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Babes in the Wood is a traditional English children's tale, as well as a popular pantomime subject. It has also been the name of some other unrelated works. The expression has passed into common language, referring to inexperienced innocents entering unawares into any potentially dangerous or hostile situation.
The traditional children's tale is of two children abandoned in a wood, who die and are covered with leaves by robins.
It was first published as an anonymous broadside ballad by Thomas Millington in Norwich in 1595 with the title "The Norfolk gent his will and Testament and howe he Commytted the keepinge of his Children to his own brother whoe delte most wickedly with them and howe God plagued him for it". [1]
The tale has been reworked in many forms; it frequently appears attributed as a Mother Goose rhyme. Around 1840, Richard Barham included a spoof of the story in his Ingoldsby Legends , under the title of The Babes in the Wood; or, the Norfolk Tragedy. [2] Harris cheekily claims in an endnote [2] that the true history of the children is, 'or ought to be,' in "Bloomfield's [sic] History of Norfolk ", but that work's Wayland section does not mention it. The anonymous ballad was also illustrated by Randolph Caldecott in a book published in London in 1879.
The story tells of two small children left in the care of an uncle and aunt after their parents' deaths. The uncle gives the children to ruffians to be killed, in order to acquire their inheritance, telling his wife they are being sent to London for their upbringing. The murderers fall out, and the milder of the two kills the other. He tells the children he will return with provisions, but they do not see him again. The children wander alone in the woods until they die; their bodies are covered with leaves by the birds. Like many morality tales, the story continues with a description of the retribution befalling the uncle. In sanitized versions, the children are bodily taken to Heaven. The story ends with a warning to those who have to take care of orphans and others' children not to inflict God's wrath upon themselves. The story is also used as a basis for pantomimes. However, for various reasons including both the brevity of the original and the target pantomime audience of young children, modern pantomimes by this name usually combine this story with parts of the modern Robin Hood story (employing the supporting characters from it, such as Maid Marian, rather than Robin himself) to lengthen it.
Fox Film produced a 36-minute short of the story, The Babes in the Woods, adapted by screenwriter Bernard McConville in 1917. Fox's treatment included a wicked witch and a house of candy, elements borrowed from the Hansel and Gretel folk story. This film provides a happy ending for the children, with Robin Hood and his company rescuing them in the end.
The Walt Disney Company re-worked this tale for their 1932 short animated film Babes in the Woods , incorporating some material from Hansel and Gretel by the Brothers Grimm, and adding a village of friendly elves (a feature not traditionally present in either tale) and a happy ending.
On Christmas Eve 1973, Junior Showtime did a Babes on the Wood pantomime episode at Bradford Alhambra. [3] [4] It starred Bobby Bennett as Robin Hood, Peter Goodwright as Alan A'Dale, Susan Maughan as Maid Marian, Roy Rolland as Nanny Riley, John Gower as the Sheriff of Nottingham, Eddie Large as Private Large, Syd Little as Private Little, Colin Prince as Little John, Norman Collier as Will Scarlett, Bonnie Langford as Babe Tilly, and Mark Curry as Babe Willy. [3] [4]
The 1915 Broadway musical Very Good Eddie featured a song entitled "Babes in the Wood" by composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Schuyler Greene. Main character Eddie Kettle comforts former love Elsie Darling in a duet in which each refers to the traditional tale.
Eddie: Then put on your little hood, And we'll both be, Oh, so good! Like the babes in the wood.
Elsie: When the babes were lost in the gloomy wood, It's no wonder they were so very good. Fourteen angels were watching them, So all the story books state, Sandman's coming now, it is getting late.
A recording of this song was included in the 1993 CD Jerome Kern Treasury, sung by Hugh Panaro (Eddie) and Rebecca Luker (Elsie) conducted by John McGlinn (Angel CDC 7 54883 2).
Several murders of children in English-speaking countries have been nicknamed the "Babes in the Wood murders":
Folklore has it that the events told in Babes in the Wood originally happened in Wayland Wood in Norfolk, England. It is said that the uncle lived at the nearby Griston Hall. The ghosts of the murdered children are said to haunt Wayland Wood. [5] The village signs at Griston and nearby Watton depict the story. In the folklore version, the uncle resents the task and pays two men to take the children into the woods and kill them. Finding themselves unable to go through with the act, the criminals abandon the children in the wood where, unable to fend for themselves, they eventually die.
Another version, from Lancashire, has it that the tale is based on real events of 1374, when "the villainous Robert de Holland" illegally seized the land of 13 year-old Roger de Langley and his young bride. The children flee to the nearby woods and are cared for by loyal retainers until they are rescued by their legal guardian John of Gaunt. [6]
Traditional English singers Bob and Ron Copper sang "Babes in the Wood" and their version was released on the EFDSS LP "Traditional Songs From Rottingdean". According to Steve Roud, the Coppers' abridged version of the story and the song's tune came from musician and composer William Gardiner (1770-1853). [7]
Robin Hood is a legendary heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature, theatre, and cinema. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions of the legend, he is depicted as being of noble birth, and in modern retellings he is sometimes depicted as having fought in the Crusades before returning to England to find his lands taken by the Sheriff. In the oldest known versions, he is instead a member of the yeoman class. Traditionally depicted dressed in Lincoln green, he is said to have stolen from the rich to give to the poor.
The figure of Mother Goose is the imaginary author of a collection of French fairy tales and later of English nursery rhymes. As a character, she appeared in a song, the first stanza of which often functions now as a nursery rhyme. This, however, was dependent on a Christmas pantomime, a successor to which is still performed in the United Kingdom.
English folklore consists of the myths and legends of England, including the English region's mythical creatures, traditional recipes, urban legends, proverbs, superstitions, and folktales. Its cultural history is rooted in Celtic, Christian, Nordic and Germanic folklore.
Pantomime is a type of musical comedy stage production designed for family entertainment. It was developed in England and is performed throughout the United Kingdom, Ireland and in other English-speaking countries, especially during the Christmas and New Year season. Modern pantomime includes songs, gags, slapstick comedy and dancing. It generally combines gender-crossing actors and topical humour with a story more or less based on a well-known fairy tale, fable or folk tale. Pantomime is a participatory form of theatre, in which the audience is encouraged and expected to sing along with certain parts of the music and shout out phrases to the performers.
The Ingoldsby Legends is a collection of myths, legends, ghost stories and poems written supposedly by Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, actually a pen-name of an English clergyman named Richard Harris Barham.
South Acre is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The village has almost disappeared, but the remnants are located about 1 km (0.62 mi) south-west of Castle Acre, 8 km (5.0 mi) north of the town of Swaffham, 20 km (12 mi) east of the town of King's Lynn and 50 km (31 mi) west of the city of Norwich. The River Nar flows between South Acre and Castle Acre.
The Famous Flower of Serving-Men or The Lady turned Serving-Man is a traditional English language folk song and murder ballad. Child considered it as closely related to the ballad "The Lament of the Border Widow" or "The Border Widow's Lament".
"Unusually, it is possible to give a precise date and authorship to this ballad. It was written by the prolific balladeer, Laurence Price, and published in July 1656, under the title of The famous Flower of Serving-Men. Or, The Lady turn'd Serving-Man. It lasted in the mouths of ordinary people for three hundred years: what a tribute to the work of any writer, leave alone the obscure Laurence Price. Oral tradition, however, has made changes. The original has twenty-eight verses and a fairy-tale ending: “And then for fear of further strife, / he took Sweet William to be his Wife: / The like before was never seen, / A Serving-man to be a Queen”. - Roy Palmer, A Book of British Ballads
Robin Hood's Death, also known as Robin Hoode his Death, is an Early Modern English ballad of Robin Hood. It dates from at the latest the 17th century, and possibly originating earlier, making it one of the oldest existing tales of Robin Hood. It is a longer version of the last six stanzas of A Gest of Robyn Hode, suggesting that one of the authors was familiar with the other work and made an expansion or summary of the other, or else both were drawing from a lost common tale. The surviving version in the Percy Folio is fragmentary, with sections missing. A more complete but later version is from the middle of the 18th century, and is written in modern English. Both versions were later published by Francis James Child as Child ballad #120 in his influential collection of popular ballads.
Robin Hood and the Potter is a 15th century ballad of Robin Hood. While usually classed with other Robin Hood ballads, it does not appear to have originally been intended to be sung, but rather recited by a minstrel, and thus is closer to a poem. It is one of the very oldest pieces of the surviving Robin Hood legend, with perhaps only Robin Hood and the Monk older than it. It inspired a short play intended for use in May Day games, attested to around 1560. It was later published by Francis James Child as Child ballad #121 in his influential collection of popular ballads in the 1880s.
The King's Disguise, and Friendship with Robin Hood is an English ballad of Robin Hood. It is a relatively late work in the corpus, found in the Forresters Manuscript from the 1670s. The work seems loosely based on the 7th and 8th fyttes of A Gest of Robyn Hode which recounts the end of Robin Hood's outlawry after an encounter with the king. Unlike Gest, the king is not acting out of the need to suppress Robin; additionally, The King's Disguise and Friendship uses the 17th century updates to the legend that places Robin as contemporaneous with King Richard's reign. In the late 1800s, Francis James Child included it in his influential collection, the Child Ballads, as #151.
The Noble Fisherman, also known as Robin Hood's Preferment and Robin Hood's Fishing, is a 17th-century ballad of Robin Hood. Unusually, it depicts Robin Hood as a hero of the sea, rather than his usual portrayal as someone who operated in the greenwood forest. It seems to have been quite popular for the first two centuries of its existence, although it eventually lost prominence and was less used in adaptations of Robin Hood from the 19th and 20th centuries. It was later published by Francis James Child in the 1880s as Child Ballad #148 in his influential collection of popular ballads.
The Bold Pedlar and Robin Hood is Child ballad 132, featuring Robin Hood. It is a traditional version of Robin Hood Newly Revived.
Robyn and Gandeleyn is an English ballad. The poem is in Sloane Manuscript 2593, a document of lyrics and carols which dates from around 1450. It was first printed by Joseph Ritson in his 1790 collection Ancient Songs. It was later republished in the second half of the 19th century in an anthology of traditional English and Scottish ballads by Francis James Child known as the Child Ballads, where it is Child Ballad 115. Child also divided the continuous text into seventeen stanzas.
Wayland Wood is a 31.7-hectare (78-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest near to Watton in Norfolk. It is a Nature Conservation Review site, Grade 2, and it is managed by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust
Wayland is an area in the district of Breckland within the English county of Norfolk. It is situated approximately 20 miles west of Norwich.
The folkloric hero Robin Hood has appeared many times, in many different variations, in popular modern works.
The Suffolk Miracle is Child ballad 272 and is listed as #246 in the Roud Folk Song Index. Versions of the ballad have been collected from traditional singers in England, Ireland and North America. The song is also known as "The Holland Handkerchief" and sometimes as "The Lover's Ghost".
"I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day" is a traditional Scottish or Irish music hall song written from the point of view of a rich landowner telling the story of his day while buying drinks at a public house. According to Archie Fisher, the song is "an Irish narrative ballad that has been shortened to an Aberdeenshire drinking song".
"Sir Hugh", also known as "The Jew's Daughter" or "The Jew's Garden", is a traditional British folk song, Child ballad No. 155, Roud No. 73, a folkloric example of a blood libel. The original texts are not preserved, but the versions written down from the 18th century onwards show a clear relationship with the 1255 accusations of the murder of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln by Jews in Lincoln, making it likely that the known versions derive from compositions made around that time.
Griston is a village and civil parish in the Wayland area of the Breckland district within the English county of Norfolk. It covers an area of 5.62 km2 (2.17 sq mi) and had a population of 1,206 in 206 households at the 2001 census, increasing to a population of 1,540 in 246 households at the 2011 Census. For the purposes of local government, it falls within the district of Breckland.
