"Scarborough Fair" is a traditional ballad of Great Britain.
The song tells the tale of a young man, who tells the listener to ask his former lover to perform for him a series of impossible tasks, such as making him a shirt without a seam and then washing it in a dry well, adding that if she completes these tasks he will take her back. Often the song is sung as a duet, with the woman then giving her lover a series of equally impossible tasks, promising to give him his seamless shirt once he has finished.
As the versions of the ballad known under the title "Scarborough Fair" are usually limited to the exchange of these impossible tasks, many suggestions concerning the plot have been proposed, including the hypothesis that it is a song about the Plague. The lyrics of "Scarborough Fair" appear to have something in common with an obscure Scottish ballad, The Elfin Knight (Child Ballad #2),[1] which has been traced at least as far back as 1670 and may well be earlier. In this ballad, an elf threatens to abduct a young woman to be his lover unless she can perform an impossible task ("For thou must shape a sark to me / Without any cut or heme, quoth he"); she responds with a list of tasks that he must first perform ("I have an aiker of good ley-land / Which lyeth low by yon sea-strand").
The melody is very typical of the middle English period.
As the song spread, it was adapted, modified, and rewritten to the point that dozens of versions existed by the end of the 18th century, although only a few are typically sung nowadays. The references to the traditional English fair, "Scarborough Fair" and the refrain "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" date to 19th century versions, and the refrain may have been borrowed from the ballad Riddles Wisely Expounded, (Child Ballad #1), which has a similar plot. A number of older versions refer to locations other than Scarborough Fair, including Wittingham Fair, Cape Ann, "twixt Berwik and Lyne", etc. Many versions do not mention a place-name, and are often generically titled ("The Lovers' Tasks", "My Father Gave Me an Acre of Land", etc.).
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A version published in 1889[2] is typical of modern versions except for the place-name:
Much thought has gone into attempts to explain the refrain "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme", although, as this is found only in relatively recent versions, there may not be much to explain. One common theory is that they are the ingredients for stuffing used in many baked poultry dishes.[3]
The oldest versions of "The Elfin Knight" (circa 1650) contain the refrain "my plaid away, my plaid away, the wind shall not blow my plaid away" (or variations thereof), which may reflect the original emphasis on the lady's chastity. Slightly younger versions often contain one of a group of related refrains:
These are usually paired with "Once (s)he was a true love of mine" or some variant. "Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" may simply be an alternate rhyming refrain to the original.
Folksong scholar Märta Ramsten states that folksong refrains containing enumerations of herbs — spices and medical herbs — occur in many languages, including Swedish, Danish, German, and English (and also in the "regional language" of Lombardy, Italy: "ravanei, remulass, barbabietul e spinass" i.e. "radish, horseradish, beet and spinach").
It has been suggested[4] that the lyrics refer to the black plague, with parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme being four herbs used to ward off the smell of the dead or dying. It was popular belief in Medieval times that the smell of the plague(s) (miasma) was responsible for infection and that herbs could be used to cleanse air. Sage, rosemary, and thyme are also common ingredients used in Four Thieves Vinegar, said to protect a group of thieves from the plague.
The melody was used throughout director Fritz Lang's 1941 film Man Hunt starring Walter Pidgeon, Joan Bennett and George Sanders.
The earliest commercial recording of the ballad was by actor/singers Gordon Heath and Lee Payant, Americans who ran a cafe and nightclub, L'Abbaye, on the Rive Gauche in Paris. They recorded the song on the Elektra album Encores From The Abbaye in 1955.[5][6] Their version used the melody from Frank Kidson's Collection Of Traditional Tunes, published in 1891, which reported it as being "as sung in Whitby streets twenty or thirty years ago" - that is, in about the 1860s.[7]
The song was also included on A. L. Lloyd's 1955 album The English And Scottish Popular Ballads, using Kidson's melody, but the version using the melody later developed by Simon & Garfunkel in "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" was first recorded on a 1956 album, English Folk Songs, by Audrey Coppard.[7][8] It was included by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger on The Singing Island, and then by Shirley Collins in 1959 on the album False True Lovers.[6][7] It is likely that both Coppard and Collins learned it from MacColl, who claimed to have collected it "in part" from a Scottish miner. However, according to Alan Lomax, MacColl's source was probably Cecil Sharp's One Hundred English Folk Songs, published in 1916.[9][10]
| "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Simon & Garfunkel | ||||
| from the album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme | ||||
| Released | February 1968 (Single release. LP release October 10, 1966) | |||
| Format | 7" single | |||
| Recorded | December 1965 - August 1966 |
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| Genre | Folk rock | |||
| Length | 3:10 | |||
| Label | Columbia Records | |||
| Producer | Bob Johnston | |||
| Simon & Garfunkel singles chronology | ||||
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Paul Simon learned the song in London in 1965 from Martin Carthy, who had picked up the tune from the songbook by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. Art Garfunkel then set it in counterpoint with "Canticle", a reworking of Simon's 1963 song "The Side of a Hill" with new, anti-war lyrics. It was the lead track of the 1966 album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, and was released as a single after being featured on the soundtrack to The Graduate in 1968. The copyright credited only Simon and Garfunkel as the authors, causing ill-feeling on the part of Carthy, who felt the "traditional" source should have been credited. This rift remained until Simon invited Carthy to duet the song with him at a London concert in 2000.[6] Simon performed this song with The Muppets when he guest starred on The Muppet Show.
Prior to Simon's learning the song, Bob Dylan had borrowed the melody and several lines from Carthy's arrangement in creating his song, "Girl from the North Country", which appeared on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), Nashville Skyline (1969) (together with Johnny Cash), Real Live (1984) and The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (1993).
| Chart (1968) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Kent Music Report | 49 |
| Irish Singles Chart | 5 |
| UK Singles Chart[11] | 9 |
| US Billboard Hot 100 | 11 |