Lover's Tasks- Symons (Corn) c.1890 Baring-Gould
[From Sabine Baring-Gould Manuscript Collection (SBG/2/3/26). This bizarre composite version was sent to Child and was faithfully printed in Additions and Corrections with the following note:
Communicated by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould. "From the north of Cornwall, near Camelford. This used to be sung as a sort of game in farm-houses, between a young man who went outside the room and a girl who sat on the settle or a chair, and a sort of chorus of farm lads and lasses. Now quite discontinued." The dead lover represents the auld man.
Atkinson reports that stanzas 6-14[1] were from Philip Symons of Jascobstowe, 1889 and another informant. These verses are Child 2, the other verses 1-4 and 15 are from "S. Penhallich, Cornwall"- which were acted out. Baring Gould writes that he didn't trust verses 1-5. Verse 5 was apparently changed to verse 15.
In his MS Baring Gould wrote out a connecting stanza (5) and one for 16.
Gilchrist in 1930 JFSS reports: Mr. Baring Gould (see his note on this song in Songs of the West) was informed that this ballad used to be sung in Cornwall as a dialogue between a young man and a girl. This dialogue may have begun abruptly, as in the Gammer Gurton's Garland (1810) version: "Can you make me a cambrick shirt?" The young man left the room, to re-enter it in the character of the ghost of a dead lover, the girl remaining seated. Her spectral visitant sets her the impossible tasks rehearsed in the first part of the song, and but for her resourcefulness in countering his demands would, so it was understood, have claimed her and carried her off. So it would seem that where the meaning of the dialogue was still remembered the menacing and malevolent had their part in it.
Baring Gould wrote: The following was sent to me from Cornwall — but I somewhat mistrust its genuineness in its present form. It was sent along with the "Tasks". I heard the "Tasks" from both a man of Jacobstow, & from another at Mawgan — but neither knew this former portion. Nevertheless it may have some basis, though perhaps touched up
R. Matteson 2018]
The Lover's Tasks- North of Cornwall: Camelford c. 1890 Sabine Baring-Gould Manuscript Collection (SBG/5/49) Stanzas 6-14 were from Philip Symons of Jascobstowe, 1889 and another informant. These verses are Child 2, the other verses 1-4 and 15 are from "S. Penhallich, Cornwall"- which are not Child 2 and were acted out. The music is attributed to Symons in Baring-Gould's MS:
1 A fair pretty maiden she sat on her bed,
The wind is blowing in forest and town
She sighed and she said, O my love he is dead!
And the wind it shaketh the acorns down
2 The maiden she sighed; 'I would,' said she,
'That again my lover might be with me!'
3 Before ever a word the maid she spake,
But she for fear did shiver and shake.
4 There stood at her side her lover dead;
'Take me by the hand, sweet love,' he said.
5. . . . . .
. . . . .
6 'Thou must buy me, my lady, a cambrick shirt,
Whilst every grove rings with a merry antine
And stitch it without any needle-work.
O and thus shalt thou be a true love of mine
7 'And thou must wash it in yonder well,
Whilst, etc.
Where never a drop of water in fell.
O and thus, etc.
8 'And thou must hang it upon a white thorn
That never has blossomed since Adam was born.
9 'And when that these tasks are finished and done
I'll take thee and marry thee under the sun.'
10 'Before ever I do these two and three,
I will set of tasks as many to thee.
11 'Thou must buy for me an acre of land
Between the salt ocean and the yellow sand.
12 'Thou must plough it oer with a horse's horn,
And sow it over with one peppercorn.
13 'Thou must reap it too with a piece of leather,
And bind it up with a peacock's feather.
14 'And when that these tasks are finished and done,
O then will I marry thee under the sun.'
15 'Now thou hast answered me well,' he said,
The wind, etc.
'Or thou must have gone away with the dead.'
And the wind, etc.
16. . . . . .
. . . . .
_____________________________________________
48. The Lovers' Tasks. This very curious song belongs, as I was told, in Cornwall, to a sort of play that was wont to be performed in farmhouses at Christmas. One performer, a male, left the room, and entered again sinking the first part. A girl, seated on a chair, responded with the second part. The story was this. She had been engaged to a young man who died. His ghost returned to claim her. She demurred to this, and he said that he would waive his claim if she could perform a series of tasks he set her. To this she responded that he must, in the first place, accomplish a set of impossible tasks she would set him. Thus was he baffled.
" In all stories of this kind," says Professor Child, "the person upon whom a task is imposed stands acquitted if another of no less difficulty is devised which must be performed first."
This ballad and dramatic scene corresponds with that in " Cold blows the wind" (No. 6). There, in the original, the ghost desires to draw the girl underground, when she is seated on his grave. She objects, and he sets her a task —
"Go fetch me a light from dungeon deep,
Wring water from a stone,
And likewise milk from a maiden's breast,
That never babe had none."
She answers the requirement—
" She stroke a light from out a flint,
An icebell squeezed she,
And likewise milk from a Johnnis' wort,
And so she did all three."
Icebell is icicle. By this means she was quit. In the version I have given I have altered this to suit the song for modern singing.
In "The Elfin Knight," Child's "British Ballads," No. 2, an elf appears to the damsel and sets her tasks. If she cannot accomplish these, she must accompany him to the elf world. Here we have a substitution of a fairy for a ghost.
In an Ulster Broadside in the British Museum (1162, k 5) we have a later substitution. A low-born gamekeeper gets a damsel of high degree into his power, and will not release her unless she can solve a series of riddles. This she does, and so makes her escape.
Of the Northumbrian ballad, " Lay the Bent to the Bonny Broom," Child, No. 1, there are two versions. In one given by Miss Mason, "Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs," a stranger comes to the door of a house where are three sisters, and demands that one shall follow him or answer a series of riddles. Then ensues a contest of wit, and the girl escapes the obligation of following the mysterious stranger. Who he is is not ascertained. In the other version it is different ; he is a knight, and he offers to marry the girl who can solve his riddles. The youngest sister effects this, so he marries her. It is the same in the corresponding Cornish ballad of " Genefer Gentle and Rose-marie," originally given by Gilbert in his " Cornish Christmas Carols," 2nd ed., p. 65, and reprinted by Child.
To the same category belongs the song, " Go no more a-rushing, Maids, in May," that we have taken down from several singers, and which is given as well by Miss Mason, and by Chappell, i. p. 158, where the task is to solve riddles —
" I'll give you a chicken that has no bone,
I'll give you a cherry without a stone,
I'll give you a ring that has no rim,
I'll give you an oak that has no limb."
The solution is —
" When the chicken is in the egg it has no bone,
When the cherry is in bloom it has no stone,
When the ring is a-melting it has no rim,
When the oak is in the acorn it has no limb."
But the story about the setting of the puzzle has fallen away.
We did obtain a ballad in Cornwall about the ghost visiting the damsel and demanding that she should keep her engagement, but the metre was not the same as that of the " Lovers' Tasks."
Apparently at some remote period a maiden who was pledged to a man was held to belong to him after he was dead, and to be obliged to follow her lover into the world of spirits, unless she could evade the obligation by some clever contrivance. When this idea fell away, either an elf was substituted or a man of low birth, or else the whole story was dropped ; or, again, it was so altered that a knight was put in the place of the ghost, and it became the privilege of the shrewd girl who could answer the riddles to be taken as his wife.
The setting of hard tasks occurs in German folk-tales, as in " Rumpelstilkins," where the girl has to spin straw into gold.
In the " Gesta Romanorum," ed. Osterley, p. 374, one of the most popular collections of stories in the Middle Ages, is a corrupt reminiscence of the tale. A king delayed to take a wife till he could find one sagacious enough to make him a shirt without seam out of a scrap of linen three inches square. She retorts that she will do this when he sends her a vessel in which she can do the work. Jacques de Voragine wrote his "Golden Legend" in or about 1260. In that he tells this tale. A bishop was about to succumb to the blandishments of the devil in female form, when a pilgrim arrived. Either the damsel or the palmer must leave, and which it should be was to be determined by the solution of riddles. The pilgrim solved two. Then the fiend in female form asked: " How far is it from heaven to earth? " "That you know best, for you fell the whole distance," replied the palmer, and the fiend vanished. Then the pilgrim revealed himself as St Andrew, to whom the bishop had a special devotion.
The classic tale of CEdipus and the Sphinx will be remembered in connection with delivery from death by solving riddles. In Norse mythology we have the contest in conundrums between Odin and the giant Vafthrudnir. The Rabbis tell of the Queen of Sheba proving Solomon with hard questions, which are riddles.
The historians of Tyre, as Josephus informs us, recorded that an interchange of riddles went on constantly between Solomon and Hiram, each being under an engagement to pay a forfeit of money for every riddle that he could not solve. Solomon got the best of Hiram, till Hiram set a Tyrian boy to work, who both solved the riddles of Solomon, and set others which Solomon could not answer. We have a later version of this story in the ballad of King John and the Abbot of Canterbury, who, unable to solve the king's riddles, set his cowherd to do this, and he accomplished
it successfully.
We took down the ballad and air from Philip Symonds of Jacobstow, Cornwall, also from John Hext, Two Bridges, and from James Dyer of Mawgan. The burden, " And every grove rings with a merry antine," is curious; antine is antienne — anthem. In "Gammer Gurton's Garland," 1783, the burden is " Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme." In one of Motherwell's MSS. it stands, " Every rose grows merry wi' thyme." These are attempts made to give sense where the meaning of the original word was lost.
In Folk- Song Journal, vol. i. p. 83, is a version from Sussex: "Sing Ivy, Sing Ivy."