The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #17306 Message #263267
Posted By: Malcolm Douglas
23-Jul-00 - 09:28 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: The Devil and the Ploughman
Subject: RE: Lyr & Tune add: The Devil And The Plough
From the notes to the Penguin Book (1959):
"The Devil comes to fetch a farmer's wife. The farmer is delighted. But the shrewish woman behaves so abominably in Hell that the Devil is obliged to bring her back again. The song, apparantly common all over the British Isles and frequently recorded in America, seems to embody a very old joke indeed. Perhaps in early forms, the farmer had enlisted the Devil's aid in his ploughing, promising the soul of one of his family in return. Most versions of this song have a whistled refrain, and this is not without sly meaning, for there is an old belief that whistling summons the Devil (hence the sailor's superstition that whistling aboard ship may bring on a storm). Burns re-made a Scottish version of the ballad, and called it The Carle o' Kellyburn Braes. Mrs. Burns, speaking to a scholar of the way in which her husband altered folk songs, remarked: "Robert gae this ane a terrible brushing". Our text is filled out with some verses obtained by Alfred Williams from David Sawyer, of Ogbourne, Wiltshire. (Folk Songs of the Upper Thames, 1923). A Dorset version is given in FSJ vol.III, p.131-2." -R.V.W./A.L.L.
This version was collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams from H. Burstow of Horsham, Sussex, in 1903, and was first published in The Folk Song Journal, vol.II, p.184.
The Old Man under the Hill The Devil and the Farmer's Wife Give eare, my loving countrey-men Old Lady and the Devil The Farmer's Curst Wife Little Devils Randy Riley The Old Woman and the Devil The Farmer and the Devil The Carle o' Killyburn Braes The Battle Axe and the Devil