US & Canadian Versions: 37. Thomas Rymer
[Below (at the bottom of the page) is the only known US tradtional text of Child No. 37- Thomas Rymer as it appears in the Brown Collection from a Mrs. Becky Gordon, no date was supplied. She was also known as Aunt Becky Gordon in the same collection and since her version of 'Lily White Robe' was collected in June- July 1928, I assume that a date of c. 1928 can be assigned to this version.
R. Matteson 2012]
CONTENTS:
1. Excerpt from The British Traditional Ballad in North America by Tristram Coffin 1950, from the section A Critical Biographical Study of the Traditional Ballads of North America
2. 'True Thomas' Secured by Mrs. Sutton from the singing of Mrs. Becky Gordon of Cat's Head, Sugar Loaf Mountain, Henderson county (no date given)
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37. THOMAS RYMER from The British Traditional Ballad in North America by Tristram Coffin 1950
Texts: Brown Coll.
Local Titles: True Thomas.
Story Types: A: True Thomas is lying on a hill when a lovely lady in grass green clothes rides up. She takes him up behind her on her horse, and they speed off. Eventually they come to a garden, where Thomas eats of some fruit. The woman then promises to show him "fairies three", and after dressing him in green and silver she takes him away to elf-land for seven long
years. Examples: Brown Coll.
Discussion: This text, which is to be published with the F. C. Brown North Carolina Collection, is unique to America as far as I know. The ballad itself (See Child, I, Siyff.) goes back to a fifteenth century romance concerning a thirteenth century seer who was given prophetic power by the Queen of the Elves. In North Carolina, the story follows Child A without too much
deviation. The first four stanzas of the American version parallel Child A, stanzas 1, 2, 6, and 8. Two lines of North Carolina Stanza 5 are almost exactly like Child A, Stanza n, while North Carolina Stanza 6 parallels Child A Stanza 16.
10. Thomas Rymer (Child 37) Brown Collection
Of this ballad, which goes back to a fifteenth-century romance and that in turn to a real person of the thirteenth century, one Thomas of Erceldoune, Child knew five texts, none of them going further back than the latter part of the eighteenth century. Since then it appears to have pretty much vanished from the old country; the only recent record of it that I have found is 'Sir John Gordon,' which Ord prints (Bothy Songs 422-5) from a Scottish newspaper to which it had been sent by the headmaster of Gordon Schools, who collected such matter from old residents of the district some thirty years before the publication of Ord's book. The North Carolina text is unique, so far as is known, in America. It has suffered a good deal in its passage down the years; compare any of the Child texts.
'True Thomas' Secured by Mrs. Sutton from the singing of Mrs. Becky Gordon of Cat's Head, Sugar Loaf Mountain, Henderson county, Mrs. Gordon was one of Mrs. Sutton's most fully stocked singers.
1. True Thomas lay on yonder hill
And saw a lady gay,
A lady that was bright and fair,
Come riding down the way.
2. Her dress was of the grass-green silk,
Her cloak was velvet fine,
And her horse's bridle was silver gay
And trimmed with gold so fine.
3 She turned her milk-white steed about
And took him up behind;
And when she spurred her horse's side
They flew on like the wind.
4. On they rode and on they rode
Till they came to a garden green.
'Light down, light down, True Thomas,
And pull that fruit for me.'
5. He ate the fruit of that green tree.
Laid his head on the lady's knee.
'Stay still, True Thomas,' the lady said,
'And I'll show you fairies three.'
6. He got him a coat of the velvet cloth
And shoes of silver so gay.
And seven long years were passed and gone
Before he returned this way.