Fause Foodrage (Child ballad 89, [1] Roud 57) is a Scottish murder ballad of the 17th or 18th century. It was first printed by Walter Scott in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802). Scott cited Elizabeth, Lady Wardlaw as the ballad's probable author.
Three kings, King Easter (or King of Eastmure), King Wester (or King of Westmure) and King Honor (or King o Luve), are courting a woman; she marries King Honor for love, but there is a rebellion of nobles, and the lot falls on "False Foodrage" (Fause Foodrage, Fa'se Footrage) to kill the king, or, in other variants, the Eastmure king kills King Honor because his suit for King Honor's queen was rejected. The queen pleads for her life until her child is born.
Fause Foodrage tells her that if the baby is a boy, he will die. He sets guards on her, but she gets them drunk and leaves out a window. She has a son in a pigsty. Wise William is sent to seek her; he sends his wife, and when she finds her, she persuades her to change her son for her daughter, saying that they will both raise the other's child fittingly. When the boy is grown, Wise William takes him by the royal castle and tells him the truth. The son kills Fause Foodrage, rewards Wise William, and marries the daughter that his mother raised.
Walter Scott commented that King Easter and King Wester represent "petty princes of Northumberland and Westmoreland" but later retracted this opinion. [2] [3]
Child ballad 90 Jellon Grame has affinities to this ballad. [4]
This ballad is closely related with a Scandinavian one, "Young William" (TSB E 96), in which a rival in love kills the successful wooer, the woman bears a child and has the rival told it was a girl, and the son, grown, kills the rival. [5] Another Scandinavian ballad (TSB D 352) opens with the bride being carried off, and her family coming to burn down the church that the bridegroom and his people are in; she hides her son from her family and in time he avenges his father. [6]
The tune recorded with Fause Foodrage was used for the ballad Willie o Winsbury by mistake by Andy Irvine of Sweeney's Men (1968) and has since frequently been used for that song. [7] An arrangement of this tune is used in The Wicker Man (1973) for the "procession" scene.
In contrast to Willie o Winsbury, the ballad Fause Foodrage has only rarely been recorded by modern folk musicians. One recording is that by Hermes Nye (1957).
Sir Aldingar is Child ballad 59. Francis James Child collected three variants, two fragmentary, in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. All three recount the tale where a rebuffed Sir Aldingar slanders his mistress, Queen Eleanor, and a miraculous champion saves her.
Willie O Winsbury is Child Ballad 100. The song, of which there are many variants, is a traditional Scottish ballad that dates from at least 1775, and is known under several other names, including "Johnnie Barbour" and "Lord Thomas of Winesberry".
"The Laily Worm and the Machrel of the Sea" is Child ballad number 36.
"Kemp Owyne" is Child Ballad number 34.
"Hind Horn" is a traditional English and Scottish folk ballad.
"Hind Etin" is a folk ballad existing in several variants.
Fair Annie is Child ballad number 62, existing in several variants.
King Estmere is an English and Scottish Child ballad and number 60 of 305 ballads collected by Francis James Child.
Johnie Scot is Child ballad number 99.
"Young Waters" is Child ballad number 94.
Jellon Grame is a murder ballad, listed as Child ballad number 90.
"The Fair Flower of Northumberland" is a folk ballad.
Leesome Brand is Child Ballad number 15 and Roud #3301.
"Gil Brenton" is Child ballad 5, Roud 22, existing in several variants.
"Riddles Wisely Expounded" is a traditional English song, dating at least to 1450. It is Child Ballad 1 and Roud 161, and exists in several variants. The first known tune was attached to it in 1719. The title "Riddles Wisely Expounded" was given by Francis James Child and seems derived from the seventeenth century broadside version "A Noble Riddle Wisely Expounded".
The False Knight Upon the Road is a British ballad, collected and published as Child ballad 3, Roud 20. It features a riddling exchange between a schoolboy and a "false knight," the devil in disguise. As to its provenance, it is presumed to not be much older than its first publication in 1824.
"Earl Brand" is a pseudo-historical English ballad.
Sweet William's Ghost is an English Ballad and folk song which exists in many lyrical variations and musical arrangements. Early known printings of the song include Allan Ramsay's The Tea-Table Miscellany in 1740 and Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry in 1765. Percy believed that the last two stanzas of the version he published were later additions, but that the details of the story they recounted were original.
"The King's Dochter Lady Jean" is Child ballad No. 52.
Thomas o Yonderdale is Child ballad number 253; Roud number 3890. Child assessed that this "apocryphal" ballad seemed like a recent fabrication from a pastiche of other ballads.