Lord Bakeman- Bailey (VT) c.1886 Flanders R
[My date From Flanders; Ancient Ballads, 1966. Notes by Coffin follow. This fragment is based on a performance in the play Rosedale; or, The Rifle Ball (1863) by Lester Wallack, which ran for 125 performances at Wallack's Theatre, on Broadway, NYC.
R. Matteson 2014]
Young Beichan
(Child 53)
This ballad has an extensive Anglo-American tradition and still is well known on both sides of the Atlantic. The American songs all trace back to early broadsides[1] and song books and quite generally refer to the hero as Lord Bateman or Bakeman. These texts vary somewhat in minor detail, but follow the Child L pattern as to plot outline, significant facts, and length. Nevertheless, a good many scholars have devoted a good bit of time to the minor variations of the American versions and more particularly to identifying the printed sources of the ballad in the New World. George L. Kittredge JAF, XXX, 295-97) used "the hole bored in the hero's shoulder" as a means of distinguishing texts closely akin to Child L from those related to the Coverly broadside in the Isaiah Thomas Collection, Worcester, Massachusetts, and Phillips Barry, British Ballads from Maine, 106 f., continues the probings and points out the "hole in the shoulder" stanza is characteristic of the South. There is also a good bit of information along similar lines in Jane Zielonko's Master's thesis, "Some American Variants of Child Ballads" (Columbia University, 1945), 83 f.
The Flanders versions below have been divided according to the findings of these researchers. Texts A-J seem to be similar to the Coverly broadside or to the version printed in the J. S. Locke of Boston Forget-Me-Not Songster (See A particularly) that goes back to an earlier broadside Coverly may have used. K-S are close to the text printed by Lucy E. Broadwood and J. A. F. Maitland in English Country Songs (London, 1893) and cited by Barry, op. cit., 116. This is a form of the song still known in Britain that evidently found its way into print in New England. In this series (see K-O) the hero's shoulder is not bored through as in many Child texts, but Bateman is tied to a tree[2]. T, it will be noted, contains further modifications and a compression
of the narrative. But, all in all, the Flanders texts are pretty typical of the northern findings for this ballad. Child, I,455 f., discusses the affinities of this song and the legend associated with Gilbert a Becket in the Middle Ages. However, analogous stories are known about Henry of Brunswick, Alexander von Metz, and a host of other heroes in Scandinavian and southern European balladry. A start on a bibliography can be had in Coffin, 63-65 (American); Dean-Smith, 5 (English) ; Greig and Keith, 40-43 (Scottish) ; and the notes in Child. Kittredge's JAF article contains a number of references, not easily available elsewhere, to printed American texts of "Lord Bateman" and its relative "The Turkish Lady." The latter, listed by Laws as O 26 and possibly derived from "Lord Bateman," is also immensely popular in America. Laws, AEBB,238, and Coffin, 65, give a
good many references for it.
The eight tunes for Child 53 are all related, and all correspond to tune group A in BC1. Two subfamilies appear: 1) the Davis, Kennison, Pierce, and Burke tunes, characterized by a triad at the beginning, this group corresponds to BCI group Aa. The other tunes together fit in with BCI group Ab, the Morton tune being relatively divergent from the others, however.
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1. In my opinion, this statement is simply inaccurate, "the American songs all trace back to early broadsides." Consider, for example, the Hick/Harmon version (Susan Price/Young Behan) which was collected from three different family members which they brought from Virginia (circa late 1600s) to the Carolina mountains probably around 1770 and has been passed strictly through oral tradition since then. [R. Matteson 2014]
2. It's likely that the "tied to a tree" reference is, in fact, derived from the "hole in the shoulder" texts, via faulty oral transmission. After all, there aren't many prisoners tied to a tree in a jail cell. [R. Matteson 2014]
R. Lord Bakeman. Recorded in Putney, Vermont, from the singing of Mrs. Herbert Bailey, who remembered this fragment of "Lord, Bakeman" from a play[1] she attended at the Boston Museum nearly forty-five years earlier. H. H. F., Collector; June 3, 1931.
Lord Bakeman
Lord Bakeman was a noble lord,
A noble lord he was of high degree,
And he determin-ed to go abroad
Strange countries for to see.
1. According to Phillips Barry the play was Rosedale, or The Rifle Ball.
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Rosedale; or, The Rifle Ball (1863), a play by Lester Wallack ['Wallack's Theatre, (on Broadway, NYC). One of Wallack's biggest successes is this complicated melodrama about a widow's inheritance. Lester was the son of English actor/manager James William Wallack (1794- 1864) and they managed the theatre during its 35-year lifetime, from 1852 to 1887.
"But the great run of those days was made by Rosedale, in which Lester Wallack was a singularly graceful, handsome, and attractive hero. The rôle fitted him admirably. The play ran in 1863 for 125 nights, something almost unprecedented.…The most phenomenal run at the house occurred during the following decade, when Dion Boucicault produced The Shaughraun, which had 143 performances." [Thomas Allston Brown, A History of the New York Stage, Vol. 1. Dodd, Mead and Company; New York; 1903.]
Here's the excerpt with the ballad:
ELL. You're a little darling! Now tell me what that pretty old-fashioned air is that you are continually singing about the house when I visit you in the village
ROSA. Oh! I dare not sing it here. It was our darling boy's favorite song; he used to make me sing it to him two or three times every day.
ELL. I wish you'd teach it to me.
ROSA. For your private theatricals, I suppose?
ELL. Yes, I want to introduce it in a new part that I am going to play.
ROSA. What is it?
ELL. A sort of low comedy serious part.
ROSA. Well, tomorrow
ELL. That won't do! Today! Now!
ROSA. But Florence if she was to hear me she'd go distracted.
ELL. She's not in the house. Come! I've no time to lose.
ROSA. Well, it begins so [Sings]
"Lord Bateman he was a noble lord,
A noble lord he was of high degree;
He determined to go abroad
Strange countries for to see!"
ELL. [Sings] "Lord Bateman was a noble lord."
ROSA. [Sings] "A noble lord he was of high degree.**
ELL. [Sings] "A noble lord he was of high degree."
ROSA. Yes, it goes up [Sings] "A noble lord he was of high degree," don't you see? [Sings] "of high degree."
ELL. Oh! I see! I didn't take my high degree.
ROSA. No! Try it again.
ELL. [Sings] "A noble lord he was of high degree."
ROSA. That's right! [Sings] "And he determined to go abroad, Strange countries for to see."
ELL. [Sings] "And he determined to go abroad, Strange countries for to see!"
ROSA. No! No! No!
ELL. What's the matter?
ROSA. You're all abroad.
ELL. Well, he went abroad.
ROSA. Don't be silly, now. [Sings] "Strange countries for to see." There's where you were wrong. [Sings] "to see."
ELL. "To see" I see!
ROSA. Now try it all.
ELL. [Sings] "Lord Bateman was a noble lord
A noble lord he was of high degree.
And he determined to go abroad,
Strange countries for to see."
ROSA. That's it, exactly.
ELL. That's right, I believe. Ha! Ha! Ha!
ROSA, I'll write out the other words for you.
ELL. Umph! One o'clock! I must be oflE. Adieu for the present. Rosa! Rosa, dear, perhaps I may not "perhaps never." [Kisses her hand]
ROSA. Why, Elliot
ELL. [Sings] "And he determined to go abroad"There, good-bye! Don't forget the words for me. Good-bye* [Exit R.DJF]