OUR GOODMAN
A. Herd’s MSS, I, 140; Herd’s Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, 1776, II, 172.
B. ‘The Merry Cuckold and Kind Wife,’ a broadside: Printed and Sold at the Printing-Office in Bow Church-Yard, London.
The copy in Ritson’s Scotish Song, I, 231, is from Herd, 1776; that in the Musical Museum, No 454, p. 466, is the same, with change of a few words. In Smith’s Scotish Minstrel, IV, 66, the piece is turned into a Jacobite ballad. The goodwife says she is hiding her cousin McIntosh; ‘Tories,’ says the goodman.
B was reprinted by Dixon in Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England, p. 211, Percy Society, vol. xvii, ‘Old Wichet and his Wife,’ from a copy “obtained in Yorkshire” and “collated” with the Aldermary broadside. The fifth adventure (in the closet) is lacking. Two or three staves, with variations for the better, are given from memory in Notes and Queries, First Series, VI, 118, as communicated by Mr R. C. Warde, of Kidderminster. (See the notes.)
Percy made B over in two shapes, whether for simple amusement or for the projected extension of the Reliques: ‘Old Wichet’s Discoveries,’ ‘Old Wichard’s Mistakes,’ among Percy’s papers.
A. Our goodman, coming home, sees successively a saddle-horse, pair of jack-boots, sword, powdered wig, muckle coat, finally a man, where none such should be. He asks the goodwife how this came about without his leave. She responds contemptuously that the things he has supposed himself to see are, respectively, a sow (milch-cow), a pair of water-stoups, a porridge-spurtle, a clocken-hen, a pair of blankets, a milking-maid, which her mother has sent her. Far has he ridden, but a saddle on a sow’s (cow’s) back, siller spurs on water-stoups, etc., long-bearded maidens, has he never seen.
B. In B Old Wichet comes upon three horses, swords, cloaks, pairs of boots, pairs of breeches, hats, and in the end three men in bed. Blind cuckold, says the wife, they are three milking-cows, roasting-spits, mantuas, pudding-bags, petticoats, skimming-dishes, milking-maids, all presents from her mother. The like was never known, exclaims Old Wichet; cows with bridles and saddles, roasting-spits with scabbards, etc., milking-maids with beards!
A song founded on this ballad was introduced into the play of “Auld Robin Gray,” produced, according to Guest’s History of the Stage, at the Haymarket, July 29, 1794. This song is a neat résumé of the ballad, with a satisfactory catastrophe.[84] See an appendix.
A Gaelic copy, taken down by Rev. Alexander Stewart, of Ballachulish, from the recitation of an old man in his parish whose father had been in the way of singing it sixty years before, is plainly based upon A. The goodman, coming home unexpectedly, finds a boat on the beach, a horse at the door, etc. These and other things are explained by his wife as gifts from her mother. Far has he wandered, but never saw a saddle on a cow, etc. Alexander Stewart, ’Twixt Ben Nevis and Glencoe, 1885, p. 76 ff.
A ballad known and sung throughout Flemish Belgium, ‘Mijn man komt thuis,’ is formed upon the pattern of A, and must have been derived from A, unless the two have a common source. Two copies are given in Volkskunde (Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsche Folklore), II, 49-58, by the editors, Messrs A. Gittée and Pol de Mont, a third by Pol de Mont, V, 20. A man comes home late, and sees in his bedroom a strange hat, overcoat, and other articles of clothing, and asks whose they are. His wife answers that they are a water-pot, a straw mattress, etc., which her mother has sent her. Travel the world round, he has never seen a water-pot with a band about it, a straw mattress with two sleeves, etc. In the last adventure of the first copy, the husband finds a man in the room, and his wife flatly answers, it is a lover my mother has sent me. The second copy ends a little better, but not well. The man is explained to be a foster-child sent by his wife’s mother, and so in the third. The husband has travelled the world round, but a foster-child with whiskers has he never seen. The wife packs out of the house. He has travelled the world round, but a wife like his he wishes never to see again.
Friedrich Wilhelm Meyer, in 1789, turned B into German in very happy style, furnishing a dénoûment in which the man gives his wife a beating and explains his cuffs as caresses which her mother has sent her. Meyer’s ballad was printed in 1790, in the Göttingen Musenalmanach, p. 61 ff., and the same year in Lieder für fröhliche Gesellschaften, p. 37 (Hamburg). It had great and immediate success, was circulated as a broadside, and was taken up by the people, in whose mouth it underwent the usual treatment of ballads traditionally propagated.[85] From Germany it spread into Scandinavia and Hungary, and perhaps elsewhere. German varieties are: ‘Des Mannes Heimkehr,’ Hoffmann u. Richter, p. 225, No 195; ‘Wind über Wind,’ Simrock, p. 375, No 241; ‘Des Ehemannes Heimkehr,’ Ditfurth, Fränkische Volkslieder, IIr Theil, p. 61, No 61; Firmenich, Germaniens Völkerstimmen, III, 66; ‘Der Bauer u. sein Weib,’ Erlach, IV, 90; ‘Der betrogene Ehemann,’ Pröhle, p. 143; Walter, p. 97; ‘O Wind, O Wind, O Wind!’ Zurmühlen (Dülkener Fiedler), p. 101. (The last four lack the beating.)
The only Scandinavian copy that I have seen is the Swedish ‘Husarerna,’ in Bergström och Nordlander, Sagor, Sägner och Visor, 1885, p. 93. For indication of others, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish (including a broadside as early as 1799), see, particularly, Olrik, Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, V, II, 211 f., and note***; also, Dybeck’s Runa, 1a Samlingen, 1865, I, 89 (where the beginnings of two stanzas are cited); Afzelius, ed. 1880, II, 285.
Magyar (Szekler), Kríza, Vadrózsák, p. 242, No 483; Aigner, p. 149.
French. A similar ballad is common in France, especially in the south.
Poésies pop. de la France, MSS: II, fol. 54, ‘Marion;’ III, 60 (printed in Revue des Traditions pop., II, 66), 62, 64, Puy-de-Dôme; 68, Auvergne; 69, ‘Zjean et Mariou,’ Bourbonnais; 71, Pays de Caux; 72, ‘Le jaloux,’ environs de Toulouse; 74, Gascogne (Rolland, II, 211); 75, Languedoc; 76, ‘Lo surprero,’ Limousin (Rolland, II, 212); 78, ‘Le mari de Marion,’ Normandie; 80, 66, ‘Le mari jaloux,’ Bouches-du-Rhône; 82, ‘Marion,’ Provence; 83, Loiret; 84, ‘La rusade,’ Limousin;’ 87, ‘Lou jolous’ (Rolland, II, 213, Revue des Trad. pop., I, 71), Limoges; VI, 381 vo, ‘Jeannetoun’ (Rolland, II, 214), Quercy. ‘Lou jalous,’ Arbaud, Chants pop. de la Provence, II, 152. ‘Lou galant,’ Atger, Revue des Langues romanes, VI, 261, and Poésies pop. en Langue d’oc, p. 53. ‘Las finessos de la Marioun,’ Moncaut, Littérature pop. de la Gascogne, p. 316 = Bladé, Poésies pop. de la Gascogne, II, 116 f. Revue des Traditions pop., II, 64, Cévennes. Daudet, Numa Roumestan, ed. 1881, p. 178, Provence = Revue des Tr. pop., II, 65, Ouest de la France. ‘Lou Tsalous, Daymard, Bulletin de la Société des Études,’ etc., du Lot, IV, 100, 1878, Vieux chants pop. rec. en Quercy, 1889, p. 92. ‘Las rebirados de Marioun,’ Soleville, Chants pop. du Bas-Quercy, p. 22; partly, in Pouvillon, Nouvelles réalistes, ed. 1878, p. 151. Victor Smith in Romania, IX, 566-68, three copies, Forez, Velay, bas-limousin. ‘Le mari soupçonneux,’ Tarbé, Romancero de Champagne, II, 98, Ardennes. ‘La chanson de la bergère,’ Puymaigre, Chants pop. rec. dans le Pays messin, 1865, p. 215, 1881, I, 263. ‘Les répliques de Marioun,’ Almanach des Traditions pop., 1882, p. 86, in Rolland, II, 208, No 162 a, environs de Lorient. ‘Las respounsos de Marioun,’ Laroche, Folklore du Lauraguais, p. 211. “Le Chroniqueur du Périgord et du Limousin, Périgueux, 1853, p. 109.” “Le Pélerinage de Mireille, p. 173.” (The last two I have not seen.)
For the most part, the colloquy runs in this wise: ‘Where were you last evening, Marion?’ ‘In the garden, picking a salad.’ ‘Who was it you were talking with?’ ‘A gossip of mine’ (camarade, voisine, cousine, sœur, servante, etc.). ‘Do women wear a sword?’ ‘It was no sword, but a distaff.’ ‘Do women wear breeches?’ ‘She was kilted up.’ ‘Have women a moustache?’ ‘She had been eating mulberries.’ ‘It is too late for mulberries.’ ‘They were last year’s’ (an autumn branch, etc.). ‘I will cut off your head.’ ‘And what will you do with the rest?’ ‘Throw it out of the window.’ ‘Les corbeaux (cochons, chiens, chats, mouches, couteliers, capucins, anges, etc.) en feront fête.’ In a few instances, to end the more smartly, the husband is made to promise (or the wife to ask) forgiveness for this time, and the wife adds, aside, ‘and many more.’ ‘You will play off no more tricks on me.’ ‘Forgive this, and I will, a good many.’ (Rolland.) ‘Pardon this fault; to-morrow I will commit another.’ (Victor Smith.) ‘Get up: I pardon you.’ ‘What dolts men are! What can’t we make them believe!’ (MSS, III, 78.) Etc.
In some half dozen copies, Marion has been at the spring (not in the garden), and has stayed suspiciously long, which she accounts for by her having found the water muddied. After this, and in a few copies which have no garden or spring, the matter is much the same as in the English ballad; there is a sword on the mantel-shelf (a gun on the table), boots (cane) behind the door, a man where nae man should be. Nearest of all to the English is one of Victor Smith’s ballads, Romania, IX, 566: ‘Whose horse was that in the stable last night?’ ‘No horse, but our black cow.’ ‘A cow with a saddle?’ ‘No saddle; it was the shadow of her horns.’ ‘Whose breeches, boots, sabre, hat?’ ‘qui était couché à ma place?’ The mulberries are nearly a constant feature in the French ballad.
There is an approach to a serious termination in MSS, III, 87: ‘Say your prayers, without so much noise.’ ‘At least put my bones in the ground.’ And in Puymaigre: ‘I will take you to Flanders and have you hanged.’ ‘Leave the gallows for the great robbers of France.’ The copies, MSS, III, 62, 71, end, prosaically,’Jamais je n’ai vu ni fille ni femme qui sent la putain comme toi;’ ‘Femme qui m’a trompé la mort a méritée!’
The lace-makers of Vorey are wont to recite or sing this ballad winter evenings as a little drama: V. Smith, Romania, IX, 568, note. So the young girls in Lorraine during carnival, Puymaigre, I, 263; and the young fellows in Provence, Arbaud, II, 155 f.
Italian. ‘Le repliche di Marion,’ Nigra, Canti popolari del Piemonte, p. 422, No 85, A, B, C. The Piedmontese copies follow the French closely, beginning with picking salad in the garden, and ending with ‘your peace is made,’ as in Poésies p. de la France, MSS, III, 64. ‘Il marito geloso’ (incomplete), Ferraro, Canti p. monferrini, p. 93, No 70. ‘La sposa colta in fallo,’ Bernoni, Canti p. veneziani, puntata ix, No 8, p. 12. (Mariù goes on her knees and asks pardon, and is told to get up, for pardoned she is.) ‘Bombarion,’ Ferrari, first in Giornale di Filologia romanza, III, No 7, p. 74, 1880, and then in Archivio per le Tradizioni popolari, Canti p. in San Pietro Capofiume, VII, 398, 1888 (peace is made). All the Italian versions keep near to the French, having nothing original but an unimportant insertion, ‘Chi ti farà la minestra?’ etc., just before the end.[86]
Catalan. ‘La Trapassera,’ Briz y Saltó, Cants pop. catalans, II, 69. Father hears daughter talking with lover in the garden; the usual questions and replies; improved, or corrupted, at the end.
For serious ballads, Scandinavian, Spanish, etc., exhibiting similar questions and evasions, see ‘Clerk Saunders,’ No 69 F, and the remarks at II, 157 f., 512 a, III, 509 a, IV, 468 a. The romance ‘De Blanca-Niña’ occurs in the Cancionero de Romances of 1550. The oldest Scandinavian ballad of the class is one of Syv’s, printed in 1695.
Herd, 1776, is translated by Wolff, Halle der Völker, I, 96, Hausschatz, p. 230; by Fiedler, Geschichte der schottischen Liederdichtung, I, 32; by Knortz, Schottische Balladen, p. 82.
Herd’s MSS, I, 140.
A broadside: Printed and Sold at the Printing-Office in Bow Church-Yard, London.
A.
11. Or, Our goodman came hame at een.
21. Or, How came this horse here?
22. Or, How can this be?
31. Or, Ye ald blind dottled carl.
32. Or, Blind mat ye be!
33. Or, a bonny milk-cow.
34. My minny is an alternative and necessary reading for The miller.
41. Or, travelld.
42. Or, And meikle hae I seen.
44. [Or,] Saw I.
51. Or, Our goodman came hame.
74. The cooper sent.
9-12. At the end, with a direction as to place: not completely written out.
91. Hame, etc.
103. O how.
124. Saw I never nane.
The regular readings have been inserted or substituted. In printing, Herd gave sometimes the alternative readings, sometimes not.
B.
Printed in seven staves, or stanzas, of eight long lines.
11, 21. Oh.
153, 193. the three.
Notes and Queries, First Series, VI, 118 (“Shropshire Ballad”).
The unhappy husband next wanders into the pantry, and discovers ‘three pairs of hunting-boots,’ which his spouse declares are
The gentlemen’s coats, discovered in the kitchen, are next disposed of, but here my memory fails me.
APPENDIX
‘’Twas on Christmas Day,’ found on a slip, “Sold at No 42 Long Lane,” in a volume in the British Museum, 1876. e (not paged, but at what would be p. 57), and again in The New Covent Garden Concert, London, Printed and sold by J. Evans, No 41 Long-Lane, West Smithfield, Br. Mus. 1077. g. 47 (4), dated in the catalogue “1805?”
[84] I am indebted for information concerning this song, and for a copy, to Mr P. Z. Round.
[85] Hoffmann von Fallersleben, Unsere Volksthümlichen Lieder, No 478. It begins:
[86] ‘O Violina, tu hai le gote rosse,’ a very pretty little contrasto bundled by Tigri with his rispetti (Canti p. toscani, p. 284, No 1023, ed. 1856), is a skirmish between father and daughter, after the fashion of our ballad. (‘My cheeks are stained with mulberries.’ ‘Show me the mulberries.’ ‘They are on the hedges.’ ‘Show me the hedges.’ ‘The goats have eaten them.’ ‘Show me the goats,’ etc.) Ferrari, in an excellent paper in the journal referred to above, tries to make out some historical relation between the two. He seems to me to take ‘La Violina’ quite too seriously.
GET UP AND BAR THE DOOR
A. a. ‘Get up and bar the Door,’ Herd, The Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 330; Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, 1776, II, 159. b. [Pinkerton], Select Scotish Ballads, 1783, II, 150.
B. ‘John Blunt,’ Macmath MS., p. 74.
C. ‘Johnie Blunt,’ Johnson’s Museum, IV, 376, No 365, 1792.
The copy in Johnson’s Museum, volume three, No 300, p. 310, 1790, is A a with two slight changes; that in Ritson’s Scotish Song, I, 226, 1794, is A a. A b is substituted for A a in the third edition of Herd, 1791, II, 63. Christie, II, 262, who follows A a, but with changes, gives as a refrain, “common in the North of Scotland from time immemorial,”
A, B. A housewife is boiling puddings anight; a cold wind blows in, and her husband bids her bar the door; she has her hands in her work and will not. They come to an agreement that whoever speaks first shall bar the door. Two belated travellers are guided to the house by the light which streams through an opening. They come in, and, getting no reply to their questions or response to their greetings, fall to eating and drinking what they find; the goodwife thinks much, but says naught. One of the strangers proposes to the other to take off the man’s beard, and he himself will kiss the goodwife. Hot water is wanting (for scalding), suggests the second; but the boiling pudding-bree will serve, answers the first. The goodman calls out, Will ye kiss my wife and scald me? and having spoken the first word has to bar the door.
C. In C man and wife are in bed, and the travellers haul the woman out and lay her on the floor: this makes the husband give tongue.
Stenhouse notes that this ballad furnished Prince Hoare with the principal scene in his musical entertainment of “No Song, no Supper,” produced in 1790, and long a favorite on the stage. (Musical Museum, 1853, IV, 292.)
This tale is one of a group which may or may not have had a single archetype. Of the varieties, that which comes nearest is the first story in Straparola’s Eighth Day. Husband and wife are sitting near the entrance of their house one night; the husband says, It is time to go to bed, shut the door; she says, Shut it yourself. They make a compact that the one who speaks first shall shut the door. The wife, tired of silence and growing sleepy, goes to bed; the husband stretches himself on a bench. A gentleman’s servant, whose lantern has been put out by the wind, seeing the door open, asks for a light. There is no reply. Advancing a little way into the house, he finds the man lying on the bench with his eyes open, but can get no word from him though he shakes him. Looking round, he sees the woman in bed and addresses her, but she is as dumb as her husband; he gets into the bed. The woman says nothing till the intruder goes away; then calls out, A pretty man you, to leave the door open all night and let people get into your bed. Fool, he says, now go shut the door. The same, with insignificant divergences, in L’Élite des Contes du Sieur d’Ouville, Rouen, 1699, I, 159.
A wedding-feast over, neither bridegroom nor bride will consent to shut the street-door; the lady proposes that the one who speaks first shall do this, to which the bridegroom agrees. They sit looking at each other in silence for two hours. Thieves, seeing the door open, come in, pillage the house, and even strip the young pair of everything valuable that they have on them, but neither says a word. In the morning a patrol of police find the house door open, enter, and make an inspection. The chief demands an explanation of the state of things; neither man nor woman vouchsafes a response, and he orders their heads off. The executioner is beginning with the husband; the wife cries out, Spare him! the husband exclaims, You have lost, go shut the door. (The Arabian tale of Sulayman Bey and the Three Story-Tellers, cited by Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, II, 29.)
Hemp-eaters, who have found a sequin and bought a mass of food, quarrel about fastening the gate of a tomb to which they have retired, to gorge unmolested. They come to an agreement that the man who first speaks shall close the gate. They let the victuals stand and sit mute. A troop of dogs rush in and eat all up clean. One of the party had secured some of the provender in advance of the rest, and bits are sticking to his mouth. A dog licks them away, and in so doing bites the lip of the fellow, who, in his pain, raps out a curse on the dog. The rest shout, Get up and shut the gate! (Turkish, Behrnauer, Die vierzig Veziere, p. 175 f.; Gibb, The History of the Forty Vezirs, p. 171 f.)
In the second Pickelheringsspiel, in the first part of Engelische Comedien und Tragedien, 1620, a married pair contend again about the shutting of a door. (R. Köhler; not seen by me.)
In other cases, speaking first entails a penalty different from shutting a door.
A young pair, lying in bed the first night after marriage, engage that whichever of the two gets up first or speaks first shall wash the dishes for a week. The husband, pretending to make his will by the process of expressing by signs his acceptance or rejection of the suggestions of a friend, bequeaths away from his wife a handsome article of dress belonging to her. The wife utters a protest, and has to wash the dishes. (Novelle di Sercambi, ed. d’Ancona, p. 16, No 3, ‘De simplicitate viri et uxoris.’)
A man complains of dry bread which his wife has given him for his supper. She tells him to get up and moisten it; he bids her do this, but she refuses. It is finally settled that the one that speaks first shall moisten the bread. A visitor comes in and can make neither of them say a word. He kisses the wife, gives the husband a blow on the cheek; no word from either. He makes complaint to the kází; the husband will say nothing when brought before the kází, and is condemned to be hanged. At the moment of execution the wife ejaculates, Alas, my unfortunate husband! You devil, says he, go home and moisten the bread! (An Arabian story in Beloe’s Oriental Apologues, cited by Clouston, II, 21.)
A shoemaker and his wife agree that the one who speaks first shall carry back a frying-pan that they have borrowed. A soldier who requires a girth for his horse asks the shoemaker to cut him one, but gets no answer, though he threatens to take off the man’s head. Enraged at last, he seizes the shoemaker by the head to do what he had menaced, when the wife cries out, For mercy’s sake, don’t! Well done! says the husband, now carry back the pan. (Bernoni, Fiabe pop. veneziane, p. 67, No 13, ‘La Scomessa;’ Crane, Italian Popular Tales, p. 284.)
John makes terms with his wife that which of the two eats first of a soup which she has brought in, or speaks the first word, shall have a beating. William, of whom the husband is jealous, comes to offer his company to go to a fight which is to come off. Man and wife will neither eat nor speak, and he thinks them possessed. He takes the woman by the hand, and she goes with him. John cries out, Let my wife be! She says, John, you have spoken and lost. (Ayrers Dramen, ed. von Keller, III, 2006-08.)
A man who has been taunting his wife as a cackler is challenged by her to a trial at silence. A tinker comes in asking for kettles to mend. He can make neither of them open their mouth, and, as a last resource, offers to kiss the woman. The husband cannot contain himself; the wife says, You have lost! and remains mistress of the house, as she had been before. (Farce d’un Chauldronnier, Viollet Le Duc, Ancien Théâtre François, II, 109 ff.)[87]
a. Herd, The Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 330. b. [Pinkerton], Select Scotish Ballads, 1783, II, 150.
Macmath MS. p. 74. “From the singing of Miss Jane Webster, 15th October, 1886, and 26th August, 1887, who learned it at Airds of Kells, Kirkcudbrightshire, many years ago, from James McJannet.”
Johnson’s Museum, IV, 376, No 365, 1792. Contributed by Robert Burns.
A. a.
Johnson’s Museum has these variations:
24. Gat up and.
43. first who should speak the foremost word.
b.
13. That our gudewife had.
14. she boild.
21. wind blew cauld frae east.
24. Get up and.
33. hunder.
34. Its neer be barrd by.
42. word whaever spak.
51. come.
53. Whan they can see na ither house.
54. And at the door they light.
72. And syne.
73. Tho wanting.
81. Then ane unto the ither said.
93. bree.
111. O up then started.
113. you have spak the first word.
O is added to the second and fourth lines for singing, in both of the Museum copies and in B.
[87] All the above have been cited by Reinhold Köhler, Jahrbuch für romanische u. englische Literatur, XII, 348 f., or by Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, II, 15 ff.
THE FRIAR IN THE WELL
A. a. ‘The Fryer well fitted,’ etc., Rawlinson Ballads, 566, fol. 63, 4°. b. ‘The Fryer well fitted,’ etc., Roxburghe Ballads, II, 172; Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, VII, 222. c. ‘The Fryer and the Maid,’ Wit and Mirth, or, Pills to purge Melancholy, “I, 340, 1707,” III, 325, 1719.
B. a. ‘The Friar and Fair Maid,’ Buchan’s MSS, II, 351. b. ‘The Friar,’ Kinloch MSS, VI, 97. c. Kinloch MSS, V, 60.
The broadside, A a, b, is found in many other collections: Pepys, III, 145, No 143; Crawford, No 94, etc. (see Ebsworth). B, the Scottish ballad (an improvement on the English), is without doubt derived from print, but not directly from A a, b. In B the maid feigns to be afraid of her master, as in A c, not of her father. From Halliwell’s Notices of Fugitive Tracts, p. 37, No 49, Percy Society, vol. xxix, we learn that The Royal Garland of Protestant Delight, London, 1689, has a ballad with the title ‘The witty lass of Somersetshire, or the fryer servd in his kind,’ with an “answer,” in the last stanza of which ‘the inn-keeper, her master,’ laughs at the fryer’s disaster.
The tune of ‘The Friar in the Well’ occurs in The Dancing Master, from 1650 to 1686: Chappell’s Popular Music, p. 274. Munday, in his ‘Downfall of Robert, Earl of Huntington,’ Act iv, Scene 2, 1598, refers to the ‘merry jest ... how the friar fell into the well, for love of Jenny, that fair bonny belle.’ A reference of Skelton’s in his Colyn Cloute[88] carries the story, and almost certainly the ballad, back to the first quarter of the sixteenth century.
The copy in Kinloch’s Ballad Book, p. 25, was compounded by the editor from B b, c.
A maid, solicited by a friar, says that she fears hell-fire; the friar reminds her that if she were in hell he could sing her out. She stipulates for money in advance; while the friar is gone to fetch some, she hangs (spreads) a cloth before (over) a well. The money in band, she calls out that her father (master) is coming; the friar runs to hide behind the cloth (a screen), and falls into the well. The friar cries for help; he is left to sing himself out. Extricated after a sufficient cooling, he asks his money back, but is told that he must pay for fouling the water.
This story, one might safely say, is not beyond the “imaginary forces” of any Western people, but an open well inside of an English house is at least of unusual occurrence, and if we find something of the kind to our hand in an Eastern tale of similar character, a borrowing seems more plausible than an invention. There is a considerable class of tales, mostly Oriental, in which a chaste wife discomfits two or three would-be seducers, bringing them to shame and ridicule in the end. In some, she exacts or receives money from her suitors at the outset; in some, an allegation that her husband is coming is the pretext for her concealing them. An example in English is ‘The Wright’s Chaste Wife,’ by Adam of Cobsam, edited for the Early English Text Society, in 1865, by Dr Furnivall. In this, three men successively are tumbled through a trap door into an underground room. But in the Persian Tútí Náma, or Book of the Parrot, of Nakhshabí, the wife lays a bed over a dry well, her suitors are invited to sit on it, and they fall in; and here, it is not extravagant to suppose, we may have the remote source of the trick in our ballad.[89]
There is a French ballad of the same general type: ‘Le lourdaud moine,’ Tarbé, Romancero de Champagne, II, 135; ‘Le moine Nicolas,’ Bujeaud, II, 284. A monk, enamored of a married woman, is appointed to come to her while her husband is away; he is told to lay off his frock, which she secures, and she takes money which he has brought. He is then sent to the door to see if the husband be coming, and is locked out. He asks to have his frock and money returned; she will keep them for her husband. The convent jeer at him when he comes back: ‘Dieu bénisse la commère qui t’a joué ce tour-là!’
‘Munken i Vaande,’ a rather flat Danish ballad from a MS. of the 16th century, tells of a monk who knocks at the door of a woman whom he has been courting, and calls to her to keep her word; she tells her husband to slip under the bed, and lets the monk in; the monk hands the woman gold rings which he had promised; the goodman comes out and gives him a beating; the monk leaps out of the window and goes to his cloister; his superior asks why he has been away; he has been shriving the farmer’s wife, and it has nearly cost him his life.
a. Rawlinson, 566, fol. 63, 4o. b. Roxburghe, II, 172; Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, VII, 222. c. D’Urfey’s Pills to purge Melancholy, ed. 1719, III, 325.
a. Buchan’s MSS, II 351. b. Kinloch MSS, VI, 97, in Kinloch’s handwriting. c. Kinloch MSS, V, 60, in the handwriting of James Beattie.
A. a, b.
a. London. Printed for F. Coles, T. Vere, and J. Wright.
b. Printed for W. Thackeray and T. Passinger.
a.
31,3, 73, 82, 3, 91,3, 104, 124, qd. for quoth.
73. qd. he.
82. too’t.
83. Oh.
101. did crept.
162. Drooping.
b.
54. my grey.
73. quoth she.
101. fryer crept.
102. on a.
113. sung on.
122. never was.
142. she would.
152. Which from me thou.
162. Dropping.
c. The variations are insignificant until we come to 83; from that point this copy (which is abridged) runs as follows:
Sing, hey down a derry, and let’s be merry, And from such sin ever keep.
The fa la burden is not given.
B. b. Apparently a revised by Kinloch.
42. sing for whistle.
72. then wanting.
101. a wanting.
152. sheet for sheep.
c.
2-6, 9, 13, 14, wanting.