| The Wee Wee Man | |
|---|---|
| Catalogue | Roud 2865, Child 38 |
| Genre | Irish Dance music |
| Language | English |
| Composed | c. 1650 |
"The Wee Wee Man" (Roud 2865, Child 38) is an Anglo-Scottish border ballad, existing in several variants. [1] The song is a piece of Irish dance music whose history spans back to around the 17th century. [2]
The narrator meets with a wee, wee man. He lifts an enormous stone and throws it, and she thinks that if she were as strong as Wallace, she could have lifted it to her knee. She asks him where he lives, and he has her come with him to a hall where there is a lady, sometimes explicitly called the fairy queen, and her ladies, usually twenty-four and so beautiful that the ugliest would make a fit queen of Scotland, but they, and the wee, wee man, instantly vanish.
Steeleye Span included it in the 1973 album Parcel of Rogues .
Danish composer Vagn Holmboe set the ballad to music twice, for tenor and small orchestra in 1971 (as op. 107b), and for mixed choir a cappella in 1972 [3]
This ballad was one of 25 traditional works included in Ballads Weird and Wonderful (1912) and illustrated by Vernon Hill.
Sir Thomas de Ercildoun, better remembered as Thomas the Rhymer, also known as Thomas Learmont or True Thomas, was a Scottish laird and reputed prophet from Earlston in the Borders. Thomas' gift of prophecy is linked to his poetic ability.
TamLin is a character in a legendary ballad originating from the Scottish Borders. It is also associated with a reel of the same name, also known as the Glasgow Reel. The story revolves around the rescue of Tam Lin by his true love from the Queen of the Fairies. The motif of winning a person by holding him through all forms of transformation is found throughout Europe in folktales.
"Barbara Allen" is a traditional folk song that is popular throughout the English-speaking world and beyond. It tells of how the eponymous character denies a dying man's love, then dies of grief soon after his untimely death.
Jeannie Robertson was a Scottish folk singer.
Vagn Gylding Holmboe was a Danish composer and teacher.
"The Bonnie Earl o' Moray" is a popular Scottish ballad, which may date from as early as the 17th century.
"Lamkin", "Lambkin", "Long Lankin", or "Bolakins" is an English-language ballad. It gives an account of the murder of a woman and her infant son by a man, in some versions, a disgruntled mason, in others, a devil, bogeyman or a motiveless villain. Versions of the ballad are found in Scotland, England and the US.
"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.
Sir Aldingar is an English-language folk song. Francis James Child collected three variants, two fragmentary, in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. All three recount the tale where a rebuffed Sir Aldingar slanders his mistress, Queen Eleanor, and a miraculous champion saves her.
"The Unquiet Grave" is an Irish / English folk song in which a young man's grief over the death of his true love is so deep that it disturbs her eternal sleep. It was collected in 1868 by Francis James Child as Child Ballad number 78. One of the more common tunes used for the ballad is the same as that used for the English ballad "Dives and Lazarus" and the Irish pub favorite "Star of the County Down".
"Allison Gross", also known as "Alison Cross", is a traditional folk ballad. It tells the story of "the ugliest witch in the north country" who tries to persuade a man to become her lover and then punishes him by a transformation.
"Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight" is the English common name representative of a very large class of European ballads.
"The Great Silkie of Sule Skerry" or "The Grey Selkie of Sule Skerry" is a traditional folk song from Orkney and Shetland. A woman has her child taken away by its father, the great selkie of Sule Skerry which can transform from a seal into a human. The woman is fated to marry a gunner who will harpoon the selkie and their son.
"Young Hunting" is a traditional folk song, Roud 47, catalogued by Francis James Child as Child Ballad number 68, and has its origin in Scotland. Like most traditional songs, numerous variants of the song exist worldwide, notably under the title of "Henry Lee" and "Love Henry" in the United States and "Earl Richard" and sometimes "The Proud Girl" in the United Kingdom.
Fause Foodrage is a Scottish murder ballad of the 17th or 18th century. It was first printed by Walter Scott in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802). Scott cited Elizabeth, Lady Wardlaw as the ballad's probable author.
The Queen of Scotland is a folk song.
"The Knight and the Shepherd’s Daughter" is an English ballad, collected by Francis James Child as Child Ballad 110 and listed as number 67 in the Roud Folk Song Index.
The Keach I' the Creel, also known as The Ride in the Creel or The Wee Toun Clerk, is an English-language folk song, originating from England and Scotland sometime in the early 1800s.
"Wee Cooper O'Fife" is a Scottish folk song about a cooper who has "a braw new wife" who will not cook, clean, and sew in case she "spoil her comely hue". A town in Fife is called Cupar; this is a pun.
Queen of Elphame or "Elf-hame", in the folklore belief of Lowland Scotland and Northern England, designates the elfin queen of Faerie, mentioned in Scottish witch trials. In ballads and contemporary texts, she is referred to as Queen of Elphane, Elphen, or the Fairies. She is equivalent to the Queen of Fairy who rules Faërie or Fairyland. The character as described in witch trials has many parallels with the legends of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin.
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