I'm still wondering where the Steeleye Span version of this song came from. In the Steeleye Span version, the singer is glad to get rid of the lover. Here's the Traditional Ballad Index entry on this song:
All Around My Hat (I)
DESCRIPTION: The singer's true love has been transported; (he) promises that "All around my hat I will wear the green willow... for a twelve month and a day... [for] my true love ... ten thousand miles away." He hopes they can reunite and marry
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1888 (Ashton)
KEYWORDS: love separation transportation
FOUND IN: Britain(England(Lond,South)) Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Kennedy 145, "All Round My Hat" (1 text, 1 tune)
Creighton/Senior, pp. 126-127, "All Round My Hat" (2 fragments, 2 tunes)
Creighton-Maritime, pp. 80-81, "All Around My Hat" (1 text, 1 tune)
Meredith/Covell/Brown, pp. 194-195, "All Round My Hat" (1 tune, presumably this one)
DT, ROUNDHAT*
Roud #567
RECORDINGS:
Neil O'Brien, "All Around My Hat" (on MRHCreighton)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Jolly Miller" (tune)
cf. "The Death of Brugh" (tune)
cf. "Around Her Neck She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (theme)
cf. "The Green Willow" ("All around my hat" lyrics)
SAME TUNE:
The Death of Brush (File: RcTDOB)
NOTES: Kennedy calls this "Perhaps one of the most popular of all English love songs." And this does not even take into account the Steeleye Span recording, said to have gone higher on the British pop charts than any other traditional song. (Don't ask me if that's a compliment.)
But Kennedy also claims this as the same tune as "The Budgeon It Is a Delicate Trade" (for which see under "The Miller of Dee") -- which it is *not*; "The Budgeon" is in the Lydian mode, and his tune for "All Around My Hat" is an ordinary Ionian melody. (Possibly the two were more alike in the original version of Chappell, which was his reference for "The Budgeon"; that edition levelled some modal tunes).
One of Sam Henry's texts, "The Laird's Wedding," mixes this with "The Nobleman's Wedding (The Faultless Bride; The Love Token)" [Laws P31]. There are hints of such mixture in other versions of the two songs. Roud goes so far as to lump them.
Spaeth (A History of Popular Music in America, pp. 83-84) has what is evidently a version of this song, from about 1840 -- in dialect! ("All round my hat, I vears a green villow.") It is credited to J. Ansell (John Hansell) and John Valentine. If this is the actual origin of the chorus, I have to think it merged with some separate love song. But I suspect the Ansell/Valentine piece of being a perversion of an actual folksong.
W. C. Hazlitt's Dictionary of Faiths & Folklore(1905; I use the 1995 Bracken Books edition), p. 621, declares, "To wear the willow long implied a man's being forsaken by his mistress." However, none of the supporting evidence cited by Hazlitt seems very relevant.
Simpson and Roud's A Dictionary of English Folklore, Oxford, 2000, notes a strong association between the willow and sorrow -- commemorated even by the phrase the "weeping willow." They cite Vickery, who noted the association between willows and weeping in the King James Bible translation of Psalm 137:2 (where the exiles from Jerusalem hung their harps on the willows) while noting that Vickery thought these were in fact poplar trees. This is in fact far from certain. The New Revised Standard Version has "willows" in the text, "poplars" in the margin. The Revised English Bible also has "willow trees" in the text, with "poplars" in the margin. Mitchell Dahood in the Anchor Bible renders "poplars" but has "aspens" in his margin.
The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, article on "Willow," observes that willows and poplars are fairly closely related, and both grow by watercourses. There are two Hebrew words which might be translated "willow"; one is found only in Ezekiel 17:5, the other in Leviticus 23:40, Job 40:22, Psalm 137:2, Isaiah 15:7, 44:4. My guess is, the KJV rendered "willows" based on Jerome's Vulgate Latin, which implies that the meaning "willow" goes back at least to the fourth century. "Willow" is also the rendering used by the LXX Greek, which puts us back to at least the first century B.C.E., although the unknown translator of LXX wasn't nearly the Hebrew scholar that Jerome was.
Of course, what people knew was the King James translation; the actual meaning of the word hardly matters. - RBW
In view of the broadside parodies listed below I am surprised not to find (yet) any broadsides for "All Around My Hat."
Bodleian, Harding B 11(38), "All Around My Hat I'll Wear the Green Willow" ("All round my hat I vears a green villow ..."), J. Pitts (London), 1797-1834; also Firth b.27(536), "All Around My Hat I Wear a Green Willow"; Harding B 16(5a), Firth c.21(60), Firth c.21(62), Harding B 20(2), Harding B 11(40), "All Round My Hat"
LOCSinging, as200070, "All Round My Hat," J. Andrews (New York), 1853-1859; also cw100090, as100150, "All Round My Hat"
Broadside LOCSinging as200070: J. Andrews dating per Studying Nineteenth-Century Popular Song by Paul Charosh in American Music, Winter 1997, Vol 15.4, Table 1, available at FindArticles site. - BS
Last updated in version 2.5
File: K145
Green Willow, The
DESCRIPTION: Phoebe accuses William. "She said he had deceived her" Usual "All Around My Hat" complaints. She fears dying a maiden. William claims his deception "was only to try if you were true" They marry and live happily as an example for young lovers.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1953 (Creighton-Maritime)
KEYWORDS: love marriage lie
FOUND IN: Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Creighton-Maritime, p. 81, "All Around My Hat" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #567
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(1432), "The Green Willow," J. Catnach (London), 1813-1838; also Firth c.18(133), Harding B 11(1433), "The Green Willow"
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "All Around My Hat" ("All around my hat" lyrics)
NOTES: Creighton-Maritime pp. 80-81 words fit "All Around My Hat" but the tune is not the standard tune. On the other hand, Creighton-Maritime p. 81 has the standard "All Around My Hat" tune but, what seems to me to be, a different theme.
Broadside Harding B 11(1432) matches Creighton-Maritime p. 81 but replaces the line "But since it is my fortune that I must Marry an old man" with "But since 'tis my misfortune that I must die a maiden." The description for "The Green Willow" is from a more complete but undated broadside Bodleian Firth c.18(133). - BS
File: CrMa081
Nobleman's Wedding, The (The Faultless Bride; The Love Token) [Laws P31]
DESCRIPTION: A man disguises himself to attend the wedding of the girl he loved before he went away. He sings a song that reminds her of her unfaithfulness and promises to return her love token. She swoons and returns to her mother's home. She dies before morning
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1855 (Petrie)
KEYWORDS: disguise wedding infidelity death grief hardheartedness jealousy love marriage
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South),Scotland(Aber)) US(MA,MW,NE,SE,So) Canada(Mar,Newf) Ireland
REFERENCES (16 citations):
Laws P31, "The Nobleman's Wedding (The Faultless Bride; The Love Token)"
Belden, pp. 165-166, "The Faultless Bride" (1 text)
SharpAp 105, "The Awful Wedding" (1 text, 1 tune)
SHenry H60a, pp. 400-401, "An Old Lover's Wedding"; H60b, p. 401, "The Laird's Wedding" (2 texts, 2 tune, the second mixed with "All Around My Hat")
Greig #24, pp. 1-2, "The Orange and Blue" (1 text)
GreigDuncan6 1199, "Down in Yon Valley" (24 texts, 14 tunes)
Ord, pp. 132-133, "The Unconstant Lover" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kennedy 164, "The Nobleman's Wedding" (1 text, 1 tune)
Butterworth/Dawney, p. 4, "All Around My Hat" (1 text, 1 tune)
McBride 1, "Another Man's Wedding" (1 text, 1 tune)
Creighton/Senior, pp. 158-159, "Green Willow" (1 text, probably this piece though not so listed by Laws)
Greenleaf/Mansfield 75, "The Nobleman's Wedding" (1 text, 1 tune)
Peacock, pp. 691-697, "Nobleman's Wedding" (4 texts, 3 tunes)
Karpeles-Newfoundland 30, "The Nobleman's Wedding" (1 text, 1 tune)
Darling-NAS, pp. 142-143, "To Wear a Green Willow" (1 text)
DT 509, NOBELWED
ST LP31 (Partial)
Roud #567
RECORDINGS:
Eddie Butcher, "Another Man's Wedding" (on Voice06, IREButcher01)
Sara Cleveland, "To Wear a Green Willow" (on SCleveland01)
Maude Thacker, "The Famous Wedding" (on FolkVisions1 -- a very confused version)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Green Willow Tree
The Forsaken Lover
The Inconstant Lover
The False Bride
NOTES: According to Hazlitt's Dictionary of Faiths & Folklore, to wear the willow meant that one had been forsaken by a lover.
Norman Ault's Elizabethan Lyrics claims that the first mention of wearing green willow comes in a poem by John Heywood (1497?-1580?): "All a green willow, willow, willow, All a green willow is my garland." The manuscript, BM Add. 15233, is dated c. 1545. We also find the notion in Shakespeare's "Othello," IV.iii, and in Salisbury's "Buen Matina" (1597).
Roud lumps this with "All Around My Hat." That's *really* a stretch. - RBW
The "Awful Wedding" subgroup ("I'll tell you of an awful wedding"), despite the similarity in titles, is *not* "The Fatal Wedding." - PJS, RBW
Last updated in version 2.5
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