Reynardine

Last updated

Reynardine is a traditional English ballad (Roud 397). In the versions most commonly sung and recorded today, Reynardine is a werefox who attracts beautiful women so that he can take them away to his castle. What fate meets them there is usually left ambiguous.

Contents

The Mountains High

The original English ballads upon which Reynardine are based, most of which date to the Victorian era, are generally found under the title The Mountains High. In the original story, Ranordine (also given as Rinordine, Rinor Dine, Ryner Dyne, Rine-a-dine, Rynadine, Retterdyne, Randal Rhin or Randal Rine) is a bandit or outlaw who encounters a young woman in the wilderness and seduces or abducts her. The song ends with a warning to young women to beware of strange men.

"The Mountains High" appears not to be very old, since only one version was collected before 1800. A version appears in George Petrie's 1855 collection of ballads; other variants appear in a number of broadside ballads from the nineteenth century. Washington Irving relates that the song had crossed the Atlantic and was being sung in Kentucky before 1832, and that it spread through North America in the nineteenth century as well.

A text of a circa 1814 broadside Ballads Catalogue: Harding B 25(1273)

A new Song, called the
MOUTAINS [sic] HIGH.
ONE evening in my rambles two miles below Pimroy, [1]
I met a farmer's daughter all on the mountains high,
Her beauty so enticed me, I could not pass her by,
So with my gun I'll guard her, all on the mountains high.→
I said my pretty creature I'm glad to meet you here,
On these lonesome mountains, your beauty shines so clear,
She said kind sir, be civil, my company forsake,
For it is my opinion I fear you are some rake.
Said he I am no rake, I'm brought up in Venus' train, [2]
I'm seeking for concealment, all in the judge's name,
Oh! if my parents they did know your life they would destroy, [3]
For keeping of my company, all on the mountains high.
I said my pretty creature don't let your parents know,
For if you do they'll ruin me and prove my overthrow,
This pretty little young thing she stood all in amaze,
With eyes as bright as Amber upon me she did gaze.
Her ruby lips and cherry cheeks, the lass of Firmadie, [4]
She fainted in my arms there, all on the mountains high,
When I had kissed her once or twice, she came to herself again,
And said kind Sir be civil and tell to me your name.
Go down in yonder forest, my castle there you'll find,
Well wrote in ancient history, my name is Rynadine:
Come all you pretty fair maids, a warning take by me,
Be sure you quit night walking, and shun bad company,
For if you don't you are sure to rue until the day you die
Beware of meeting Rynadine all on the mountains high.
Wood, Printer, Liverpool.

A. L. Lloyd's contributions

According to folklorist Stephen Winick, although the name "Reynardine" is found in one 19th century version, the association with foxes, as well as Reynardine's supernatural characteristics, first arise in connection with a fragment of the ballad (a single stanza) that was collected in 1904 by Herbert Hughes. The source's recollection of the ballad was that Reynardine was an Irish "faëry" who could turn into a fox. This ability (which is not suggested in any extant version of "The Mountains High") may have derived from the word "Reynardine": renard is French for "fox," deriving from the trickster figure Reynard.

Winick points out that Hughes and a friend named Joseph Campbell (not to be confused with the mythologist) wrote short poems incorporating this stanza and the fox interpretation, aspects of which A. L. Lloyd in turn adapted for his versions of "Reynardine" (see Winick 2004). Winick also shows that Lloyd's versions incorporate several striking turns of phrase, including "sly, bold Reynardine" and "his teeth did brightly shine", that are found neither in the original ballads, nor in Hughes' or Campbell's versions.

Lloyd generally represented his versions of "Reynardine" as "authentic" folksongs (going so far as to claim to have collected the song from one "Tom Cook, of Eastbridge, Suffolk"), but this informant has never apparently been encountered by any other collector. Lloyd's claims have led to the current state of confusion; few modern singers know that the "werefox" interpretation of the ballad is not traditional. Lloyd's reworkings are certainly more interesting to the modern listener than the simple and moralistic original ballads, and have gained far greater interest from singers and songwriters; his versions of "Reynardine" have served as inspiration for many additional modern reworkings.

Modern recordings

Modern versions of the song have been recorded for the following albums:

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fairport Convention</span> British folk rock group

Fairport Convention are an English folk rock band, formed in 1967 by guitarists Richard Thompson and Simon Nicol, bassist Ashley Hutchings and drummer Shaun Frater. They started out influenced by American folk rock, with a set list dominated by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell songs and a sound that earned them the nickname "the British Jefferson Airplane". Vocalists Judy Dyble and Iain Matthews joined them before the recording of their self-titled debut in 1968; afterwards, Dyble was replaced by Sandy Denny, and Matthews later left during the recording of their third album.

"St. James Infirmary" is an American blues and jazz standard that emerged, like many others, from folk traditions. Louis Armstrong brought the song to lasting fame through his 1928 recording, on which Don Redman is named as composer; later releases credit "Joe Primrose", a pseudonym used by musician manager, music promoter and publisher Irving Mills. The melody is eight bars long, unlike songs in the classic blues genre, where there are 12 bars. It is in a minor key, and has a 4
4
time signature, but has also been played in 3
4
.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dave Swarbrick</span> English folk-rock musician (1941–2016)

David Cyril Eric Swarbrick was an English folk musician and singer-songwriter. He was one of the most highly regarded musicians produced by the second British folk revival, contributing to some of the most important groups and projects of the 1960s, and he became a much sought-after session musician, which led him throughout his career to work with many of the major figures in folk and folk rock music.

British folk rock is a form of folk rock which developed in the United Kingdom from the mid 1960s, and was at its most significant in the 1970s. Though the merging of folk and rock music came from several sources, it is widely regarded that the success of "The House of the Rising Sun" by British band the Animals in 1964 was a catalyst, prompting Bob Dylan to "go electric", in which, like the Animals, he brought folk and rock music together, from which other musicians followed. In the same year, the Beatles began incorporating overt folk influences into their music, most noticeably on their Beatles for Sale album. The Beatles and other British Invasion bands, in turn, influenced the American band the Byrds, who released their recording of Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" in April 1965, setting off the mid-1960s American folk rock movement. A number of British groups, usually those associated with the British folk revival, moved into folk rock in the mid-1960s, including the Strawbs, Pentangle, and Fairport Convention.

<i>(guitar, vocal)</i> 1976 compilation album by Richard Thompson

(guitar, vocal) is a 1976 album by Richard Thompson. It was released by Island Records as a career retrospective after he and his wife Linda had gone into semi-retirement from the business of making and performing music following the release of Pour Down Like Silver (1975).

Anne Patricia Briggs is an English folk singer. Although she travelled widely in the 1960s and early 1970s, appearing at folk clubs and venues in Britain and Ireland, she never aspired to commercial success or to achieve widespread public acknowledgment of her music. However, she was an influential figure in the British folk revival, being a source of songs and musical inspiration for others such as A. L. Lloyd, Bert Jansch, Jimmy Page, The Watersons, June Tabor, Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, and Maddy Prior.

<i>Unhalfbricking</i> 1969 studio album by Fairport Convention

Unhalfbricking is the third studio album by the English folk rock band Fairport Convention and their second album released in 1969. It is seen as a transitional album in their history and marked a further musical move away from American influences towards more traditional English folk songs that had begun on their previous album, What We Did on Our Holidays and reached its peak on the follow-up, Liege & Lief, released later the same year.

<i>Liege & Lief</i> 1969 studio album by Fairport Convention

Liege & Lief is the fourth album by the British folk rock band Fairport Convention. It is the third album the group released in the UK during 1969, all of which prominently feature Sandy Denny as lead female vocalist, as well as the first to feature future long-serving personnel Dave Swarbrick and Dave Mattacks on violin/mandolin and drums, respectively, as full band members. It is also the first Fairport album on which all songs are either adapted (freely) from traditional British and Celtic folk material, or else are original compositions written and performed in a similar style. Although Denny and founding bass player Ashley Hutchings quit the band before the album's release, Fairport Convention has continued to the present day to make music strongly based within the British folk rock idiom, and are still the band most prominently associated with it.

"The Broomfield Hill", "The Broomfield Wager" "The Merry Broomfield", "The Green Broomfield", "A Wager, a Wager", or "The West Country Wager" (Child 43, Roud 34) is a traditional English folk ballad.

"Seventeen Come Sunday", also known as "As I Roved Out", is an English folk song which was arranged by Percy Grainger for choir and brass accompaniment in 1912 and used in the first movement of Ralph Vaughan Williams' English Folk Song Suite in 1923. The words were first published between 1838 and 1845.

<i>Gunnerkrigg Court</i> Science-fantasy webcomic started in 2005

Gunnerkrigg Court is a science-fantasy webcomic created by Tom Siddell and launched in April 2005. It is updated online three days a week, and eight volumes of the still continuing comic have been published in print format by Archaia Studios Press and Titan Books. The comic has been critically acclaimed and has won numerous Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards, as well as receiving positive reviews for its artwork and storytelling.

<i>Tipplers Tales</i> 1978 studio album by Fairport Convention

Tipplers Tales is a 1978 album by Fairport Convention, the band's thirteenth studio album since their debut in 1968. Recorded in only ten days, it was the last album the band recorded for Vertigo. Simon Nicol later wrote

"We secured a deal with Vertigo, the one that ended up with them paying us not to make records. It seemed a novelty, like that Marx Brothers line: "How much for you NOT to rehearse?" "Oh, you can't afford it." We did Bonny Bunch and Tipplers Tales then didn't make the other four contracted albums"

"Meet on the Ledge" is a song written by British singer-songwriter Richard Thompson and recorded by British folk rock band Fairport Convention in 1968 on Island Records. It was their second single.

<i>Heyday</i> (Fairport Convention album) 1987 live album by Fairport Convention

Heyday: the BBC Radio Sessions 1968–69 is an album by the English folk rock band Fairport Convention first released in 1987. As its title suggests, it consists of live versions of songs recorded for John Peel's Top Gear radio programmes.

<i>Who Knows Where the Time Goes?</i> (Sandy Denny album) 1985 compilation album by Sandy Denny

Who Knows Where the Time Goes? is a retrospective compilation of the work of English folk rock singer Sandy Denny issued in 1985. It is a four LP boxed set released on the Island Records label in the UK and Germany and on Hannibal/Carthage Records in the US, later reissued as a three CD set. It includes released and previously unreleased recordings from 1967 to 1977, live performances, outtakes and demos from Denny's solo career, and with Fairport Convention, Fotheringay and Strawbs.

"A Sailor’s Life" is an English language folk song which describes the attempt of a young woman to find her lover, a sailor. Eventually she hears that he has drowned and mourns him.

<i>The Unfortunate Rake</i> (album) 1960 compilation album by Various Artists

The Unfortunate Rake is an album released by Folkways Records in 1960, containing 20 different variations from what is sometimes called the 'Rake' cycle of ballads. The album repeats a claim made by Phillips Barry in 1911 that the song is Irish in origin, a claim made on the basis of a fragment called "My Jewel My Joy" collected in Ireland in 1848. The song is incorrectly said to have been heard in Dublin, when the cited source states it was collected and had been heard in Cork. However, the notes to the album make no mention of what is now thought to be the oldest written version of the song, one called "The Buck's Elegy".

The Sandy Denny discography chronicles the output of British folk rock singer Sandy Denny. Her brief career, spanning 1967 to 1978, saw the release of 4 solo albums and 4 singles on several record labels.

The Unfortunate Rake is a ballad, which through the folk process has evolved into a large number of variants, including allegedly the country and western song "Streets of Laredo".

"The Unfortunate Lad" is the correct title of a song printed without a tune on a number of 19th century ballad sheets by Such of London and Carrots and possibly others.

References

Notes

  1. Pomeroy is in Tyrone in Ireland. The song the Mountains of Pomeroy has many similarities with this song
  2. The significance of "brought up in Venus' train" is unclear. The "train" may refer to Venus' ladies-in-waiting, in which case the phrase might indicate that Rynadine is accustomed to the company of beautiful women. How this would distinguish him from a rake is not immediately apparent. An alternate interpretation may refer to the Transit of Venus across the sun which occurred in the Victorian period, in 1874 and 1882, during when this song became popularized.
  3. This line and the next are presumably spoken by the young lady.
  4. Firmadie also does not appear to be an actual place-name. Most versions have "they lost their former dye" as the half-line instead.
  5. "Folk Roots, New Routes – Shirley Collins, Davy Graham" via www.allmusic.com.
  6. "Fire & Fleet & Candlelight – Buffy Sainte-Marie" via www.allmusic.com.
  7. "Liege & Lief – Fairport Convention" via www.allmusic.com.
  8. "Prince Heathen – Martin Carthy" via www.allmusic.com.
  9. "Anne Briggs – Anne Briggs" via www.allmusic.com.
  10. "StackPath". September 2017.
  11. "Spiers & Boden: Fallow Ground review – a walk on the bright side". TheGuardian.com . 11 September 2021.

Other sources