The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #108389   Message #2257387
Posted By: Nerd
08-Feb-08 - 09:38 PM
Thread Name: Folklore: supernatural gone from american songs
Subject: RE: Folklore: supernatural gone from american son
Art, Tam Lin barely survived in Britain. There have been a very few versions collected from oral tradition in Scotland and Northern Ireland...none, I think, in England (though I may be wrong) and none in the US.

A.L. Lloyd wrote of it:

"It was thought to have disappeared from tradition but of recent years a number of versions, mostly fragmentary, have turned up among country singers, particularly Scottish travelling people. I cobbled this set together, in part from Child, in part from recent collection; the tune is derived from one used for this ballad by travellers. Many consider it the best of all English-language ballad stories."

Pretty much everyone who records this takes either A.L. Lloyd's adaptation or Fairport's as the starting place, though some groups have started to go directly to the Child books to come up with something more unusual.

Wimberly is a fun book, isn't it?