The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #66006 Message #1092007
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
13-Jan-04 - 01:54 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: june tabor's Young Allan (Child 245)
Subject: RE: Lyr Req: june tabor's young allan
Of the DT texts, the first is relevant here. The second acknowledges no source of any kind, but it is the text that James Duncan (The Greig-Duncan Folk Song Collection, II, 1983, no. 326R) got from Mrs Margaret Gillespie, without a tune. The DT midi provided belongs to a different version (Miraladen (326B), which Gavin Greig got from Mrs Thain, 1908). The DT mentions a "missing verse", which requires some amplification; so I quote from Greig-Duncan, II, p.578: "Mrs Gillespie adds a note at the end: 'There should be another verse, stating that he drowned him, instead of giving him his daughter. Perhaps you will find it some-where else.' Duncan comments: 'Mrs Gillespie never heard such a verse, however; she was only told that it existed. William [Duncan] says that this specified additional verse is a mistake between this ballad and the sinking of the 'French Gallee'."
June Tabor's arrangement of the song (and it would not be a bad idea to name the recording on which it appears; we are not all fans) is an anglicised collation, so far as I can see, made of bits from the various texts in Child; including his example C (The first DT file) and A.