Recordings & Info 94. Young Waters
[There are no known traditional US or Canadian versions of this ballad. In the attached article on this page, The Motif of Young Waters (Modern Language Notes, Vol. 20, No. 4; Apr., 1905, pp. 115-116), William Wistar Comfort argues that Young Waters has a similar motif as the Voyage de Charlemagne, a point not taken or noticed by F. J. Child.
R. Matteson 2012]
CONTENTS:
1) Alternative Titles
2) Traditional Ballad Index
3) Child Collection Index
4) Wiki
5) Sidebar 3: Young Waters - A Question of Authenticity by Greg Lindahl
ATTACHED PAGES: (see left hand column)
1) Roud Number 59: Fair Mary of Wallington (15 Listings)
Alternative Titles
Bonny Earl of Livingston
Mild Marie
Traditional Ballad Index: Young Waters [Child 94]
DESCRIPTION: Because the queen has admitted that Young Waters has the fairest face of all the lords and lairds and knights she's seen, the king has him beheaded.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST_DATE: 1765 (Percy)
KEYWORDS: beauty death execution
FOUND_IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES: (6 citations)
Child 94, "Young Waters" (2 texts)
Bronson 94, "Young Waters" (1 version)
Percy/Wheatley II, pp. 228-231, "Young Waters" (1 text)
GlenbuchatBallads, pp. 95-96, "Young Waters" (1 text)
OBB 82, "Young Waters" (1 text)
Gummere, pp. 156-158+334, "Young Waters" (1 text)
ST C094 (Full)
Roud #2860
NOTES: Various suggestions have been offered for the identity of Young Waters. Percy suggested none other than the Bonny Earl of Murray, while Buchan offered one David Graham of Fintray (executed 1592). These and all other suggestions must be labelled simply, "Possible, but not really likely."
Although Bronson reports a tune, he notes, "It cannot be proved that this ballad was ever traditionally sung in Scots or English." The source of the tune is dubious, and Bronson has some cutting remarks about the stanzas of the English-language texts (though there is little doubt that the story exists in traditional forms in other languages -- indeed, the idea is not far from the traditional notion that Eleanor of Aquitaine had Rosamund Clifford poisoned). - RBW
Child Collection Index- Child Ballad 094: Young Waters
Child --Artist --Title --Album --Year --Length --Have
094 Asonance Mladý Walter (Young Waters) Dva Havrani 1995 4:44 Yes
094 Asonance Mladý Walter (Young Waters) Asonance 1 & 2 - Dva Havrani + Duse Mé Lásky 1995 4:44 Yes
094 Bill Jones Young Waters Turn to Me 2000 4:19 Yes
094 Chris & Siobhan Nelson Young Waters Day Has Dawned 2006 No
094 Dave Smith & Judy Dinning Young Waters Waiting for the Change 2002 3:45 Yes
094 David Kilpatrick Young Waters O'er the Castle Wall 2001 4:57 Yes
094 Deirdre Young Waters Daughter of Peggy-O 1977 5:24 Yes
094 Heather Heywood Young Watters By Yon Castle Wa' 1993 5:17 Yes
094 Jane Threlfall & Carl Hogsden Young Waters Who? 1995 5:57 Yes
094 JSD Band Young Waters Travelling Days 1973 3:48 Yes
094 June Tabor Young Waters Airs and Graces 1976 5:09 Yes
094 Ranarim Falkvard Lagermansson Morgonstjärna (Morning Star) 2007 5:16 Yes
094 Rita Eriksen & Dolores Keane Falkvord Lomannson Tideland 2001 3:46 Yes
094 Steve Turner Young Waters The Whirligig of Time 2008 5:37 Yes
094 Veslemøy Solberg Falkvord Lommannsson The Strength of the Runes 1996 4:45 Yes
Young Waters From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Young Waters is Child ballad number 94.[1]
Synopsis
The queen sees Young Waters ride to court. A clever lord asks her who the comeliest man is, and she says Young Waters. The king is angry that she did not accept him. She tries to appease him, but the king throws Young Waters in prison and executes him.
Commentary
The ballad is often supposed to be based on a historical occurrence, but no such event has been located that matches it.[2]
A very similar Scandinavian ballad names King Magnus I of Sweden and his wife Helvig as the king and queen. Folke Lovmandson finds favor with many ladies of court, especially the queen; a page stirs the king's suspicion; the innocent knight is rolled down the hill in a barrel set with knives.[3]
References
1.^ Francis James Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, "Young Waters"
2.^ Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, v 2, p 342, Dover Publications, New York 1965
3.^ Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, v 2, p 343, Dover Publications, New York 1965
Sidebar 3: Young Waters - A Question of Authenticity
by Greg Lindahl
The statement that ballads which have undergone oral transmission have a different `feel' from literary creations is obviously subjective. Still, there is something real underlying that subjective judgment. In order for a ballad to survive oral transmission, it has to be worth transmitting. A literary ballad can be remarkably bad, but if the paper on which it was written survives long enough, it will still be around centuries later. A ballad in the oral tradition will die if those who hear it feel no inclination to sing it themselves.
On the perhaps-less-positive side, the process of transmission tends to blur some types of literary flourishes. The particularly clever play on words, the unusual image, the striking metaphor, often rely upon the precise wording of a verse for their effectiveness. In oral transmission, couplets are often swapped for other couplets (perhaps formulae from other ballads) that may serve similar functions. (Maybe they scan better. Maybe the singer couldn't quite remember the words to the original version. Maybe the original got garbled a bit in transmission, and what was left didn't make much sense. Maybe the singer just liked the new version better.) So are entire stanzas. This process is unkind to some literary devices.
"Young Waters" (Child #94) - a fourteen-stanza ballad about a man whom the king executes because the queen praises him - may illustrate both sides. The earliest claimed sighting of the ballad is a 1755 publication titled "Young Waters, an Ancient Scotish Poem, never before printed." If it was a literary creation (a question which occupies much of Child's essay on this ballad - he seems to have decided that it was an embellished version of a traditional ballad), it was a fine one, and the writer clearly made an effort to effect a traditional ballad style. Still, there are turns of phrase that suggest a literary hand. To adduce one example, Bronson points out Waters's description, which begins:
His fottmen they did rin before,
His horsemen rade behind;
Ane mantel of the burning gowd
Did keip him frae the wind.
What I wrote earlier, about ballads not paying attention to how people dressed, was an oversimplification: Clothing is described, but almost always conventionally, e.g. "She dressed herself in silk so fine/Most beautiful to behold" (in "The Demon Lover" - Child #243), or "She dressed herself up in a suit of fine clothes/With merry maids all in green" (in "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet" - Child #73). By contrast, the description of a mantel as useful as well as striking is stylistically unusual.
Following this ballad, and for contrast, Child provides a much longer version of "Young Waters" which is clearly literary hackwork. (The main problem is not that any given stanza is obviously bad - the added text runs to uninspired balladic commonplaces - so much as that the commonplaces drone on, not always coherently, for twenty stanzas after the real story has ended.) In introducing this version, Child writes:
"Buchan, who may generally be relied upon to produce a longer ballad than anybody else, has `Young Waters' in thirty-nine stanzas, "the only complete version which he had ever met." Of this copy I will only say that everything which is not in the edition of 1755 (itself a little the worse for editing) is a counterfeit of the lowest description. Nevertheless it is given in an appendix; for much the same reason that thieves are photographed."