In Bruton Town- Overd (So) 1904 Sharp
[From: Folk-Songs Noted in Somerset and North Devon by Cecil J. Sharp, Frank Kidson, Lucy E. Broadwood and J. A. Fuller-Maitland; Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 2, No. 6 (1905), pp. 1-60. Published by: English Folk Dance + Song Society. Their notes (Sharp and then Broadwood) follow the text.
R. Matteson 2016]
IN BRUTON TOWN- SUNG BY MRS. OVERD, AT LANGPORT, AUG. 4TH, 1904.
DORIAN MODE.
1. In Bruton town there lives a farmer
Who had two sons and one daughter dear,
By day and night they was a-contriving
To fill their parents' heart with fear.
2. He told his secrets to no other,
But unto her brother he told them to;
"I think our servant courts our sister,
I think they has a great mind to wed
I'll put an end to all their courtship,
I'll send him silent to his grave."
3. A day of hunting whilst prepared,
Thorny woods and valley where briars grow;
And there they did this young man a-murder,
And into the brake his fair body thrown.
4. Welcome home, my dear young brothers,
Pray tell me, where's that servant man?
"We've a-left him behind where we've been a-hunting,
We've a-left him behind where no man can find."
5. She went to bed crying and lamenting,
Lamenting for her heart's delight;
She slept, she dreamed, she saw him lay by her,
Covered all over in a gore of bled.
6. She rose early the very next morning,
Unto the garden brook she went;
There she found her own dear jewel
Covered all over in a gore of bled.
7. She took her handkerchief out of her pocket
For to wipe his eyes for he could not see;
"And since my brothers have been so cruel
To take your tender sweet life away,
One grave shall hold us both together,
And along, along with you to death I'll stay."
In the second and seventh verses the last four bars of the melody are repeated. The penultimate bar was sung in four different ways, apparently on no settled plan, but at the discretion of the singer. I have collected no variants.--C. J. S.
This, apart from its fine tune, is a ballad of great interest, for we have here a doggerel version of the story, "Isabella and the Pot of Basil," that, though made famous by Boccaccio, was probably one of those old folk-tales, popular long before his time (1313-1373), of which he loved to make use. Hans Sachs (1494-1576) has put Boccaccio's story into verse, and his translation has much of the directness and homeliness which we find in this Somersetshire version. Both contrast curiously with Keats's flowery and artificial transcription, and certainly suggest better than his a primitive story of the people.
The word "farmer" in the first verse printed above should no doubt be "father," he being thus mentioned in Sachs's poem. There are obviously two lines missing after the first verse, making a confusion between the "father" and the "son," to whom "He told his secrets," really refers. Hans Sachs represents the one brother as confiding to the other brother his private fears. The German and Somersetshire versions tally in all the main incidents and should be compared by every student of ballads. The English fragment stops short with the wiping of the dead lover's face. It would be of the greatest interest could other variants be found which possibly might carry on the story to its terrible end.
I have not yet been able to find any printed English ballad on this subject, but in the Roxburghe Ballads (B. M.) there is, on a seventeenth century black-letter broadside, a doggerel version of the tale of Grisilda, the last story in Boccaccio's Decameron,
showing that early ballad-writers either used his material, or, more probably, drew from the same common stock of stories.-- L. E. B.