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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Jim Carroll Date: 24 Jul 15 - 11:39 AM "Joseph Ritson, Frederick Furnivall, William Chappell, Robert Chambers, not many admittedly" Sorry - missed this Steve Better start piling the books in the back garden while it's not raining Why do these threads inevitably end up as knocking sites for the long -dead? We have Buchan the faker, and Walkwer the ignoramous, and Keith, who's in Walkers pocket. WE seem to be on;y left with a precious few modern genuises. Sorry, thought Dave Harker and his hit-list had exited, stage left a long time ago! Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Steve Gardham Date: 24 Jul 15 - 04:07 PM On the contrary, Jim, the only academic criticisms I've seen of Harker's work are Chris Bearman on his treatment of Sharp and the unnecessary political slant Dave put on the motives of the fakers which spoiled what would have been a very well-researched book. The problem with the antiquarians is not so much what they published, as they had to tailor this to sell their books, but the fact that most of them later admitted their tampering and imitating being passed off as straight from oral tradition. The problem we have now is caused by them not telling us which ones they tampered with and how heavily. In Peter Buchan's case it is obviously very heavily. Bert Lloyd isn't that long dead, nor Niles. The faking tradition is probably as long and vigorous as the oral tradition. Some of us are truth seekers, not romantics, and we're entitled to add in what we know. Not criticising the long-dead is a silly idea. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Jim Carroll Date: 26 Jul 15 - 05:38 AM "The faking tradition is probably as long and vigorous as the oral tradition." Hoiow can you fake something is a situation where ethics and standards don't exist? They published as they saw fit - that is not faking, nor does it carry any burden of the blame that is all too common in these threads, "dishonest", "faker", "counterfeit" et al. As incomplete as these collections are, they are all we have as links to past traditions and should be treasured as such and not denigrated as they are all too often here. As for Harker - criticism of him and his hit list was so extreme that he refused to accept speaking appointments at conferences - I was there when he said so. One of the main problems with understanding the tradition is that we have no significant input from our source singers - they've never been considered as having anything important to say. Th is has led to the situation where modern researchers and academics can float their own theories, however outlandish. One of the most disturbing is that singers had no part i the making of the songs, but were passive recipients - as of pop songs (as somebody once said) That was the point when I decided to stay away from these knocking sessions. Sorry - can't continue this - off for a few days. Last minute thought on my part Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Richard Mellish Date: 26 Jul 15 - 05:00 PM I'm with Steve here. As with Lloyd, much discussed on other threads, so with some of those older collectors. There's nothing at all wrong with anyone making what they consider to be improvements in a song before publishing it or performing it. Very often, though not always, the song really is improved. And anyway, whether the modified version is better or worse will be partly a matter of taste. What is rightly objected to is that they sometimes told lies about the songs' provenance. "Collected from Mr A B" or "learnt as a child from a nurse" or whatever, when in fact they have significantly changed whatever they initially collected, or indeed in some instances Mr A B never existed at all as far as anyone can tell. Going back to Lamkin: it seems plausible that the earliest versions gave no motive and that someone added the unpaid mason idea, WITHOUT admitting to doing so, though without telling any explicit lies about it either. We can surmise about whether this happened and if so who did it, but we're unlikely ever to know for sure. And whether the story is better with that motive, some other motive, or no motive is a matter of taste. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: GUEST,Anne Neilson Date: 26 Jul 15 - 06:04 PM I'm with Jim and his disquiet at the theory that singers brought nothing to the material but were merely passive recipients, and I like Jon Bartlett's reminder of another theory that there was such a thing as a 'rationaliser' singer -- which chimes with some interpretations of Anna Brown and her contributions to the ballad canon. I've been singing ballads since the late 1950s and have always found that a completed back-story (often only in my own mind) was essential for a committed performance. I've been singing 'Lamkin' from around the late 1970s and the text I had was basically the Jamieson one with explicit mention of the mason not being paid but some omissions (mention of the lord sailing away and his warning, the whereabouts of the other servants etc.): but I was most taken by the unexplained hatred of the maid for the mistress, and found that I needed some way of making this real in performance -- so, for me, the lines that clinched it were 'What better is the heart's blood / O' the rich than o' the poor?', which became the pivot of the whole plot even to the point of suggesting to me that the nurse worked on Lamkin and poured her bile into his ear, working him up to do the deed. I personally can't imagine a ballad singer persuading an audience unless (s)he has a clear notion of what the full story "might" be. And, of course, there may be as many back stories as there are singers! |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Brian Peters Date: 27 Jul 15 - 07:33 AM "the only academic criticisms I've seen of Harker's work are Chris Bearman on his treatment of Sharp..." Well, stuff like Harker's unsubstantiated suggestion that Louie Hooper and Lucy White's mother might have been a broadside seller, turning into a 'fact' just a few pages later, doesn't encourage confidence in the work as a whole. Ironic, since he accused Sharp of making exactly that kind of leap from speculation to certitude. "The problem with the antiquarians is not so much what they published, as they had to tailor this to sell their books..." I don't have a copy of Harker to hand (so correct me if I'm wrong), but as far as I can remember he didn't raise suspicions about the texts that people like Scott and Motherwell had in their manuscripts, as opposed to their published material. Is there a comprehensive published account of the extent of the 'fakery' we hear so much about? |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: GUEST,leeneia Date: 27 Jul 15 - 10:15 AM To get back to the OP: Richie, here's the beginning of Version 93A 93A.1 IT'S Lamkin was a mason good As ever built wi stane; He built Lord Wearie's castle, But payment got he nane. 93A.2 'O pay me, Lord Wearie, come, pay me my fee:' 'I canna pay you, Lamkin, For I maun gang oer the sea.' 93A.3 'O pay me now, Lord Wearie, Come, pay me out o hand:' 'I canna pay you, Lamkin, Unless I sell my land.' No doubt your reference to 'paint' came from somebody's misunderstanding of 'payment.' Note the lameness of the Lord's excuses: So he maun gang o'er the sea. Doesn't he have a factor who can see to paying Lamkin? So he has to sell his land? Well, he probably doesn't have to sell all of it, does he? Alas, the excuses and evasions will never end. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: GUEST,leeneia Date: 27 Jul 15 - 10:16 AM that was from: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch093.htm |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Jon Bartlett Date: 02 Aug 15 - 12:18 AM The point I wanted to make was that the earliest set in print (Child's K) comes in 1775 from a Kentish churchman to Bishop Percy. Its first verse is: My lord said to my lady When he went from home Take care of Long Longkin He lies in the lone. Only one of the Scottish sources follows this incipit - Child's D, from Maidment and ultimately from a ms. copy from oral tradition. All the other sources Child quotes are English F (from Notes & Queries, Northumberland and Northamptonshire); G (Richardson, from Northumberland)and U (Allingham, from Ireland). All the other Scottish sets (A (Jamieson, from Mrs. Brown), B Motherwell's Ms from a Kilbarchan recitation; C (Motherwell again, also from a Kilbarchan recitation); E (Kinloch Mss.); H (Kinloch again; I (Skene Mss); J (Kinloch again); N (Robertson); P (Herd Mss.); Q (Finlay's Scottish Ballads); and S (Motherwell) speak of a mason. It looks like we have two distinct versions of the song. It isn't that the English sets have lost the mason - it's clearly that the Scottish sets ADD the mason. This might be the work of Annie Brown (whose set is the only one with the magnificent There need nae basin, Lamkin, lat it run through the floor; What better is the heart's blood o the rich than o the poor?) What indeed? Jon Bartlett |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Jim Brown Date: 02 Aug 15 - 04:59 AM > This might be the work of Annie Brown... The problem with this is that the opening stanza about the unpaid mason was published by David Herd in 1776 (see Child 93P). That's about seven years before Mrs Brown's first ballad manuscripts were written, and at least 24 years before she gave Robert Jamieson her version of Lambkin (which isn't in any of her surviving manuscripts). Sigrid Rieuwerts reproduces a letter from Mrs Brown to Jamieson in September 1800, in which she says: "as to the fragment of Lamekin upon reading over the edition of it that is in herds Collection I find that mine differs from it very materially tho the story must certainly have been the same. If you wish to have my way of it I shall send it." (The Ballad Repertoire of Anna Gordon, Mrs Brown of Falkland, p. 47) So it seems clear that she had read Herd's version before she wrote down her own for Jamieson. (Whether she actually independently knew another version with a similar opening or created her own version influenced what she found in Herd is, of course, another question.) |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Jim Brown Date: 02 Aug 15 - 07:35 AM Next question: if Mrs Brown wasn't the inventor of the unpaid mason motif, was it Herd? Obviously it could have been, but given that the opening stanza first appears in the fragment of the ballad in his manuscript and not just in the fuller text he published in 1776 (much of which I'm sure Child was right to regard as "spurious"), I would be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt and accept that a version in which Lambkin is a mason with a grievance at not being paid was probably already in circulation in Scotland by the 1770s. That means that Mrs Brown (or Anna Gordon as she would have been then) could well have known it long before she saw Herd's book. (Alexander Fraser Tytler sent her a copy of Herd in April 1800, and her letter to him in December suggests that hadn't been familiar with the book before that -- the letters are on pp. 36 and 49 of Rieuwerts's book). On the other hand it is perhaps a little odd that she didn't produce her version of Lamkin until after she had seen Herd's version -- although I like David Fowler's comment that even if she did use Herd's text in putting together her own, she "managed to turn lead into gold". |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Steve Gardham Date: 02 Aug 15 - 09:50 AM Brian, As far as I know there is no comprehensive account of the fakery. You would generally have to put together bits and pieces from various writers on various collectors. Scott is reasonably well documented. Motherwell, who is rightly praised for his essay on how it should be done, admits to his own mischief in his younger days in letters to others. Child is still the main source for the Peter Buchan accusations. I have an unpublished paper on him. Any cursory study of his material would not fail to throw up all sorts of wonder at how he got away with it. The problem nowadays is not that they did it, but to what extent they did it. It's almost impossible to prove it beyond all doubt. You really need to look at the material itself in great depth and compare all versions as Child did to come to any conclusions. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Gutcher Date: 13 Dec 15 - 11:28 AM Ha Steve, unmasked and defrocked !! {my mother always wanted me to be a minister, not of the type who would wear a frock}. Reason anent posting as a guest in the other thread--in this thread I stated Anderson had claimed that Auchruglen Castle had been burned by Kennedy of Bargany in the 14th.C. Anderson, working in Edinburgh in the first part of the 19th.C. must have had access to a vast number of historical documents in order to compile his monumental 3v. work, why would he state as a fact something he had not seen in these documents.----I have therefore posted as a guest in the other thread until such times as I can locate the source of his information. As can be seen from my last post in the other thread even highly qualified academics do not have all the correct information. Joe. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: EBarnacle Date: 13 Dec 15 - 01:07 PM As stated in the Churchill thread, it would seem the aristos were more assiduous about paying debts to other members of the gentry than they were about paying their debts the "lower classes." |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Gutcher Date: 13 Dec 15 - 02:15 PM It was ever thus EBarnacle---they do not grudge paying for the luxuries and self-indulgencies of life but man they fare hate paying for the necessaries. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Steve Gardham Date: 13 Dec 15 - 02:26 PM Hi Joe, I don't know anyone else with your sort of knowledge, and that includes academics. Have you published anything yet? |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Gutcher Date: 13 Dec 15 - 04:34 PM Hello Steve. As my late wife of fifty plus years was wont to put it my head was full of useless knowledge, she herself having a degree in Maths and Science. She also proclaimed that I was never young, this possibly due to the fact that my formative and after years were spent listening to and absorbing the lore of the elderly country people, this may have given me an undue respect for oral transmission, who knows. The answer to your question is no---I once tried to write but did not get very far. Joe |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Steve Gardham Date: 13 Dec 15 - 04:54 PM Then I hope you have someone close at hand who can take down your useless knowledge before you take your leave of us and I also hope that's a long way off yet. I also have a massive respect for oral tradition which is probably why I start seething when I smell forgery. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: The Sandman Date: 14 Dec 15 - 05:01 PM I hope Lamkin is sitting on a marble slab with Lord Randall singing their own songs to one another, a sort of musical tedium, and an unusual take on hell. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Richard Mellish Date: 14 Dec 15 - 05:52 PM I take it from that, Dick, that you personally find those two ballads tedious. I might agree, when I hear a particular version for the umpteenth time; but the "folk" from whom the many versions were collected evidently found some value there. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: The Sandman Date: 15 Dec 15 - 01:37 AM I am joking. you know, HUMOUR. I think long lamkin is alright,although it is not in my repertoire. I judge performance of songs on the actual performance, not on how many times they are sung. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Richard Mellish Date: 15 Dec 15 - 06:13 AM > I am joking. you know, HUMOUR. Indeed; nevertheless I read it as suggesting that you disliked those particular ballads. > I judge performance of songs on the actual performance, not on how many times they are sung. For me it's both, but I don't mind even a mediocre performance if the song is interesting, and I'd rather hear that than a good performance of a song that I've heard too often. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Jim Carroll Date: 17 Dec 15 - 07:55 AM Just stumbled across this interesting piece and thought I'd put it up before interest dissipate among the mince pies and endless roast potatoes. It comes from a Canadian Journal of Traditional Music of yesteryear. The text given in the article (which I have omitted along with the footnotes) gives the Christie text as an example I found it interesting - hope somebody else does Happy Crimbo all Jim Carroll Lamkin, "The Terror of Countless Nurseries" Jon Bartlett and Rika Ruebsaat This paper is an attempt to come to terms with a ballad unique in its often motiveless brutality. 1 In an interpretation that speaks to the undoubted popularity of the ballad by addressing the question of its "meaning", we look to the listeners and to the singers to provide significant clues. We start by drawing a distinction between "origins" and "meanings". A song might at its composition bear one meaning - it might have been made for some purpose later obscured - and yet continue its life bearing other meanings, having to do with the social context in which it finds itself. Given the varied perspectives of later singers and audiences, it might bear or have borne several meanings, both synchronically and diachronically. To distinguish between etiology - the causation of the ballad, and utility - why the ballad is and has been passed on, William of Ockam's warning - pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate - "multiplicity ought not to be posited without necessity" - should ring in our ears. We shall be addressing the question of the multiplicities of meanings, from leprosy to pacts with the devil, which have been used to explain Lamkin's original meaning. In this paper, we review other theories as to the etiology and the meaning of the ballad, and argue, predicated on its wide circulation over considerable time, and on its singers and listeners, that it speaks to the issue of abandonment, on the part of both the murdered child and the murdered mother. Further, we suggest a reason for the continued presence (in every variant collected) of the five essential persons: The absent father and the mother, their "dark twins" Lamkin and the false nurse, and the baby. "Lamkin" appears in Child in twenty-five variants, the earliest dating from a 1775 letter from a Kentish churchman to Bishop Percy, and the latest in Allingham's The Ballad Book of 1892. Most of the variants are from Scotland, with a very few from Ireland. "The story is told, " Child notes, "without material variation in all the numerous versions. A mason has built a castle for a nobleman, cannot get his pay, and therefore seeks his revenge. " Child quotes Motherwell as saying "it seems questionable how some Scottish lairds could well afford to get themselves seated in the large castles they once occupied unless they occasionally treated the mason after the fashion adopted in this ballad. " Child disagrees with Motherwell's notion that the mason's name was Lambert Linkin, and suggests that the name Lambkin "was a sobriquet applied in derision of the meekness with which the builder had submitted to his injury. " He closes his relatively short and somewhat uninterested head note with the fruitful statement that Lambkin's name was a "simply ironical designation for the bloody mason, the terror of countless nurseries". 11 We shall return to this statement later. It is to be noted that fourteen of the sixteen identifiable texts from informants were taken from the singing of women. Bertrand Bronson111 finds forty-five tunes, which he organizes into thirty-three variants. The earliest is from Virginia in 1914 and the latest from Arkansas in 1941. He also records tunes from Newfoundland (four collected in the 'thirties) and six from England in the period 1896-1911. Given that most of Child's sets derived from Scotland, it is interesting that Bronson only reports two Scottish tunesiv. Again, be it noted that of the thirty-five tunes, twenty-three are noted as sung by women and eight by men. Coffin and Renwick report a total of forty-five North American texts'. The ballad was first given serious study by Annie G. Gilchrist in 1932. vi In her "'Lambkin': A Study in Evolution", she posits two forms of the ballad, which she titles "The Wronged Mason" and "The Border Ruffian". She proposes that the first form is Scottish and the second Northumbrian, and that they are distinguished by the presence or absence of the identification of the motive for the murder he and his accomplice commit. In the Scottish tradition, she identifies Balwearie Castle as a possible site, but argues that whether or not there was any connection between it and the ballad, it seems to her "probable" that the ballad has an historical foundation. She argues that the Scottish form is "the undoubtedly older and completer form"™, the Northumbrian version differing only in that the murder motive is missing. There are thus problems for the singer of the latter version in finding other motives for the murders. She discusses such possible motives as robbery, or the jealousy of Lamkin as a spurned lover of the lady. Having decided that the Scottish is the real form of the ballad, and that the Northumbrian version is an incomplete version of it, she turns her attention to the villain's name, which she argues is Flemish in origin. She finds that there were "former colonies of Flemings" at Balwearie, Fife, and reports that the "dule-tree" on which Lambkin was hanged "used to be pointed out". She appears to presume that there is only one meaning, the original meaning, to the ballad. Bertrand Bronson reports much of the above in his head note. He argues that it is "highly probable, on Miss Gilchrist's showing, that... the secondary variety is a north-country offshoot arising from the loss of the first stanza", and that, with this loss, deterioration as once begins to eat into the ballad from this side and that. " He finds (it seems to us) no great distinction, as between the two forms of the ballad, in the tunes associated with the texts. It was not until 1977 that a re-examination of the ballad was attempted, in spite of MacEdward Leach's comment that "this ballad needs detailed study"™' when John DeWitt Niles' "Lamkin: The Motivation of Horror" appeared. "Again searching for original meaning, Niles' very thorough study led him to suppose that no singer in the last two hundred years of its recorded history "might have understood (it) fully. " Niles, like Gilchrist, assumes here that the "original meaning' is the "true" or "only" meaning. He begins his analysis by a comparison of the two types identified by Gilchrist, and a close reading of the Jamieson textx, from the lips of the celebrated Mrs. (Anna) Brown". He notes how her version is distinguished from all others in three particulars: the three-stanza dialogue between Lord Wearie and Lambkin over the former's inability to pay the latter what he owes him; the nurse's urging on of Lamkin in the killing of the lady, with the inflammatory "What better is the heart's blood'o the rich than o the poor?" and the two-stanza ending beginning "O sweetly sang the black-bird/that sat upon the tree". He takes these as examples of Mrs. Brown's skill and ability, and evidence that she "did not hesitate to improve upon the raw materials of oral tradition". ™ |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: GUEST,Anne Neilson Date: 17 Dec 15 - 08:32 AM Thanks, Jim -- lots of interesting stuff to go poking after. Probably when the mince pies have ceased to allure… Have a good Christmas! |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: The Sandman Date: 17 Dec 15 - 12:13 PM was he just a crap builder?, like the ejit who beat up noel hill |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Steve Gardham Date: 17 Dec 15 - 01:31 PM See EBarnacle's posting of the 13th inst. for the most likely motive. I would certainly agree with what Niles says here and will try to get hold of the full article. (John DeWitt Niles, no relation to John Jacob Niles, I hope). No denying Mrs Brown's great skill, certainly deserving of Child's praise. Jim, have you got the full ref for the CJTM article, please? I have several copies so I might already have it. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Jim Carroll Date: 17 Dec 15 - 01:36 PM Hi Steve Will send you the ref later, but I can let you (or anybody) have a scan of the document if you'd rather Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Jim Carroll Date: 17 Dec 15 - 02:48 PM Sorry Steve My mistake - not CJTM as stated, but Canadian Folk Music Bulletin - I got it as a single document with a set of journals - unfortunately it is not referenced Offer still stands. Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Steve Gardham Date: 17 Dec 15 - 03:01 PM Thanks, Jim. I think I may already have the article. Is it at CFMB 36.1 p34, and/or CFMB 36.3 pp13 and 15? If so I have got it. All the best, Steve |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Steve Gardham Date: 17 Dec 15 - 03:06 PM Jim, Found it. It is the same one as you posted, thanks. The DeWitt Niles article is in JAFL Vol 90 (1977) pp49-67. Hopefully I can find this somewhere online. If not Jon might have a copy. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Steve Gardham Date: 17 Dec 15 - 03:09 PM By Jon I meant Jon Lighter but I see Jon Bartlett the writer of the article in CFMB posted here in August. |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Jon Bartlett Date: 18 Dec 15 - 01:37 AM Thanks to Jim Carroll for the reprinting of the first part of our paper. The whole thing is on our website at http://jonandrika.org/wp/articles/lamkin-terror-of-nurseries/. Feel free to print yourselves a copy. The Niles piece is indeed where Steve says it is, titled 'Lamkin: The Motivation of Horror'. Jon Bartlett |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Jim Carroll Date: 18 Dec 15 - 03:24 AM Jon Thank yourselves for a fine analysis of an important ballad - would that there were more of them widely available. I always feel slightly uneasy at putting these up without permission, but on this occasion, it seemed to be too good an opportunity to pass off. Best wishes. Jim Carroll |
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Subject: RE: Origins: Why didn't Lamkin get paid? From: Steve Gardham Date: 18 Dec 15 - 09:29 AM Thanks, Jon. Will follow that up. Have a good Christmas. |
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