"James Harris" in Britain Since Child
"James Harris" in Britain Since Child
John Burrison
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 80, No. 317 (Jul. - Sep., 1967), pp. 271-284
"James Harris" in Britain Since Child
ONE OF THE MANY GAPS IN BALLAD SCHOLARSHIP remaining to be filled is to do for the British Isles what Dr. Tristram Coffin has done for America:[1] that is, to study the British Traditional Ballads collected in Great Britain since Professor Francis James Child published his revised edition of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads in 1882-1898,[2] and to study these new variants in relation to those printed in the collection.
The purpose of this paper is to examine one of the Child ballads, No. 243, "James Harris," to see how variants not included in Child's collection fit into his scholarship. It is hoped that in the process some further light is thrown on the ballad's history, or development, in Britain, as well as on the problem of folk creativity. To do this, it is necessary to briefly trace the evolution of the ballad, in light of my own researches based on those of Child and Coffin. While this depends to some degree on a rough form of the historical-geographical method, it is derived chiefly from careful analysis of internal textual evidence. No consideration will be given to the ballad's music, for this facet is more than adequately handled in volume three of Dr. Bertrand H. Bronson's The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads.[3]
Henry M. Belden characterized the history of "James Harris" aptly when he said, "There can be, I think, no question, in the case of this ballad, of the importance of print in spreading and perpetuating it."[4] Indeed, the life of the ballad has been one of printed-oral-printed-oral tradition. Evidently, the broadside press gave birth to "James Harris." The earliest extant version, Child A, is a long-winded English broadside of thirty-two stanzas entitled "A Warning for Married Women, being an example of Mrs. Jane Reynolds (a West-country woman), born near Plymouth, who, having plighted her troth to a Seaman, was afterwards married to a Carpenter, and at last carried away by a Spirit . . ." This was printed in London as early as 1657,[5] and may have been based on a legend; by combining the following items from Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk- Literature,[6] we have already reconstructed the skeletal framework of the ballad's plot:
N391. Lover who is detained away beyond stipulated time returns to find fiancee married.
E2I4. Dead lover haunts faithless sweetheart.
Q252. Punishment for breaking betrothal.
There is also the possibility that the broadside is an adaptation of an earlier folk ballad (which may have developed independently into Child's later forms), but this is doubtful.
There is a gap of 128 years between the time Child A was first licensed and the appearance of Child B, "The Distressed Ship-Carpenter," in The Rambler's Garland, 1785 (?).[7]
Child B, as found in John Ashton's Real Sailor-Songs (London: The Leadenhall Press, 1891), 75. Apparently from a British broadside ballad using the original cut; no date or publisher mentioned, but presumably London, early nineteenth century.
THE DISTRESSED SHIP CARPENTER.
Well met, well met, my own true Love,
Long time I have been seeking thee,
I am lately come from the salt salt Sea,
And all for the Sake, Love, of thee.
I might have had a King's Daughter,
And fain she would have married me,
But I've forsaken all her Crowns of Gold,
And all for the Sake, Love, of thee.
If you might have had a King's Daughter,
I think you much to blame,
I would not for Five Hundred Pounds,
That my Husband should hear the same.
For my Husband is a Carpenter,
And a young Ship Carpenter is he,
And by him I have a little Son,
Or else, Love, I'd go along with thee.
But, if I should leave my Husband dear,
Likewise my little Son also,
What have you to maintain me withal,
If I along with you should go?
I have seven Ships upon the Seas,
And one of them brought me to Land,
And Seventeen Mariners to wait on thee,
For to be, Love at your Command.
A pair of Slippers thou shalt have,
They shall be made of beaten Gold,
Nay, and be lin'd with Velvet Soft,
For to keep thy Feet from Cold.
A gilded Boat then thou shalt have,
Thy Oars shall be gilded also,
And Mariners to row thee along,
For to keep thee from thy overthrow.
They had not been long upon the Sea,
Before that she began to weep;
What weep you for my Gold? he said,
Or do you weep for my Fee?
Or do you weep for some other young Man,
That you love much better than me?
No, I do weep for my little Son,
That should have come along with me.
She had not been upon the Seas,
Passing Days three or four,
But the Mariner and she were drown'd,
And never were heard of more.
When Tidings to Old England came,
The Ship's Carpenter's wife was drown'd,
He wrung his Hands, and tore his Hair,
And grievously fell in a Swoon.
Oh! cursed be those Mariners,
For they do lead a wicked life,
They ruin'd me a Ship Carpenter,
By deluding away my Wife.
In this second broadside version, which is familiar to us because it developed into the American forms of "The House Carpenter," the ballad has undergone considerable change. Some traces of the original broadside remain, as well as new elements of broadside composition, but as a whole Child B seems to represent the London broadside press's borrowing and perhaps slight reworking (for example the "curse" ending) of a folk version which had had a century to develop in oral
tradition from the Child A broadside. This is suggested by such characteristic folk touches as beginning the story in the third act (thus cutting out much of the tedious and straightforward narrative of A); leaping and lingering on the two most dramatic incidents (the return of the persuasive lover and the shipboard confrontation) and so preserving and focusing on what Dr. Coffin calls the "emotional core"[8]; repetition of words and phrases; and rationalizing out of existence the supernatural element. Further, examination of Child B suggests that there may have been an intermediary broadside version unknown to Child and to us, which picked up a folk version of A in some stage of development, added certain broadside touches (as "Well met," an urbane phrase found frequently in seventeenth- century broadsides), then threw the ballad back into the stewpot of oral circulation where it underwent further changes, to then be intercepted by the broadside press again and issued as the Child B version. Child could find no instances of this latter broadside in folk tradition (although he did stumble across two stanzas of the American "House Carpenter" broadside, and could have found countless oral variants in the countryside around Boston, had it occurred to him to investigate).
From England, folk versions of the Child A broadside (or perhaps the original broadsheet itself) appear to have crossed the border into Scotland, where they were recast in the delightful Scottish folksong mold of lyricism and characterization. As Child astutely recognized, version C seems to be an early Scottish remaking of the English Child A tradition; the nature of the returned lover is not yet clearly defined. Gradually, in D-G, the Scottish "Demon Lover" tradition, it becomes established that he is the devil himself, come to carry off the unfaithful girl to the "hills of hell," a later and more sophisticated concept than the revenant of Child A. Whatever their origin may be, these Scottish versions comprising the "Demon Lover" form are the only oral variants of the ballad in Child's collection.
In America, the ballad's history is essentially one of development (and later, degeneration) from the Child B form, which, as we shall see, had passed into English tradition. Most probably, the ballad was brought here by English and Scotch-Irish immigrants around 1800 or perhaps earlier; understandably, the ship carpenter became a house carpenter in the mouths of pioneers who were building houses, not ships. In view of the ballad's great popularity and widespread distribution in America (it is one of the five most commonly reported Child ballads, there being something like 250 printed variants), its relative stability is surprising:
most variants conform to Coffin's Story Type A (p. 137), while other story types result from survivals of the Scottish (Types B and C) and Child A (? Type E), rather than from conscious reworking (a possible exception is Type D). This "freezing" of "The House Carpenter's" form has been attributed to an American broadside version printed by Andrews of New York around 1857 (and reissued by his successor, De Marsan, in 1860), in Philadelphia in 1858 (see Child's headnote), and later in several songsters. This Americanized broadside of the English "Ship Carpenter" is the earliest example of the ballad we have for this
country, and it is, in the opinion of Arthur Kyle Davis,[9] who has studied it carefully, taken from oral tradition, having been wrenched, as it were, by the enterprising New York broadside publisher (or perhaps by an earlier press, of whose print we have no record) from the mouth of some American folk. I am inclined to agree with W. Edson Richmond when he says, "there appear to be two distinct traditions for this ballad in America, one stemming from the printed De Marsan broadside and one purely oral in tradition, the two eventually coalescing to produce yet a third version, a not improbable process for many other ballads as well."[10]
This is a modification of the more accepted but less supportable theory that the De Marsan broadside is the source of all American variants, but it still underscores the importance of the broadside in spreading and reinforcing the ballad in America.
Part of the "purely oral" stream of tradition mentioned by Richmond is the survival of certain elements from the Scottish "Demon Lover" tradition which have fused with the "House Carpenter" form descended from Child B; an excellent example is the "hills of heaven, hills of hell" stanzas affixed to a substantial percentage (about one-eighth) of American variants. In nearly all cases, however, the English tradition is the dominant one. Whether the Scottish tradition (even the De Marsan broadside shows traces of Scottish influence) merged with the English form before or after the ballad arrived in America is a matter for speculation, although my discussion of British variants since Child may throw some light on this knotty problem.
The final stage in development, or what we may refer to as the deterioration, of our ballad in America is the intrusion of other ballads and songs (as the floating "Shoe my foot" stanzas associated with "The Lass of Roch Royal," Child No. 76) into the "House Carpenter" tradition, and the subsequent breakdown of the narrative into a garbled lyric song. This is best illustrated by a variant called "The Rocky Mountain Top."[11]
The ballad appears to have begun in England, developed from folk-literature motifs, as the pure narrative "James Harris," a black-letter broadside ballad organized in complete straightforward sequence. Passing into oral tradition, and undergoing what Barry termed "communal recreation,"[12] it was "folk-ized" and intensified by dropping out unnecessary stanzas. In thus developing the "leaping and lingering" format, it became a dramatic narrative ballad, exemplified and reinforced by the broadside, "The Distressed Ship Carpenter." Meanwhile, the ballad had passed into Scotland, where it had become humanized, and converted into a more emotional, or lyrical narrative, ballad. In America, the British "Ship Carpenter" tradition mingled lightly with elements of the Scottish "Demon Lover" to produce "The House Carpenter," which was reinforced by the De Marsan broadside. In some cases this was intruded upon by other folksongs of a lyric nature to produce narrative lyrics, in which a fragmentary story remains, and finally pure lyrics, in which the story has been dropped in deference to the expression of emotion. Thus, "James Harris" has run the gamut of ballad development.
Having established a broad historical base to which we can now refer, let us turn our attention to the major subject of this paper, the British variants of the ballad not included in the Child volumes.
I have been able to discover only four new texts of "James Harris," although there are probably other collected variants from Britain in archives, private collections, and obscure printed sources that have not been brought to my attention.
This alarming scarcity of British variants, especially in contrast to the ballad's great profusion in the United States, may result from at least two possible causes. The first is that for some reason Britain has proved poor soil for the perpetuation of the ballad, which has become all but extinct in the last fifty years. Of the four variants, three are only fragments, indicating a waning tradition. All four were collected (or published) between 1889 and 1910, so that, to my knowledge, the ballad has not been collected in Britain for over fifty years. This would seem to support the theory which contends that conservative traditions, like the ripples from a rock thrown in a pool of water, survive best at the edge rather than at the center of the culture. I do not mean to imply from this one example, however, that in Britain folksong in general or the Child ballad more specifically is dying
at a much faster rate than in America (although perhaps this could be established with further evidence). The second explanation, on the other hand, is that British (particularly English) folksong collecting has declined strongly since the latter
days of the Victorian Era (the beginning of the twentieth century); indeed, comparatively few British folksong volumes (containing recently collected material) have appeared since the I920's. This stagnation of activity may be applied to English folklore studies in general.[13] Thus, we are not likely to get a true picture of the status of "James Harris" among the British countryfolk from this (at best) spotty collecting. Nevertheless, the failure of Alan Lomax and Peter Kennedy to uncover the ballad[14] may indeed indicate that it is no longer active in Britain.
The first text to which I shall refer is entitled "Well Met, Well Met, My Own True Love," collected by H. E. D. Hammond from Mrs. Russell of Upwey, Dorset, in 1907 and published in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society, No. ii (III, Part 2; London, I907), 84. This variant consists of only three stanzas. The first is almost identical with the first stanza of Child B, the more recent of the two English broadsides; this does not surprise us. However, the second and third stanzas give us an interesting insight into the processes of British oral tradition. The second stanza appears to be a mixture of the first two lines of stanza six from Child B and the last two lines of stanza seven from Child F, a Scottish variant from Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, I8I2:
English: I've four and twenty mariners on board;
You shall have music at your command.
Scottish: With four-and-twenty bold mariners,
And music on every hand.
This is a dead giveaway, for nowhere else but in this Scottish variant does the number "four-and-twenty" and the music appear.
Further, the third and final stanza of our new English variant is not directly related to anything in Child B, but corresponds fairly closely to the first stanza of Child G, also from Scotland. This ultimately descends from stanza twenty-six of Child A, the broadside from which the Scottish versions probably developed. These similarities seem more than coincidental. What appears to have occurred, then, is that the oral tradition resulting from the Child B broadside mingled in England with the Scottish "Demon Lover" tradition. To add to the confusion, certain details of the Scottish variants seem to have been influenced by that broadside, as well as by the Child A broadside from which they developed. Thus, evidently, the ballad drifted across the border from both sides, each side influencing the other's tradition. The result of this two-way circulation was that the English "Ship Carpenter" tradition intermingled with the Scottish "Demon Lover" tradition in both countries, but each country retained the basic and dominant form of its original tradition, despite the slight admixture. This thesis becomes even more significant in light of what we have seen of the American variants of the ballad. The question was posed earlier whether elements of the Scottish tradition entered "The House Carpenter" before or after the ballad crossed over to America (this is a valid question, for there is at least one case of the Scottish version existing intact over here[15]). Our new English variant from the Journal of the Folk-Song Society is instrumental in establishing that the Scottish tradition did indeed mix with the "Ship Carpenter" in Britain, and helps to explain, for example, the appearance of music on shipboard and "hills of heaven, hills of hell" stanzas in an American variant that otherwise follows closely the English "Ship Carpenter."[16]
I am not at all certain what to make of the version sung by A. L. Lloyd on "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (The Child Ballads) Sung by Ewan MacColl and A. L. Lloyd," Riverside RLP 12-627/628 (ed. Kenneth S. Goldstein, Vol. IV, band A2; see notes, p. 3). It is listed as "collected by H. E. D. Hammond from Mrs. Russell of Upwey, Dorset," the same singer whose three stanza text in JFSS is discussed above. The title here is given as "The Daemon Lover," and not inappropriately, since the ten-stanza text consists largely of the Scottish tradition.
This version poses a number of questions. First, does it come entirely from Mrs. Russell? If so, what was Lloyd's source? I have not been able to find this fuller version in print. It is possible that he had access to the Hammond manuscripts, but why wasn't the complete version printed in JFSS? It may be that the two texts were collected from Mrs. Russell during two different sessions, and that she remembered much more the second time. This would account for the variations occurring in the first three stanzas, for a folksinger rarely remembers a song exactly the same way for each performance. The third stanza of the printed text differs appreciably from that of the record, but most of the early collectors had few qualms about altering a folksong text for print. It is possible that Lloyd grafted the Russell text to a Scottish one, using artistic license to make further
emendation, but a scrutiny of the version he sings indicates that this is improbable. Lloyd would have had to study the ballad's history very carefully to produce such a convincing hybrid.
Let us therefore work from the assumption that this record text is authentic and worthy of serious consideration. In doing so, we are confronted with a highly significant document. For if Mrs. Russell's three-stanza text suggests a merging of English and Scottish traditions, her longer text firmly establishes it. The first two stanzas are nearly the same as those given above, with only minor variation. But the third stanza departs from the printed one thusly:
3. "And the ship wherein my love shall sail
Is wondrous to behold.
The sails shall be of finest silk,
And the masts shall be of red beaten gold."
The JFSS stanza reads as follows:
The ship, my love, that you shall sail in,
It shall be of the fine beaten gold.
I've four and twenty mariners on board;
It is a beauty for to behold.
In the new form it is a good deal closer to stanza twenty-six of the seventeenth-century broadside, Child A (which was evidently modified into the Scottish "Demon Lover"); in fact, it is nearly identical. This direct survival from the earliest form of the ballad appears nowhere else, so far as I know, in this unmodified form (but compare Child's B8, Cio, F9). The JFSS text consists of only three stanzas; but that of the Riverside record continues for seven more, in the following fashion:
4. "But I'm now wed to a ship's carpenter,
To a ship's carpenter I am bound, D3
And I wouldn't leave my husband dear (A2I)
For twice the sum of ten hundred pound."
5. "Oh, I pray you leave your husband dear, (Ci6
And sail away with me. D6
I'll take you where the white lilies grow FI2
All on the banks of Italy." G6)
6. So she dressed herself in her gay clothing
Most glorious to behold,
And as she trod the salt water side,
She shone like glittering gold.
7. They hadn't sailed a mile and a mile FII
And a mile but barely three, (D7
She cast herself down on the deck Eio
And wept and mourned most bitterly. G8)
8. "Oh, hold your tongue, my dearest love,
Let all your sorrows be. D8
I'll take you where them white lilies grow
All on the bottom of the sea."
9. And as she turned herself round about,
So taller and tall he seemed to be (C22
Until the tops of that shining ship Ei8)
No taller were than he.
io. He struck the topmast with his hand,
The mainmast with his knee. FI5
He broke that gallant ship in two
And dashed it to the bottom of the sea.
I have given the approximate correspondences to stanzas in Child's versions alongside each verse, indicating that while the ballad initially is in the English broadside tradition of Child B with some survival of the earlier broadside Child A, it soon develops clearly in the Scottish "Demon Lover" mold. But it is not a typical Scottish text. It provides, in fact, several missing links in the ballad's over-all history.
One such link is stanza six. This, or one similar to it, appears in over half of the American texts I have studied (more than a hundred), yet it is not directly related to anything in Child (it evidently evolved from E8 which in turn may have derived from Cio, A26, or even B7). This tends to negate the hypothesis that the stanza originated in America as based on Scottish elements, since we now have proof that it existed in Britain (let us not even consider the exasperating possibility that an American version may have crossed back over to England to influence the Russell text!).
Another link is stanza five, which may have led to the frequent American stanza,
If you'll forsake your house carpenter
And come along with me,
I'll take you where the grass grows green
On the banks of the Sweet Willie [or something similar].
Mrs. Russell's text adds the demon's plea that the woman abandon her husband to his usual appeasing offer to show her the white lilies on the banks of Italy. By combining these two ideas one arrives at the "American" stanza above. Stanza nine is an important link for the Scottish versions, for it clarifies the abductor's supernatural stretching ability, which is rather vague in C22 and is rationalized in Ei8 (see the following discussion).
The combination of English and Scottish traditions in this British version, while complicating the ballad's history in Britain, helps to answer some disturbing questions about American variants containing Scottish elements. However, this discussion is based on the assumption that the Lloyd text, supposedly taken by Hammond completely from Mrs. Russell, is a reliable one, and this assumption, as I have suggested earlier, is questionable.
The next fragment we shall examine, from Gavin Greig's Folk-Song of the North-East,[17] is less informative on the ballad's history in Britain. Since it "represents the joint recollections of Miss Robb, Strichen, and Mr. Robb, New Deer," we may better understand why there is a discrepancy between the text printed in the article at the end of 1910 or early in 1911, and that printed in Greig and Keith's Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads in I925.[18] Greig's fragment, consisting of five and one-half stanzas, is completely in the Scottish mold, being descended from the same "Demon Lover" tradition as Child C-H, with the following correspondences (they are approximate, of course, not following any of the older Scottish variants exactly):
Stanza 1 roughly equates with H2
Stanza 2 roughly equates with D5
Stanza 3 roughly equates with D6, FI2, G6
Stanza 4 roughly equates with EIo, G8, FIo
Stanza 5 (fragmentary) roughly equates with C2 I
Stanza 6 roughly equates with C22, F 5
However typical this new Scottish variant may be, its circulation in Scottish oral tradition has changed it beyond merely wearing down the narrative, for the supernatural elements have been mostly rationalized away. The replacement of the earlier
When dark, dark grew his eerie looks, G8
And raging grew the sea,
with
Till dark and rainy grew the day,
And raging grew the sea
does away with the demonic nature of the abductor (a feature, incidentally, that survives in garbled form in a number of American variants[19]). Similarly, his supernatural reach and deliberate effort to sink the ship, evident in C22,
He reached his hand to the topmast,
Made a' the sails gae down,
And in the twinkling o an ee
Baith ship and crew did drown,
are lost in the later corruption:
He turned roon his bonnie ship,
Wi' her topmast to the win',
And a' her seven sails did sink,
And was never seen again.
Thus, as in the Child B broadside and subsequently most American versions, the supernatural aspects that were once dominant narrative features in the earliest English and Scottish traditions of the ballad have been altered or obliterated in more recent times. This probably reflects a decreasing intensity of ghost and devil beliefs among British countryfolk.
Our third text, and one apparently unnoticed by folksong scholars, appears in Arthur William Moore's Manx Ballads and Music, published in 1896.[20]
YN GRAIHDER JOUYLAGH
Trooid marym nish, trooid marym nish,
Trooid marym, graih my chree,
As inshyns dhyts cre haink orrym,
Er bankyn Italy.
T'an Ihong ayms nish Ihie ayns y phurt,
Lughtit lesh airh ta buigh,
Shen ooilley neem's bestowal ort:
Trooid marym, graih my chree.
Neem's coamrey oo lesh sheeidey bwaagh,
Sheeidey bwaagh foddee eh ve,
My hig uss marym, graih my chree,
Dys bankyn Italy.
As braagyn berchagh veryms dhyts,
Braagyn jeh airh ta buigh,
My hig uss marym, graih my chree,
Dys bankyn Italy.
Myr v'ee ny-hoie sheese er y deck,
Geaistagh rish yn chiaulleeaght v'ayn,
Huitt ee er cheayney as dobberan
Er son y lhiannoo Juan.
"My lhiannoo Juan t'eh faagit noght,
Gyn ayr ny moir erbee;
T'eh faagit noght gyn kemmyrk, boght,
Faagit fo myghin Jee."
"O sole uss rish my Ihiattee nish,
Soie liorym, graih my chree,
As inshyms dhyts cre hig orrin
Er bankyn Italy."
THE DEMON LOVER
Come with me now, come with me now, C16,
Come with me, my heart's love, D6,
And I'll tell thee what came on me, FI2,
On the banks of Italy. G6
My ship now lies within the port,
Loaded with yellow gold, GI
All this I will bestow on thee:
Come with me, my heart's love.
I will clothe thee with beauteous silk,
Silk beauteous as can be, E6
If thou'lt come with me, my heart's love,
To the banks of Italy.
And costly shoes I'll give to thee,
Shoes made of yellow gold, G2,
If thou'lt come with me, my heart's love, CI3
To the banks of Italy.
As she was sitting on the deck,
List'ning to their sweet melody,
She was weeping and lamenting
For the infant Juan.
"My infant Juan is left to-night,
Without father or mother;
He's left to-night helpless, poor thing,
Left under God's mercy."
"O sit thee now close by my side,
Sit with me, my heart's love,
And I'll tell thee what came on us,
On the banks of Italy." F7 G5
This is the best collection of Manx folksongs, but informant information, date, and location of collecting are not given. The book is arranged so that the Gaelic text appears on the left-hand page, the English translation on the opposite. The Isle of Man's unique location, in proximity to Ireland, Scotland, and England, has created an interesting diversity of both English and Gaelic traditions, not to mention those (few) of native origin. Other ballads aside from "James Harris" of English-speaking origin in Moore's collection include "Huntt he Wren," pp. 64- 65; "The Cruel Mistress" (Laws O 39, "The Sheffield Apprentice"), pp. 86-89;
"Mother and Daughter" (similar to "Lolly Too Dum"), pp. 88-93; "The Shepherd's Daughter"(Child 110, "The Knight and the Shepherd's Daughter"), pp. 110-113; "A Gentleman in Exeter" (Laws P 32), pp. II4-II7; and "My Good Old Man" (dialogue song), pp. 206-209. All seem to have been translated from Manx G aelic, a nd i t is thus interesting that they are fairly usual texts.
The Manx version of "The Demon Lover," as the title suggests, belongs to the Scottish tradition of the ballad, taking into account its translation by the folk from English into Gaelic and by the editor back into English, and the consequent alteration
it underwent.A pparentc orrespondenceas re given alongside the English stanzas; the last two stanzas are probably intrusive formulas from Gaelic poetry applicable to the situation. I nterestingly, the "music" element from Scottish F7 that we found in the English variant from JFSS also survives in this Manx version.
In general, the Manx ballad seems to have descended largely from Child G. It may b e asked how this essentially S cottish ballad got to the Isle of Man. There are a number of possibilities. Man belonged to Scotland from 1266 to the fourteenth
century, during which time the island was inhabited by many Scots, who must have had relations with their mother country from then on. Also, sea trade between Man and Scotland must have implanted Scottish traditions on the island. Finally, Scottish refugees during the early nineteenth century brought their folklore with them to Man, and Manxmen seeking employment in Scotland brought back n ew traditions on return visits.
The fourth and final text not included in the Child collection is by far the most interesting and complete, a nd bears s trongly o n the question of folk creativity. It can be found in James Reeves' The Everlasting Circle,[21] and was collected by Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould from J. Paddon at Holcombe Burnell (Devon), on December 21, 1889. Baring-Gould printed only stanzas one, two, six, seven, eight, and a final one of his own fabrication (see footnote 22) in his Songs of the West (revised edition, I905), pp. I56-I57, No. 76, under the title "Well Met! Well Met!" Reeves' note, while hardly analytical, bears quoting (pp. 71-72):
... A very fragmentary version was noted by Hammond near Weymouth in I907 . As Baring-Gould says, "the traditional ballad, as compared with the printed ballad [Child B], is superior at every point." Child (No. 243) gives a number of versions, of which none is closely parallel to Baring-Gould's version, now printed in its entirety, so far as I know, for the first time.
A close examination o f the text shows that the first seven-and-a-half of the twenty stanzas follow the Child B broadside almost word for word. Exceptions are slight grammatical changes to more natural speech patterns, and certain replacementss, uch as "far far away" (stanzaf ive) for "to maintain me withal," "mariners m any" for "seventeen mariners" (stanza six), and a few others tha do not seem worth mentioning. In addition, the following line in stanza seven, They're lined within with coney's skin,
replaces the broadside's velvet lining for the golden slippers, and is far more poetic in its use of internal rhyme. "Coney's skin" is, according to Webster's Universal Unabridged Dictionary (1937), "The fur of rabbits or conies, formerly much used in England,"a nd is closert o folk experiencest han velvet. This individual touch hints at the amazing changes that have been made in the ballad, which we shall soon observe. In the eighth stanza, Baring-Gould's variant begins to depart from the Child B broadside tradition in a most extraordinary way. The first two lines follow the broadside's stanza eight almost exactly, but the second two,
And the mariners shall pipe and sing
As thro' the salt waves we go,
replace the broadside's
And mariners to row thee along,
For to keep thee from thy overthrow.
This seems to be an intrusion from the Scottish F7, the "music" stanza, which we have already seen in our other new British variants, and in itself is not very unusual. But it is then followed by this series of stanzas:
9. They had not rowed a bowshot off,
A bowshot on the main,
But o'er her shoulder she looked back.
I would I were home again!
10. They had not rowed a bowshot off,
A bowshot from the land,
But o'er her shoulder she looked and said,
Set me back on the yellow sand.
11. For I have a child in my little chamber
And I think I hear him cry.
I would not, I would not my babe should wake
And his mother not standing by.
12. The Captain he smiled and stroked his arms
And said, This may not be.
Behind is the shore and the sea is before
And thou must go, sweet love, with me.
I3. She had not been long upon the sea,
Not long upon the deep,
Before that she was wringing her hands
And loudly did wail and weep.
14. 0 why do you wail and wherefore weep
And wring your hands? said he.
Do you weep for the gold that lies in the hold
Or do you weep for my fee?
15. I do not weep for your gold, she said,
Nor yet do I weep for your fee,
But by the mast-head is my baby dead
And I weep for my dead baby.
16. She had not abeen upon the seas
The days they were three or four,
And never a word she spoke nor stirred
And she looked towards the shore.
I7. She had not abeen upon the seas
But six days of the week
Before that she lay as cold as the clay
And never a word could speak.
I8. They had not sailed upon the seas
Of weeks but three and four
But down to the bottom the ship did swim
And never was heard of more.
19. And when the news to England came
The Carpenter's wife was drowned
The Carpenter rent his hair and wept
And then as dead he swound.
20. A curse be on all sea-captains
That lead such a godless life.
They will ruin a good ship-carpenter,
His little one and his wife.
We seem to be dealing with a conscious remaking by a folk poet of the Child B broadside. Or, could Baring-Gould himself have rewritten the broadside and passed the new version off as folk? We have seen that he added a stanza of his own making to the fragmentary version printed in Songs of the West;[22] indeed, he was not beyond touching up songs he had collected from the folk, a common enough practice among esthetically minded collector-editors of that day. But what we know of Baring-Gould tells us that he was not intentionally dishonest to the degree of composing a poem on traditional lines and passing it off as folk,
putting it in the mouth of one of his informants. Further, it is not likely that he recomposed a rather mundane oral version (based on the broadside) which he collected from Paddon. This version came from his manuscripts (rewritten field notes), and there seems to be a ring of authenticity about the piece, in the choice of words and evidences of oral tradition, indicating that it had indeed been collected intact from Paddon. But why did Baring-Gould print only the less interesting stanzas in his book, keeping the others a virtual secret? This question may never be answered.
What do the new stanzas disclose to us? First, that some are not entirely new. The last three stanzas, particularly, correspond to those of the broadside, the changes having resulted from oral tradition rather than conscious reworking. Stanzas thirteen and fourteen have been expanded from stanza nine of the broadside. Stanzas nine through twelve convey the same feelings of the grief-stricken woman as do stanzas fourteen through twenty of the Scottish Child C, but the wording is so different that a direct connection is not likely. The first two lines of stanzas fifteen and sixteen also derive from the Child B broadside. But otherwise the ballad has been completely rewritten. Changes in story line, such as the shipboard deaths of the woman and her baby, appear nowhere else. We tend to think of folk variation as unconscious and relatively slight. Indeed, folk tradition, as a rule, is conservative. How then, can we account for such radical changes on what appears to be a folk level? Actually, this is not such a difficult problem to contend with as it may first seem. Phillips Barry, in his essay in The Critics & the Ballad,23 stressed the role of the individual folksinger in ballad re-creation and change. We know, also, of the wonderful parodies created
along traditional lines by the competent folk bards of the lumbercamps (such as Larry Gorman) 24 and of other occupational groups. And one need go no further for precedent than our own ballad. A Newfoundland version collected by Kenneth Peacock[25] b egins with these two creative stanzas:
In England there lived a young ship's carpenter,
They tell me that he had a handsome wife,
When a sea captain he went from Newfoundland,
And soon he blighted both their tender lives.
He said, "Come and leave your husband now my dear,
And see some pleasure all of your life,
And we will both go back to Newfoundland,
And there we will pass for man and wife."
The rest of the piece conforms to the English "Ship Carpenter" with American (?) influences (for example, the woman's suicide, Coffin Story Type D). The singer's other texts in the collection are ordinary, so it is not likely that she herself composed the first two stanzas.
Baring-Gould's version, then, appears to be a truly creative reworking of the Child B broadside (the printed text itself or its oral tradition) by a gifted folk poet, probably not the singer from whom it was recorded. My guess is that he was an Anglicized Irishman or someone closely acquainted with Anglo-Irish folksong, because of the apparent fondness for internal rhyme. He must have approved of the broadside's beginning and end for he kept them intact. But we shall never know who he was, or what tempted him to construct an entirely new section for the ballad.
This paper has posed problems that may be cleared up by further research. I have tried to show that while Child's treatment of "James Harris" in Britain was surprisingly thorough, it is not by any means definitive. The versions published since Child have shed further light on the ballad's history both in Britain and America.
NOTES
I. Tristram P. Coffin, The British Traditional Ballad in North America (Philadelphia, 1963, revised edition).
2. Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston and New York, I882-I898, five volumes).
3. Bertrand Harris Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads (Princeton, New Jersey, 1959-1966, three volumes), III, 429-496.
4. Henry Marvin Belden, Ballads and Songs Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society (Columbia, Missouri, I955; reprint of 1940 edition), 79.
5. Hyder Edward Rollins, An Analytical Index to the Ballad-Entries (1557-1709) in the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1924). Child gives no date for the Pepys broadside, but notes an apparently contemporary version printed by Thackeray in I685, thus dating the ballad nearly thirty years later than the Stationers' Company records show.
6. Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature (Copenhagen, Denmark, and Bloomington, Indiana, I955-1958, six volumes, revised edition).
7. Gavin Greig, in Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads and Ballad Airs (Aberdeen, 1925), I96, notes that there is an earlier fourteen-stanza text in A Collection of Diverting Songs (I737), 466.
8. MacEdward Leach and Tristram P. Coffin, eds., The Critics & the Ballad (Carbondale, Illinois, I96I), "Mary Hamilton and the Anglo-American Ballad as an Art Form," by Tristram P. Coffin, 245-256. Also in Coffin, The British Traditional Ballad, 164-172, and JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE, LXX (1957), 208-214.
9. Arthur Kyle Davis, More Traditional Ballads of Virginia (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I960), 271-272.
10. Leach and Coffin, "Some Effects of Scribal and Typographical Error on Oral Tradition," by W. Edson Richmond, 281 n. Also in Southern Folklore Quarterly, XV (1951), 159-I70. See Richmond, "Ballad Place Names," JOURNALO F AMERICANF OLKLOREL, IX (1946), 263-267.
11. Edwin and Mary Kirkland, "Popular Ballads Recorded in Knoxville, Tennessee," Southern Folklore Quarterly, II (1938), 75, recorded from Raymond Stanley, 1937.
12. Phillips Barry, Bulletin of the Folksong Society of the Northeast (Philadelphia, I960, reprint), No. 5 (I933), 4-6, "Communal Re-creation."
I3. See Richard M. Dorson, "Folklore Studies in England," in Folklore Research Around the World: a North American Point of View (ed., Richard M. Dorson, Bloomington, Indiana, 1961; reprint of JOURNALO F AMERICANF OLKLOREL,X XIV, I96I).
14. Peter Kennedy and Alan Lomax, eds., "The Folk Songs of Britain Series," V, The Child Ballads, II (New York, Caedmon Records TC 1146, 961 ), booklet, iv.
15. Helen Hartness Flanders, Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New England (Philadelphia, 1963), III, 320-321, "The Daemon Lover," recorded from Edith B. Price in 1945; suspect.
16. Bertrand H. Bronson, ed., "Folk Music of the United States: Child Ballads Traditional in the United States," II (Washington, D.C., Library of Congress record AAFS L58), "The Ship Carpenter," sung by Clay Walters, Kentucky, 1937, band A5.
17. Gavin Greig, Folk-Song of the North-East (Hatboro, Pennsylvania, 1963, reprint edition), Article No. 162, 2-3.
18. Greig, Last Leaves, 196-197, stanza 5, line 2: On the banks of littertie; in Folk-Song of the North-East: At the bottom of the sea.
I9. For example, William A. Owens, Texas Folk Songs (Dallas, I950), 56, stanza 10; John Harrington Cox, Folk-Songs of the South (Cambridge, Massachusetts, I925), Version D, I45, stanza 13. These could also be derived from Child's Scottish F3.
20. Arthur William Moore, Manx Ballads and Music (Douglas, Isle of Man, I896), 118-19.
21. James Reeves, ed., The Everlasting Circle: English Traditional Verse . . . from the Manuscripts of S. Baring-Gould, H. E. D. Hammond and George B. Gardiner (London, I960), No. 19, "The Carpenter's Wife," 69-71. Bronson, Traditional Tunes, 494-495, No. I43, also prints this, with melody, from Baring-Gould's manuscript, with minor variations (mostly in punctuation), and the singer's full name is given as James Paddon.
22. Baring-Gould admits (Notes, p. 22) that the final stanza is of his own making:
A way of gold lies over the sea
Where the sun doth set in the west,
And along that way thou shalt sail with me,
To the land of lands, sweet love, that's best.
23. Leach and Coffin, 59-76, "The Part of the Folk Singer in the Making of Folk Balladry," by Phillips Barry.
24. See Edward D. Ives, Larry Gorman: the Man Who Made the Songs (Bloomington, 1964).
25. Kenneth Peacock, Songs of the Newfoundland Outports (Ottawa, Canada, I965, three volumes), III, 740-741, "The Young Ship's Carpenter," sung by Mrs. Mary Ann Galpin, I96I.
Georgia State College
Atlanta, Georgia