Recordings & Info 300. Blancheflour and Jollyflorice
[There are no recordings in the Child Collection Index.]
CONTENTS:
1) Alternative Titles
2) Traditional Ballad Index
ATTACHED PAGES: (see left hand column)
1) Roud No. 3904: Blancheflour and Jollyflorice (3 Listings)
Alternate Titles
Floris and Blancheflour (Floriz and Blauncheflur)
Traditional Ballad Index: Blancheflour and Jellyflorice [Child 300]
DESCRIPTION: Blancheflour, a pretty servant girl, finds a place sewing for a queen. The queen warns the girl away from her son Jellyflorice, but the two fall in love. The queen would kill the girl, but Jellyflorice rescues and marries her
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST_DATE: 1828 (Buchan)
KEYWORDS: royalty courting servant punishment rescue marriage
FOUND_IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES: (1 citation)
Child 300, "Blancheflour and Jellyflorice" (1 text)
Roud #3904
NOTES: Depending on how you count, there seem to be between thirty and fifty Middle English metrical romances which have survived to the present day. Of these, three seem to get most of the critical attention: "King Horn," because it is the oldest; "Sir Orfeo," because because it is the best; and "Floris and Blancheflour," because it is the prettiest.
All three seem to have become ballads -- "King Horn" became "Hind Horn" [Child 17]; "Sir Orfeo" became "King Orfeo" [Child 19], and "Floris and Blancheflour" (also known as "Floriz and Blauncheflur," etc.) became "Blancheflour and Jellyflorice" [Child 300]. Briggs also compares the romance to the folktale "The Dorsetshire Garland or The Beggar's Wedding" (Briggs, volume A.2, pp. 400-401), but while there are thematic similarities, I wouldn't call them the same song.
"Floris and Blancheflour" is not really the source of the plot of this piece, but probably the ultimate inspiration. Dickins/Wilson, p. 43, report that there are two European versions of the story, one for aristocratic and one for popular audiences; both exist, e.g., in French.
The Middle English romance seems to be derived from the aristocratic version (Sands, p. 280).
The plot of the romance is roughly as follows: A band of pilgrims is attacked by Saracens. A young pregnant widow is taken prisoner when her father is killed. Taken to Spain, she bears a daughter Blancheflur. On that day, the Saracen queen has a son Floris. Brought up together, they fall in love. The parents oppose the match, and sell Blancheflur into slavery. Floris attempts suicide; his parents relent and equip him for a journey to find her. He discovers her in an eastern harem and manages to rescue her.
(The popular version makes the ending simpler; Floris simply performs some of the tasks of a knight errant.)
The plot is common; Boccaccio used it in _Il Filocopo_, and the idea at least is found in Chaucer's "Franklin's Tale" and is said to go all the way back to India.
The Middle English "Floris and Blauncheflur" romance, according to Dickins/Wilson, p. 43, has been "severely pruned... to such a degree that occasionally details vital to the plot have been omitted." This includes even the introductory material, about the capture of the Christian widow that motivates the plot -- though all the surviving Middle English versions seem to have lost material at the beginning, so that lack may be accidental.
The name "Blancheflour" -- "White Flower" -- also worked its way into the Percival legend (Lacy, p. 422), but that doesn't seem to be the same girl, just the same name.
"Floris and Blancheflour" seems to have been very popular by romance standards. Most Middle English romances survive in only one copy (although we have three of "Sir Orfeo" and three of "King Horn"). "Floris and Blancheflour" tops that; there are four manuscripts:
* B.M. Cotton Vitellius D III (late XIII century, according to Dickens/Wilson, p. 44 and Sands, p. 280; Sands notes that it suffered very badly in the Cotton Library fire -- unfortunate, since it seems particularly close to the French)
* Cambridge Gg.4.27.2 (early XIV century, according to Dickens/Wilson; late XIII according to Sands; Emerson, p. 263 puts it in the middle of XIII and considers this the best manuscript as far as extant),
* Edinburgh Auchinleck MS (probably written between 1325 and 1350)
* B. M. Egerton 2862 (early XV century; although the latest manuscript, it is the most complete, probably lacking only a few lines at the beginning; it contains 366 lines not found in any of the others, according to Dickins/Wilson, p. 44).
Dickins/Wilson, p. 44, make the odd claim that "All MSS. go back to a single lost original, but the wide discrepancies between them suggest that the intervening links were more probably oral than written."
Sands seems to offer a simpler explanation: The manuscripts have all been edited, with much material being omitted along the way. The result is erratic and the meter often defective, but Sands notes (p. 282) that it is a "well-structured story" and believes that this makes up for the "undistinguished verse."
The language is a mixture of southern and Midland (Emerson, p. 263).
The earlier history of this romance is curious and disputed. Sands, p. 280, dates the English version c. 1250, and suggests that the French original was current 75-100 year before that. Emerson, p. 263, says that the plot is "probably of Eastern origin, and brought to the West in the twelfth century, perhaps by crusaders. The English poem was freely translated and condensed from a French version."
Garnett and Gosse, p. 117, call this the "most beautiful" of the romances, and note that it is "represented in most mediaeval literatures. The theory of its Spanish origin is inadmissible, but in tolerance and spirit of humanity it does seem to bear traces of influence from some land where Christian and Moslem often lived in amity." (This would seem to support the notion that it was carried by Crusaders, since -- prior to the formation of the Ottoman Empire -- it was in the Islamic regions of Palestine and Egypt that such toleration was most common.)
Bennett/Gray, p. 136, says that "_Floris and Blancheflour_, translated and modified from a French original somewhere in the South East Midlands in the mid-thirteenth century -- and soon copied in the South West -- is as near as we can come in English to the daintiness and charm of the more famous _Aucassin et Nicolette_, and has something of the perennial appeal, though little of the artistry, of that early masterpiece." On p. 137, however, they declare that "It was doubtless the Eastern magic and marvels -- the gleaming carbuncle, Babylon of 140 gates and 700 towers, the brazen conduit, a stream that runs from Paradise over precious stones and tests chastity -- that gave the poem its chief appeal." On p. 138, we read, "If we miss the verve of _Aucassin_, there is something in this tale for most tastes of the time, and a foretaste of the _Arabian Nights_."
All four manuscripts of "Floris and Blancheflour" have been published, typically in obscure volumes. Sands, pp. 282-309, prints a 1083 line version, slightly modernized, based mostly on the Egerton manuscript. Dickins/Wilson, pp. 44-48, print what they consider to be lines 639-824 based on the Cambridge manuscript. Emerson, pp. 35-47,prints about 400 lines based on Cambridge, starting with line 433 of that manuscript.
As already mentioned, several other ballads also derive loosely or from Middle English romance, or from the legends that underlie it, examples being:
* "Hind Horn" [Child 17], from "King Horn" (3 MSS., including Cambridge Gg.4.27.2, which also contains "Floris and Blancheflour")
* "King Orfeo" [Child 19], from "Sir Orfeo" (3 MSS., including the Auchinlek MS, which also contains "Floris and Blancheflour")
* "The Marriage of Sir Gawain" [Child 31], from "The Weddynge of Sir Gawe and Dame Ragnell" (1 defective MS, Bodleian MS Rawlinson C 86) - RBW
>>BIBLIOGRAPHY<<
Bennett/Gray: J. A. W. Bennett, _Middle Englich Literature_, edited and completed by Douglas Gray and being a volume of the Oxford History of English Literature, 1986 (I use the 1990 Clarendon paperback)
Briggs: Katherine Briggs, _A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language_, Part A: Folk Narratives, 1970 (I use the 1971 Routledge paperback that combines volumes A.1 and A.2)
Dickins/Wilson: Bruce Dickins & R. M. Wilson, editors, _Early Middle English Texts_, 1951; revised edition 1952
Emerson: O. F. Emerson, _A Middle English Reader_, 1905; revised 1915 (I use the 1921 Macmillan hardcover)
Garnett/Gosse: Richard Garnett and Edmund Gosse, _English Literature: An Illustrated Record_ four volumes, MacMillan, 1903-1904 (I used the 1935 edition published in two volumes)
Lacy: Norris J. Lacy, Editor, _The Arthurian Encyclopedia_, 1986 (I use the 1987 Peter Bedrick paperback edition)
Sands: Donald B. Sands, editor, _Middle English Verse Romances_, Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1966