An illustration from La Chanson de Roland

To fear God and maintain His Church
To serve the liege lord in valour and faith
To protect the weak and defenceless
To give succour to widows and orphans
To refrain from the wanton giving of offence
To live by honour and for glory
To despise pecuniary reward
To fight for the welfare of all
To obey those placed in authority
To guard the honour of fellow knights
To eschew unfairness, meanness and deceit
To keep faith
At all times to speak the truth
To persevere to the end in any enterprise begun
To respect the honour of women
Never to refuse a challenge from an equal
Never to turn the back upon a foe

You could be forgiven when reading this list of expectations for thinking that medieval Europe was full of sweetness and light and everyone lived in harmony and skipped merrily down the road hand in hand! Clearly there are countless occasions of when this code was completely ignored and indeed when this list was turned from an expectation to actually do the opposite.

And yet in terms of our ballad the code becomes the hallmark for looking at the imagery behind the words. Let’s look at the lyrics and start to tease out meaning:

As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies making a mane;
The tane unto the t’other say,
‘Where sall we gang and dine to-day?’

Immediately we notice that there is a narrator however we know absolutely zero about him or her. The first sentence – As I was walking all alone  – is the only indication of this mysterious narrator. Whoever they are immediately disappears from the rest of the story. After the narrator shifts the focus away from him/herself the story proper begins. The narrator happens to come across two crows who are having a moan concerning what and where they will eat this day.

‘In behint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.

The one says to the other that that behind that old grass wall there is a newly killed knight. So far so good. The ballad is following along very similar lines to the story of the Three Ravens. However in the next sentence we see an utterly divergent path from the Three Ravens ballad. In that version the ravens can’t get to the knight because he is protected by his hawk and hound.

‘His hawk is to the hunting gane,
His hound to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady’s ta’en another mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.

In our version the normal symbols of medieval loyalty are usurped. A medieval hearer of this ballad would be surprised and somewhat shocked by the behaviours of these animals. Loyalty should be seen as an expectation of the fact that this is knight we are talking about. Therefore the hawk and the hound would be expected to stay with the knight to protect his body, to preserve the understanding that even though his soul has gone to a higher place there remains a sense of dignity in preserving his earthly  remains. And yet, the absence of the hawk and hound starts to raise questions in the minds of the listeners. Why have they gone? Was there something bad about this knight? The three who know of the knight’s final position are the hawk, the hound and the ‘lady fair.’ Here we get a pretty large hint as to who was responsible for the death of the knight. The knight’s lady fair has already taken another in his place. She is the only human (beyond the narrator) who knows of the place where her former lover/mate/husband lies and for any fans of countless murder/crime tv programmes this knowledge would make her the number one suspect. And yet we must remember that we are dealing with a counter-intuitive ballad, one that seeks to usurp our expectations and question our assumptions. The fact that the hound and hawk have resumed their normal duties indicates that they have a new owner and that they are happy with this owner. Were they mistreated by this knight? Was the lady fair also mistreated? Does nature as featured in this ballad celebrate the fact that this knight has been killed?

‘Ye’ll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I’ll pike out his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
We’ll theek our nest when it grows bare.

There is almost a sense that the knight is returning to whence he came. All the parts of his body will be used by the crows for their survival. The white hause-bane – his white neck bone –  his bonny blue een – his eye and even his hair will be used to thatch their nest when winter comes and their nest grows bare.

‘Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken where he is gane;
Oer his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair.’

The crow continues to celebrate the fact that the body of the knight will be of great use to them and the crows will use everything they can until his white banes – bones – are are and even though there will be folk who will moan of his absence the wind will continue to blow over them forever.

We close with the late Ray Fisher singing her version of the song.