King Henry, My Son- Lattimer (Carlisle) c.1840
[My date, a guess but considering the info given, an educated guess. It could be titled "King Henery, my Son" as sung: Hen-er-y. There are two versions given by Broadwood with the same title in 1907 and 1908-- the melody is the same both by Miss Lattimer who is probably Robert Lattimer's sister [ref. Wakefield's Folk Song Competition]. The ballad was communicated by Sydney Nicholson, an organist at Carlisle Cathedral in 1905, who learned songs from various sources but his main source was Robert Lattimer of Carlisle. This is the same melody in English Traditional Songs and Carols 1908 given by "a Miss M. B. Lattimer, living in Carlisle, noted this fine air, which she learned in childhood, some time before 1868, from Margaret Scott (now Mrs. Thorburn), a young servant in her home. The singer came from Wigton, in Cumberland, and had learnt the ballad from her father, who died when she was nine years old." Here it's from Mr. Lattimer when a boy. The date at age 15 would be 1840, according to "folk song in cumbria" by S Allan, 2017, who reports "Robert Lattimer (1825-1901) and other members of his family seem to be key 'tradition bearers', in carrying forward into the twentieth century folk songs current in Carlisle in the nineteenth century."
Since the melodies and titles are the same (the texts different and the info different but both from Miss Lattimer) something is amiss unless both the melodies sung were the same- which is possible but unlikely.
R. Matteson 2011, 2018]
Songs from Cumberland & Northumberland
by Frank Kidson, Lucy E. Broadwood, A. G. Gilchrist, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Cecil J. Sharp
Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 3, No. 10 (1907), pp. 39-46
14.- KING HENRY, MY SON [LORD RENDAL]
Noted by Miss Lattimer, communicated by Sydney Nicholson
SUNG BY MR. [ROBERT] LATTIMER, OF CARLISLE, LEARNT, VERY LONG SINCE, IN CUMBERLAND, WHEN A BOY.
"Oh, where have you been wandering, King Henery, my son,
[Oh,] where have you been wandering, my pretty one?"
"I've been to my sweetheart's,mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick to the heart, and would fain lay me down."
"And what did your sweetheart give you, King Henery, my son,
What did your sweetheart give you, my pretty one?"
"She fried me some paddocks,* mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, and would fain lay me down."
"And what will you leave your sweetheart, King Henery, my son?
What will you leave your sweetheart, my pretty one?
"My garter to hang her, mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, and would fain lay me down!
* Toads (Old English)
The occasional occurrence of the name "King Henry" in the ballad more commonly known as "Lord Rendal" is perhaps due to a reminiscence of Henry I's death from eating a dish of lanmpreys, on his return from a hunting expedition. It seems quite possible that a story arose that the dish had been tampered with, or that the "lampreys" were euphemistically named, and hence that the king died of poison, not simple gluttony. A somewhat similar poisoning circumstance in connection with the death of King John is recorded in the old clhronicle which relates that a certain monk poisoned, with the venom from a toad, a wassail-cup, of which the king drank and thereafter swelled and died. See Scott's Bordler Minstrelsy, note to "Lord Rendal."
It is also imaginable that the "King Henry" referred to may have been the "Young King Henry" who was crowned in the lifetime of his father, Henry II, and died of "a violent fever and flix" while fighting against him, in France. There is a possibility that poison was suspected in his case, also; but it seems much more likely that the person who first introduced the name of Henry into the ballad had in mind the monarch who succumbed to the dish of lampreys.
While the poisoning story itself was probably current in Europe at an early period, the following suggestions may be offered as to the reason why the name "Lord Rendal" should be traditionally connected with the ballad in England and Scotland:
(1). - Randal III, sixth Earl of Chester, ii8i, (died 1232) divorced his first wife, Constance, widow of Geoffrey Plantagenet, and married again, " for which sin, as many men suppose, this Ranulph [Randal] deserved to dye without issuie and to relinquish
his honors unto the sonne of his sister." [The quotation is taken from The Catalogue of Hontor, 1610, an old peerage in the writer's possession].
(2). - He was succeeded by his nephew John, whose wife "was infamous for plotting to take away the life of her husband John by poison." - [Ibid.]
(a). - Following upon a contemporary belief that Randal left no heir because of his sin in divorcing his first wife and re-marrying, may there not have arisen the story that a young son and heir, child of the second wife, was poisoned by his " stepmother" (i.e. the divorced Constance) at her own house, returning to his mother to die? (This would explain the "Wee Croodlin' Doo" form of the story, with its conjunction of "stepmother " and "nammy," though, at the same time, the "mammy"
of the nursery version may simply have been the child's foster-mother or nurse).
If, when the real circumstances had somewhat faded from memory, people wished to find a romantic reason for the fact of Randal III's leaving no heir and the earldom thus passing to his nephew, a divine judgment might be the explanation offered by
the priest and the scholar, but the common folk would, I think, be much more likely to seek a human agent in the first wife, dishonoured, jealous, and revengeful, and thus to attach to Randal an already existing ballad-story. (It will be remembered that
Constance's own son, Prince Arthur, had been done to death).
(b). - The fact, or story, that Randal's nephew and successor to the title was poisoned by his own wife may later have become attached to Randal himself by confusion with the (presumptive) poisoning legend about Randal's young son and heir. These suggestions do not, of course, interfere with the circumstance of the Lord Randal story being current in Italy or other countries at a much earlier date. They merely aim at explaining why the hero should be called Lord Randal in the English form of the ballad.* - A. G. G.
Cf. this beautiful tune with "The Trees they do grow high" noted in Sussex by Dr. Vaughan Williams. (Jourual, Vol. ii, No. 8, p. 2o6). For copious variants, and notes on the ancient ballad, see Child's Eniglish and Scottisl Ballads. Child gives two distinct tunes to 'Lord Rendal.' For other tunes and references see Journal, Vol. II, No. 6, and Folk Sonigs fronit Sommerset, Ist series.-L. E. B.
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Footnote:
* See Chappell's Popular Music, p. 10, for an account of the services English minstrels rendered to Randal, when besieged in I2I2. This (or another) Randal seems to have been early a popular hero, for Longland describes his Friar as much better acquainted with the "rimes of Robinhode and of Randal, erle of Chester," than with his Paternoster. - A. G. G.