A Contamination in "Lord Randal"- Archer Taylor 1931
A Contamination in "Lord Randal"
by Archer Taylor
Modern Philology, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Aug., 1931), pp. 105-107
A CONTAMINATION IN "LORD RANDAL"
In its first stanzas the A text of "Lord Randal" exhibits a striking incongruity:
1. O where ha you been, Lord Randal, my son?
And where ha you been, my handsome young man?
I ha been at the greenwood; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie down.
2. An wha met ye there, Lord Randal, my son?
An wha met you there, my handsome young man?
O I met wi my true-love; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi huntin, an fain wad lie down.
3. And what did she give you, Lord Randal, my son?
And what did she give you, my handsome young man?
Eels fried in a pan; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi huntin, an fain wad lie down.
4. And wha gat your leavins, Lord Randal, my son?
And wha gat your leavins, my handsome young man?
My hawky and my hounds; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie down.
5. And what becam of them, Lord Randal, my son?
And what becam of them, my handsome young man?
They stretched their legs out an died; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi huntin, and fain wad lie down.[1]
It seems scarcely probable that the hero should have met his truelove while he was hunting and have dined with her. Our suspicion that the text is disordered in some way is confirmed by the examination of the parallels. Both the B text and the G text regularize the situation by declaring that the hero has been courting or wooing, but they fail to supply an explanation for the presence of the dogs. We cannot suppose that the A text represents a corruption of the B and G texts. Rather the reverse is true: B and G endeavor to bring order into the confused situation.
We can then ask ourselves: Is the confusion in A the survival of something which the singers have not fully remembered or does this confusion arise from the contamination of two themes? If the confusion in A is a survival, we may find somewhere sufficient traces of the original situation to set things right.
For we have an abundance of texts of "Lord Randal" in many languages- Italian, German, Hungarian, Danish, Swedish, and what not. A few texts, moreover, are even older than English A of 1710. Somewhere, then, we should find an indication of the original situation of which, ex hypothesi, the incongruity in English A might be a survival. Now, whatever the differences in all these texts in the various languages may be, the texts agree on one point:
there is no meeting with the truelove in the greenwood. There are therefore two conceivable explanations of the greenwood in English A:
(1) the greenwood has vanished from every text but English A and its congeners or
(2) English A has borrowed the greenwood from some other ballad. Thus far all indications favor the second explanation, but they are negative rather than positive.
We must look for some reason to believe that English A is a contaminated ballad. Mention of the greenwood is a commonplace of English balladry.[2] Many of the Robin Hood ballads begin with conventional introductions, as for example:
In summer time, when leaves grow green,
And flowers are fresh and gay,
Robin Hood and his merry men
Were disposed to play.[3]
As is well known, we find the origin of this convention in medieval art poetry, conspicuously illustrated by the French reverdie. It enjoyed high favor in the ballads which circulated before 1700, but has now fallen into disuse and persists only in ballads of the older sort. Mention of visiting the greenwood occurs likewise in such ballads with a long history as "Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight," "Tam Lin," and "Hind Etin." A striking parallel to "Lord Randal" is found in the extremely corrupt ballad of "The King's Dochter Lady Jean." Here we have the visit to the greenwood, the command to make the bed-
O sister, sister, mak my bed,
O the clean sheets and strae,
O sister, sister, mak my bed,
Down in the parlour below [4] -
and the death of the chief actor. The texts are so few and so corrupted that we cannot hope to bring order into them. But we can safely deduce that the visit to the greenwood was a conventional formula, capable of uniting with a theme very similar to that of "Lord Randal." In the chaotic state of "The King's Dochter Lady Jean" we dare not say that it was the source of the contamination of "Lord Randal." It does prove that contamination must be reckoned with in interpreting "Lord Randal."
There is a certain interest and value in thus demonstrating the presence of a contamination in the oldest text of "Lord Randal." A much greater importance, I think, attaches to the fact as an evidence of the condition of all our ballad texts. What is true of "Lord Randal" is true, mutatis mutandis, of other ballads. Contamination is no new factor in ballad study, but it is unusually interesting and significant to find it in so old and important a ballad.
ARCHER TAYLOR
UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Footnotes:
1 Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballad., I, 157-58, No. 12A.
2. Bernhard Fehr (Die formelhaften Elemente in den alien englischen Balladen [Basel diss.; Berlin, 19001, pp. 65-66) gives less on this point than one would expect, but probably some material is to be found in the unpublished portion of his work dealing with introductory formulas.
3. "Robin Hood and the Curtal Friar" (Child, op. cit., III, 124, No. 123B). See further Nos. 116, 118, 119, 121, 122, 127, 148.
4 "The King's Dochter Lady Jean," A, stanza 13 (Child, op. cit., I, 451).