The Fowler- Walter Gales (Norfolk) 1921 JFSS
[From: Songs Collected in Norfolk by E. J. Moeran, A. G. Gilchrist, Frank Kidson, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Lucy E. Broadwood; Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 7, No. 26 (Dec., 1922), pp. 1-24. Their notes follow the text.
At the end of the first stanza Gales sang "in the room of a swan," which means, "in the dwelling place of a swan or perhaps, "in the ruse of a swan."
R. Matteson 2016]
14. THE FOWLER. [THE SHOOTING OF HIS DEAR.] SUNG BY AMR. WN. GALES, AT SUTTON, NORFOLK, OCTOBER, 1921.
NOTED BY E. J. MOERAN.
1. O come all you young fellows that carry your gun,
I'll have you get home by the light of the sun,
For young Jimmy was a fowler and a-fowling alone
When he shot his own true love in the room[1] of a swan.
2 Then home went young Jimmy with his dog and his gun
Saying "Uncle, dear Uncle have you heard what I've done?
Cursed be that old gun-smith that made my old gun!
I have shot my own true love in the room of a swan."
3 Then out came bold Uncle with his locks hanging grey
Saying "Jimmv, dear Jimmy, don't you go away,
Don't you leave your own country till your trial come on,
For you ne'er will be hanged for shooting a swan."
4 So the trial came on, and pretty Polly did appear,
Saying "Uncle, dear Uncle, let Jimmy go clear;
For my apron was bound round me and he took me for a swan,
And his poor heart lay bleeding for Polly his own."
1. Also "ru' ", perhaps, "in the ruse of a swan."
I have noted a tune in the Western Highlands of Scotland, the Gaelic text of which turns on the same subject as this and the Irish "Peggy Bawn."-L. E. B."
Since Mr. Sharp's first version of "The Shooting of his Dear" appeared in the Journal seventeen years ago, a number of variants of this curious ballad have been brought together. In a note to his two American versions (see English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, 1917) Mr. Sharp gives the following references: Texts with tunes- F.S.S. Journal, ii, p. 59; Irish Folk Song Society's Journal, iii, p. 25; Songs of the West (2nd ed.), No. 62; "Molly Bin (pronounced Van) so fair, Petrie's Collection of Irish Music, Nos. 724 and 1171 (tunes only); Journal of American Folk Lore, xxii, p. 387.
To these may be added "Molly Bawn," No. 409 in Joyce's Old Irish Folk-Music and Songs (where two other Irish forms are mentioned) in which version Molly is mistaken for a fawn-and the eighteenth-century version quoted by Jamieson (Popular Ballads, I, p. 194, I806) as "Peggy Bawn." Dr. Joyce--whose version is a rationalized one from which the swan apparition in the assize-court has disappeared-- remarks that the ballad "obviously commemorates a tragedy in real life." Jamieson, who evidently did not credit the possibility of a white apron being mistaken for a swan--calls it a "silly ditty," which he apologises for printing, it is "one of the very lowest description of vulgar modem English ballads, which are sung about the streets in country towns and sold four or five for a halfpenny." Jamieson, however, who had heard the ballad as a child, deigned to re-write it after his own sham antique fashion as "Lord Kenneth and Fair Ellinour," with the result that one of his classical friends asked whether he had had Ovid's Procris and Aura in his eye!
The editor of Popular Ballads apparently had not had the patience to transcribe the whole of the Aberdeen version sent to him, as noted from a maid-servant, but prefaces the following copy by explaining that the unlucky sportsman runs home to his father and tells him what he has done and that he will 'run his country':
Out spak his old father
(His head it was grey)
" O, keep your ain country,
My son" he did say.
"O, keep your ain country,
Let your trial come on," etc.
She appeared to her uncle
And to him said she
"O uncle, dear uncle,
Jamie Warwick is free.
"Ye'll neither hang him nor head him
Nor do him any wrong,
Be kind to my darling
Now since I am gone.
"For once as I was walking
It fell a shower of rain,
I went under the hedging
The rain for to shun."
"As he was a-hunting
With his dog and his gun,
By my white apron
He took me for a swan."
With this the "paltry stuff" is dismissed. And neither Jamieson nor Dr. Joyce, a century later, seems to have glimpsed anything beyond a real event in the mind of one or childish nonsense in the opinion of the other. But there seems little doubt that this ballad is a degraded relic of something very old, and that fair (lit. white) Molly can trace her descent from either swan-maiden or enchanted white doe. In a Hessian tale cited by Mr. Baring-Gould a forester is about to shoot a fair swan floating on a lonely lake when it warns him to desist or it will cost him his life, and reveals itself as a bewitched maiden. (The 'swiffling' described in Mr. Sharp's earliest noted version suggests that Polly swan was either swimming or bathing in a pool in the dusk when shot, before her white apron was offered as an explanation of the blunder.) Another instance of the soul in swan- form is found in the Celtic legend of "The Fate of the Children of Lir," Lir's three daughters being transformed into swans by a cruel stepmother. For further light on such stories see the chapters on Swan-maidens in E. S. Hartland's The Science of Fairy Tales.
The old Scandinavian ballads contain many examples of similar enchantments, generally the work of a wicked step-mother, as in "The Maid as a Hind and a Hawk" (see Prior's Ancient Danish Ballads, No. cxviii). Dr. Prior remarks that the transforming of persons to quadrupeds to gratify a spite against them is common to the tales of Greece and Rome, Arabia and Scandinavia. In the above Danish ballad the step-mother shapes the girl to a little white hind and banishes her to the greenwood, turning the maiden's seven little maids to wolves, with command to tear her flesh--but they refuse to do so. Her lover, sorrowing for his lost lady, rides a-hunting to distract his mind, and pursues the white hind, who to escape him changes to a hawk. At last, by the lure of flesh cut from his own breast, Sir Orm accomplishes her restoration to human form and his arms.
In the old French ballad " La Chasse" otherwise "La Blanche Biche,"translated by Andrew Lang as "The Milk-white Doe," the maiden under enchantment is a woman by daylight, but at midnight of every ninth day changes into a milk-white doe. In this guise she is hunted in the forest by her brother and other men, the brother being the fiercest pursuer. In the act of slaying her the spell is broken, the maid resumes her human form, dead, and the tragic mistake is discovered:
Then out and spake the forester,
As he came from the wood,
"Nor never saw I maids' gold hair
Among the wild deer's blood.
"And I have hunted the wild deer
In east lands and in west,
And never saw I white doe yet
That had a maiden's breast."
The dreadful discovery having been made, the brother accuses himself of his sister's death, and after giving directions for her fair burial flees to the greenwood, to dwell an outlaw for seven years.
The stress laid upon "the setting of the sun" in some versions of the "Shooting of his Dear" suggests that the transformation took place at the hour of sunset, in the original form of the ballad--which seems to be of Celtic origin (see Miss Broadwood's reference to a version in Gaelic). It will be remembered that according to Gaelic tradition, Ossian was the son of an enchanted doe, and his mysterious counsel to his mother:
Mas tu mo mhathair's gur fiadh thu
Sirich mu'n oirich a' ghrian ort.
(Mother mine, if deer thou be,
Arise ere sun arise on thee)
is supposed to have reference to the breaking of her enchantment. Here sunrise would appear to be the critical moment.[1]
The white hind as a fairy love is also found in Celtic tales-one of which, related as a fact, concerns an ancestor of the family who now call themselves Whyte. These Whytes are descendants of a certain fair- (literally white) haired man who belonged to a branch of the MacLeods of Raasay and who was a forester. This forester was in 1644 in the army of the Earl of Argyll, and had a fairy sweetheart in the shape of a white hind which followed the troops wherever they went. Argyll having been mocked at by his brother officers on account of this phenomenon, commanded his men to fire at the hind-which they did without effect. It was observed that the forester did not fire with the rest, and Argyll thereupon commanded him to shoot at the hind. The forester obeyed, but warned Argyll that it would be his last shot.
Hardly had he fired when he fell dead. The fairy hind gave a scream, and vanishing up the mountain like a cloud of mist[2], was never seen again. The milk-white hind as a woman under enchantment is also suggested in the old ballad of "Leesome Brand" (Buchan's Ballads of the North, Vol. i, p. 40)
"Ye'll take your arrow and your bow,
And ye will hunt the deer and roe;
Be sure ye touch not the white hynde,
For she is o' the woman kind."
It seems just possible that in recent times there has been some confusion amongst folk singers between 'deer' and 'dear.' Also that the commonplace of comparison "as white as a swan" applied to a fair maid may have helped to recommend the swan rather than the deer form to the singer's imagination. But enough has, I think, been cited to show that Molly Bawn--whether appearing as swan or fawn- is no kinless waif of vulgar balladry. Her ultimate ancestry may be left to folklorists to trace, this annotator not being competent to discuss her long descent from 'the theriomorphic soul.'
Most of the tunes sung to this ballad are Scottish or Irish in character. Both of Mr. Sharp's Appalachian tunes are in gapped modes-the first being pentatonic, and sound like Highland airs, the second being reminiscent of the "Lament for MacGregor of Ruaro" and the equally well-known air "Colin's Cattle." The first is perhaps also a fragment of the latter tune.--A. G. G.
1. The point is rather obscure. Dr. G. Henderson in his Survivals in Belief among Ike Celts says (p. 70) that "Ossian's advice to his mother, in her animal-form, that she should get up before sunrise, implies that otherwise she was liable to be shot by hunters; to be up ere sunrise was a sort of taboo comparable to some of the restrictions of the Early Irish kings in the Book of Rights."
2. The 'fountain of snow' which takes the place of the swan-apparition in court in one of the Appalachian versions of "The Shooting of his Dear" is more likely to be a late corruption of "the form of a swan," or possibly a "fawn white as snow" than any wraith of snow or white mist.-A. G. G.