'Lord Randal' in Kent: The Meaning and Context of a Ballad Variant
by S. Elizabeth Bird
Folklore, Vol. 96, No. 2 (1985), pp. 248-252
'Lord Randal' in Kent: The Meaning and Context of a Ballad Variant
S. ELIZABETH BIRD
'LORD RANDAL' (Child 12) has been one of the most widely collected ballads, with many variants recorded from Britain, Europe, Canada and the United States.[1] Bronson lists it as third in his 'top seven' Child ballads.[2]
The ballad, a dialogue between a mother and her dying son, is dramatic and tragic; as Flatto points out, 'The deep, all-pervasive mood of melancholy underlying "Lord Randal" is unfolded gradually through the slow, measured musicality so characteristic of the ballad.[3] The young man (or young boy, as he sometimes seems to be), has usually been poisoned by either his stepmother or his lover, the poison being administered in cooked eels.[4]
However, although most of the known variants are dramatic, there are also 'lighter' versions, ranging from 'The Bonnie Wee Croodin' Dow' (Child 12J) to a Welsh 'burlesque mountaineering version.[5] Paquin, although he does not quote this variant, writes that 'the burlesque effect ... is achieved through the exaggeration of stress and the deformation of words ... and through the use of a bouncy, irregular rhythm.'[6]
Like many other ballads, 'Lord Randal' has on occasion adapted to changed circumstances by losing its original intensity and becoming a street or children's song.[7] A recently-collected variant of 'Lord Randal' seems to fall somewhere between the 'burlesque' and the dramatic. This variant, recorded in Bath, England, in 1982, is sung in a brisk, jaunty fashion, and seems to have some similarities to 'Green and Yella,' the Welsh version cited by Paquin.
Where have you been all day, my loving one,
Where have you been all day, my loving son,
In the woods, dear mother, in the woods, dear mother,
Then make a bed for a pain in my head,
For I want to lie down.
Who took you to the woods, my loving one,
Who took you to the woods, my loving son,
Gypsies, dear mother, gypsies, dear mother,
Then make a bed for a pain in my head,
For I want to lie down.
What did you eat all day, my loving one,
What did you eat all day, my loving son,
Snakes, dear mother, snakes, dear mother,
Then make a bed for a pain in my head,
For I want to lie down.
What colour were the snakes, my loving one,
What colour were the snakes, my loving son,
Green and yellow, green and yellow,
Then make a bed for a pain in my head,
For I want to lie down.
What shape do you want your bed, my loving one,
What shape do you want your bed, my loving son,
Long and narrow, long and narrow,
Then make a bed for a pain in my head,
For I want to lie down.
When will we meet again, my loving one,
When will we meet again, my loving son,
In Heaven, dear mother, in Heaven, dear mother,
Then make a bed for a pain in my head,
For I want to lie down.
When performing the song, the informant usually stresses the third line of each stanza heavily and melodramatically, until the final stanza, which takes on a slightly maudlin tone.[8] This variant, unlike many others, does not include any discussion of a legacy to the victim's family or murderer, but substitutes the familiar 'long and narrow' motif, usually associated with digging a grave rather than making a bed, and asks another familiar question, 'When will we meet again?' in the final stanza. However, the most interesting feature of the variant is the substitution of snakes for eels (or fish), and of gypsies for the usual lover or stepmother; these substitutions may be the key to the ballad's survival in this cultural context. Lord Randal, with its dramatic tale of 'innocence and experience, trust and betrayal, love and rejection,' [9] is rarely collected in contemporary urban oral tradition, yet the substitution of new symbols for the traditional betrayers gives the song a new relevance and meaning.
The structure of the ballad has remained constant; as Bronson points out, the ballad 'has held with extraordinary tenacity to its stanzaic pattern.' The sharp contrasts remain between the wild, dark unknown (the woods, snakes, gypsies) and the safety of home (mother, bed), but rather than the unknown being represented as a lover, stepmother, or other family member, whose potency as evil figures may no longer be so appropriate, it is represented by gypsies. In Britain and elsewhere, gypsies have long been feared and distrusted, seen as dark, exotic strangers who have mysterious powers and may steal children.[10] Widdowson recalls the threat used to discipline him when he was a child in north Derbyshire: 'I'll give you to the gypsies.'[12] He also mentions two uses of gypsies as 'threatening figures' in Newfoundland.[13]
My informant recalls that he first heard the song as a small child, remembering that his older sister sang it often, with the same emphases. His 32-year-old son recalls his aunt using the threat, 'I'll sell you to the gypsies,' when he and his brothers misbehaved as children. Furthermore, the informant remembers that in his community, gypsies were more than a fearful symbol, but were a very real presence, at least for part of the year. Born in 1922, he spent his childhood in Ramsgate, Kent, a hop-growing county that every summer attracted large numbers of itinerant hoppickers, including many gypsies. Gypsies would often visit houses to tell fortunes, sell clothes-pegs and other items, and the informant remembers 'one woman in particular, or maybe it's just a picture of a gypsy woman type-dark, dressed in unusual, bright scarves and big earrings.' The children were warned to stay away from the gypsies, who 'stole children' and 'were dirty.' In thinking about the song, the informant said that 'it certainly seemed to be part of that general thing; you had to be wary of gypsies.' He added that although his sister sang the song jauntily, she would 'try to scare us with the snakes and gypsies bits.'
The informant's sister does not recall any role in initiating the change of the central evil character in the song; in fact she does not recall where she learned it herself. So it cannot be known when the addition of the gypsies motif took place. What is clear is that the song in its changed form had a practical, functional meaning that the older versions could not have had. At the same time, it had a deeper, symbolic meaning that may have been similar to that of the older ballad, although expressed in different terms.
In successive stanzas, the song warns about crossing the boundaries into the unknown and dangerous. First, the child is warned about the potential danger of the wood, then of gypsies, and then of snakes. In this variant, the poisoned food is explicitly identified as snake, a development of earlier variants. Coffin suggests that the 'eels' were in fact snakes,[14] while Seemann, Strombaick and Jonsson give a version in which Lord Randal says, 'A snake I for eel took,'[15] But in the Kent variant the identity is unambiguous. While this is probably a modern rationalization, it is also a necessary change in order to maintain the full horror and inappropriateness of the food eaten, particularly as in this version poison is not explicitly mentioned. As Douglas has pointed out in her analysis of the 'abominations' of Leviticus, eels have traditionally been an 'ambiguous' food that may well have once been regarded as suspect: 'Swarming things are neither fish, flesh nor fowl. Eels and worms inhabit water, though not as fish . . .' [16] However, by the twentieth century, eels had become widely acceptable as a working-class food, especially when served in jelly; it therefore apparently became necessary to restress the unusual nature of the food offered by the poisoner. Snakes fit the bill well; they are a logical progression in shape from eels, and the potency of the snake as a symbol of evil in Western culture is pervasive. According to Maranda,' in our areas, for most people, "snake" belongs to the paradigmatic set of "repulsive" or "evil" things.' [17]
At a practical level, it would make sense to avoid snakes, just as it would for a child to avoid forests. At a more symbolic level, the association of snakes served as food by gypsies makes sense. Snakes, of course, are not food in Western culture, even though they are not by nature inedible. Discussing cultural definitions of inedible animals, Leach explains, 'such classification is a matter of language and culture, not of nature. It is a classification that is of great importance, and it is felt to be so. Our classification is not only correct, but it is morally right and a mark of our superiority.'[18] Developing Douglas's discussion of anomalous categories, Leach adds, 'The hostile taboo is applied most strongly to creatures that are most anomalous in respect of the major categories, e.g. snakes-land animals with no legs which lay eggs.' [19]
Thus, people who offer snakes as food are clearly alien and to be feared; one recalls the typical 'Chinese restaurant' urban legends, in which people from 'alien' cultures serve up dogs, monkeys and other 'non-food' animals to unsuspecting patrons.[20] One of the most widely-known British stereotypes about gypsies is that they eat hedgehogs; while hedgehogs baked in clay were indeed a traditional and apparently tasty gypsy dish, they are clearly 'non-food' in terms of mainstream British culture. the warning against the gypsies themselves functions at two levels of meaning. First, there is the practical, though not necessarily well-founded, perception that gypsies are dirty and criminally-inclined, and therefore should be avoided. Second, there is the warning to avoid anything that is different and alien. Anyone who would serve snakes is clearly evil; by identifying that evil as gypsies, who already are defined as evil, the definition of 'alien' becomes even more powerful. And by defining the feared 'Other,' the community is better able to define and maintain its own identity and cohesion. In older versions, this 'Other' was represented as stepmother or lover; the boundaries being defined were those of the immediate family-mother versus stepmother or prospective daughter-in-law[21]. In the context of Kent in the 1930s, the 'Other' makes more sense as a stranger, a threatening outsider. As Widdowson explains,' The role of the stranger as a threatening figure emphasizes the use of threats to maintain a certain unity within a community, to resist sudden change or interference from outside and to maintain discipline and obedience within the family circle.'[22] Gypsies, those wild, woodland creatures who eat snakes, are perfect symbols of the 'Other.' Even the snakes they eat are not normal, but 'green and yellow,' a description that does not fit any kind of English snake, poisonous or not.
So 'Lord Randal,' as sung in Kent in the 1930s, was a living part of folk tradition with a dual-level meaning. As part of a much wider, practical socialization process, it warned against venturing out into the woods and getting lost, against contact with snakes, particularly brightly-marked ones that might be poisonous, and against gypsies. At the deeper level, and again as only a small part of a wider enculturation process, it served to define symbolic boundaries between clean and unclean, the wild, outer world and the safe, homebound world, and between accepted norms and alien deviance.
Department of Anthropology,
The University of Iowa, U.S.A.
NOTES
1. See, for example, F. J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1965 reprint), Vol. I; Erich Seemann, Dag Strombick and Bengt R. Jonsson, eds., European Folk Ballads (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1967), Vol. 2; Robert Paquin, "'Le Testament du Garqon Empoisonne": A French Lord Randal in Acadie,' Folklore, 91 (1980), 157-72.
2. Bertrand H. Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads (Princeton, N.J.: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1959), Vol. 1, 190-1.
3. E. Flatto, 'Lord Randal,' Southern Folklore Quarterly, 34:4 (1978), p. 334.
4. The ballad has been categorized into types according to the identity of the poisoner. In addition to the stepmother and lover, these include a brother, grandmother and sister. See Tristram P. Coffin, The British Traditional Ballad in North America, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: The American Folklore Society, 1963), pp. 37-38.
5. Paquin, op. cit., p. 171.
6. Ibid., p. 171.
7. The Opies cite a skipping rhyme which clearly derives from Lord Randal:
'Mother, mother, I feel sick,
Send for the doctor, quick, quick, quick,
Doctor, doctor, I shall die,
Yes my dear, and so shall I,
How many carriages shall I have?
One, two three, four...'
Iona and Peter Opie, The Lore and Languageo f Schoolchildren(L ondon: Oxford University Press, 1959),
p. 34.
8. The informant is Douglas Tobin, 61, of Bath, England, who was born and grew up in Ramsgate,
Kent. Mr. Tobin is my father-in-law, and I have heard him sing the song often. The information quoted in this paper was gathered during informal conversation on several occasions.
9. Flatto, op. cit., p. 334.
10. Bronson, op. cit., p. 191.
11. See Christine A. Cartwright, 'Johnny Faa and Black Jack Davy: Cultural Values and Change in
Scots and American Balladry,' Journal of American Folklore, 93:370 (1980), pp. 397-416; also printed in
Lore and Language 3:4/5 (1981), pp. 153-188.
12. John D. A. Widdowson, If You Don't be Good: VerbalS ocial Controli n Newfoundland( St. John's,
Newfoundland: Memorial University of Newfoundland, 1977; Social and Economic Studies No. 21), p. iii.
13. Ibid., p. 274.
14. Coffin, op. cit.
15. Seemann, Strombick & Jonsson, op. cit., p. 87.
16. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger:A n Analysis of Concepts o f Purity and Taboo (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1966), p. 71.
17. Pierre Maranda ed., Mythology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972), p. 14.
18. Edmund Leach, 'Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal Categories and Verbal Abuse,' in
Maranda, op. cit., p. 44.
19. Ibid., p. 51.
20. See, for example, Jan Harold Brunvand, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and
Their Meanings (New York: W. W. Norton & Co. Ltd., 1981).
21. Ann C. Hall, 'A Jungian Interpretation of "Lord Randal" or What is Worse than a Woman Was?'
In this paper, presented at the annual convention of the American Folklore Society, October, 1983, Hall
offers an interpretation of the ballad from a Jungian point of view, with emphasis on two major feminine
archetypes, the mother and the anima.
22. Widdowson, op. cit., p. 269.