Recordings & Info: 280. The Beggar-Laddie
[Roud No. 119, The Beggar-Laddie (142 Listings- attached to this page), has versions of Roud 118, "Jolly Beggar" and "The Gaberlunzie Man" [Child 279A] mixed together.
R. Matteson 2013]
CONTENTS:
1) Alternative Titles
2) Traditional Ballad Index
3) Child Collection Index
4) Folk Index
5) Mainly Norfolk
ATTACHED PAGES: (see left hand column)
1) Roud No. 119: The Beggar-Laddie (142 Listings)
Alternate Titles
The Beggar's Bride
Twas in the Bonnie Month o' June
The Beggar Prince
The Beggar's Dawtie
Traditional Ballad Index: Beggar-Laddie, The [Child 280]
DESCRIPTION: A girl asks the shepherd what his trade is. He tells her, then declares that he loves her "as Jacob loved Rachel of old." She decides to go with him despite his poverty. He takes her home with him and reveals that he is actually well-to-do
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST_DATE: 1881 (Christie); also in Motherwell's and Kinloch's papers (before 1850)
KEYWORDS: work home courting money disguise
FOUND_IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES: (6 citations)
Child 280, "The Beggar-Laddie" (5 texts)
Bronson 280, "The Beggar-Laddie" (18 versions)
GlenbuchatBallads, pp. 203-205, "The Gaberlunzie Laddie" (1 text)
Greig #31, p. 1, "The Beggar Laddie" (1 text)
GreigDuncan2 277, "The Beggar's Dawtie" (20 texts, 13 tunes) {A=Bronson's #7, B=#10?, C=#4, D=#5? E=#13, F=#12, G=#8, H=#9, I=#5, J=#3, K=#11, L=#15}
Ord, pp. 382-383, "The Beggar's Dawtie" (1 text)
Roud #119
CROSS_REFERENCES:
cf. "The Gaberlunzie Man" [Child 279A]
cf. "The Jolly Beggar" [Child 279] and references there
ALTERNATE_TITLES:
The Beggar's Bride
Twas in the Bonnie Month o' June
The Beggar Prince
NOTES: The reference to Jacob loving Rachel, or vice versa, is to Gen. 29:18 and following; it is probably offered as an example because Jacob served Laban (Rachel's brother) for seven years to win her hand (and actually wound up working for Laban for fourteen years, because he got Rachel's sister Leah also).
The reference to Judas loving gold is more of a stretch; we are told that Judas was given thirty pieces of *silver* (Matt. 26:15), and the less explicit accounts of Mark (14:11) and Luke (22:5) also mention only silver (usually rendered "money" in English translations). These references seem to be corruptions of the reading in Child's "A" text, which refers to the classical legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece. (Compare Ord's text, in which it is Jesse, not Judas, who loves "cups of gold.")
The repartee also has a strange parallel in Lewis Carroll's _Through the Looking Glass_. The White Knight sings a song which includes these lines:
"Who are you, aged man," I said.
"And how is it you live?"
And his answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.
He said, "I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat....
And that's the way I get my bread --
A trifle, if you please."
William Bernard McCarthy, in the article "'Barbara Allen' and 'The Gypsy Laddie': Single-Rhyme Ballads in the Child Corpus," printed on pp. 143-154 of Thomas A. McKean, editor, _The Flowering Thorn: International Ballad Studies_, Utah State University Press, 2003, makes the interesting observation that there are only two ballads in the Child collection -- "The Jolly Beggar" [Child 279]/"The Gaberlunzie Man" [Child 279A] and "The Beggar-Laddie" [Child 280], which are known to cross-fertilize, which normally use the rhyme scheme aaab, with the same b rhyme in all the verses. - RBW
Child Collection- Child Ballad 280: The Beggar-Laddie
Child --Artist --Title --Album --Year --Length --Have
280 Alex Campbell The Beggar Laddie The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
280 Bell Duncan The Beggar Laddie The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
280 Bell Duncan The Beggar's Dawtie The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
280 Ewan MacColl The Beggar Laddie The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (The Child Ballads) - Vol. 3 1956 5:00 Yes
280 Ewan MacColl The Beggar Laddie The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (The Child Ballads) - Vol. 6 [Reissue] 196? No
280 Ewan MacColl The Beggar Laddie Ballads - Murder Intrigue Love Discord 2009 5:12 Yes
280 Ewan MacColl & Peggy Seeger The Beggar Laddie Traditional Songs and Ballads - The Scottish Garland 1964 5:41 Yes
280 Hector Campbell The Beggar Laddie (1) The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
280 Hector Campbell The Beggar Laddie (2) The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
280 Jessie Davidson The Beggar's Dawtie The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
280 Jon Boden The Beggar Laddie A Folk Song a Day - June 2011 4:29 Yes
280 Mrs Cameron The Beggar Laddie The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
280 Mrs Goodall The Beggar's Dawtie The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
280 Mrs John Catto The Beggar's Dawtie The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
280 Mrs William Duncan The Beggar Laddie The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
280 Unknown Male Singer The Beggar's Dawtie The James Madison Carpenter Collection 1927-1955 No
Folk Index: The Beggar Laddie [Ch 280]
Rt - Jolly Beggar ; Gaberlunzie Man
MacColl, Ewan. MacColl, Ewan / Folk Songs and Ballads of Scotland, Oak, Sof (1965), p13
Mainly Norfolk: The Beggar Laddie
[Roud 119; Child 280; Ballad Index C280; trad.]
Ewan MacColl sang The Beggar Laddie in 1956 on his and A.L. Lloyd's Riverside anthology The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (The Child Ballads) Volume III. This song and 28 other from this series were reissued in 2009 on his Topic double CD set Ballads: Murder—Intrigue—Love—Discord. The liner notes commented:
This ballad is related to The Jolly Beggar (Child 279) by reason of the “beggar in disguise” theme. The Beggar Laddie is less ribald, however, and has a romantic ending. Here the young lady is rewarded for her belief in the pretended beggar by becoming his bride after he reveals his high station to her.
Outside of Scotland, the ballad appears to be unknown in tradition. This version sung by MacColl was learned in fragmentary form from his mother, with additional lines collated from Greig and Keith['s Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads and Ballad Airs (Aberdeen, 1925)].
Jon Boden sang The Beggar Laddie as the June 2, 2011 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day. He noted in the blog:
Simon ("admin") with his Properganda hat on was kind enough to ask me to review a few of the recent Topic re-releases. The double Ewan MacColl CD was a bit of an epic but there's some great stuff on it. This one struck me particularly. I love the verse where she's tired and hungry and starts to have second thoughts—a little flourish of realism amongst the romance.
Lyrics
Ewan MacColl sings The Beggar Laddie
'Twas in the pleasant month of June
When gentle ladies walk their lane,
When woods and valleys a' grow green
And the sun it shines sae clearly.
Doon in yon grove I spied a swain,
A shepherd sheep-club in his hand,
He was drivin' yowes oot ower the knowes,
And he was a we'el-faurd laddie.
“Come tell to me what is your trade,
Or by what airt you win your bread,
Or by what airt you win your bread
When herding ye give over?”
“Makin' spindles is my trade,
And fighting' sticks in time o'need,
For l'm a beggar tae my trade;
Noo, lassie, could ye love me?”
“l could love ye as many fold
As Jacob loved Rachel of old,
As Jesse loved his cups of gold,
My laddie, if ye'll believe me.”
“Then ye'll tak' aff your robes o'reid,
And ye'll pit on the beggin'weed,
And ye'll follow me hard my back
And ye'll be the beggar's dawtie.”
And when they come to yonder toon
They bocht a loaf and they both sat doon,
They bocht a loaf and they both sat doon,
And the lassie ate wi' her laddie.
But the lassie's courage began to fail,
And her rosie cheeks grew wan and pale
And the tears cam' trinkling doon like hail
Or a heavy shower in summer.
“Oh, gin I were on yon high hill
Whaur my faither's flocks do feed their fill,
I would sit me doon and greet a while
For the followin' o' my laddie.
When they cam' tae yon marble gate,
Sae boldly as he knocked thereat,
He rappit loud and he rappit late,
And he rappit there sae rudely.
Then fower and twenty gentlemen
Cam' oot to welcome the beggar hame,
And just as mony ladies gay
To welcome the young knicht's lady.
His brither John stood next the wa',
He laughed till he was like to fa':
“O brither, I wish we had beggit a'
For sic a bonnie lassie.”
“Yestreen I was the beggar's bride,
This nicht I'll lie doon by his side,
l've come to guid by my misguide,
For noo l'm the young knicht's lady.”