Lord Thomas- Bowman (VA) 1932 Davis AA
[From Davis; More Traditional Ballads of Virginia; 1960. Davis notes follow. Davis collected ballads from Ruby Bowman when she attended State Teachers College with her friend and fellow ballad singer Eunice Yeattes. Later both women married and recorded ballads on Virginia Traditions: Ballads From British Tradition: Little Massie Grove - Ruby Bowman Plemmons; Wild Hog In The Woods - Eunice Yeattes McAlexander.
R. Matteson 2014]
LORD THOMAS AND FAIR ANNET
(Child, No. 73)
The TBVa headnote points out the kinship between this ballad and the two that immediately follow, "F-air Margaret and Sweet William" and "Lord Lovel," and attempts to distinguish the pure types of the three from the blended texts. A11 are love tragedies. But in "Lord Thomas" there is a triangle with three violent deaths; in "Fair Margaret" there is a triangle, with two lovers' deaths, neither violent; in "Lord Lovel" the triangle disappears, the lover is not unfaithful, only laggard, returns to find his lady dead of love too long deferred, then himself dies of grief. The "rose-and-brier" ending is often, but not always, attached to all three, more regularly to the two ballads that follow than to this ballad.
The ballad of Lord Thomas plus his variously named sweetheart (generally some form of Eleanor) and her brown-girl rival (sometimes Sally Brown) is one of the more popular ballads still found in tradition in America. Coffin's American bibliography is extensive. TBVa printed seventeen texts and omitted seventeen more. FSVa lists thirteen items subsequently collected in Virginia, four of them phonographic recordings. Of the thirteen, only six are here presented. Five of the six have tunes.
The new Virginia texts are most closely related to Child D and with one possible exception to be noted, follow the English rather than the Scottish form of the ballad. All, with variations, follow Coffin's Story Type A, not the extraordinary Type B (if the latter deserves the name of a distinct story type of this ballad). As usual, it is with a pang that many excellent texts with some distinctive readings have been omitted. One of the discarded texts has this distinctive stanza, somewhat reminiscent of the several Scottish texts in Child:
The brown girl she come stepping up,
Her heart was filled with hate.
“where did you get your well water
That washed your skin so white ?"
Another has and the singer insisted upon the readings "riddler's boat" for "riddle us both," "merriments" for "merry men's," and the following unique last stanza:
Lord Thomas he commenced cussin' and swearin'
An' walkin' across the hall.
Then he cut off the brown girl's head
And kicked it against the wall.
Another has this variant stanza:
Lord Thomas called his merry men round,
He dressed them all in white,
So that every city he passed through
They took him to be some knight.
Still another has Lord Thomas reply to Fair Ellen's taunts about the brown girl with, "Throw not your slurs at me, Fair Ellen." And so on. But in the main these discarded versions follow the same story line without too significant variation, except, perhaps, in the eyes of the connoisseur of such variants. The six texts and five tunes that follow, plus the above notes, will adequately represent the ballad and its variants here. Child prints nine versions of the ballad and finds room in his Additions and Corrections (III, 509-10) for a variant of his D version "from the singing of a Virginia nurse-maid (helped out by her mother)" communicated by W. H. Babcock to the Folk-Lore Journal (VII, 33, 1889). This, like most of the American texts, stems from any one of several seventeenth-century broadside collections (Pepys, Roxburghe, Bagford, and others). Most of the numerous survivals in recent British tradition stem from the same broadside sources. In America, the ballad rivals in popularity "Barbara Allan" and "The House Carpenter." Sharp-Karpeles print an astonishing thirty-one tunes with texts or part-texts ( I, 115-31). The Brown Collection prints or comments upon fourteen (II, 69-79), the first from Rockingham County, Virginia. Excellent as the ballad is, it has perhaps less critical and scholarly interest because of its close relationship to broadsides and songbooks (see Barry, p. 134).
AA. "Lord Thomas." Phonograph record (aluminum) made by A. K. Davis, Jr. Sung by Miss Ruby Bowman, of Laurel Fork, Va. Carroll County. August 19, 1932. Text transcribed by P. C. Worthington. Tune noted by Winston Wilkinson. As will be seen from the notation, the first stanza is atypical; the second and succeeding stanzas represent the musical fairly more closely and repeat the last line, as indicated. There are interesting verbal variants.
1. Lord Thomas was a brave young man,
A keeper of bach'lor's hall,
"Come talk with me, my mother dear,
Come talk to me of love."
2. "I think I'll quit my rambling round,
No more I love to roam,
Shall I marry Fair Ellener now,
Or bring the brown girl home, home,
Or bring the brown girl home ?”
3. "The brown girl she has house and land,
Fair Ellener she has none,
My advice to you, my dearest son,
Go bring the brown girl home, home,
Go bring the brown girl home."
4. Fair Ellener dressed herself in white,
Her merry maids in green,
And every station they passed through,
She was taken to be some queen, some queen,
Was taken to be some queen.
5. She rode up to Lord Thomas's hall,
And janged a lovely ring,
No one so ready as Lord Thomas himself,
To open and bid her come in, come in,
To open and bid her come in.
6 He took her by the lily-white hand,
He led her through the hall,
He took her in and set her down,
That she might see them all, them all,
That she might see them all.
7 "Is this your bride, Lord Thomas?" she said,
"I think she's wonderful brown.
You once could have married the fairest-skinned girl,
As ever set foot on the ground, the ground,
As ever set foot on the ground."
8 The brown girl had a small penknife,
Its blades were keen and sharp,
She stuck it in Fair Ellender's side,
And it almost reached her heart, her heart,
It almost reached her heart.
9. "Fair Ellen, Fair Ellener," he declared,
"What makes you look so pale?
Your cheeks were once the rosy red,
But all of your color has failed, has failed,
But all of your color has failed."
10. "Lord Thomas, Lord Thomas," she replied,
"O tell me can't you see?
Oh, don't you see my own heart's blood,
Come a-trinkling down so free, so free,
Come a-trinkling down so free?"
11 He took the brown girl by her hand,
He led her from the hall,
And with his sword he cut her throat,
He flung her head against the wall, the wall,
Flung her head against the wall.
12. He placed the sword against the wall,
The point against his breast,
"Here is the ending of three dear lovers,
Pray take their souls to rest, to rest,
Pray take their souls to rest.
13. "Go dig my grave both wide and deep,
And paint my coffin black,
Bury Fair Ellender in my arms,
And the brown girl at my back, my back,
And the brown girl at my back.”
14. They dug his grave both wide and deep,
And painted his coffin black,
And buried Fair Ellender in his arms,
And the brown girl at his back, his back,
And the brown girl at his back.