Page:One Hundred English Folksongs (1916).djvu/23

 The tune in the text is a close variant of “Tomorrow is St. Valentine’s Day” (Chappell’s Popular Music, p. 227).

No. 9. Geordie

other versions with tunes, see Traditional Tunes (p. 24); Folk Songs from the Eastern Counties (p. 47); English Traditional Songs and Carols (p. 32); and Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume i, p. 164; volume ii, pp. 27 and 208; volume iii, p. 191).

The tune here given is modal, and, lacking the sixth of the scale, may be either Dorian or Æolian; it is harmonized as though it were the latter.

Child gives many versions and exhaustive notes.

Buchan (Ancient Ballads and Songs, volume i, p. 133) prints a version, “Gight’s Lady,” and suggests that the ballad “recounts an affair which actually took place in the reign, or rather the minority, of King James VI. Sir George Gordon of Gight had become too familiar with the laird of Bignet’s lady, for which the former was imprisoned and likely to lose his life, but for the timely interference of Lady Ann, his lawful spouse, who came to Edinburgh to plead his cause, which she did with success—gained his life, and was rewarded with the loss of her own, by the hand of her ungrateful husband.” The version in the text cannot, however, refer to this incident.

Kinloch (Ancient Scottish Ballads) agrees that “Geordie” was George Gordon,, and that the incident related in the ballad “originated in the factions of the family of Huntly, during the reign of Queen Mary.” Motherwell, on the other hand, says that in some copies the hero is named George Luklie. In Ritson’s Northumberland Garland (1793), the ballad is described as “A lamentable ditty made upon the death of a worthy gentleman, named George Stoole.”

James Hogg (Jacobite Relics) prints another version, and in the Straloch Manuscripts (early 17th century), there is an air entitled “God he wi’ thee, Geordie.”

The words are on broadsides by Such and others.

No. 10. Lady Maisry

other versions of the words only of this ballad, see Motherwell’s Minstrelsy (p. 71), and Child’s English and Scottish Popular Ballads (No. 65); and of the words with tunes, the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume i, p. 43; volume iii, pp. 74 and 304).

In the Scottish ballad, Lady Maisry rejects the Northern lords, who come to woo her, and enters into an illicit connection with an English nobleman. Lord William. During the absence of the latter, the brothers of Lady Maisry discover her secret and make preparations to burn her. She dispatches in hot haste a messenger to apprise Lord William of her danger. He hastens home to find her at the point of death. He swears to avenge her by burning her kinsmen, and The last bonfire that I come to Myself I will cast in.

The first part of the story is omitted in this version, while the last four verses recall the ballad of “Lord Lovel,” rather than that of “Lady Maisry.”

The tune is in the Æolian mode.

No. 11. The Outlandish Knight

, speaking of this ballad (English and Scottish Ballads, No. 4), remarks: “Of all the ballads this has perhaps obtained the widest circulation. It is nearly as well known to the southern as to the northern nations of Europe. It has an extraordinary currency in Poland."

This ballad is widely known throughout England, and I have taken it down no less than thirty-six times. Although very few singers could “go through” with it, I have recorded several fairly complete sets of words, from which that given in this book has been compiled. As a rule the versions vary but little, although I have heard only one singer sing the seventh and eighth stanzas of the text. One singer, however, used the word “croppèd,” instead of the more usual “droppèd,” in the ninth stanza, and this may have been a reminiscence of the “nettle” theme. None of the printed copies contain these verses except one in