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Leesome Brand (Roud 3301, Child 15) is an English-language folk song.
Leesome Brand (Roud 3301, Child 15) is an English-language folk song.
Leesome Brand went to court when ten years old. An eleven-year-old girl fell in love with him, but nine months later, called on him to saddle horses, take her dowry, and flee with her. They headed to his mother's house, but she went into labour on the way. He went off to hunt, but violated a prohibition she laid on him, either not to hunt a milk-white hind, or to come running when called, and she and his son died. He went home and lamented this to his mother.
Some variants stop there. In others, the mother gave him a horn with ointment that restored them both to life.
Francis James Child described this ballad as particularly ill-preserved in its Scottish form, requiring consulting foreign variants even to be sure of the plot. [1] One of its variants was so corrupted as to be barely distinguishable from "Sheath and Knife", Child Ballad 16, which laments a death in the same language. [2]
The foreign variants of this ballad include Scandinavian, German, and French forms. [3]
The heroine's difficulty riding, because of her advanced pregnancy, also features in some Scandavian variants of "Gil Brenton". [4]
"Willie o Douglas Dale" and "Willie and Earl Richard's Daughter" include similar flights, of the lovers, with the woman being pregnant and giving birth in the woods, although with altered endings. [5]
Sir Aldingar is an English-language folk song. 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.
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
"Hind Etin" is a folk ballad existing in several variants.
Fair Annie is a traditional folk ballad, existing in several variants.
Child Waters is an English-language folk song, existing in several variants.
The Gay Goshawk is a traditional English-language folk ballad.
"Rose the Red and White Lily" is Child ballad number 103.
"The Fair Flower of Northumberland" is a folk ballad.
"Sheath and Knife" is a folk ballad.
The Bent Sae Brown is an English-language folk song.
Fause Foodrage 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.
Fair Janet is an English-language folk ballad.
Willie and Earl Richard's Daughter is a traditional English-language folk ballad. It recounts the birth of Robin Hood, but is not part of the Robin Hood cycle; Francis James Child rejected the title The Birth of Robin Hood for it on those grounds.
"Gil Brenton" is an English-language folk song, existing in several variants.
"Erlinton" is an English-language folk ballad. One variant features Robin Hood, but this variant forces the folk hero into a ballad structure where he does not fit naturally.
"Earl Brand" is a pseudo-historical English ballad.
"Young Andrew" is a folk song catalogued as Child ballad 48.
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.
Clerk Saunders is an English-language folk song, likely originating somewhere in England or Scotland. It exists in several variants.
"Brown Robyn's Confession" is an English-language folk song.
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