This motive is absent from the present version, of which it may or may not once have formed part. For it is possible to argue that the “wether’s skin” motive is an addition, which became attached to an older and simpler form of the ballad. The facts, as they stand, admit of either interpretation.
There is yet a third variation of the story in “Robin-a-thrush (see English County Songs, The Besom Maker, English Folk Songs for Schools, etc.), in which the story is still further curtailed by the omission of the wife-beating episode. In this latter form, it becomes a nursery nonsense-song, which relates in humorous fashion the ridiculous muddles made by a slovenly and incompetent wife. Its connection with “Ruggleton” or “Sweet Robin” is to be inferred from the title and refrain, “Robin-a-thrush,” which as Miss Gilchrist has pointed out, is probably a corruption of “Robin he thrashes her.”
I have collected another song which has some affinity with “Ruggleton.” Here the husband married his wife on Monday; cut “a twig of holly so green” on Tuesday; “hung it out to dry” on Wednesday; on Thursday he “beat her all over the shoulders and head, till he had a-broke his holly green twig;” on Friday she “opened her mouth and began to roar;” and, finally,
On Saturday morning I breakfast without
A scolding wife or a brawling bout.
Now I can enjoy my bottle and friend;
I think I have made a rare week’s end.
The same motive is to be found in “The Husband’s Complaint,” printed in Herd’s Manuscripts, edited by Dr. Hans Hecht (p. 106).
The words given in the text are almost exactly as they were sung to me. I have, however, transposed the order of the words “brew” and “bake” in the fourth and fifth verses, in order to restore some semblance of a rhyme. Clearly there was some corruption; but whether my emendation is the correct one or not, it is difficult to say. There is a fragment, quoted by Jamieson, in which the verse in question is rendered:
She wadna bake, she wadna brew,
(Hollin, green hollin),
For spoiling o’ her comely hue,
(Bend your bow, Robin).
There is, too, a version in The Journal of American Folk-Lore (volume vii, p. 253), quoted by Child, which is closely allied to the song in the text. In this variant, the following stanza occurs:
Jenny could n’t wash and Jenny could n’t bake.
Gently Jenny cried rosemaree.
For fear of dirting her white apurn tape.
As the dew flies over the mulberry tree.
No. 71. William Taylor
For other versions with tunes, see the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume i, p. 254; volume iii, pp. 214–210); and Folk Songs from Somerset (No. 118). No tune is better known to the average English folksinger than this. It is usually in the major or, as in the present case, in the Mixolydian mode, but occasionally (see the versions cited above) in the Dorian or Æolian. A burlesque version of the words, with an illustration by George Cruikshank, is given in the Universal Songster (volume i, p. 6). “Billy Taylor” became a very popular street-song during the first half of the last century, and I suspect that it was during that period that the last stanza in the text was added.
No. 72. Sweet William
Other versions are given in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume i,p. 99); English County Songs (p. 74); and Christie’s Traditional Ballad Airs (volume i, p. 248). The song is a very common one and I have noted several variants of it.
No. 73. The Watchet Sailor
I have only one variant of this song, “Three-penny Street,” and so far as I know it has not been published elsewhere. Compare the tune, which is in the Æolian mode, with that of “Henry Martin” in this collection (No. 1).
No. 74. Scarborough Fair
For other versions, see Songs of the West (No. 48, 2d ed.); English County Songs (p. 12); Traditional
