The Rarest Ballad That Ever Was Seen is an English broadside ballad from the late 17th century. It tells the story of a blind beggar's daughter from Bednal-Green and her marriage to a knight.
In the story, the main character Bessee is the most beautiful woman in her town. But she was few marital prospects due to her father's status as a beggar. She eventually gains four suitors, but only the knight among them is willing to marry an impoverished girl. The beggar father turns out to a blinded war veteran with hidden wealth of his own. The father mentions that he served Henry III of England in his wars in France.
In an 18th-century variation of the ballad, Bessee's father is identified as the historical figure Henry de Montfort (1238 –1265), a son of Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester. In the ballad, Henry apparently survived his reported death in the Battle of Evesham.
The ballad tells the story of Bessee, the daughter of a blind beggar. She is the most beautiful woman in her town, and has many suitors, but none of their parents will allow them to marry a beggar's daughter. Bessee asks her parents to let her travel and seek her fortunes. She leaves in the night, and when she reaches Stratford at Bow she doesn't know where to go next and starts crying. Finally, she decides to go on to Rumford, where she is entertained at the Kings-Arms. In Rumford, she once again has many suitors, all of whom offer her gold and silver.
Four suitors come calling simultaneously. A knight, a gentleman, a merchant, and her master's son compete for her affections, but she refuses them all, telling them that they must seek her father's approval first. They all agree, until she tells them that her father is the blind beggar, at which point three of them back out. The knight says it doesn't matter, and agrees to return to Bednal-Green with Bessee, even though his kinsman urges him not to go. A number of men from Rumford follow him and fight him, but he wins the battle, with some outside help, and approaches her father. His kinsman begins to rail against Bessee, but her father tells him that he is willing to compare his gold with that of the knight by "dropping angels." He drops 3,000 pounds, more than twice that of the knight, and then adds another 100 for his daughter's gown. When all of her previous suitors see that her father is actually rich, they become angry.
In the second part of the ballad, Bessee and the knight have a huge wedding, and all the noble people are invited. At the wedding, the beggar comes out dressed in fine clothes and playing the lute. The noblemen at the wedding recognize a noble pedigree in his face, and ask the beggar to tell them his story. He agrees by playing one more song. His name is Monfort, and he lost his eyes fighting in France for King Henry III. A woman saved him from dying on the battlefield, and they moved to Bednal-Green and became beggars. Everybody pronounces that Bessee comes from a good pedigree, and they celebrate her marriage to the knight.
A version of the ballad, called The Blind Beggar's Daughter of Bednal-Green was included in Bishop Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry , published in 1765. This version of the ballad has a slightly different ending, in which the identity of the beggar is made more explicit. According to Joseph Scott Moore, Percy substituted this ending for the "vulgar" ending in order to reconcile the ballad with "true history." In Percy's version, the beggar tells us that he is Henry de Montfort, son of Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, who was killed in the Battle of Evesham. According to history, Henry was also killed at the Battle of Evesham, but according to the ballad he only lost his eyesight and was saved by a woman who became Bessee's mother. According to Percy's version, the two donned beggars' clothing and moved to England in order to hide from Henry's enemies, who would think he was dead. Moore also argues that alternate versions of the ballad refer to the "Queen's Arms" instead of the "King's Arms," suggesting that it was written in the time of Queen Elizabeth. [1]
Ambrose Philips and Richard Whittington include it in their Collection of Old Ballads , but don't include it as a "historical" ballad because they can't find evidence of any truth in it. They speculate that Montfort was not included in lists of the slain, and that the writer exercised poetic license by creating a fictional story in which Henry survives the battle. They also cite controversy over the identity of Montfort, and whether he served under Henry II or Henry III, suggesting that great men of that name served under both kings. They cite another Montfort who "challenged and overcame" the king's standard-bearer, Henry of Essex, after he was charged with treason for throwing down the royal standard during a battle with Wales. [2]
The story is the source of the 17th-century play, The Blind Beggar of Bednal-Green, with the Merry Humour of Tom Strowd the Norfolk Yeoman, originally published in 1659 by John Day after being performed many times. [3]
The story is also the source of the 16th-century play Faire Em (c. 1590). [4]
It gave its name to an English pub, The Blind Beggar, in 1894.
In 1900, the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green adopted a scene from the ballad to be depicted in their official arms. A depiction of the blind beggar has been depicted on the head of the beadle's staff since 1690. [5]
Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, later sometimes referred to as Simon V de Montfort to distinguish him from his namesake relatives, was an English nobleman of French origin and a member of the English peerage, who led the baronial opposition to the rule of King Henry III of England, culminating in the Second Barons' War. Following his initial victories over royal forces, he became de facto ruler of the country, and played a major role in the constitutional development of England.
Bethnal Green was a civil parish and a metropolitan borough of the County of London between 1899 and 1965, when it was merged with the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney and the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar to form the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
The title of Earl of Northumberland has been created several times in the Peerage of England and of Great Britain, succeeding the title Earl of Northumbria. Its most famous holders are the House of Percy, who were the most powerful noble family in Northern England for much of the Middle Ages. The heirs of the Percys, via a female line, were ultimately made Duke of Northumberland in 1766, and continue to hold the earldom as a subsidiary title.
John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey was a prominent English nobleman and military commander during the reigns of Henry III of England and Edward I of England. During the Second Barons' War he switched sides twice, ending up in support of the king, for whose capture he was present at Lewes in 1264. Warenne was later appointed as "warden of the kingdom and land of Scotland" and featured prominently in Edward I's wars in Scotland.
Sir Henry de Montfort was the son of Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, and with his father played an important role in the struggle of the barons against King Henry III. Henry's mother was Princess Eleanor of England, a daughter of King John, whose marriage to Simon further increased the foreign influence begun by the king, which was to result in great hostility by those very barons who later revolted against the king.
Thomas Percy was Bishop of Dromore, County Down, Ireland. Before being made bishop, he was chaplain to George III of the United Kingdom. Percy's greatest contribution is considered to be his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765), the first of the great ballad collections, which was the one work most responsible for the ballad revival in English poetry that was a significant part of the Romantic movement.
The Blind Beggar is a pub in Whitechapel Road in the East End of London, England, at the junction with Cambridge Heath Road.
Amaury de Montfort was the third son of parliamentary pioneer Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, and Eleanor of England, daughter of King John.
Hjaðningavíg, the legend of Heðinn and Hǫgni or the Saga of Hild is a Germanic heroic legend about a never-ending battle which is documented in Sörla þáttr, Ragnarsdrápa, Gesta Danorum, Skíðaríma and in Skáldskaparmál. It is also held to appear on the image stone at Stora Hammar on Gotland. Moreover, it is alluded to in the Old English poems Deor and Widsið, and in the Old Norse Háttalykill inn forni, and a version of it survived down to the 18th century in the traditional Norn language ballad "Hildina". An altered version of the saga is found in the Middle High German poem Kudrun, as a prologue to the story of Kudrun herself. Yet another version is found in the Old Yiddish Dukus Horant.
"The King and the Beggar-maid" is a 16th-century broadside ballad that tells of an African king, Cophetua, and his love for the beggar Penelophon. Artists and writers have referenced the story, and King Cophetua has become a byword for "a man who falls in love with a woman instantly and proposes marriage immediately".
Catskin is an English fairy tale collected by Joseph Jacobs in More English Fairy Tales. Marian Roalfe Cox, in her study of Cinderella, identified as one of the basic types, the Unnatural Father, contrasting with Cinderella itself and Cap O' Rushes.
"Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight" is the English common name representative of a very large class of European ballads.
"The Twa Sisters" is a traditional murder ballad, dating at least as far back as the mid 17th century. The song recounts the tale of a girl drowned by her jealous sister. At least 21 English variants exist under several names, including "Minnorie" or "Binnorie", "The Cruel Sister", "The Wind and Rain", "Dreadful Wind and Rain", "Two Sisters", "The Bonny Swans" and the "Bonnie Bows of London". The ballad was collected by renowned folklorist Francis J. Child as Child Ballad 10 and is also listed in the Roud Folk Song Index. Whilst the song is thought to originate somewhere around England or Scotland, extremely similar songs have been found throughout Europe, particularly in Scandinavia.
"Hind Horn" is a traditional English and Scottish folk ballad.
The Knight's Ghost is Child ballad 265. It tells the story of a woman who learns that her husband has died in battle, after which she locks his men in a cellar and throws the keys in the sea. Her husband's ghost appears to ask that she release his men, assuring her they fought bravely. Francis Child drew the ballad from Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland.
"King Arthur and King Cornwall" is an English ballad surviving in fragmentary form in the 17th-century Percy Folio manuscript. An Arthurian story, it was collected by Francis James Child as Child Ballad 30. Unlike other Child Ballads, but like the Arthurian "The Boy and the Mantle" and "The Marriage of Sir Gawain", it is not a folk ballad but a professional minstrel's song. It is notable for containing the Green Knight, a character known from the medieval poems The Greene Knight and the more famous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; he appears as "Bredbeddle", the character's name in The Greene Knight.
"The Lochmaben Harper" or "The Blind Harper" is a traditional British Folk ballad and is one of the ballads collected by Francis Child in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–1898).
Alice de Lusignan was the first wife of Marcher baron Gilbert de Clare, 7th Earl of Gloucester, and half-niece of King Henry III of England.
The Odyssey is an eight-episode European TV miniseries broadcast on RAI in 1968 and based on Homer's Odyssey. An Italian, Yugoslavian, German and French coproduction, it was directed by Franco Rossi, assisted by Piero Schivazappa and Mario Bava; the cast includes Bekim Fehmiu as Odysseus and Irene Papas as Penelope, Samson Burke as the Cyclops, as well as Barbara Bach as Nausicaa, and Gérard Herter. Several critics consider the series to be a masterful representation of the ancient world.
Blind Beggar and his Dog is a bronze statue of 1958, by the sculptor Elisabeth Frink, based on the famous ballad The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green. It stands in the enclosed garden of Tate House, a residential development for the elderly on the Cranbrook Estate in the London district of Bethnal Green. It is a Grade II* listed structure.