Continuing my folklore research, as noted in the previous thread BS: Fine Art Resources, I encountered a painting, The Magic Mantle by artist Isobel Lilian Gloag that was accompanied by notes that included what might be someone's version of a traditional folk song.

As the art site "went down for maintenance" a few minutes ago, it seemed appropriate to come back home to mudcat while waiting to continue my "research." Note that the above link to the painting probably won't work until the site is back on line, but is expected to be good when they return.

The painting is described as:

The Magic Mantle,
Also known as The Enchanted Cloak.
Artist: Isobel Lilian Gloag
Painting Date: 1898
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 153 x 200 cm
Location: Unknown

The notes refer to a traditional ballad from Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry 1765. A DT/Forum search for "Mantle" shows that the "BOY AND THE MANTLE" as given by Percy has been entered in the DT, and is much longer (and considerably less comprehensible) than the short verses given with the painting.

Perhaps someone would be interested in the simpler lyric here as an "alternate" to the "Olde Englyshe" version.

Notes accompanying the painting, reformatted but otherwise verbatim:


A little boy came to the court of King Arthur with a magic mantle, which no wife could wear who was not true to her lord

The subject is taken not from the Morte d'Arthur but from 'The Boy and the Mantle', a traditional ballad published in Bishop Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765). This describes how 'a strange and cunning boy' appeared at King Arthur's court of Camelot at Carlisle (other contenders for the location of Camelot are Tintagel, Caerleon and Cadbury Hill) one Christmas with a mantle 'of wondrous shape and hew'. No woman, he claimed, who had been unfaithful to her husband could wear it without it shrivelling and leaved her naked. Queen Guinevere was the first to don it, with predictable consequences:

And first came Lady Guenever, The mantle she must trye,
This dame, she was new-fangled, And of a roving eye.

When she had tane the mantle, And all was with it cladde,
From top to toe it shiver'd down, As tho' with sheers beshradde.

One while it was too long, Another while too short,
And wrinkled on her shoulders In most unseemly sort.

Now green, now red it seemed, Then all of sable hue,
'Beshrew me,' quoth King Arthur, 'I think thou beest not true,'

Down she threw the mantle, Ne longer would not stay;
But, storming like a fury, To her chamber flung away.

She curst the whoreson weaver, That had the mantle wrought;
And doubly curst the froward impe, Who thither had it brought.


John