Lord Thomas and Fair Ellen- Webb (MO) 1914 Belden J
[From Belden; Ballads and Songs--Collected by the Missouri Folk-Lore Society; 1940. His notes follow (barely edited).
R. Matteson 2014]
Lord Thomas and Fair Annet
(Child 73)
Child has nine versions of this ballad (which has parallels in Scandinavian and Romance balladry), all but one of which are Scotch. This one, D, is an English broadside of the seventeenth century, frequently printed since and current also in oral tradition. And from it have come all the American versions as well as most of those gathered from oral tradition in Great Britain since Child's time. Two features that mark most of the Scotch texts : the contamination with Lady Margaret and Sweet William, at the opening and the close, and Annie's answer to the brown girl's question about her complexion that she got it where the brown girl will never get the like, viz. in her mother's womb- these have disappeared in the modern versions.* The rose and briar ending, too, which marks several of the Scotch versions and some of the later British texts (Aberdeenshire, Staffordshire, Gloucestershire, Devonshire) and is inconsistent with the triple burial (with which it is none the less combined in Gloucestershire and Devonshire and in Child's Dh, an Irish-American version), is infrequent in American texts, appearing only in NPM, TBV B, SCBB, SSSA, and Missouri J. In the broadside Lord Thomas is a bold forester, and he is so called in the Staffordshire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, and Devonshire versions recently recorded. When this characterization appears in Ameriean texts (as it does in BBM A B C, NPM, TBV A B C, SharpK K, SCB B, and the Vermont, Indiana, and Nebraska texts) we may infer a rather close relation to print. Thomas is so described in The Forget-Me-Not Songster, which had wide circulation in America in the middle of the last century. Thomas never sends a messenger to Eleanor, as in Child C E F H I, but goes himself. In the great majority of the modem texts the lovers consult their respective mothers only, occasionally father and mother together; never does a sister (as in Child A B F G H) advise him to prefer the fair girl to the brown. Two elements of realism-or perhaps we should say brutality-are evidently valued, for they persist in almost all the American versions: after Thomas has cut off the brown girl's head he kicks it (or some equivalent phraseology) against the wall; and when he remarks Eleanor's pallor she asks him if he cannot see her own heart's blood come trickling down her knee. There is considerable variety in the way the mother's counsel is asked. Most often the language is 'come riddle my riddle, come riddle it all in (as) one.' In Missouri A it is, come riddle your sword,' and in Missouri D J, TBv I(1), SharpK L N it is 'riddle my (the, these) sport(s).' Many years ago (modern Language Notes XXII 263-4) I ventured the suggestion that sport here is a mishearing of sword and that the latter word points to an earlier belief in the potency of weapons in soothsaying. This peculiar wording appears only in the American versions.
The ballad has been found in oral tradition since Child's time in Aberdeenshire (LL, 54-7, 256), Hertfordshire (JFSS v 180-1), Staffordshire (Burne, Shropshire Folk Lore 651), Herefordshire (JFSS II 107), Gloucestershire (FSUT 135-7), Hampshire (JFSS II 106, tune only), Somerset (JFSS II 105-6, 109), and Devonshire (JFSS II 102-8); in Nova scotia (BSSNS 21-4, SBNS 8-10) and Newfoundland (BSSN 18-20); in Maine (BBM 126-84), Vermont (JAFL XVIII 128-30, VFSB 209-13), Massachusetts (JAFL XYIII 180, by way of New Jersey), Pennsylvania (JAFL XXIX 159, by way of Kansas; NPM 755-7), Maryland (ABS 27-31, by way of Nebraska), Virginia (TBVa- 797-220, SharpK I 120, 721, 127-9, FSSH 68-9, SCSM 106-18), West Virginia (FSS 45-64), Kentucky (JAFL XX 264-6, BKH 49-bt, FSI(M 26-88, TKMS 11-27, DD 88-90, SharpK I 124-G), Tennessee (JAFL XLII 262-5, sharpK, 119-20,722-3, FSSH 60-3, SFL,Q II G9), North Carolina (JAFL XXVIII 152, SSSA 41, SharpK I 115-6, 118-21, 129-81, BMFSB 16-T), South Carolina (SCB 109-20), Georgia (SharpK I 116-8, 121), Mississippi (FSM 78-87), Texas (PFLST X 144-6),Indiana (JAFL XITVIII 314-6), Illinois (TSSI IBG-T), and Iowa (MAFITS XXIX 5-7). Three of Child's D texts, g h i, are from Irish in America, showing the ballad known in Ireland, and one, f, is from New Brunswick. Cambiaire does not exactly locate his texts, so that ETWVIIB 84-6, 11b-6 may represent either Tennessee or Virginia.
Since American texts are so much alike and so numerous (TBV prints eighteen, SharpK thirty-one (several of them however only fragments with tunes), FSS nine). I shall not print here all the twelve in the Missouri collection. Four of them have already been printed in JAFL XIX.
*The first of these features is retained in the Aberdeenshire version, and what is perhaps a vestige of the second; and a little vestige is perhaps to be seen in TBV H and FSS E.
J. 'Lord Thomas and Fair Ellen.' From Violet Webb of Norborne, Carroll County, a student at the University, in 1914.
'O mother, O mother, come riddle my sports,
Come riddle them three, two, one,
O shall I marry fair Ellen
Or bring the Brown Girl home?'
(Repeat last two lines of each stanza)
'The Brown Girl she has houses and. land,
Fair Ellen she has none;
Therefore I charge you with my blessing
To bring the Brown Girl home.'
'Go saddle up my milk-white steed,
Also my speedy brown;
Go saddle me up the speediest horse
That ever hoofed the ground.'
He rode till he came to Fair Ellen's hall
And tinkled at the ring;
No one so ready as Fair Ellen herself
To rise and let him in.
'Lord Thomas, Lord Thomas, what news have you brought?
What news have you brought to me?'
'I've come to invite you to my wedding,'
'O that is sad news for me!'
'Go ask my Ma, go ask my Pa,
Get both of their consent;
Shall I attend Lord Thomas' wedding
Or shall I stay at home?'
She dressed. herself in scarlet red,
Her waiting-maids in green;
And every city she passed through
They took her to be the queen.
She rode till she came to Lord Thomas' hall,
And tinkled at the ring.
No one so ready as Lord Thomas himself
To rise and let her in.
He took her by her lily-white hand
And led her through the hall,
And set her down at his bride's right side
Among the ladies all.
'Lord Thomas, Lord Thomas, is this your bride?
I think she's awful brown.
When you could have married the fairest lady
That ever the sun shone on.'
The Brown Girl had a little pen-knife,
'Twas very sharp and keen.
She pierced it through Fair Ellen's side,
And the blood came trickling down'
Lord Thomas took her little brown hand
And led her through the hall,
Took down his own sword, cut off her head,
And kicked it against the wall.
'O mother, O mother, come dig my grave,
Come dig it wide and deep;
And bury Fair Ellen in my arms
And the Brown Girl at my feet.
'And plant a tame rose at my head
And a wild rose at my feet,
And let them grow to a steeple's top
And twine in a lover's knot!'
This is the only Missouri text that shows a memory of the rose-and-briar ending-a confused memory at that.