The site referred to above does have a great deal of information, though as the site itself says, it isn't a finished product, and the 'information' could, I feel, be better set out for easy reading and digestion. I'm not sure that the choice of blue for the text was in line with current thinking on 'readability'. That said, it is a great site and a lot of work has evidently gone into providing a resource for enthusiasts.


If I have read the information right then the earliest record of the song 'Lord Lovel' - Child no 75, also referred to above - was provided by one Horace Walpole who was son of a Prime Minister and also a famous author of a novel that was more or less the first in the fashion for gothic novels.

As so often happens when trying to trace the 'history' of something, claims are made, relating to one Dixon, that the song is an ancient one from Northumberland, but the evidence for this claim isn't clear to me, it may just be Dixon's guess on the topic. (NB If you research Dixon he was a member of the Percy Society and produced a collection called Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England. He based his entry for the song in his work on broadsheets, though he claimed to have known the song for some time).


The term 'Dowsabel', used in some versions of the song, is an English form of a French name, which came to mean 'sweetheart' by a process of generalisation. The earliest occurrence for it in the OED is 16th century. The dictionary believes that the name might have been first used in some pastoral song, but again, no evidence for this guess is provided. Our song isn't 'pastoral' but maybe such songs did make use of French derived names. The authors of the dictionary appear to have been conjecturing. However, for present purposes, I note that pastoral songs don't appear to have been written by the lower orders, as is claimed for folk song. I'm not sure how that piece of information about the name, not given on the web site, fits with the theory of an ancient Northumbrian origin for the song.

We are given what might be called a 'historiography' of the song, a summary of what various 'historians' or 'folklorists' have said about it, but not all of this is particularly convincing or well-referenced and exemplified so that one can chase up the source material. An example is the reference on the web site to Dixon's views on the song. I have no idea how reliable Dixon is as a source.

All this aside, I cannot say that I find the song to be an example of 'great art'. It doesn't seem to me to be particularly skilful. Some versions include cliches such as the milk white horse/steed. The story has been much parodied and no wonder due to the double deaths which seem a bit far-fetched. Probably appealed to Walpole's gothic side? Yes it is about a universal theme 'death' but given I know little and care less about the characters it isn't particularly moving on the topic.

Nor does it seem to me to be at all clear that this must have been written by the 'lower orders' or a member of the 'peasantry'.