“Lady of Carlisle” and the New, Weird America
Frau mit Fächer – Lady with a Fan – Gustav Klimt – 1917, oil on canvas
Introduction – “These songs didn’t come out of thin air…”
Greil Marcus described the aural image captured in Harry Smith’s seminal Anthology of American Folk Music as being that of an “old, weird America.” We take that concept seriously here at MBM. Of course, murder ballads are only one part of that world, and it’s not limited to the United States. Simply put, we want to know as much of it as we can. On our better days, what we do here connects that old world to a sort of new, weird one. At our best, we do that unequivocally with sound.
Some songs endure. They get their start in a place and time before America and persist well into the post-modern age. That’s not a profound realization. Of course, subjected to an entertainment world that elevates artist above art, we often ignore it. Bob Dylan said as much in his acceptance speech for the 2015 MusiCares Person of the Year award.
Lions from the installation “The Royal Beasts”, Kendra Haste, sculpture of galvanized wire, 2010 – Photo by Cynthia Goodson at enclos*ure.com
“These songs didn’t come out of thin air. I didn’t just make them up out of whole cloth… It all came out of traditional music: traditional folk music, traditional rock & roll and traditional big-band swing orchestra music.
If you sang “John Henry” as many times as me – “John Henry was a steel-driving man / Died with a hammer in his hand / John Henry said a man ain’t nothin’ but a man / Before I let that steam drill drive me down / I’ll die with that hammer in my hand.” If you had sung that song as many times as I did, you’d have written “How many roads must a man walk down?” too.”
Dylan knows Smith’s “old, weird America” as well as anyone can, but it’s not exclusive to any one artist or listener. Technology allows us all to hear the links that bind that world to this, anytime we choose. Today’s ballad is a fine example of that which connects the two.
“Lady of Carlisle” emerged in the British Isles when lions still prowled the Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London. It crossed the ocean and took its place east of the Mississippi as a traditional ‘love song’ with several names. It finally found re-purposing in late 20th century California at the hands of hippies. Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter recast the old ballad as a psychedelic epic with themes as ancient as Homer’s.
Let’s start with the older weird stuff first, though. This is Dillard Chandler, in Madison County, North Carolina, from November of 1965.
Lyrics for “Carolina Lady” performed by Dillard Chandler
“Then up spoke this handsome lady…”
Harry Smith did not include an example of this ballad in his Anthology. It’s too bad! It would have at least given him an opportunity to employ his unique ability to summarize colorfully. You’ll have to read through the lyrics above to get the full spectrum, but Waltz and Engle do a fine black-and-white job of it in the online entry for the song in their Traditional Ballad Index.
“Two brothers court a lady. Unable to choose between them, she decides to find out who is braver. She throws her fan into a den of lions and says she will marry whoever recovers it. The sea captain does so; she offers herself as the prize.”
Actually in Chandler’s and some versions it’s the soldier rather than the sailor who retrieves her fan, but the narrative works either way. It’s not about sibling rivalry though. One brother will not give his life for love and one will. The lady chooses the one who takes the risk. It’s not complicated. Simple narratives can be the most powerful.
Alan Lomax recorded Basil May’s version of the song in Saylersville, Kentucky in 1937. Lomax later claimed the “ballad dates back to a medieval French country tale, which Robert Browning adapted in his narrative poem, The Glove.” Other scholars see different but equally literary sources, and some even posit a connection to a real event in 16th century France. We may never know the particulars, but that doesn’t leave us blind. Most versions of the ballad use a polished structure with common motifs and narrative. It’s reasonable to see that this is almost certainly not pure music of the folk, and likely derives at least in part from older literature or story-telling.
By 1807, the ballad started to appear in Irish and British broadsides. Cecil Sharp collected it in Appalachia as “The Bold Lieutenant” by 1918. Malcolm Laws cataloged it in 1957 as ballad O25 with dozens of references, and the Roud Folksong Index today assigns it number 396, with citations in the neighborhood of two hundred, representing variants throughout Britain, Ireland, and much of North America.
Provenance isn’t the point today. Suffice it to say that this song’s been around. There’s plenty more to explore, if you’re so inclined. The lady may hail from Carlisle, Carolina, St. James, or Reading Isles. The name of the sailor’s ship shows similar variety; but the core story is always the same. That part of the ballad doesn’t adapt to geography. Neither does it shift over the centuries, despite the fact that its meaning must change across both time and place. That’s the most interesting thing to me, particularly when considering its latest counter-cultural context.