Lord Thomas- Osborne (VA) 1932 Davis FF
[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. 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).
FF. "Lord Thomas." Collected by E. J. Sutherland, of Clintwood, Va. Contributed by Hampton Osborne, of Omaha, Va., who learned it from Misses Alpha and Lillie Yates of Omaha. Dickenson County. March 31, 1932. A full and good text, with some interesting verbal variants. The brown girl has become Sally Brown.
1. Lord Thomas was a gay young man,
The lord of many a town;
He courted a girl called Pretty Fair Ellen,
And one called Sally Brown.
2. "Come, father, come, mother, I'll ask you both,
I'll ask you both as one;
Whether I must marry Pretty Fair Ellen,
Or bring that Brown girl home ?"
3 "The Brown girl has a house and home,
Fair Ellen she has none.
But now take warning from a friend,
And bring that Brown girl home."
4 He rode up to Fair Ellen's gate,
So loudly toned and called,
None so ready but Fair Ellen herself
To rise and ask him in.
5 "Very sad news for you, Fair Ellen,
And it's very sad news indeed,
I've come to ask you to my wedding,
Next Saturday night will be."
6 "Very sad news for me, Lord Thomas,
It's very sad news indeed;
I was going to be Your bride myself,
And You the bride's groom for me.
7 "Come, father, come, mother, I'll ask you both,
I'll ask You both as one;
Whether I can go to Lord Thomas's wedding,
Or tarry with mother at home?"
8 "Many might be there," they say,
"There might be friends and foes;
So now take warning from a friend,
And stay with mother at home."
9 "Many might be there," she said,
"There might be friends and foes;
But I don't care for friends and foes-
To Lord Thomas's wedding I'll go."
10 She dressed herself in scarlet and green,
The fairest colors e'er seen;
And every town that she rode through,
They took her for to be some queen.
11 She rode up to Lord Thomas's gate,
So loudly toned and called;
Alone was to ready as Lord Thomas himself
To rise and bid her in.
12 He took the Brown girl by the hand,
And led her through the hall,
And sat her on the marble-top table,
Among the ladies all.
13. “Is this your bride?" Fair Ellen said,
"Is this your bride so brown?
You could have married the fairest young girl
That ever rode through this town'"
14. "Throw none of your snares [1] at me, Fair Ellen,
Throw none of Your snares at me,
For I think more of your little finger
Than the Brown girl's whole body."
15 The Brown girl had a little penknife,
The blade was keen and sharp;
Between the long ribs and the short,
She pierced Fair Ellen's heart.
"What makes you look so pale, Fair Ellen?
What makes you look so pale?"
"When I can feel my cold heart's blood,
Come flowing beside my knees."
17 He took the Brown girl by the hand,
He led her through the hall;
And with his knife cut her head clean off,
And kicked it against the wall.
18 "Papa, Papa, go dig my grave,
Go dig it long and deep;
Bury pretty Ellen in my arms,
And the Brown girl at my feet."
19 He placed the sword against the wall,
The point against his breast;
Saying, "Here's the death of three long lovers,
God send their souls to rest.”
1. In other versions from the same section, "slurs" which makes better sense (sec headnote).