Burd Ellen and Young Tamlane (Roud 3962, Child 28) is a traditional English-language folk song. [1] Despite similarity in names, it appears to have no connection with Tam Lin , nor with the tale of Childe Rowland, though they both have characters named Burd Ellen; indeed, Francis James Child was unable to connect this ballad with any other tradition or ballad. [2]
Burd Ellen is weeping. Young Tamlane tells her to rock her son. She tells him to rock the child himself, she has done more than her share. Instead, he goes to sea, with her curse.
Burd Ellen sits in her bower windowe,
With a double laddy double
And for the double dow
Twisting the red silk and the blue
With the double rose and the May-hay.
And whiles she twisted and whiles she twan
And whiles the tears fell down amang.
Till once thee by cam Young Tamlane
"Come light, oh light, and rock your young son."
"If you winna roack him, you may not let him rair,
For I hae rockit my share and more."
Young Tamlane to the seas he's gane,
And a' women's curse in his company gane.
TamLin is a character in a legendary ballad originating from the Scottish Borders. It is also associated with a reel of the same name, also known as the Glasgow Reel. The story revolves around the rescue of Tam Lin by his true love from the Queen of the Fairies. The motif of winning a person by holding him through all forms of transformation is found throughout Europe in folktales.
Childe Rowland is a fairy tale, the most popular version written by Joseph Jacobs in his English Fairy Tales, published in 1890, based on an earlier version published in 1814 by Robert Jamieson. Jamieson's was repeating a "Scottish ballad", which he had heard from a tailor.
"Allison Gross", also known as "Alison Cross", is a traditional folk ballad. It tells the story of "the ugliest witch in the north country" who tries to persuade a man to become her lover and then punishes him by a transformation.
Billy Blind is an English and Lowland Scottish household spirit, much like a brownie. He appears only in ballads, where he frequently advises the characters. It is possible that the character of Billy Blind is a folk memory of the god Woden or Odin from Germanic mythology, in his "more playful aspect" and is speculated to have been the same character as Blind Harie, the "blind man of the game" in Scotland.
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"The Marriage of Sir Gawain" is an English Arthurian ballad, collected as Child Ballad 31. Found in the Percy Folio, it is a fragmented account of the story of Sir Gawain and the loathly lady, which has been preserved in fuller form in the medieval poem The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle. The loathly lady episode itself dates at least back to Geoffrey Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" from The Canterbury Tales. Unlike most of the Child Ballads, but like the Arthurian "King Arthur and King Cornwall" and "The Boy and the Mantle", "The Marriage of Sir Gawain" is not a folk ballad but a song for professional minstrels.
"Young Andrew" is a folk song catalogued as Child ballad 48.
Crow and Pie is an English-language folk song. It is one of the oldest preserved ballads, dating to c. 1500. Pie is the now-obsolete original name for the magpie, a bird often connected with sorrow and misfortune. The crow is a scavenger, often thought of as feeding upon the bodies of men hanged or slain in battle, and thus associated with unhallowed and violent death.
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