Two Ballads : Lord Thomas & Child Owlet

Lord Thomas : AKA Fair Ellender / The Brown Girl : Child #73
 (From the singing of Mrs Pearl Brewer of Pocahantas, Arkensas as collected by Max Hunter in 1958.)

 

Child Owlet : AKA Childe Owlet : Child #291
(From the singing of Sally Bee / In Our Lady's Name, April 2010, though where she got it from I've no idea.)

Ballads have always held a certain fascination for me - a darker sense of narrative drama akin to that found in Soap Opera albeit reduced to its more immediate inter-personal essence, such as #73 which features a plotline worthy of EastEnders where the Nut-Brown girl knifes her rival having realised she's been wed out of fiscal convenience - confirmed when her husband cuts of her head and smashes it against a wall.   In such a setting his repentant suicide seems a tuch mawkish , unlike #291  which has our eponymous hero being offed in fine old style to preserve the good name of his entirely unrepentant randy aunt. Word is Prof Child had his doubts about its authenticity though conceded there was merit in the last two verses. Seems even the good Professor was of the opinion these things grew on trees and were gathered from the hedgerows by witless peasants entirely innocent of the sort of cunning that could free-style such a thing at the drop of a hat. In this, of course, my belief is that he was sorely mistaken. Although these things are pretty fixed now (in point of collected reference or revival arrangement) they seem to have been quite fluid in their natural habitat, both as an overall objective tradition and with respect of the subjective performer many whom would never sing a song the same way twice.  The knack of free-styling such stuff is lost to us today, but these performances are free enough to embody that spirit if only in a musical sense.  In both I improvise an ostinato using the Kaossilator (a hand held phrase looping synth which does away with the tyranny of the keyboard with an X-Y pad) thus creating an ambient wash over which to sing the ballad.  The swinging fiddle stunt is simply to provide visual appeal fore & aft to save me the bother of editing the things. Maybe I'll start doing this in future performances, providing landlords don't object to me fixing a hook in their bending beams....

Sedayne, The Fylde, UK, Thursday 20th January 2011