Spark and a Country Lass,” 1740. It is difficult to say whether this be so or not, but I think that the phraseology of some of the lines in the text—which are also on broadsides by Disley and Such—shows distinct signs of “editing.” Mr. Baring-Gould pronounces the words as “substantially old,” “the softening down of an earlier ballad which has its analogue in Scotland,” and I suspect that this is the true explanation.
No. 41. Bedlam
For other versions with words, see the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume i, p. 146; volume ii, pp. 37, 93, and 291; volume iii, pp. 111 and 290); English County Songs (p. 71); and Songs of the West (No.92).
For words only, see Garret’s Newcastle Garlands (volumes i and ii), and Logan’s A Pedlar’s Pack of Ballads and Songs (pp. 172–189).
“Mad songs” are great favorites with English folksingers, and I have collected several examples. The tune in the text is frankly a harmonic melody, chiefly remarkable for its very beautiful final phrase.
No. 42. The Bold Fisherman
For other versions with tunes, see the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume i, p. 138; volume v, pp. 132–135); and English County Songs (p. 110).
I have always felt that there was something mystical about this song, and I was accordingly much interested to find that the same idea had independently occurred to Miss Lucy Broadwood, who, in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume v, pp. 132, 133), has developed her theory in a very interesting manner. She believes that the “Bold Fisherman,” as it appears on broadsides, is but "a vulgar and secularized transmutation of a mediæval allegorical legend,” and points out that the familiar elements of Gnostic and Early Christian mystical literature, for example, “the River, the Sea, the royal Fisher, the three Vestures of Light (or Robes of Glory), the Recognition and Adoration by the illuminated humble Soul, the free Pardon,” etc., are all to be found among variants of this ballad. The early Fathers of the Christian Church wrote of their baptized members as “fish,” emerged from the waters of baptism. For a full exposition of this view, however, the reader is referred to the note above mentioned.
I have several variants, and I think in every case the tune is in 5-time. The words in the text have been compiled from the sets given me by various singers.
No. 43. The Rambling Sailor
For other versions with tunes, see the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume iii, p. 108; volume v, p. 61); and Songs of the West (No. 87, 2d ed.). The tune, like the one in the text, is nearly always in the Mixolydian mode, and usually in hornpipe rhythm. The words on the older broadsides were always about a soldier, not a sailor, but on more modern stall copies, the latter is given the preference. The singer could remember only the first two verses; the third has been “lifted” from the broadside.
No. 44. Dabbling in the Dew
This is a very popular song all over England, and I have taken down a large number of variants. The words, which vary but little, are very free and unconventional. I have therefore taken some of the lines in the text from Halliwell’s Nursery Rhymes (p. 35). In some versions, it is “strawberry leaves,” not “dabbling in the dew,” that “makes the milkmaids fair”—which I am told, though I have not been able to verify it, is the version given in Mother Goose’s Melodies for Children (Boston, ed. 1719).
The tune is in the Æolian mode.
For other versions with words, see the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume iv, pp. 181–285); Songs of the Four Nations (p. 58); English Folk Songs for Schools (No. 23); and Butterworth’s Folk Songs from Sussex (No. 9).
No. 45. The Saucy Sailor
Other versions with tunes are published in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume v, pp. 343–345); Tozer’s Sailors’ Songs (No. 39); Bar
