Fair Maid by the Sea-Shore: Marston (ME) pre1934
[From Bulletin of the Folk Song Society of the Northeast; Volume 7, 1934. Notes by Barry follow the text.
According to Ancestry.com, the informant, Annie V. Marston was born in Maine about 1855 and married to Charles C. Marston. They later (by 1910 ) lived in Bridgewater, Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Obviously the date is much earlier than 1934 but no attempt was made to ascertain when she learned this.
R. Matteson 2014]
THE FAIR MAID BY THE SEA-SHORE0 Text and melody (in Shaker notation) sent in by Mrs. Annie V. Marston, West Gouldsboro, Maine, 1934.
1 There was a fair lady far crossed in love,
Far crossed in love as it were, O;
Nothing could she find to ease her fair mind,
Than to stray all along the sea shore, O,
Than to stray all along the sea shore.
2 There was a sea captain a-ploughing the deep,
A-ploughing the deep as it were, O,
Nothing could he find to ease his sad mind,
Than to sail all alone the sea shore, O.
3 "I shall die, I shall die," the sea captain he cried,
"If I don't get that lady so fair, O;
What will I not give to my jolly seamen,
If they'll bring that fair damsel on board, o!"
4 "O, I have got silver and I have got gold,
And I have got costly a ware, O!
All these I will give to my jolly seamen,
If they'll bring this fair damsel on board, O."
5 With many persuasions she came on board,
The captain he welcomed her there, O;
He welcomed her down to the cabin below,
Saying, "Fare thee well, sorrow and care, O!"
6 She sang him a song, it was at his request,
She sang it so sweet and so fair, O;
She sang it so sweet, so neat and complete,
That she sang the sea captain to sleep, O.
7 Then she robbed him of silver, she robbed him of gold,
She robbed him of costly a ware, O;
And the captain's broadsword she used for an oar,
And she paddled her boat to the shore, O.
8 "O were my men sleeping, or were my men mad,
Or were my men sunk in despair, O,
That that lady so gay should thus run away,
When the captain he welcomed her there, O?"
9 "No, your men were not sleeping, your men were not mad,
Your men were not sunk in despair, O;
I deluded your crew and likewise yourself too,
And again I'm a maid on the shore, O !"
This ballad was first printed in Joyce's Old Irish Folk-Music and, Songs, p. 152, "The Mermaid", a fragment of one stanza with the air. American versions have been printed by Mackenzie (Ballads and Sea Songs from Nova Scotia, pp. 74-5, 394, two texts, with one air), Gordon, (Adventure, August 15, 1927, text from California), Greenleaf and Mansfield, (Ballads and Sea-Songs from Newfoundland, pp. 63-4, one text with its air). There are two unpublished texts, one with the air, in the Belden MSS., (Harvard University Library), the other, recorded by Miss Smyth, from Mr. Horace Priest of Sangerville, Maine. The rather close relationship of the texts to each other suggests derivation from a lost broadside; the traditional divergencies are less in the textual variants than in the sets of the air. The Fair Maid by the Sea-Shore is the representative in English of a group of Nordic and Romance ballads in which a maid is enticed on board a ship and abducted; the motif is found also in Middle Irish popular tales.
The Romance form is in French, Italian and Catalan. A French ballad, L'Epee Liberatrice (V. Smith, Romania, VII, 69) is of a Prince's daughter who sees a ship with thirty men on board, coming to land; she goes on board to learn the song sung by the youngest of the crew. The song puts her to sleep; when she awakes, she is on the high seas. She asks a sailor for a sword and kills herself. The Italian ballad Il Corsaro (C. Nigra, Canti Popolari d'el Piemonte, p. 106) is much the same, except that it omits the sleep-producing effect of the music. In Catalan tradition (Lo Mariner, in Briz y Candi, Cansons d'e Ia
Tema,I, 113-20), the ballad has a happy ending.
The Nordic form, found in Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and, Faroese, has been studied in detail by R. Berge, Skipar Holgje, in Norsk Folkekultur, I, pp. 71-84. The best form of it is the Swedish Skon, Jungfrun (A.I. Arwidsson, Szsenska Fornsanger, I, no. 41, PP. 2S8, ff.) A maid on the beach sees a ship coming to land and asks the skipper what he has to sell. He takes her by the snow-white hand and leads her into his cabin, where she passes the night. When she awakes on the high seas, she laments that she will never see her children again -a taunt for the skipper, implying that she has deceived him- lets down her yellow hair, jumps overboard and swims to her native land. The skipper pursues in his ship, but is left cursing on the beach, as he sees her sitting in her father's window' Norwegian B (Berge, l. c., pp. 72-3) has the "happy ending" of the Catalan ballad, found also in the version of The Fair Maid on the Sea Shore in the Belden MSS.
Our ballad resembles the Nordic form rather more closely, but approaches the Romance form in its retention of the sleep-producing music. We have the magic music in the Middle Irish Dindsenchus of Cleena's Wave, Glandore, County Cork, to the effect that Cleena (M. Ir., Clidna) was beguiled by Iuchna Curly-locks, who played sleep-producing music to her in his boat of bronze, from which she was washed overboard and drowned. (Revue Celtique, XV, 437; Todd Lecture Series, X, part 3, pp. 206, ff.)
Elsewhere in the Dindsenchas (Rev. Celt., XVI , 32) , the sleep-producing music is called "the mermaid's melody": the fact that in our ballad, it is the maid and not the seaman who sings it enables us to trace the ancestry of the ballad to ancient mythology of the ghost-soul.
G. Weicker, in Der Seelenaogel in der Antilten Litteratur und Kunst, shows that the Sirens, birds with human heads, originally represented spirits of the dead. From very ancient time, the ghost soul was believed to desire passionately the love of a living mortal: this belief, through the lore of Lilith, Lamia and similar types of supernatural women, has left innumerable traces in popular tradition. The magic music, that is, ghost and spirit music, of which Sirens' song and angels' song are but particular types, has been held to possess for mortal ears an attraction so irresistible that the consciousness of time and space might be extinguished by it. In the eighth century, as we learn from the tract De Monstris et Belluis, (ed. Berger de Xivrey, p.25) Sirens are described as mermaids, women with tails of fishes, "who deceive sailors by their lovely form and by the charm of their singing". We suspect the change is due to Arabic influence, since the Latin synonym of siren, namely puella marina, is in Arabic bint al-bahr, "maid, (literally daughter) of the sea", a phrase applied by Arab naturalists to the manatee, popularly believed to be half fish, half human. Through the Irish muirgen, morigain -the latter a gloss to lamia in Isa., XXXIV, 14, Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, f, 2, -the character of the siren-lamia is fixed for Morgain la Fee, the case-type of supernatural mistress, sometimes devoted, sometimes cruel and malicious.
A Greek ballad printed by A. Passow, Carmina Popularia Graeciae Recentiorit, No. 524, p. 401, has some affinities with our ballad. A water-woman, who calls herself the Lamia of the Sea Shore and, of the Sea wagers that she can dance longer than a young shepherd can pipe for her. He pipes for three days, then falls asleep: the Lamia robs him of his flocks.
P. B.