Lamkin: The Motivation of Horror- Niles 1977
[Footnotes moved to the end. Some supplimental notes added in blue. Proofed once.
R. Matteson 2012]
Lamkin: The Motivation of Horror
by John De Witt Niles
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 90, No. 355 (Jan. - Mar., 1977), pp. 49-67
Lamkin: The Motivation of Horror (A short version of the present paper was presented at the 1975 annual meeting of the American Folklore Society in New Orleans, Louisiana.)
JOHN DEWITT NILES
EVERYONE LOVES A GOOD KILLING the more bloody and cruel the killing, the more interesting it is likely to be, especially when the victims are helpless: a woman home alone, an infant child. But the most fascinating murder of all, to the popular mind, is a bloody killing of helpless persons with no plausible motive. Here we have the materials of tabloid journalism; here we have the Sharon Tate murders; and here we have the singularly unpleasant ballad of Lamkin (Child 93).
The ballad of Lamkin first came to light just over two hundred years ago. Bishop Percy was sent a Kentish version in 1775, and in 1776 Thomas Herd printed a text for the first time. The moment therefore seems right for a retrospective view of its history, especially since as yet no scholar seems to have responded to MacEdward Leach's comment more than two decades ago that "this ballad needs detailed study." [1] Like most of the Child ballads, the song has known corruption. In fact, one plausibly might maintain that the ballad's history is nothing but a history of corruption. I am not one to take a devolutionary view of ballad evolution.[2] Ballads have been known to improve in time as well as to degenerate, given the talents of a good singer. Good singers are not easy to come by, however, and too often the process of ballad transmission has been a downhill affair. Old stories have survived only in rudimentary form, old details have been lost, old motives forgotten, and themes which pertain to the customs of a vanished age meet the fate of us all, silence. But Lamkin is different. When I suggest that the history of Lamkin may be a history of corruption, I mean to suggest that the ballad tells a story which might not have been understood fully by any of its singers during the two hundred years of its recorded history. If my hypothesis is correct, by the time of Percy and Herd the story already had lost several of its earlier features, features without which the central crime either stands poorly motivated or is downright incomprehensible. Since these features concern devil lore and the motif of foundation sacrifice, it is easy to see how they came to be lost in the age of the steam engine and the electronic computer. Still, if I am correct, the features properly pertain to the story, and without them the story is incomplete, despite the efforts of some singers to invent a new rationale for the crime.
Let us begin by considering the song as it has come down to us. Regularly there are four dramatis personae: a lord, a lady, a false nurse, and an outsider referred to as Lamkin, Lambkin, or a derivative of this name (Lammikin, Bloody Lambkin, Lamferd, Lantin, False Lankie, Long Lankyn, John Lankin, Billy Lamkin, Bold Lankon, Bold Lantern, Beau Lamkin, Bow Lamkins, Beaulampkins, Bold Rankin, Balankin, Balcanqual, Lambert Linkin, Squire Relantman, Ward Lampkin, Bold Dunkins, Boab King, William Tom King, and so on). In the main story-type, Lamkin builds a castle for the lord but is cheated of his pay. One day he gains entrance to the castle while the lord is away. With the aid of the nurse, he tricks the lady into coming downstairs by pricking her child, then kills the lady in cold blood. The lord returns home to see the carnage, and Lamkin and the nurse are executed.
Despite Child's assertion that "the story is told without material variation in all the numerous versions,"[3] the song has shown the fluidity and adaptability which one expects of oral literature. Study of three versions-Child K, Child A, and Bronson 5a-is enough to show the limits within which most variation has occurred. The first of these is an English version of the eighteenth century, the second is a Scottish version of the turn of the nineteenth century, and the third is a North American version of the twentieth century.
Child K is the version which the Reverend P. Parsons of Wye, Kent, sent to Percy in 1775. Although it is the earliest datable version, in it the story already shows signs of corruption. Here as in a number of versions, there is no indication that the villain is a mason. Instead, he is a mysterious figure named "Long Longkin," and he lives "in the lone." His hostility is unexplained. He tells the nurse to pinch the child in order to induce the mother into coming downstairs, then kills not only the mother, but three daughters in succession, despite their pleas for their mother's life. The end of the song is lacking, but the Reverend Parsons reports in a prose note that "whilst [Longkin] and the nurse are plundering the house, the lord comes home, and avenges himself upon these wicked villains." As Anne Gilchrist has pointed out in the course of an excellent study of the ballad,[4] versions of the "Long Longkin" type could have been generated from the main type by the omission of a single stanza, for usually it is only in an initial stanza that the villain is identified as a mason. Once the idea of a neglected payment had dropped from the story, the motive of robbery is introduced, though one cannot tell whether the motive ever formed part of the song as sung.
Child A was written down by Anna Brown and was printed by Robert Jamieson in the first volume of his Popular Ballads and Songs (Edinburgh, 1806). Thanks to its frequent reprinting in the anthologies, it is the version which is most widely known today. Unlike Child K, it preserves the motif of the wronged mason, and in other respects as well it presents the story with admirable fullness. After an initial stanza which identifies the villain as a mason, there appear three stanzas which elaborate on the motivation for the crime. Lamkin is in conversation with the lord:
"O pay me, Lord Wearie,
come, pay me my fee":
"I canna pay you, Lamkin,
for I maun gang oer the sea."
"O pay me now, Lord Wearie,
come, pay me out o hand":
"I canna pay you, Lainkin,
unless I sell my land."
"O gin ye winna pay me,
I here sall mak a vow,
Before that ye come hame again,
ye sall hae cause to rue." (A 2-4)
These stanzas appear in no other version. Only here are we given a picture of the lord's evasiveness and greed, and only here does the villain make an outright declaration of his intentions. Other versions move swiftly to the action, without this preliminary concern with motivations. Anna Brown's version is unique also in the way in which it elaborates the part of the nurse. Two separate times (A 6, A 7) the nurse is said explicitly to have laid a plot with Lamkin, whereas in other versions her treachery is unprepared. Anna Brown's nurse urges Lamkin to kill the lady "for she neer was good to me," and adds rhetorically: "What better is the heart's blood/ o the rich than o the poor?" (A 22). In no other version is the nurse attributed such democratic sentiments, although the theme of class antagonism may be present in more subdued form. Finally, Mrs. Brown's version differs from others in the way in which it adorns the ending. By introducing two ironic songbirds, it relates in two stanzas what usually is told in a single matter-of-fact one:
O sweetly sang the black-bird
that sat upon the tree;
But sairer grat Lamkin,
when he was condemnd to die.
And bonny sang the mavis,
out o the thorny brake;
But sairer grat the nourice,
when she was tied to the stake. (A 26-27)
In general, Child A illustrates what can happen to the bare bones of a song when the song lives on the lips of a gifted singer. One is tempted to say "is shaped by the pen of a gifted poet," for there is every reason to believe that in the skill with which she motivates the crime, develops the sentiments of the nurse, and ironically adorns the ending, Anna Brown was drawing on the resources of her own mind alone; and as the daughter of Professor Gordon of King's College, Aberdeen, Anna Brown scarcely fits the stereotype of the illiterate balladeer. Study of her version of Lamkin corroborates Bertrand Bronson's conclusion in his study "Mrs. Brown and the Ballad": [5] is that Anna Brown was a gifted and creative individual who (like Percy, Scott, Burns, and others) did not hesitate to improve upon the raw materials of oral tradition. That she did so with taste, we may be thankful; but we should not confuse her ballads with the rougher stuff of unlettered or semiliterate singers. Child A is a transitional text, a text which shows how a simple song can be developed into a more subtle and sophisticated work of art when it captures the imagination of a person with literary talents.
Bronson 5a, finally, represents very nearly the bare bones of the story. It is a version sung by Lena Turbyfill [Turberfield] of Elk Park, North Carolina, in 1939, and recorded for the Library of Congress by Herbert Halpert, and it well illustrates the sorts of changes which the ballad has undergone in North American tradition. [This version was first recorded in 1933 by Maurice Matteson under the title Bolakin with some textual differences, mostly minor. It was subsequently published in his book, "Beech Mountain Folk-Songs and Ballads." 1936] Here Lamkin goes by the name "Bolakins," while the false nurse is "the foster"; the tune may be heard on Library of Congress LP AAFS 7 (Folk Music of the United States, Album 7:
Anglo-American Ballads, ed. B. A. Botkin), band 34 A.
1. Bolakins was a very fine mason
As ever laid stone.
He built a fine castle
And the pay he got none.
2. "Where is the gentleman?
Is he at home?"
"He's gone down to Marion
For to visit his son."
3. "Where is the lady?
Is she at home?"
"She's upstairs sleeping,"
Said the foster to him.
4. "How will we get her down
Such a dark night as this?"
"We'll stick her little baby
Full of needles and pins."
They stuck her little baby
Full of needles and pins.
5. The foster she rocked,
And Bolakins he sung,
While blood and tears
From the cradle did run.
6. Down came our lady,
Not thinking any harm.
Old Bolakins,
He took her in his arms.
7. "Bolakins, Bolakins,
Spare my life one day.
I'll give you many marigolds
As my horse can carry away.
8. "Bolakins, Bolakins,
Spare my life one hour.
I'll give you daughter Bessie
My own blooming flower."
9. "You better keep your daughter Bessie
For to run through the flood,
And scour a silver basin
For to catch your heart's blood."
10. Daughter Bessie climbed up
In the window so high,
And saw her father
Come riding hard by.
11. "Oh, father, oh, father,
Can you blame me?
Old Bolakins
Has killed your lady.
12. "Oh, father, oh, father,
Can you blame me?
Old Bolakins
Has killed your baby."
13. They hung old Bolakins
To the sea-gallows tree
And tied the foster
To the stake of stand-by.
The song comes to an end in less than half the length of Anna Brown's version-not elegantly, but the story is told. One remarkable feature of Mrs. Turbyfill's version is the lady's altruistic gesture in offering her daughter in place of herself (stanza 8). In Child K we have already met three daughters, each of whom offers her life in place of her mother's. The situation in Mrs. Turbyfill's version appears to derive from the former situation by a curious turning of the tables. The twist to the story whereby the mother offers her daughter is not unique to this version, but appears commonly in recent tradition, and on both sides of the Atlantic. Elsewhere Mrs. Turbyfill's version shows evidence of a singer's wrestling with inherited materials which already may have become garbled. The Marion of stanza 2 is a descendant of the Merry England of other versions. The horse-load of marigolds which the lady offers in her desperation-an offer which the villain heartlessly spurns- seems to be a transformation of the gold of other texts. I do not know what to make of the sea-gallows tree from which the villain is hung, but the stake of stand-by of the last stanza appears to be equal to a stake standing by.[6] Other North American versions are equally inventive. The lord may go to New England "to dine with the king" (cf. Child C, "He's up in Old England,/ he's dining wi the king"). Or the skilled mason may build not a castle, but a frame house. [7]
In a version from Appalachia recorded by Cecil Sharp, there is no mason who is refused payment, but there is a merchant who builds a castle even though he has no paint. [8] In an Arkansas version, the false nurse escapes punishment, but the villain's faults are purged mercilessly:
False Lamkin shall be hung on a gallows so high,
And his faults shall be burnt in an oven close by. (Bronson 25)
Such superficial instances of corruption are not my present concern, however. There is a major dislocation near the song's heart. The ballad is cruel, gratuitously cruel, in version after version. There is something uncalled- for in the way that it dwells on the torture of the child and calls attention to the blood which streams in a flood through parlor and hall. What is the motivation for this horror? In the main story-type, a mason is said to be angry because of a neglected payment. And yet in numerous versions, he is offered as much gold as he or his horse can carry away, and he shows no interest. As he says in a Virginia version,
"Ef you gave me as much money
As there's stars in the sky,
'T would not keep my bright sword
From your lily-white breast." (Bronson 10)
Clearly, what had begun as righteous indignation has turned into a delight in killing for its own sake. In any case, as Flanders mildly remarks, "the crime seems rather extreme as a retaliation for failure to pay a debt." [9] One is not surprised that many versions discard altogether the motif of the wronged mason and present the villain simply as a ruffian, a sinister figure whose origins and motives are obscure. In addition, there have been isolated attempts to find a better motivation for the crime. In a version which Motherwell took down in Kilbarchan in 1825, the nurse eggs on Balankin so that "ye'll be laird of the castle, /and I'll be ladie" (Child B 21). Inevitably, there surfaces an erotic motivation. In a 1902 version from Surrey (Bronson 30b), the villain is a suitor for the hand of the lord's daughter. When the father spurns his suit, Lamkin makes known his displeasure by slaughtering the girl's mother and baby brother. Somewhat more plausible is a 1914 Virginia version in which the villain is attracted not to the daughter but to the lady. As the informant explains, "Ward Lampkin had been in love with the Landlady, before her marriage to the Lord, and had always sworn to get his revenge." [10] The same themes of spurned love, resentment, and passionate revenge are met with in the story as told near Nafferton, Northumberland, though in this case without a song attached (see Child, vol. V, p. 295). In a number of recent versions, the erotic theme is present in latent form. The time is midnight. The lady wakes and comes downstairs wrapped only in a pair of sheets. Mention is made of her "milk-white skin," and at the bottom of the stairs she practically falls into the villain's arms. In a Tennessee version, Lamkin then declares "I have got the land-lord's lady,/ My whole heart's delight" (Bronson 13). In an Arkansas version, he declares "I have got my That's all I do crave" desire,/ (Bronson 12). To exhaust the possibilities of erotic attachments between Lamkin and the female characters, one may note the Michigan text in which Lamkin seems to be referred to as the nurse's beau. [11] Such a development is to be expected, given the two characters' collusion in crime, and given the mutation by which Bold Lamkin became Beau Lamkin or Bolakins. Finally, in a version known in Caroline County, Virginia, there appears to be an erotic attachment between the lord and the nurse. In this version the bloodbath occurs while the lord is absent in London to buy the nursemaid a ring. In this case she, not Lamkin, would seem to be the prime instigator of the plot. [12]
The evident uncertainty among informants concerning the "true" reason for Lamkin's hostility-this casting about among different motives, none of which is wholly satisfactory-has suggested to me as to others that a breakdown of some kind has occurred in the course of the song's history. Something appears to have been lost, something essential to the logic of the story. But what is this something?
Three attempts have been made to account for the action of this puzzling ballad, as far as I know. The first of these was by Phillips Barry, as reported by Fannie Hardy Eckstorm. In brief, Barry was struck by a version which he collected in 1934 from Mrs. Susan M. Harding of Hampden, Maine, a version in which the villain is called "the Linfinn."
"The Linfinn" he took to be Irish for "the white man who lives by the linn," or stream, or in other words an outcast leper. Now one good cure for leprosy is the blood of a human being collected in a silver bowl, and one striking feature of the ballad is the silver bowl or basin in which the lady's blood is caught (see for example Mrs. Turbyfill's version, stanza 9). The bloodbath thus has a sufficient motive: the song is about an attempted cure for leprosy. [13] MacEdward Leach takes a different approach.
He takes as his starting point the several Scottish versions (such as Child A) in which the lord of the castle is named "Lord Wearie." Now a place named "Wearie's Well" is known to us from certain versions of the ballad of Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight (Child 4). It is the place to which Lady Isabel is abducted by her false or otherworldly lover. Leach suggests that Lamkin too may be a ballad about abduction by the fairy folk or the devil, the abductor in question being none other than Lord Wearie himself. Presumably, Lamkin kills the lady-his former wife-for having run away with a demon lover. [14] Neither of these suggestions strikes me as convincing. Barry's Maine text is indeed interesting, and I shall have more to say about it later, but his theory of the song's Irish origins is not strengthened by the fact that almost no Irish versions have come to light. [15] Leach correctly identifies Barry's suggestion as "rather wide speculation" (p. 288); yet his own suggestion is at least equally speculative. His theory depends on the lord being named Lord Wearie. Yet in other reputable versions, the same lord is called Lord Arran, Lord Arnold, Lord Cassilis, Lord Douglas, Lord Erley, Lord Farmer, Lord Montgomery, Lord Murray, Lord Nelson, Lord Warrington, Earl Robert, the laird o Lariston, and so on. There seems to be no special reason to consider Lord Wearie the proper or original form of the name. In any case, the whole situation is not that of our ballad. The Lord Wearie of Lamkin has the role of the lady's protector and avenger, not of her abductor; he scarcely can be confused with the sinister seducer of Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight.
Recently Ninon Leader has made a third suggestion which seems to me more fruitful. In the course of a valuable discussion of the ballad of Clement Mason in his book Classical Hungarian Ballads and Their Folklore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), Leader cites a number of European documents which bear on the superstition that the blood, bones, or ashes of a human being are required if an important edifice (bridge, castle, or church) is to stand firm. Not only in central Europe and
the Balkans, but in Scotland, England, and Wales, belief in the efficacy of foundation sacrifice is well attested (pp. 39-41). In an appendix to his book (pp. 348-349), Leader makes certain suggestions concerning the ballad of Lamkin which are well worth attention.
It is not impossible, that there may be a deeper motivation for the murder story of Lamkin than is related in the present form of the ballad. Why should the "unpaid" mason exact such a fearful revenge? Is it because "he was wicked," or is it that there has been a bond ("my fee") that was not honoured? Hitherto "money" has been the interpretation of "my fee." But there could be a more terrible implication if we take into account that "the fee" might have some relation to the sacrifice which, according to superstitious belief, was exacted so that the building might stand firm (cf. Clement Mason). If this was so, then either the life devoted as sacrifice for the building was a life dear to the lord (his wife, his baby son) which he was not prepared to offer, and this is now exacted with justification by the mason, or the life devoted as sacrifice for the building was provided by the mason (his wife or child) and a terrible revenge-killing is now taking place.
The first alternative would justify the lord's exaggerated warnings against the mason, the wife's utmost precautions in locking the doors and windows of the castles ([Child] B-H, K, P, R, U) and would explain the mason's refusal to accept gold in place of the lady's life (B-E, H, I, M, O, U), also his refusal to accept the offers to take somebody else's life instead. The second alternative, on the other hand, would explain versions F, T, in which the lady-"very unnaturally" according to F. J. Child-offers her own daughter as a wife to the mason (i.e. "wife for a wife"?).
Leader thus sees two possible scenarios for the crime. (A) The mason agreed to build the castle, and the lord agreed to make a foundation sacrifice of his wife or child. When the sacrifice was not forthcoming, the mason took the lives himself. Or, possibly, (B) The mason built the castle, and provided a foundation sacrifice of his own wife or child. He then murdered the lord's wife and child in revenge. Leader offers no further support for his suggestions, but he does call attention to one feature of the ballad which fits in well with his hypothesis: the silver or golden basin which is used to hold the blood of the murdered lady. To Leader, as to Barry, the vessel seems a clear vestige of sacrificial usages. In the context of foundation sacrifice, blood mixed with lime is said to make an outstanding mortar (Leader, pp. 39-40), and the blood of a victim is therefore prized. Leader's remarks about Lamkin seem to me to hit close to the problem of motivation without, however, solving it. The story of the Hungarian ballad Clement Mason (like that of the Greek ballad The Bridge of Arta and the Rumanian ballad Manole the Master Mason) goes roughly as follows. A certain major edifice (bridge, castle, or church) keeps falling down, despite the efforts of a team of masons. The masons discover that a humans acrificei s required. By some choice, often involving treachery, the wife of the master mason is selected for the sacrifice. She is either killed or immured alive, and the building stands firm. In its cast of characters, the ballad thus presents certain similarities to Lamkin. In each case, the central figures are a mason and a killed or sacrificed lady; in addition, frequently, there is the lady's infant child, and there is a false servant. Beyond this, the two ballads differ widely. The Hungarian ballad tells the story of a mason who is bound by his own oath to sacrifice his beloved wife. The British ballad tells the story of a mason who savagely kills another man's wife and child. Although one cannot rule out the possibility of one ballad's having influenced the other, perhaps by way of the traveling folk, there seems to be no way of interpretingth e action of Lamkin solely by reference to ballads of the kind of Clement Mason. In particular, there seems to be no justification for Leader's scenario B, whereby the mason sacrifices his own wife or child (as in the Hungarian ballad). Of Lamkin's wife or child, British tradition tells us nothing, and little is accomplished by inventing these figures now. Furthermore, the idea of a "wife for a wife" is not one which is encountered among the English and Scottish ballads, as far as I know. More plausible is Leader's scenario A, whereby the mason exacts his lives as compensation for a neglected sacrifice. Still, one is forced to wonder: why should the mason feel driven to exact these lives? What is the source of his passion? After all, it is the lord's castle which is in danger of falling down, not the mason's. No ordinary mason would concern himself about another man's dwelling to the point of such savagery.
I offer a somewhat different explanation. Rather than appealing to what is not expressed, as does Barry with his leprosy cure, Leach with his demon lover, and Leader with his calling up of the mason's hypothetical wife or child, I prefer a hypothesis based on those elements in the story which remain constant: that a master mason builds a fine castle, that he is cheated of his pay, that he nevertheless takes the lives of an innocent woman and child, and that his name is Lamkin or some derivative.
What are we to make of this name Lamkin? Anne Gilchrist has argued that the name is no more nor less than a proper name, the diminutive of the Flemish Lambert. [16] In support of this conclusion, she calls attention to the number of Flemish craftsmen who lived and worked in the British Isles during the late Middle Ages and subsequent centuries, some of whom bore this name. Such a conclusion is possible. Of all the versions of the song which I have seen, however, the name "Lambert" occurs only in Child B. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that "Lamkin" is a pseudonym. According to Finlay, "All reciters agree that Lammikin, or Lambkin, is not the name of the hero, but merely an epithet." [17]
As the villain himself states, "Where is the lady o this house,/ That calls me Lammikin?" (J 6). In several versions the villain is called "the Lamkins" (Bronson 9) or "the Lamkin" (Bronson 14)-surely not normal personal names. If the name is in fact a pseudonym, then very likely it is a significant name, and those scribes would seem to be correct who spell it "Lambkin" (as in Child E, S, and parts of C, and as in Bronson 8 and 19, for example). For the word "lambkin" or "lambkyn," meaning "little lamb," is attested in the English language from the time of Shakespeare and Spenser, as a glance at the Oxford English Dictionary will show. What an appropriate touch, to call the fiendish protagonist of the ballad by the name of "little lamb!" Child is doubtless correct in seeing the name as ironic, at least in part, although I believe he erred in speculating that it was a name applied "in derision of the meekness with which the builder had submitted to his injury" (vol. II, p. 321). The name reminds one of the logic by which fairies commonly are referred to as "the good folk," "the seelie [blessed] folk," or something similar. They are called "the good folk" precisely because too often they are not good, only we wish that they were. The fairies' weakness for oblique or flattering names is well known, and is spelled out explicitly in a Scottish rhyme recorded by Robert Chambers:
Gin ye ca' me imp or elf,
I rede ye look weel to yourself;
Gin ye ca' me fairy,
I'll work ye muckle tarrie [trouble];
Gin guid neibour ye ca' me,
Then guid neibour I will be;
But gin ye ca' me seelie wicht,
I'll be your freend baith day and nicht. [18]
Other malignant creatures are known to be equally sensitive about their names. In fact, the suspicion comes upon me strongly that the "Lambkin" of our ballad is another pet name for that ubiquitous character who is known by almost as many names as the forms which he is able to assume: "the Old Boy," "the Old Fellow," "the Good Man," "the Good Fellow," "Old Nick," "Old Scratch," "Gentleman Jack," or-to be blunt-the devil himself. [19]
For is the devil not a fine mason? Fine as ever laid stone? Are there not devil's bridges from Sicily to Scandinavia to testify to his legendary architectural skills? For centuries if not millennia, the belief has been widespread in Europe that the building of a great bridge, castle, or church is a dangerous enterprise, one which may require the assistance of extraordinary powers: a god, a giant, one of the fairy folk, the devil. And these powers must be paid, paid usually not in money or property but in lives. Countless European legends attest to the belief that when man assumes the function of God and turns creator, the devil is ready to lend a hand-for a price. If payment is prompt, he is happy. Sometimes he can be fooled by the substitution of an animal victim for a human one. But if he is neither paid nor fooled, then watch out for his anger.
If my hypothesis is correct, the ballad of Lamkin is an offshoot of European Baumeister legends in the special form which these legends had taken in Scandinavia by the mid-seventeenth century. A common motif throughout Europe is that of the devil-as-builder (Motif G.303.9.1.).[20] In Scandinavia, this motif joined with the internationally known tale of the name-of-the-helper (Tale Type 500)[21] to produce legends of a distinctive kind. In these legends, a supernatural or superhuman helper (giant, troll,
or devil) agrees to construct an important building in exchange for a pledge of a human life or human lives, with the condition that no payment need be made if his name is discovered. Regularly in southern Norway and southern Sweden and often in Denmark, the name of the helper is Finn or some derivative. Inger M. Boberg has studied the legend at length, and Mai Fossenius is the author of a detailed monograph on the subject. [22] The earliest record of the legend is found in J. L. Wolf's
Encomion Regni Danice (Copenhagen, 1654), in the account of the building of the cathedral at Lund, Skdne (Boberg, pp. 8-9; Fossenius, pp. 8-12). The giant Find agrees to build the cathedral if St. Lawrence will reward him with the sun and the moon, or, failing this, with the saint's two eyes; but no payment need be made if the giant's name is discovered. St. Lawrence avoids payment by going to eavesdrop on the giant at his home, where he hears a mother crooning to a child:
"Tijg stille Sqnnen min, i Staed kommer Find Faderen din, oc skal giffve dig
Soel oc Maanea t lege med, eller begge S. Lauritzses O yen."
In other versions, the helper is to be rewarded with the soul of the person making the bargain, or with this person's wife or child. In the legend as localized at Stavanger church, for example, the builder's name is Fin Fin, and payment is to consist of either the sun and the moon or the contractor himself:
"Ti du lidet Kind
i Morgen kommer Fin Fin Far din
enter kommer han med Sol og Maane eller med en Christen Mand."
(Fossenius, p. 31)
In an example from Bro, Bohuslan, the bargain is between a priest and a figure named Hin Finn:
"Vyss, vyss barnet min
i morgon kommer Hin Finn
fadern din
med sol och mlne i sin hand
eller prastens hjirteblod." (Fossenius, p. 67)
In this case, the mason is just about to collect his reward when the priest greets him amiably-"God dag, Hin Finn!"-and payment is evaded. Not always does the bargain turn out so well. In a legend associated with Korup church on the island of Fanen, for example (Boberg, pp. 5-6), a lord lacks enough money to build the church and so strikes a bargain with the devil. When the church is built, the devil collects his pay with such a vengeance that drops of the lord's blood can still be seen.
Although the Finn legend has been recovered almost exclusively from Scandinavia, C. W. von Sydow and Mai Fossenius have thought it to be of ultimate Celtic origin. [23] According to Fossenius, the legend is a union of Irish and Scandinavian stories deriving from Celtic ground, probably a Norwegian settlement in Scotland or Ireland. Whatever its place of origin, the legend has circulated in the British Isles. James MacDougall recorded a similar Highland story of an old gentleman who runs out of money before he can build his castle on Stirling Rock. [24] A stranger, "a little manikin," agrees to finish it for him if the gentleman will go with him in a year; but the old man may evade this service if he can tell the stranger's name. The castle is on the verge of completion, but in the meantime the lord comes to suspect that the stranger is one of the sidhe. The last part of the tale can best tell itself.
When the year was drawing toward its close, the building was nearly completed. The old gentleman was now getting very anxious; for he had not yet discovered the stranger's name. He tried again and again to guess what it might be; but in spite of every effort he made, he acted to no purpose. At last he went to a wise man in the neighbourhood, and asked his assistance. The old man said:
"The Stranger is a fairy. On the last night of the quarter follow him to the place where he goes, and stand listening outside, and you will likely hear his name pronounced by somebody or other within."
The gentleman returned home, and when the proper time arrived he did everything the wise man had advised him. On quarter night he followed the fairy until he saw him enter the Fairy Knoll, and heard a voice inside saying:
"Have you come, Thomas son of Jock?"
["An d'thaiinig thu, a Th6mais Sheochd?"]
As soon as he heard this, he went away, quite satisfied that he had discovered the fairy's secret. But he kept it to himself until the last evening of the year arrived. Then he went to the Rock, where the fairy was waiting for him. The fairy said: "I have finished my work, and you must now go away with me." "No, I will not go with you yet," answered the gentleman. "You must, if you cannot tell me my name," said the fairy. "Are you not Thomas, son of Jock?" enquired the gentleman. The fairy replied:
"If I am Thomas, son of Jock,
'Tis I devised the wicked plot.
Thou standest, River Mount, in sight,
And for thee nought have I to-night."
["Ma 's mise Tomas Sheochd,
Is mi a dhealbh an t-olc;
Tha thusa 'sin, a Shrutha-Shliabh,
Is tha mise gun d'fhiach an nochd." ]
And away he flew through the Castle wall in a flame of fire, leaving behind him a hole which neither stone, nor wood, nor anything under the sun but horse dung can close. In this Scottish Highland tale, as in the Finn legend, we see a union of the motif of the devil-as-builder with the tale of the name-of-the-helper. Here the helper is not the devil but is one of the sidhe, whereas in Denmark and in other parts of Scandinavia, the devil generally has supplanted the earlier giant or troll.
If my tentative suggestion is correct, the ballad of Lamkin grew out of legends of this general type. Very possibly the song arose from the free adorning of a Finn-type legend by a Scotsman in touch with Scandinavian settlers or traders. Such a supposition is not unlikely in view of the intimate contact which has existed between Scotland and various parts of western Scandinavia since the Middle Ages, a contact which is reflected in the numerous ballads which are the common property of the two regions.
If I am right, the story once may have gone something as follows. A lord struck a bargain with a stranger (the devil, or an equivalent figure; at any rate, someone whose true name was unknown). The stranger would build the lord's castle in exchange for a promise of human lives. The castle was built, but payment was not forthcoming. One day when the lord was away, the stranger made his way into the castle and claimed the lives which he had been promised. When the lord returned home, he discovered how his attempt to cheat the stranger had ended in the deaths of his own wife and child.
In such a form, the story is given a motivation which accords with the brutality of its crimes. The story is of a wronged mason. Once the demonic nature of the mason had been forgotten-once "Lambkin" had become "John Lankin," and so on-it is easy to see how the motif of a neglected sacrifice came to be replaced by the motif of a neglected monetary payment, and from this point on, further disintegration (and reintegration) followed rapidly. However and whenever the song first arose-and I see no reason to push the date of composition back before the seventeenth century-by the time that the first recorded versions came into the hands of Percy and Herd, the notion of a pledge of human lives had dropped from the story. Instead, we have a murder ballad. The villain of the song is still fiendish, but no longer is he literally diabolical. The original motive for his hatred is forgotten; only the idea of a neglected paymenti s preserved. Only one detail reminiscent of sacrifice remains: the silver or golden bowl which is used to catch the blood of the slaughtered lady.
All well and fine, a skeptic might reply. But where is the proof for this theory? In cases such as these, proof is hard to come by, given the paucity of records bearing on English and Scottish oral traditions before the late eighteenth century. In such cases, one is well advised to state one's findings in the form of tentative hypotheses rather than as theorems capable of proof. The hypothesis advanced in the present essay may strike some readers as far-fetched, yet it is certainly no more far-fetched than the suggestions made by Barry and by Leach. I believe it improves upon the suggestion made by Leader; and if one rejects it, one is left with a balladw hose troublingf eaturesa re unexplained. The evidence is tenuous, but exciting, for there is some indication of a linear connection between the British ballad and the Scandinavian legend. In the name Linfinn which the villain bears in Barry's Maine text, as well as in the name Lamfin which he bears in a version which John Jacob Niles collected from Aunt Annie Shelton near Cleveland, Georgia,[25] we seem to hear an echo of the Hin Finn, Fin Fin, Anfinn, Steinfinn, Fjiirfin, Fefinn, Fink, Find, or simply Finn whose masonry is so well known in Scandinavia. The name Fin is known elsewhere in British folklore, after all, and known in a context which makes it clear that the bearer of the name is of a demonic character. Robert Chambers prints a rhyme in the 1858 edition of his Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 66, the first stanza of which goes as follows:
Harpkin gaed up to the hill,
And blew his horn loud and shrill,
And by came Fin. (Child, vol. I, p. 21)
Here Fin has the role of a sinister figure who must be bested in a contest of wits. Child takes the rhyme as a parallel to the Scottish ballad The Fause Knight upon the Road (Child 3), in which the equivalent figure, the false knight, is clearly the devil in thin disguise. It is easy to see how in the course of oral transmission, a name such as "Hin Finn" or "Anfinn" could have been transformed to "Linfinn" or "Lamfin," or to the "Lambert Linkin" of Child B. The demonic associations of the Scandinavian Finn, in turn, are preserved fairly much intact in the ironic English designation "Lambkin." As these demonic associations lost their force, the name "Lambkin" would of course have been taken as a personal name, though a peculiar one; and so we arrive eventually at such forms as "Long Longkin," "Ward Lampkin," and "Bold Dunkins." Finally-although I am not sure what to make of this evidence-there is evidence of a Scandinavian element in the song's melodic tradition. Almost all recorded versions of Lamkin are in triple time. One of the few exceptions is the first published tune, in R. A. Smith's Scotish Ministral (Edinburgh, 1820-1824), vol. II, p. 94 (= Bronson 24). As Gilchrist points out (p. 223), the last twelve notes of the Faroese ballad Asmundar Ad3alsson, as given in Hjalmar Thuren's Dans og Kvaddidigtning paa Fcerderne (Copenhagen: H6st, 1901), are practically identical with the concluding notes of Smith's tune.
Lamkin tells a harsh story. The persons who have kept the song alive in oral tradition have made no secret of its gruesome nature. Still, despite its brutality, and despite the central dislocation which has left its killings ill-motivated, the song has kept a curious hold on life. The number of recorded variants testifies to the popularity which it has enjoyed over the past two hundred years, from Aberdeen to Oklahoma. The following remarks by Mrs. Lilian Britnell Vaughn of Russellville, Alabama, are probably typical in the way that they show both attraction to and revulsion from the song on the part of its singers. The remarks are excerpted from an interview by Mrs. Vaughn's great-nephew, Mr. Joseph P. Goodwin, which took place on October 13, 1973. [26] Mr. Goodwin reports that Mrs. Vaughn was born May 4, 1886, in Newburg, Alabama (a few miles east of Russellville), and has lived almost all her life in the area. Her ancestors came into Alabama about 1830 from Virginia, after having lived for a number of years in Tennessee.
LV. Now my mother [Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Britnell of Newburg, Alabama] used to sing these ballads to us in the evenings, whether my father was present or absent. Now in the fall months, and some of the winter months after Christmas, Papa would sometimes be gone from home a week or two, two or three weeks or something, usually not more than two weeks at a time, and not too often, either. But we had our big log fireplace, and our sitting room-here's the fireplace [pointing]. Right over there was a bed that some of us children slept on; over there in that corner was another bed, and over there was another bed. Now we didn't have a fire for each and every room, either. But anyway, if Papa was there, all right, and if he wasn't there, all right. And maybe we'd be cracking peanuts or hickory nuts or what not, eating them.... But she would knit our stockings. She'd spun the thread on the spinning wheel. And she would be sitting there knitting; she'd tell us stories of the pioneer days that had been handed down to her by her parents and grandparents that they had actually experienced. And she'd sing those ballads. One of them was Bo Lamkin. I can't recall much of it. [Recites:]
Bo Lamkin was as fine a mason
As ever lay a stone.
He built fine mansions,
But pay he got none.
And the story went on telling about how those folks wouldn't pay him, so he and a woman-I think she was called a nurse in the song-but they collaborated. This woman got employment in the mansion, and when the time was right, one night she opened the door and let Bo Lamkin in, and he killed all the family, "till the tears and the red blood down the stairway did run." It's a gruesome song. And so he commended [?] her with his debts.
JG. Can you remember any of the tune?
LV. [Sings:]
Now that's the only stanza I remember. And it's just as well for me not to remember gruesome things. But there was a time when that was the only kind I did seem to remember.
The adult learns to turn away from the song, yet the same song was a thing of fascination for the child. However incongruous may be the picture of a mother and her children gathered about the fireplace singing songs of slaughtered innocents, for the family itself there seems to have been no sense of incongruity. Even stories of savage killings could not destroy the calm of the moment. "We had a good time," adds Mrs. Vaughn, "peaceful, sitting around that fireplace. Mama sitting there knitting and all of us feeling so secure and so close at heart." It is probably in just such peaceful scenes that this song of unchained violence has been sung and sung again up to the present day.
If one were to have told most singers of the ballad of Lamkin that the song grew out of old stories of devil's bargains and foundation sacrifice, one probably would have been met with incredulity. To most of its singers, the ballad has been a gruesome story, and that is that. The song has taken its place beside tales of Indian massacres and songs of frontier badmen, and it probably has seemed no more nor less offensive than these. But one would be wrong to dismiss Lamkin as nothing but a tale of senseless killings. Even in its cruelty, if my hypothesis is correct, the ballad expresses in disguised form the logic of a former age, an age when major edifices were not to be built solely by trained architects and engineers, but sometimes required the assistance of more sinister powers. In its own peculiar way, the ballad even presents a moral of sorts: if you strike a bargain with the devil, give him his due-or there will be the devil to pay.
Whether or not my suggestions concerning the prehistory of Lamkin are accepted, it is my hope that the present essay will have thrown light on the way that Lamkin illustrates the processes of ballad change. In this song one sees clearly how motivations belong to the ephemeral part of a tale, while plot structure tends to remain firm. One sees clearly how individual singers play an active role in ballad transmission as they continually reinterpret stories, add their own coloring, introduce local detail, and in general recast a ballad into terms which make better personal sense. The ballad of Lamkin thus serves as outstanding evidence of how tradition and individual artistry are not at odds in the realm of oral literature. It shows how the ballad of tradition is no fossilized collection of texts and tunes, but never ceases to be "a green and growing thing" (Gilchrist, p. 17). The reason for this is simple: ballads are the work of people. They are the work of a Mrs. Anna Brown of Falkland, or of a Mrs. Lena Turbyfill of Elk Park, North Carolina, or of a Mrs. Susan M. Harding of Hampden, Maine. They are the work of a Lilian Britnell Vaughn of Russellville, Alabama, who at the age of eighty-seven could still search her memory for songs of her childhood. They are the work of an Aunt Annie Shelton of Cleveland, Georgia, a woman whom John Jacob Niles found to be "alone in the world" when he met her and yet "rather gay," and who had her own definite account of Lamkin and his origins
(Niles, pp. 213-214):
I said, "Aunt Annie, where did this fellow Lamfin come from?"
She answered, with complete assurance, "Philadelphia."
I said, "That's a long way off, Philadelphia ... "
"Why, you just don't know how them bricklayers and stonemasons will travel."
Ballads, too, will travel. Like a number of traveling folks, they have an uncanny knack for adapting themselves to new surroundings. However much the late products of ballad evolution may fail artistically, and however much some of them may excite our amusement or contempt, even these late versions show how personal creativity may enter into ballad tradition at any time and place, as bearers of tradition wrestle actively with the materials which they have inherited. And just as ballad singing is an ongoing process, the collecting and publishing of ballad tunes and texts should never stop, regardless of how many tunes and texts are already in print. The Barry text and the Niles text of Lamkin should serve as persuasive witnesses to this point. For to judge from these examples, even the slightest fragment of a ballad collected in North America in the twentieth century may provide a clue to the song's prehistory.
University of California
Berkeley
Footnotes:
1. MacEdward Leach, The Ballad Book (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955), p. 288.
2. See Alan Dundes, "The Devolutionary Premise in Folklore Theory," Journal of the Folklore Institute, 6 (1969), 5-19, rpt. in Dundes, Analytic Essays in Folklore (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 17-27.
3. Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882-1898; rpt. New York: Dover, 1965), II, 320. In the following part of this essay, short titles such as "Child K" will refer to the version of the song which is labelled thus in Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads; short titles such as "Bronson 5a" will refer to the version which is labelled thus in Bertrand H. Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959-1972).
4. Anne G. Gilchrist, "Lambkin: A Study in Evolution," Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, 1 (1932), 1-17, rpt. in The Critics and the Ballad, ed. MacEdward Leach and Tristram P. Coffin (Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1961), pp. 204-224 and 280-281.
5. California Folklore Quarterly, 4 (1945), 129-140, rpt. in Bertrand H. Bronson, The Ballad as Song (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 64-78.
6. In his album notes to Mrs. Turbyfill's song on the Library of Congress album, B. A. Botkin calls attention to several of these instances of corruption.
7. Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr., Traditional Ballads of Virginia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1929), p. 355.
8. Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), 2 vols. in one, I, 207. In a footnote, the authors suggest the reading "payment (?)," and this is the reading of the version as reprinted as Bronson 9. And yet since it is the merchant and not the mason who lacks the item in question, "paint" must be what the singer indeed said.
9. Helen Hartness Flanders, Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New England, II (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), p. 296.
10. Davis, p. 357. The version is reprinted as Bronson 10, without the singer's comments.
11. Emelyn E. Gardner and Geraldine J. Chickering, Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1939), pp. 314-315.
12. The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles (1961; rpt. New York: Dover, 1970), p. 213. In a letter to me of July 29, 1976, Niles supplements the allusion in his Ballad Book as follows: "The version to which I allude from Caroline County, Virginia, was mentioned to me by a hotel clerk in Marian, Va. He did not sing the ballad or even recite it-he simply said he knew it, had heard it, and that he remembered the part about the lord of the manor going to London to buy the nursemaid a ring."
13 Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, "Two Maine Texts of Lamkin," Journal of American Folklore, 52 (1939), 72-74. The version is reprinted in Leach, The Ballad Book, pp. 291-292, and in Flanders, II, 299-301.
14 Leach, The Ballad Book, p. 288.
15. Gilchrist, p. 219, refers without further details to "an Irish text" in which Lamkin kills the nurse after she has served his ends; this is the only Irish version of which I am aware.
16. Gilchrist, pp. 213-214. This receives the support of Albert B. Friedman, The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World (1956; New York: Viking Compass, 1963), p. 199.
17. John Finlay, Scottish Historical and Romantic Ballads (Edinburgh, 1808), II, 56, quoted in Child, II, 321 (note).
18. Robert Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland, revised ed. (Edinburgh, 1870), p. 324.
19. On the subject of names for the devil, see further Maximilian Rudwin, The Devil in Legend and Literature (Chicago: The Open Court, 1931), pp. 26-34.
20. The reference is to Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature, revised ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1955-1958). See further Motifs C.432.1 (Guessing name of supernatural creature gives power over him), H. 521 (Guessing unknown propounder's name), and S.261 (Foundation sacrifice).
21. The reference is to Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale, 2nd revision, FF Communications No. 184 (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961).
22. Inger M. Boberg, Baumeistersagen, FF Communications No. 151 (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1955), pp. 7-21; Mai Fossenius, "Sagnera om trollen Finn och Skalle som byggmistere," Folkkultur, 3 (Lund, 1943), 5-144. See further Reidar Th. Christiansen, The Migratory Legends: A Proposed List of Types, FF Communications No. 175 (Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1958), Type 7065 (Building a Church: The Name of the Masterbuilder). Christiansen notes that "the lullaby is often found independently as a well-known nursery rhyme" (p. 210). English translations of two legends of the type are to be found in Christiansen's Folktales of Norway (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), pp. 5-7.
23. Co Wv. on Sydow, "Iriskt inflytande pa nordisk guda- och hjiltesaga," Vetenskapssocietetens i Lund Arsbok, 1 (1920), 26-27, and Fossenius, p. 82. James MacDougall and George Calder, Folk Tales and Fairy Lore in Gaelic and English (Edinburgh: J. Grant, 1910), pp. 169-173. Compare the Cornish legend "The Demon Mason" summarized in Katherine M. Briggs, A Dictionary of British Folktales (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970-1971), part B, vol. I, pp. 68-70.
25. The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles, pp. 213-215. This Ballad Book version is not dated, but Niles writes me that his notes show that he took down the version in June 1933. He adds, "The singer was reluctant to say very much about the ballad, feeling that there was an element of bad luck in dwelling on this gruesome story." We shall hope that the singer's feeling was ill- founded.
26 Tapes of the interview (2-3 reels) together with a transcription (100 pp.) are deposited in the Archives of Traditional Music, 057 Maxwell Hall, Indiana University, under accession number 75-033-F. I would like to thank Mr. Goodwin for calling my attention to the material and for permitting me to quote from it. The transcription of the tune is by Ms. Caroline Card.