Beau Lamkin- Clough (VT-NH) 1957 Flanders H
[From Flanders; Ancient Ballads, 1961, notes by Coffin follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
Lamkin (Child 93)
Although child printed twenty-six versions of "Lamkin" and although it is still known in British-American tradition, the story of the revengeful mason who murders a woman and child because he has not been paid is much the same wherever it is found. The fact that the crime is so weakly motivated has made scholars suspect much of the plot to be lost. Phillips Barry (see JAF, LII, 70-74) offers an appealing explanation in connection with the "False Linfinn" text (Flanders B) collected in Maine. "The Linfinn" was Irish for "the white man who lives by the Stream," the outcast who was a leper forced to live alone. A cure for leprosy could be had through the blood of an innocent human collected in a silver container, and this fact offers a real motive for the crime. Barry felt that the identification of Linfinn with masonry came later, possibly because Irish masons had a recipe for making cement with blood. However, other scholars have identified the name Lamkin as a Flemish form of Lambert and noted that Flemish masons were well-known in Britain in the Middle Ages. In America, one Virginia informant noted by Arthur K. Davis in his Traditional Ballads of Virginia (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), 357, claimed there had been a love affair between the lady and the mason prior to the opening of the story. Whatever the answer, the crime seems rather extreme as a retaliation for failure to pay a debt.
Flanders A has the false window built by the irate mason (Child E), and A, B, and C contain the offer of the daughter's hand as a bribe (Child F, T, X). In D1, D2, E, and F only gold is proffered. A, B, D1, D2, and F include the basin of blood, and all the Flanders texts find the false nurse or maid executed with Lamkin at the end. These points generally ally the New England tradition printed here with the Child B, C, F group and the material discussed in Barry, British Ballads from Maine, 203-6, although the Flanders H fragment, where the nurse actually lets the murderer in, recalls the Child A story. For other discussions and bibliography, start with Coffin, 94-96 (American); Dean-Smith, 83 (English); and Greig and Keith, 7l-72 (Scottish). The Flanders G text, "Tumkin" (Tom King), with its relationship to Dick Turpin legends, is interesting, if hard to explain.
All of the tunes for Child 93 are members of the same family. The Moses and Delorme tunes are slightly removed from the rest, the Delorme tune being related primarily at the first line. For melodic relationship to the entire group, see FCB4, 74-76 (a11 tunes for Child 93); Sharp 1, 202, 204, 205; EO, 59; DV, 583, No. 26 (B); BES, 201 (especially related to the Delorme tune); and GCM, 313 (distant).
H. Beau Lamkin. The following is a copy of lines written down by Louise Rogers Clough (Mrs. O. F.) of Poultney, Vermont, and mailed, to H. H. F. They represent stanzas of a ballad recalled, by Mrs. Clough and her mother, Harriet Jane Burdick Rogers (100 years old), originally learned from Mrs. Rogers' grandmother, Cynthia Morgan, who was born in Poultney, Vermont. Both Mrs. Clough and her mother were born in Mitford, New Hampshire. Mrs. Clough very much wanted to know the story involved in these verses. H. H. F., Collector; November 12, 1957.
One day as the lord was gone from his home,
Who should be so bold as Beau Lamkin to come:
He knock-ed and knock-ed, and knock-ed again.
Who was so ready as the false nurse to let him in.
They pricked that little baby and pricked him again.
They pricked that little baby with a silver bodkin.
"He will not be soothed by breast milk or pap,
So come down, my fair lady, and hold him on your lap."
When the lord came home and opened the door,
He saw his son and lady lie dead on the floor.
Beau Lamkin he was hung on a gallows so high;
The false nurse she was burnt in a fire close by.