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Help: hopeful for Lord Ellenwater info(Child #208)

10 Sep 01 - 04:08 PM (#546524)
Subject: Lord Ellenwater
From: GUEST,hopeful

Vaughn Williams collected a song from the north of England entitled Lord Ellenwater. Does anyone have any background on this song, other versions or derivations etc etc etc?

10 Sep 01 - 07:37 PM (#546663)
Subject: RE: Help: hopeful
From: Matthew Edwards

Offhand I can't recall this, but there is a song Lord Derwentwater which may be related. I'll try to follow this up later, unless Malcolm Douglas gets in here first. PS As a guide to requesting lyrics etc it is generally more useful to put the title (or whatever you can remember from a song) in the thread title, that way there is more chance somebody will be able to respond with the answer you need. If its OK with you I'll ask for your thread request to be amended. PS Actually, on checking it out, your subject Lord Ellenwater looks as if it is right, but it has come up on the Forum as "Help: Hopeful" ?????
Fixed it.
-Joe Offer-

10 Sep 01 - 08:57 PM (#546704)
Subject: RE: Help: hopeful for Lord Ellenwater info
From: Sorcha

This page says Nic Jones did it, but no lyrics, etc. available. We have a lot of Nic fans here, perhaps one can help.

10 Sep 01 - 09:44 PM (#546724)
Subject: RE: Help: hopeful for Lord Ellenwater info
From: Malcolm Douglas

This is Child's number #208, but is often confused with the entirely different song (though it deals with the same subject) Derwentwater's Farewell, which is in the DT (and wrongly given the Child number).  Child (English and Scottish Popular Ballads) has nine texts, from Northern England and from Scotland.

There is an entry at  The Traditional Ballad Index:

Lord Derwentwater [Child 208]

Roy Palmer (Bushes and Briars: Folk Songs Collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1983/99) comments:

"The Derwentwater family had estates in Cumberland and Northumberland.  The family seat, originally on an island in Derwentwater (hence the name) was abandoned in the 17th century in favour of Dilston Hall, near Corbridge.  James Ratcliffe, the third Lord Derwentwater, and the subject of the ballad, seems to have been genuinely loved by his family, servants and tenants.  When he was beheaded in 1716, for his part in the abortive Jacobite rising of the previous year, he was widely mourned..."

Child, of course, gives far more detailed historical information.  The song has also been found ( in both England and Scotland) as Lord Dunwaters, Lord Allenwater, Lord Arnwaters and Lord Ellenwater; some texts were given in the Journal of the Folk Song Society (No. 13, 1909), but I don't have those -yet!-, so can't help further just now; there are, I think, additional examples in Bronson's Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, but again I don't have the relevant volume.  I assume you have the Lord Ellenwater set that Vaughan Williams got from (presumably) Cambridgeshire, and which appeared in the Palmer collection?

11 Sep 01 - 03:59 AM (#546825)
Subject: RE: Help: hopeful for Lord Ellenwater info
From: GUEST,Hopeful

Thanks everyone. Yes, I have the RVW text as collected by him, but the song appears incomplete and therefore I suspected that there was a more complete version in Child. I know the background etc to the Derwentwater strand but it is this particular version that I wish to pursue.

11 Sep 01 - 09:57 AM (#546981)
Subject: ADD: Lord Allenwater (Child #208)
From: Malcolm Douglas

Here is a slightly more complete set than the one referred to above.
^^

LORD ALLENWATER

(Traditional; from E.A. Stears of Horsham, Sussex, 1905)

The King he wrote a long letter
And sealed it up with gold,
And sent it unto my Lord Allenwater
To read it if he could.

The first two lines Lord Allenwater read
They struck him with surprise,
The next two lines Lord Allenwater read
Made the tears fall from his eyes.

He goes up to his gay lady,
As she in child bed lay,
He says "I must go up to London town,
For I'm sure there's never more need".

"If you must go up to London town
Before you go away
Make your will, make your will, Lord Allenwater,
Lest you should go astray".

"Here is unto my only son,
My houses and my land;
Here is unto my own wedded wife
Forty thousand pounds in hand".

He goes out to his head stable groom
To saddle his milk-white steed;
He says, "I must go up to London town,
For I'm sure there's never more need".

He put his foot into the stirrup
And leant across his steed;
His gay gold ring from his finger burst,
And his nose began to bleed.

As he was riding along the road
His horse tripped against a stone.
He says, "There's signs and tokens I have seen,
And I fear I shall never return".

As he was riding up merry London street
'Twas near by the Whitehall,
The lords and ladies they stood looking hard,
And "a traitor" he was called.

"No traitor at all", Lord Allenwater said,
"No traitor at all", said he,
"I vow I can find ye three score men
That will fight for King Georgie".

Then up bespoke a grey-headed old man,
With a broad axe in his hand
"Hold your tongue, hold your tongue, Lord Allenwater,
For your life's at my command".

"My life I do not value,
My life I will give unto thee,
And the black velvet coat I have on my back,
You may take it for your fee.

There is forty pounds in one pocket,
Pray give it unto the poor,
There is forty-five in the other pocket,
Pray give it from door to door".

Then he laid his head upon the block,
The man gave a mighty blow,
"Now there lies the head of a traitor", he said.
And it answered and said- "No".

Child #208

This version appeared in the West Sussex Gazette some time in 1905; the paper had launched a song competition in the previous year, expressly intended to encourage people to write down and submit "old country songs".  The collector Lucy Broadwood (at the time Secretary of the Folk Song Society) was invited to adjudicate the "words and music" section.  One of the winning songs was Mrs. Harriet Verrall of Monk's Gate's set of  Salisbury Plain.

The immediate source for this information and the above text, an article by Stanley Godman, The "West Sussex Gazette" Song Competition of 1904 (Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, vol. 9, number 4, 1964) doesn't say whether there was a tune with Mr. Stears' text.