Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please

Subject: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,old bill
Date: 29 Mar 02 - 03:00 PM

I aim to sing Twa Corbies anglicised, but I'm stumped by the following words. Can anyone help?

Verse 2. 'In behind yon old [fail dyke????????]' Verse 4. 'You'll sit on his white [hause-bane????????]'

Thanks

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: DMcG
Date: 29 Mar 02 - 03:13 PM

You have the words right, according to Prof Child

A dyke is a ditch; the hause-bane is his skull, I think. I don't know what 'fail' means in this context.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,DonMeixner
Date: 29 Mar 02 - 03:19 PM

My translation is an "Auld Fell Dike" meaning an earthen dam or dike.

Don

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: RolyH
Date: 29 Mar 02 - 03:26 PM

'Fail' means turf

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: RolyH
Date: 29 Mar 02 - 04:00 PM

Literal translation of 'hause-bane' is neck bone.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 29 Mar 02 - 06:51 PM

Ditch for dike suggests a pit in the ground, but in this case I'd imagine it's a raised one (in behind) - like a turf stack.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: Bill D
Date: 29 Mar 02 - 06:59 PM

I sure hope you don't Anglicize it too much...the song stands very well as it is...I have NEVER had anyone suggest they did not get the picture when I sang it..(off & on for 25 years)..(I'd much prefer to hear a 'few' words of explanation for most dialect, rather than changing the feel of the song.)

...pretty durn old Bill, myself

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 30 Mar 02 - 04:05 AM

"Ahent yon auld fell dyke"----behind yon old hillside stone wall. A "dyke" in Scotland [in the south at least] refers to a stone wall dividing and/or enclosing fields.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: DMcG
Date: 30 Mar 02 - 05:08 AM

Sounds like Bill D is right - we all get the picture without being too sure what the words mean! *BG*

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: masato sakurai
Date: 30 Mar 02 - 07:24 AM

THE TWA CORBIES (with notes)

The Twa Corbies (with stardard English translation)

The Twa Corbies (reading in Scottish)

~Masato

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 30 Mar 02 - 12:16 PM

It'd be hilarious singing it with that translation in a Queen's English accent...

As I was walking all alone,
I heard two crows making a moan;
One said to the other,
"Where shall we go and dine today?"

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: weepiper
Date: 30 Mar 02 - 08:38 PM

"hause-bane" = collar bone.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,Old Bill
Date: 31 Mar 02 - 09:40 AM

Bill D and DMcG - have you ever heard an English person try to sing in Scots? It sounds bloody silly. Even when Ewan MacColl tried to sing in the Scots which he didn't use in eveyday speech it sounded forced. We should, I think, sing in our real accent unless we're a good imitator - and even that's dodgy. The important thing about a song is to communicate. How daft would it be if I sang something I didn't understand myself? If I don't know what a fail dyke and hause-bane are then neither will a section of my audience. After all, when songs travelled so did the dialect and therefore some of the words. But now we're onto a whole new subject.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 31 Mar 02 - 09:48 AM

I'm with you, Bill. If I can modernize a song without mutilating it, I do. Take a song by Burns, for example. I figure that if Robert Burns miraculously came to my house, I wouldn't make him talk like me. So why should he make me talk like him?

And so, for example, I feel free to change "ilka" to "every" and "a'" to "all." The purpose of language is to communicate, after all.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: masato sakurai
Date: 31 Mar 02 - 11:40 AM

English and German translations are HERE; a Russian one HERE.

~Masato

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,DMcG (slight cookie issue!)
Date: 31 Mar 02 - 12:08 PM

I agree the business of deciding whether to try to keep the original form or sing a translation of a song is tricky. I don't have any hard and fast rules myself, but I do feel that the original usually has cadences and other poetic structures that are very difficult or impossible to maintain in a translation. As a result I would normally try to keep close the original if I can. The problem is not just Scots songs of course. I have always preferred "Adeste Fidelis" to "O come all ye faithful" - the translations of the second verse (God of God/Light of Light/Begotten not created) is almost impossible to do well in English (drag-it-out, drag-it-out, cram-as-many-syllables-in-as-we-possibly-can is the usual form!). The same applies to old English and middle English to modern.

But I agree there does come a point at which the singer and audience have lost so much understanding of the original that your only choice is between using a translation and dropping the song altogether.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: Shields Folk
Date: 31 Mar 02 - 03:56 PM

Lowland Scots is a form of English anyway. So do you mean translate into Queens/Modern/American(delete where appropriate)English?

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 01 Apr 02 - 04:44 AM

ShieldsFolk---awa an scart yer whurrie wi a whin bush! Is English a form of French/Teutonic/Latin?

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: DMcG
Date: 01 Apr 02 - 04:58 AM

Boab: Risking life and limb here - you surely agree that one of the effects of the clearances of only about 250 years was to greatly displace Lowland Scots with incoming English speakers? This is why I think Shieldsfolk is more or less right. Highland Scots and places like the Shetlands are a completely different matter.

And yes, English is heavily influenced by French, German and Latin! On the other hand, it is more like 1000 years than 250 the the blending is more complicated.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: Shields Folk
Date: 01 Apr 02 - 02:53 PM

With all respect DMcG thats Bollocks! Since the Dark Ages what is now lowland Scotland was settled by English speaking people, large parts of lowland Scotland only became part of Scotland in the 11th century. They have always been English speakers but consider themselves as Scots not English.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: DMcG
Date: 01 Apr 02 - 04:55 PM

Yeah, I know! I don't know how many times Berwick has changed hands either, and there has been plenty of reiver activies, and all that! *G*

English is really too complex a language for any simple categorisation. I agree that what Lowlands Scots speak has been 'English' (as distinct to Gaelic, say) for many centuries. But every area - including I presume, North or South Shields? - has always prided itself on its local variations and dialect and Lowland Scots is no exception. In fact, that is probably why Boab - rightly - feels so passionate about his/hers. But the clearings were, I think, one of last times there was a major pressure on Scotland to conform to the standards imposed by the South. Certainly it is the last I know of with legal sanctions for not conforming.

What I expected people to object to is that the clearances are usually thought of as a Highland event, rather than Lowland. Just shows you can never be sure how people will react!

Best regards, Shields - I'm not offended! Feel free to correct this post as well!

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,Charmion
Date: 01 Apr 02 - 05:59 PM

Here in Ontario, we generally sing the Scots words in our genuine, flat Canadian accents complete with the nasal Irish 'r'. I have heard recordings of myself singing in German, sounding really quite Bonnish until I got to a word with the dreaded terminal 'r' ... and there we all were, back in the Ottawa Valley. Fortunately, my father -- born in Quebec of a very mixed English-Scots-Irish-Swiss family -- had a fairly complete Lallands vocabulary, so words like "hause-bane" are not off-putting. Actually, a German-speaker will find plenty of familiar words in Lallands; "hause" is "Hals", for example. For those without Scots-speaking relatives or an annotated volume of Burns, there's always the Oxford English Dictionary, which contains just about all the dialectical words you're likely to trip over in the British Isles.

Charmion

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,Charmion
Date: 01 Apr 02 - 05:59 PM

Here in Ontario, we generally sing the Scots words in our genuine, flat Canadian accents complete with the nasal Irish 'r'. I have heard recordings of myself singing in German, sounding really quite Bonnish until I got to a word with the dreaded terminal 'r' ... and there we all were, back in the Ottawa Valley. Fortunately, my father -- born in Quebec of a very mixed English-Scots-Irish-Swiss family -- had a fairly complete Lallands vocabulary, so words like "hause-bane" are not off-putting. Actually, a German-speaker will find plenty of familiar words in Lallands; "hause" is "Hals", for example. For those without Scots-speaking relatives or an annotated volume of Burns, there's always the Oxford English Dictionary, which contains just about all the dialectical words you're likely to trip over in the British Isles.

Charmion

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 02 Apr 02 - 04:07 AM

There was a time when a fair whack of what is now southeast Scotland was in the realm of the King of Northumbria. The southwest was never at any time part of Northumbria. At various stages in the history of the south west the spoken language was an ancient form of Welsh. The demise of Gaelic as the language of Strathclyde is surprisingly recent---it was still almost universally used at the time of Mary, Queen of Scots. A mere glance at many of the old place-names---farms, etc.,makes this pretty obvious. We are, however, conducting a spurious discussion here; the Scottish Nation is one of the oldest in Europe. Border lands changed ownership and allegiances many times in the past, and I'm sure all of us here are aware of that fact. I am a wee bit puzzled by DmcG's reference to "Lowland clearances", though. Rab Burns was a contemporary of many of those who had to leave these shores for what they hoped would be a better living. Strange that he made no great song about it---? You could say that the clearances are ongoing; Scotland's population is in ongoing dangerous decline .

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: DMcG
Date: 02 Apr 02 - 04:25 AM

Thanks Boab - I will back out quietly! What I was being lazy about expressing properly was that I believe the laws that lead to the clearances in the Highlands applied throughout Scotland and so had a psychological and cultural effect on the lowlands, even though I don't think they were a significant number of evictions (etc) there. As I said in my last post, I'm not in the least surprised people got confused by what I meant on this one. That tends to happen when you don't say what you mean. On the other hand it looks as if my last post managed to confuse my meaning still further. Perhaps I'd better just quit while I'm behind...

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: IanC
Date: 02 Apr 02 - 05:56 AM

Boab

You're wrong. Strathclyde wa one of the ancient Anglian kingdoms by the 8th Century. In the 9th, they had teamed up with the picts to try and repel the invaders from the Irish (Dublin) Norwegian kingdom.

Cheers!
Ian

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: Shields Folk
Date: 02 Apr 02 - 07:23 AM

Just to back someones argument for a change DMcG, here's a quote from the BBC that supports the idea that language and ethnicity defies simple categorisation. This comment was made in reference to the BBC program The Blood of the Vikings

"Surprisingly, mainland Scotland had a similar Celtic input as the population of southern England, showing that not only were the English never "homogenous Anglo-Saxons", but neither were the Scots predominantly Celtic."

But what the study showed was that Northern England (and Southern Scotland) was significantly Angle-ish

Click here

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: IanC
Date: 02 Apr 02 - 08:14 AM

Quite important, but usually forgotten, is the fact that the "Germanic" tribes were, in fact, celtic tribes along with all the others to be found on the European mainland. The main difference was that they had not been conquered by the Roman empire. There was never any homogeneity of culture or religion, although neighbouring tribes were more similar in this way than those at some distance from each other.

Neither is there any justification for referring to some people in the British Isles (named, by the way, after the various tribal groupings living there before the coming of the "Anglo-Saxons") as "celts" or "celtic". Either they all are, or none of them are.

Scholars around 1800 were busy trying to prove that Scotland was different to England because it was a "Scandinavian" nation. Even as late as the second half of the C19th, Child (for example) seemed inclined to subscribe to this view. Now it seems to be the common view that "The English" are somehow different from the other "ethnic groupings" because of some historially observable fact. This is not so.

If you're looking for some kind of pure-blood "Celt", then your best bet would probably be the people of the Cambridgeshire fens in East Anglia who, until the C19th and often into the C20th, were highly interbred and often thought to be descendants of Boudicca's Iceni. They are short (the men are often less than 5ft tall), dark haired and quite shy people - I'm related to some of them. They also made up a large part of Cromwell's "New Model Army".

If you're looking for a different "Celtic" culture, then you're probably too late by about 1500 years (unless the surviving picts of C13th or C14th are what you're after). The whole thing is given the lie by the well commented and observable fact that English traditional music (for example) is nearer to both Irish and Scots cultures than they are to each other.

The genetic survey quoted by Shields Folk above is just objective evidence of what serious scholars already knew, that England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, are populated by people of seriously mixed race and culture.

Rant over (for the moment) :-)
Ian

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: DMcG
Date: 02 Apr 02 - 08:22 AM

My, haven't we got a long way from the Twa Corbies? Perhaps we'd better start a new thread. I would, if I knew how to link them properly.

In the interests of light relief while crossing threads, can anyone post that part of "1066 and all that" that summaries IanC's post above?

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: Pied Piper
Date: 02 Apr 02 - 11:20 AM

Ian C "the "Germanic" tribes were, in fact, celtic tribes".Gernanic and celtic are linguistic terms, and though they are both indo-europian languages they are different and have been seperate branches since well before the Romans came along.As far as I'm concerned you can only be a "Celt" if you speek a celtic language, this rules out most of the people who call them selves Scots.The idea that their is some celtic "race" is nonsense.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: IanC
Date: 02 Apr 02 - 11:41 AM

Pied Piper

Celtic tribes are so called because they used a type of axe called a Kelt or Celt. The languages you refer to are called Gaelic. Germanic is not a linguistic term.

Best if you read the scholarship, rather than the loosely defined stuff people have been making up for nearly a century.

:-)
Ian

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: weepiper
Date: 02 Apr 02 - 02:36 PM

Ahem! "Germanic is not a linguistic term"...tell that to my English Language and Celtic Department professors, mate. And "Celtic" in the linguistic sense refers to Welsh and Breton as well as Scottish and Irish Gaelic.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: CET
Date: 02 Apr 02 - 10:54 PM

I would be interested to hear how other singers (non-Scots) approach a song like Twa Corbies. How do you deal with phrases like "bonnie blue e'en" and "theek oor nest"?

I agree with Bill and Leenia to a large extent. My experience has been that I sing Scottish songs better when I'm not trying to sound "Scottish". I'm actually quite a good imitator, but for some reason my voice tends to tense up.

Some Scots songs lend themselves very well to using standard English words. "Bonnie Susie Cleland" is a good example. You can sing it throughout without using Scottish dialect words and not lose any of the power of the song.

Twa Corbies is different though. This is as close to perfect as a folk song can get I think, and anglicizing it would spoil it. (There's a good English variant called the Two Crows, but that's quite a different song).

I haven't really begun to work on Twa Corbies yet, but I think I will. It's too good a song to pass up. I sing in French and German sometimes, so it should be possible.

Edmund

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 02 Apr 02 - 11:31 PM

Good for you, IanC. I for one, am sick of hearing about Celtic this and Celtic that. The Celts have been dead a long, long time.

I have been active in traditional music since 1982. We brought Irish and Scottish bands to town for years before we ever heard the term "Celtic music." I think that term came into use because Nashville and the media needed a term for the music that River Dance was using, and they didn't want to be honest and call it "authentic country music."

Anyhow, one day we put a ruler on the map of Europe and concluded that the distance from Turkey to Ireland is only about 700 miles. How do you suppose all these supposedly different races and cultures managed to remain so distinct across this short distance, given the wars, displacements and migrations of the centuries?

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: Roughyed
Date: 03 Apr 02 - 03:41 PM

I was told last year that this version of the song was in fact a parody of over-dramatic ballads and of comparatively recent origin. The tune Steleye Span used and a lot of people now sing is Breton and was put to the song in the 1960's. Even if it's true, I still think the song is great.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: IanC
Date: 04 Apr 02 - 03:03 AM

Actually, Old Bill, I was wondering if (as is probable) you were singing the version of Twa Corbies recorded by Steeleye. If so, this is a rewrite by Sir Walter Scott of the earlier English song The Three Ravens.

If you're having trouble with the Scots dialect and accent, why don't you just use an English version?

Cheers!
Ian

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,DMcG at work
Date: 04 Apr 02 - 05:42 AM

The Three Ravens is a sickly sweet ballad of enduring love - the Twa Ravens is practically a horror story! I don't doubt one inspired the other but they are hardly equivalent.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: IanC
Date: 04 Apr 02 - 06:07 AM

DmG

The version in DT is, I think, from one of the "poetic" versions rather than from tradition (for which I ca only apologies) but there are other versions. As for Scott's "Twa Corbies", Hodgart (1950), for example, says

"Scott said that it had been communicated by C. Sharpe, as written down from tradition "by a lady", but it is poorly supported in folk tradition. For this reason, and from internal evidence, it is likely that the version is largely of Scott's making. It has become a narrative of domestic tragedy, with the story partly concealed ... instead of a rich symbolism, it has only brilliant pictorial imagery: almost everything is on the surface"

Yes, Scott was a good poet.

Cheers!
Ian

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,maryrrf
Date: 04 Apr 02 - 09:29 AM

This is a song I've wanted to learn but have kind of put it off because of the language/dialect issue - I can't think of a way to modify it that satisfies me and remains semi faithful to the original, and I don't think the average American would understand it as it is - not without a glossary. Regarding "Lallands" I spent some time in a small town in Scotland (Ayrshire) recently and whether you'd classify it as a different language - well, my opinion is no - but it is very, very difficult to understand. It's not just that they use some words that are different, it's the pronunciation and probably more than that - the cadence and inflection of their speech that's hard to catch.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: greg stephens
Date: 04 Apr 02 - 09:46 AM

I am fascinated by a definition of Celt as someone who speaks a Celtic language, as proposed in a message here. Anyone care to argue that anyone who speaks English is English? It would be well to remember that speakers of Celtic languages have been remarkably good at conquering other people, as have speakers of English, and subsequently remarkably good at imposing their language on the natives.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: greg stephens
Date: 04 Apr 02 - 10:17 AM

Wish I'd never used the words Celtic language inthe previous message.More bollocks has been talked on that subject than any other I can think of.Some clever bloke in the 17th century(Iforget his name) spotted the very real connections between Breton, Welsh, Cornish, Irish , Scottish and Manx Gaelic and called them Celtic, after the people who used to live north of Greece; (he thought the two groups might connected in some way). If only he'd called them"northwest seaboard languages" or something what a lot ofproblems of self-identity a lot of people might have been spared. On the other hand, what a lot of enjoyable ill-informed circular arguments we'd have failed to enjoy.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: weepiper
Date: 04 Apr 02 - 01:41 PM

I don't think everyone who speaks a Celtic language is automatically "a Celt". I speak Gaelic and understand a bit of Welsh but I don't consider myself a Celt. I don't think that word has much relevance really these days except as a useful tag to distinguish between language groups or whatever.
I do get really narked at what gets labelled Celtic music though. It's totally overused, I mean if a band has a fiddle player they get called Celtic... eeesh

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 05 Apr 02 - 04:29 AM

IanC--with respect, Ian, I stated that Strathclyde was never part of NORTHUMBRIA. I stand by that. My reference to the spoken language is borne out by historical record besides the still-extant place-names. And, for the record, I am in total agreement with those who deplore the willy-nilly use of the label "Celtic". There has been a trend in recent years, however, to indulgence in some kind of compulsion to denigrate all things Celtic. The reason for this is obscure, though evidence of it is unmistakeable. Perhaps it arises from some conscious or unconscious resentment of the success of culture and music which is claimed as "Celtic' by the proponents of the culture. In support of the "homogenous" theorists, by the way, some of the prominent Highland Scottish clans have their origins in the Norman conquest. Frazers, Colquhouns, Menzies and Gordons all were Norman in origin. My own name [which I wont reveal!] is Scandinavian via Normandy, and was first recorded in Aberdeen and Angus [shout "moo!" and I'll slay ye!] in the 11th century. Finally, I love Celtic music and song, and spend a lot of time playing it and singing it. And I always had the impression [perhaps wrong] that "the Twa Corbies" ---which is NOT a celtic song---was like Jock o' Hazeldean; another song from a different culture half-inched by Wattie Scott only this time not from Ireland but from the French "Les Deux Corbeax".

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 05 Apr 02 - 04:32 AM

OOPS!---"CORBEAUX"!

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: IanC
Date: 05 Apr 02 - 09:51 AM

Boab

Which French "Les Deux Corbeaux" are you referring to? The only one I know is by Alexander Dumas - Rather later than Scott. Also, though Scott loses the symbolism, he does keep in all the main characters of the English song. I'd like to see the French song if you have a copy.

Thanks! Ian

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: Joe_F
Date: 05 Apr 02 - 06:41 PM

Oddly, the German translation at the site given by Masato is not a translation of the Scottish version there, but of "The Three Ravens" with its (comparatively) happy ending.

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: masato sakurai
Date: 05 Apr 02 - 07:23 PM

So is this version by Spielleut (with mp3PRO):

12. Rabenballade
(melody originally Breton):
This song in its present form is the German version of the English ballad "The three ravens" by T. Ravenscroft (1611), but we used the melody of the Scottish version "The twa corbies", which was originally known as 'Al Alarc'h' (the swan) in Brittany.
(a capella)

~Masato

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: GUEST,Boab
Date: 06 Apr 02 - 04:26 AM

Sorry Ian--can't enlarge on what was in my last posting.I cannot even insist on the truth of the connection.As I say I had this impression; could be so, could be otherwise. Am enjoying the speculation though--a good way of learning!

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: IanC
Date: 25 Jun 02 - 12:25 PM

Just thought I'd correct a mistake I'd unknowingly made in an earlier post.

It's true that Scott published the "Twa Corbies" but he did, indeed, get it from Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. I've been reading Sharpe's letters, published by Allardyce (1888) and the letter to Scott is there. Sharpe was quite happy, himself, to tidy up old ballads (and did so with a few others for Scott's books) so it could have been him rather than Scott who made the changes. Sharpe claimed to have got it from an aristocratic friend, but I'm looking at him more closely these days as he was clearly taking stuff from Allan Cunningham for publication (one letter survives from AC in Allardyce).

Scott's reply is also there, in which he says that the song is rather like the English ballad of "The Three Ravens" in Ritson, but with the end missing.

Cheers!
Ian

Subject: RE: Twa Corbies - transl. into Engl, please
From: Orac
Date: 26 Jun 02 - 11:31 AM

I prefer to sing the English (and maybe original) version of this song "The three ravens" which was in print in 1611 and is thought it could be as old as circa 1450. There are odd words in that which are now obsolete like "leman" which means a lover.