are inverted; the rest are a modern composition.
A more genuine Scottish form is in Maidment's "North Country
Garland," Edinburgh, 1874; but there the young man is fictitiously
converted into a Laird of Craigstoun. It begins--
"Father, said she, you have done me wrong,
For ye have married me on a childe young man,
And my bonny love is long
Agrowing, growing, deary,
Growing, growing, said the bonny maid."
But the most genuine form is on an Aberdeen Broadside, B.M., 1871, f.
This, the real Scottish ballad, has verses not in the English, and
the English ballad has a verse or two not in the Scottish.
I have received an Irish version as sung in Co. Tipperary; it is in
six verses, but that about the "Trees so High" is lacking. The rhyme
is more correct than that of any of the printed versions, and the
lines run in triplets. One verse is--
"O Father, dear Father, I'll tell you what we'll do,
We'll send him off to college for another year or two,
And we'll tie round his college cap a ribbon of the blue,
To let the maidens know he is married."
In one of the versions I have taken down (Hannaford's and Aggett's)
there were traces of the triplet very distinct, and the tune was
akin to the Irish melody sent me, as sung by Mary O'Bryan, Cahir,
Tipperary. Portions of the ballad have been forced into that of "The
Cruel Mother" in Motherwell's MS., Child's "British and Scottish
Ballads," i. p. 223. In this a mother gives birth to three sons at
once and murders them; but after they are murdered--
"She lookit over her father's wa',
And saw three bonnie boys playing at the ba'."
Our melody is in the Phrygian mode, a scale which is extremely
scarce in English folk-song. The only other example we know is in
Ducoudray's book of the "Folk Melodies of Brittany."
The Scotch have two airs, one in Johnson's "Museum," the other in
"The British Minstrel," Glasgow, 1844, vol. ii. p. 36, both totally
distinct from ours.
That the ballad is English and not originally Scotch is probable, for
Fletcher quotes it in "The Two Noble Kinsmen," 1634. He makes the
crazy jailer's daughter sing us a snatch of an old ballad--
"For I'll cut my green coat, a foot above my knee,
And I'll clip my yellow locks, an inch below my eye,
Hey ninny, ninny, ninny;
He's buy me a white cut (stick) forth for to ride,
And I'll go seek him, through the world that is so wide,
Hey ninny, ninny, ninny."
In the ballad as taken down from Aggett--
"I'll cut my yellow hair away by the root,
And I will clothe myself all in a boy's suit,
And to the college high, I will go afoot."
I have had versions also from Mary Langworthy, Stoke Flemming, in
the Hypodorian mode, and from W.S. Vance, Penarth, as sung by an old
woman at Padstow in 1863, now dead.
Mr. Sharp gives a version in "Folk Songs from Somerset," No. 15.
5. PARSON HOGG. This was sung by my great-uncle, Thomas Snow, Esq.,
of Franklyn, near Exeter, when I was a child. I have received it
also from Mr. H. Whitfeld, brushmaker, Plymouth. The words may
be found, not quite the same, but substantially so, in "The New
Cabinet of Love," _circ._ 1810, as "Doctor Mack." In Oliver's "Comic
Songs," _circ._ 1815, it is "Parson Ogg, the Cornish Vicar." It is
also in "The Universal Songster" (1826), ii. p. 348. It is found on
Broadsides.
6. COLD BLOWS THE WIND. The words originally reached me as taken down
by the late Mrs. Gibbons, daughter of Sir W.L. Trelawney, Bart., from
an old woman, who, in 1830, was nurse in her father's house. Since
then we have heard it repeatedly, indeed there are few old singers
who do not know it. There are two melodies to which it is sung,
that we give here, and that to which "Childe the Hunter" is set in
this collection. The ballad is always in a fragmentary condition.
The ballad, under the title of "The Unquiet Grave," is in Professor
Child's "British Ballads," No. 78. He gives various forms of it. The
idea on which it is based is that if a woman has plighted her oath
to a man, she is still bound to him, after he is dead, and that he
can claim her to follow him into the world of spirits, unless she can
redeem herself by solving riddles he sets her. See further on this
topic under "The Lover's Tasks," No. 48. Verses 8 and 10 are not in
the original ballad. I have supplied them to reduce the length and
give a conclusion.
7. THE SPRIG OF THYME. Taken down from James Parsons. After the
second verse he broke away into "The Seeds of Love." Joseph Dyer, of
Mawgan in Pyder, sang the same ballad or song to the same tune, and
in what I believe to be the complete form of words--
"O once I had plenty of thyme,
It would flourish by night and by day,
Till a saucy lad came, return'd from the sea,
And stole my thyme away.
"O and I was a damsel fair,
But fairer I wish't to appear;
So I wash'd me in milk, and I clothed me in silk,
And put the sweet thyme in my hair.
"With June is the red rose in bud,
But that was no flower for me,
I plucked the bud, and it prick'd me to blood,
And I gazed on the willow tree.
"O the willow tree it will twist,
And the willow tree it will twine,
I would I were fast in my lover's arms clasp't,
For 'tis he that has stolen my thyme.
"O it's very good drinking of ale,
But it's better far drinking of wine,
I would I were clasp't in my lover's arms fast,
For 'tis he that has stolen my thyme."
The song, running as it does on the same theme and in the same metre
as "The Seeds of Love," is very generally mixed up with it, and Miss
Broadwood calls her version of it, in "English County Songs," p. 58,
"The Seeds of Love, _or_ The Sprig of Thyme." The "Seeds of Love"
is attributed by Dr. Whittaker, in his "History of Whalley," to
Mrs. Fleetwood Habergham, who died in 1703. He says: "Ruined by the
extravagance and disgraced by the vices of her husband, she soothed
her sorrows by some stanzas yet remembered among the old people of
her neighbourhood." See "The New Lover's Garland," B.M. (11,621, b
6); a Northumbrian version in "Northumbrian Minstrelsy," 1882, p.
90; a Scottish version in "Albyn's Anthology," 1816, i. p. 40; a
Somersetshire in "Folk Songs from Somerset," No. 1; a Yorkshire in
Kidson's "Traditional Tunes," p. 69. As the two songs are so mixed up
together, I have thought it best to re-write the song.
The melody was almost certainly originally in the Æolian mode, but
has got altered.
8. ROVING JACK. Taken down, words and melody, from William Aggett,
Chagford, and from James Parsons, Lew Down. An inferior version
of the words is to be found among Catnach's Broadsheets, Ballads,
B.M. (1162, b, vol. vii.), also one printed in Edinburgh, Ballads
(1750-1840), B.M. (1871, f). Note what has been said relative to this
tune, which is in the Æolian mode, under 1, "By chance it was," with
which it is closely related.
9. BRIXHAM TOWN. Words taken down from Jonas Coaker, aged 85, and
blind. The melody was given us by Mr. John Webb, who had heard him
sing it in former years. Another version to the same air was obtained
from North Tawton. Again, another was given me by the Hon. A.F.
Northcote, who took it down in 1877 from an itinerant pedlar of 90
years at Buckingham.
The words and tune were clearly composed at the time of the
Commonwealth, 1649-1661.
10. GREEN BROOM. Words and melody taken down from John Woodrich,
blacksmith; he learned both from his grandmother when he was a
child. The Hon. J.S. Northcote sent me another version taken down
from an old woman at Upton Pyne. Again, another from Mr. James Ellis
of Chaddlehanger, Lamerton; another from Bruce Tyndall, Esq., of
Exmouth, as taken down from a Devonshire cook in 1839 or 1840. This,
the same melody as that from Upton Pyne. Woodrich's tune is the
brightest, the other the oldest. The same ballad to different tune
in "Northumbrian Minstrelsy," 1882, p. 98. The song is in D'Urfey's
"Pills to Purge Melancholy," 1720, vi. p. 100, in 14 verses, with a
different conclusion. Broadside versions by Disley and Such. Also
in "The Broom Man's Garland," in "LXXXII. Old Ballads" collected by
J. Bell, B.M. (11,621, c 2). Bell was librarian to the Society of
Antiquaries, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1810-20. Mr. Kidson has obtained a
version in North Yorkshire. Another is in "English County Songs," p.
88. In "Gammer Gurton's Garland," _circ._ 1783, are three verses.
11. AS JOHNNY WALKED OUT. Words and melody from James Parsons. The
original words are in six stanzas, and these I have compressed. The
words with some verbal differences as "set by Mr. Dunn" are in "Six
English Songs and Dialogues, as they are performed in the Public
Gardens," N.D., but about 1750. Then in _The London Magazine_, 1754;
in "Apollo's Cabinet," Liverpool, 1757; in "Clio and Euterpe,"
London, 1758. Our melody was obtained also by Mr. T.S. Cayzer, at
Post Bridge, in 1849, and we have taken down four or five versions.
The tune is totally different from that by "Mr. Dunn."
12. THE MILLER AND HIS SONS. Taken down, music and words, from
J. Helmore, miller, South Brent. The words occur in the Roxburgh
Collection, iii. p. 681. It is included in Bell's "Songs of the
English Peasantry," p. 194; and is in the "Northumbrian Minstrelsy,"
Newcastle, 1882. In the North of England it is sung to the air
of "The Oxfordshire Tragedy," Chappell, p. 191. Our air bears no
resemblance to this.
13. ORMOND THE BRAVE. This very interesting Ballad was taken down,
words and music, from J. Peake, tanner, Liskeard; it was sung by his
father about 1830. It refers to the Duke of Ormond's landing in Devon
in 1714. Ormond fled to France in the first days of July, "a duke
without a duchy," as Lord Oxford termed him, when it was manifest
that the country was resolved on having the Hanoverian Elector as
King, and was unwilling to summon the Chevalier of St. George to the
throne. At the end of October the Duke of Ormond landed in Devon
at the head of a few men, hoping that the West would rise in the
Jacobite cause, but not a single adherent joined his standard, and he
returned to France. The Devonshire squires were ready to plant Scotch
pines in token of their Jacobite sympathies, but not to jeopardise
their heads and acres in behalf of a cause which their good sense
told them was hopeless. I have met with the ballad in a Garland, B.M.
(11,621, b 16). This, however, is imperfect. It runs thus--
"I am Ormond the brave, did you ever hear of me?
Who lately was banished from my own country.
They sought for my life and plundered my estate,
For being so loyal to Queen Anne the Great.
I am Ormond, etc.
"Says Ormond, If I did go, with Berwick I stood,
And for the Crown of England I ventured my blood,
To the Boyne I advanced, to Tingney (Quesnoy?) also,
I preserved King William from Berwick his foe.
"I never sold my country as cut-purses do,
Nor never wronged my soldiers of what was their due.
Such laws I do hate, you're witness above,
I left my estate for the country I love.
"Although they degrade me, I value it not a straw,
Some call me Jemmy Butler, I'm Ormond you know.
(_Rest of verse missing._)
"But in the latter days our late Mistress Anne,
Disprove my loyalty if you can,
I was Queen Anne's darling, old England's delight,
Sacheverel's friend, and Fanatic's spite."
When Peake sang the song to Mr. Sheppard and me, he converted German
Elector into German lecturers.
The impeachment and attainder of the Duke in 1715 was a cruel and
malicious act. When he was in the Netherlands acting in concert with
Prince Eugene, he was hindered from prosecuting the war by secret
instructions from Queen Anne. When Quesnoy was on the point of
capitulating, he was forced to withdraw, as he had received orders to
proclaim a cessation of arms for two months. After the death of Queen
Anne, the new Whig Ministry was resolved on his destruction, and
he fled to France, where, although he had been loyal to William of
Orange, and had fought under him at the Boyne, and had also been one
of the first to welcome George I., he threw himself into the cause
of the Pretender, in a fit of resentment at the treatment he had
received. He died on 16th November 1745 at Avignon, but his body was
brought to England and buried in Henry VII.'s Chapel, Westminster.
Swift, writing in the hour of his persecution, gives his character
at great length. "The attainder," says he, "now it is done, looks
like a dream to those who will consider the nobleness of his birth;
the great merits of his ancestors, and his own; his long, unspotted
loyalty; his affability, generosity, and sweetness of nature.... I
have not conversed with a more faultless person; of great justice and
charity; a true sense of religion, without ostentation; of undoubted
valour; thoroughly skilled in his trade of a soldier; a quick and
ready apprehension; with a good share of understanding, and a general
knowledge of men and history."
Mackay, in his "Characters of the Court of Great Britain," says of
him when Governor in Ireland:--"He governs in Ireland with more
affection from the people, and his court is in the greatest splendour
ever known in that country. He certainly is one of the most generous,
princely, brave men that ever was, but good-natured to a fault."
14. JOHN BARLEYCORN. This famous old song has gone through several
recastings. The earliest known copy is of the age of James I. in
the Pepysian Collection, i. 426, printed in black letter by H.
Gosson (1607-1641). Other copies of Charles II.'s reign in the same
Collection, i. 470, and the Ewing Collection, by the publishers
Clarke, Thackeray, and Passenger, to the tune of "Shall I lye beyond
thee." Chappell concludes that this was a very early ballad. "The
language is not that of London and its neighbourhood during James's
reign. It is either northern dialect--which, according to Puttenham,
would commence about 60 miles from London--or it is much older than
the date of the printers," Roxburgh Ballads, ii. p. 327.
This ballad begins--
"As I went through the North Country
I heard a merry greeting,
A pleasant toy and full of joy--
Two noblemen were meeting."
These two noblemen are Sir John Barleycorn and Thomas Goodale.
The sixth verse runs--
"Sir John Barlycorne fought in a boule
Who wonne the victorie,
And made them all to fume and sweare
That Barlycorne should die.
"Some said kill him, some said drowne,
Others wisht to hang him hie;
For as many as follow Barlycorne
Shall surely beggars die.
"Then with a plough they plow'd him up,
And thus they did devise,
To burie him quicke within the earth,
And sware he should not rise.
"With harrowes strong they combèd him
And burst clods on his head,
A joyfull banquet then they made
When Barlycorne was dead."
Then the ballad runs on the same as ours. Burns got hold of this
ballad, and tinkered it up into the shape in which it appears in his
collected works, altering some expressions, and adding about six
stanzas. He in no way improved it. Jameson, in his "Popular Ballads,"
Edinburgh, 1806, tells us that he had heard it sung in Morayshire
before that Burns' songs were published.
Dixon, in his collection of the "Songs of the English Peasantry,"
1846, says that "John Barleycorn" was sung throughout England to the
tune of "Stingo, or Oil of Barley," which may be found in Chappell,
from the "Dancing Master," in which it occurs from 1650 to 1690.
But this is not the air to which it is set in the Broadsides above
referred to, nor is it that to which it is sung in the West of
England.
Dr. Barrett has given a different "John Barleycorn" in his "English
Folk-Songs," and another is in the _Folk-Song Journal_, vol. i. p. 81.
The words as now sung may be found in "The Mountain of Hair Garland,"
B.M. (1162, c 4), _circ._ 1760. It is also among Such's broadsides.
Words and air were taken down by Mr. Bussell, from James Mortimore, a
cripple, at Princetown, in 1890.
A version taken down in Sussex, to a different tune, is seen in the
_Folk-Song Journal_. This begins--
"There were three men came out of the West,
They sold their wheat for rye;
They made an oath and a solemn oath,
John Barleycorn should die."
One verse is not in our version--
"And in the mash-tub he was put,
And they scalded him stark blind.
And then they served him worse than that
They cast him to the swine."
15. SWEET NIGHTINGALE. In "Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of
England," by Robert Bell, London, 1857, the author says: "This
curious ditty, which may be confidently assigned to the 17th century
... we first heard in Germany at Marienberg on the Moselle. The
singers were four Cornish miners, who were at that time, 1854,
employed at some lead mines near the town of Zell. The leader,
or captain, John Stocker, said that the song was an established
favourite with the miners of Cornwall and Devonshire, and was always
sung on the pay-days and at the wakes; and that his grandfather, who
died thirty years before, at the age of a hundred years, used to
sing the song, and say it was very old. The tune is plaintive and
original." Unfortunately Mr. Bell does not give the tune. The air
was first sent me by E.F. Stevens, Esq., of the Terrace, St. Ives,
who wrote that the melody "had run in his head any time these eight
and thirty years." We have since had it from a good many old men in
Cornwall, and always to the same air. They assert that it is a duet,
and was so set in our first edition.
Mr. Bell did not know much of the subject, or he would have been
aware that so far from the song being of the 17th century, it was
composed by Bickerstaff for "Thomas and Sally" in 1760, and was set
to music by Dr. Arne. I have, however, adopted Bell's words instead
of those of Bickerstaff, as shorter. The Cornish melody is quite
distinct from that by Arne, and is not earlier or later than the
second half of the 18th century.
16. WIDDECOMBE FAIR. At present the best known and most popular of
Devonshire songs, though the melody is without particular merit. The
original "Uncle Tom Cobley" lived in a house near Yeoford Junction,
in the parish of Spreyton. His will was signed on January 20, 1787,
and was proved on March 14, 1794. He was a genial old bachelor. Mr.
Samuel Peach, his oldest relation living, tells me, "My great-uncle,
who succeeded him, with whom I lived for some years, died in 1843,
over eighty years of age; he married, but left no children." We have
obtained numerous variants of the air, one taken down from R. Bickle,
Two Bridges, is an early form of the melody; but as that we give is
familiar to most Devonshire men, we have retained it. The names in
the chorus all belonged to residents at Sticklepath.
Mr. C. Sharp has taken down a variant as "Midsummer Fair" in
Somersetshire. The words so far as they went were the same, but each
verse ended in a jingle instead of names.
17. YE MAIDENS PRETTY. The words and melody from James Parsons.
The fullest Broadside version, but very corrupt, is one published
at Aberdeen, Ballads, B.M. (1871, f, p. 61); another, shorter, by
Williams of Portsea. In both great confusion has been made by some
ignorant poetaster in enlarging and altering, so that in many of the
verses the rhymes have been lost. This is how the Aberdeen Broadside
copy begins--
"You maidens pretty
In country and city
With pity hear,
My mournful tale;
A maid confounded,
In sorrow drownded,
And deeply wounded,
With grief and pain."
In the third line the "pity" has got misplaced, and "sad complain"
has been turned into "mournful tale," to the loss of the rhyme. Verse
4 has fared even worse. It runs--
"My hardened parents
Gave special order
That I should be
Close confined be (_sic._)
Within my chamber
Far from all danger,
Or lest that I
Should my darling see."
A parody on the song was written by Ashley, of Bath, and sung in
"Bombastes Furioso," Rhodes' burlesque, in 1810, to the Irish tune of
"Paddy O'Carrol." This appears also in "The London Warbler," 3 vols.,
N.D., but about 1826, vol. i. p. 80--
"My love is so pretty, so gay, and so witty,
All in town, court, and city, to her must give place.
My Lord on the woolsack, his coachman did pull back,
To have a look, full smack, at her pretty face," etc.
A Catnach Broadside, "The Cruel Father and the Affectionate Lovers,"
is a new version of the original ballad. Words and melody are
probably of the Elizabethan age; an air to which this ballad has
been recovered from tradition in Surrey resembles ours, and is a
corruption of the earlier melody.
The ballad goes back to a remote antiquity. The French have it, a
"complainte romanesque," of which Tiersot says: "It was known in
past ages, as is shown by a semi-literary imitation, published in a
song-book of the beginning of the 17th century. And in our own day,
poets and literary men, such as Gerard de Nerval, Prosper Mérimée,
M. Auguste Vitu, have given their names to it, having picked it up
as a precious thing from oral recitations by the peasants of our
provinces." It is the ballad of a princess loving a knight, "qu' n'a
pas vaillant six deniers." The King Loys, her father, has imprisoned
her in the highest of his towers--
"Elle y fut bien sept ans passés
Sans qu' son pèr' vint la visiter;
Et quand l'y eut sept ans passés,
Son père la fut visiter."--TIERSOT, _op. cit._ p. 20.
There can, I think, be no doubt that it is an old troubadour lay
which has been re-composed in Elizabethan times, and has since been
somewhat degraded.
18. THE SILLY OLD MAN. A ballad that was sung by the late Rev.
G. Luscombe something over half a century ago. He was curate of
Bickleigh, and by ancestry belonged to a good old Devonshire family,
and he was particularly fond of ancient West of England songs.
Another version, from old Suey Stephens, a charwoman at Stowford;
another, as sung in 1848, received from Dr. Reed in Tiverton. Miss
Mason, in her "Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs," 1877, gives a
slight variant, also from Devonshire.
The ballad is in Dixon's "Songs of the English Peasantry," 1846,
as taken down by him from oral recitation in Yorkshire in 1845.
It exists in a chap-book, under the title of "The Crafty Farmer,"
published in 1796. In Yorkshire the song goes by the name of "Saddle
to Rags"; there, and elsewhere in the North of England, it is sung to
the tune of "The Rant," better known as "How happy could I be with
either." It has been published as a Scottish ballad in Maidment's
"Ballads and Songs," Edinburgh, 1859. It is given in Kidson's
"Traditional Tunes." The words also in "A Pedlar's Pack," by Logan,
Edinburgh, 1849. The tune to which this ballad is sung in Devonshire
is quite distinct.
19. THE MONTHS OF THE YEAR. Still a popular song among farm
labourers. Three versions of the air and words were taken down--one
at South Brent, one at Belstone, one at Post Bridge. The air is
clearly an old dance tune. The version we preferred was that given us
by J. Potter, farmer, of Merripit, Post Bridge. For like songs, see
"English County Songs," p. 143, and Barrett's "Folk-Songs." Barrett
has the same air as ours, but in triple time. That a similar song
should be found on the Continent is not wonderful; see "Les Douze
Mois de l'année" in Coussemaker: "Les Flamands de France," p. 133.
20. THE CHIMNEY SWEEP. Taken down from J. Helmore, miller, South
Brent. The first verse occurs in one of James Catnach's chap-books:
"The Cries of London," _circ._ 1815.
The tune is possibly based on one used by the Savoyard sweeps, for
Tiersot refers to one such: "Avec sa bizarre vocalise descendante,
d'un accent si étrange dans sa rudesse montagnarde--
"Ramonez-ci, ramonez-là,
Sh-a-a-a-ah
La cheminée du haut en bas."
And this corresponds with the passage, "Aye and there," with its
curious descent in our tune: Tiersot, "Hist. de la Chanson Populaire
en France," Paris, 1889, p. 143.
21. THE SAUCY SAILOR. Words and melody taken from James Parsons. A
Broadside with a different ending printed by Disley, Pitts, Such &
Hodges. Also Tozer's "Forty Sailors' Songs," Boosey, No. 33. The
usual air to which this song is sung in Devon is of a much earlier
character; but we give this as more agreeable to modern ears. Barrett
gives the song in his "English Folk-Songs," No. 32, to a different
tune.
22. BLUE MUSLIN. Taken down, words and music, from John Woodrich,
blacksmith. Muslin was introduced into England in 1670, and cork in
1690. Both are spoken of as novelties, and muslin is sung to the old
form of the word, mous-el-ine.
Miss F. Crossing sent me another version of the words, taken down
from an old woman in South Devon, in or about 1850--