English Riddle Ballads- Chapter 4; False Knight on the Road- Edmunds 1985
[This is an excerpt from Susan Edmunds, (1985) The English Riddle Ballads, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7574/
Some of the old English and foreign letter characters have not reprinted properly as they were hand drawn. I've corrected minor spelling errors.
At the end I've added Appendix A; Description of Texts.
R. Matteson 2014]
FALSE KNIGHT UPON THE ROAD (CHILD 3)
Texts of what Child describes as 'this singular ballad' are comparatively few, but far-flung, testifying to a three-stranded tradition in Scotland, Ireland and the United States, where it is found mainly in the North-East, but also in Arkansas and Oklahoma. There are two Scandinavian relations, one in Swedish from the Lappfiord in Finland, one from the Faroe Islands.[1] Apart from these two, the thirty-one texts can be roughly divided between two groups, one of which has connections with Ireland, the other of which has Scottish characteristics. In America, however, the two groups have merged in some cases.
The 'Irish' Group.
(Texts i, v, vi, vii, ix, xi, xii, xiii, xv, xvi, xviii, xix, xxv, xxix, xxxi)
Only four of these texts are actually recorded from Irish sources; the rest are classed with them because of features which they have in common and which are not found in any Scottish versions. The earliest of them, and of all the texts, is the fragment recorded in C. R. Maturin's gothic novel Women: or, Pour et Contre, published in Edinburgh in 1818 (Text i). It consists of two stanzas, sung by an old madwoman, who is pursuing a young and virtuous heroine; the madwoman is clearly associated with the Devil, because she utters wild diabolic prayers, and thus the dramatic situation is appropriate to the song. The singer acknowledges that it is only a fragment, and she says that the rest is 'gone far off, like all I remembered once - far off'. The first stanza is not found elsewhere:
Oh, I wish you were along with me,
Said the false-knight, as he rode,
And our Lord in company,
Said the child as he stood.
The second stanza occurs in Scottish and American texts a hundred years later, and in one of the early Scottish texts (iv):
Oh, I wish you were in yonder well,
Said the false-knight as he rode,
And you in the pit of Hell,
Said the child as he stood.
Maturin describes the verses as 'a fragment of an Irish ballad evidently of monkish composition'. Other versions from Irish sources certainly show a tendency towards the homiletic, but this is more probably evidence of Christian overlay than of monkish origin. The homiletic tendency, which is manifested in references to God and Hell, and in an emphasis of the polarity of knight and child, is one of the distinctive features of the 'Irish' group. For example, in the most recent of the group, the recording of Frank Quinn in County Tyrone in 1958 (xxv), the religious overtones are dominant, and have ousted the more whimsical exchanges of the Scottish versions. Instead of going to school, the child is on his way 'to meet my God'; the hour is late, the journey is not the everyday one found in most other texts, but a pilgrimage over land and sea. The phrase 'with a strong staff in my hand' is possibly a deliberate evocation of the twenty-third psalm, and an elaboration of the more common question found in the American texts (vi) and (xviii):
I wish you were on the sands . . .
A good staff in my hands. . .
There is also a staff in 'Harpkin', the Scottish rhyme Child prints as an analogue of the ballad, but the context is a nonsensical one:
What for had you your staff on your shoulder?...
To haud the cauld frae me .. [2]
It is unclear whether Quinn's text (xxv) originated in Scotland or in Ireland; he learned it from his grandfather, who moved from Scotland to Coalisland as a boy. The collector, Sean O'Boyle, notes that 'Burns was the favourite poet of the district and his grandfather, who read Ovid among other good literature, taught him other ballads. . . '. This literary heritage, which is typical of many Scottish families [3], may account for the neat and logical structure of the text; the material, however, is found in other versions and was evidently accepted as a part of the song's oral tradition. O'Boyle also notes a rather suspect folkloric explanation of the homiletic element, which is supposed to have been given to Quinn by 'an old fisherman':
'The knight was some kind of emissary of the devil, some sort of spectre or ghost like, that inhabited a certain part of the road. It was fatal for a person to move confronting this thing and this dialogue was a test of the child, to see if he was well fortified for the ultimate end.' [4]
There are a number of beliefs mixed in this explanation, which seems to be a response to the ballad text itself, rather than a piece of supporting evidence. The idea that it was 'fatal' to move seems particularly out of place, and may well be a rationalization of the child standing still in the road, a stance which is emphasized in Quinn's text by the refrain:
And he stood, and he stood, and 'twere well that he stood
The child stands firm in the majority of texts, but it is the defiance of the gesture, not a fear of death, which is important. There are three American texts which bear close resemblances to Quinn's. The closest are the two Appalachian versions recorded by Cecil Sharp in 1916, (vi and vii), from Mrs. T. G. Coates and Mrs. Jane Gentry. In 1947, Duncan Emrich recorded the daughter of Mrs. Gentry, Maud Long, singing the ballad as taught to her by her mother (xviii), and this recording is longer and very close to Mrs. Coates' text. The Tennessee text (vi) has the rare 'bell' rhyme (Q in Appendix c) as its ending, which is found also in Quinn's text:
I think I hear a bell. . .
It's ringing you to Hell . . .
This text also has the unique feature of a one-line introduction, 'The Knight met a child in the road', the only narrative setting given in all the texts. All these three texts have a similar refrain to Quinn's, although the tunes differ.
Another text with similarities to Quinn's, and sharing the same tune, is printed by J. J. Niles in his Ballad Book, supposedly supplied by Preston Wolford in Powell County (xv). Texts from Niles, who was a professional singer as well as a collector, are notoriously suspect, and D. K. Wilgus notes that 'in recent program and album notes, (Niles) has confessed personal interference ranging from tune alteration to complete composition'. [5] His 'False Knight' bears typical marks of tampering, such as the new title, 'The Smart Schoolboy', and dialect or archaic usages not found in any other version, such as the first line:
'Oh where be ye going?' said the knight on the road.
Niles' texts can very often be traced to printed sources, and there is nothing in the words of this one that could not have been composed from Sharp's American-English Folk-Ballads, published in 1918 with Mrs. Coates' text of the ballad (vi). However, the tune that Niles supplies is an unmistakable relation to Frank Quinn's (xxv), which is like the Scottish melody published by Sir Hugh Roberton as the Uist tramping song.[6] This tune does not appear with any other 'False Knight' texts, which implies either that Niles and Quinn had a common traditional source, or that the publication of Niles' Ballad Book was the source for Quinn's version. Either way, the Niles text cannot this time be dismissed; whether a Preston Wolford sang it or not, it is a part of the ballad's tradition.
A rare English version of the ballad also falls into this group of 'Irish' texts, collected from Mrs. Stanley in Cheshire (xxxi) . The tune is different from any other, but the words resemble those of (vi), the Tennessee text, with the distinctive 'bell' rhyme. The child, a girl, is on her way to school; when questioned as to why, she replies, 'to learn the word of God'.
However, since this is the only text from England in the 'Irish' group, and since the only other English text collected (xxxvii) has a possible connection with Scotland, there is a possibility that this is an educated borrowing from (vi), which was already published in the well-known collection of Appalachian folksongs by Sharp and Karpeles. The tune, moreover, is untypical of English folksong but bears a resemblance to the French tune to the hymn, 'Let all mortal flesh keep silence'.
Homiletic elements are also found in texts (ix) from Sarah Finchum in Virginia, and (xix), from Evelyn Richardson and Anne Wickens in Nova Scotia. In the first of these, the false knight asks the child if it is a 'child of God', to which it replies, 'I say my prayers at night'. The knight is described in this text as 'the false so rude', which is perhaps derived from the line in Motherwell's text (ii), 'And false, false was his rede'. In text (xix) the child says she is going to school to learn to read, which will keep her from Hell, and when the knight says that there is no Hell she replies, 'I believe you lie', which makes an unusual and striking end to the song.
The fragment (v), a single stanza learned by a French child from an illiterate Irish family, has none of these homiletic elements, but gives the age of the child as seven years old, a detail found in six other texts in the 'Irish' group and in none of the Scottish. It appears in another Irish-derived version, (xi), which Mrs. E. M. Sullivan learned in her childhood in Ireland and took with her to Vermont. In this case the mystical significance of the number seven is emphasized, for the child, after mentioning Hell in stanza six, bows seven times on the road. This is perhaps connected with the curse, and the child's negation of the curse, in the following stanza. The curse is also found in text (xii), where the child's age is again given as seven. In (xii), some of the questions are borrowed from 'Riddles Wisely Expounded' (Child 1: see Chapter 2), where the dialogue is also between a mortal and the Devil in American versions. The same has happened in the text (xxix) although the riddle section here is not identical. This text also has the age of the child given, but there is a discrepancy between some stanzas which give it as seven, and others which give it as 'not seven years old'. Lee Haggerty, who collected the text from Alan Kelly in New Brunswick, suggests that the latter reading is the correct one, since seven is the theological age of reason: under that age, the child is safeguarded from the attempts of the Devil to harm him. However, if this was so, the homiletic elements, in which the child uses the names of Heaven and Hell, and God and the Devil, in the same way as they are used in Child 1, would be pointless. It seems much more logical that the more common reading of 'seven years old' is the correct one, emphasising the fact that the child is old enough to make a moral stand against his adversary.
The age of seven is found also in a French-Canadian version of the ballad, entitled 'Ou vas-tu, mon petit garron?', which was recorded from the Revd. P. Arsenault of Prince Edward Island, learned from his mother.[7] It is published by C. Marius Barbeau in his collection of Jongleur Songs of Old Quebec, and Barbeau assumes French composition, being presumably unaware of the song's existence in English. The text is not a direct translation of any version in English, but it most resembles Alan Kelly's text (xxix), and is associated with the 'Irish' group rather than with the Scottish. The main difference is in the first line of refrain, which replaces the description of the false knight with the line:
Je m'en viens, tu t'en vas, nous passons
The line has a possible connection with a dance-song, and it is perhaps not a coincidence that the text (xii), which comes from Nova Scotia, has a nonsense refrain during which the singer dances. The second refrain line is as in the English versions:
Disait ca un enfant de sept ans
Thus, in the French song, the context of the false knight questioning a small child is obscured, but the first stanza is a common one in the 'Irish' group:
O' u vas-tu, mon petit garcon?
0~ vas-tu, mon petit garcon?
(Je m'en viens, tu t'en vas, nous passons)
Je m'en vais droit a l'ecole,
Apprendre la parol' de Dieu,
Disait ya un enfant de sept ans.
The repetition of the first line is found also in the Nova Scotia text with the dance refrain (xii), although the tunes are not similar. The next two stanzas contain the two riddles from Child 1 that appeared also in Alan Kelly's text (xxix); these questions, of course, preserve the context of Devil and child, although the Devil is never named in the French. The last two stanzas are quite different from any English version:
4. 'Qu'est-ctqui pousse sur nos terres?' etc.
'Les avoines et les bles d'or,
'Les chataignes et les poiriers' etc.
5. 'Que f'ras tu quand tu s'ras grand?' etc.
'Je cultiverai les champs,
'Nourrirai femme et enfant', etc.
The fields of oats and golden wheat (Les avoines et les bles d'or) could be from either side of the Atlantic, but Barbeau points out that 'chataignes' and 'poiriers' (chestnut and pear trees) are not familiar in Nova Scotia, and this was his reason for assuming that the song was composed by 'a singer of old France.' These last two questions may have been borrowed from a French song. French and English traditions of the folksong in general seem to have been closely linked in the North-Eastern states; the fragment (v) was learned by a French child from an Irish source; Alan Kelly, who learned most of his songs from his father, had a repertoire of both French and English texts.
The Irish and the Scottish strands of the tradition are also closely connected in America and in Britain. The eighteenth century settlers in the Appalachians were from both Lowland Scotland and the North of Ireland. From the seventeenth century there were settlements of Scottish families in Northern Ireland, and from the eighteen-twenties onwards there was large scale emigration in the other direction, as Irish labourers, sought work in the more prosperous Scottish Lowlands; there was also a seasonal influx of Irish workers for potato harvesting and other casual labour.[8]
In general, the merging of traditions of the song, especially in America, suggest that it was more widely popular than the thirty-odd texts testify; the occasional note to a text also suggests this, such as that by Manny and Wilson to Alan Kelly's text:
The False Knight, we are told, used to be much sung in Miramichi, and all our singers know fragments of it. Several people told us they had learned it, words and music, from the Family Herald. Upon further inquiry, we found that it was well known in Miramichi before the Family Herald printed it in its 'Old Favourites'. However, when it appeared in print, everyone felt that the printed version was the authoritative 'right one'.
Alan Kelly's version is very different from any other that we have heard here.[9]
The Scottish Group.
(Texts ii-iv, viii, x, xiv, xvii, xx-xxiii, xxvii, xxviii, xxx)
The other main branch of the song's tradition is the more distinctively Scottish one found first in the two Motherwell texts printed by Child (ii, iii) and associated more closely with Scandinavian traditions than is the Irish group.
Mary MacQueen's version of 1827 (iii) seems to have been widely known, possibly through the publication of Motherwell's Minstrelsy. It appears verbatim in Andrew Crawfurd's Collection; it also travelled intact to New Brunswick, via Mrs. James McGill, who learned it in Galloway and wrote it down in 1929 (x). Moffat printed a slightly modified version in 1933 with the tune of (iii), changing the timing slightly to fit the words. The text from the McMath family (iv), with a different tune, is textually still close to the earlier versions and, as Bronson points out, the tune is 'rhythmically the exact counterpart of Motherwell's text,'[10] by which he means the tuneless text (iii). All this testifies to a strong tradition of the ballad in West Scotland, well-established by the beginning of the nineteenth century.
Modern Scottish texts collected by Hamish Henderson and Francis Collinson in Perthshire and Aberdeen have close affinities with this earlier tradition, but are not identical. The most striking similarities are in the tunes, which are mostly very close to the McMath version (iv). The tune from Nellie MacGregor (xx) seems to be the same tune turned inside out; since it is a very basic pentatonic melody which moves straight up and down the scale, this is quite easily done by moving up the scale where other versions move down, and vice versa. Willie Whyte's tune (xxviii) has an additional second half which extends over the second stanza. His text also has an innovative final stanza:
'Has your mother any more like you?' said the false knight upon the road,
'Aye, but none of them for you', says the little boy, and there he stood.
Several American texts seem to be derived from the early West Scottish tradition (which may of course have been common to the rest of Scotland). Text (xiv), from Lucile Wilkin in Indiana, 1935, and (xxx), from James McPherson in Oklahoma, are particularly close to the Scottish versions and (xxx) is Scottish in origin, since the singer comes from Inverness. Another Scots-derived text comes from Virginia (viii) via Miss J. D. Johns, whose uncle came from Scotland, and is rather different, having the unusual prose conclusion, 'And he pitched him in the well and went on to school'. The knight has acquired the name 'Munroe', perhaps a mishearing of the phrase 'on the road,' which may also owe something to the lovesong 'Young Munro'. It has the command by the knight to give his dog a share of food, which is elsewhere found only in Alan Kelly's text (xxix) from the 'Irish' group, but otherwise the questions follow the general pattern of the Scottish tradition and there are no religious overtones. The text is recited, as is James MacPherson's. Another Virginian text in the Scottish group is a two-stanza fragment sung by Mrs. Ninninger (xvii), where the questions are much closer to the Galloway versions.
Finally in this group there is the text from Miss Margaret Eyre, which is a single stanza (xxvii). Though collected in Scotland, the text was learned in Huntingdonshire in the eighteen-sixties, and the phrase 'on the road' has been anglicised to 'in the wood' to thyme with 'stood'. In Scottish it is possible, of course, that the rhyme was always a bad one; it could have been perfect, however, if the text came originally from the Islands, from Norn, the Orkneys or the Shetlands, where the common pronunciation of 'stood' was 'stod,' which would rhyme with the old pronunciation of 'road' as 'rod', common in the eighteenth century and in use for some time after.[11]
There are several features of the texts in this group which are found also in the Faroese or the Finnish-Swedish ballads of the same type. The Faroese version, 'Kall og svein ungi,' was collected by Hammershaimb between 1847 and 1853; before this, no specific collections of Faroese ballads had been made. The two speakers are an old man and a young boy; the latter is driving a herd of cattle and the old man challenges him:
Hvar rakstu neyt mfni? seg~i kall
(Where have you driven my cattle? said the old man)
Beint ni~an { akur tint seg~i svein ungi.
(straight down into your cornfieldt said the boy)
The exchange of abuse that follows (in ten stanzas) is similar to the exchange of the Scottish ballad, where each expression of ill-wishing is negated by a conditional clause[12]. For example, stanzas 4 - 5:
He~i t~ veri~ flongdurt ...
(If only you had been whippedt ... )
Vi5' mjukari ostfl{s ...
(With a soft slice of cheese •.• )
Vi~ skarpum B.'li t
(With a sharp thong of leathert)
Ryggur tfn ligi~ undirt
(And your back lying under itt) [13]
The Swedish version is similar in form and in basic material. A carlin (Karngen) asks a little boy why he is driving over his field; the boy replies that this is the way the path goes. The exchange of ill-wishes is closer in subject matter to the Scottish texts than to the Faroese, such as stanza 5:
Jag onskar du vore i vildan sjon ...
(I wish you were in the wild sea ... )
Ja, du uti sjon och jag uti b~t ...
(Yes, you in the sea and I in a boat ... )[14]
The most striking feature which is common to Faroese, Finnish-Swedish and Scottish ballads is the initial situation, a boy driving a herd of animals, and being challenged by an older man. In the Faroese and Finnish-Swedish texts, the challenge has the more obvious cause: the boy is damaging the man's land with his own, or the man's animals. This motif appears in a rather confused manner also in the Danish ballad, found also in Swedish, 'Svend Vonved,' translated in English as 'Child Norman's Riddle Rhymes.' [15] In this ballad, the protagonist, who has just avenged his father's murder, meets a shepherd. He asks the shepherd whose sheep he is driving, and there follows, without obvious logical connection, a sequence of riddles, several of which are of the comparative and superlative type found in Child 1, and which together build up a sketch of Norse mythology. In the Galloway texts, the sheep belong to the child and his mother or father; the knight's share, says the child, is the sheep with blue tails. In the North-Eastern Scottish versions, animals have disappeared in all but Duncan MacPhee's text (xxiii), where they are both sheep and cattle. Several of the American texts have either sheep or cattle. In the McMath text (iv), the sheep are 'on yonder hill', their traditional habitat, but in all the others, the implication is that, like the books, the bannocks and the peat, the sheep are with the child; this is closer to the Scandinavian versions. Since it does not seem entirely logical that a child should be driving animals on the way to school, it is possible that a Northern tradition, in which the child was
simply driving the animals, merged with another version in which the child was on his way to school.
Another shared motif between Faroese, Finnish-Swedish and Scottish texts is the boat. (M - N in Appendix C). This is a persistent motif in the Scottish group and occurs also in some of the Irish texts; the knight wishes the child out at sea, and the child qualifies the wish, 'and a good boat under me' . In some cases this is developed further as the knight wishes the boat to break, in which case the child answers either 'and you to drown' or 'and you in, I out.'
This latter reply, which is found in a fragment (xvii) from Virginia, echoes the wording of the Finnish-Swedish ballad, in which the carlin wishes the boy in the wild wood (i vildan skog, st.J), and later on in Hell (i helvitet, st.7), the boy replying each time:
Ja, du derinne och jag deromkring
(Yes, you in and I outside)
In the final stanza the phrase is reversed as the carlin wishes the boy in Heaven, perhaps in an attempt to trick him into replying the same and so wishing himself to be damned, but the boy answers:
Ja, jag derinne och du deromkring
The motif of the boat in the Finnish-Swedish text extends over two stanzas:
5. Jag onskar du vore i vildan SJOn ...
(I wish you were in the wild sea ... )
Ja, du uti sjon och jag uti bBt ...
(Yes, you in the sea and I in a boat ... )
6. Jag borrar ett h&l uti b&ten din ...
(I'll bore a hole in your boat •.• )
Ja, borrar du, s& pliggar jag •..
(Yes, you bore, I 1 11 plug ••. )
In the Faroese ballad, the wording is closer to the Scottish:
9. Hev~i t~ flotia t havinuml .•.
(If only you were floating in the seat ...
Go~ur b~tur undir maer •••
(A good boat under me •.. )
1 0. 0 ngar a/ rar •I ...
(No oars! ... )
Vindurin ligi~ at landinum! ...
(The wind blowing towards landl •.. )
Similarly, the motif of the tree is found in both Finnish-Swedish and Scottish traditions, and is echoed in the Faroese. In the Galloway text (iii) the knight wishes the child in a tree; he replies, 'a gude ladder under me'. The knight wishes the ladder to break; the child replies, 'and you to fa down'. This is not found in later versions, except in (x), which seems to be taken directly from the Minstrelsy; there is a similar stanza, however, in (xvi) from the 'Irish' group, a Virginian text which seems to have absorbed both Scottish and Irish influences:
I wish you was in yon tree
Said false knight to the row,
And a good gun with me
For I'm seven years old.
In the Finnish-Swedish ballad the reply follows the pattern of the 'You in and I outside' series:
4. Jag ~nskar du vore i h~gstan topp ••.
(I wish you were in the highest tree-top ... )
Ja, du upp i topp och jag ner i rot ..•
(Yes, you up in the top and I at the roots •.. )
There is no tree in the Faroese, possibly because there are no big trees in the Faroes, but there is a comparable stanza with a cliff:
7. Hev}h tG hingi~ { berginum! ...
(If only you hung from a cliff! ..• )
Gotf l{na [; maer •.•
(A good rope around me ... )
Stanza three in the Finnish-Swedish is not found in either Faroese or native Scottish texts:
Jag onskar du vore i vildan skog, ..•
(I wish you were in the wild wood .•• )
Ja, du derinne och jag deromkring ..•
(Yes, you in and I outside)
It is echoed, however, in an American text which does not fit easily into either the Scottish or the Irish groups. This is the Kentucky variant (xxiv) from the Crouch family, where the characters are 'the proud porter gay' and 'the child gentleman'. The wood appears in stanza four:
'I wished I had you in the woods', said the proud porter
All alone by the wayside lone. gay,
'With a good gun under my arm', said the child gentleman,
And the game feller's walking alone.
The gun appears also in (xvi) (K1), but in this case the knight has wished the child not in the woods, but in a tree, and this is possibly derived from the Kentucky text where the gun makes better sense. The gun and the woods show the ballad to have been well acclimatised into America; they would presumably be as natural an image of danger to the Sang Branch settlers as the boat and the sea were to the Faroese. The Kentucky text develops the image with an unusual show of physical violence:
'With your head broke in two', said the proud porter gay,
All alone by the wayside lone.
'0 a fence rail jobbed down your neck', said the child gentleman,
And the game feller's walking alone.[16]
Thus, there are two instances of details which appear in the Finnish-Swedish text and in American texts, without appearing in Scotland: the wood motif, and the wording 'You in and I out', in the Virginian text (xvii). It is possible that this is due to coincidence, but since the Scandinavian and the Scottish traditions do seem to be closely linked, it is also possible that there was another version of the ballad, with different or additional allegiances to the Scandinavian traditions, in circulation in Scotland and thence in America. A third possibility is direct influence from Swedish settlers in America.
The patterns of transmission and influence between the Scandinavian countries, Scotland and Ireland, are difficult to ascertain, since from the ninth century onwards there were trading links and colonization between the Scandinavian mainland, the Faroes, Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is possible that the song began in its religious, 'Irish' form, in Ireland or the Lowlands of Scotland, and merged gradually with horthern traditions as it moved north. However, the strength of the Scottish tradition, its relative constancy of material, and the affinities of the song with other Scandinavian traditions such as the flytings in Icelandic literature, combine to suggest that the development of the song was either from Scandinavia, through Scotland to Ireland, or from Scotland to both Scandinavia and Ireland. Two linguistic points support the possibility that the song originated in the North, and moved southwards: the first is the rhyme 'road/stood', which, as described above, could have been a true rhyme in the Northern islands of Scotland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Secondly, the form of the ill-wishing exchange in the North-Eastern Scottish versions of the ballad, unlike any other versions, is 'If I bad you', rather than 'I wish you were'. Although this is not foreign to North-Eastern Scottish language, it is unusual, and it could have been influenced by, or translated from, the Faroese form ' Hevdi tu' , meaning both 'If you' and 'If only you'; this is the form used in the Faroese ballad 'Kall og svein ungi' If this pattern of transmission, from north to south, is correct, there would have been a gradual development in the identity of the child's opponent from old man, who may also have had supernatural attributes, to Devil. Child translated the Swedish 'kurngen' as 'carlin', which he glossed as 'an old crone, possibly a witch, and clearly no better than one of the wicked' [17], but the supernatural overtones need not be inferred from the Swedish. The Faroese 'kall' like,vise means simply 1 old man' ; but 'auld man' is a euphemism for a sinister and possibly diabolic figure in an Ayrshire text of 'The Elfin Knight' (Child 21), and the equally sinister, though not supernatural, protagonist of the seventeenth century Scottish poem 'The Gaberlunzie Man' [18] is introduced as an 'auld carl'. Thus the progression from old man to Devil is not unnatural. The term 'false knight' does not seem to be used elsewhere for the Devil, although it is used in a non-supernatural context in Child 161C (The Battle of Otterburn) and Child 244c (James Hatley); in both cases, the term merely means cowardly and treacherous. Henderson and Collinson say that nearly all their singers explained that the 'false knight' was the Devil, but they also remark that in Willie Whyte's text (xxviii) 'the supernatural figure of the False Knight has become more human, if no less sinister; the text suggests the figure of the child murderer' [19]. This is because the question, 'If I had you in the well' has been changed to the more realistic 'If I had you under will', and because of the homely question, 'Has your mother any more like you?'. In general, the native Scottish texts do not openly treat the False Knight as the Devil, while American texts are more explicit: this is true also of 'Riddles Wisely Expounded' (Child 1). It does not mean that singers did not regard the knight as diabolic; an unwillingness to mention the Devil by name is understandable in both folkloristic and dramatic terms. Tabus often surround such powerful names, and the ballad tradition uses euphemisms such as 1Clootie 1 (Child lC) and 'Shame' (62A)[20]. The mention of Hell in the final stanza of many variants seems to serve the same purpose as the mention of the evil's name in 'Riddles Wisely Expounded' where, in most versions, the naming breaks the tabu and banishes the fiend (see Chapter 2, note 6).
Other epithets for the false knight occur in various texts: a particularly expressive one is 'The Old Dark Knight in the Wood' in Margaret Eyre's Huntingdon text (xxvii). Two American texts in the 'Irish' group use names which are presumably corruptions of 'false'; 'fol, fol, fly' (v) and 'Folfol-follies'. A separate recording from the singer of the latter has the normal reading, 'the false, false knight on the road', so it would seem that the corruption is a deliberate playing with the words to fit the music. Similarly, an Indiana text has the reading, 'the False, fie, the FalseFidee' (xiv). Two very different readings occur in two texts which do not fit into either the 'Irish' or 'Scottish' groups, because they have assumed such individual characteristics that it is impossible to associate them with either. One of these has already been mentioned, the Kentucky text (xxiv), where the knight has become a 'proud porter gay' and the child a 'child gentleman', so that the opposition between the two characters is ostensibly one of social class. This text has adopted refrain lines from 'The Cruel Mother' (Child 20) and the characters may also be borrowed from another source. The Devil is mentioned in the last stanza, where the child retorts, 'But the Devil's chained in Hell', which would only make sense if the 'proud porter' is taken to be some sort of devil, a little like the diabolic 'gay yemen' in Chaucer's 'Friar's Tale', who is also encountered in a greenwood.[21] The obscurity of this reference, together with the violence of the preceding stanzas, make the text a powerful and disturbing one; however, the tune does something to negate this, being a cheerful pentatonic melody, with some similarity to the Irish tune, 'The Mountain Dew', which seems to have been borrowed from the American tune of 'Riddles Wisely Expounded' (Chapter 2, tune group B).
The second text which does not fit into either of the main groups is the Arkansas text (xxvi), 'The Nightman'. This epithet may be simply a variation of 'Knight' , or it may have overtones of the 'night-rider', a sinister horseman belonging to the Ku Klux Klan, members of which also use the term 'knight' to describe themselves. The scenario presented in this text is also strikingly different to that of other versions: as usual, the boy is on the way to school with his dinner, his books and a herd of cattle, but behind him is a fine castle, which the nightman wishes 'in a flame of fire', and a river, which like the castle and the cattle belongs to the boy and his father. As in the Kentucky version, this is a rise in social status for the boy from the older versions, and introduces class tensions as a part of the conflict. In this case there is no hint of supernatural or diabolic identity for the nightman.
The Tunes.
Bronson believes all his tunes to have a common, Scottish, ancestry, although he remarks that 'they have developed into surprisingly diversified variants.'[22] The tunes of several texts are so diverse that it is difficult to imagine any real link between them, and since Bronson gives no objective principles for the inclusion of tunes in his 'tune families', his groupings are questionable in several cases. The American tunes to 'The False Knight' are in general not distinctive and often little more than a chant to fit the words, the singers perhaps following Mr. Pottipher's famous dictum that 'if you can get the words the Almighty sends the tune'.[23] The main exception is the well-defined tune from Tennessee (vi, Group C), which seems to have influenced the two North Carolina versions (vii, xviii). The Vermont tune (xi) and the Nova Scotia, (xii) are more distant relatives, but still recognizable as such by the contour of the second half of the stanza, rising to the octave at the end of the third textual line. Several of the unclassified tunes (such as ix, xiv, xxix) do seem to have some resemblance to each other in their opening phrases, which mostly, like the tunes in Group D, ascend the major tonic arpeggio, but this in itself does not seem sufficient to claim a family grouping. As mentioned above, Tom Crouch's tune (xxiv) has been borrowed from Child 1. The most unusual of the unclassified melodies is the Cheshire tune (xxxi), which like the French tune to the hymn 'Let all mortal flesh keep silence'[24], opens with an ascending five-note scale of the Dorian mode, and confines itself in the remainder of the tune to moving up and down this scale.
.....
The French tune of 'Ou vas-tu, mon petit garcon' is not related to any of the English versions. The two different recordings of Alan Kelly (xxix A and B), which were taken down by different collectors in 1963 and 1962 respectively, shed some light on the way in which a singer produces a melody of this type, which is very free in rhythm and melodic detail, but constant in contour. Each set of variations for the four lines of melody fall within the same compass as each other, and begim and end on the same note as each other; this provides a block structure of four parts, within which the singer can vary the melodic line and the rhythm as the words, or his inclination, allow.
Related Traditions.
'The False Knight Upon the Road' is one of the most elusive of the Child ballads to place in terms of the ballad tradition: it may be argued, even, that it is not a ballad at all, since its narrative content is virtually non-existent. Since it is included among Motherwell's collection, however, indicating that the same singers sang it who also sang the more orthodox ballads, and since this is also true of the modern tradition of the song, it seems pointless now to exclude it from its allotted place in Child's corpus. The text has a number of features which appear also in othr traditions, both literary and non-literary, in Britain, Scandinavian countries and elsewhere. The closest relation to the ballad is the Scottish piece 'Harpkin', printed by Child in his headnote. While mainly a series of evasive questions and answers, this does have a fragment of the ill-wishing exchange found in the second half of 'The False Knight'. This exchange, where each wish is undermined by an additional clause neutralising the ill, or putting the ill-wisher in an equally undesirable position, is akin to the magical spell contest in 'The Twa Magicians' (Child 44), where instead of mere insults and verbal evasions, the 'dialogue' is in the form of physical shape-changing. A more stylised version of this sort of exchange is found in the ballad, 'The Gardener' (Child 219), where a gardener offers to deck a 'leal maiden' completely in flowers, and she responds by offering him garments made of snow, wind and rain. Ballads and folktales of the 'Twa Magician' type are found all over Europe, and contests in words, often between a supernatural or diabolic character and a girl, are also common to folktale: Aarne and Thompson's Types show that they are particularly popular in Sweden and Finland (Type 1093).
There is a comparable tradition of verbal contest in the Mumming Plays, more in the style of the opening questions of 1The False Knight' than the ill-wishing exchanges. The tradition centres around the character of the Doctor, either with the rest of the cast or with his servant and clown, Jack Finney. The dialogues, which are usually a long series of one-line retorts, are often simply nonsense patter, which Tiddy calls 'topsy-turvy patter'[25]; it is stereo type 'found all over England, or at any rate over the Midlands, and there is something like it in the North'. Tiddy also says that he has 'heard village boys doing something of the sort when they were playing the fool together'. In the Tipteerers' Play from Chithurst, Sussex, the dialogue is sung and involves the whole cast, although the Doctor is addressing his questions to the Noble Captain, 'Mr. Carpenter':
DOCTOR: Hip Mr. Carpenter, I've got a little question to ask you. How far is it across the river?
ALL: When you're in the middle you're halfway over Fol the riddle ido
When you're in the middle you're halfway over
Fol the ri the ray. . .
DOCTOR: How do you get across the river?
ALL: The ducks and geese they all swam overt etc.
DOCTOR: Whose house is that over yonder?
ALL. It is not yours but it is the owner's etc. [26]
Echoes of similar language are sometimes found in the Tudor Interludes; Tiddy points out a small section of his 'topsy-turvy patter' in the late sixteenth century Mucedorus, a dialogue between the Clown, Mouse and Segasto; incidentally he observes that the Clown also uses a line very close to the refrain of some versions of 'The Twa Magicians' (Child 44), 'rusty dusty musty fusty crusty firebrand'.[27] Although not in the same sort of dialogue style, the interlude Youth, which shares several stylistic details with the Mummers' Plays, has a passage reminiscent of the 'ladder' motif in 'The False Knight': Charity has told Youth that if he will repent he will go to Heaven. Youth replies:
What, sirs! above the sky?
I had need of a ladder to climb so high.
But what and the ladder slip?
Then I am deceived yet.
And if I fall, I catch a queck;
I may fortune to break my neck.
And that joint is ill to set.[28]
Ian Lancashire points out that Youth's objection to the ladder to Heaven is not unique, and he cites the Abbot in Lindsay's Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, who objects to the two-step ladder:
Quhat and I fal, than I will break my bleder[29]
Another satirical parody of theological argument which appears in the interlude Mankind is echoed in 'Harpkin': this is the metaphor of grinding corn not chaff, appearing in the interlude as follows:
But sir, I pray this question to clarify:
Mishmash, driff, draff,
Some was corn and some was chaff
My dame said my name was Raff;
Unshut your lock and take a halfpenny.[30]
The last exchange in 1Harpkin' seems to be a less coherent form of this:
'Giff, gaff', quo Fin:
'Your mou1 s fou o draff', quo Harpkin.
However, this may be derived simply from the Scottish phrase 'giff-gaff', meaning 'tit for tat', a bandying of words. Literary flytings, such as Dunbar's famous 'Flyting of Dunbar and Kennedie', and the English 'Jacke Upland', which is an extended exchange between a layman and a Friar, are more of the debate tradition of the Provencal 'Tenson' and the French 'Jeu-parti' ; they are wordy, stylised attacks far removed from the brusque one-line combat of the false knight and the child. Slightly closer is the tradition of versecapping, which was part of the professional skills of the Irish poet, and a practice which St. Columba was said to have undertaken with the Devil.[31] The Devil attempted to puzzle the saint by repeating various verses to which the saint had to supply the second line. Columba succeeded in this, and went on to defeat his opponent by quoting moral poems, which the Devil did not know and could not cap. It could be that this tradition had influence on the ballad, which
in Irish versions, as described above, has a strong religious content.
However, the most important analogues of the ballad are the flytings of Old Norse literature, of which there are several examples. Flytings, the formal exchange of abuse and of impolite questions and answers, occur often between pairs of characters of whom one is supernatural and the other sometimes a child; they often take place over water or in a boat, and they represent a contest for superiority, as do the Old Norse riddle dialogues. One of the most extended examples is contained in the translations of Saxo Grammaticue (v l32ff.), the flytings of Erik with Grep, Koli and Gotvara. This provides an interesting comment on the mechanics of the flyting dialogue, in the words of Erik and Grep:
GREP: Adversum scurram causam producere non est, qui vacua vocis mobilitate viget.
(It is hard to bring a case against a buffoon, who thrives on a dance of words without expressing a meaning)
ERIK: Hercule, ni fallor, ad eum, qui protulit ipsum,
editus ignave sermo redire solet.
Ad prolatorem iusto conamine divi
fusa parum docte verba referre solent.
(By Heaven, brainless talk, unless I am much mistaken,
often rebounds on the head of him who uttered it.
Through the righteous dispensation of the gods, words
poured forth with too little wit return to plague the
deliverer) [32]
Erik who is the winner of all his flyting contests, here describes the flyting as a game of skill and calculation, in which each insult has to be carefully composed to avoid its being turned against its maker. Grep fails to understand the subtlety of the game; he loses, resorting to wizardry by setting the head of a horse on a pole and propping open its mouth as a magical curse on Erik; Erik, however, continues to turn his opponents' curses against themselves, and finally wins outright by making the horse's head fall on one of them. This contest takes place with the two sides on opposite sides of a river. The opening questions, from Grep, are similar to the False Knight's first questions in the ballad:
Stulte, quis es? quid inane petis? die, unde iter autquo?
Qua via, quod studium,quis pater, unde genus?
(Fool, who are you? what do you stupidly seek? say,
where have you come from and where are you going?
By what road, what is your purpose, who is your father, and of what race?)
After defeating Grep, Erik goes on to wit contests with Koli, custodian of the gifts of King Frothi, and with the queen, Gotvara, winning both times.
Another flyting in Saxo Grammaticus occurs between Fridlef and a giant (VI l78ff.); this contains the motif of the boat, and also involves the contest between boy and supernatural adversary, although in this case it is not the boy who speaks. Fridlef, who is with his army by the Frokasund fjord, hears three swans sing an enigmatic song about Hithin, son of the King of Telemark. A belt drops from the sky on which is inscribed the explanation of the song: a giant has carried off Hithin, and is forcing him to row across to the neighbouring coast. The giant has assumed human shape. The boat passes Fridlef and the boy calls out to him, asking him to use sharp words against the giant, so as to weaken his power and make an attack possible (facilius oppugnandum promittens); this Fridlef does, in twenty-one lines of abusive verse, and is then able to hew a foot off the giant
and deliver the boy to safety.
The boat is also present in the Harbaradsljod, in the Poetic Edda, where there is an exchange of abuse between Dor and Odinn, who is disguised as the ferryman Harbad. Dor is on his way back from a journey to the East, and comes to a sound. On the other side is a ferry-man in a boat, and they challenge each other. Dor then asks Harbard to ferry him over the sound, promising reward in a curious passage reminiscent of 'The False Knight':
Ferdu mik urn sundit, fardi ek tdk a morgan;
(Ferry me over the sound, I will feed thee for it in the morning;)
meis hefi ek a baki, vedra matrinn betrit
(A basket I have on my back, and food therein, none better;)
At ek i hvild adr ek heiman for,
(At leisure I ate, before I left the house)
Sildr ok hafra; sadr em ek enn dess.
(of herrings and porridge, so plenty I had)[33]
There follows an exchange of abuse, mainly concerning their past lives.
Flytings occur also in the sagas, again often with the sea or a river involved. In Ketils saga haengs (chapter v)
there is a challenge very like that of the.Harbardsljd, as Ketil asks:
Hvat er pad flagda der ek sa a fornu nesi?
(What ogress is that that I saw on the ancient headland?) [34]
Grims saga lodinkinna (ch.I) also contains a flyting of this type, in which the sea is present. [35] In Bdsa saga (Ch.V) there is a curse which, though not a part of a flyting as such, is very similar to the 'boat' curse in the ballad:
Ef ~6 siglir (When you go sailing,
slitni reitJi the rigging shall break,
en .. af styri and the hooks on your rudder
stokkvi krokar shall snap asunder,
rifni reflar, the sails shall tear
reki segl ofan and be swamped by the sea,
en ak taumar the braces shall break;
allir slitni unless you give up
nema ¥ Herraud your hatred of Herraud
heift upp gefir
ok sv8:' Bosa and plead with Bosi
bi-8"ir til sa:' t ta to come to terms.)[36]
The curse ends with a runic riddle, which the King must guess or his soul sink into Hell, a conclusion also reminiscent of 'The False Knight'.
The Helgi lays also contain flytings between warriors and in some cases against supernatural enemies, such as the exchange between Atli and the giantess Hrimges in Helgakvida Hjorvardssonar.[37] A flyting of a rather different type
occurs in Gautrek's saga, once more between Odinn and Dor; Odinn is bestowing a number of blessings on Starkad, each of which is negated by a curse from Dor. The flyting in this case takes place on an island.[38]
There is a Scottish example of the same type of story, although it is grounded in the Celtic tradition rather than in the Nordic; it was collected from a fisherman of Barra, Alexander MacNeill. [39] Gruagach, son of the King of Eirinn, goes out to challenge the band of Fionn, An Fhinn the Een, and finds them fishing for trout in a river. He asks to join the band, and then suggests that they hunt rather than fish, which they do; in due course Gruagach catches a deer. A carlin appears, demanding, 'Who seized the beast of my love?' She demands the deer, then a share of the meat, which is refused. The carlin and Gruagach fight, and exchange curses; each curse, however, has a conditional clause that will lift it. Gruagach's conditional clause is that he sleeps with the wife of the Tree Lion; hers is that sne stands with a foot on either side of a ford with the water running through her. A shape-changing sequence follows as Gruagach, having fulfilled his conditional clause, has to fight the Tree Lion; this brings him to the end of his quest.
Bertha Philpotts argues that the Norse flyting is a part of an ancient ritual drama, comprising the slaying of a bridegroom, an accusation against the bride (or a curse), a flyting and a love scene, which may contain a suggestion of resurrection. This drama, she believes, lies beneath the plot of the Helgi lays and is essentially the universal folk drama of fertility and rebirth, representing the contest of the old and the new years, and performed to induce the earth to bring forth abundantly'. [40] Whether or not this is true of the lays, flytings certainly occur in the English versions of this folk drama, the Mumming Plays, as described above, in association with the figure of the doctor, who is the figure most strongly associated with resurrection in the plays. There are, moreover, many traditions all over the world of abuse being used in a ritual context, not linked to any literary form. Frazer cites several examples of abuse uttered, or provoked from one's neighbours, in order to bring what he loosely terms 'good luck'; this nearly always involves fertility. For example, in the Indian district of Behar, 'people ... who accompany a marriage procession to the bride's house are often foully abused by the women of the bride's family in the belief that this contributes to the good fortune of the married pair'.[41] In the Birbhum district of Bengal, when rain is scarce, 'people will throw dirt or filth on the houses of their neighbours, who abuse them for doing so. Or they drench the lame, the halt, the blind and other infirm persons, and are reviled for their pains by the victims. This vituperation is believed to bring about the desired result by drawing down showers the parched earth'.[42] There seems to be no consistency as to whether the good fortune comes to the abuser or to the abused, or to a third party. Enid Welsford, in her study The Fool, develops this concept more fully, from Sanskrit drama to the Tudor court fool, whose function she describes as that of the scapegoat who, by jeering at his superiors, bore their abuse and their bad luck on his own shoulders.[43] She suggests that Unferth in Beowulf is an example of this official function of the abuser; and evidence of the Tudor court fools, such as Will Somers, certainly includes incidents of abuse and raillery that are demonstrated also in Shakespeare's fools; 'There is no slander in an allowed fool, though he do nothing but rail'. Welsford also links the court fool with the dramatic Vice of the morality plays, who tempts and abuses the Virtue. This brings the circle back to the Mumming Plays and the fertility dramas of Bertha Philpott's argument, since there seem to be definite links between court drama and folk drama in the Tudor period. Whatever the precise relationship between these very diverse traditions, the fool, the Vice, the ritual doctor and the Indian fertility rituals, it seems clear that abuse is widely held to be a protection against misfortune, whether this misfortune is sterility, death, or being carried off by an evil spirit, and this idea seems to lie at the heart of the flyting tradition.
There remains the question of why so many of the flytings take place over water, or with one of the participants in a boat. As a purely practical consideration, the sea and the fjords would have been a dominant feature of Scandinavian life, and the positioning of enemies on opposite sides of a stretch of water would therefore have been an obvious image to use, just as it would have been a particularly meaningful curse, in a Seafaring society, to wish your enemy's boat sunk. Water is so consistently associated with the flyting, however, that it would seem that there must be a more specific reason. Philpotts suggests that it may reflect an actual custom or ritual performance, but this still does not explain the association. One explanation may be that water is frequently associated with boundaries and with shape-changing. Tam Lin (Child 39) has to be thrown into water before resuming human shape; mermaids, half-human and half-fish, live in it and so do silkies, half-human and halfseal. Areas of changing nature, boundaries and 'between' areas that are neither one thing nor the other, are particularly potent areas in magic traditions,[44] and since many of the flytings are concerned with at least one supernatural character, it may be that this was an obvious association.
The conditional clause in the story of Gruagach and the carlin, in which the carlin has to stand with one foot on either side of a ford in order to lift a curse, seems to indicate that the power of water was definitely involved in the power of the curse; by bridging the water, the curse is lifted. Thus a general association of water with supernatural power, coupled with a specific association of a curse being delivered from one side of a stretch of water to the other, the water representing the enmity between the two parties, goes some way to explaining the flyting scenario. It is possibly that in some cases there was an idea that water protected the human from the supernatural enemy; witches are supposed to be unable to cross a running stream and to be afraid of water.[45]
The boat curse in 'The False Knight Upon the Road' is a long way removed from these Norse flyting sequences, which date roughly from the twelfth century onwards, but the ballad has such similarities to the flytings that it seems most likely to have originated from the Scandinavian tradition. The use of a child as one of the contestants, and the 'Irish' association of the child with good, may owe something to the more classical European tradition of the Wise Child, a tradition demonstrated in the stories of the Christ Child disputing with his supposed superiors, popular in medieval England, and in particular in the stories of Ypotis, the wise child who reveals himself finally as Christ.[46] The roots of this tradition are complex, howeve~ and it may be that the oppositional pair of characters represented in the ballad, the young hero and the old villain, is one of the archetypal patterns of literature and of human thinking.
NOTES TO CHAPTER FOUR (CHILD 3)
1. For the Swedish text, see Oskar ancken, Nigra Prof af Folksong och Saga i det svenska Osterbotten, in Finska Fornminnesforeningens Tidskrift (suomen Muinaismuisto Yhtion Aikakauskirja III, Helsinki 1878), No.10 p.25. English translation, Child I p.21. For the Faerose; see V. U. Hammershaimb, Faerosk Anthologi, (Miller & Thomsen, Copenhagen, 1891), I p.283.
2. Child I p.21.
3. For a discussion of the literate Scottish folksingers, see Hamish Henderson, 'The Ballad, the Folk and the Oral Tradition' in Edward J. Cowan, The People's Past (1980), 106ff.
4. Sleeve notes, Topic, 'The Child Ballads I'.
5. D. K. Wilgus, Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship since 1898, p. 213.
6. Hugh S. Roberton, Songs of the Isles (J. Curwen, London, n.d.) II p.42.
7. C. M. Barbeau, Jongleur Songs of Old Quebec (Rutgers U.P., New Brunswick, 1962), pp.9-12.
8. For details of this, see Anthony Slaven, The Development of the West of Scotland, 1750-1960 (Routledge & Kagan Paul, London 1975); and S.G.E. Lythe and J. Butt, An Economic History of Scotland, ll00-1939 (Blackie, Glasgow & London 1975).
9. L. Manny & J. R. Wilson, Songs of Miramichi, p. 200.
10. Bronson, Traditional Tunes, I p. 34.
11. S. W. Grant, The Scottish National Dictionary.
12. Phillips Barry points out in his notes to text (xiii) that there are classical antecedents to this type of exchange and cites Plautus, Rudens, 375, an exchange between Ampelisca and Trachalio.
13. Hammershaimb, op.cit., p.283.
14. See Note 1.
15. Svend Grundtvig, Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, I No. 18. Translated, R. C. A. Prior, Ancient Danish Ballads I No. xix.
16. Similar improvisation can be seen in text (xiii) (T).
17. Child I p. 20.
18. Penguin Book of Scottish Verse, pp.241-4.
19. Scottish Studies IX Pt.l (1965) p.13.
20. Robert Burns provides a collection of such euphemisms in his poem 'Address to the Deil' (J. Kinsley, The Poems & Songs of Robert Burns I p.168, No.76):
0 Thou, whatever title suit theel
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick or Clootie,
Wha in yon cavern grim and sooty
Clos'd under hatches,
Spairges about the brunstane cootie,
To scaud poor wretchesl (st.1)
21. 'The Friar's Tale', 1.1380 (Chaucer, Works p.90).
22. Bronson, Traditional Tunes, I p.34.
23. Mr. Pottipher was one of Vaughan Williams' sources of folksongs. He is cited in D. Occomore & P. Spratley, Bushes and Briars (Laughton, Essex 1979) p.60.
24. Hymns Ancient and Modern, revised, No. 390.
25. R. Tiddy, The Mummers' Play, pp.84-5.
26. Alan Brody, The English Mummers and their Plays (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1969) p.70.
27. Tiddy, op.cit., p.l30. A similar passage occurs in the Smiths' greeting from Germany: (Lutz Rohrich, 'Ratsellied' in Handbuch des Volkslieder I, Munich 1973, pp.209-10):
Mein Schmied, wo streichst du her, da~
deine Schuh so staubig,
dein Haar so krausig,
dein Bart auf Backen herausfahrt
wie ein zwieschneidig Schlachtschwert?
28. Ian Lancashire, Two Tudor Interludes (Manchester U.P., 1980) p.108.
29. Ibid. The phrase 'to catch a queck' probably means 'to be hanged', which idea strengthens the irony of the ladder in both examples.
30. Lines spoken by the Vice Mischief to Mercy: Mankind, 11.48-52. (J. A. B. Somerset, Four Tudor Interludes, Athlone, London 1974).
31. Bodleian MS Laud 615 p.134. (transl. John O'Donovan, ed. 1868) pp.135ff. See Cormac's Glossary, Whitley Stokes, Calcutta
32. Saxo Grammaticus, transl. Peter Fisher, ed. H. E.
33. Davidson (1970), Chap.V l32ff. Harbaresljo, in G. Neckel, Edda I p.75. Henry A. Bellows, The Poetic Edda (Regan,
pp.l2l-l37- Transl., N. York 1923)
34. Gulni Jtnsson, Fornaldar Sogur Nor~urlanda II p.169.
35. Bertha Philpotts, The Elder Edda & Scandinavian Drama, p.l58.
36. G. J~nsson, £E·cit., III p.293. Transl., H. P~lsson & P. Edwards, Gautrek's Saga & other medieval tales, p.66.
37. Henry A. Bellows, The Poetic Edda, pp.269-289.
38. G. Jonsson, £E·cit., III pp.25-6.
Edwards, £E•cit., p.39.
/ Transl., Palsson &
39. J. F. Camp bell, Popular Tales of the West H:i.ghlands
(Edinburgh 1860) II pp.4lOff., 1The Fair Grbagach,
son of the King of Eirinn 1 •
40. Philp_otts, £E•Cit., p.l44.
41. J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (1926) I p.279.
42. Ibid., I p.278.
43. Enid Welsford, The Fool: His social and literary history (Faber & Faber, London 1935.
44. See Chapter 8, p.239; pp.254-5.
45. As Maggie and the rest of the coven are in Burns' 'Tam O' Shanter'; Kinsley, The Poems & Songs of Robert Burns
No. 323, p.448.
46. See Francis Utley, 'Dialogues, Debates and Catechisms' in A Manual of the Writings in Middle Enlish 1050-1500 ed. A. E. Hartung, Connecticut 1972 III No.7l.
--------------------
APPENDIX C: CHILD J, 'THE FALSE KNIGHT UPON THE ROAD':
DESCRIPTION OF TEXTS.
Key to Description of Texts.
A. Where are you going? - I'm going to my school.
B. What brings you here so late? - I go to meet my God.
C. What do you go there for? - to learn the word of God.
D. What do you go there for? - to learn to read (I read from my book).
D. What's that on your back? -my books.
D1. What's that on your back? -my bannocks (bundles) and my books.
D2. What's in your pack? (bag/wooler) -my books (primer and my dinner) .
D3. What's in your bucket?(basket) -vittles for my dinner (bread/breakfast and my dinner).
D4 . What's in your bottle? -milk for myself to drink.
D5 . What are you eating? -bread and cheese (meat).
D6 . What have you there? -something to eat (bread and cheese/dinner and books).
D7. What have you there? -good books in my hand.
D8. What is for your dinner? -some bread and some meat.
E. Give me a share. -Not a bite or a crumb (not a bite for your tooth/I canna give you a share).
E1. Have you any for me? -I 've got little enough for myself.
E2. Give my dog some. -I won't give him none (I'd sooner see him choke)
F. What's on your arm? -my peat.
G. Whose cattle are those? -mine and my father's.
G1. Whose sheep are those? -mine and mother's (my father's).
G2. What sheep andcattle are those? -my father's and mine.
H. How many are mine? -All those with blue tails (no tails).
H1 . Which of them are yours? -The ones that wear their tails behind.
H2 . There's nary a one with a blue tail. -And nary a one shall you have.
I. How will you go by land? - with a strong staff in my hand.
How will you go by sea? - with a good boat under me.
I 1 Are you a child of God? - I say my prayers at night.
I 2. Whose castle is that? -my father's and mine.
I wish it were in a blaze of flame. - and you in the middle of it.
Whose river is that? -my father's and mine.
I wish you were in the middle of it. - and a good boat under me.
I 3. Has your mother any more like you? -aye, but none of them for you.
What is rounder than a ring? - the sun.
What is higher than a king? - God.
What is whiter than milk? - snow.
What is softer than silk? - down.
What is greener than grass? - poison.
What is worse than women coarse? - the devil.
What is longer than the wave? - love.
What is deeper than the sea? - Hell.
I 5 . What is higher than the sky? -Heaven.
What is deeper than the sea? - Hell.
I 6 . What do you learn to read for? -to keep me from Hell.
I 7. Who taught you so well? -my teachers and my mama.
What did they teach you so well for? - to keep me from you and your wicked Hell).
J. I wish you were along with me -and our Lord in company.
K. I wish you were in that tree - a ladder under me.
K1 . I wish you were in that tree - a good gun with me.
L. And the ladder to break - and you to fall.
M. I wish you were in the sea - a good boat (ship/bottom) under me.
N. And the boat to break - and you to drown.
N1 . And the boat to break - and you in and I out.
O. I wish you were in that well
O 1. I wish you were in that well and you in Hell.
but the Devil's chained in Hell.
O2 . I'll pitch you in the well - I'll pitch you in first.
P. I wish you were on the sands - a good staff in my hands.
Q. I hear a bell (your school bell) - it 's ringing you to Hell.
R. A curse on your mother and father (on your teacher)
A blessing on my mother. . .
S. I wish I had you in the woods - a good gun under my arm.
With your head broke in two - a fence rail jobbed down your neck.
T. I wish you were a fiddle -And you to be the bow of it.
And if the bow should break - May the end stick in your throat.
U. You're on your knees - I am praying to my Lord to send the Devil back to Hell.
Description of Texts.
(i) 'Oh, I wish you were along with me'
Place: ? Ireland
Date: 1818
Source: c. R. Maturin, Women: or, Pour et Contre, Edinburgh, 1818, p.28. In the novel the stanzas are sung by an old madwoman; the novelist describes it as a fragment of an Irish ballad 'evidently of monkish composition, and of which
the air has all the monotonous melancholy of the chaunt of the cloister'. Also in G. H. Gerould, 'An Irish Version of the
False Knight Upon the Road', MLN 53 (1938) 596-7.
Description: 2 stanzas:
Description of Knight: 'the false knight as he rode'
Description of Child: 'the child, and he stood'
(ii) 'Oh, whare are ye gaun'
Place: West Scotland
Date: 1827
Source: Motherwell, Minstrelsy, App. No.J2 and p.xxiv.
Child 3B.
Description: 1 stanza: A.
Knight: 'the false knight, and false false was his rede'
Child: 'the pretty little boy, and still still he stude'
Tune: A
(iii) The Fause Knicht
Place: Galloway, Scotland
Date: 1827
Source: Mary McQueen. Andrew Crawfurd's Collection of Ballads and Songs, ed. E. B. Lyle, I p.77. Motherwell, Minstrelsy, Introduction p.lxxiv.
Child 3A.
Description: 9 stanzas.
A D F G1 H K L M N.
Knight: 'the fause knicht upon the road'
Child: 'the wee boy and still he stood'
(iv) 'Oh whare are ye gaun'
Place: Airds, Kirkcudbright, Galloway
Date: 1884
Source: From Mr. McMath, from the recitation of his aunt, Jane Webster, learned 'many years ago' from the wife of Peter McGuire, cotman at Airds.
Child I p.485 (C)
Description: 4 stanzas
A G H 0
Knight: 1 the false knight upon the road'
Child: 1 the wee boy, and still he stood'
Tune: Child V p.4ll.Group B. Bronson 3.8
(v) 'What have you in your bottle?'
Place: Fort Kent
Date: 1911
Source: Sung by a French girl, learned from an illiterate Irish family, before 1870. P. Barry, JAF XXIV (1911) p.344.
Description: 1 stanza: D4
Knight: 'the fol, fol Fly on the road'
Child: 'the child, who was seven years old'
(vi) 'The Knight met a child in the Road'
Place: Flag Pond, Tennessee
Date: Sept. 1, 1916
Source: Sung by Mrs. T. G. Coates. Sharp MSS 3369/2466
Sharp & Karpeles, English Folksongs from the
Southern Appalachians, 1932, I p.3.
Description: 7 stanzas + introductory line as above.
A C D6 E P M Q.
Refrain: He stood and he stood, and it's well because he stood
Knight: 'the knight in the road'
child: 'the child as he stood'
Tune: Group C. Bronson 3.5
(vii) 'Where are you going?'
Place: Hot Springs, N. Carolina
Date: 1916
Source: Mrs. Jane Gentry. Sharp MSS 3426/2516. Sharp & Karpeles, English Folksongs, 1932 I p.4 (B).
Description: 5 stanzas:
Refrain: He stood and he stood
He well thought on he stood
Knight: 'the knight in the road'
Child: 'the child as he stood'
Tune: Group C. Bronson 3.6
(viii) 'Where are you going?'
Place: Missouri (Virginian source)
Date: 1917
Source: Learned by Miss J. D. Johns from an uncle in Virginia, whose grandmother came from Scotland.
Belden, Ballads & Songs collected by the Missouri Folklore Society, p. JAF XXX 1917)286
Description: 4 stanzas: A D3 E2 o2 .
Knight: 'the false knight Munroe'
Child: 'the little boy' ... 'but I'll stand to my book also'
Last line is spoken: 'And he pitched him in the well and went on to school'.
(ix) 'The False Knight on the Road'
Place: Elkton, Virginia
Date: Nov. 23, 1918
Source: Mrs. Sarah Finchum, collected by Martha M. Davis. A. K. Davis, Traditional Ballads of Virginia, 1929, pp.549, 61.
Description: 4 stanzas:
Knight: 'the false knight .... the false so rude'
Child: 'the child, and still it stood'
Tune: unclassified. Bronson 3.4
(x) 'The Fause Knicht and the Wee Boy'
Place: New Brunswick (Scottish source)
Date: 1929
Source: Written down by Mrs. James McGill, learned in Galloway. Barry, Eckstorm and Smyth, British Ballads from Maine, p.ll
Description: 9 stanzas
AD F G1 H K L M N.
Knight: 'the Fause Knicht upon the road'
Child: 'the wee boy and still he stude'
(xi) 'The False Knight on the Road'
Place: Springfield, Vermont
Date: Sept. 21, 1932
Source: Mrs. E. M. Sullivan. Learned in childhood in Ireland. Flanders & Olney, Ballads Migrant in New England, 1953, pp.46-7
Description: 7 stanzas
A D2 G H I 7 R.
Knight: 'the false, false knight'
Child: 'the child on the road: the pretty boy seven years old'
St.6: 1 and he bowed seven times on the road'
Tune: Group C. Bronson 3.10
(xii) 'False Knight Upon the Road'
Place: Devil 1 s Island, Nova Scotia
Date: 1932
Source: Mr. Faulkner and Mr. Ben Henneberry.
Helen Creighton, Songs and Ballads from Nova Scotia, pp. 1-2.
Description: 6 stanzas
D 2 I4 R.
'Hi diddle' refrain, 4 lines.
Knight: 'the false knight'
Child: 'the child on the road: the pretty little child only seven years old'
Tune: Group C. Bronson 3.9
(xiii) 'The False Knight upon the Road'
Place: Brewer, Maine
Date: August 20, 1934
Source: Mr. William Morris, learned from the singing of his mother, native of Prince Edward Island. Phillips Barry, BFSSNE XI (1936) 8-9.
Description: 5 stanzas
A D2 E T.
Knight: 'the false knight upon the road'
Child: 'the pretty little boy about seven years old'
(xiv) 'The False Fidee'
Place: Connersville, Indiana
Date: 1935
Source: Lucile Wilkin, learned from Mrs. Chester A.
Porter. Paul G. Brewster, Ballads and Songs of Indiana, pp.29-30.
Description: 6 stanzas
A G H H2 M O.
Knight: 'the false, fie, the false Fidee'
Child: 'the child, and there still she stood'
Tune: unclassified. Bronson 3.3
(xv) 'The Smart Schoolboy'
Place: Powell Co., Virginia
Date: 1935
Source: Preston Wolford. J. J. Niles, Ballad Book,
1961, pp.22-3.
Description: 5 stanzas
A C1 D6 E Q.
Knight: 'the knight on the road'
Child: 'the boy as he stood'
Tune: Group D
(xvi) 'The False Knight to the Row'
Place: Wise Co. Virginia
Date: June 16, 1939
Source: Mrs. Polly Johnson, collected by E. L. Hamilton. University of Virginia Library Collection, 1547/20/375.
Description: 7 stanzas
A D6 E1 Gl H M K1.
Knight: 'the false knight to the row'
Child: 'child ... for I'm seven years old'
(xvii) 'The Boy and the Devil'
Place: Roanoke Co., Virginia
Date: 1941
Source: Mrs. Ninninger, collected by Alfreda M. Peel. A. K. Davis, More Traditional Ballads of Virginia, pp. 14-15.
Description: 1 stanza:
Knight: 'Devil'
Child: 'Boy'
(xviii) 'The False Knight upon the Road'
Place: Hot Springs, N. Carolina
Date: 1947
Source: Mrs. Maud Long (daughter of Mrs. Jane Gentry, (see vii). Duncan Emrich, LC Archive of American Folksong, Album XXI.
Description: 7 stanzas
A C D5 EM P 0.
Knight: 'the knight in the road'
Child: 'the child as he stood'
Tune: Group C. Bronson 3. 7
(xix) 'False Knight upon the Road'
Place: Nova Scotia
Date: 1950
Source: Evelyn Richardson and Anne Wickens. H. Creighton, Traditional Songs from Nova Scotia, p.1.
Description: 4 stanzas:
Knight: 'False Knight'
Child: 'the child in the road': 'the pretty little girl, but still she stood in the road'
Tune: unclassified. Bronson J.2
(xx) 'False Knight'
Place: Aberdeen
Date: 1954
Source: Nellie MacGregor, a city-dwelling tinker woman. H. Henderson & F. Collinson, 'New Child Ballad Variants', Scottish Studies IX Pt. 1 (1965) 11 (c).
Description: 1 stanza: D1
Knight: 'the false knight upon the road'
Child: 'the wee boy and still he stood'
Tune: Group B
(xxi) 'False Knight'
Place: Blairgowrie, Perthshire
Date: 1955
Source: Mrs. Bella Higgins. Henderson & Collinson, 55 IX Pt. 1 (1965) 11(B).
Description: 4 stanzas: A D1 M O.
Knight: 'the false knight upon the road'
Child: 'the wee boy arld still he stood'
Tune: Group B
(xxii) 'False Knight'
Place: Blairgowrie, Perthshire
Date: 1955
Source: Andra and Bell Stewart. Archive of the School of Scottish Studies, rec. no. l955/l52/B6.
Description: 5 stanzas
A D1 EM O.
Knight: 'the false knight upon the road'
Child: 'the wee boy and still he stood'
Tune: Group B. Bronson IV p.442, 3.9.1
(xxiii) 'The False Knight'
Place: Blairgowrie, Perthshire
Date: Summer 1955
Source: Duncan MacPhee (aged 19). Henderson & Collinson, SS IX Pt. 1 (1965) 10 (A).
Description: 3 stanzas: Dl E G2 .
Knight: 'the false knight upon the road'
Child: 'the wee lad and still he stood'
Tune: Group B
(xxiv) 'The Devil and the School Child'
Place: Putney, E. Kentucky
Date: 1955
Source: Tom Crouch, transcribed by his son Jim: the Crouches are a mining and small farming family. Leonard Roberts, Sang Branch Settlers, pp.89-90.
Description: 8 stanzas
A DJ E S M N2 0 1.
Knight: 'the proud porter gay, all alone by the wayside lone'
Child: 'the child gentleman, and the game feller's walking alone'
Tune: unclassified
(xxv) 'The False Knight on the Road'
Place: Coalisland, Co. Tyrone, Ireland
Date: 1958
Source: Frank Quinn, recorded by Sean O'Boyle. Topic, The Folksongs of Britain IV, 'The Child Ballads'. Also in J. Taylor & Michael Yates, eds., Ballads and Songs, Vol 6.
Description: 4 stanzas
B I Q + refrain
Refrain: 'And he stood and he stood
and twere well that he stood'
Knight: 'the knight on the road'
Child: 'the child as he stood'
Tune:Group D
(xxvi) 'The Nightman'
Place: Fayetteville, Arkansas
Date: July 15, 1959
Source: Mrs. Maxine Hite. M. c. Parler, An Arkansas Ballet Book, p.44.
Description: 8 stanzas
A D6 G H1 I2.
Knight: 'the nightman as he rode'
Child: 'the boy and still he stood' (repeated at end of each stanza as a refrain)
(xxvii) 'The False Knight in the Wood'
Place: Huntingdonshire, England
Date: 1962
Source: Remembered by Miss Margaret Eyre. JFDSS IX 3 (1962) 156-7; 55 IX Pt.1 (1965) l3(E).
Description: 1 stanza: A.
Knight: 'the old dark knight, the old dark knight in the wood'
Child: 'the little little boy, and he answered him where he stood'
Tune: unclassified
(xxviii) 'False Knight'
Place: Aberdeen
Date: 1962
Snurce: Willie Whyte. Henderson & Collinson, 55 IX Pt. 1 (1965) 12(D).
Description: 3 stanzas:
Knight: 'the false knight upon the road'
Child: 'the little boy, and there he stood'
Tune: Group B
(xxix) 'The False Knight'
Place: Chaplin Island Road, Miramichi, New Brunswick
Date: 1963
Source: Alan Kelly. L. Manny & J. R. Wilson, Songs of Miramichi, pp. 199-200.
Description: 8 stanzas
A D3 E2 D4 E2 IS U.
Knight: 'the false, false knight on the road'
Child: 'the little boy not seven years old' ... of seven years old'
Tune: unclassified
N.B. Another text from Mr. Kelly was recorded in 1962 by Lee B. Haggery & Henry Felt: Bronson IV p.442 (3.10.1)
The tune, which is irregular, is slightly different; the false knight is recorded as 'the fol-fol-follies at the road'; and the text has only three stanzas, as follows:
D3 D4 E2.
(xxx) 'The False Knight on the Road'
Place: Tulsa, Oklahoma (scottish source)
Date: ? 1964
Source: James McPherson (recitation), born Inverness. Ethel & Chauncey O. Moore, Ballads and Folksongs of the Southwest. pp. 11-12.
Description: 5 stanzas
A D7 G1 H O.
Knight: 'the fause knicht on the road'
Child: 'the child, but still he stood'
(xxxi) 'The False Knight'
Place: New Ferry, Cheshire
Date: ?1967
Source: Sung by Mrs. Stanley. Dorothy Dearnley, Seven Cheshire Folksongs, pp. 12-14.
Description: 6 stanzas
A D6 DB E C Q.
Knight: 'the false knight'
Child: 'the child on the road: the bonny little girl of seven years old'.
Tune: unclassified