The Opening of "Tam Lin"- E. B. Lyle
The Opening of "Tam Lin"
by E. B. Lyle
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 83, No. 327 (Jan. - Mar., 1970), pp. 33-43
The Opening of "Tam Lin"
IN A NUMBER of the longer variants of the ballad "Tam Lin" (Child 39), there is what could be calleda double opening, with some narrative repetition in the two parts. In the following quotation from Child K, [1] a line divides the "first opening" (I) from the "second opening" (II). The similar pieces of narrative occur in stanzas 1-3 and 10-12.
I.
1. Leady Margat stands in her boor-door,
Clead in the robs of green;
She longed to go to Charters Woods,
To pull the flowers her lean.
2. She had not puld a rose, a rose,
O not a rose but one,
Till up it starts True Thomas,
Said, Leady, let alone.
3. "Why pull ye the rose, Marget?
Or why break ye the tree?
Or why come ye to Charters Woods
Without the leave of me?"
4. "I will pull the rose," she said,
"And I will break the tree,
For Charters Woods is all my own,
And I'll ask no leave of thee."
5. He's tean her by the milk-white hand,
And by the grass-green sleeve,
And laid her lo at the foot of the tree,
At her he askt no leave.
II.
6. It fell once upon a day
They wer a pleaying at the ha,
And every one was reed and whyte,
Leady Marget's culler was all awa.
7. Out it speaks an elder man,
As he stood in the gate,
"Our king's daughter she gos we bern,
And we will get the wait."
8. "If I be we bern," she said,
"My own self beer the blame!
There is not a man in my father's court
Will get my bern's name."
9. "There grows a flower in Charters Woods,
It grows on gravel greay,
It ould destroy the boney young bern
That ye got in your pley."
10. She's tean her mantle her about,
Her green glove on her hand,
And she's awa to Charters Woods,
As fest as she could gang.
11. She had no puld a pile, a pile,
O not a pile but one,
Up it startid True Thomas,
Said, Leady, lat alean.
12. "Why pull ye the pile, Marget,
That grows on gravel green,
For to destroy the boney young bern
That we got us between?"
The "second opening" is peculiar to "Tam Lin," but the "first opening" has an almost complete overlap with openings found in "Hind Etin" (Child 41) and "The King's Dochter Lady Jean" (Child 52). Child notedt he resemblance in the openings of these three ballads,[2] but he did not draw attention to the point that "Tam Lin," unlike the other two ballads, includes a later sequence (II) that could have been its original opening. A passage as long as opening I could not possibly have been arrived at by independent development. It is clear that there must have been borrowing in some direction, and since opening I is dispensable to "Tam Lin" I take it that the passage was an addition to this ballad.
In order to show the extent and type of borrowing from other ballads in opening I of "Tam Lin," a system of cross reference has to be set up. I use "Lady Jean" as a basis for comparisonb, ut with no intentiono f implyingt hat all the material
quoted originated in that ballad. The opening stanzas of Child D of "Tam Lin" (excluding a preliminary "warning" stanza) are shown below parallel with the opening stanzas of Child A of "Lady Jean." The numbering is for the purpose of cross reference.
"LADY JEAN" A "TAM LIN" D
(1) The king's young dochter was sitting in her window
Sewing at her silken seam;
She lookt out o the bow-window;
And she saw the leaves growing green, my luve,
And she saw the leaves growing green.
Fair Margret sat in her bonny bower,
Sewing her silken seam,
And wished to be in Chaster's wood,
Among the leaves so green.
(2) She stuck her needle into her sleeve,
Her seam down by her tae,
And she is awa to the merrie green-wood,
To pu the nit and slae.
She let her seam fall to her foot,
The needle to her toe,
And she has gone to Chaster's wood,
As fast as she could go.
(3)
She hadna pu't a nit at a',
A nit but scarcely three,
Till out and spak a braw young man,
Saying, How daur ye bow the tree?
When she began to pull the flowers,
She pulld both red and green;
Then by did come, and by did go,
Said, Fair maid, let aleene.
"0 why pluck you the flowers, lady,
Or why climb you the tree?
Or why come ye to Chaster's wood
Without the leave of me?"
(4)
"It's I will pu the nit," she said,
"And I will bow the tree,
And I will come to the merrie green wud,
And na ax leive o thee."
"0 I will pull the flowers,"s he said,
"Or I will break the tree,
ForC haster'ws ood it is my own,
I'll no ask leave at thee."
(7)
He took her by the middle sae sma,
And laid her on the gerss sae green,
And he has taen his will o her,
And he loot her up agen.
He took her by the milk-white hand,
And by the grass green sleeve,
And laid her low down on the flowers,
At her he asked no leave.
(8)
"Now syn ye hae got your will o me,
Pray tell to me your name;
For I am the king's young dochter," she said,
"And this nicht I daurna gang hame."
The lady blushed, and sourly frowned,
And she did think great shame;
Says, "If you are a gentleman,
You will tell me your name."
The man'sr eplyt o the woman'qs uestionin ChildD of "TamL in"i s phrasedin
a wayu suallyfo undi n "TheK nighta ndt he ShepherdD's aughter"(C hildi 0o).
A stanzali ket his doesn ot occuri n "LadyJ ean,"b uti s foundi n the one variant
representinigts companionb allad," TheB onnyH ind" (Child5 0). As Bronson
comments", Iti s a littleh ardt o seew hyC hildd id notr ank[ 'TheK ing'sD ochter
LadyJ ean']a s a versiono f his No. 50 ('TheB onnyH ind'), for it showsn o more
divergencfer omt hatb alladt hand o the versionso f a numbero f othersw hichh e
hasu nitede, .g., 'LadyIs abel'( 4), 'LeesomBe rand(' 15) ."
3 Bronsonv, ol. I, 407-
36 E. B. LYLE
"THE BONNY HIND" "TAM LIN" D
(9)
"They call me Jack when I'm abroad, "First they did call me Jack," he said,
Sometimes they call me John; "And then they called me John,
But when I'm in my father's bower But since I lived in the fairy court
Jock Randal is my name." Tomlin has always been my name."
Two further stanzas that have affected "Tam Lin" appear in "Lady Jean" as alternativest
o 4; these I haven umbered5 and 6. Equivalenttso theset wo stanzaso ccur
together, following 4, in an unprinted variant of "Tam Lin" in Andrew Crawfurd's
collection (AC). (AC refers to the variantf rom Andrew Crawfurd'sc ollection
in Paisley Public Library Ms. PC 1454, 13-17, opening I of which is included
[in two parts] in the present article. This variant was collected ca. 1827 by
Thomas Macqueen from "Bettie-a gangrel body" at Mauchline in Ayrshire. I
have added punctuationb oth in this text and in the MansfieldM anuscriptt ext
quoted below.) The second part of opening I in this text is given below.
"LADY JEAN" C "TAM LIN" AC
"The garden is my ain father's
Sae also is the tree,
An I will pu the red, red rose
An speir nae leive o thee."
(5)
"There's nane that comes to gude greenwood
But pays to me a tein,
And I maun hae your maidenhead,
Or than your mantle green."
"Tho the garden is your ain father's
O ye maun pay to me
Your mantle or your maidenheid,
The tane o thaim maun be."
(6)
"My mantle's o the finest silk,
Anither I can spin;
But gin you take my maidenhead,
The like I'll never fin."
"Manteils can I mak," she said,
"And manteils can I spin,
But gin I tine my maidenheid
I'll neir get ane again."
But ay he rowit her owr the grein,
And ay she speirit his name;
But sune he vanished out a sicht
And she gade dowie hame.
The lady's return home, dealt with in the last line of opening I in variant AC of
"Tam Lin," is the subject of a stanza in "Lady Jean." The "return home" stanza
I have numbered io, and it is illustrated from Child C of "Lady Jean" and Child
F of "Tam Lin."
"LADY JEAN" C "TAM LIN" F
(10)
Then dowie, dowie, raise she up,
And dowie came she hame,
And stripped aff her silk mantle,
And then to bed she's gane.
She's taen her petticoat by the band,
Her mantle owre her arm,
And Lady Margaret's gane hame agen,
As fast as she could run.
THE OPENING OF "TAM LIN" 37
Most of the narrativeo f openingI in the variantso f "TamL in"c an be grouped
as roughlye quivalentt o these ten stanzaso f "LadyJ ean"a nd "TheB onnyH ind,"
and the following table shows the number of lines in each variant that may be
Opening I of "Tam Lin"
W I 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Child
B 4 6 8 4 (4) 6
C 4 4 4
D 4 4 4 8 4 4 4 4
E 4 12 4 2
F 4 4 4
G 8 4 8 4 4 6 [21 4
H 8 8 4
J2 2 2 8 4 4
K 4 8 4 4
L 4 4 8 4 4
N 4
Bronson
I 2 6 4 4 2
4 4
LL 4 8 4 4 2 [21
SS 4 2 6 4 2 2
AC 4 8 4 4 4 I I [1]
regardeda s equivalentt o these references tanzas.T he lines occuri n the variantsi n
the order in which they appear in the table, with the exception of the bracketed
stanza in Child B. The table omits a stanza occurring between stanzas 2 and 3 in
Child B and L only, in which Janetf inds Tam Lin's steed at Carterhaugh(. I use
the names "Janet,"" Tam Lin," and "Carterhaught"h roughoutt his discussion,
although the variants employ a number of other forms.) This stanza occurs also in
openingI I, and is not primarilya ssociatedw ith the borrowedo pening. An interesting
variation, according to which there is no reply when the woman asks the
man's name because Tam Lin has vanished, is denoted by the use of square
bracketsu nder9 , "them an tells his name."T he W of the firstc olumni ndicatesa
preliminaryw arning,l ike thati n ChildD :
O all you ladies young and gay,
Who are so sweet and fair,
Do not go intoC haster'ws ood,
For Tomlin will be there.
The table includes all the printed variants except the fragments that do not have
this opening and the composite texts of Burns and Scott (Child A and I). Child
has two "Tam Lin" texts lettered J: JI (vol. i, pp. 507-508) and J2 (vol. 3, pp.
38 E. B. LYLE
504-505). Coffinn otes that only the firsts tanzao f Bronson4 is traditional.4T he
lettering LL refers to a variant from Gavin Greig's collection, printed in Last
Leaveso f TraditionaBl alladsa nd BalladA irs, edited by AlexanderK eith (Aberdeen,
1925), and SS to a variant collected by Hamish Henderson, printed in
"New ChildB alladV ariantsf romO ralT radition,"S cottishS tudies,9 (1965 ) .
OpeningI apparentlyf lourisheda t the expenseo f the firstf ew stanzaso f opening
II, which are representedin only eight variants:C hild B, F, G, K, L, and M;
and LL and AC. In Child K, II begins:
It fell once upon a day
They wer a pleaying at the ba,
And every one was reed and whyte,
LeadyM arget'sc ullerw as all awa.
Out it speaks an elder man,
As he stood in the gate,
"Our king's daughter she gos we bern,
And we will get the wait."
The "elder man" has some justificationi n expressinga fearful concernf or the
men at court when he sees the king's daughter is with child. In the same situation
in "Willie o Winsbury"( Child ioo), a balladt hath as lent two stanzast o variants
of "Tam Lin,"5 the king threatens that the lady's lover will be "high hanged."
One may say tentatively that "Tam Lin" depends on knowledge of a simple narrative
of this type. The familiarity of the background enables the scene to be
swiftly set before "Tam Lin" proceeds to the individual twist given by Janet's
reply, which removeso ne causeo f fear and introducesa new one. The following
stanzasa re fromC hildG :
"O had your tongue, ye eldren man,
And bring me not to shame;
Although that I do gang wi bairn,
Yese naeways get the blame.
"Were my love but an earthly man,
As he's an elfin knight,
I woudna gie my ain true love
For a' that's in my sight."
Theno ut it speaksh er britherd ear,
He meant to do her harm:
"Therei s an herbi n Charterw ood
Will twine you an the bairn."
It is after Janet has revealed by her proud answer that her lover is not "an earthly
man" that she is urged to destroy the child. The advice usually comes from a relative-
father (Child B), mother (Child F) or brother (Child G land LL). In the
passage quoted above from Child G the advice is ill-intentioned, but the narrative
line suggests that Janet's relative acts out of fear of what the child of the
"elfin knight" may be like, and not out of enmity towards her.
4 Tristram P. Coffin, The British Traditional Ballad in North America, rev. ed. (Philadelphia,
1963), 50-51.
5 "Tam Lin" Ji, stanza x3, and the stanza 30 quoted by Child in the notes to Variant I in vol. 2,
P. 358.
THE OPENING OF "TAM LIN" 39
Janet then goes to Carterhaugh to gather the herb, but as she is plucking it, Tam
Lin asks her why she is taking steps to destroy their child. Her response, when
Tam Lin questions her, shows that she is only preparing to destroy it because of
the fear now induced in her of bearing the child of a supernatural being, and at
this point of tension Tam Lin assures Janet that he is a mortal.
"Oy es,I am a Christiank night,
And am by woman born."6
The sequence of opening II leading up to this point runs as follows in Child K:
She's tean her mantle her about,
Her green glove on her hand,
And she'sa wa to CharterWs oods,
As fest as she could gang.
She had no puld a pile, a pile,
O not a pile but one,
Up it startid True Thomas,
Said, Leady, lat alean.
"Why pull ye the pile, Marget,
That grows on gravel green,
For to destroy the boney young bern
That we got us between?"
It was apparently this group of stanzas that drew the "Lady Jean" opening into
"Tam Lin." Tristran P. Coffin observes that "whole stanzas and motifs wander
from song to song when the dramatic situations are approximately similar,' ' and
here there are parallel situations in "Tam Lin" and "Lady Jean" that would invite
the transfer of material from one to the other. Janet goes to Carterhaugh to pluck
an herb to cause abortion and is challenged by Tam Lin, who asks why she is
plucking an herb to destroy their child; Lady Jean goes to the wood to gather
flowers and is challenged by a young man, who asks how she dare gather flowers
in that wood without his leave. It would be quite in accord with what is known of
song transmission if the familiar "visit to the greenwood" opening of "Lady Jean"
eventually replaced the more unusual episode in "Tam Lin." Since the visit to the
greenwood is the opening episode of "Lady Jean," it would tend to become the
opening of "Tam Lin," resulting in the loss of the pregnancy theme presented
before the visit to Carterhaugh. This state of the ballad can be illustrated from
Child E, which makes a direct transition from opening I to the central incident of
the recovery from the fairy troop, and completely omits the theme of pregnancy.
LadyM argareits overg ravelg reen,
And over gravel grey,
And she'sa wa to Charterihs a,
Lang lang three hour or day.
She hadna pu'd a flower, a flower,
A flower but only ane,
Till up ands tartedy oungT amlin,
Says, Lady, let alane.
6 Frank Miller, The Mansfield Manuscript (Dumfries, 1935), 35.
7 Coffin, 5.
40 E. B. LYLE
She hadna pu'd a flower, a flower,
A flower but only twa,
Till up and started young Tamlene,
Atween her and the wa.
"How daur you pu my flower, madam?
How daur ye break my tree?
How daur ye come to Charter's ha,
Without the leave of me?"
"Weel I may pu the rose," she said,
"But I daurna break the tree;
And Charter's ha is my father's,
And I'm his heir to be."
"If Charteris ha be thy father's,
I was ance as gude mysell;
But as I came in by Lady Kirk,
And in by Lady Well,
"Deep and drowsy was the sleep
On my poor body fell;
By came the Queen of Faery,
Made me with her to dwell.
"But the morn at een is Halloween,
Our fairy foks a' do ride;
And she that will her true-love win,
At Blackstock she must bide."
At this stage, it can be supposed, as an abstraction, that the original opening of
"Tam Lin" exerted pressure, and in a number of variants the two openings found
a modus vivendi suited to the unique situation. Since "Tam Lin" began with Janet
pregnant, the greenwood episode could be the conception story that preceded the
discovery of Janet's pregnancy. This meant that the two similar episodes, the visit
to the greenwood and the visit to Carterhaugh, were both included in the ballad,
where they developed verbal parallelism, as in the following sections of AC.
I.
It fell upon a certain day
Of leif a certain nicht,
That Janet gade to Gordon's wud
Aw for to flouir her hart.
She hadna puit a rose, a rose,
A rose but onlie three,
Till upon jampit her ain Tam Blain
Just at fair Janet's knee.
"How dare ye pu the rose?" he said,
"How daur ye bow the tree?"
How daur ye pou the redd, red rose
And but the leive o me?"
II.
It fell upon a certain day
Or leif a certain nicht,
That Janet gade to Gordon's wud
Aw for to flouir her hart.
She had na puit a rose, a rose,
A rose but onlie ane,
Till up and jamp her ain Tam Blain
Just at fair Janet's haund.
"How daur ye wauk alane," he said.
"Amang your father's tries
For spoiling o the bonnie babe
That we gat merrilie?"
It can be seen that in this case opening I has had a considerable effect on opening
II, for Janet sets out to gather flowers on the second occasion as on the first, and
plucks a rose and not an herb or "pile." However, the process of levelling by which
originally separate though similar sequences lost much of their individual identity
THE OPENING OF "TAM LIN" 41
and became variations of each other can be expected to operate in both directions,
and the question opening with "why," occurring twice in Child K, as shown below,
apparently had its source in II.
I.
"Why pull ye the rose, Marget?
Or why break ye the tree?
Or why come ye to Charters Woods
Without the leave of me?"
II.
"Why pull ye the pile, Marget,
That grows on gravel green,
Fort o destroyt he boneyy oungb ern
That we got us between?"
This form of question does not occur in "Lady Jean." In Child K, the question
"Why?" put by Tam Lin to Janet when she is plucking the "pile" seems to have
spread from II to I.
The intermixture of material in the two openings brought into existence stanzas
not derived directly from early forms of "Tam Lin" and yet having no place outside
this ballad. Another new development is the vanishing of the man at the end
of opening I, possibly appropriate to "Tam Lin" but not at all appropriate to
"Lady Jean." The preliminary warning belongs only to the reconstituted "Tam
Lin," for it mentions Tam Lin and Carterhaugh but applies to opening I. Willa
Muir, in Living with Ballads, quotes this "prefatory admonition" from the Burns
text (Child A) and comments, "I incline to think that it was due to Burns himself:
its tone belongs to the second half of the eighteenth century rather than to
earlier times."8 In all probability the warning is a late development as Mrs. Muir
suggests, but it cannot have originated with Burns, for it is found not only in
Child B, used by Burns, but also in the earlier Mansfield Manuscript collection,
where it appears as
I charge ye, ye maidens fair,
That wear goud on your hair,
That ye go not to Carterhaugh,
For young Tom Lean is there.9
An addition of this type agrees with Coffin's observation about the effect of morality
on ballads during transmission. "A conventional stanza will often appear at
the finish of Barbara Allen or James Harris warning 'Ye maidens all' to 'shun the
fate I fell in'."10 A preliminary stanza rather similar to that in "Tam Lin" occurs
in "Child Waters" (Child 63B).
"I warn ye all, ye gay ladies,
That wear scarlet an brown,
That ye dinna leave your father's house,
To follow young men frae town."
The gold worn on the maidens' hair in the "Tam Lin" warning stanza has been
mentioned as a medieval feature,"1 but however old it may be it does not seem that
it can be claimed as a part of "Tam Lin" until a comparatively recent date. It does
not seem, either, that a "magic wood or sacred grove," as discussed by Lowry C.
8 Willa Muir, Living with Ballads (London, 1965), 136.
9 This stanza was crossed out by the original writer, and does not appear in Miller's text. It is
quotedf rom page 269 of the MansfieldM anuscriptw, hich is in BroughtonH ouse, Kirkcudbright.
10 Coffin, 13.
11 Evelyn K. Wells, The Ballad Tree (London, I950), 86.
42 E. B. LYLE
Wimberly,12w aso riginallyp resentin "TamL in,"a lthoughth erei s stillt he possibilityt
hat the ideao f the woodi n the borrowedo peningw ase nrichedb y the
associationosf woodsi n folk beliefo r in otherb alladsI. t mayb e somec ompensationf
or the loss of the primitive" sacredg rove,"w hichh as had considerable
appealf or studentos f thisb alladi,f I toucho n an elemenot f folklorei n opening
II thath asn ot receivedso mucha ttention.'J aneti,n herr eplyt o the "elderm an"
in LL,s peakos f herl overa sa ne lfin" rae"( roed eer).
"Gin my love were an earthly man,
As he's an elfin rae,
I wad go boun for my love's sake
A twalmonth an' a day."
She speaks of him as a "rae" in Child G and H also, and it seems that this rather
striking idea may be an early feature in the ballad. If it is, it should probably be
connected with Janet's mistaken belief that Tam Lin is not mortal, for she might
well think he was "elfin" if she had seen him as a deer, a shape particularly associatedw
ith fairyt ransformationH.'*o weverd, eers hapew as not an infallible
indication of fairy nature. In the folktale "The Princess Transformed into Deer"
(AT 401 )," the deer woman is a mortal like Tam Lin. In this story, a young man
sees a deer he is about to shoot turn into a beautiful young woman. He frees her
from enchantment by undergoing an ordeal in obedience to her requests, and the
tale ends with their marriage. It may be that the hint of deer transformation in the
ballad was suggested by this other story of love and ordeal.
By the late eighteenth century, when these ballads were collected, the borrowed
opening had a firm hold in "Tam Lin" and indeed occurs without opening II,
while II, the original opening, does not occur without opening I in any variant
except Child M, the only text of "Tam Lin" recorded in England. An English
variant might have provided a valuable check on the Scottish and Irish development
in the opening of "Tam Lin," but M is not very helpful from this point of
view as it is a unique combination of "Tam Lin" and "Thomas Rymer" (Child
37) 'and has only a rather confused echo of opening II in stanzas 14 and 15. The
original opening of "Tam Lin" was perhaps in some danger of being ousted altogether.
If it had been, there would be no alternative to accepting the ballad in
the form in which it was delivered by late tradition, but as it is the preservation of
the "second opening" in some variants allows us, if we wish, to omit the greenwood
incident with its account of a rape that appears to be alien to "Tam Lin,"
and to start the ballad with its original opening sequence. Opening I remains of
interest, of course, for the study both of "Tam Lin" and of related ballads, but
12 Lowry C. Wimberly, Folklore in the English & Scottish Ballads (Chicago, 1928; reprinted,
New York, 1965), 314-315.
13 Wimberly, 57.
14 J. G. McKay, "The Deer-Cult and the Deer-Goddess Cult of the Ancient Caledonians," Folklore,
43 (1932), 144-174.
15 Antti Aarne and Stith Thompson, The Types of the Folktale, 2nd rev. ed. (Helsinki, 1964).
For Scottish examples, see J. F. Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands, 4 vols. (Paisley
and London, I890-I893), vol. 2, pp. 307-317, No. 44, "The Widow's Son," and John G. McKay,
More West Highland Tales, 2 vols. (Edinburgh and London, 1940-1961), vol. I, pp. 394-409,
No. 24, "The Weaver's Son."
THE OPENING OF "TAM LIN" 43
a first look at this sectiono f "TamL in" in the light of present-daya warenesso f
the effectso f song transmissiond oes indicatet hat it is a vigorousp arasiticg rowth
on thatb alladr athert hana n integralp arto f its structure.
EdinburghS, cotland
______________
Footnotes:
1 The Child variants are quoted from Francis J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vols. (Boston and New York, 1882-1898; reprint ed., New York, 1965).
2 Child, vol. I, p. 450. There are similaritiesa lso in the tunes of these ballads;s ee BertrandH .
Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, 3 vols. (Princeton, New Jersey, 1959-1966),
notes to "Hind Etin" 2 (vol. i, p. 333) and "Tam Lin" 4 (vol. i, p. 330).