The Cruel Mother

"The Cruel Mother" (a.k.a. "The Greenwood Side") (Child 20, Roud 9) is a murder ballad.[1]

Contents

Synopsis

A woman gives birth to one or two illegitimate children (usually sons) in the woods, kills them, and buries them. On her return trip home, she sees a child, or children, playing, and says that if they were hers, she would dress them in various fine garments and otherwise take care of them. The children tell her that when they were hers, she did not dress them so but murdered them. Frequently they say she will be damned for it.

Some variants open with the account that she has fallen in love with her father's clerk.

Variants

This ballad exists in a number of variants; one contains a number of verses that appear to stem from "The Maid and the Palmer".[2] A closely related German ballad exists in many variants: a child comes to a woman's wedding to announce himself her child and that she had murdered three children, the woman says the Devil can carry her off if it is true, and the Devil appears to do so.[3] Variants include "Carlisle Hall", "The Rose o Malinde", "Fine Flowers in the Valley", "The Minister's Daughter of New York", and "The Lady From Lee", among others. "Fine Flowers of the Valley" is a Scottish variant.

Ballad scholar Hyder Rollins listed a broadside print dated 1638, and a fairly complete version was published in London in broadside ballad format as "The Duke's Daughter's Cruelty: Or the Wonderful Apparition of two Infants whom she Murther'd and Buried in a Forrest, for to hide her Shame" sometime between 1684-1695.[4]

This ballad was one of 25 traditional works included in Ballads Weird and Wonderful (1912) and illustrated by Vernon Hill (sculptor).

Recordings

Album/Single Performer Year Variant Notes
False True Lovers Shirley Collins 1959 The Cruel Mother .
The Judy Collins Concert Judy Collins 1964 The Cruel Mother .
The Long Harvest, Vol. 1 Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger 1967 see note Album contains three versions of The Cruel Mother, one variant called "Down By the Greenwood Sidey-O", and another called "The Lady From Lee".
Joan Joan Baez 1967 The Greenwood Side .
A Beacon from Mars Kaleidoscope 1968 The Greenwood Side .
Landfall Martin Carthy 1972 The Cruel Mother .
Flesh and Blood Maddy Prior 1997 The Cruel Mother .
Live at Newport Ian & Sylvia 1996 The Greenwood Side Recorded live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963.
Songs Of Experience Cindy Mangsen 1998 The Cruel Mother .
No Earthly Man Alasdair Roberts 2005 The Cruel Mother .
Wolverley Summer of Love 2007 Stuart Estell 2007 The Cruel Mother .
To The Ground Kerfuffle 2006 Down By The Greenwood Side .
In The Shadow of Mountians Bella Hardy 2009 Cruel Mother Miss Hardy omits 'The' from the title but it is nonetheless a variant of the folk song.
Lady Diamond Bryony Griffith & Will Hampson 2011 The Lady of York From the singing of Jim Eldon.

See also

References

  1. ^ Francis James Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, "The Cruel Mother"
  2. ^ Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, v 1, p 218, Dover Publications, New York 1965
  3. ^ Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, v 1, p 219, Dover Publications, New York 1965
  4. ^ Cazden, Norman, Herbert Haufrechtt, and Norman Studer. Folksongs of the Catskills. Albany: SUNY Press, 1982. 251-252. Print.

External links