The term “Child Ballad” refers to those English and Scottish ballads collected, analyzed, and reviewed by Harvard University English professor Francis James Child (1825-1896). His collection, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, published in nine volumes from 1882-1898, included transcriptions of all known versions of 305 traditional ballads, including precise and extensive annotations on each song’s origin, subjects, and changes over time.
A ballad is a song in narrative form, i.e., the beginning takes place in time prior to the end. Most of the ballads included in the Child opus involve topics such as romance, rivalry, murder, and the supernatural. Many originated in England and Scotland, and were transported by early colonists to Canada and the U.S. Many have been collected across Appalachia, particularly by English folklorist Cecil Sharpe.
In The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Child attempted to include, and thoroughly review and analyze, all available versions of every English and Scottish popular ballad that he considered to be “authentic.” This body of work encompassed older ballads that were no longer extant in oral tradition, such as the various ballads relating to the adventures of Robin Hood, and the related ballads of other European countries. Child consciously excluded ballads that he believed originated as printed broadsides, which he saw as being oppositional to rural tradition.
He did not venture into rural areas to collect ballads directly from living purveyors of oral tradition, choosing instead to draw on handwritten archival sources from old manuscript collections. Fortunately, other scholars and collectors who were also interested in ballads had made significant collections gathered in the field, which formed the raw material for Professor Child's opus.
In keeping with then-current professorial preferences, Child included no melodies in the first nine volumes of his opus. However, it's been revealed that in the unfinished, unpublished tenth volume, he had intended to include the accompanying musical notation. We are fortunate that when The English and Scottish Popular Ballads was republished in 2001, melodies were included when available. And long before 2001, artists set their versions of the Child Ballads to melody, many of which are preserved in the Smithsonian Folkways catalog.
Among traditional singers, the most popular ballad is generally considered to be “Bonny Barbara Allen” (Child No. 84). At Smithsonian Folkways alone, Barbara Allen has 43 recordings. “First place” at the label goes to “The Gypsy Laddie” (Child No. 200, also known as “The Gypsy Davy,” “The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies”) which has 53 recordings. Dating back to at least the early 18th century, the song follows a lady who leaves behind paradigmatic comforts—wealth, home, husband, child—to be with a rambler whose name is often “Black Jack Davy.” Sometimes it’s because he’s cast a spell on her; sometimes her husband kills Davy and his company. Like many of the Child Ballads, the song teeters on the edge of what is known and what isn’t, and pulses with peculiarity and danger.
Here, we present a small selection of those ballads from our collection.
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Track List:
1 - Texas Gladden, “The Devil's Nine Questions” [Riddles Wisely Expounded (Child No. 1)](from Virginia Traditions: Ballads from British Tradition (1978))
2 - Jean Ritchie, “False Sir John” [Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight (Child No. 4)] (from Jean Ritchie: Ballads from her Appalachian Family Tradition (2003)).
3 - Hermes Nye, “Binnorie - The Cruel Sister” [The Twa Sisters (Child No. 10)] (from Early English Ballads from the Percy and Child Collections (Ballads Reliques) (1957)).