The Cruel Mother (20)

For this post I tried to pick the most disturbing Child Ballad – or at least the one I had the strongest reaction to. It wasn’t an easy task. People can be hateful and vicious to each other. They can also kill, rape, or maim with chilling indifference. There’s a ballad about a blood libel – a common medieval anti-Semitic belief that Jews killed Christian children and used their blood to make matzah bread. “The Prioress’s Tale” in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales tells a similar story. There’s a ballad where a man massacres a woman’s family, rapes her, and then imprisons her until she bears him a child.

Honestly, as I’m writing this, all I can think about is that I’m really looking forward to my next post where I’m done with my self-inflicted sojourn into the darkest Child Ballads. This might be shorter than usual.

The ballad I settled on is titled “The Cruel Mother” and concerns a woman who is pregnant with illegitimate twins. She gives birth to them alone in the woods and then kills them with a penknife. In one version, after burying them, she attempts to wipe the blade clean but the more she wipes the redder it grows.

She wiped the penknife in the sludge;

The more she wiped it, the more the blood showed.

This was a common storytelling trope indicating guilt, as in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Later she finds two children playing with a ball and tells them that if they were her own she would dress them in finery and take care of them. They turn and inform her that they are the ghosts of her murdered children and know she would do no such thing. They tell her that hell awaits her.

This is a well known ballad in Scotland, England, and America. There are also related versions in other countries, most notably Germany. In the German song, the children appear to a bride at her wedding and she denies having had them, wishing the devil would take her if it was true. So the devil comes and snatches her up.

a1985897666_10 — Illustration by Arthur Rackham for “Some British Ballads” (1919)

I probably don’t need much of an explanation for why this is so disturbing to me. Acts of violence are harder to bear when done to infants and children. The way their ghosts appear to her also makes my skin crawl. The song has little sympathy for her. It was probably meant to impart a moral lesson to young girls. The Birmingham singer Cecilia Costello, born in the 1880s, recalled her father putting her on his knee and singing it to her with the admonition that she was not to act so. Modern singers have made note of the difficulties of the woman, however, living in a time where postpartum depression was not understood and where if her illegitimate birth was to be made public she could be disowned and exiled. Historians have noted that such infanticides were probably quite common in the past, but little reported for obvious reasons. As horrified as I am by her actions I do feel something for her.

My preferred version of the song (though I rarely listen to it) is by the New Zealand band Lothlórien. It is grim and matter of fact about the subject matter.

I don’t have much more to say except that I’m not against making songs about such awful things. In fact, I believe in the capability of music to help us face the harrowing aspects of life. It’s just that sometimes I really don’t like it.

Ballad Text

Internet Sacred Text Archive

My Favorite Recordings

Lothlórien – YouTube|Spotify

Appalachian Celtic Consort – YouTube| Spotify

Shirley Collins – YouTube| Spotify

Lizzie Higgins – YouTube| Spotify

Edward (13)

My last post about the murder of a poacher and his dogs was a bit on the darker side. At first I thought, “let’s balance this out and write about a love ballad or something whimsical.” But, thinking about this more, I feel like I’ve been avoiding some of the really harrowing ballads and I should probably tackle a few as they’re an important part of the border ballad tradition. “Edward” is not the darkest, but it’s getting closer. I think in my next couple posts I’ll see how far down we can go.

“Edward” or “My Son David” is pure dialogue between a son and his mother which is unusual for a ballad. It begins when a young man comes home and his mother asks about the blood stains on his clothes or sword. He claims they’re from his hawk but his mother says the blood of a hawk could never be so red. He claims they’re from his horse but she doesn’t believe that either.

‘O I hae killed my reid-roan steid [horse],

Mither, mither,

O I hae killed my reid-roan steid,

That erst was sae fair and frie O.’ [that used to be so fair and free]

–

‘Your steid was auld [old], and ye hae gat mair [more],

Edward, Edward,

Your steid was auld, and ye hae gat mair,

Sum other dule ye drie O.’ [some other grief you are enduring]

He then admits he has killed a man, usually his father or brother. His reasons are not entirely clear but more on that later. His mother usually asks what he’s going to do with his wife, children, house, and lands. He says he must abandon them and sail across the sea (or sometimes commit suicide). Some versions end here but in others the mother asks what he’s leaving for her and he answers “a curse from hell” with the implication that she put him up to the murder. This short addition changes the ending dramatically from a sorrowful farewell to a shocking revelation.

I wasn’t able to find much analysis of this ballad which is strange because it has been and remains immensely popular. Then again, it does add some allure to an already enigmatic story. Most versions of this have been found in America and there are quite a few variants in Scandinavia as well. In Scotland it was considered lost until it was rediscovered in the 20th century as a popular song with Scottish Travelers which is fitting, I think, considering the protagonist decides to banish himself in most versions.

The Scottish versions usually have the father as the murder victim and the mother implicated at the end. In America it’s usually the brother who is slain and the mother is not complicit. I’ve heard it suggested that the ending was toned down to make it more palatable in America which could be true but I’m not convinced. The Scandinavian ones tend to match the American versions and theirs are quite old. I’m guessing there have just been a lot of versions of this song floating around for a while.

Now about the motive for the murder – in the Scottish versions it’s suggested the mother lied to her son to manipulate him into killing his father. What she lied about is never said. In the American versions, on the other hand, he says something like “it was mostly over the cutting of a rod that never will be a tree” i.e. his brother cut down a sapling. Now, this could be taken at face value – fatal arguments often occur over trivial matters. But some have suggested that the sapling is a euphemism for a child and the brother has killed a pregnant woman. Such euphemisms are common in other ballads but are usually a bit more obvious to the listeners. So it’s hard to say what exactly caused the brother’s murder. But like I say, this adds an aura of mystery to the ballad, which for me just makes it more interesting.

My favorite recording of this is by the American folk band Red Tail Ring. I love the slow mournful playing of the fiddle and the Southern sounding twang and drawl in the vocals.

I’ve made a distinction between the Scottish and American versions but since the mid 1900s there has been a good deal of cross-contamination with musicians setting the Scottish words to an American tune or vice-versa which is pretty cool.

Kinslaying has been considered a particularly monstrous deed since Cain and Abel. In Greek Tragedy, Oedipus blinds himself on discovering he killed his father. Orestes is relentlessly hounded by the Furies for killing his mother. The “protagonist” of this ballad seems to realize his life is over whatever the provocation was. Even so, this is not as grim as the Child Ballads get as you’ll discover in my next post.

Ballad Text

Internet Sacred Text Archive

My Favorite Recordings

Red Tail Ring – YouTube | Spotify

Hex – YouTube | Spotify

The Johnstons – YouTube | Spotify

The Furrow Collective – YouTube | Spotify

Old Blind Dogs – YouTube

Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard (81)

It’s worth talking about the relationship between Britain and America here. I think it gets lost how connected these two countries are because of the American revolution. We like to think of ourselves as free and untethered to anyone. We define our own destiny. This sort of thinking, I believe, can obfuscate just how British the United States is. Most people, if they sit down to think about it, would probably recognize this on some level. We speak English, after all, and our legal system is based on English Common Law. If we were to dig down further, we’d learn how much of our society has British roots from architecture to music to the free market. But most of us aren’t ethnically British. We’re German, West African, Irish, Polish, Italian, Mexican, Chinese, etc. The first three of those groups might each outnumber Brits. But the British were the majority of the original settlers and immigrants tend to assimilate into a dominant culture. So here I am, with my Norwegian and German ancestry, listening to and writing about Child Ballads.

Side note: 23andMe tells me I have a small amount of British ancestry. It makes sense I wouldn’t have known about this. Immigrants who marry “natives” (meaning here the descendants of first settlers) tend to identify as the recent ancestry e.g. the child of a Polish immigrant and an American with English ancestry usually identifies as Polish-American. So British ancestry is probably under-reported.

A_lamentable_ballad_of_the_little_Musgrove_(Bod_23499) — A 17th century broadside of today’s ballad (held in the Bodleian Library)

Why is this important? I’ve talked previously about how the Child Ballads are rooted in the Scottish-English border region. But cultures are always in flux. Most of the people who sings these songs now don’t live there. Many have no ties to that people or region whatsoever. In one sense that’s a little tragic. Much of the language, culture, and stories passed down from my Norwegian ancestors have been lost here in Minnesota. For others, like African Americans, it’s been violently ripped away. On the other hand it’s hopeful. I and others have adopted a new culture from the Anglo-sphere. These songs don’t belong to anyone. They’re constantly moving across ethnic, geographical, and even language boundaries.

With that being said, learning about the specific cultures and regions that propagated a style of music can teach us a lot. “Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard” (much more commonly known as “Matty Groves”) is one of the Child Ballads that has many more versions in North America than it does in Britain. That tells us a couple things. One – it’s old. Most of the immigration from Britain happened early – in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Child Ballads from the 19th century on tend to be sung more often in the land of Albion. Another thing it tells us is that its themes stayed relevant outside of its birthplace. Ballads like “The Bonnie Earl O’ Moray” that involve historical events that happened in Scotland for instance, tended to become less popular in the colonies for obvious reasons. “Matty Groves”, in pretty much all versions, takes place in England but murder and adultery are not purely English affairs.

The song begins with Lady Barnard going to church. After the service she approaches “Little Matty Groves” and asks him to come to bed with her. He refuses at first, afraid of her husband, but she assures him her husband is away tending to livestock. Her foot page, deciding his loyalties lie with the lord rather than the lady of the house, runs off and tells his master. When Lady Barnard and her lover awake in the morning, Lord Barnard is standing over them. He demands Matty Groves get up and fight him (the names are all a little different in each version).

‘Win up, win up, ye Little Munsgrove,

Put all your armour an;

It’s never be said anither day

I killed a naked man.

–
‘I hae twa brands [swords] in ae scabbard,

Cost me merks [silver coins] twenty-nine;

Take ye the best, gie me the warst,

For ye’re the weakest man.’

–
The firs an stroke that Munsgrove drew

Wounded Lord Burnett sair [sore];

The next an stroke Lord Burnett drew,

Munsgrove he spake nae mair [no more].

Having killed the poor boy, Lord Barnard seizes his wife and asks who she prefers. She responds:

‘O better love I this well-faird face,

Lyes weltering in his blude [blood],

Then eer [ever] I’ll do this ill-faird face,

That stands straight by my side.’

This response enrages her husband who kills her on the spot. The song ends with a softening of Lord Barnard’s heart and he demands they both be buried, though his wife will be buried on top “for she was of noble kin”. It’s one of those lines that feels very alien to modern sensibilities. Having just committed double murder, he’s still careful to observe distinctions of class.

The song is easily one of the most tragic ballads I’ve encountered. Matty Groves and Lady Barnard – who one can imagine have longed for one another during many a church service – both seem to be speeding towards an end they can see coming. They even appear to invite the inevitable – Matty by telling Lord Barnard how much he enjoyed being with his wife – and she with her taunt of preferring a dead Matty Groves to him. Even Lord Barnard appears to recognize the tragedy of what he’s done by demanding they be buried together. In a few versions he then kills himself.

Though most recordings are from America (primarily around Appalachia) my favorite recording is by the British folk rock band Fairport Convention. They were hugely influential in the folk revival of the 60s, themselves having been influenced by earlier American artists like Bob Dylan. See! Musical styles and traditions continue to influence each other across the Atlantic.

This has ended up being a rather long post but I’ll leave with an interesting anecdote. “Matty Groves” is one of the few ballads to survive in recognizable form in Jamaica after British colonial governance. This again I think speaks to the universality of the subject matter but it also touches on a subject I hope to explore in a future blog post: the often fraught but mutually enriching relationship between the musical traditions of African-Americans and the Scotch-Irish

Ballad Text

Internet Sacred Text Archive

My Favorite Recordings

Fairport Convention – YouTube | Spotify

Jim Pipkin – YouTube | Spotify

Linde Nijland – YouTube | Spotify

Wylde Nept – YouTube | Spotify

Iona Fyfe – Spotify

Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight (4)

I read an article recently about the surge in popularity of “true crime” stories and the fan bases they’ve built up. From Netflix shows like “Mindhunter” to podcasts like “My Favorite Murder” there are any number of examples. The article posits several theories for why women especially seem to love the genre – they want to avoid becoming victims, there’s a dark allure to masculine evil, etc. Regardless of ebbs and flows in pop culture, crime stories have been around for a while. And why wouldn’t we be fascinated by them? They offer glimpses of human depravity and restore our faith in justice. My mom and sister love British detective shows like “Midsomer Murders” (there’s a joke that if you went off of British TV you’d assume rural England has a higher homicide rate than war-torn Syria).

“Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight” (also “The Outlandish Knight” or “May Colven”) is an older example of such a story in ballad form. Just how old? That’s tough to say. It holds the distinction of being perhaps the most wide ranging Child Ballad with versions in Germany, Portugal, France, Poland, etc. The oldest version we are aware of is from the Netherlands – “Heer Halewijn” – dating to the 13th Century. The story is much older though with elements from pre-Christian Germanic mythology. How cool is that? A song that lived through the viking raids, the terror of the Black Death, religious reformations, the Industrial Revolution upending the old order, and it still continued to hold meaning. Hearing it is like holding an ancient coin and wondering what brought it to you – which is something I at least feel overawed by!

6a00e54fcf7385883401b7c7afefae970b-800wi — “The Ballad of May Colven” by Arthur Rackham

On to the story. Though there are hundreds of variations the ones I’ll focus on are popular in Britain and the Anglo world. A young lady is approached in her home by a knight (or elf-knight in older versions) who offers to spirit her away to his lands and marry her. She agrees and takes some valuables with her at his bidding. After riding a while he bids her dismount and reveals his intention to drown her in the sea with the other maidens he has seduced. The heroine, however, manages to trick her assailant usually by singing him to sleep or bidding him turn around while she disrobes. She then either skewers him with his own sword or grabs him by the waist and throws him into the sea. She proceeds to taunt him over this reversal of fortune.

‘Lie there, lie there, you false-hearted man,

Lie there instead of me;

Six pretty maids have you drowned here,

And the seventh has drowned thee.’

In some versions she returns home and a bird threatens to tell her parents what she’s done but she bribes it into silence. I’m not entirely sure why she feels like she needs to cover up the event. Perhaps she feels guilty or humiliated for allowing herself to be seduced.

This feels like the kind of ballad mothers would sing to their daughters as a warning not to let strange men beguile them. The amount of border balladry that concerns women outsmarting or simply outfighting predatory men surely speaks to the heavy contributions of women in general to this sort of music. It doesn’t seem like subject matter that would endure long in a purely masculine environment. It also speaks to the often grim realities of gender relations. Have things gotten better? I think so. Are the themes and power dynamics alien to our modern world? Definitively no.

My favorite rendition of this ballad is by Lisa Theriot. I would really encourage you to check out the links to other versions below, however. It was quite difficult to select a favorite this time.

One of the things I love most about this ballad is how you can see the pagan, supernatural elements get replaced by more realistic imagery over the centuries. The elf-knight enchanting maidens with a magic horn is replaced by a sinister though charming man. The maiden overcomes her would-be-murderer by songs or sleep charms in earlier versions and by clever thinking in more recent ones. And the ending with the sentient bird was usually left out by Victorian times. These changes, of course, reflect a changing worldview where spiritual forces were superseded as the governing order by mechanistic, natural laws.

Ballad Text

Internet Sacred Text Archive

My Favorite Recordings

Lisa Theriot – YouTube | Spotify

Danú – YouTube | Spotify

Carla Gover – YouTube | Spotify

Kate Rusby – YouTube | Spotify

Custer LaRue – YouTube | Spotify

Poor Old Horse – YouTube | Spotify

The Bonnie Banks O’ Fordie (14)

One of the great film directors ever to live – Ingmar Bergman – made a medieval movie in the ’60s called The Virgin Spring about a young girl who is waylaid by bandits, raped, and killed. By chance, the bandits seek shelter in her family’s home, are discovered, and subsequently killed by her father. I was obsessed with Bergman’s work while I was in film school and interested to learn the story was based on a 13th century Swedish ballad. It’s not perhaps the most well known movie, though it was remade in the ’70s by horror icon Wes Craven as The Last House on the Left (which was itself remade again in 2009). This is film-trivia though and probably not the most interesting unless you are as obsessed with movies as me.

DgAvR6hR5i8_mkho7P11Iex4 — Ingmar Bergman’s *The Virgin Spring*

Fast-forward ten years and I learn that one of the Child Ballads is the Anglicized version of the Scandinavian ballad that inspired Bergman’s movie! Fascinating, right? Well, to me it is. The Child Ballads have many connections with the folk music of France, Germany, and other countries but nowhere do they have as many ties as they do with the Scandinavian nations. There are probably many reasons for this kinship from the viking settlements in Northern Britain, to a shared Germanic language, to a close religious and cultural history but that’s a blog post for another time.

In “The Bonnie Banks O’ Fordie” (or “Babylon”) a “robber-man” or “banished man” accosts three sisters in the woods and, one by one, demands that each becomes his wife (gives him her maidenhead) or die by his penknife.

‘It’s whether will ye be a rank robber’s wife,

Or will ye die by my wee pen-knife?’

The first two choose death. The youngest, when presented with the same choice, refuses to play and tells the man that her brother Babylon wanders these woods and will avenge anything done to her. The outlaw realizes she is talking about him and, in horror at what he has done to his sisters, kills himself.

Mackie, Charles Hodge, 1862-1920; 'There were three maidens pu'd a flower (by the bonnie banks o' Fordie)' — ‘There were three maidens pu’d a flower (by the bonnie banks o’ Fordie)’ by Charles Hodge Mackie

As a side note, when you hear the word penknife, you usually think of a pocket knife or folding blade knife but the term was originally applied more generally to short bladed knives that, unsurprising, were used to shave down feathers to make quills. Like box cutters today they could be easily concealed for more criminal purposes.

Mistaken identity, often involving family members, is a prominent theme in the Child Ballads and most end just as tragically. From Shakespeare to Hitchcock, mistaken identity plots are common no matter the era, though most modern instances tend to be comedic and slapstick rather than bloody and incestuous (with the prominent exception of Oldboy).

My favorite version of this ballad is a rendition by Old Blind Dogs. They’re becoming regulars in this blog.

I don’t know quite how to feel at the brother’s grief when he realizes who he has killed. Does the fact that the women you intended to rape or murder were related to you really make all the difference? He can’t have even been close to them if no one recognized each other. Perhaps family meant more back then, or at least everyone else mattered less.

I tend to dislike such sweeping generalizations about “the past” in its kaleidoscopic variations but I think some generalizations apply. In most every era and area people lived shorter, more violent lives. That has to have an affect on your moral outlook, right?

Ballad Text

Internet Sacred Text Archive

My Favorite Recordings

Old Blind Dogs – YouTube | Spotify

Highland Reign – YouTube | Spotify

Dick Gaughan – YouTube

Ewan MacColl – YouTube | Spotify

Young Hunting (68)

Well, now that I’m done with moving and the flu I can get back to this project. Life does tend to get in the way of these things. “Young Hunting” is a murder ballad that originated in Scotland but is perhaps better known as its American variant, “Henry Lee”. All versions are – at their core – a story about a young man who visits his mistress one last time and tells her he is to marry someone else. He usually incenses her by saying how much more beautiful his bride-to-be is. Upset at being abandoned, she stabs him and watches him bleed out. Perhaps a bit panicked, she hastily tries to cover up her crime by hiding the body, but a bird sitting in a tree begins to taunt her and call her a fool. She tries to lure the bird down and then threatens to shoot it but the bird is unmoved.

vagabondage-the-sweet-trade-henry-lee — Promotional artwork for a rendition by the bands Vagabondage and The Sweet Trade

Now there’s plenty to pick apart here but it’s worth mentioning that older versions of the ballad continue on with her neighbors discovering the body – sometimes with the help of the bird – and burning the woman at the stake. I suppose this ending was eventually omitted because it was assumed inevitable. I did, however, find the crime solving methods fascinating. The neighbors float candles stuck in a loaf of bread to identify the location of the body in the river. That a candle would be attracted to the resting spot of a corpse was an old folk belief but Child does mention that streams generally have pools formed by eddies in which bodies and floating debris alike would be pulled into. The superstition the townsfolk use to identify the murderer – that a corpse would bleed when approached by the guilty party – has less scientific standing.

This ballad could be seen as containing a sharp admonishment for both sexes – men, don’t treat your sweethearts poorly and women, don’t get carried away by jealousy – but I prefer seeing it more as a tragedy. Neither party is particularly villainous. Both act cruelly toward the other but there are strong feelings there for one another. The song opens with the woman begging the man to stay:

‘Come to my arms, my dear Willie,

You’re welcome hame to me;

To best o chear and charcoal red,

And candle burnin free.’

He is attempting to kiss his lover when she stabs him and in some versions tells her he loved her best as he lies dying. Her guilt hangs over her head in the form of the bird as she goes about disposing of the body. It reminds her, often mockingly, of his love for her.

The bird could be seen as a manifestation of her conscience or the dead man’s soul reborn (a not uncommon trope) or it could simply be one of the many anthropomorphized denizens of a folk tale. I’m not sure whether her attempts to lure the bird down with promises of a golden cage are meant as an obvious act of desperation or if the original singers actually believed birds preferred a life of gilded confinement.

My favorite version of this song is by the Appalachian folk singer Sheila Kay Adams. This rendition lacks any instrumentals which, to my ears, gives it a somber, haunting quality.

The rendition of the song that is most familiar to modern audiences, however, would have to be the recording by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (I will link this below). The music is less traditional and it’s full of all sorts of tweaks and variations but I love that about it. These ballads transformed and morphed over time and across the Atlantic but that is exactly the quality that makes folk music so fascinating and compelling. I hope we keep it up.

Ballad Text

Internet Sacred Text Archive

My Favorite Recordings

Sheila Kay Adams – YouTube | Spotify

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – YouTube | Spotify

Brian Peters – YouTube | Spotify

Martin Simpson – YouTube | Spotify

Iona Fyfe – Spotify