English Riddle Ballads- Child 45 - Edmunds 1985
[Excerpt from: Susan Edmunds, (1985) The English riddle ballads, Durham theses, Durham University; Chapter 5. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7574/
Edmunds included the extant versions in Appendix D at the bottom of this article. For some reason Edmunds does not list the version published by Kittredge in the 1908 JAFL from Massachusetts.
R. Matteson 2014]
CHAPTER FIVE: 'KING JOHN AND THE BISHOP' (CHILD 45)
This is one of the most famous of English broadside ballads, with copies in at least ten of the existing broadside collections. Taking its plot from a well-known folk tale, it began its life as a minstrel ballad in the sixteenth century, and is still sung in modern times in America. Only two texts seem to have been found in Scotland, and none in Ireland, and this is presumably because the story is, in the ballad version, concerned with an English political situation which would have no relevance in the other British countries.
(i) The Oxford text
The sixteenth century text was discovered only fifty years ago, by Professor Carleton Brown, and was published by Roberta D. Cornelius in 1931. The manuscript is contained in the second of four volumes of Collectanea compiled by Brian Twyne, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, who died in 1644. The collection brings together many separate items from diverse sources, such as college affairs, a chronicle of Abingdon monastery, a treatise on the analysis of dreams, and excerpts from the works of Roger Bacon. The only other item on the page with the ballad is a Latin text, much abridged, of an apocryphal life of Judas, based on the Legend Aurea.
The ballad is written in two hands, the second taking it up from line 128 on the verso, and adding a section of six lines that were omitted by the first scribe (36-41). A third hand has given the ballad an erroneous title, 'A Tale of Henry ye J. and ye Archb. of Canterb.,' which accounts for the late discovery of the text; the error, as Roberta Cornelius points ont, is due to the lines 5-8, where the syntax is confusing:
King rycherd ye fyrste was brother indead
and henry the therd dyd hem succead
This K. (as the story sayth for certaytye)
was greeyed with the byshipe of canterburye.
There are two cancellations in the manuscript, following lines 45 and 100. Both of these occur where there is a repetition in the text, and Roberta Cornelius has taken this to be a suggestion that the scribe was writing from memory, or from dictation. However, this is not conclusive, for if the scribe was copying another text, his eye could easily have slipped to another section of this repetitive ballad.
Whether the scribe was writing from a copy or from an oral source, the text certainly seems to bear the marks of oral transmission. It is written in rhymed couplets which generally, but not always, fall into groups of two couplets; the irregularity suggests perhaps that the text was not sung but recited, and three and a half centuries later there is still evidence of the text being treated as a recitation and not as a song. (See x). There are several repeated formulae, ranging from short phrases to longer sections of the text, which reinforce the structure of the story, and would also help the minstrel to collect his thoughts before proceeding to a new part of the plot. The phrase 'without leasing', for example, is a useful line-filler and occurs at lines l-.5, 19 and 80, rhyming in each case with 'King'. Formulae are often built around a rhyme, a rhyming couplet being more memorable than a single line. The rhyming oppositional pair 'sad-glad' occurs twice (60-61; 70-71). More important structurally, the couplet in which the Bishop (or Shepherd as Bishop) defends his expenditure occurs three times (23-24; 36-37; 109-107):
... I wysh it were knowene
I spend nothing but godes end my owne
The first time they occur, these lines are spoken by the Bishop to the messenger; the second time, by the Bishop to the King. Thus the third occurrence, where they are spoken by the shepherd to the King, reinforces the disguise theme. The same is true of the couplet 31-32, repeated at 99-100, which describes the Bishop and the Shepherd-as-Bishop kneeling before the King. On a larger scale, the riddles themselves are repeated, which completes the pairing of Bishop and Shepherd-as-Bishop. By the accumulation of repeated elements, the two episodes of the Bishop/ Shepherd-as-Bishop arriving at court and being set riddles are thus paired, and together they form the central interest in the story, around which the other episodes are arranged. This basic structure is preserved in most of the later versions of the ballad, although in some, a third section is added between the two main sections, in which the Bishop relates the questions to the shepherd on his arrival home. (See Appendix D). This
firm, balanced structure has presumably been responsible for the stability of the ballad through the four centuries of its history, although the influence of print must also have greatly contributed to this.
(ii) The Percy Folio text
The nearest relation to the Oxford text is the text found in the Percy Folio of around c.1650, the 'curious Old Manuscript' belonging to Humphrey Pitt of Shifnal which was rescued from oblivion by Thomas Percy and used as the basis of his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry. The most striking difference between the text of 'King John and the Bishop' in the Oxford and the Folio texts is in the description of the King's character. In the Oxford text, this is as follows:
I read in a story I can shew you anone
Of a noble prince they called K. Jhon
was borne in England a princ of great myght
for he put downe wroynge & held vp right (1-- 4)
The corresponding lines in the Percy MS are:
Off an ancient story Ile tell you anon
Of a notable· prince that was called King Iohn
In England was borne, with maine and with might,
Hee did much wrong and maintained little right. (1 - 4)
This is the normal reading, found in most of the subsequent texts, and by the eighteenth century at least, it was the popular view of John, as witnessed by the editor of the Collection of Old Ballads attributed to Ambrose Phillips, of 1723:
He is recorded as a very cruel and unjust Prince. To the clergy he was an inveterate Foe; for he seized their lands and revenues, put many to death, and forced the rest to fly. . . [1]
From the portrayal of John's character in the remainder of the ballad, either the Oxford or the Percy MS reading could make sens~. He is jealous and threatens arbitrary violence; yet he is good-humoured and generous towards both shepherd and Bishop after the deception has been revealed, a fact which the editor of A Collection points out as a breach of verisimilitude, and an indication that the ballad was originally not about John at all. John certainly could have inherited this dual personality from the dramatic demands of the folktale, but it is not far removed from what seems to have been his actual political character, and it is certainly true to the controversy over his reign which raged in the sixteenth century, at the time when the ballad was composed.
The events of John's turbulent reign (1199 -1216) were easily adaptable to either Protestant or Papist argument: he was the first English King to make a stand against the Pope; yet at the threat of deposition he retracted, subjecting his nation to Papal control. It would be difficult to make him a hero, as is shown by Bale's play King Johan, but he was not an out and out villain. Contemporary sources are ambiguous: Giraldus Cambrensis, for example, comments wryly on the King's duplicity towards the Church but is not openly hostile. In the sixteenth century, Holinshed maintains a sympathetic view of John's character, but he notes that he was:
Somewhat cruell of nature, as by the writers of his time he is noted, and not so hardie as doubtfull in time of perill and danger. . . he was a great and mighty prince, but yet not verie fortunate . . . [2]
Even the ardently Protestant author of the play, The Troublesome Raigne (1591) was unable to make a straightforward hero of the King; in the words of the character Lewis, he is forced to concede that,
England is England, yielding good and bad,
And John of England is as other Johns.[3]
John Bale had fewer qualms than most. In his violently anti-Papist play King Johan (1538 - 60), the character of Veritas proclaims,
I assure ye, fryndes, lete men wryte what they will,
Kynge Johan was a man both valeaunt and godlye.
What though Polydorus reporteth him very yll
At the suggestyons of the malicyouse clergy?[4]
He then produces a list of nine historians more sympathetic towards John, but not all of these are in fact as complimentary
as Bale suggests: Hector Boece, for example, comments that the King showed himself to be a reasonable man over the
issue of the Papal Interdict, but he also remarks in strong terms on his avarice, and writes that the nobility rose against him,
For to remeid the wrang and greit injure,
that he had wrocht baith agane riche and puir[5].
Another of Bale's supposedly sympathetic sources, John Major, also notes the less attractive traits of the King's nature,
calling him,
That far from worthy king of the English[6]
Bale identifies King John with Henry VIII as a champion of the English Protestant cause, and this was a common comparison.
He was also likened to Elizabeth, as in the homily 'Against Disobedience and Wylfull Rebellion', which would have been read out in parish churches from the 1571 Book of Homilies.
Thus the author of the Oxford text of 'King John' would have had a political, as well as antiquarian, interest in his material. It seems unnecessary to press the origins of the ballad further back than the estimated date of the manuscript (1550-70), when such an interest would have been so topical, and it is unlikely to have been made before the 1530's, when Henry VIII began his fight against the Papacy. The portrayal of King John as a 'prince of great might', a phrase which echoes Holinshed, would have been a fashionable view.
As to the identity of the Bishop, if an individual was in mind, the obvious historical candidate would have been Archbishop Stephen Langton, whose consecration in 1207 marked the beginning of the conflict between King and Pope. Bale's play features Langton as the vice Sedicyon, but there seems to be no link between the vice and the ballad Bishop, and although the antiquarian Bale knew of Langton, his name may well have been forgotten by the general public by the sixteenth century. The events of the ballad story are not unfitting to the real relations between John and Langton, however, which developed from open hostility to an uneasy alliance. The ballad Bishop tells the shepherd that he will 'fle into France', and from 1207 to 1213 Langton did in fact live mostly at the Cistercian foundation at Pontigny, having been forbidden by John to take up his see. However, France was an obvious refuge for a persecuted bishop, much used in John's reign. It is possible that the ballad composer had Langton in mind, but his portrayal of a merry, pleasure loving cleric could be derived from popular stereotype.
There is, however, another candidate. Several of the nobility of Henry VIII's reign boasted huge households, with which the King had to compete, and none was more ostentatious than that of Cardinal Wolsey, who entertained 400 guests at
one sitting at Hampton Court, where his staff numbered over 100.[7] Although this was not the chief reason for his downfall
in 1529, when his estates were seized, to the public it was the most obvious reason for his unpopularity. It may be that the ballad maker was referring to the disgraced Cardinal, at least in the motive for the King's displeasure.
The Percy Folio text, then seems to be a deliberate reversal of the sixteenth century view of John, and this is in keeping with other satirical pieces in the manuscript.[8]
The text of the ballad, like the Oxford text, is in couplets, but not regularly in four-line stanzas; however, the irregularities occur at different points in the two texts. The narrative structure remains essentially the same, with a few additions and one omission (D in Appendix D). There is a confused passage (sts. 36-8) where the shepherd's refusal to serve his master precedes the offer of a reward; in the older text, the order is reversed to make more sense. The Folio text is in general of a lower standard of verse, being more repetitive and rambling; instead of marking time with formulae, as in the Oxford text, the author fills in with verbose paraphrases and flat comments. He makes too much use of the half-line 'without any doubt,' which occurs six times. The conclusion is also weak; after six lines which reiterate the story, the author is still unable to make an end, and trails off in mild amazement:
I neuer hard of his fellow before.
Nor neuer shall: now I need so say noe more.
I neuer knew shepeard that gott such a liuing
But David, the shepeard, that was a king.[9]
The two texts together show the great difference between repetition used well and badly. In (i), repetition emphasises form and helps to consolidate the story; in (ii), it loosens the text and gives the impression of a lack of control of the narrative structure.
The precise nature of Percy's Folio manuscript is not clear, but David Fowler suggests that it was compiled 'during the twilight of minstrelsy in a somewhat nostalgic spirit'.[10] Thus, it contains a good selection of the minstrel repertoire, but is unlikely to have been compiled by a professional, since the profession was by 1650 virtually obsolete in England. The weakness of style in the ballad may therefore be attributed to an amateur imitation of an old-fashioned style.
Broadside versions
A. Early ballad versions of the story (not included in Appendix D)
The verbosity and improvisatory style of the Folio text seem to owe nothing to the influence of print, but by 1650 there was already a broadside version of the tale published. This was the ballad sheet dated 1642 and printed for Wright, Clarke, Thackeray and Passinger.[11] Although the substance of this composition is the same as that of the minstrel versions, the author has made of it a completely different text, well-polished, compact, with no repetitions even o£ the riddles. It is entitled, 'The King and the Bishop: or, Unlearned men hard matters out can find, When learned Bishops miss the mark, and Princes eyes do blind', and is directed to be sung to the tune of 'Chevy Chase', one of the most commonly used broadside ballad tunes.
The King in this ballad is not John but 1 old Henry'. Despite its neatness, the broadside lacks the impact of the Oxford ballad; the story has lost its compelling rhythm and, without this, the verses are unmemorable. No oral versions of this ballad have been found.
The story must have remained in demand, however, perhaps because of the appeal emphasized in the sub-title, the triumph
of the lowly man over the great. In about 1682, another working of the story into ballad form was printed for the same group of publishers, with a different title, 'The Old Abbot and King Olfrey', and a different tune, 'The Shaking of the Sheets'. There are two separate tunes of this name, of which the one connected with the ballad seems to be the irregular sixteenth century air, first printed in William Ballet's Lute Book of 1600. According to Bronson, references to the tune are common in the second half of the sixteenth century,[12] indicating that the tune was in vogue then, but this does not mean that it would not still be in currency in the next century. The stanza form of the ballad is unusual, to conform to the tune:
In old times past there was a king, we read, was bountiful in each degree,
That gave rewards to each Subject's need, so orderly as it might be,
And kept his Princely Pallaty,
In every kingly quality,
Maintaining hospitality.[13]
Despite the garbled form of 'Principality,' which might on its own imply an oral version, the general style of the text is literary and clumsily worked to fit the tune, with lines such as,
No, I am but his Brother, God wot, in field which after his sheep do trot (1.59)
It seems unlikely that the ballad was taken from any singing tradition, although it may well have been a reworking of a known broadside.
The identity of 'Olfrey' is obscure, and has been the subject of some minor controversy in the eighteenth century, when there was a strong antiquarian interest in the ballad. Francis Wise, in 1738, claimed that the original must have been King Alfred, and that 'modern bards' transferred the ballad to John; this claim was attacked in 1740 by one Mr. Bumphrey, in a shilling quarto entitled 'The Impertinence and Imposture of Modern Antiquaries Displayed', to which Wise duly responded in 1741.[14] The editor of the 1723 Collection of Old Ballads suggested Offa as the original King. Another possibility is that 'Olfrey' is a corruption, or a wild misprint, for 'Old Henry', the subject of the 1642 broadside. In any case, the name occurs only in the
title, and cannot be used in any way as an indication of the date of the ballad.
These two seventeenth century broadsides, though using the same story as the manuscript texts and the later Brooksby broadside, are unrelated in any other way and are therefore not included in the Appendix for this chapter (Appendix D).
A. The Brooksby broadside (iii)
The broadside text of the story which passed into the oral singing tradition was the black-letter copy printed for P. Brooksby at the Golden Ball, Pye Corner, which dates it between 1672 and 1695. It is entitled, 'A New Ballad of King John and the Abbot of Canterbury,' to be sung to the tune of 'The King and the Lord Abbot.' As Bronson remarks, the adjective 'new' means little in broadside jargon, but the mention of a tune with a different title from any of the known texts does suggest that in this case there was another older ballad, as well as the two discussed above, from which this version, and possibly the two others, were
derived. The tune is found in D'Urfey's Pills to Purge Melancholy of 1719-20; it has a distinctive form with the famous 'Derry down' refrain, and would not fit any of the surviving earlier texts.
Textually, the Brooksby broadside is unrelated to the two earlier versions of the tale, although the story is the same. However, it does closely resemble the Folio text (ii), combining the rhythmic balance of the two minstrel versions with the verbal neatness of the two unrelated broadsides. Some archaic forms in the Folio are found here modernized, such as the substitution of 'steed' for 'stead' in the fifth stanza. The rambling descriptions of the Folio text are absent from the broadside, and the common formula, 'Sad news, sad news, I have thee to give,' appears in stanza 10. All these factors point to a popular text being adapted to suit the broadside format. All unnecessary journeyings and comments are omitted, as is the prolix end to the earlier versions. In this new format, the ballad evidently pleased its audience; copies were printed throughout the eighteenth century and can be found in many of the existing broadside collections.[15] The tune was used in at least a hundred other songs,[16] and was included in the second edition of Gay's Beggar's Opera and in eleven other ballad operas from 1728 to 1749. The first line of the text, 'I'll tell you a story, a story anon', became a cliche for eighteenth century satirists to seize upon: a satire attributed to Swift, for example, on the Archbishop of Armagh, Hugh Bolton, begins 'I'll tell you a story, a story most merry'.[17]
It is not possible to give a definite chronological order to the three seventeenth century broadsides. All were printed in the period 1642-95; all three have tunes which could have been Elizabethan. In plot, they closely resemble each other, but not in diction, and they name different kings. Only the Brooksby text has any connection with evidence of an oral tradition prior to its publication. It is possible that the three texts have a common broadside ancestor, perhaps the original owner of the tune mentioned in the Brooks by copy, 'The King and the Lord Abbot'. (Thackeray's trade list of 1689 mentions a ballad of the 'King and the Lord Abbott, but this could be an abbreviation of the Brooksby title.) Since the King in the 1642 and 1682 texts is a
generalized figure, it seems likely that there was an early broadside with a generalised king. The Brooksby text would then be a convergence of this tradition and the minstrel tradition which specified King John. However, in the absence of further evidence of an older version, it is impossible to reconstruct for certain the history of the broadside tradition of this ballad.
(iv) The Reliques version
The other seminal text of the ballad is Percy's refashioning, published in his Reliques in 1765. In the headnote, Percy claims that the Folio MS was too corrupt to print, but that it 'afforded many lines worth reviving, which will be found inserted in the following stanzas'. He describes his chief source as 'an ancient black-letter copy to the tune of Derry Down.' There are, then three components of the Reliques text: the Folio text, the broadside, and Percy's own distinctive additions. Evidence from his
letters suggests that the broadside he used was the Brooksby one; in a letter to Shenstone, July 19th 1761, Percy tells him that William Dicey of the Printing Office in Bow Church Yard,
has promised me copies of all his old Stock Ballads, and engaged to rommage into his warehouse for everything curious that it contains: as a specimen only I have already recd. above 4 score pieces from him, some of which I never saw before.[18]
Dicey was the most important printer of ballad broadsides in the eighteenth century, and one of his first sources was the 1723 Collection of Old Ballads, attributed to Ambrose Phillips, from which Dicey used seventy items, including 'King John and the Abbot of Canterbury' (No.8), which is virtually identical to the original Brooksby broadside.[19]
The Collection of Old Ballads also includes a copy of 'The Old Abbot and King Olfrey', but no influences from this can be seen in the Reliques text. Working from the basis of the broadside text, Percy's chief aims seem to have been to emphasise the antiquity of the ballad, and to neaten a few points of metre, rhyme and sense. He also adds some idiosyncratic embellishments of his own.
To emphasise the ballad's antiquity, he draws upon the Folio version, borrowing such phrases as 'with main and with might'; 'they rode post for him'; 'my owne true-gotten geere'. He also adds a few minor archaic details of his own, such as the replacement of 'pounds' in the reward with 'nobles'.
To neaten the sense of the story, Percy adds a stanza (17) in which the shepherd explains a chance similarity in appearance between himself and the Bishop; this point is covered in the Folio version by the fact that they are half-brothers, but is not mentioned in the broadside.
As for Percy's more idiosyncratic additions, the most colourful are the three oaths sworn by the King after each correct answer to the riddles. In the Folio text there are two oaths, after the first and the third answers, calling respectively upon Saint Andrew and Saint Mary. Both are rather clumsily worked, and the first is an imperfect rhyme (Andrew-value). There are no oaths in the broadside text. Percy has the King swear by St. Bittel, by St. Jone, and by the Mass. 'Bittel' rhymes nicely with 'little'; the other
two rhymes are imperfect ('soone' and 'place'). Percy gives a footnote to 'Bittel', explaining that it is probably a corruption of 'Botulph', but, like 'Olfrey,' the form seems to be unique and is possibly an invention of Percy's. 'Jone' might be a corruption, or archaised form, of John, Joan, or even Jonah; again, this may be an invention of Percy's.
The Reliques text was reprinted several times in the nineteenth century: a luxury edition, printed privately and with no acknowledgement to Percy, appeared in 1872, an opportunity for its publisher and illustrator, Matthew Hinscliff, to display his extravagant typography and fullpage drawings. In 1876, Hinscliff produced another edition of the text, in a larger and still more extravagant Gothic format and copiously illustrated, the pages bearing large banners with the words 'Gloom' or 'Hope' to guide the reader's sensibilities, and including drawings which purport to be from 'stone sculpture of the 13th century', almost certainly
a false claim, which depict a King chasing an Abbot in the hunt. These editions indicate that the ballad was now the property of the whimsical Victorian antiquarian, not the down-trodden lower classes to whom it was directed in the seventeenth century.
The text was also translated into Swedish, German, French, Russian, Dutch and Italian[20]; a German translation by Gottfried August Burger, 'Der Kaiser und der Abt', 1784, was in turn widely translated. Free adaptations also continued: an English example is the prose version, 'King John and the Abbot of Canterbury' in Joseph Jacob's More English Fairy Tales (London, 1894). Thus Percy, more than anyone else, was responsible for returning the story to the European tradition from which it came.
American Versions
Percy's Reliques were also known in the United States, for there was a reprinting of the collection in 1856 in Boston (Phillips, Sampson & Co.). However, only one version collected in America seems to have been influenced by the Reliques text. This is the fragmented text from Massachusetts (ix) in which only three stanzas are complete. Although the existing lines are not identical to Percy's, and show some influence from the other American traditions, there are a few lines which are not found in any other American text, and which are close to the Reliques version:
. . . . in his stead,
With my crown of gold so fair on my head.
The qualification, 'so fair', is elsewhere found only in Percy. The last line probably also came from his version, although it is found also in the Brooksby text, because no other American text uses it:
You bring him a pardon from good King John.
There are two American fragments which seem to have derived from the Brooksby broadside text without the help of Percy. These are Henry Vaughan's version from Michigan, 1937 (xiv), learned from his mother in Vermont, and the most recent of all versions, that of Mrs. Maxine Elkins of Kentucky, 1965 (xxi). The latter has only the first two stanzas; the former has only the first, but in the case of (xiv), the lines are identical to the broadside, and in (xxi), the only differences are obvious developments of the same: in place of 'a story anon', for example, she has, 'a story I know', and in place of 'high renown', 'great compound'.
The Stevens-Douglas Group (vii; xviii; xix)
Earliest of the American oral versions is the text from the Stevens-Douglas family manuscript, dated 1841-56: this is a record of songs used at family gatherings in the mid-nineteenth century, written down by Artemas Stevens, who died in 1877, and by his children. It contains 89 songs, including 36 of British origin, unfortunately without music. The family lived near Buffalo, in an area settled mainly be Puritans from New England in the seventeenth century.
The 'King John' text is entitled 'The Bishop of Canterbury', and apart from some unique mis-hearings, such as 'abilities' for •nobility', in stanza J, it is coherent and well-structured. It is evidently related to the Brooksby text in some respects, but there are certain elements which occur here and in other American variants, which point to another source. The elements, as they are found in the Stevens-Douglas text, are as follows:
1. In the third riddle, in place of the normal broadside reading, 'thou must not shrink', the MS reads, 'As I do now wink'. This is found in six other American texts.
2. The Bishop offers the shepherd a reward before he sets off:
"A suit of pearl (apparel) I will freely give,
"And ten pounds a year as long as I live."
This occurs in the same six other American texts, although the sum varies (See Appendix D).
3. On the arrival of the shepherd, the King asks,
"Have you come here to live or to die?"
This occurs in four other texts. Two texts in particular are very close to the Stevens-Douglas, and can be traced to the same period: the first of these is Virginia Hiner's version from Kansas, 1945 (xviii), which came from a great-uncle who had lived in New York State, moving to Kansas in 1857. The second is from Mrs. Salley Hubbard, Utah 1946-7 (xix), which she learned from her brother in 1875. Both these two texts have a syncopated refrain of the 'Fol-de-rol' type, which sets them apart from other American versions, most of which preserve the 'Derry Down' refrain. The Stevens-Douglas MS records no refrain. They also share an ending not found in any English version, in which the King says to the shepherd,
"Go tell the old Bishop, go tell him for me,
"He keeps a fine fellow if he keeps thee.
It seems probable that these elements, not found in the Brooksby text or the Reliques, came from another broadside version of the ballad.
The Vermont Group (xii; xiii; xi; xv; xvi; xx)
A second group of texts seems closer to the Brooksby version, but also has in common certain features not known in any English version. The texts come mainly from Vermont, three of them from the Elmer George family. ( 2-1) The Warde Ford version (xv) is close to the Stevens-Douglas group in tune and refrain, but in its opening stanza and in general diction it belongs in the Vermont group.
These texts, unlike the Stevens-Douglas group and the Brooksby broadside, succeed in avoiding self-contradiction in the opening description of the King. The Virginia Hiner text (xviii), for example, in the Stevens-Douglas group, blatantly presents a double view:
A health to King John, that worthy old knight
Who set up great wrongs and put down great rights. . .
The Elmer George texts thoughtfully put this right:
A story, a story, a story of one
About an old prince whose name was King John.
He was a man, a man of great mirth
Who set up all rights and downed great wrongs.
Warde Ford (xv) does not describe him at all. George Farnham (xi) has the most original and, in social context, the most realistic version:
He was a man and a man of great might,
He tore down great barns and set up great right.
The other significant feature that distinguishes these texts is the taunt of the shepherd when the Bishop explains his predicament:
"Are you a man of learning and wit
"To answer these questions, so soonly put to it?" (xii)
Each of the texts has this question in some form: in the fragment from Alice Sicily, (xiii), it has shifted to the opening description of the King:
He was a man of learning and wit.
The taunt is absent from both the Brooksby broadside and the Reliques text: it does exist, however, in the Folio version:
"Brother", quoth the shepard, "you are a man of learninge;
"What neede you stand in doubt of soe small a thinge?" (st. 18)
The word "wit" may have come from the proverbial remark retained by the Brooksby writer and by Percy,
"Brother", quoth the shepeard, "you have heard itt,
"That a foole may teach a wisemane witt. . ." (Folio, st. 13)
The Stevens-Douglas group and the Vermont group, then, exhibit between them a number of regular features which cannot have come from any of the known English sources. This suggests an independent source, most probably a broadside, since the area covered by the texts is too large for an unprinted text to remain as constant. This hypothetical text could have been taken to New England by Puritan emigrants and thence to the Puritan settlements in New York State, the home of the Stevens family.
One American text does not fit into any of the groups described above: this is the version from Mr. Jack MacNelly, Maine, 1949 {xvii). It has no tune or refrain, and has become well acclimatised to its new nationality: it opens with the formula:
Come all you folks and I'll make you merry
The basic story is still there, and the three riddles, but the text is so much altered that it is impossible to determine its probable source. It shows, however, that the song was robust enough to adapt to a completely foreign environment. The King and the Bishop are token figures, barely given a mention, but the shepherd evidently struck a sympathetic chord; his answers to the questions are the main substance of the text, which ends:
"You think I'm the Bishop of Canterbury
"And I nawthin' but his hired man."
The ballad has given to, as well as taken from, the wider American folksong tradition: the tune continued to be used for other songs in the twentieth century, such as 'The Belle of Long Lake'[22]. And like the eighteenth century satirists, ballad-makers continued to use the famous opening formula to begin new ballads, such as the variant of 'The Liverpool Landlady' collected in Nova Scotia at the beginning of the century:
I'll tell you a story, I'll not keep you long,
Concerning a sailor whose name it was John. . .[23]
Modern English Versions
The ballad does not seem to have lasted in the English oral tradition beyond the first decade of this century, when two texts were recorded: from Joseph Skinner, in Barrow-on-Humber, in 1906 {viii), and from Mr. Windsor, in Hampshire, in 1907 (x).
The Hampshire text was collected by Gardiner, who noted that Mr. Windsor, who learned the ballad from his grandmother,
repeated the text as a recitation. It is in fact the Reliques version, almost verbatim, except for the three oaths, which not surprisingly gave the reciter some problems: 'St. Bittel' becomes 'St. Vital', perhaps confused with St. Vitus; 'Jane' becomes 'June' (which does at least rhyme); 'by the Mass' becomes 'by St. Mace'.
Mr. Skinner's text, which was collected by Grainger, seems to be likewise based on the Reliques text, but has mixed with the broadside tradition in acquiring the 'Derry Down' refrain and a tune that is very similar to the one printed by Chappell in his 1838 Collection of National Airs with the ballad (Bronson 45.3). Since Chappell also printed the Reliques text, it is quite likely that this is the source of the 1906 version, although it is possible that the mixing of the two traditions had already occurred before Chappell published his variants. Mr. Skinner's text has its own peculiarities and additions: there are only two riddles,
and the text has been completely reworked to accommodate this fact; there is no suggestion of something missing. The most striking alteration is the detail that the Shepherd as Bishop goes to court on a mule, a detail which is not found in any other existing text, but which is consistent with late medieval tradition, when Bishops rode on mules in festival processions, a sign of their Christian humility and a remembrance of Christ's entry into Jerusalem. The tradition is recorded in a poem by William Dunbar to the King, requesting new clothes for the Christmas festivities, and concluding with a reply attributed to James IV, which gives orders to 'Tak in this gray hors, auld Dunbar', and to 'busk him lyk ane bischopis muill'[24]. Unless an antiquarian reviser had a hand in this text, it would seem that this is another indication of a more complex broadside tradition, the details of which are now lost.
As in the American tradition, the tune has been adopted for other songs, such as the industrial ballad, 'The Poor Pitman's Wife' [25].
The Scottish versions
There are only two texts of the ballad from Scotland, both closely related to the broadside tradition, which may have reached Scotland via the Newcastle printer, John White, who printed a text of (iii) in 1740. (see Appendix D). The Buchan text {vi) is very close to the broadside (iii), with a few minor differences of wording, such as the opening line, 'I'll sing you a story, a story anon'.
The Glenbuchat text (v) is more loosely worded, but still recognisably related to the broadside. Neither of the Scottish versions contain any Scottish dialect spellings. The only significant difference between the Glenbuchat and the Brooksby broadside type is the tenth stanza:
"You that's a man of so high learning
"Cannot you tell him such a small thing?"
This is not found in the English broadside versions: it is, however, very close to the wording of the Folio MS (ii):
"Brother", quoth the shepard, "you are a man of learninge;
"What neede you stand in doubt of soe small a thinge?" (st.18)
The same taunt is found in the Vermont group of American texts:
"Are you a man of learning and wit
"To answer these questions, so soonly put to it?"(xii)
Although this is the only feature of the Glenbuchat text which diverges from the Brooksby broadside, it suggests that the lost broadside, or broadsides, which seem to be behind the Vermont and the Stevens-Douglas groups of texts
in America, and which are linked with the Folio text, also reached Scotland.
The Folk Tale
Running concurrently with the ballad is the tradition of the international folktale from which the story originally came, Folktale versions are still being collected on both sides of the Atlantic; a recent text is the tale related in Lance au Clair, on the Labrador coast, in which the accused man and his rescuer are both Irishmen.[26]
In 1923, Walter Anderson published his detailed analysis of the transmission of the tale, entitled 'Kaiser und Abt'[27]. After examining 474 variants of the tale worldwide, Anderson calculates that the English ballad version is only one of 62 literary reworkings of the story. His variants come from a survey of Celtic, Romance, Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, African, Eastern and American traditions: the details of the plot vary a great deal, but the basic components of the three characters, the threat of death, and the test of the riddles, remain, although the riddles themselves vary. The accused is normally of high social status, a nobleman or a cleric, and the answerer of the riddles is normally a miller or shepherd, and always 'ein Mann aus dem Volk' ; the judge is usually a King or Emperor. Thus the essence of the story, which has made it appeal all over the world for many centuries, is the triumph, by wit, of the lowly man over the high-born.
Anderson constructs a tentative history of the tale, which begins, according to his findings, in a Judaic community in the Near East, possibly in Egypt, and probably in the early seventh century, before the Arab conquests. Near Eastern versions have since then remained remarkably constant, the three characters being a King, a nobleman and a simple man. The tale spread through Eastern Christendom, and it was here that the riddle, 'How much am I worth', first appeared in the tale. The first Western European versions appeared in the early thirteenth century, in Southern France and Germany. In the early fourteenth century, the character of the noble was superseded by that of the cleric. The riddle, 'What do I think', first appeared with the tale in about 1500; the riddle, 'How long would it take me to travel round the world', is first found in the ballad version, but riddles of this sort do appear in different tales, and as separate riddles, in sixteenth century sources, such as the Demaundes
Joyous, which appeared in English in 1511.
English versions of the tale seem to be scarce, although this may well be because of the lack of adequate searching. There are several Scottish variants, such as the tale entitled 'The Three Questions,' recorded from the brothers MacCraw in North Uist, in 1859, and published in J. F. Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands, in which the characters are a scholar, his master, and a miller. The riddles are as follows:
1. How many ladders would reach the sky?
(one, if it were long enough)
2. Where is the middle of the earth?
(Miller sets down a rod, saying, set a hoop around it and
the middle will be here)
3. What is the world's worth?
(Thirty pieces of silver) [28]
In all versions of the tale, the riddles seem to be of this type: the emphasis is not on esoteric knowledge, or the solving of ingenious paradoxes, and the only hint of a catechismal riddle tradition is in the riddle, 'How much am I worth.' The riddles are exercises in evasion, the ability of the answerer to outwit his social superior, as he is doing in a physical sense by his disguise.
Anderson's research of the 'Kaiser und Abt' is sometimes regarded as the prime example of the 'Finnish' historicgeographic
method of research. Some of his aims and methods are now questionable, in particular his search for an 'original' form of the story. Moreover, some of the assumptions of the Finnish school are possibly more true of the folk tale than of the ballad: for example, the ballad, with its more stable form, is more likely to be disseminated as a kind of family tree, (the Stammbaumtheorie) than in 'waves' (the Wellentheorie)[29]. However, although the aims and conclusions of Anderson's study may be questioned, his research and the wealth of material he discovered remain extremely valuable in setting the ballad in its wider context.
Tunes for the ballad
Bronson treats all the tunes associated with the ballad text (discounting those of the other broadside versions) as variants of the same family, despite their 'superficial changes'. Some are indeed so far removed that they could have been composed or improvised independently, the metre and distinctive refrain giving them a similarity of shape. The only surviving English tune is certainly very similar to the tune printed in D'Urfey and Chappell (see p. 52 above). Of the American tunes, George Farnham's is the closest to this prototype; Mary Eddy's also bears a strong resemblance in mode and melodic contour (xi; ix). The Elmer George tunes are, as might be expected, very close to each other, but apart from a general resemblance in form (for example, the repetition of the first line), are far removed from the seventeenth century tune. The tunes from Henry Vaughan and Warde
Ford (xiv; xv) are similar to each other, especially in the first two lines, but again there is no strong resemblance to other tunes associated with the ballad. Salley Hubbard's tune (xix) seems unrelated to any other. The seventeenth century tune printed by D1Urfey, which was used for so many English broadsides, did survive almost intact in America, associated with other ballads such as the lumberjack ballad 'The Belle of Long Lake'. However, in passing into the wider song tradition it would appear to have lost its strong connection with 'King John and the Bishop', for although there are still traces of it in a few of the tunes collected, the rest of the tunes cannot be regarded as mere variants, because of their wide diversity of contour and modal setting.
NOTES TO CHAPTER FIVE (CHILD 45)
1. A Collection of Old Ballads, 1723, Vol.II p.49.
2. Holinshed, Chronicles (Everyman, London 1927), 196 I.
3. The Troublesome Raigne (ed. F. J. Furnivall & J. Munro, Tudor Facsimile Texts, l9ll) Act I Scene ii, 35-6.
4. King Johan (ed. Peter Happe, Four Morality Plays, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1979) lines 2193-96.
5. Hector Boece, Chronicles (transl. J. Bellenden, Scottish Text Society, Edinburgh 1938-41), ll. 44957-8.
6. John Major, Histor of Greater Britain (transl. A. Constable, Edinburgh, 1892 Book IV Chapter 3.
7. Lacy Baldwin Smith, Henry VIII: The Mask of Royalty (Jonathan Cape, London, l97l) pp. 77-8.
8. For example, the song 1To Oxfforde', which ridicules the visit of a King to a University, and is presumed to be directed at James I.
9. The reference to David may show influence of the metrical version of the Psalms of David, which was widely used during the Commonwealth period.
10. Fowler, A Literary History of the Popular Ballad, p. 157.
11. Roxburghe Ballads, ed. J. W. Ebsworth, VI p.751.
12. See Bronson, Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, I p.354, for the tune's history.
13. Roxburghe Ballads, VI p.753.
14. Ibid. p.750.
15. See Appendix D, (iii).
16. Claude Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and its Music, pp. 172-6. The tune and first line were also used in a ballad, 'Dialogue between the K(in)g (George I) and B(isho)p of R(ochester)', attributed to Sam Wesley:
I'll tell you a story, a story that true is,
What it was for to tell a great king what he meant ...(Bodleian MSS Eng. Poet. f.12 p.100)
Similarly, there is a satire on Justice Bush of Cirencester to the tune of 'The Abbot of Canterbury', by Philip (?) Hawkins:
I'll tell you a story, though tis but a queer one,
Tis plain from what's past that the church is in danger. (Bodleian MS Ballard 47, fol.l67)
The item in Pepys, Penny Merriments, I 14, 'The pleasant history of King Henry VIII and the Abbot of Reading' , which Child assqmed was a variation of 'King John and the Bishop' (Child I p. 404), is in fact a prose tale and unrelated to the ballad (it is printed in Roger Thompson, ed., Samuel Pepys' Penny Merriments, Constable, London 1976).
17. Printed in Dublin for T. Harbin, 1725-6. British Museum c 121 g g(40).
18. Quoted in R. S. Thomson, The Development of the Broadside Trade, p.125.
19. Ibid., pp.ll2-J.
20. For details, see Walter Anderson, Kaiser und Abt, section i; Child I p. 410.
21. Two are from Elmer George, sung on different occasions; see Appendix D.
22. Bronson, Traditional Tunes, no. 45.10.
23. W. Roy Mackenzie, The Quest of the Ballad, p.71.
24. James Kinsley, The Poems of William Dunbar, no. 43, p.128.
25. A. L. Lloyd, Come All Ye Bold Miners (2nd edition, 1978, Lawrence & Wishart, London), p.25J, 'The Coal Owner and the Pitman's Wife'.
26. MacEdward Leach, Folk Ballads and Songs of the Lower Labrador Coast, pp.24-5 (related by Peter Letto).
27. Walter Anderson, op.cit.
28. J. F Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands II pp.J91 ff.
29. See Wolfgang M&ller, Die englisch-schottische Volksballade, p.40.
----------
CHILD 45
Smith and Rufty, American Anthology of Old World Ballads, p.8.
-------------
APPENDIX D: CHILD 45, 'KING JOHN AND THE BISHOP': DESCRIPTION OF TEXTS
Key to Description of Texts.
A. Announcement: 'I read in a story I can shew you anon'
A1. 'Of an ancient story I'll tell you anon'
A2. 'I'll tell you a story, a story anon/ A story, a story, a story of one'
A3. 'Here's a health to King John . . . '
B. Description of John: 'a noble prince. . . of great might'
B1. 'a notable prince. . . with maine and might'
B2. 'an old prince. . . of great might/mirth'
B3. 'a young prince. . . of great mirth'
B4. 'a young prince. . . of learning and wit'
B5. 'Old King John. . .a great noble knight/worthy old knight'
C. Character of John: put down wrong and held up right
C1. held up great wrong and put down right
D. Genealogy: brother of Richard I, succeeded by Henry III
E. The King (K.) is grieved with the Bishop/Abbot (B.) for his expensive household, and sends his messenger for him
post haste.
E1. 'I'll tell you of the Abbot of Canterbury, how his housekeeping made him go to London'.
E2. K. sends for B. to 'make himself merry'.
E3. K. sends for B. as he is seated to make himself merry.
F. The messenger finds B. making merry, and delivers the charge of keeping too sumptuous a household. B. smiles and says he spends nothing but God's and his own. He says he will answer the charge, and gives orders for the messenger to be entertained.
F1. B.'s household is described, 100 men, gold chains, etc.
G. B. comes to court and kneels before K., who says he is welcome and will be charged with treason.
G1. B. comes to court; K. says he is welcome; he has worked treason.
G2. K. accuses B. of keeping a better house than himself.
G3 • K. accuses B. of being a better scholar than himself.
H. B. assures K. he spends nothing but God's and his own.
H1. B. hopes K. will not bear him a grudge for spending his own goods.
I. K. says unless B. can answer 3 questions, his land and living shall be taken from him and his head from his body.
I1. K. says unless B. can answer 3 questions, his head shall be taken from his body.
J. The questions: (i) When K. is in his seat, with his gold crown and his nobility around him, how much is he worth?
(ii)How soon may the K. go round the world?
(iii) What does the K. think?
K. B. is given 40 days to answer the questions.
K1. "20 days"
K2. B. asks for 3 days and is given them.
K3. B. asks for 3 weeks and is given them.
L. B. goes to Oxford and Cambridge to consult doctors; none can help, so he goes home sadly.
M. B.'s brother-in-law, a shepherd, comes out to meet him.
M1. B.'s half-brother, a shepherd 'fierce and fell', comes to welcome him.
M2. B. meets his shepherd (all alone/going to the fold).
M3. B. goes to shepherd (s.) and asks for his skill.
N. S. asks B. why he is so sad: if he tells him, he can perhaps help. B. doubts it; S. quotes adage that 'a fool can teach a wiseman wit'.
N1. S. asks B. for his news; B. answers that he has been given 3 days to answer the questions.
O. B. relates questions (J) to S.
P. S. tells B. to lend him apparel and he will go to London in his place.
P1. S. wonders that a man of learning is defeated by so little; he asks B. to lend his apparel to go in his place.
P2. S. quotes adage: 'A fool can teach a wiseman wit'.
Q. B. resists, then agrees, saying he will himself flee into France.
Q1 • B. makes ready the horses and s. sets off.
Q2. S. points out that they are very like each other. B. agrees, then kits S. out
Q3. B. offers s. a suit of apparel and £5/£10 a year for as long as he lives (£10,000 as sure as he lives).
R. S. comes to court and kneels before K. K. offers pardon if questions are solved. S. says he spends nothing but God's and his own.
R1. S. comes to court and is so like B. that K. is fooled.
R2 . S. comes to court; K. welcomes him and offers pardon if questions are solved.
R3. S. rides off and meets K.
R4. K. asks S. has he come to live or die.
R5. S. gets on mule and rides to K.
R6. S. has gone to answer questions; if he fails he will lose his head.
S. K. repeats questions and S. answers them:
(i) K. is worth one penny less than Christ, who was sold for 30 pence.
(ii) K. can travel round world in a day, with the sun.
(iii) K. thinks s. is B., but he is mistaken.
S1. S. relates questions to K. and answers them as above.
T. K. says S. shall be Bishop and vice versa. S. refuses because he is illiterate.
T1. K. says s. shall reign Bishop 'another while'
U. K. gives S. money and a pardon for the B.
U1. K tells S. to tell B. 'he keeps a fine fellow if he keeps thee'.
U2. S. tells K. to tell B. 'he'll be a frisky one if he gets me'.
V. S. returns and tells B. news, and that he will no longer 'crouch and creep', or be shepherd. B. makes him a gentleman with £50 a year.
W. Not many shepherds could have done the same. B. and S. pass their lives serving God. Minstrel begs for a place
in Heaven.
W1. Minstrel says he never knew of such a shepherd, unless it were David.
Description of Texts.
(i) 'A Tale of Henry ye J. and ye Archbishop of Canterbury'
Place: Oxford
Date: c.1550
Source: MS 255, fol.l05, Corpus Christi College, Oxford.
Printed, R. D. Cornelius, 'A New Text of an old Ballad', 46 (1931) pp.1025-33.
Description: 166 lines, no stanza divisions
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N 0 P Q R S T U(£100)V W.
(ii) 'Kinge John and Bishoppe'
Place: Shropshire
Date: c.1650
Source: Percy Folio MS p.184. Ed. Hales & Furnivall, I 508. Child 45A.
Description: 38 stanzas.
A1 B1 C1 E F1 G1 H I J K1 L M1 N 0 P1 Q1 R1 S T U(£300 a year) V W.
(iii) 'King John and the Abbot of Canterbury'
Place: London
Date: 1673-95
Source: Broadside printed for P. Brooksby at the Golden Ball, licensed by Roger Estrange. British Museum, Roxburghe II 883. Child 45B.
Copies of the same text occur throughout the 18th century to 1790, found in the following collections: Pepys, Ouvry, Bagford, Heber, Euing, Crawford, Douce, Charles Harding Firth. Printed in Newcastle by John White, c.1740 (B. Mus., Roxburghe III 494). Published in A Collection of Old Ballads, 1723, attrib. Ambrose Phillips.
Description: 19 stanzas: 11-12 are misplaced in some copies.
A2 B c1 E G2 H1 J K2 M2 N1 O P2 S T U(£4 a week).
Tune: 'The King and the Lord Abbot'; printed in D'Urfey, Pills to Purge Melancholy, 1719-20. Bronson 45.1
(iv) 'King John and the Abbot of Canterbury'
Place: London
Date: 1765
Source: Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry No. VI. Compiled by Percy from 'an ancient black-letter copy to the tune of derry down' with additions from the Folio text.
Description: 27 stanzas
A1 B1 c 1 E1 Fl G2 I 2 J KJ L M2 N1 0 P 2 R2 Q2 S T U (4 nobles a week).
(v) 'King John'
Place: Glenbuchat, Aberdeenshire
Date: c.l818
Source: Glenbuchat MSS, IV pp.ll-lJ. King's College University Library, Aberdeen; collected by Rev. Robert Scott, minister of Glenbuchat, and one of his daughters.
Description: 17 stanzas
A2 B2 c 1 El G2 I1 J K2 N1 0 P1 R3 S T U(£5 a wk.)
(vi) 'King John and the Abbot of Canterbury'
Place: Scotland
Date: c.1825
Source: Buchan MSS British Museum Add. MSS 29.409, pp. 324-6. Collected by Peter Buchan.
Description: 16 stanzas, the last two being long stanzas.
A2 B c 1 E1 G2 H1 I1 J M2 N1 (J weeks) 0 P2 P R2 S.
(vii) 'The Bishop of Canterbury'
Place: Wyoming Co. Western New York State
Date: 1841-56
Source: Stevens-Douglas MS. (Family song book). Published, 1958: Harold W. Thompson & Edith E. Cutting, A Pioneer Songster, (cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca, N.Y.) pp. 5-7.
Description: 16 stanzas
A1 c 1 EJ G2 I1 J M2 N1 0 P QJ R4 s1 T(but no refusal) U1 .
(viii) 'King John'
Place: Barrow-on-Humber
Date: 27 July 1906
Source: Sung by Joseph Skinner.
Bronson 45.7.
Grainger MS No.138.
Description: 9 stanzas
Al B1 c1 E G2 I1 J(ii,iii) M2 R5 S(ii,iii) U.
Tune: Bronson 45.7 (very similar to (iii))
(ix) ('King John and the Bishop')
Place: Providence, Massachusetts
Date: 4 May 1907
Source: Sent to Philips Barry by Mrs. Mary E. Eddy, from the singirg of her mother. Barry, JAF XX (1908) pp.57-8; JAF XXII (1909) p.73.
Bronson 45.9. ---
Description: 17 lines + 2 half lines: Bronson makes 9 stanzas.
C1 J(i) I 1 J(ii) s(ii) s(i,iii) u.
Tune: Bronson 45.9
(x) 'King John and the Abbot of Canterbury'
Place: Titchfield, Hampshire
Date: September 1907
Source: Repeated by Mr. Windsor: learned from his grandmother.
Gardiner MS 1011 (Notebook No.lJ, p.l23)
(Vaughan Williams Memorial Library).
Description: 28 stanzas
Al Bl Cl El Fl G2 H I2 J K1 L M2 N1 0 p2 Q2
R2 S(+extra stanza from J) T u(4 nobles a week)
(xi) 'The King's Three Questions'
Place: Wardsboro, Vermont
Date: 1931
Source: Sung by George Farnham, learned from his grandmother. Flanders & Brown, ed., Vermont Songs and Ballads, pp.200-203. Bronson 45.11.
Description: 16 stanzas
A2 B C(Tore down great barns) E2 GJ I1 J M2 N1 0 P1 Q1 (£10,000) R4 s 1 .
Tune: Bronson 45.11
(xii) 'King John and the Bishop'
Place: E. Calais and N. Montpelier, Vermont
Date: 1933
Source: Sung by Mrs. Elmer George and her sister, Mrs. Myra Daniells, at separate times. H. H. Flanders, Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New England I pp. 286-90 (B 1). Flanders, A Garland of Green Mountain Song, p. 64.
Bronson. IV p.461.
Description: 16 stanzas
A3 B2 C E2 G2 M2 N1 0 Pl Q3 R4 s1 T u2 •
Tune: Bronson IV p.461
(xiii) 'King John and the Bishop'
Place: North Calais, Vermont
Date: 1933
Source: Sung by Alice Sicily. Flanders, Ancient Ballads, p.297 (c).
Description: 2 stanzas
A3 B4 C E3 (King of Canterbury) G2 •
(xiv) ('King John and the Bishop')
Place: Detroit, Michigan
Date: 1937
Source: Sung by Henry R. Vaughan; learned from his mother in Vermont. Gardner and Chickering, Ballads and Songs of Southern Michigan, p.379.
Bronson 45.5
Description: l stanza: A2 B c 1 •
Tune; Bronson 45.5
(xv) 'The Bishop of Canterbury: or, King John'
Place: Central Valley, California
Date: 25 December 1938
Source: Sung by Warde H. Ford, learned from his mother
of Wisconsin. Robertson, UC/LC Folk-Record 4196.
Bronson 45.4
Description: 13 stanzas
A2 E2 Il J M2 Nl pl Q3 Sl.
Tune: Bronson 45.4
(xvi) 'King John and the Bishop'
Place: E. Calais, Vermont
Date: November 1939
Source: Sung by Elmer George. Collected by Alan Lomax.
Flanders, Ancient Ballads, pp.290~94 (B 2).
Description: 18 stanzas
A2 B3 C E2 G2 I 1 J M2 N1 0 Pl Q3 R4 s1 T u2 .
Tune: Flanders, Ancient Ballads, pp. 290-94.
(xvii) 'The King's Three Questions'
Place: Siberia, Staceyville, Maine
Date: 1940
Source: From Mr. Jack MacNelly. Collected by H. H.
Flanders. Flanders & Olney, Ballads Migrant
in New England, pp.111-12.
Description: 13 lines
E1 (includes prose explanation) J(ii,i,iii) (concludes, 'and I nawthin but his hired man')
(xviii) 'The King's Three Questions'
Place: Garnett, Kansas
Date: 26 January 1945
Source: Sent by Virginia Hiner, learned from her mother. H. H. Flanders Collection, Middlebury College, Vermont.
Description: 17 stanzas
AJ B5 c1 EJ G2 I J M2 Nl 0 P QJ R4 s1 T u1
(xix) ('The Bishop of Canterbury')
Place: Salt Lake City, Utah
Date: 10 February 1946; 10 June 1947
Source: Mrs. Salley A. Hubbard, from a brother in Willard, c.1875. Lester A. Hubbard & LeRoy Robertson, 'Traditional Ballads from Utah',
JAF 64 (1951) pp.J7-5J. Bronson 45.12.
Description: B5 cl
Tune: Bronson
16 stanzas
EJ G2 I1 M2 N1 0 P R6 S T1 u1 . 45.12
(xx) 'King John and the Bishop'
Place: E. Calais, Vermont
Date: 1953
Source: Elmer George; sung for a long-playing record. H. H. Flanders, Ancient Ballads, pp.294-6 (B J)
Description: Substantially the same as (xvi), but the wording differs in places, e.g.
Stanza 12: (xvi) I hope your faith will pardon me
(xx) I hope your grace will pardon me
Stanza 1 (xvi) who sawed great rights . . .
(xx) he set up great rights . . .
Tune: Flanders, pp.294~6 (same as (xvi))
(xxi) 'King John and the Abbot of Canterbury'
Place: La Rue Co., Kentucky
Date: Autumn 1965
Source: Sung by Mrs. Maxine Elkins, aged 24. Collected by Joyce Lee. Mantell Collection, W. Kentucky University.
Description: 2 stanzas:
A2(a story I know) B1 E1