Scottish Knight- M. Eyre (Glou) 1958 Collinson
[My abbreviated title. From "Four Songs Remembered by Miss Margaret Eyre" by Francis Collinson in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Dec., 1962), pp. 155-158. Collinson's notes follow.
R. Matteson 2018]
Miss Eyre, who has Scottish forbears, has lived for many years at St. Briavels, in the Forest of Dean, West Gloucestershire. She sent the following songs to Cecil Sharp House in the spring of 1958 following a broadcast by Mr. Douglas Kennedy in which an appeal was made for versions of old ballads and songs. She was then in her 84th year.
Some of the transcriptions which were passed on to me as a member of the Society's Editorial Board seemed doubtful, and as the occasion of a family wedding chanced to take me to the vicinity of her home in the following August, I was able to record Miss Eyre herself with a portable tape recorder. Though I found Miss Eyre to be an old lady of strong and even dominating personality, her singing voice was small, wavering and indistinct, and even with the help of the recording some of both notes and words had to be guessed at in transcription.
THERE WAS ONCE A SCOTTISH KNIGHT (THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND)
[music]
1. There was once a Scottish knight,
Follow me love over the Lea,
And he was pris'ner taen in fight,
By the great Lord Northumberlee.
2. And he was put in a prison strong,
Follow me follow me over the lea,
And there he lay a twelve-month long
With the great Lord Northumberlee.
3. This Lord he had a daughter fair,
Follow me love come over the lea,
And she did learn how he was there,
She the fair flower of Northumberlee.
4. 0 gin ye will follow and set me free,
Follow me love come over the lea,
My love for ever your own shall be,
O the fair flower of Northumberlee.
5. So they did over the border flee,
Follow me love come over the lea,
And he was wed in the North Countree
To the fair flower of Northumberlee.
This is No. 9 in Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 'The Fair Flower of Northumberland'. The ballad is similar in theme to 'Lord Bateman', in that a prisoner persuades the daughter of his captor to contrive his escape under promise of marriage. In this ballad, the prisoner, a Scots Knight, cruelly deserts the lady as soon as he reaches the safety of his own country. The tune has a remarkable similarity to 'Shall I go walk the woods so wild?' Cf. The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. Incidentally, in the form in which the tune is used there by both Gibbons and Byrd, it is the only English traditional tune which I have found in the Locrian mode, with its final upon the leading note of the major scale. (In Chappell the cadence is conventionalised and the mode becomes in consequence a mundane Dorian; while Miss Eyre's tune is Hexatonic.)
Child gives the earliest version of the ballad as 'The Maiden's Song' in a book by Deloney dated 1657. Child also gives a tune for the ballad which has one or two slight resemblances to Miss Eyre's. There are a number of tunes for the ballad in printed
collections which are assembled in Bronson.