Johnie Scot- Hensley (KY) 1917 Sharp B
English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians
Comprising 122 Songs and Ballads, and 323 Tunes With Lyrics & sheet Music
Collected by Olive Dame Campbell and Cecil J. Sharp, circa 1917
Sharp's notes: No. 25. Johnie Scot.
Texts without tunes:—Child, No. 99.
Texts with tunes:—Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, tune No. 15. Child, v., p. 418.
"Taverin" in the text is "Italian," "Tailliant," "Itilian," or simply "champion" in other versions. Child throws light upon the incident by quoting a story (Revd. Andrew Hall's Interesting Roman Antiquities recently Discovered in Fife, 1823, p. 216) in which James Macgill of Lindores is offered a pardon by Charles II. upon condition of his fighting an Italian gladiator or bully. In the contest which ensues, "the Italian actually leaped over his opponent as if he would swallow him alive, but in attempting to do this a second time Sir James run his sword up through him and then called out, 'I have spitted him; let them roast him who will.'" A similar story is related of the Breton seigneur Les Aubrays of St. Bricux, who is ordered by the French King to undertake a combat with his wild Moor (Luzel's Poesies populaires de la France, MS., vol. 1).
Johnie Scot- Hensley (KY) 1917 Sharp B
1. In the merry green woods a hunting,
In the merry green woods so wide;
There Johnnie Scot met with King Henry's only daughter,
And talked with her a while.
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