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 →Murder Ballad Monday→A bit older this time, perhaps
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A bit older this time, perhaps

Sing Out! Posted on by

I listened to this version for the first time this morning:  I had never heard this tune for the song before.  Here is where we have want of a musicologist.  On the face of it, it seems like this tune is less amenable to supporting instruments, so the other version may have taken hold as an adaptation.  I’ll wager that this is at least slightly closer to the earliest versions.


The story here is more detailed than in the Garcia/Grisman or Mike Seeger versions–touching on some of the details referred to in the comments to the previous post.

Related posts:

  1. Fair Ellender
  2. A Cage of Beaten Gold – “False Sir John”
  3. Edward / What Put the Blood? / The Blood on His Shirt Sleeve
  4. Matty Groves / Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard

Comments

A bit older this time, perhaps — 2 Comments

  1. I think you’re right Ken, Ritchie’s is no doubt earlier than the Mike Seeger and Garcia/Grisman interpretations.

    I’m new to Spotify, so I’m not sure I’m copying this right, but here is a North Carolina version that seems related…

    Horton Barker – Lord Thomas and Fair Ellender
    http://open.spotify.com/track/5zNATGGr8CIWLAB685ct3n

    and here is the Ewan MacColl version that may be even older (or could be a later Scots version too… you’re right, we need a musicologist here.)

    Ewan MacColl – The Brown Girl – Lord Thomas and Fair Annet – Child 73
    http://open.spotify.com/track/6ZCTRERtm36SgGPV4jFmI1

  2. Jean wrote the following in her _Folk Songs of the Southern Appalachians_

    “And then would come the time when my heavy eyelids began to droop and my mind to wander all around and the people in the ballads would pass before me out there in the sparkly dusk…alive and beautiful. Fair Ellender rode slowly by on her snow-white horse, her hair like long strands of silver and her face like milk in the moonlight. Then came her waiting maids, dressed all in green and holding their heads high and proud…Lord Thomas, tall and brave with sword shining in his hand…the wedding folk around the long table. Then, in some easy manner that never had to be explained, I became Fair Ellender, and the movement of the porch swing became the slow, graceful walking of the white horse. Hundreds of people lined the broad highway as I rode by, taking me to be some queen, as the song wound its way to the tragic ending.”

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