Recordings & Info 29. The Boy and the Mantle
[There are no known traditional US & Canadian versions, the text that appears in Flanders, Ancient Bids, I, 257 is from The Charms of Melody, printed by J. & J. Carrick, Dublin.]
CONTENTS
1) Alternative Titles (No alternative titles)
2) Traditional Ballad Index
3) Folk Index
4) Child Collection Index
5) Excerpt from The British Traditional Ballad in North America by Tristram Coffin 1950, from the section A Critical Biographical Study of the Traditional Ballads of North America
ATTACHED PAGES: (see left hand column)
1) Roud number 3961; The Boy and the Mantle (7 listings)
Traditional Ballad Index: Boy and the Mantle, The [Child 29]
DESCRIPTION: A boy enters King Arthur's court wearing a rich mantle. He offers the mantle to whichever woman proves virtuous (the appearance of the mantle will show who is chaste and who is not). Only one woman in the court proves virtuous.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1765 (Percy)
KEYWORDS: clothes infidelity magic
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Child 29, "The Boy and the Mantle" (1 text)
Percy/Wheatley III, pp. 3-12, "The Boy and the Mantle" (1 text); cf. pp. 315-323, "The Boy and the Mantle" (a rewritten version)
Flanders-Ancient1, pp. 257-264, "The Boy and the Mantle" (1 text, from "The Charms of Melody" rather than tradition)
Leach, pp. 113-118, "The Boy and the Mantle" (1 text)
OBB 17, "The Boy and the Mantle (A Ballad of King Arthur's Court)" (1 text)
DT 29, BOYMANT1
Roud #3961
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Twa Knights" [Child 268] (theme)
NOTES: The custom in Arthur's court of always having an entertainment before dinner (at least on a high day) occurs also in the (somewhat earlier) "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Stanza 4 (lines 85-106) -- a story in which, interestingly, it is the *man's* fidelity which comes under attack. We also find a variant on it in "A Gest of Robyn Hode" [Child 117].
The contest over women's fidelity is common in folklore; in the Child canon, cf. e.g. "The Twa Knights" [Child 268]. Flanders-Ancient mentions the French fabliau Le Mantel Mautaillie (which is also the first analog mentioned in Child's notes) and von Zatzikhoven's Lanzelet. Garnett/Gosse, volume I, p. 300, also believe this ballad derived from a French fabliau, though they do not specify the particlar tale. Lacy, p. 155, notes thematic parallels to The Romance of Sir Corneus of c. 1450.
Child gives extensive Arthurian parallels to what happens in this ballad, but these are so exhaustingly long that he perhaps gives too little attention to other tests of fidelity. The Bible, for instance, offers a rather dreadful example, in which a man who suspected his wife of infidelity (but not a wife who suspected her husband) could haul her before a priest, force her to drink the "water of bitterness" (which was carefully prepared to have a high probability of being full of dangerous bacteria), and wait to see if she got sick. If she did, she was guilty of adultery; if she didn't, she was clear (Numbers 5:11-31. So, apparently, you could fool around all you wanted as long as you had a strong immune system.
A possible source for the early Welsh versions of this tale is found in the Mabinogion, in the tale of Math son of Mathonwy. In the middle of the tale, for complicated reasons, Math and his colleagues need to find a virgin. Gwydion suggests Arianrhod daughter of Don, Math's niece. Math asks if she is a virgin, and she answers "I do not know but that I am" (in the translation of Mabinogion/Gantz, p. 106. The incident is a little less than half way through the story). Math sets his wand on the ground and orders her to step over it to test her. In doing so, she "drops" a child, whom Math arranges to be baptized under the name Dylan; he would later be killed by one of his uncles. Curiously, the rest of the story never seems to come out, but the parallel to the tests of fidelity is clear.
For other examples of a magic device to test fidelity, see the notes to "Bonny Bee Hom" [Child 92].
The theme of the "wise child," who speaks up and challenges authority, is very old. Moore, p. 88, notes a version in the Thousand and One Nights, as well as a Mongolian analog. And the reason that Moore brings it up is that these tales are similar to the story of Susanna in the deuterocanonical/apocryphal addition to the book of Daniel. In that tale, the wise child is Daniel, and he is actually a young man, but it has been speculated that the tale of Daniel's intervention might be based on a "wise child" story. Since the tale of Susanna is known to have been in existence in the second century C.E., and probably was in existence in the first century B.C.E., and the folktale on which it is based is presumably even older, the "wide child" motif must be very ancient indeed -- although it is not absolutely clear that this ballad is derived from any of those other versions.
Incidentally, the Sir Craddoccke (Caradoc) of this song makes a brief appearance in Gilbert and Sullivan: In The Pirates of Penzance, the Modern Major General tells us that "I know our mythic history, King Arthur's and Sir Caradoc's"; one suspects Gilbert got it from Percy (the notes in Gilbert/Sullivan/Bradley, p. 118, appear to contain a reference to this song). - RBW
Bibliography
Garnett/Gosse: Richard Garnett and Edmund Gosse, English Literature: An Illustrated Record four volumes, MacMillan, 1903-1904 (I used the 1935 edition published in two volumes)
Gilbert/Sullivan/Bradley: Ian Bradley, editor, The Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan 1, Penguin, 1982 (I use the slightly revised 1985 edition)
Lacy: Norris J. Lacy, Editor, The Arthurian Encyclopedia, 1986 (I use the 1987 Peter Bedrick paperback edition)
Mabinogion/Gantz: The Mabionogion, translated [from Welsh] by Jeffrey Gantz, Penguin, 1976
Moore: Carey A. Moore, Daniel, Esther, and Jeremiah: The Additions, being volume 44 of the Anchor Bible, Doubleday, 1977
Folk Index: Boy and the Mantle [Ch 29]
Leach, MacEdward / The Ballad Book, Harper & Row, Bk (1955), p114
Child Collection Index
029 Allan Taylor The Boy and the Mantle The Lady 1971 6:41 Yes
029 Allan Taylor The Boy and the Mantle Sometimes + The Lady 1998 6:42 Yes
Excerpt from The British Traditional Ballad in North America
by Tristram Coffin 1950, from the section A Critical Biographical Study of the Traditional Ballads of North America
THE BOY AND THE MANTLE The Boy and the Mantle is not known in the oral tradition of the New World. The text that appears in Flanders, Ancient Bids, I, 257 is from The Charms of Melody, printed by J. & J. Carrick, Dublin.