Lord Thomas- Varner (MO) 1904 Belden E
[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.
E. 'Lord Thomas.' Sent me by Miss Calla Varner in 1906 from Maryville, Nodaway County, with this notation: 'obtained from an old lady who had sung it in her youth but who cannot recall much of it now -she procured the copy I sent from some young girls in her family. The girls wrote it down just as they sing it today. She thinks her parents probably brought it from Virginia.' In this as in a good many other texts the brown girl is apparently understood to be a girl of that family name.
'Oh riddle, oh riddle, dear mother, clear,
Now riddle us both as one:
Must I marry Fair Elinor
Or bring the Brown girl home?'
(Repeat the last two lines of each stanza)
'The Brown girl has her house and lands,
Fair Elinor has none;
So let me charge you, with my blessing,
To bring the Brown girl home.'
Lord Thomas then went to Fair Elinor's inn
And jingled hard at the ring;
And none was as willing as Fair Elinor,
To arise and let him in.
"Lord. Thomas,' she said, 'have you any good news?
Have you any good news for me?'
'I've come to invite you to my wedding,
And that is sad news for thee.'
'Oh riddle, oh riddle, dear mother, clear,
Now riddle us both as one.
Must I go to Lord Thomas' wedding
Or must I stay at home?'
'Fair Elinor,' she said, 'you have but one friend,
And many may be your foes.
So let me charge you with my blessing
To Lord Thomas' wedding don't go.'
Fair Elinor then dressed in her fine array,
And then she put on her green;
And every village that she passed through
They took her to be some queen.
Fair Elinor then went to Lord Thomas' inn,
And jingled hard at the ring;
And none was as filling as Lord Thomas was
To arise and let her in.
He took her by her lily-white hand
And led her through the hall;
And among the four-score and twenty ladies fair
She was the fairest of all.
'Lord Thomas,' she said, 'is this your bride?
It seems that she's terribly brown;
You once could have married the fairest lady
That ever trod on the ground.'
The Brown girl had a knife in her hand,
'Twas long and keen and sharp;
And between the short ribs and the lungs
She pierced Fair Elinor's heart.
'Lord Thomas,' she said, 'are you blind?
Or can't you very well see?
Or can't you see my own heart's blood
Come trickling down my knee?'
Lord Thomas then said, 'No, I am not blind
But I can very well see;
And for the shedding of your heart's blood
Vengeance will I see.'
Lord Thomas had a sword by his side
And, as he passed through the hall,
He chopped off his own bride's head.
And kicked it against the wall.
Lord Thomas then said, 'Go dig my grave,
Go dig it both wide and deep,
And bury Fair Elinor at my side,
And the Brown girl at my feet.'
Lord Thomas then put the helm to the floor
And the point into his heart.
And then they buried the three lovers together;
No sooner did they part.