Outlandish Knight- Feltwell (Nor) c.1962 Steele
[From the VT150CD recording, "Heel & Toe, 'Songs, tunes and stepdances from the Sam Steele collection’ " Liner notes follow:
R. Matteson 2018]
Arthur ‘Hockey’ Feltwell, was born in the Fens near Southery, Norfolk and later moved into the town. After leaving school at ten he worked first as a horseman with his father, then with steam traction engines, but for most of his life he was a lorry driver.
He learned songs from his father and other horsemen, and his five brothers sang and his eldest brother, Piper, also played the melodeon. He sang, often at darts matches, in all seven of the pubs in Southery but the Nag's Headwas his pub. It was the gathering place for singers in the town and Hockey was usually the leader. He was a great singer, but would change key during choruses! Sam Steele thought this was to confuse the other singers, and so remain the loudest. It was in the Nag’s Head that the recordings on this CD were made. Hockey also once sang on the radio from the BBC studio in Norwich, but there is no record of when this happened.
Hockey Feltwell can be heard on: VT150CD. Sam Steele first recorded Hockey in 1959 and in 1962 Sam’s friend Russell Wortley took Bill Leader and Reg Hall to record him. The song Four Horses from that session is on TSCD655 ‘Come all my lads that follow the plough’.
The Outlandish Knight- sung by Hockey Feltwell from the Southery, Norfolk area, c. 1962.
There came a man from a far off land,
He came a courting me,
And he promised to take me to some far off land,
And there he would marry me.
He said, "Fetch me some of your father's gold,
Some of your mother's freeze (fees).
And two of the best horses out of the stable,
Where there stood thirty and three.
Now he jumped on a white milk horse.
She on a nether (dapple?) grey,
For six pretty maidens he has drowned there,
The seventh thee should be.
He says, "Pull off your silk white gown,
And deliver it unto me,
For six pretty maidens I have drown here,
The seventh thou shall be."
She said, "I shall not pull off my silk white gown,
Nor deliver it unto you,
It's not fitting for a man to see a woman stark naked,
Nor a man to see a woman."
She plunged him into the water,
She plunged him into the sea.
She says, "Lay there you false hearted man,
Lay there instead of me."
Now she jumped on that white milk horse,
Tied the poor nether grey.
She rode 'til she came to her father's house,
Three hours before it was day.
"Oh father, dear father tell no tale,
Please tell no tales on me.
For six pretty maidens he has drowned there,
and the seventh she should be."
* * * *
This well known ballad has a remarkable history, as Professor Child (who called it Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight) pointed out, he knew of versions from Portugal to Poland and from Scandinavia to the Balkans. It can be directly traced back to a German broadside of C.1550 although it was known as a tale long before that date. In many European versions of the ballad there is an episode that has all but vanished from our present story. As the eloping couple reach the waterside, the man persuades the girl to stop beneath a tree. She is asked not to look up into the tree’s branches, but is asked, instead to delouse the man’s hair. As she is complying, she glances up into the branches where she sees the severed heads of his previous victims. Thus warned she is able to outsmart her would-be murderer. Many 19th century English broadside houses published the ballad including Pitts, Fortey, Dever, Hill, Taylor, Carnach and Such in London and Russell and Wadsworth in Birmingham. The ballad became widespread, particularly in America and Canada.
In East Anglia Ralph Vaughan Williams took down the tune from a Mr Hilton of South Walsham, Norfolk in 1908 and Cecil Sharp again collected just the tune from a William Porter of Ely, Cambridgeshire in 1911. In 1947 E. J. Moeran arranged for the BBC to make a second visit to the Eel’s Foot in Eastbridge, Suffolk where Jumbo Brightwell sang the ballad under his title The False Hearted Knight. That recording can be heard on Veteran VT140CD ‘Good Order’. Seamus Ennis visited Norfolk in 1954 /55 as part of the BBC’s collecting initiative and recorded the ballad from Ben Baxter of Southrepps and Bill Lowne at Cley-next-the-sea, then in 1959 Philip Donnellan recorded the ballad from Sam Larner of Winterton, Norfolk.
Three other recorded versions from other parts of the country which are worth comparing are from Cornwall’s Charlotte Renals (called A Man from the North Country) on VT119CD ‘Catch me if you Can’, from Shropshire’s Fred Jordan (called Six Pretty Maids) on VTD148CD ‘A Shropshire Lad’ and from Sussex’s Mary Ann Hayes (called the Young Officer) on TSCD661 ‘My Father’s the King of the Gypsies’.