46A. "The Riddle Song" or "I Gave My Love a Cherry" / "Perrie Merrie" (Para-Mara)/"Go No More a-Rushing"
[Dating back to c. 1430, "The Riddle Song/I Gave my Love" is one of the oldest songs, predating Child No. 46 Captain Wedderburn's Courtship. This song text has become attached to two main variants, 1) "Go No More a-Rushing" dating back to at least the early 1600s and 2) the nursery rhyme, "I Have Four Sisters/Perry Merry Dixie Domine."
I believe that Child No. 46, Captain Wedderburn's Courtship, was constructed in part from the older text of "Riddle Song." Bronson and I list the Riddle Song as an appendix to Child 46 along with its variants.
In the US "The Riddle Song" (I Gave My Love A Cherry) went from the backroads or rural Kentucky, where it was collected in 1917 by Cecil Sharp, to the city- where it garnished renditions by African-Americans Josh White in 1949 and later Sam Cooke.
I've made several recordings, one for solo guitar and recently a version titled, I Gave My Love a Cherry, that was collected by my grandfather Maurice Matteson from Mollye Wilcox of Berea, KY circa 1934 and published in my book, Appalachian Folk Songs for Piano and Voice in 1996 by Mel Bay.
Listen: [I Gave My Love a Cherry] Recorded by Bob Hitchcock Dec. 2011. Performed by Richard L. Matteson Jr. on Nathan Hicks' dulcimer made in early 1930s. Performers: Richard L. Matteson Jr. -dulcimer, with Kara Pleasants- vocal, and Zach Matteson- fiddle, in December 2011.
R. Matteson 2012, 2014]
CONTENTS:
1. Child's Narrative and Ballad Texts (Child gives one text for both, the second is in a footnote)
2. Footnote (added at the end of Child's Narration)
3. Brief (Matteson)
ATTACHED PAGES (see left hand column):
1. Recordings & Info: "The Riddle Song" or "I Gave My Love a Cherry" / "Perrie Merrie"/"Go No More a-Rushing,"
A. Roud Number 330: Riddle Song (106 Listings)
B. 'The Riddle Song' and the Shepherds' Gifts
C. Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree- Gilchrist 1940
2. Sheet Music: "The Riddle Song" or "I Gave My Love a Cherry" / "Perrie Merrie" (Bronson's texts and some music examples)
3. US & Canadian Versions
4. English and Other Versions (Including Child's with additional notes)]
Child's Narrative
"....the two others in the following song, from a manuscript assigned to the fifteenth century, and also preserved in several forms by oral tradition: [1] Sloane Manuscript, No 2593, British Museum; Wright's Songs and Carols, 1836, No 8; as printed for the Warton Club, No xxix, p. 33.
I have a ȝong suster fer beȝondyn the se,
Many be the drowryis that che sente me.
Che sente me the cherye, withoutyn ony ston,
And so che dede [the] dowe, withoutyn ony bon.
Sche sente me the brere, withoutyn ony rynde,
Sche bad me love my lemman withoute longgyng.
How xuld ony eherye be withoute ston?
And how xuld ony dowe ben withoute bon?
How xuld any brere ben withoute rynde?
How xuld y love myn lemman without longyng?
Quan the cherye was a flour, than hadde it non ston;
Quan the dowe was an ey, than had de it non bon.
Quan the brere was onbred, than hadde it non rynd;
Quan the mayden haȝt that che lovit, che is without longyng.
Footnote 1. Halliwell's Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales, p. 150; Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes, No 375; Notes and Queries, 3d Ser., IX, 401; 4th Ser., III, 501, 604; Macmillan's Magazine, V, 248, by T. Hughes. The first of these runs:
[The Four Sisters]
I have four sisters beyond the sea,
Para-mara, dictum, domine
And they did send four presents to me.
Partum. quartum, paradise, tempum,
Para-mara, dictum, domine
The first it was a bird without eer a bone,
The second was a cherry without eer a stone.
The third it was a blanket without eer a thread,
The fourth it was a book which no man could read.
How can there be a bird without eer a bone?
How can there be a cherry without eer a stone?
How can there be a blanket without eer a thread?
How can there be a book which no man can read?
When the bird's in the shell, there is no bone;
When the cherry's in the bud, there is no stone.
When the blanket's in the fleece, there is no thread;
When the book's in the press, no man can read.
The Minnesinger dames went far beyond our laird's daughter in the way of requiring "ferlies" from their lovers. Der Tanhuser and Boppe represent that their ladies would he satisfied with nothing short of their turning the course of rivers; bringing them the salamander, the basilisk, the graal, Paris's apple; giving them a sight of Enoch and Elijah in the body, a hearing of the sirens, etc. Von der Hagen, Minnesinger, II, 91 f, 385 f.
Brief Description by Richard L. Matteson Jr.
Child introduces two riddle variants in his Narrative to ballad No. 46 Captain Wedderburn's Courtship. The first is the Riddle Song text from the Sloane Manuscript, No 2593, British Museum, dates back to the mid-1400s. The second variant appears in a footnote, Halliwell's nursery song, "I Have Four Sisters" also titled by the refrain, "Para-mara, Dictum, Domine". Usually there are four riddles in the variant versions with the answers supplied.
In the US and Canada, "The Riddle Song" is known as "I Gave My Love a Cherry" or sometimes under the English title, "I'll give my Love an Apple."
A different variant with similar riddles, is a nursery song found in the the US and British Isles with the "Para-mara, Dictum, Domine" (titled by Halliwell "The Four Sisters", as noted by Child above) or common "Perrie Merrie Dixie Domine" refrain.
"Go No More a-Rushing," is yet another old English variant. The melody and song date back to the early 1600s when, it became at some point, attached to the Riddle Song. Versions of "Go No More a-Rushing" attached to the Riddle Song with the standard four riddles, date back to 1800s.
There are three different melodies and songs plus the variants of these three songs.
Here's a more modern text of the Sloane Manuscript from James J. Wilhelm, Medieval Song: An Anthology of Hymns and Lyrics (George Allen & Unwin, 1971, pp. 359-60):
I HAVE A YONG SUSTER
I haue a yong suster
Fer beyonde the see,
Many be the drueries [presents]
That she sente me.
She sente me the cherry
Withouten any ston;
And so she did the dove
Withouten any bon.
She sente me te brere [rose-briar]
Withouten any rinde, [bark or in this case, thorn]
She bad me love my lemman [lover]
Withouten longginge.
How should any cherry
Be withouten ston?
And how should any dove
Be withouten bon?
How should any brere [briar]
Be withoute rinde? [thorn]
How should I love my lemman
Withouten longinge?
Whan the cherry was a flour,
Than hadde it no ston.
Whan the dove was an ey, [egg]
Than hadde it no bon.
Whan the brere was unbred [unborn, i.e. a seed]
Than hadde it no rinde. [thorn]
Whan the maid hath that she loveth
She is without longinge.
______________
I Have A Young Sister (translation from old English from Arthur's home Magazine: Volumes 7-8 - Page 224 (1856) [I've edited it]
I have a young sister,
Far beyond the sea;
Many are the presents
That she sent to me.
She sent me a cherry
Without any stone,
She sent me a dove
Without any bone
Without any thorns
She sent me a briar;
She bade me love my lover,
And that without desire.
How can a cherry
Be without a stone?
How can a dove
Be without a bone?
How can a briar
Be without a thorn?
And who e'er loved without desire,
Since true love first was born?
When the cherry was a blossom,
Then it had no stone;
When the dove was in the egg,
Then it had no bone;
When first the briar sprouted,
Never a thorn it bore;
And when a maiden has her lover,
Oh, then she longs no more.
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[Excerpt from: Susan Edmunds, (1985) The English riddle ballads, Durham theses, Durham University; Chapter 5.]
'Perry Merry Dictum' Texts.
The song was printed in 1848, in Halliwell's Nursery Songs and Rhymes, and the tradition by this time certainly see~to have centred around children, often the sole preservers of medieval traditions. Two of the earliest orally transmitted versions come from children's sources: the earlier of them, (iii), comes from a document belonging to Miss M. C. Meyer, who taught it to children in Forty Hall Infant School in Kent before l84J. The other (xii), from Oxford, 1860, is from an unusual source connected with children and undergraduates; in a letter to the librarian at the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, in 1932, Mr. G. H. Page enclosed a text of the song as he remembered it from his days in the St. John's College choir in the 1860s: it had been sung at a college gaudy, and the older boys in the choir had seized upon it, singing it in true communal style, with a soloist giving the verse line and the others joining in the chorus. Mr. Page supplies block chord harmony and suggests that they sang it in four parts. Despite their background, the choirboys provide one of the least convincing mock-Latin refrains:
Mere mere victus domine
Both text and tune are fragmented and Mr. Page adds that he never saw the song written down. The sister, or sisters, have by now disappeared, and from 1878, the date of publication of Mason's Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs (which probably did much to popularise and stabilise the song), they are replaced by brothers in most cases, the one exception being text (x) from Stratford-on-Avon (1914).
The text (vi) sent to Notes & Queries in 1866, which is allegedly from 'an aged country-woman', is almost certainly a literary forgery by someone who knew the Sloane text (which was published by Wright in 1856), since this is the only text which is at all close to the medieval song; moreover, the language is most unlike that of the average aged country-woman and includes lines such as:
Whoe'er loved without desire since first true love was born?
Even allowing for the fact that folksongs often employ an idiom foreign to that of normal speech[32], this seems very dubious, the more so as the riddles are identical to the Sloane riddles and unlike any contemporary texts.
Willa Muir believes 'Perry Merry Dictum' to have affiliations with game-song, and she likens it to the widespread one which, in its most archaic form, begins:
We are three Jews
Come out of Spain
To call upon your daughter Jane.[33]
She suggests that this has medieval origins; so too does another game-song close in subject-matter to 'Perry Merry Dictum', the 'Twelve Days of Christmas', which is found in both England and France and may have troubadour origins.
However, there is no direct evidence of 'Perry Merry Dictum' being used as a game-song. Songs which rely on a simple numerical structure are not restricted to gamesongs, or indeed to children: the carol 'The Joys of Mary', in which the numbers vary from five to twelve, was possibly composed as a Franciscan mnemonic.[34] Even more venerable in tradition is the song 'Green Grow the Rushes 0', sometimes known as 'The Twelve Apostles' or 'The Ten Commandments', which probably began life as a Hebrew religious rhyme, each number having religious, and often obscure, associations.[35]
In assigning a separate gift to each of four brothers, or sisters, then, the singers of 'Perry Merry Dictum' were following a well-established habit of traditional song. The riddles themselves had changed a little since the fifteenth century: the dove without a bone became the more mundane chicken; the cherry remained the same; the 'brer' and the 'leman' disappeared, and two different riddles took their place: the blanket without a thread (in the fleece) and the book no man has read (in the press). Both religious and sexual overtones persist, however, for the book is in some cases a Bible, possibly a Protestant reworking of the 'leman,' which would only have a religious meaning in Catholic tradition; the blanket is analogous to the 'mantle without
weft' of 'Captain Wedderburn's Courtship', and to the many mantles and cloths made of mysterious material or with mysterious origins in popular tradition, which have medieval origins.[36] The fleece, or the dew on Gideon's fleece, was another traditional religious symbol, again linking the Annunciation with the Incarnation.(37)
The most mysterious feature of the 'Perry Merry Dictum' group is the refrain itself; the words vary slightly (see Appendix E), but none can be translated into anything recognizable. The closest possibility seems to be a refrain from the carol (Greene 374): 'Farce michi, Domine'. Other phrases which may have been in mind are 'Dixit Dominus' and 'Benedictus Dominus'. There are many other examples of parody Latin, or Latin used in absurd contexts, such as the drinking song from Sloane 2593, 'Omnes gentes Plaudite':
I saw myny bryddis setyn on a tre;
He tokyn here fleyt and flowyn away,
With Ego dixi, have good day! ( .. ') XXV111
An example of a complete poem in dog-Latin is the poem attributed to William Drummond, 'Nymphae quae colitis highissima manta Fifaea'[38]. However, all such examples are by authors who understood Latin, and who belonged to an earlier period when Latin was either still used in Church services or still in living memory. The text of 'Perry Merry Dictum' was first recorded in 1838 and the most likely explanation of the mock Latin is as an uneducated gesture to acknowledge the age of the song and to produce an imitation of an archaic Latin refrain.
Niles' text (xiv) bears his usual individual marks in both text and tune, for example in the spelling of the refrain (see Appendix E), but it is probably based on a genuine tradition in Ohio, since it is close to a more reliable text from the same state {xvii).
Tunes in this group are all closely related, except for the fragment from Mr. Page (xii), and this might be a worn-down version of Miss Aimer's tune (x) The tunes are melodically simple, perhaps because of the influence of children, the most rudimentary being that of Charles Muchler (xiii), which is based on the first three notes of the major scale, and which seems, with its monotonous refrain line, to be the musical counterpart of the pseudo-Latin words, imitating the intonation of an ecclesiastical chant. The Mason tune (vii") has the same repetitive refrain, but is embellished with an unexpected and unusual octave leap in the fourth line of text; singers of ballads rarely use the octave as a decoration, but usually as a means of shaping a phrase.
Most decorative of all the tunes in this group, however, is the Oklahoma version (xx), where the basic melody is adorned
with slurred passing-notes (bars 2-4) and the tonal centre of the third line is transposed a tone higher, giving more variety and movement to the tune.
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[Excerpt from: Susan Edmunds, (1985) The English riddle ballads, Durham theses, Durham University; Chapter 5. ]
'Riddle Song' Texts.
The second stream of tradition which seems to flow from the Sloane MS. text is the group of texts which are often entitled 'Riddle Song'. The features which distinguish this group from the 'Perry Merry Dictum' types are, firstly, the inclusion of different riddles; the transference from brother/sister relationships to lover relationships; different tunes and, where there are any, different refrains. The fact that the two types are included under separate headings in Mason's Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs, where there is no attempt normally to print more than one version of a song, indicates that the two were regarded as separate songs.
The basic structure, however, is the same, and the riddles of the cherry and the chicken remain unaltered. There has been some borrowing between the two types, as might be expected, and the Mason text (iv) uses the book and blanket riddles from 'Perry Merry Dictum.' Most commonly, however, the third and fourth riddles are the ring (or thimble) without end (or rim) -when it's rolling or melting; and the baby with no crying- when it's sleeping (or 'agetting'). With these riddles, and with the opening formula 'I gave my love', or 'My love gave me', the song moves to the sexual side of the religious-sexual duality it showed in the fifteenth century; it has clearly become a love-song. This is manifested also in a number of developments: firstly, in two American texts (xiii,xxi), the riddle is more explicitly romanticised: the ring becomes a 'story without end', which is 'the story of our love', or 'the story that I love you.' J. B. Toelken, however, finds another 'anatomical referent' here, taking the phrase 'a ring with no end' to be a symbol of female virginity.[39] Secondly, there is the development of an additional riddle sequence: the apple without a core (head); the house without a door (mind); the palace that can be unlocked without a key (heart). This is found intact in (ii,iii,viii and xxii); it is found partially in (vi) where it has a less romantic twist:
I'll get my love a home, wherein she may be,
Where she may be kept fast, without any key.
These additional riddles seem to have made their first printed appearance in broadsides of the early nineteenth century: the Opies mention a song-sheet printed by Pitts in c.1830;[40] and the new riddles are found embedded in an oddly strung together medley of the same title, printed as a slip-sheet by J. Jennings of Fleet Street, who was one of the smaller printers used by Pitts. (See App.E, 'Riddle Song' ii).
At least two other songs are recognizable in this slip-sheet: one of them is the Irish song, 'The Boys of Kilkenny', from which a complete stanza is transplanted:
Kilkenny is a fine place and shines where it stands
The more I look upon it the more my heart's won
Was I at Kilkenny I should think myself at home,
For there I've got a true love, but here I've got none
This stanza immediately precedes the riddle sequence. The opening of the song is an incoherent jumble of lines and phrases from songs of courtship, with a passing reference to 'Bushes and Briars':
Over hills and lofty mountains, long time I have been,
Through bushes and briars by myself alone,
Through bushes and briars, being void of all care,
Over hills and lofty mountains for the loss of my dear,
'Tis not your long absence I value a straw,
But to leave my dearest jewel, the girl I adore,
There's nothing will grieve or trouble my mind
But to leave my dearest jewel sweet Kilkenny behind.
At the end of the riddle sequence, which is perfectly coherent, the song reverts to a jumble of commonplaces:
So you lords and dukes of high renown,
Kings, princes, or emperors, or any of you all,
The King can but love you and I do the same,
I will call you a sheperdess and I'll be your fond swain.
It would seem that the purpose of these extra, transplanted lines was solely to eke out the song to a standard broadside
length; in terms of narrative or poetic content they are as irrelevant as the woodcut of an elegant mansion house at the head of the broadside (unless this was intended as a representation of the 'house without a door' or the 'palace without a key'). No tune is suggested for this version; the words would not fit 'Bushes and Briars', 'The Boys of Kilkenny', or any of the known tunes for the 'Riddle Song' without a great deal of rescanning. Nevertheless, the song evidently found its way into the oral tradition, for the text collected from J. Burrows of Sherborne, Dorset, by Hammond in 1906, not only has the 'apple' riddle sequence, but also two stanzas from a version of 'The Boys of Kilkenny', close, but not identical, to the stanza in the Jennings copy: (viii)
As I was a walking one morning in June
Down by some pleasant riverside by myself all alone
But there is one thing more still runs in my mind
To think I should leave Kilkenny behind
Kilkenny is a fine place it lies in the west
And when I think on it, it lies on my breast,
But now I am in London Obt so far from my home
In Kilkenny I've a true love, but here I have none.
Moreover, although there is no mention of 'Bushes and Briars', the tune taken down by Hammond, a very melodious Aeolian air, is reminiscent of the Essex tune of 'Bushes and Briars' in its leaps of a seventh and the cadences at the end of the second and fourth lines, especially at the end of the second line where the cadence is followed by a rise to the fifth of the scale, also found in the Essex song. This tune would easily fit the broadside text. Thus the broadside 'Captain Wedderburn's Courtship' was not the last attempt of the broadside publishers to graft the 'Riddle Song' onto another framework.
The American text (xxii) is almost identical with the broadside copy for the apple sequence, but has no hint of the 'Kilkenny' version, and the tune is not related to any of the others. It seems very likely that a 'Riddle' broadside was the origin of this text.
The riddle of the head as a building is not uncommon; Archer Taylor gives nine examples in his collection of English Riddles from Oral Tradition( 4l), such as this American one:
A large theatre has two windows upstairs, two windows downstairs, a large door with white people, a red stag.
All Taylor's examples are concerned with physical detail; romantic metaphors are perhaps too delicate to survive alone in the oral riddle tradition. One is found in another song, 'The Keys of Heaven', which in some versions contains the stanza:
I 1 ll give you the keys of my heart
That we may marry and never part.[42]
The third major addition to the basic riddle sequence found in this group is the four-line refrain, occurring in four English texts, and which comes from another song:
Go no more a-rushing, maids, in May;
Go no more a-rushing, maids, I pray;
Go no more a-rushing, or you'll fall a-blushing,
Bundle up your rushes and haste away.
Bronson notes that the song, which is printed in Chappell's Popular Music of Olden Time, was found in a manuscript of pieces by William Byrd. 'Rushing' , also called 'rush bearing' is the custom of decorating the church with garlands of flowers and rushes, after a festival procession and a short service; it seems to have been most prevalent in the north of England, and especially in the north west, where Wordsworth had some influence in the preservation of the custom. It occurred annually, usually at the dedication or the patronal saint's day, and the festivities resembled Mayday or Whitsun celebrations. Once again, there is a convergence of religious and sexual connotations, for, as the refrain suggests, 'rushing' took on a euphemistic meaning and appears more explicitly in other songs such as 'The Bonny Bunch of Rushes Green.'[43]
The rush-bearing song, however, does not seem to have become popular in modern times, and so the two songs probably
combined in the Elizabethan period, when it seems that they might both have been dance-songs. Charles Read Baskervill,
in his study of the Elizabethan jig, writes that dance-songs in which a wooer offers gifts to win a wife, enacting the narrative as in a game-song, were in the sixteenth century a popular convention, and the subject of several sixteenth and seventeenth century burlesques.[44] He uses as an illustration the 'Keys of Heaven' song mentioned above.
The earliest 'Riddle Song' text is set to a dance tune, to which the words have been subjugated; this is the text (i) from the mid-seventeenth century song-book belonging to Edinburgh University, which contains songs by J. Wilson, W. Lawes and H. Burman, among others; there is what appears to be a companion MS. in the Bodleian collection (Mus.d.238), in the same hand.[45] The tune printed with Barrett's text(vii) is of the same style and idiom as the seventeenth century tune, and allegedly comes from oral sources, but the first half of the tune is identical to 'Tell me, Daphne', in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book[46]. Since Barrett was an early music scholar as well as a folksong collector, it is possible that there was some borrowing or polishing here, but other tunes from the Fitzwilliam book also appear orally.
Nevertheless, in the absence of more complete evidence, it seems possible that the 'Riddle Song' took on its character in the Elizabethan period and as a dance-song, thus swerving away from the medieval tradition which is preserved more closely in 'Perry Merry Dictum' texts. There are two features, however, which link it to the Sloane text where the 'Perry Merry' texts differ: firstly, the final phrase of the last riddle, 'without mourning', or 'without crying', echo the line in the Sloane text, 'Sche bad me love my lemman wythoute longgynge', although this may be pure coincidence. Secondly, the riddle of the oak without
a limb, which occurs in the Baring-Gould text, (v), recalls the 'brer' without bark. It also gives a better rhyme for the last two riddles, since in this case the ring is a 'ring without a rim', and the answer, 'when it's melting'. There may have been a gradual change in the third riddle from 'rynde' to 'rim', followed by a rationalisation which produced a 'ring' riddle. Baring-Gould might himself have been responsible for the introduction of the 'oak' riddle, either by coincidence or by conscious imitation of the
medieval text.
The texts of the 'Riddle Song' group have attracted a wide variety of tunes, some of which are identifiable as belonging also to other songs. The tunes marked A in the Appendix are similar in melodic idiom and shape, but are not directly related, except for the identity between (i) and (vii) which has been already mentioned. Tune B (viii) has also been mentioned as bearing similarities to 'Bushes and Briars'; however, Lucy Broadwood saw a kinship of this tune with a 'Celtic' one from Antrim, while Annie Gilchrist found a resemblance in the opening bars to a version of 'Glenlogie'[49]. This illustrates the difficulty of identifying relationships between tunes; melodic formulae may be so common that they cannot be used alone as evidence of a 'family'; they are merely a part of the melodic apparatus available.
Tune C, however, has more than a passing resemblance to the tune 'The Bold Princess Royal'[50] the two tunes differ only markedly in the last line.
Tunes marked E, like the A tunes, are not directly related, but bear similarities in idiom and in their simple melodic range and habit. The only true 'tune family' for the 'Riddle Song' is the group D; tunes in this group seem to be found only with this song, and have become the standard modern American and English song-book melody. Tunes designated DD have apparently been influenced by D tunes, but are not full members of the family; (xiv), for example, has turned the ABBA form of the tune inside our, with two new and distinctive lines, which end on the dominant, so that the new form is BACD. (xi) looks as if it might have originated as a harmony for the standard D tune