Fair Annie is Child ballad number 62, existing in several variants.[1]
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A lord tells Fair Annie to prepare a welcome for his bride, and to look like a maiden. Annie laments that she has borne him seven sons and is pregnant with the eighth; she can not look like a maiden. She welcomes the bride but laments her fate, even wishing her sons evil, that they might be rats and she a cat. The bride comes to ask her why she grieves, and then asks her what her family was before the lord stole her. Then she reveals that she is Annie's full sister and will give her her dowry, so that Annie can marry the lord instead of her; she is a maiden still and so can return home.
Several Scandavian variants exist: the Swedish Skön Anna and the Danish Skjön Anna. In them, the hero is a man who has newly become king, after the death of his father; his long-term leman, Anneck, tries to get him to make her his wife, and the queen mother supports her. When the son refuses and choses a bride, Anneck wishes to speak with her; the queen mother brings her to the other woman, and her account makes the bride make the realization.[2]
Marie de France retold this story in her lai, Le Fresne, where the heroine is not kidnapped but abandoned with birth tokens; she was one of a pair of twins, which was regarded as proof of adultery, and a servant abandoned her to save her life. The bride in Le Fresne is, in fact, the other twin.[3]
In some variants of Hind Etin, the captive mother expresses her grief in hostility to her children in the same language as this ballad.[4]
Guitarist and singer Martin Simpson recorded a version of Fair Annie on his 2001 album The Bramble Briar in his distinctive finger-picking style.