Recordings & Info 61. Sir Cawline
[There are no known traditional US or Canadian versions of this ballad. Child adds the Harris version, Sir Colin, in an Appendix. since it is traditional, perhaps it should be Version B. The words to Sir Colin were written down from memory by Amelia Harris in 1859 and the tune by her sister Jane in 1872. It was learned from their mother who died in 1845.]
CONTENTS:
1) Alternative Titles
2) Traditional Ballad Index
3) Child Collection Index
4) Wiki
ATTACHED PAGES: (see left hand column)
1) Roud Number 479: Sir Cawline (15 Listings)
Alternative Titles
Sir Colin
Sir Collyne
Sir Colling
Traditional Ballad Index: Sir Cawline [Child 61]
DESCRIPTION: Sir Cawline falls ill for love of the king's daughter; she attends him. He desires to prove himself worthy of her; she sends him to vanquish the elvish king. He then defeats a giant threatening to wed her, and survives a lion attack before marrying her.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1765 (Percy); the text of "Sir Colllyne," in Scotland National Archive MS. H13/35 is dated c. 1583 by Lyle
KEYWORDS: courting disease royalty knight battle marriage
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (6 citations):
Child 61, "Sir Cawline" (3 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #1}
Bronson 61, "Sir Cawline" (2 versions)
Percy/Wheatley I, pp. 61-81, "Sir Cauline" (1 text)
OBB 3, "Sir Cawline" (1 text)
DT 61, SIRCAWL*
ADDITIONAL: Lyle: Emily Lyle, _Fairies and Folk: Approaches to the Scottish Ballad Tradition_, Wissenschaflicher Verlag Trier, 2007, pp. 85-93, "(Sir Colin)" (2 parallel texts, one the Percy text, one the "Edinburgh" version of c. 158, plus on pp. 104-105a collation of Lyle's transcription of the Edinburgh text against Stewart's; the Harris tune is on p. 943)
Roud #479
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Sir Colin
Sir Collyne
Sir Colling
NOTES: The only copy of this that Child accepted as real is that in the Percy manuscript (which Percy thoroughly corrupted), though Child prints two texts ("Sir Colin" and "King Malcolm and Sir Colvin," from the Harris ms. and Buchan respectively) in an appendix.
Percy's modifications to the text are so thorough that the 210 lines of the Percy manuscript are made into 392 lines in his text.
Based on Child's notes, it would seem that this song was never traditional as we would define the term; all the later versions were derived from the literary text as reworked by Percy. Bronson, however, pointed out that the Harris version *was* found in tradition, even if the text was influenced by Percy (Bronson adds that the result is in many ways simpler and superior to the Percy text; it also has a different ending). It seems that there were folk revivals before The Folk Revival.
It does appear (paraphrasing and expanding comments by Lyle, p. 93) that this ballad existed in two states: A full form, in which Sir Cawline/Colin fights an "elvish knight," a giant, and a lion; this is represented in the Percy and Edinburgh texts. There is also a short form, in the Buchan and Harris texts, in which the fight with the knight is the only major escapade. Although Child considered the long form to be the true version and relegated the other to the appendix, Lyle, pp. 93-94, suggests treating the long form as a "ballad romance," which makes good sense to me. I am less confident of her next stage, which consists of trying to identify and retrovert cases where original six-line stanzas were converted to four-line stanzas; it is her belief that the original "Sir Colin" romance was in six-line stanzas rhymed abcbdb and with a 434343 metrical patter (Lyle, pp. 96-99). - RBW
Child Collection Index
Child --Artist --Title --Album --Year --Length --Have
061 Spriguns Sir Colvin Revel Weird and Wild 1976 6:02 Yes
061 Steve Turner Sir Colvin The Whirligig of Time 2008 4:43 Yes