Lady Margaret- Jefferies (VA) 1957 Rec. Clayton
[From: Paul Clayton Folksongs and Ballads of Virginia; 1956 Folkways.
R .Matteson 2014]
Side II, Band 2: LADY MARGARET (Child #74)
This ballad, in its earliest British original, traces back to at least the beginning of the 17th century, for stanzas from it are quoted in Beaumont and Fletcher's Knight of the Burning Pestle (ca. 1611). By the end of the 17th century, the ballad had achieved wide popular circulation by means of numerous broadside and stall-ballad printings. It has come down to modern times in an interesting admixture of printed and orally Circulated variants. Lady Margaret is very popular in America, with New World variants being quite unlike anything in Child. The action usually begins with Margaret standing on hsr porch or bower and spying sweet William and his bride riding by. Lady Margaret goes back into her room and dies. Most American versions then have Margaret's ghost appear before William that night when he is sleeping with his new brids. William then seeks out Margaret and is shown her corpse, whereupon he kisses her cold lips before dying himself.
In Mr. Clayton's version, the stanzas containing the appearance of the ghost have been dropped from the ballad. This is consistent with the tendency on the part of many American folksingers to rationalize or discard all supernatural material in the ballads they sing.
Mr. Clayton received this ballad from Miss Margaret Jefferies of Culpeper County as she had collected it from Miss Judy Towell.
Lady Margaret standing on the porch so high,
Combing back her yellow hair,
And who should she spy but sweet William and his bride
Come riding by this way.
She dropped her ivory comb down,
Back into the room she did go,
A pretty fair Miss going into the room,
For to never come back no more.
And she laid her head down close to the wall,
And sweet Willie he come and said,
Is she in the kitchen so fine,
Or is she in the hall?
She's neither in the kitchen so fine,
Nor is she in the hall,
She's a-laying with her cold pale face,
A-laying turned to the wall.
Can't I go in and unfold the sheets,
Unfold the sheets so fine,
That I may kiss her cold clay lips,
As often she's kissed mine.
For full bibliographical and informative notes, see:
Child, Francis James, THE ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH POPULAR BALLADS - Cambridge, Mass ., 1882 -1898. (Reprinted in 1956 by the Folklore Press, 509 Fifth Avenue, New York City)
Coffin, Tristram P., THE BRITISH TRADITIONAL BALLAD IN NORTH AMERICA, The American Folklore Society, Philadelphia, 1950.
Davis, Arthur Kyle, Jr., TRADITIONAL BALLADS OF VIRGINIA, Harvard, 1929-