Help: Possible Yorkshire Ballad?

Subject: Possible Yorkshire Ballad?
From: GUEST,BigDaddy
Date: 29 Nov 01 - 03:23 AM

In Emily Bronte's novel, "Wuthering Heights," there is a scrap of a ballad which goes,

"It was far in the night, and the bairnies grat,
The mither beneath the mools heard that..."

Anyone out there know of such a ballad? A professor of mine once told me that the scholar Bronson had finally determined this to be an invention of the author, and not a true ballad. I have always felt that it was indeed from a ballad, but have never been able to find it. Anyone else out there?

Subject: RE: Help: Possible Yorkshire Ballad?
From: brid widder
Date: 29 Nov 01 - 01:53 PM

I reckom this is another one of Rambling Sid Rumpo's classics!!

Subject: RE: Help: Possible Yorkshire Ballad?
From: Wyrd Sister
Date: 29 Nov 01 - 04:45 PM

Took the very words, Brid!

Subject: RE: Help: Possible Yorkshire Ballad?
From: Marymac90
Date: 29 Nov 01 - 05:24 PM

So what exactly does it mean, that it a a Rambling Sid Rumpo classic?

Marymac

Subject: RE: Help: Possible Yorkshire Ballad?
From: Gareth
Date: 29 Nov 01 - 06:45 PM

Marymac - Its late here in South Wales but briefly "Rambling Sid Rumpo" was a character from that 1960's ??? ( Sorry Memory is going ) BBC Radio comedy show " Round the Horne"

Very close to the knuckle and full of double entendres.

Rumpo - played by Kenneth Williams (a "camp" British Actor) was the resident "Folk Singer" for more CLICK HERE

Gareth

Subject: RE: Help: Possible Yorkshire Ballad?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 17 Sep 08 - 11:40 PM

From The Influence of Byron on Emily Brontë, by Helen Brown in The Modern Language Review, Vol. 34, No. 3 (Jul., 1939), pp. 374-381:

...Unfortunately, we have practically no information as to what Emily read.... The only other clue is the song with which Nelly Dean sings the baby Hareton to sleep:

It was far in the night, and the bairnies grat,
The mither beneath the mools heard that—

These are two lines from a translation of an ancient Danish ballad, which was printed by Scott in the appendix to The Lady of the Lake....

Subject: RE: Help: Possible Yorkshire Ballad?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 12:13 AM

From:

Child, Francis James. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Part IX. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co, 1894, page 203, in the appendix chapter "Fragments":

It was far in the night, and the bairnies grat;
The mither beneath the mools heard that.

sung in Wuthering Heights, ch. 9, has not unnaturally been taken for a relic of a traditional Scottish ballad of a dead mother returning to her abused children. It is, in fact, a stanza (not literally well remembered) from the Danish ballad 'Moderen under Mulde,' Grundtvig, II, 470, No 89, B 11, translated by Jamieson, and given in the notes to the fourth canto of Scott's Lady of the Lake.

A longer excerpt is given in

Tait, William, and C. I. Johnstone. Tait's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol X (1843). Edinburgh: William Tait.

It was far in the night, and the bairnies grat,
Their mither aneath the mools heard that;
The wife stood up at our Lord's knee,
And said, 'O! may I gang my bairnies to see!'
She pleaded sae sair, and she pleaded sae lang,
That he at last gied her leave to gang.
'But see ye come back ere the cock does craw,
For langer ye mauna bide awa.'

Subject: RE: Help: Possible Yorkshire Ballad?
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 02:11 PM

More accessible sources perhaps:-
Prior, Ancient Danish Ballads Vol 1 , p367
Olrik, A Book of Danish Ballads p263
Borrow, Ballads of All Nations p50
Dal/Meyer, Danish Ballads and Folk Songs p43

Subject: RE: Help: Possible Yorkshire Ballad?
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Sep 08 - 08:39 PM

See also thread Help: Seeking old Yorkshire ballad where the same person asked the same question a few days later, having been discouraged by the silly responses he initially got here; and got a whole series of more considered answers, including the Child reference. They degenerated into irrelevant speculation after a while, but the essential information is there. This thread really ought to have been combined with the slightly later one at the time, but there are many such orphans lurking about in this place.