O cursed be my uncle- C. Rook (Kent) c1884 Sharp
[Fragment from: Journal of the Folk-Song Society- Volume 2, Issues 6-9, 1906. Sharps note's are at the bottom of this page.
R. Matteson 2016]
O cursed be my uncle- Sung by Clarence Rook, c. 1884 at a Harvest Supper at Homestall, Doddington, near Faversham, Kent.
O cursed be my uncle
For a-lending me a gun,
For I bin and shot my true love
In de room[1] of a swan.
“ With my apyrin tied ower me,
I ’peared like unto a swan ;
All underneath the green tree,
While the showers they did come on."
1. also "ru'."
The Rev. S. Baring-Gould has published a harmonised version of this ballad in sheet form, called “ The Setting of the Sun ” (Weekes and Co.), both words and tune of which are quite different from the Somerset version, although the subject of the two ballads is the same.
I noted the second version—which is but a fragment—from Mr. Clarence Rook, who heard it sung twenty years ago by a very old man at a Harvest Supper at Homestall, Doddington, near Faversham, Kent. This shows that the ballad is sung in the extreme East of England as well as in the West.
The supernatural element enters so rarely into the English Ballad that one is inclined to see in its occurrence an indication of Celtic origin. In the present case this suspicion is perhaps strengthened by the presence of certain Irish characteristics in the tune.
The incidents related in the song are a strange admixture of fancy with matter of fact. I would hazard the suggestion that the ballad is the survival of a genuine piece of Celtic or, still more probably, of Norse imagination, and that the efforts made to account for the tragedy without resorting to the supernatural (e.g. the white apron, shower of rain, etc.) and of course the mention of the Assizes, are the work of a more modern and less imaginative generation of singers—C. J. S.