Hi Steve,

Which brings us to the master of illusion- Sabine Baring Gould who sent the following version to Child which Sabine claimed was acted out almost like a mummers play by a girl and boy acting out the parts of the maid and her dead lover: From Sabine Baring-Gould Manuscript Collection (SBG/2/3/26).

This bizarre composite version was sent to Child by Baring Gould about 1890 and was faithfully printed by Child in Additions and Corrections with the following note:

Communicated by the Rev. S. Baring-Gould. "From the north of Cornwall, near Camelford. This used to be sung as a sort of game in farm-houses, between a young man who went outside the room and a girl who sat on the settle or a chair, and a sort of chorus of farm lads and lasses. Now quite discontinued." The dead lover represents the auld man.

What Baring-Gould failed to mention to Child that it was actually three versions and the first version (stanzas 1-4 and 15) was from a different song!!! Somehow Baring Gould wed these songs together to form a spectral version of the Elfin Knight as a play starring the maid riddling with her dead lover who was impersonating the "auld man," the Devil or a demon spirit (some details follow). I assume the girl's dead lover, then asked the girl to perform the impossible tasks such as making a cambric sark-- while he circled around her chair, chanting the tasks as a ghost from the other world!!!

Yes fact is stranger than fiction! David Atkinson reports that stanzas 6-14 were from Philip Symons of Jascobstowe, 1889 and another informant. These verses are Child 2, the other verses 1-4 and 15 are from Cornwall- which were acted out. Baring Gould writes that he didn't trust verses 1-4.

However, in his MS Baring Gould wrote out a connecting stanza (the missing 5th stanza) and one for 16. So that somehow the two dissimilar ballads could be wed. Since Baring-Gould never had versions with missing stanzas- he always filled them in himself- it added a degree of authenticity to the version (in his MS the missing stanzas are, of course, filled in).

Gilchrist in 1930 JFSS reports: Mr. Baring Gould (see his note on this song in Songs of the West) was informed that this ballad used to be sung in Cornwall as a dialogue between a young man and a girl. This dialogue may have begun abruptly, as in the Gammer Gurton's Garland (1810) version: "Can you make me a cambric shirt?" The young man left the room, to re-enter it in the character of the ghost of a dead lover, the girl remaining seated. Her spectral visitant sets her the impossible tasks rehearsed in the first part of the song, and but for her resourcefulness in countering his demands would, so it was understood, have claimed her and carried her off. So it would seem that where the meaning of the dialogue was still remembered the menacing and malevolent had their part in it.

Baring Gould wrote: The following was sent to me from Cornwall — but I somewhat mistrust its genuineness in its present form. It was sent along with the "Tasks." I heard the "Tasks" from both a man of Jacobstow, & from another at Mawgan — but neither knew this former portion. Nevertheless, it may have some basis, though perhaps touched up.

The Lover's Tasks- North of Cornwall: Camelford c. 1890. Sabine Baring-Gould Manuscript Collection (SBG/5/49)

1 A fair pretty maiden she sat on her bed,
The wind is blowing in forest and town
She sighed and she said, O my love he is dead!
And the wind it shaketh the acorns down

2 The maiden she sighed; 'I would,' said she,
'That again my lover might be with me!'

3 Before ever a word the maid she spake,
But she for fear did shiver and shake.

4 There stood at her side her lover dead;
'Take me by the hand, sweet love,' he said.

5. . . . . .
. . . . .

6 'Thou must buy me, my lady, a cambric shirt,
Whilst every grove rings with a merry antine
And stitch it without any needlework.
O and thus shalt thou be a true love of mine

7 'And thou must wash it in yonder well,
Whilst, etc.
Where never a drop of water in fell.
O and thus, etc.

8 'And thou must hang it upon a white thorn
That never has blossomed since Adam was born.

9 'And when that these tasks are finished and done
I'll take thee and marry thee under the sun.'

10 'Before ever I do these two and three,
I will set of tasks as many to thee.

11 'Thou must buy for me an acre of land
Between the salt ocean and the yellow sand.

12 'Thou must plough it o'er with a horse's horn,
And sow it over with one peppercorn.

13 'Thou must reap it too with a piece of leather,
And bind it up with a peacock's feather.

14 'And when that these tasks are finished and done,
O then will I marry thee under the sun.'

15 'Now thou hast answered me well,' he said,
The wind, etc.
'Or thou must have gone away with the dead.'
And the wind, etc.

16. . . . . .
. . . . .

* * * *

Richie