[Henry, My Son] Lord Randal My Son- Sellars (Bristol) 1941
[My title. The footnotes, now added at the end, are wrong in the original; [11] is missing; [13] appears twice (fits one was changed to [12]. From: Lord Randal My Son by J. H. P. Pafford Folklore, Vol. 63, No. 1 (Mar., 1952), pp. 26-29.
R. Matteson 2011, 2018]
LORD RANDAL MY SON
As a contribution to the record of ballad diffusion and particularly to that of the ballad theme usually entitled Lord Randal My Son the following version is printed. It was sung on the march by men of a battalion of the Wiltshire regiment stationed at and near Devizes in 1941. Enquiry revealed that the ballad had previously been known by only two men who had introduced it in their platoon where it became a popular marching song. One of these men, Pte. Sellars, lived near Bristol, and the other, Pte. Beasant, near Wootton Bassett; both said that they had learnt it " from other men " in their home districts, which indicates that the song was current in their communities in the West Country. Sellars' version was taken in 1941, Beasant's in 1951. The version below is that given by Sellars, variations by Beasant being noted as B Variants, below. The tune is written in 1951 from memory of the singing ten years earlier.
[Music]
1. Where have you been all day Henry my son ?
Where have you been all day my be-lov-ed one ?
Fields dear moth-er Fields dear moth-er
0 make my bed for I've pains in my head and I want to lie down.
2. Who took you to the fields Henry my son?
Who took you to the fields my beloved one?
Gypsies dear mother,
Gypsies dear mother,
Oh make my bed (etc.).
3. What did you have to eat Henry my son?
What did you have to eat my beloved one?
Snakes dear mother,
Snakes dear mother,
Oh make my bed (etc.)
4. What colour were the snakes Henry my one?
What colour were the snakes my beloved son?
Brown and yellow,
Brown and yellow,
Oh make my bed (etc.).
5. How shall I make your bed Henry my son?
How shall I make your bed my beloved one?
Long and narrow,
Long and narrow,
Oh make my bed (etc.).
6. Where shall I make your bed Henry my son?
Where shall I make your bed my beloved one?
In the Church-yard,
In the Church-yard,
Oh make my bed for I've pains in my head,
And I want to lie down.
B Variants
The only variants given by Beasant, writing independently ten after years the above version was recorded by Sellars, were that the second verse was omitted altogether and in verse 4 the colour of the snakes was given as "Green and yellow ".
The ballad is, of course, a crude version of Child No. 12.[1] This is a well known and widely diffused ballad which can be traced in Italy at least to the early seventeenth century-Child (I. 152) records an Italian printed reference to it in 1629. Although Lord Randal has not apparently had such detailed treatment as Edward [2]-a ballad with which it has much in common-it has certainly not been neglected. After Child the main treatments seem to be those by Countess Evelyn Martinengo- Cesaresco in Essays in the study of folksongs, 1886,[3] Phillips Barry[4] and by Phillips Barry, F. H. Eckstrom and M. W. Smyth in British ballads from Maine, 1929.[5] It has been traced as common in Italy for over 300 years where, according to Child and to British Ballads from Maine (p. 65) it is still sung as L'Avvelenato, that is, "The poisoned man". It is known in Scotland, England (one record, from Suffolk, is in Child I, 152) and Ireland; in America, Germany, Holland, Sweden, Denmark, Hungary and in the Wendish language (Child I, 152-54). The American versions are dealt with fully in the works referred to in footnotes 4 and 5 of the present article, but there is another American version, and a valuable bibliography complementary to that in Child, on pp. 51-2 of Ballads and songs of Indiana by P. G. Brewster [6] and further references will be found in A bibliography of North American Folklore and Folksong by C. Haywood, published in 1951.
As is well known, the ballad exists in almost innumerable variants and, although the name Randal was chosen by Child, very many other names are used in different versions, e.g. Ronald, Rowland, Tiranty. Henry, although fairly frequent, is not among the most common. It is used in a Scotch version given by Child (I, pp. 159-60) where the character is King Henry, my son, as it also is in the English version in English Traditional Songs and Carols by L. E. Broadwood, 1908.[7] It is also used in at least one American version, as sung by some " little Jewish girls " in New York City.[8] Here Henry dies from poisoned butter, but a further link with the Wiltshire version is that this is described as being "Green and Yellow". King Henry is also used in the two stanza fragment from Lincolnshire in Notes and Queries 8, Vol. 6, p. 427.[9] The German version "Schlangenkachin", noted by Child (I. 187), has not only the name Henry and the snakes but the burden entreaty to the Mother to "make my bed" followed by the instruction that this is to be in the churchyard, and these parallels make it perhaps closest to the present Wiltshire version.
Outside Italy there is no record of the ballad earlier than the beginning of the nineteenth century. Countess Martinengo-Cesarescbo elieved that the ballad may have originated in Italy. The fact that it is recorded there some 200 years before it is traced elsewhere is strong argument for this theory although, if true, the apparent slowness of the ballad's diffusion would appear to be interesting.
The Wiltshire version-which is apparently unrecorded by Alfred Williams or by Sharp-is crude and lacks the final "bequest" clauses which are so common:
"What d'ye leave to your true-love, Lord Randal, my son?
What d'ye leave to your true-love, my handsome young man? "
"I leave her hell and fire; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down."
[Child, I, 158].
But is not this very crudity and lack of literary polish or dramatic intensity in itself significant when the use of the Wiltshire version is considered; and does not this perhaps throw some light on communal usage and adaptation of the ballads? For to the men who sang it, the version, with its simplicity and serio-comic flavour, was sufficient. It was the sort of thing they wanted to sing. It had been picked up from other men, one of whom may well have learnt a more literary and tragic version, but it had been changed to a form acceptable to the community, changed, perhaps, by them and certainly used and diffused by them. The basic metre roughly conforms to the "3/4 time, with the stress usually on the second, fifth, seventh and tenth syllables" which is noted by M. J. C. Hodgart; [10] the feet, however, are not dactyllic throughout but chiefly in the penultimate line.
With regard to the tune, although this is recorded from memory after a ten-year interval, it is believed to be a close approximation to the tune actually sung. It could hardly have been much more than this if it had been recorded at the time, for the singing was rough and ready and almost certainly varied among the men. The tune shows little affinity to recorded versions which have been noted: the closest, perhaps, being with that given by Sharp in English Folk Songs, Selected Edition. Vol. 2, pp. 2-3, who also notes in this work (p. ix) that "This ballad is sung very freely from one end of the island to the other." The fact that the tune may have little beauty in itself would seem to put this specimen among those ballads which Sharp describes as " the most perfect type ", i.e. the ballad "in which the tune, whilst serving its purpose as an ideal vehicle for the words, is of comparatively little value when divorced from its text ".[12] Two airs are recorded by Child (Vol. 5, PP. 412-3) and these two, with five others, are also printed by John Goss.[13] Another version which has close parallels in tune and words with the Wiltshire version is that recorded by Mr. F. C. Collinson.[14] This--which has only been noticed as the present article was in the press-is another modern version of the ballad taken in Coventry in 1946 and learned by the singer in 1926 from a child who had probably come from " somewhere in the Black Country ".
Finally it should be noted that-as with many ballads-this may also be classed as a nursery rhyme, and that examples and a discussion of it are given on pp. 75-8 of the Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes edited by I. and P. Opie, 1951.
J. H. P. PAFFORD
____________________
Footnotes:
1 English and Scottish popular ballads. 5 vols. 1882-98 (Vol I, pp. I51-66). [Edition in one vol. ed. by H. C. Sargent and G. L. Kittredge, 19o6, but references in this article are to the 5 vol. ed.]
2 e.g. Taylor, Archer: "Edward" and "Sven i Rosengard". 1931.
3 Pp. 214-27, "Lord Ronald in Italy".
4 Jnl. of American Folk-lore, 16, 1903, 258-64 and 18, 1905, 195-207, 303-4
5 Lord Randal is extensively treated on pp. 46-72.
6 Indiana University Publications. Folklore Series I, I940o.
7 Cited with tune, in Goss J. : Ballads of Britain. 1937, p. Io.
8 " Lord Randal " in America by H. G. Shearin (Mod. Lang. Rev. I4, I919,pp. 211-14, esp. p. 214).
9. Cited in Gutch, E. & Peacock, M. : County Folklore V. Lincolnshire. p. 372. I908"
10 The Ballads, 1950, p. 62.
11. As in references in footnotes 4, 5 and 7 and in Greig, G. and Keith, A.: Last leaves of traditional ballads and ballad airs, 1925, pp. 14-15, and Sharp, C. J.; English folk songs. Selected edition, Vol. 2, pp. ix-x, 2-3.
12 Sharp, C. J. : English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalacians. (Vol. I, p. XXIX. 13 versions of Lord Randal are given in Vol. I on pp. 38-45).
13 Ballads of Britain, 1937, pp. 10-13.
14 Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. Vol. V., No. I, Dec.
1946, pp. 13, 15-16.