JIMMY CROWLEY and EVE TELFORD, 'Hello!' A sister ballad to 'Willie O'Winsbury', and also called 'Johnny Bardon' (Child 100).
"We were enchanted by Mary McGrath's husky, jovial rendition of 'Johnny Barden' as soon as we heard it on that jewel of a cassette tape, Songs of the Irish Travellers (recorded and edited by Tommy Munnelly, 1967-75). A Traveller hailing from Bridgetown, Co. Wexford, she was a seller of furniture and jewellery before her store of unique ballads brought her to Slattery's famous pub in Capel Street. She imbues such life into the song with the madcap refrain--'Hello!'--that it became our nickname for the song, and subsequently the album title. It is, of course, a version of child 100, 'Willie O'Winsbury', made famous by Sweeney's Men and Anne Briggs." (Eve Telford)
Folk duo Jimmy Crowley & Eve Telford draw inspiration from the rich heritage of Irish Travellers. “Swashbuckling narrative of fierce robbers, scheming stepmothers, cross-dressing lassies, and gallant pages” taken from the songs collected by Francis James Child in the late 19th century.
“The Child Ballads, around for centuries, are so full of the ins and outs, ups and downs of humanity in all our admirable and shameful moments, that a listen to a fresh take on some of the big songs is always a revelation and a pleasure. No better outing than this new album ‘Hello’ by Cork’s Jimmy Crowley and Eve Telford. With a bunch of beautifully performed songs learned from Travelers, they sure-footedly lead us through the full gamut of human emotions and connect us once more with our deeper selves. A jewel of a record.”
~Paul Brady
Jimmy Crowley has been a central figure in the Irish folk scene since the enthusiastic reception of his debut album The Boys of Fairhill in 1977. With his band Stokers Lodge their mission was to present the street ballads of Cork city complimented by the ornate folk songs of the rural hinterland of Cork and Kerry in an exciting orchestration of uilleann pipes, concertina, autoharp, harmonium, mandolin, bouzouki and guitar in their native accent. The second album, Camphouse Ballads hurtled the band into the vortex of the folk scene; they were now performing at folk festivals and making tv appearances in Ireland, Britain and America .Both albums were produced by Micheál Ó Dómhnaill of the Bothy Band. Like Chris Twomey of Stokers Lodge, Micheál was a seminal influence in Jimmy’s musical education.
Every Jimmy Crowley album after the demise of Stokers Lodge in the middle eighties has been imbued with an excitement and autonomy; has challenged conventions and has been totally different from its predecessor. Some Things Never Change, an eclectic, electric experiment featuring some of the most creative musicians in Ireland: Declan Sinnott, Keith Mc Donald and Christy Moore of Moving Hearts was applauded and voted album of the year by rock critic, Bill Graham. Jimmy’s new band, The Electric Band released a reggae version of the Cork ballad, The Boys of Fairhill which went into the pop charts.
In between recording and writing his own songs, Crowley found time to taste the rich Gaelic hinterland of his native province of Munster learning his profession as a bard and falling in love with the Irish language. The songs he learned in the Irish speaking parts of Munster found a hearth in his first Irish language album, Jimí Mo Mhíle Stór, produced by Dónal Lunny for Gael Linn records. There followed a bitter-sweet amalgam of caustic urban ballads and sentimental parlour songs which Crowley had began to endorse. The album simply called, Jimmy Crowley for K-tel records was produced by Declan Sinnott.
Crowley’s fascination with the theatre and in particular musical drama culminated in his ballad opera, Red Patriots. Set against the backdrop of Mao Tse Tung’s cultural and social policies,it’s the story of an apprentice musician who falls for a revolutionary girl. Actual events such as the mob-incited burning of the Marxist bookshop in Cork city in the early seventies induce fierce realism. The play was well-received and ran successfully at the Triskil Arts Centre in Cork City.
By now Jimmy Crowley had established himself not just as a tradition bearer, ethnographer and Gaelic language enthusiast but also as a stylish songwriter. His song about the sailing ship Asgard, My Love is a Tall Ship, was adopted as an anthem for sailors everywhere and was used in the documentary film on the Tall Ships’ Race made by the National Television service, R.T.É The eponymous album that followed presented all original songs backed by a small string orchestra ,subtle rhythm section and songwriter Dave Murphy’s piano skills. Her Excellency, Mary Robinson was the subject of the quasi-bassanova style skit, Mrs. President which finally proclaimed to those who pigeon-holed Jimmy Crowley as being the “voice of Cork” and nothing else, that there was much more to this man.
Disheartened at the demise of the Irish language and Celtic traditions and the endorsement by the Irish government of cultural globalisation, Crowley began work on his Celtic Utopian novel, Hy Brazil. Its the story of a new resurgence and autonomy set slightly in the future; exhorting Plato’s Rule of the Wise, a poetical, didactic dismissal of everything the Celtic Tiger stands for.
There followed his first live solo album, Uncorked and the establishment of his own record company, Freestate Records. The Coast of Malibar endorsed both his love for the sea and his affection for the double-string instruments like bouzouki, mando-cello, dordán, mandola and mandolin. Jimmy is joined here by an old friend, Tríona Ní Dhómhnaill of the Bothy Band .His new album, Irish Eyes, is a swing-jazz reverential treatment of John Mc Cormack, Bing Crosby and Flanaghan Brothers Irish-American sentimental songs which Crowley feels are part of the legitimate legacy of Irish song. Here he breathes fresh life into old chestnuts like Danny Boy and When Irish Eyes Are Smiling and displays creditable crooning skills.
"Lamkin" or "Lambkin" (Roud 6, Child 93) is an English-language ballad. It gives an account of the murder of a woman and her infant son by a man, in some versions, a disgruntled mason, in others, a devil, bogeyman or a motiveless villain. Versions of the ballad are found in Scotland, England and the US.
According to Roud and Bishop (2012):
"Lambkin" is not one of the major league Child ballads in terms of popularity, but it was widely known in England and Scotland, and even more so in North America. ... The central character's name varies considerably, including, in just the English versions 'Lambkin', 'Lamkin', 'Lincoln', and 'Limkin', and he is various referred to as 'Long', 'Bold', 'Cruel' and 'False'.
They cite the analysis of Anne Gilchrist, who identified two threads: one Scottish, which retained the mason narrative; one Northumbrian, which lost the mason in early versions, thus encouraging singers to supply a different back-story. Versions collected in England stem from the Northumbrian thread.
Other versions follow the same basic story, but the antagonist has many different names, among them "Long Lonkin", "Balankin", "Lambert Linkin", "Rankin", "Long Lankyn", and "Lammikin". Later versions lose the opening of the story, which explains that Lamkin is a mason who has not been paid; in these, Lamkin becomes a sort of a bogeyman who dwells in the wild places; the lord, before leaving, warns against him:
These versions add peculiar incidents that add to the grisliness of the crime. Lamkin and the nursemaid collect the baby's blood in a basin which, along with the idea that the name Lamkin or Lammikin indicates the murderer was pale skinned and, therefore, perhaps a leper who sought to cure himself by bathing in the blood of an innocent collected in a silver bowl, a medieval cure.
"Lamkin: Versions & Variants Across the Northern Hemisphere", 2022
Folklorist Derek Piotr teams with Death is Not the End for a third outing, this time plumbing the depths of every archive from West Virginia University to the British Library in search of versions of the ballad Lamkin. Following the template set by Charlie Seeger with his seminal Barbara Allen compilation, Piotr's collection outs versions of the bloody ballad from the last ninety years; most of these renditions haven't been heard by anyone but their original recordists for decades.
The ballad, as Long Lonkin, was taken from a friend by Letitia Elizabeth Landon and published in her Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835.
The song was referenced in the title of the short story collection, Long Lankin, by John Banville. The American poet Robert Lowell also referenced the song in the title of his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of poetry Lord Weary's Castle (1946). The song inspired the young-adult novel Long Lankin (2011) by Lindsey Barraclough.
A sadistic character named Lankin appears as a member of the Fairy Queen's court in Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies.
Long Lankin appears in Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder's book Except The Queen.
Alasdair Roberts sang Long Lankin in 2010 on his CD Too Long in This Condition. This video shows him at a Songs From the Shed session in 2009.
James Findlay sang Long Lamkin in 2012 on his second Fellside CD, Another Day Another Story. He noted:
"A Scottish story and graphically hideous song that dates back to the latter half of the eighteenth century but I believe has a much longer and richer history. Looking at the various versions compiled by Child, the protagonist of the murders is often depicted as a mason who has not been paid for building the Lord’s castle and so plans to take his revenge. I like to think of Lamkin as an early ‘Bogey-man’ type character that might scare your children into behaving. Certainly worked for us when my mum used to sing a version to my sister and me!"
Mike Yates commented:
"A mason is owed money for building work on a Lord’s castle. The mason, seeking revenge when the Lord is absent, kills the Lord’s child and wife. The child’s nurse is also implicated in the killings and, like the mason, is subsequently executed. So runs the story to one of the most gruesome ballads that Professor Child included in his English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The ballad may be based on an actual event that occurred at Balwearie Castle in Fife, which was built in the 15th century, although the story is also associated with other places in Perthshire, the Scottish Borders and in Northumberland. Over the years much has been written about this ballad. Anne Gilchrist, for instance, has ingeniously suggested that the name Lamkin / Lammikin (which Child saw as an epithet) possibly indicated that the murderer was pale-skinned and, as such, could possibly have been suffering from leprosy, which was well-known in medieval Britain. Gilchrist, adding that one supposed medieval ‘cure’ for the disease was to be obtained by taking human blood (obtained from an innocent child and preserved in a silver bowl), was thus able to offer a ‘complete’ explanation for she events described in this ballad. George’s fragment probably comes originally from the broadside text printed in London by John Pitts c.1820."
Lamkin / Long Lankin / Cruel Lincoln © Mainly Norfolk
The Famous Flower of Serving-Men or The Lady turned Serving-Man (Child 106, Roud 199) is a traditional English language folk song and murder ballad. Child considered it as closely related to the ballad "The Lament of the Border Widow" or "The Border Widow's Lament".
"Unusually, it is possible to give a precise date and authorship to this ballad. It was written by the prolific balladeer, Laurence Price, and published in July 1656, under the title of The famous Flower of Serving-Men. Or, The Lady turn'd Serving-Man. It lasted in the mouths of ordinary people for three hundred years: what a tribute to the work of any writer, leave alone the obscure Laurence Price. Oral tradition, however, has made changes. The original has twenty-eight verses and a fairy-tale ending: “And then for fear of further strife, / he took Sweet William to be his Wife: / The like before was never seen, / A Serving-man to be a Queen”. - Roy Palmer, A Book of British Ballads
A woman's husband and child are killed by agents of her mother (or, sometimes, stepmother). The woman buries them, cuts her hair, changes her name from "Fair Elise" or "Fair Elinor" to "Sweet William", and goes to the king's court to become his servant. She serves him well enough to become his chamberlain.
The song variants split, sharply, at this point. The common variant has the king going to hunt and being led into the forest by a white hind. The king reaches a clearing and the hind vanishes. A bird, the personification of the woman's dead husband, then appears and laments what has happened to his love. The king asks, and the bird tells the story. The king returns and kisses his chamberlain, still dressed as a man, to the shock of the assembled court. In many versions the woman's mother/stepmother is then executed, possibly by burning, and usually the king marries the woman.
In some versions the king goes hunting, and the woman laments her fate, but is overheard; when the king is told it, he marries her.
In The Border Widow's Lament, the woman laments, in very similar verses, the murder of her husband by the king; she buries him and declares she will never love another.
Martin Carthy's version is the most notable. For his 1972 album Shearwater, Carthy took the fragments and reworked the ballad, drawing on lines from other ballads. He set the piece to a tune used by Hedy West for the "Maid of Colchester." The song was featured twice on the BBC Radio 1 John Peel show - first on 14 August 1973 and again on 28 April 1975. In 2005 Carthy won the award for Best Traditional Track for "Famous Flower of Serving Men" at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
Joseph Haydn arranged a version of the song in the 1790s, entitled "The Border Widow's Lament".
Bob Davenport sang The Border Widow's Lament in 1964 on the album Northumbrian Minstrelsy.
The Ian Campbell Folk Group sang Highland Widow's Lament in 1966 on their Transatlantic EP Four Highland Songs.
The Clutha sang The Border Widow's Lament in 1971 on their Argo album Scotia!.
The High Level Ranters sang The Border Widow's Lament in 1973 on their Trailer album A Mile to Ride.
Linda Adams sang The Lament of the Border Widow in 1975 on her and Paul Adams' album Far Over the Fell.
Ellen Kushner's novel Thomas the Rhymer (1990) includes elements of the song.
Martin Carthy sang Famous Flower of Serving Men on his 1972 album Shearwater. This track was also included on his 4 CD anthology The Carthy Chronicles and on a lot of generic folk compilations. A slightly different live version of this song is on the BBC recording The Kershaw Sessions. Martin Carthy recorded it again in 2004 for his album Waiting for Angels with verses very similar to the BBC recording. and sang it live at Ruskin Mill in December 2004 and live in studio in July 2006 for the DVD Guitar Maestros.
Martin Carthy noted on the original album:
"There is a whole group of songs and stories in which the heroine, seeking to hide some shame, takes on a disguise. In Fairy stories, this has come out in, among others, the German tale Catskin, and the English Cap O’Rushes (more properly Cap O’Ashes?). In song, one of the forms it has taken is the one known on broadsides as The Lady Turned Serving Man, and [known] in drastically curtailed form to Bishop Percy, Sir Walter Scott and Johnson as The Famous Flower of Serving Men or The Lament of the Border Widow. Having first read The Famous Flower and been fired with enthusiasm, I was sobered by reading the rather pedestrian text of the broadside, which immediately followed, and gave the story an ending, because it simply did not match—either in intensity or elegance—the considerably older, shortened version, and decided to try and tell it in my own way. The tune came from Hedy West, who sings it to an American song called The Maid of Colchester."
Maggie Holland and John Tobler noted in the Mooncrest reissue of Shearwater:
"By common consent, the finest piece on the album is Famous Flower of Serving Men. The plot (brace yourself!): a mother sends violent thugs to her daughter’s house to kill her husband and baby. The young woman digs their graves, buries them, dries her tears, cuts off her hair and dresses herself as a man. She goes to work at the King’s court, where the King falls in love with her although he thinks she is a man, so he makes her his chamberlain. The King goes hunting one day and is led deep into the forest, to the site of the graves, by a magical white hind. He is visited by a white dove who is the spirit of the murdered husband and tells him the whole story, whereupon the King rides home, swearing vengeance on the mother, and sweeps the Famous Flower of Serving Men into his arms, and has the mother taken prisoner and burned at the stake. No mention of happy ever afters. The song is utterly compelling, with its complex but hypnotic rhythm and the vivid images it inspires: “They left me naught to dig his grave but the bloody sword that slew my babe”—it could easily be the substance of a full length opera, a film, a classical ballet, and Shakespeare could have made a major play out of it. Carthy manages to convey all this immense drama and emotion in under ten minutes. A. L. “Bert” Lloyd (one of the doyens of English folk music) apparently once said something about this: one shouldn’t be surprised at such a song being so many verses long, but that it should be so many verses short."
Martin Carthy also wrote in the sleeve notes of Waiting for Angels:
"The last song is The Famous Flower of Serving Men—which is very close to my heart. I first recorded it on a now unavailable album called Shearwater and felt that it was time to have another shot at it. Over time these big songs have a habit of revealing more of themselves to you and over the space of thirty years or more this is no exception. The Famous Flower is another name for the May flower which is a symbol of ill luck and mischief. This song is about terminal bullying, child killing, abject humiliation and shame, redemption and terrible revenge. And all in the name of justice. There’s a fury in those first five verses which sends the same shiver through me as when I first read them in 1970. The parson who sent them to Sir Walter Scott never sent the rest (!) so I glued some bits together and made up chunks to tell a story which is clear and terrifying. How people do things like this to each other and survive such episodes is beyond me but they do, don’t they?"
This video shows Martin Carthy at The Albert Hole in Bristol on 28 February 1996.
The Askew Sisters sang My Father Built Me a Pretty Tower on their 2018 album Enclosure. They noted:
"This song was collected from the singing of William Ross of Ross-shire by James Madison Carpenter, an American academic who travelled the UK collecting songs between 1928-1935. It’s more commonly known by its Child Ballad title of The Famous Flower of Serving Men, but when Hazel discovered it under this different title, it led her to look at it with fresh eyes, highlighting some of the issues around gender and the ownership of women. “Swaddlin’ bands” is probably a misremembered lyric (likely a corruption of the stays used to lace up the woman’s waist at the end of other versions), but we’ve decided to leave it in, as it is such a striking image of confinement. This, together with the tower that stands tall in the first verse, creates two mighty pillars of captivity which bookend the song."
This video shows the Askew Sisters at the Witham, Barnard Castle, on 5 April 2019.
The Famous Flower of Serving Men / The Lament of the Border Widow © Mainly Norfolk
The Grey Cock or Saw You My Father (Roud 179) is one of the famous English/Scots Child ballads (number 248) and is sometimes known as The Lover's Ghost.
It has been recorded by many singers, including Tim Hart and Maddy Prior (on Summer Solstice, 1971) and Eliza Carthy.
A woman asks after her father, her mother, and her true-love John. Only John is there. He waits until all are abed and joins her. The woman tells the cock to crow when it is day; it crows an hour early, and she sends her love away before she needs to.
Two versions are printed in James Reeves's The Everlasting Circle. They were collected at Beaminster and Puddletown in Dorset. "Child assumes the ballad to be an aubade, but in an article in the Journal of American Folklore (Vol. 67, No. 265, 1954) Dr Albert B. Friedman gives reasons for thinking that it concerns a revenant or lover's ghost, due to return to the world of the dead at cock-crow.—James Reeves. Popularly known and recorded as The Night Visiting Song, the piece implies that the lover's death was from drowning at sea: he died because of the "tempest's rages" and must return to the "arms of the deep".
Cecilia Costello sang a supernatural version of this ballad it on 30 November 1951 in Birmingham in a recording made by Maria Slocombe and Patrick Shuldham-Shaw for the BBC (recording 17033). It was included as The Grey Cock in Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.L. Lloyd’s book The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs and on the anthology The Child Ballads 2 (The Folk Songs of Britain Volume 5; Caedmon 1961; Topic 1968), and in 1975 as The Lover’s Ghost on her eponymous album on the Leader label, Cecilia Costello. Roy Palmer commented in the album’s booklet:
"This ballad (Child 248) is variously called The Lover’s Ghost, Willie’s Ghost and The Grey Cock. Mrs. Costello seems to prefer the last, which she sometimes abbreviates to The Cock.
The ballad was circulating in England as early as the seventeenth century, but no version as fine as Mrs. Costello’s has been collected. She believes that the ghostly lover was a soldier, and that the visit to his lady took place while his corporeal body lay mortally wounded on the battlefield. The cock’s summon to the ghost to return indicated that the death of the soldier was to take place."
A.L. Lloyd sang The Lover’s Ghost on his and Ewan MacColl’s Riverside anthology, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (The Child Ballads) Volume IV. As all of his songs from this series it was reissued in 2011 on his Fellside CD Bramble Briars and Beams of the Sun. He also recorded this song as The Grey Cock in 1960 for his Collector album A Selection from the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. Again, his words were very similar to Cecilia Costello’s but this time he left out the second-to-last verse. All tracks on this LP were reissued in 2003 on his Fellside CD England & Her Traditional Songs. Lloyd wrote in the album’s sleeve notes:
"In folk song, when a cock crows, it’s usually a sign that lovers are to be untimely parted or that ghosts are about. In this ballad it means both, for the lover is himself a revenant spirit. The cock in the song is a descendant of the legendary fowls of Oriental folklore, with feathers of gold, diamond beaks and ruby legs. Indeed, the whole ballad may be based on a tale that spread from the East, through Byzantium, as far as Ireland. This rare and well-kept song was recorded in Birmingham, of all places, in 1951. The singer was Mrs. Cecilia Costello; the collectors, Miss Marie Slocombe and Patrick Shuldham-Shaw."
The Grey Cock / The Lover’s Ghost © Mainly Norfolk
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.
Date: March 2023.
Photo Credits:
(1) Paul Brady,
(2)-(4) Jimmy Crowley
& Eve Telford,
(5) 'The New Penguin Book of English Folk Songs',
(6) 'Lamkin: Versions & Variants Across the Northern Hemisphere',
(8) James Findlay,
(9) Martin Carthy,
(11) The Askew Sisters,
(14) A.L. Lloyd
(unknown/website);
(7) 'Lamkin',
(10) 'The Famous Flower of Serving-Men',
(13) 'The Grey Cock'
(by 8notes.com);
(12) Jimmy Crowley (by Sean Laffey).
