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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.
"Lord Randall", or "Lord Randal", is an Anglo-Scottish border ballad consisting of dialogue between a young Lord and his mother. Similar ballads can be found across Europe in many languages, including Danish, German, Magyar, Irish, Swedish, and Wendish. Italian variants are usually titled "L'avvelenato" or "Il testamento dell'avvelenato", the earliest known version being a 1629 setting by Camillo il Bianchino, in Verona.
"The Daemon Lover" – also known as "James Harris", "A Warning for Married Women", "The Distressed Ship Carpenter", "James Herries", "The Carpenter’s Wife", "The Banks of Italy", or "The House-Carpenter" – is a popular ballad dating from the mid-seventeenth century, when the earliest known broadside version of the ballad was entered in the Stationers' Register on 21 February 1657.
"Matty Groves", also known as "Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard" or "Little Musgrave", is a ballad probably originating in Northern England that describes an adulterous tryst between a young man and a noblewoman that is ended when the woman's husband discovers and kills them. It is listed as Child ballad number 81 and number 52 in the Roud Folk Song Index. This song exists in many textual variants and has several variant names. The song dates to at least 1613, and under the title Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard is one of the Child ballads collected by 19th-century American scholar Francis James Child.
"Mary Hamilton", or "The Fower Maries", is a common name for a well-known sixteenth-century ballad from Scotland based on an apparently fictional incident about a lady-in-waiting to a Queen of Scotland. It is Child Ballad 173 and Roud 79.
"Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight" is the English common name representative of a very large class of European ballads.
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud, a former librarian in the London Borough of Croydon. Roud's Index is a combination of the Broadside Index and a "field-recording index" compiled by Roud. It subsumes all the previous printed sources known to Francis James Child and includes recordings from 1900 to 1975. Until early 2006, the index was available by a CD subscription; now it can be found online on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website, maintained by the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). A partial list is also available at List of folk songs by Roud number.
"The Cruel Mother" is a murder ballad originating in England that has since become popular throughout the wider English-speaking world.
Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, also known as Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor, is an English folk ballad.
"Sheath and Knife" is a folk ballad.
The Queen of Scotland is a folk song.
"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 Cruel Brother" is a folk song.
"Edward" is a traditional murder ballad existing in several variants, categorised by Francis James Child as Child Ballad number 13 and listed as number 200 in the Roud Folk Song Index. The ballad, which is at least 250 years old, has been documented and recorded numerous times across the English speaking world into the twentieth century.
"Babylon" or "The Bonnie Banks o Fordie" is Child ballad 14, Roud 27.
Mr. Motherwell gives a version under the title of Babylon; or, the Bonny Banks o' Fordie; and Mr. Kinloch gives another under the title of The Duke of Perth's Three Daughters. Previous editors have attempted to find a local habitation for this tradition, and have associated it with the family of Drummond, of Perth. As a legend exactly similar is current in Denmark. this appears a bootless quest.
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 Rose of England is Child ballad 166 and Roud Folk Song Index 4001. It is an account of Henry VII of England claiming the throne from Richard III of England, frequently allegorically. It may be the oldest ballad on the Battle of Bosworth, and as old as 1485, but the earliest manuscript is from the mid-seventeenth century.
"The Twa Brothers" is a traditional ballad existing in many variants.
Glasgerion is Child ballad 67,, existing in several variants.
References
- ↑ "Welcome to the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library". www.vwml.org.
- ↑ "Proud Maisrie / The Gardener / The Gardener Child (Roud 339; Child 219; G/D 4:840)". mainlynorfolk.info.
- ↑ Sedley, Stephen; Carthy, Martin (September 16, 2021). Who Killed Cock Robin?: British Folk Songs of Crime and Punishment. Reaktion Books. ISBN 9781789145021 – via Google Books.
