Recordings & Info 256. Alison and Willie
CONTENTS:
1) Alternative Titles
2) Traditional Ballad Index
3) Child Collection Index
4) A Note on "Alison and Willie" (Child 256) by Ruth Yakes Mortenson
ATTACHED PAGES: (see left hand column)
1) Roud No. 245: Alison and Willie (5 Listings)
Alternative Titles
Hynde Chiel
My Luve She Lives in Lincolnshire
Traditional Ballad Index: Alison and Willie [Child 256]
DESCRIPTION: Alison invites Willie to her wedding. He will not come except as the groom. She tells him that if he leaves, she will ignore him forever. He sets out slowly and sadly, sees an omen, and dies for love. A letter arrives, halting the wedding. Alison too dies
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST_DATE: c, 1818 (GlenbuchatBallads)
KEYWORDS: love wedding separation death
FOUND_IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber,Bord))
REFERENCES: (4 citations)
Child 256, "Alison and Willie" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's [#1]}
Bronson 256, "Alison and Willie" (1 version)
GlenbuchatBallads, pp. 54-55, "Hynde Chiel" (1 text, substantially different from Child's)
Leach, pp. 625-626, "Alison and Willie" (1 text)
Roud #245
Child Ballad 256: Alison and Willie
Child --Artist --Title --Album --Year --Length --Have
256 Katherine Campbell My Luve She Lives The Songs of Amelia and Jane Harris - Scots Songs and Ballads from Perthshire Tradition 2004 3:45 Yes
A Note on "Alison and Willie" (Child 256)
by Ruth Yakes Mortenson
Midwest Folklore, Vol. 11, No. 4 (Winter, 1961-1962), pp. 213-214
A NOTE ON "ALISON AND WILLIE" (CHILD 256)
"He saw a hart draw near a hare,
An aye that hare drew near a toun,
An that same hart did get a hare
But the gentle knicht got neer a toun."
Stanza 7
ACCORDING TO CHILD (The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, IV, pp. 416-17), Stanza 7 of "Alison and Willie" " . . must
be left to those who can interpret Thomas of Ercildoune's prophecies." A clue to the meaning of this stanza, then, may lie in the body of "apocryphal" material that has grown up around the Thomas of Ercildoune legend. The prophecies, traditionally attributed to Thomas, contain only one reference to a hare:
"The hare sall kittle on my hearth stane
And there will never be a laird Learmont again."
EETS, The Romance and Prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune, p. xliv
But this prophecy, referring to the end of the Learmont family, clearly contributes nothing toward explicating Stanza 7 of "Alison
and Willie." It is in Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scotch Border, v. IV, pp. 125-137, that we find "the traditional account of his [Thomas'] marvelous return to Fairy Land. . . " This "modern" part of the Thomas legend is, of course, Scott's own contribution to the legend. In Stanza XXVIII of his poem, the following occurs:
"Tlhen forth they rushed: by Leader's tide
A selcouth sight they see
A hart and hind pace side by side. . " (p. 133)
This strange event was interpreted by Thomas as a summons from the Fairy Queen:
"And there, before Lord Douglas' face
With them he crossed the tide.
In the last stanza of this poem, we find that
neer in haunts of living men
Again was Thomas seen."
Because of the lacuna in Stanza 9 of "Alison and Willie," we cannot be sure of Willie's fate. Did he die of "the pains of luve,"
or did he, upon seeing the hart and hare, follow them into the forest? It well might be that he did, for this incident and the
Thomas story parallel one another except in one respect, the animals involved. Both disappearance stories contain a hart, but his companion in the Thomas episode was a hind, while his mate in the ballad was a hare. Wimberley, in Folklore of the English and Scottish Ballads, lists common "witch familiars" in the British Isles: "cats, hares, and occassionally red deer." (p. 58) Later, on p. 64, he states: "The hare is known throughout Europe as a witch familiar. . . and is a common character in myths and folktales." From these comments, it would seem that these two incidents are parallel ones, the ballad containing either a deliberate mixing of species, perhaps for effect, or a mis-interpretation or mis-reading of a traditional episode as found in the Thomas of Ercildoune story. Thus, I feel, we can now "unravel" Stanza 7 of "Alison and Willie." This ballad contains, like the Thomas legend, an association with the "fairy abduction" theme. The rather ambiguous last line of the ballad, "But the birds waur Willie's companie" would indicate some peculiar fate. "Alison and Willie," from Buchan's manuscript, of a later date than Scott's poem, would seem then, to have picked up, if not directly, at least within the same tradition, an account of a mortal lured away from the world of the living by witch or fairy folk in disguise.
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania