appear in Mrs. Jane Gentry's text (Sharp 1932:4 [B]) but she is given as the source of the variant collected from her daughter, Mrs. Maud Long, where the request and refusal do appear (Bronson 1959:37 [7]). Mrs. Gentry's version does exhibit the shift from question/answer to threat/counter-threat after the knight asks "What are you eating?" The "what are you eating?" stanza is absent from Andra and Bell Stewart's Scottish text (Bronson 1972:442 [9.1]), but following the characteristic second stanza ("What's that upon your back?"/My bannock? and? my books") the knight asks for a share and is refused. Bella Higgins's four-stanza variant (Henderson and Collinson 1965:11 [B]) totally omits the challenge but is otherwise identical to stanzas 1, 2, 4, and 5 of the Stewarts's text (the question/answer, threat/counter-threat sections) and is accordingly included in this type. In Mrs. Jane D. Johns's text (Belden 1955:4) the "False Knight Munro" asks for food on behalf of his dog. This unusual variant ends with the child pitching the knight into the well and going on to school.
13. Although Mrs. Gentry's text (Sharp 1932:4 [BI) does not include the "Word of God" stanza found in Sharp's other text, this detail appears in the later variant that her daughter, Mrs. Maud Long, attributes to her (Bronson 1959:37 [7]).
14 Creighton and Senior (1950:1[ B]); Flanders and Olney (1953:46-47); Henderson and Collinson (1965:10 [A], 12 [D]); Kennedy and Lomax (1961:2); MacSweeney (1917:204).
15. This implication is one of the considerations that has caused me to place Duncan MacPhee's variant (Henderson and Collinson 1965:10[Al) in this type, althoughi t is arguablya fragmentarye xampleo f Type II rather than a fully evolved lyric; it is not moralistic in the least. Willie Whyte's text (Henderson and Collinson 1965:12 [D]) is more clearly of the third type although it is the least homiletic of the group save MacPhee's. Mrs. Sullivan's text (Flanders and Olney 1953:46-47), which she learned in Ireland as a child, actually contains a variant of the impossible-task response to the challenge concerning livestock from Type I (cows with no tails replacing sheep with blue tails) and the text that MacSweeney collected from his mother (1917:204) contains the food challenge from Type II, but neither of these shows the clear shift in speech roles motivated by these challenges as in Types I and II. Both of these texts are quite moralistic and specify that the child is "seven years old," the "theological age of reason" (Manny and Wilson 1970:200), a detail which seems to be Irish in origin; its earliest occurrence is in the single stanza in British Ballads From Maine "sung before 1870 in Fort Kent by a French girl who could speak very little English, who had learned this song from an illiterate Irish family" (Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth 1929:13).
16. Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth (1929:13); Child (1956 [1882]:22[ B]); Davis (1960:15); Henderson and Collinson (1965:11 [C], 13 [El).
17. While I am convinced that the change in the challenge stanza is the result of the substitution of riddles for verbal abuse in the second half of the ballad, the explanation offered above may be open to challenge. As Richard Bauman has pointed out to me, riddling is often viewed as agonistic, a characteristicim plied by the very notion of a riddling contest, especially between a mortal and the devil with a soul wagered in the outcome. Likewise, verbal dueling and ritual insult are formally structured and rule-governed acts requiring a certain amount of coordination despite their manifestly aggressive character. Perhaps the key here lies in the nature of the riddles employed, wisdom questions whose arbitrary answers are only "right" through consensus. "A cautionary note: the only other text in which the dog appears (Belden 1955:4) is the only text in which the child actually commits physical violence against the knight rather than just talking about it, pitching him into the well and going on to school. Whether or not he is a ludic influence, the dog seems to possess a transformative power in the minds of singers, either increasing or decreasing the amount of aggression displayed by the child within the ballad.
"It is the most recent specimen in my sample.
References Cited
Abrahams, Roger D. and Alan Dundes 1972 Riddles. In Folklore and Folklife: An Introduction, ed. Richard M. Dorson, pp. 129-
143. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Barry, Phillips, Fanny Hardy Eckstorm, and Mary Winslow Smyth 1929 British Ballads From Maine. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Bauman, Richard 1972 Differential Identity and the Social Base of Folklore. In Toward New Perspectives in Folklore, ed. Am6rico Paredes and Richard Bauman, pp. 31-41. Austin: University of Texas Press. 1977 Linguistics, Anthropology, and Verbal Art: Toward a Unified Perspective, with a Special Discussion of Children's Folklore. In Linguistics and Anthropology: Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics, ed. Muriel Saville-Troike, pp. 13-36. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University.
Belden, H. M.
1955 Ballads and Songs. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Brewster, Paul
1940 Ballads and Songs of Indiana. Bloomington: Indiana University Publications Folklore Series No. 1.
Bronson, Bertrand Harris
1959 The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads. Volume I. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
1972 The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads. Volume IV. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress.
Buchan, David
1972 The Ballad and the Folk. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Chambers, Robert
1841 Popular Rhymes of Scotland. Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers, Ltd. Child, Francis James
1956 [1882] The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Volume I. New York: The Folklore Press.
Coffin, Tristram Potter
1957 "Mary Hamilton" and the Anglo-American Ballad As an Art Form. Journal of American Folklore 70:208-214.
1977 The British Traditional Ballad in North America, with a supplement by Roger de V. Renwick. Austin: University of Texas Press.
1983 Four Black Sheep Among the 305. In The Ballad Image: Essays Presented to Bertrand Harris Bronson, ed. James Porter, pp. 30-38. Los Angeles: Center for the Comparative Study of Folklore and Mythology, University of California.
Creighton, Helen
1933 Songs and Ballads From Nova Scotia. Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons.
Creighton, Helen and Doreen H. Senior
1950 Traditional Songs From Nova Scotia. Toronto: The Ryerson Press.
Davis, Arthur Kyle
1929 Traditional Ballads of Virginia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
1960 More Traditional Ballads of Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
Degh, Linda and Andrew Vazsonyi
1976 Legend and Belief. In Folklore Genres, ed. Dan Ben-Amos, pp. 93-123. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Flanders, Helen Hartness and Marguerite Olney
1953 Ballads Migrant in New England. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Young.
Goldstein, Kenneth S.
1963 Riddling Traditions in Northeastern Scotland. Journal of American Folklore 76:330-
336.
1972 On the Application of the Concepts of Active and Inactive Traditions to the Study of
Repertory. In Toward New Perspectives in Folklore, ed. Americo Paredes and Richard
Bauman, pp. 62-67. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Henderson, Hamish and Francis Collinson
1965 New Child Ballad Variants From Oral Tradition. Scottish Studies Volume 9:1-33.
Kennedy, Peter and Alan Lomax
1961 Liner Notes to the Folksongs of Britain Volume Four: Child Ballads No. 1. Topic Records
12T 160.
McDowell, John Holmes
1979 Children's Riddling. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
MacSweeney, Joseph J.
1917 The Fause Knight Upon the Road. Modern Language Review 12:203-205.
Manny, Louise and James Reginald Wilson
1970 Songs of Miramichi. Fredericton, New Brunswick: Brunswick Press.
Moffat, Alfred
1933 Fifty Traditional Scottish Nursery Rhymes. London: Augener, Ltd.
Moore, Chauncy 0. and Ethel Moore
1964 Ballads and Songs of the Southwest. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Motherwell, William
1824 Minstrelsy: Ancient and Modern. Glasgow: John Wylie.
The Only True Mother Goose Melodies
1905[1833] Boston: Munroe and Francis. Reprint ed. Boston: Cothrop, Lee & Shepard.
Renwick, Roger deV.
1977 Supplement. In British Traditional Ballad in North America, by Tristram P. Coffin,
pp. 187-297. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Roberts, John M. and Michael L. Forman
454
THE FAUSE KNIGHT 455
1972 Riddles: Expressive Models of Interrogation. In Directions in Sociolinguistics, ed. John
Gumperz and Dell Hymes, pp. 180-209. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
Roberts, Leonard
1974 Sang Branch Settlers: Folksongs and Tales of a Kentucky Mountain Family. Austin:
University of Texas Press.
Sharp, CecilJ.
1932 English Folksongs From the Southern Appalachians. Volume I. London: Oxford University
Press.
Toelken, J. Barre
1966 "Riddles Wisely Expounded." Western Folklore 25:1-16.
Wells, Evelyn Kendrick
1950 The Ballad Tree. New York: The Ronald Press Company.
The University of Texas
Austin