"St. Stephen and Herod" is Child ballad 22 and a Christmas carol. [1] It depicts the martyrdom of Saint Stephen as occurring, with wild anachronism, under Herod the Great, and claims that that was the reason for St. Stephen's Day being the day after Christmas. [2]
St. Stephen served Herod as a clerk. He saw the Star of Bethlehem and went to Herod to leave his service. Herod asks him what he lacks, and he affirms that no one lacks anything in his hall, but the child born in Bethlehem is better than that. Herod says it is as true as that the cock cooked for his supper would crow again. Immediately it does, and Herod had Stephen stoned to death. [1] [2]
This story, with the Wise Men as the heroes, appears in Child ballad 55, "The Carnal and the Crane". [3]
The miraculous restoration of a rooster to life is a common motif in European ballads; it frequently appears in a tale in which an innocent person condemned to death is miraculously saved from death, and in which someone expresses disbelief in that miracle as it was unlikely as the rooster's resurrection. [4]
Willie's Lady is Child ballad number 6 and Roud #220. The earliest known copy of the ballad is from a recitation transcribed in 1783.
"The Queen of Elfan's Nourice" or "The Queen of Elfland's Nourice" is Child ballad number 40, although fragmentary in form.
Lady Alice is Child ballad 85. It may be a fragment of a longer ballad that has not been preserved.
"Willie's Lyke-Wake" is Child ballad 25.
"Robin Hood and Queen Katherine" is Child ballad 145. "Robin Hood's Chase", Child ballad 146, takes up after it.
Robin Hood's Chase is Child ballad 146 and a sequel to Child ballad 145, "Robin Hood and Queen Katherine". This song has survived as, among other forms, a late seventeenth-century English broadside ballad, and is one of several ballads about the medieval folk hero that form part of the Child Ballads, a comprehensive collection of traditional English and Scottish ballads.
"Robin Hood and the Golden Arrow" is Child ballad 152.
The King’s Disguise, and Friendship with Robin Hood is Child ballad 151. It holds the common tradition of the end of Robin Hood's outlawry, although it is a relatively late ballad, as it puts Robin firmly in King Richard's reign. Also, unlike "A Gest of Robyn Hode", an earlier version, the king is not acting out of the need to suppress Robin.
Robin Hood and the Bishop of Hereford is Child ballad 144.
The Noble Fisherman or Robin Hood's Preferment is Child ballad 148, a tale of Robin Hood.
"Christopher White" is #108 of the Child Ballads, the collection of 305 ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, collected by Francis James Child in the late nineteenth century. The collection was published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads between 1882 and 1898 by Houghton Mifflin in ten volumes.
"The Carnal and the Crane" is Child Ballad 55 and a Christmas carol. It depicts a conversation between two birds—apparently, although the species of the "carnal" has never been identified with any certainty, though crow is generally assumed.
Little John A Begging is Child ballad 142 and about Robin Hood. It exists in two variants, one fragmentary.
"Judas", Child ballad 23, dates to at least the 13th century and is one of the oldest surviving English ballads. It is numbered as 23 in Francis Child's collection.
Will Stewart and John is Child ballad 107, indexed as such in Francis James Child's 19th century collection of English and Scottish ballads.
"Kempy Kay" is Child ballad no. 33.
"The Little Old Log Cabin In The Lane" is a popular song written by Will S. Hays in 1871 for the minstrel trade. Written in dialect, the song tells of an elderly man, presumably a slave or former slave, passing his later years in a broken-down old log cabin. The title is from a refrain: "de little old log cabin in de lane".
Young Peggy is one of 305 songs in an anthology of ballads from England and Scotland cataloged by American academic Francis James Child during the late 1800s. Known as the Child Ballads, Child's work was published as the 2,500-page book The English and Scottish Popular Ballads.
Earl Rothes is Child Ballad 297 and is listed as #4025 in the Roud Folk Song Index. Child offers no comment on the ballad beyond its basic story, listing it among the final ballads in a five-volume work that covered 305 of the form.
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