Jock o' Hazeldean- McGill (NB) pre1911 Barry
[From Bulletin of the Folksong Society of the Northeast; Vol. 3, Phillips Barry; 1933. My title, this version was surely learned by McGill in Scotland before 1911. This ballad is based on Scott's Jock o' Hazeldean which was written by Scott using the first verse of Child E. See attached to the Recording & info page:
Jock of Hazeldean and Child 293 E by Maurice W. Kelley
Modern Language Notes, Vol. 46, No. 5 (May, 1931), pp. 304-306
Scott's "Jock of Hazeldean": The Re-Creation of a Traditional Ballad by Charles G. Zug, III as published in The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 86, No. 340 (Apr. - Jun., 1973), pp. 152-160.
Mrs. James McGill of Chamcook, New Brunswick, was originally from Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland where she learned songs and ballads from her grandmother and family. She moved to New Brunswick about 1911 and still sang in Scots diction.
Notes below by Phillips Barry. Barry could have included this in British Ballads from Maine (1929) but chose to leave it out. See the article referenced by Barry on Scott's Jock o' Hazeldean by Kelley (attached to Recording & Info page).
R. Matteson Jr. 2014]
JOHN OF HAZELGREEN.
(Child, 293)
Text sent in, June, 1928, by Mrs. James McGill, Chamcook, New Brunswick. Melody recorded from Mrs. McGill's singing by Mr. George Herzog.
1. "Why weep 'e by the tide, Ladye,
Why weep 'e by the tide?
I'll wed ye tae my youngest son,
An' ye sall be his bryde;
An' ye sall be his bryde, Ladye,
Sae comely tae be seen;"
But aye she loot the tear doon fa'
For Jock o' Hazeldean.
2. "O, what na man is Hazeldean?
I pray ye, tell tae me."
"O there is na a finer man
In a' the sooth countree;
His step is first in peaceful ha'
His sword in battle keen."
But aye she loot the tear doon fa'
For Jock o' Hazeldean.
3. . . .
. . . . .
Young Frank is chief of Errington
And the lord of Langly Dale.
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
4. The church was decked at morning tide,
An' dame an' knight were there;
'Wi' armour bright an' managed hawk
An' palfrey fresh an' fair;
They sought her baith by bower an' ha',
The ladye wasna seen--
She's ower the borders an' awa
Wi' Jock o' Hazeldean.
Mrs. McGill's version is an oddly zersungen variant, as to text and air of Scott's "Jock of Hazeldean." The first half of stanza 2, not in Scott's poem, belongs to the old ballad, "John of Hazelgreen" ( Child. 293). Curiouslv, also, Scott's Frank has almost disappeared from the story, as well as the least folksy of the three stanzas crafted by Scott on a fragment of the old ballad represented by stanza 1 (reprinted from Alben's Anthology, p. l8).
"O' chain o' gold ye sall not lack,
Nor braid to bind your hair;
Nor mettled hound, nor managed hawk,
Nor palfrey fresh and fair,
And you, the foremost of them a'
Shall ride, our forest queen-"
But aye she loot the tears down fa'
For Jock of Hazeldean.
The intrusion of lines 3, 4,, into stanza 4 of Mrs. McGill's text in place of Scott's reference to glimmering tapers and waiting priest does the ballad no harm.
Virginia J (in two stanzas) of John of Hazelgreen (Davis: Traditional Ballads of Virginia, p. 536) has lately been subject to controversy. It is obviously a traditional variant of Scott's poem, from which it differs only in the name Hazelgreen and in the recreation of stanza 2, corresponding to Scott, 3. The hound and hawk, not inappropriately in a land where hounds are not mettled, and hawks, good and bad, are indiscriminately shot, have disappeared, leaving the horse to be taken for a piece of iadies' jewelry. It shows the folk at its worst. And how much the leaflet sent out in April 1911, by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, containing the item in the list of Child Ballads: "John of Hazelgreen, 293 (Jock o' Hazelgreen) "may have effected the substitution of Hazelgreen for Hazeldean in a version sent in on November, 1915, we cannot say. The air would make the evidence conclusive.
The history of Scott's poem has never been fully told. Thomas Pringle, a mutual friend of Scott and of Alexander Campbell, [1] editor of Albyn's Anthology, according to Graham (Songs of Scotland, pp. 121-2) had the first slanza from his mother. His sister, Miss M. Pringle of Jedburgh, gave to Campbell a set of an old air later identified by Chappell (PopuIar Music of the Olden Time, I, 575), as the melody to "In January Last," a song in Thomas D'Urfey's play, "The Fond Husband," performed in 1676: to this set, Scott wrote the song of "Jock of Hazeldean" (Atbyn's Anthology, Edinburgh, 1816, vol. I, p. 41). Scott, in 1821, in Vol. IX of his Poetical Works, pp. 80-82, reprinted it with the note: "The first stanza of this Ballad is ancient. The others were written for Mr. Campbell's Albyn's Anthology," -- thereby disclaiming the authorship of the whole song, attributed to him by Campbell. Yet neither Scott himself, nor any later editors, as R. A. Smith in The Scotish Minstrel, 2nd ed., (not in the first), V, 80, and G. F. Graham in The Songs of Scotland,, p. 121, have reproduced literatim the text of the editio princeps. Scott had, of course, no idea of the actual plot of the old ballad of John of Hazelgreen, of which a complete text was first printed in 1827 by Kinloch (Child B), and it is most unlikely that, if he had known it, he would have failed to use the second stanza obtained from Pringle by Kinloch, (Child Ea.).
We are glad that Dr. Davis printed Virginia J. The psychological laws of traditional re-creation are little understood, though a beginning in this new field of research has been made by Dr. Renata Dessauer, author of Das Zersingen, Berlin, 1928. And it is Kunstlieder im Volksmunde which supply, both textually and melodically, the clearest first-hand evidence of the working of these laws. We are not, however, impressed by the effort of Mr. Maurice W. Kelley (M. L. N., XLVI, 304) to show that Scott based "Jock of Hazeldean" on a version of the old ballad "nearer to Virginia J than to Child E," especially since his argument rests finally on the theory that Scott had in 1821 "forgotten how much of it he took from popular sources."
P. B.
1. Alexander Campbell was an eccentric genius who had been Scott's music teacher, and, undismayed by his pupil's tone-deafness, had insisted, says Scott of himself that "if I did not understand music, it was because I did not choose to learn it." (Lockhart's Memoirs, Philadelphia, 1838, I, 42, note) He printed in Albyn's Anthology, I, 79, the only known tune to Kinmont Willie, (Child' 186) as "its own original melody," but he did not tell where he got, and it may be as much his own composition as the text of the ballad is Scott's.