Lord Bateman- Grindle (ME) 1842 Barry E
[From British Ballads from Maine; Barry Eckstorm, Smyth; 1929, p. 119. Their notes follow.
Dr. Robert L. Grindle was born July 9, 1842 in Surry, Me. and died in 1930 in Somesville, Mount Desert, Me. He was married to Flora A. Milliken in 1868. Since this is his grandmother's version, this would date back to around the late 1700s assuming his grandmother learned this when she was a girl.
This version is similar to Child L (c.1815) but clearly pre-dates it. There is no mention of Sophia, the tree, or even whether she is Turkish. The "all I want is your fair body," line is found only in the Coverly broadside (and reprints of it), not in Child L, the Lord Bateman broadside.
R. Matteson 2014]
This is the text which Doctor Grindle sung for us in 1928, when he was eighty-six years old, for the recording of the air. The variations in his two texts, taken some four years apart, were trifling. If this was his grandmother's form, it must be at least as old as the old broadside, text C. we have never found in any Maine copy except D, which comes from an unknown printed source, the detail of the tree growing in the prison; and no text shows a feature characteristic of several texts from the South, as in Cox A3 (and also B3 and C3):
Through his left shoulder a hole they bore,
And through the same a rope was tied
And he was made to drag cold iron,
Till he was sick and like to died.
Professor Kittredge notes, JAFL, XXX, 29B, that "the boring of the hero's shoulder" (cf. child A, B, D, E; H, I, N) is the test to distinguish American texts of the ballad which are akin to Child L, from those derived from the Coverly Broadside, or the Forget-me-not songster. Coverly and the Forget-Me-Not, and the old broadside they both go back to, all lack this stanza. It is found often in the southern texts. The cruelty in Child's texts is generally charged to the Moors, only once to the Turks. In Maine the hero isn't called Lord Beichan, as in the scotch texts, but always Bateman, as in the English copy, or Bakeman, its equivalent dialectically. We have seen no Irish copies. . .
"Lord Bateman"- Sung by Dr. R. L. Grindle, Mount Desert, Maine, 1928; learned from his mother, who learned it from her mother. Melody recorded by George Herzog.
1. I'll sing to you about Lord Bateman,
Of all his journeyings o'er land and sea,
How he got in and out of prison
All through the help of a fair lady.
2. He sailed south, he sailed east,
Until he came to a foreign shore,
Here he was taken and put in prison
Where he could see the light no more.
3. Long days and nights he lay in prison,
With never a hope of liberty,
And not a ray of light from heaven
To cheer him in his misery.
4. At length there came into the prison
A lady fair to hear and see,
Whose jeweled hand and costly raiment
Proclaimed her a lady of high degree.
5. Said he, "I have lands and costly treasures,
Also a house of high degree,
And all of these shall be thine forever
If from this prison you'll set me free."
6. "I want none of your costly treasures,
Nor none of your house of high degree,
But what I want to make me happy
Is just your own fair body."
7. When from the prison walls delivered,
Straightway he sailed to his native shore;
There seven long years he watched and waited,
But his old deliverer came no more.
8. And so he wed a comely lady,
And to his palace did repair;
At another gat€e his old deliverer
Was waiting and inquiring there.
9. Said she, "Is this Lord Bateman's palace,
And is Lord Bateman now within?"
"O yes, Lord Bateman and his lady
With wedding guests have just passed in."
10. She wrung her hands with bitter weeping,
And cried aloud, "Lord, pity me!
And ask Lord Bateman has he forgotten
The lady who did set him free."
11. He wrung his hands and tore his raiment
And kicked the table in pieces three,
Saying, "There's lately been one wedding
And another wedding there now shall be."