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"Scarborough Fair" is a traditional English ballad. The song lists a number of impossible tasks given to a former lover who lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. The "Scarborough/Whittingham Fair" variant was most common in Yorkshire and Northumbria, where it was sung to various melodies, often using Dorian mode, with refrains resembling "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" and "Then she'll be a true love of mine." It appears in Traditional Tunes by Frank Kidson published in 1891, who claims to have collected it from Whitby.
The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The tunes of most of the ballads were collected and published by Bertrand Harris Bronson in and around the 1960s.
"The Three Ravens" is an English folk ballad, printed in the songbook Melismata compiled by Thomas Ravenscroft and published in 1611, but the song is possibly older than that. Newer versions were recorded up through the 19th century. Francis James Child recorded several versions in his Child Ballads.
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The (Bonnie) Rantin' Laddie or Lord Aboyne is a traditional Scottish folk ballad telling of the valiant rescue of his lover by a noble Highland lord.
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References
- ↑ Francis James Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, "The Elfin Knight" Sacred-texts.com
- ↑ "See here". Archived from the original on 2021-05-21. Retrieved 2018-05-23.
- ↑ Child, notes to Ballad #2, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads
- ↑ Buchan, Peter (1828). "The Fairy Knight". Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland. Vol. 2. pp. 296–298, 346.
- ↑ Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, v 1, p 8, Dover Publications, New York 1965
- ↑ ""Ballads Weird and Wonderful" (1912), illustrated by Vernon Hill (Spirit of the Ages)". spiritoftheages.com. Retrieved 2017-11-23.
- ↑ Child, Francis James (1894). The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Part 9. Vol. 9. Boston / Cambridge: Houghton, Mifflin and Company / The Riverside Press. p. 206.
- ↑ "Can you decipher long-lost verse of historic dale song?". www.teesdalemercury.co.uk. 21 November 2019. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
- ↑ "Alan Lomax Archive". research.culturalequity.org. Archived from the original on 2016-10-17. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
- ↑ "Sold on Song - Song Library - Scarborough Fair". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2020-08-10.
- ↑ Peter Shepheard. "Child 2: The Elfin Knight". Springthyme.co.uk. Retrieved 2015-04-16.
