False Lamkin- Delorme (NY) c.1878 Flanders F
[From Flanders; Ancient Ballads, 1961, notes by Coffin follow.
R. Matteson 2015]
Lamkin (Child 93)
Although child printed twenty-six versions of "Lamkin" and although it is still known in British-American tradition, the story of the revengeful mason who murders a woman and child because he has not been paid is much the same wherever it is found. The fact that the crime is so weakly motivated has made scholars suspect much of the plot to be lost. Phillips Barry (see JAF, LII, 70-74) offers an appealing explanation in connection with the "False Linfinn" text (Flanders B) collected in Maine. "The Linfinn" was Irish for "the white man who lives by the Stream," the outcast who was a leper forced to live alone. A cure for leprosy could be had through the blood of an innocent human collected in a silver container, and this fact offers a real motive for the crime. Barry felt that the identification of Linfinn with masonry came later, possibly because Irish masons had a recipe for making cement with blood. However, other scholars have identified the name Lamkin as a Flemish form of Lambert and noted that Flemish masons were well-known in Britain in the Middle Ages. In America, one Virginia informant noted by Arthur K. Davis in his Traditional Ballads of Virginia (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), 357, claimed there had been a love affair between the lady and the mason prior to the opening of the story. Whatever the answer, the crime seems rather extreme as a retaliation for failure to pay a debt.
Flanders A has the false window built by the irate mason (Child E), and A, B, and C contain the offer of the daughter's hand as a bribe (Child F, T, X). In D1, D2, E, and F only gold is proffered. A, B, D1, D2, and F include the basin of blood, and all the Flanders texts find the false nurse or maid executed with Lamkin at the end. These points generally ally the New England tradition printed here with the Child B, C, F group and the material discussed in Barry, British Ballads from Maine, 203-6, although the Flanders H fragment, where the nurse actually lets the murderer in, recalls the Child A story. For other discussions and bibliography, start with Coffin, 94-96 (American); Dean-Smith, 83 (English); and Greig and Keith, 7l-72 (Scottish). The Flanders G text, "Tumkin" (Tom King), with its relationship to Dick Turpin legends, is interesting, if hard to explain.
All of the tunes for Child 93 are members of the same family. The Moses and Delorme tunes are slightly removed from the rest, the Delorme tune being related primarily at the first line. For melodic relationship to the entire group, see FCB4, 74-76 (a11 tunes for Child 93); Sharp 1, 202, 204, 205; EO, 59; DV, 583, No. 26 (B); BES, 201 (especially related to the Delorme tune); and GCM, 313 (distant).
F. False Lamkin. As sung by Mrs. Lily M. Delorme of Cadyville, New York. Mrs. Delorme was born in Schuyler Falls, New York, in 1869. Her father was born in Starksboro, Vermont; her mother, in Schuyler Falls. This ballad was learned in her home as a child. M. Olney, Collector; December 8, 1941; Structure: A B C D (2,2,2,2); Rhythm C but divergent; Contour: each half an arc: Scale: hexatonic
False Lamkin
["The first of this ballad, I can recollect is where False Lamkin says to the false maid,"]
"How shall I get to her,
How shall I get in?"
"I'll pierce her sweet baby
With a silver bodkin."
["The next I recollect is where he has got in and the lady."]
"O Lamkin, dear Lamkin,
Spare me till one o'clock,
And I'll give You all the money
You can carry on Your back."
"Oh, no," said False Lamkin,
"I'll not spare you till one o'clock,
Not for all of the money
I could carry on my back."
"O Lamkin, dear Lamkin,
Spare me but one hour,
Till I call my daughter Betsy
To see this brown flower."
"You may call your daughter Betsy
And send her again
To fetch a silver basin
For your heart's blood to run in."
"Daughter Betsy, daughter Betsy,
Run up the bower so high
And see if your father
Is a-riding near by."
"O father, dear father,
Ride home with great haste;
There is trouble at the castle,
There's trouble, indeed.
"There's blood in the kitchen
And there's blood in the hall,
And here lies your lady
Dead close by the wall."
False Lamkin was hung
On a gallows so high,
And the false maid was burned
In a furnace close by.