The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #125951   Message #2929820
Posted By: Tannywheeler
17-Jun-10 - 09:38 AM
Thread Name: Taking on the Big Boys? - classic big long ballads
Subject: RE: Taking on the Big Boys? - classic big long ballads
Many years ago my mother, Hally Wood, was engaged in research & found several sources for a ballad called "Tam Lin". Scottish. She told me she once put out a stopwatch & sang all the way through the verses she had corralled & it was 17 minutes of story!! In fact, there exists a recording of a session of her trying to commit this story to tape. But it was an informal session which involved repeats of verses which she felt were less than perfect 1st time thru. It would require serious editting to extract the best presentation of each verse. & probably 1st transferring the whole thing from tape to something else. The verse that intrigues me is about our heroine, the Fair Janet. She "girds her kirtle aboon her knee, & breeds her yellow hair aboon her bree, & hies off..." from point A to point B 5 times in this thing. Probably on horseback. Get out of the road...Tw