Origins: Andrew Bardeen

Subject: Lyr Req: Andrew Bardeen
From: GUEST,Jane
Date: 03 May 10 - 06:16 AM

Hi All,
I'm looking for the lyrics to a version of Andrew Bardeen (ballad of Andrew Barton? of possibly a verson of Henry Martyn)

The first verse I have is:

There were three brothers in old Scotland
Three loving brothrers was they
They all cast lots to see who should go
a robbin' all o'er the salt sea.

If anyone knows the source of this version or has the rest of the lyrics I'd be glad to get them.

The tune I have is a phrygian one...not in my shortened version of Bronson.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Andrew Bardeen
From: Susan of DT
Date: 03 May 10 - 06:49 AM

Here are several versions of Andrew Barton and Henry Martin from the Digital Tradition.


Andrew Barton
Andy Bardan
Andrew Barton 2
Henry Martin

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Andrew Bardeen
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 03 May 10 - 06:52 AM

Looking at my Roud index, the Andrew Bardeen title seems to be on American versions: Randolph's Ozark Folk Songs, Flanders' Country Songs of Vermont and Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung In New England and Moore's Ballads and Folksongs of the Southwest seem to be the sources for printed versions.

Here's the Randolph version from Bronson. The tune is Phrygian (or as Bronson puts it Phrygian (-VII) if on E, Ionian (-II) if on C). I'll post the tune in a while and you can see if it's your tune.

Mick

---

ANDREW BARDEEN

There was three brothers in old Scotland,
Three lovin' brothers was they,
They all cast lots to see who should go
A-robbin' all o'er the salt sea.

The lot it fell to Andrew Bardeen,
He being the youngest of three,
Was forced to go robbing all o'er the salt sea
To maintain his two brothers and he.

He had not sailed more than a week in the year,
When a ship he did espy,
Come sailing so far off and so far on
Till at last it come sailing so high.

Who are you? Who are you? cries Andrew Bardeen,
Who are you? And where are you bound?
We're the merry rich merchants from old England,
Won't you please for to let us pass on?

Oh no, oh no, cries Andrew Bardeen,
Oh no, that never can be.
Your ship and your cargo we'll take all away
And your merry men we'll drown in the sea.

Go build me a boat, cries Captain Charles Stuart,
Go build it both safe and strong,
That I may go capture this king of the sea,
Or my life it will not last me long.

He had not sailed more than a week in the year,
When a ship he did espy,
Come sailing so far off and so far on
Till at last it come sailing so high.

Who are you? Who are you? cries Captain Charles Stuart,
Who are you? And where are you bound?
We're the merry Scotch robbers from old Scotland,
Won't you please for to let us pass on?

Oh no, oh no, cries Captain Charles Stuart,
Oh no, that never can be,
Your ship and your cargo we'll take all away
And your merry men we'll drown in the sea.

Come on, come on, cries Andrew Bardeen,
'Tis I that don't fear you a pin,
'Tis you that can show your bright brasses without,
But we'll show you bright steel within.

'Twas at that moment the battle began,
And loudly the cannon did roar,
They had not fought more than a last and a half,
Till Captain Charles Stuart gave o'er.

Go back, go back, cries Andrew Bardeen,
And tell King George Third for me,
that he may be king of the whole wide land,
But I will be king of the sea.


Source: Bronson, originally from Randolph, 1946 from Bruce Evans, Rogersville, Mo, April 19, 1934.

Subject: Tune Add: ANDREW BARDEEN
From: Mick Pearce (MCP)
Date: 03 May 10 - 10:32 AM

Here's the tune from Bronson. The tune there does not have lyrics under the notes, but the first verse seems to fit as is.

Mick

---

X:1
T:Andrew Bardeen
S:Bronson from Randolph from Bruce Evans, Rogersville, Mo, April 19, 1934
B:Bronson - Traditional Tunes of The Child Ballads; Randolph - Ozark Folk Songs
L:1/4
M:4/4
K:E Phr
E|c c E/G/B/A/|E E2
w:There was three broth-ers in old Scot-land,
E|c c A/B/ B|G2 z
w:Three lov-in' broth-ers was they,
G|c c E> G|G A/A/ B>
w:They all cast lots to see who should go
B|G E A/ A G/|F E2|]
w:A-rob-bin' all o'er the salt sea.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Andrew Bardeen
From: GUEST,Lanidrax (Jerry Houck, Coos Bay, OR; Dec 20
Date: 19 Dec 23 - 04:40 PM

The "Ballad of Andrew Bardeen" was told to me as a child back in the '50s by my Grandmother who was born in the late 1800s. And it was told to her by her mother at least. My siblings and I had forgotten the words as we are now in our later years and our father, who also knew the ballad, passed away in 1989. My grandmother, Alice Horton Houck, traced her ancestry back to the French and Indian wars in Eastern Canada so there is a possibility that the ballad was handed down from those times although I can't be sure. It is nice to come across the words again and I will share them with my sibs as they will be greatful to hear once more the ballad and the memories it will bring back of sitting around listening to our beloved Grandma tell the story of "Andrew Bardeen"!   Thank you, Jerry Houck

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Andrew Bardeen
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 20 Dec 23 - 04:06 PM

Jerry, that's very interesting. It would be very useful to researchers and collectors here if you could post what you can remember of your grandmother's version.

The existence in America of these Andrew Bardeen versions creates a very interesting conundrum. The text is very obviously a version of Henry Martin and yet the title harks back to the much earlier separate ballad of Sir Andrew Barton. The 2 ballads tell of separate incidents in the life of Barton, HM being about his early days and how he came to be attacking English vessels, and the old longer ballad tells of his demise.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Andrew Bardeen
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 20 Dec 23 - 05:47 PM

Steve Gardham wrote of the relationship between "Andrew Bardeen" and "Henry Martin." I think it's worth emphasizing that the ballad of Andrew Barton is historical. The following is based on Jackie Cosh, The King with the Iron Belt: The Life of King James IV of Scotland, JC Publications, 2018:

Scotland's King James IV (died 1513) "set out to build a navy that would impress," though he was short of money, and Scotland was not noted for ship-building; he ended up purchasing ships abroad. Fortunately, he "had able captains, including John Barton and his three sons Robert, John, and Andrew." James actually bought half-ownership of a ship from Robert Barton, and Barton also organized supplied for James's ship-building efforts (Cosh, p. 48). John Barton Jr. captained some of these ships. Andrew was a recipient of lands in Fife (Cosh, pp. 48-49).

Originally Andrew Barton fought the Portuguese, not the English, after the Portuguese had attacked John Barton's ships. So James IV gave him a letter of marque to fight the Portuguese in 1507 -- only to suspend it in 1510 when Andrew got mixed up with what sounds like a mixed Portuguese/English fleet. The Bretons were also after him, so he and Robert Barton went to Denmark for a while (Cosh, pp. 49).

The problem was that Andrew Barton seems to have enjoyed being a pirate; he refused to stop his activities. So, when Lord Edward Howard encountered Barton and his two ships the Lion and the Jennet of Purwyn, Howard attacked, winning the battle, killing Barton, and capturing most of his men (Cosh, pp. 49-50).

It should be noted that England and Scotland were officially at peace at this time; James IV had married Henry VIII's sister Margaret Tudor. The peace wouldn't last much longer. This makes it hard to determine Barton's true status. In a legal sense, he was probably a pirate, in that he attacked the commerce of a friendly power, but he was also an officer of James's navy. Barton himself was dead, but the status of his surviving crew probably should have depended on James's response to Henry's complaints about the attack.

Additional information about Barton can be found in Child. As for Edward Howard, note that his father Surrey was the man who, two years later, fought and won the Battle of Flodden (and was given back his Dukedom of Norfolk as a reward). The Lord Howard who led the English fleet against the Spanish Armada was also a member of this family.

I really would consider "Henry Martin" to be "Andrew Barton"; it retains all the actual facts of "Andrew Barton," including the three brothers in Scotland and the fact that Andrew was the one most engaged in piracy. Child was confused by the versions he had found: the "Andrew Barton" versions were long and detailed; the "Henry Martin" versions, apart from changing the name in a way that is easily understood as an error of hearing, were shorter and simpler. But we have a lot more versions now. There simply isn't a dividing line, though it does seem as if the change to "Henry Martin" took place in a version that had gotten shorter and simpler.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Andrew Bardeen
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 Dec 23 - 02:58 PM

Hi Bob,
If it is the case that a substantial number of versions of the shorter ballad have significant crossover with the old ballad, then a detailed study is needed. Is it possible that some versions of HM have been deliberately crossed with SAB within the last 2 and a half centuries? There are plenty of examples of mixing of ballads by, shall we say, literate people, and then those mixtures have gone into oral tradition. Scottish versions of The Cruel Mother spring to mind, having been deliberately added to from The Maid and the Palmer.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Andrew Bardeen
From: Robert B. Waltz
Date: 21 Dec 23 - 03:43 PM

Steve Gardham wrote: If it is the case that a substantial number of versions of the shorter ballad have significant crossover with the old ballad, then a detailed study is needed. Is it possible that some versions of HM have been deliberately crossed with SAB within the last 2 and a half centuries? There are plenty of examples of mixing of ballads by, shall we say, literate people, and then those mixtures have gone into oral tradition.

It's perhaps worth noting that Steve Roud agrees with me; he lists both AB and HM as #104, and lists the versions with BOTH Child numbers.

Which is not to disagree with you. The two versions did not diverge enough to become separate songs (IMHO), but they did diverge enough that different versions could cross-fertilize.

Sorting it out, though, would take somebody doing a major collation project. Bronson, e.g., has 62 versions of the two collectively, and there are 288 items in the Roud Index. Some of those are non-meaningful (e.g. the two citations of the Ballad Index), and some are duplicates, but I did my best to count the different informants cited by Steve R. (not easy, because different books may call an informant by a different name), and got 111 different informants plus the anonymous ones. Some of the informants (e.g. Sam Larner) actually knew multiple versions. So I suspect we have 125-150 different texts to deal with. That's going to need somebody willing to do a substantial paper to figure it out. I have the background (I'm the one folk song scholar, these days, who understands stemmatics :-), but I don't have the time!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Andrew Bardeen
From: Steve Gardham
Date: 21 Dec 23 - 05:53 PM

Hmmm, something I would like to have a go at, but a preliminary study of just the crossover stanzas wouldn't take an enormous effort. I'll have a look after Christmas. I don't remember seeing any crossover in British versions.