Lord Thomas- Hodges (VA) 1932 Davis CC Edit Settings For this Content Instance
[From Davis; More Traditional Ballads of Virginia; 1960. Davis notes follow.
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, "Fair Margaret and Sweet William" and "Lord Lovel," and attempts to distinguish the pure types of the three from the blended texts. All 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).
CC. "Lord Thomas." Phonograph record (aluminum) made by A. K. Davis. Sung by Mr. J. F. Hodges, of Roanoke, Va., Roanoke County. August 8, 1932. Text transcribed by P. C. Worthington. Tune noted by Williams and E. C. Mead.
1 He mounted his horse, he rode to fair Ellen,
He knocked so clear at the ring,
But who were no ready Fair Ellen herself,
To rise and let him in.
2 "What's the matter, what's the matter, Lord. Thomas?" she said,
"What seems the matter?” said she.
"I've come to invite you to my wedding,
Tomorrow it's to be."
3 "Come riddle, come riddle, dear mother," she said,
"Come riddle us both as one,
Whether I shall go to Lord Thomas's wedding,
Or tarry with you at home."
4 "Twelve thousands may be your friends, dear daughter,
Ten thousand may be your foes,
I would advise you with my blessing,
To tarry with me at home."
5 "Twelve thousands may be my friends, dear mother,
Ten thousand may be my foes,
But if it is to be my death,
Lord Thomas's wedding I'll go."
6 She dressed herself in the finest of silk,
It all trimmed up in green,
And every town that she passed through,
She was taken to be the queen.
7 She rode until Lord Thomas's house,
She knocked so clear at the ring,
But who were no ready, Lord Thomas himself,
To rise and let her in.
8 He took her by her lily-white hand,
As he led her through the hall,
He take her to the brown girl's chamber
And placed her above them all.
9 "Is this your bride, Lord Thomas?" she said,
"I'm sure she's wonderful brown,
When once you'd of married as fair a young lady
As ever the sun shone on."
10 The brown girl having a knife in her bosom,
The point both keen and sharp,
Between the long ribs and the short,
She pierced fair Ellender's heart.
11. "What's the matter, what's the matter, Fair Ellen?" he said,
"What makes you look so sad?"
"Oh, don't you see my own heart's blood,
Come bleeding out of me?"
12 He took her by the lily-white hand,
As he led her through the hall,
He cut the brown girl's head off
And dashed it against the wall.
13 He placed Fair Ellen by his right side,
The brown girl at his feet,
He placed a big Bible right under their head,
So silently they might sleep.