I said I would transcribe the sleeve note for Bold Lovell from Roy Harris's "Champions of Folly" LP, Topic 12TS256, recorded 1974 and released 1975, on which Harris is joined by Martin Carthy (guitar, dulcimer); Bobby Campbell (fiddle, mandola); and Vic Gammon (melodeon, concertina).
The sleeve notes are by the well-known folksinger, the late A. L. Lloyd.
I sent Dick G. a tape of this song, with the hope that he might add a midi of the tune to the database, since I do not yet have that capability. It is not the same tune as Whiskey In The Jar.


BOLD LOVELL

"The theme of this song reminds us of the capture of MacHeath in The Beggar's Opera. Was it suggested by it? Or is the ballad old enough to have put the idea into the head of John Gay who wrote the play in 1728? Sometimes the hero is named Peter or Patrick Fleming, not Lovell. Sir Walter Scott was interested in the song, but he only had a few scraps of it. In 1821 he wrote to his son Cornet Scott at Portobello Barracks, Dublin: 'I wish you would pick up for me the Irish lilt of a tune to Patrick Fleming.'From the bits that Sir Walter quotes, it's clear he had our song in mind. A close cousin is the celebrated Irish highwayman ballad 'Whiskey In The Jar'. Roy Harris learnt it some ten years ago from Mike Herring of Peterborough, who had it from A. L. Lloyd who got it from print ('The New Green Mountain Songster"), and adapted it a bit."

(Some of you may be more familiar with the twentieth century musical adaptation of The Beggar's Opera, "The Threepenny Opera" by Bertold Brecht, from which comes the song Mac The Knife.)