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Author
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Comment
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otherworld
Unregistered User
(4/15/02 6:34:46 pm)
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tales in to songs, songs in to tales
hi every one
I'm part of a glasgow based theatre company that is blending folk tales and their musical counter-parts together such as in "Tam Lin" or "The Barring of the door" which turns up in British song but has it's roots in an Indian story.. any excamples whould be greatly appretiated
thanks
martin
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Judith
Berman
Registered User
(4/15/02 7:38:14 pm)
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Re: tales in to songs, songs in to tales
I read or was told in some long ago course that many tale-types occurring widely in the India-to-Ireland Indoeuropean diaspora turn up in the British Isles (and by extension in the US Appalachia) not as folktales but as ballads. So there are a whole bunch of what you are talking about. I think there are probably folklore sources where you can look this kind of thing up, but they have long since vanished from my memory.
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Gregor9
Registered User
(4/16/02 5:12:22 am)
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Re: tales in to songs, songs in to tales
Martin,
I wrote two volumes based on the Tain bo Cuailnge, and one of the research texts I worked from had traced it and numerous other Celtic tales back to India, and worked from the premise that these stories had moved along with IndoEuropean settlement, evolving as they went along, just as various forms of jewelry and ornamentation could be shown to have moved north and westward across Europe to the British Isles. I can't recall the name of the book offhand, but I imagine it's not that hard to find.
I've written two stories that derive from folk songs--one from a Fairport Convention song, "Crazy Man Michael", and another, which Terri just bought for a forthcoming anthology, is based on the traditional ballad "The Cruel Sister." Michael Swanwick has done stories based on ballads, too; as I am sure many others writing fantasy have done.
Greg
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(4/16/02 5:42:27 am)
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Me too!
First short story I ever wrote was in college and it used the "Twa Sisters" and since then I have written a TAM LIN picture book, a short story that used "Five Points of Roguery," and probably many more I am forgetting. I also made up a lot of ballads and folksongs that have olde antecedents in a variety of books, epsecially the White Jenna books.
Jane
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Terri
Registered User
(4/16/02 7:46:45 am)
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Re: Me too!
You should take a look at the "Ballads" series of comics
published, and beautifully illustrated, by Charles Vess. Here's
his web site: www.greenmanpress.com
Also, there have been some terrific novels based on ballads. Off the top of my head:
Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
Through a Brazen Mirror by Delia Sherman (based on The Famous Flower of Serving Men)
The Winter Rose by Patricia A. McKillip (loosely based on Tam Lin)
Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones (Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer)
The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope (Tam Lin)
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Gregor9
Registered User
(4/16/02 11:40:34 am)
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Re: Me too!
Terri,
In looking over your list, my immediate reaction is: What the heck is it about Tam Lin in particular? I love the song, the story...but what is it about that story which has so many people using it?
If I think about this, I'll start trying to answer it, so I'll stop and shut up instead.
Greg
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(4/16/02 12:35:23 pm)
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My take
Tam Lin is one of the few (perhaps the only) feminist Border Ballads for starters. Girl rescues boy in danger Big Time. She is strong, smart, brave.
And of course the Queen is an elegant, smart, powerful enemy.
Jane
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Otherworld
Registered User
(4/16/02 1:55:11 pm)
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Re: ta and heres more
Thanks every one for all your info... It's a great start.
Yep, I've seen the indo/euro/celtic connection before but lacked spicific excamples.
Ones I've discovered since last night are
"The Knight and the Shepherds Daughter" Scotland and know as "The Royal Forester" in England
"Alison Gross" Northen England ..Lad lad refuses to sleep with ugly witch so is turned in to worm.
Also rememberd that an Irish band "Horslips" Did two albums based on "The Book of Invasions" and "The Tain"
Does any one know about a song/tale called "Lord Baker" Irish prince held to ransom by Turkish King but his daughter falls in love with him and sets him free. They agree to marry and she waits for him but after seven years he has not sent for her [is he a cad methinks!!!] so she decides to go to him only to arrive on his wedding day but in true romantic style he dumps his new bride and marries his turkish love. A version was done by Planxty.
As for Tam Lin... We [Otherworld] did an adaptation for a halloween show last year so I read many versions and it does, as Jane says have a strong feminist point in most versions.
How ever in many it seemed that Tam was a rapeist. "He's asked of her no leave" sounds pretty dodgy to me.
The older Versions were much darker as is often the case
thanks again
martin
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Jane Yolen
Unregistered User
(4/16/02 2:14:09 pm)
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Is this it?
I think the ballad you are thinking of is also called "The Nut Brown Maid."
Jane
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Terri
Registered User
(4/17/02 7:09:16 am)
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Re: Is this it?
In addition to Jane's comments, another likely reason Tam Lin is so popular with fiction writers is that it is a long, suspenseful, richly imagistic story with a proper beginning, middle, and end -- and thus is more easily adapted than some of the sketchier tales. As for me, and perhaps other writers and readers of a Certain Age, I was introduced to folk music by Fairport Convention's Leaf and Liege album back in the Seventies (along with Steeleye Span) on which Tam Lin was featured, and have retained a special fondness for the ballad ever since. I even did a senior thesis on it in college. Certainly the strength of the heroine, and of her female nemesis, appealled to my feminist sensibilities, and the question of whether she'd been raped or not (in those years when I was doing a lot of work with women's rape crisis centers) was also of interest.
Here's what Delia Sherman had to say about writing ballad-inspired fiction (when I interviewed her for an article on ballads):
"What I like best about ballads," she said, "is that they're plots with all the motivations left out. Why did Young Randall's stepmother want to poison him? Why choose eels? Why did Randall eat them (especially if they were green and yellow)? There's a novel there, or at least a short story. Ballads give you classical human situations, and also some decidedly unclassical ones, exploring relationships between lovers, parents and children, between friends, masters and servants. Many of them deal with power and powerlessness, which is one of the central themes of fairy tales too, but it seems to me that ballads are more pragmatic, more realistic, in their denouments. Not every villain gets his/her just desserts. I can imagine a ballad variant of 'Beauty and the Beast' in which Beauty comes too late, and sings a plaintive last verse over the Beast's body, about how she will sew him a shroud of the linen fine and sit barefoot in the dark all her days, for the love of him who she loved too late."
(Anyone interested in reading the whole article can find it at:
www.endicott-studio.com/forcbmof.html)
This could make an interesting Wiscon panel, by the way -- next year when Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman will be there. (They're missing it this year, alas, due to a family commitment.) Midori, Charles, Greg: Let's remember this for next year, okay?
Edited by: Terri at: 4/17/02 7:14:01 am
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catja1
Registered User
(4/17/02 1:06:29 pm)
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Ballads (long and annoyingly academic, sorry!)
I just got out of folklore class, and we were discussing this very
topic! My professor, Robert Thomson, is a ballad guy who was very
much involved in the collecting of folk music in Britain and Appalachia
in the past half century, so it's wonderful just to sit at his feet
and soak up all this knowledge. So here's my two cents, it being
fresh in my mind and all.
There's a ton of good sources for ballad material. For primary sources, there's of course Francis Child's monumental _The English and Scottish Ballads_; and, as a supplement, Bertrand Bronson's _Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads_. This may sound surprising, but it wasn't until this century that anyone considered the music of the ballads to be important; Cecil Sharp, the famous Appalachian collector, certainly didn't. There's also some hairiness over whether traditional ballad performances were musically accompanied; mostly no, but you do have Sharp sending out his assistant to do a preliminary sweep of his potential informants, telling them that he wanted them to put away all their instruments -- Sharp's achievement, while still important, is not unproblematic because it so much reflects what he *wanted* to find, rather than what was there.
This is a problem that plagues a lot of folklore scholarship; here, I should point out that you will find very few folklorists today willing to commit themselves to the Indo-European theory of transmission, because there's a lot of this iffiness about the work of the so-called "Indianists" (whose names escape me right now, arrgh!) of the early twentieth century (which most versions of the theory that crops up today seem to be based on) -- they are generally seen as obscuring, manipulating or even falsifying source material to fit in with their theory that the root of all story lies in India. That's not to say that some stories may have their roots in India, but that's often difficult to prove; the most many scholars will say about the subject is that the earliest recorded form of a particular tale-type may show up in an Indian text, but that doesn't necessarily make it a wellspring: I forget the philosophical term for it, but the principle that just because something exists before, it doesn't necessarily follow that it *causes* later events, holds here -- this is a major critique of the historic-geographic (or Finnish) school of folk transmission. This is still debated, but, again, most folklorists are wary of it; then again, one could reasonably say that folklorists *today* are reluctant to commit to any overarching theory, partially because of the awareness that the field is too large and idiosyncratic, and also because of a reluctance to go in and say, "I the academic, will tell you what your stories mean! They all come from India/express your Oedipal fantasies/preserve pagan rites etc."
Okay, back to ballads. There's been a lot of debate about authenticity and tradition within all aspects of folklore, and in ballad collecting, it tends to get very fierce, in part owing to the explosion, in the 1960's and '70's, of "revivalist" bands like Steeleye Span and the Fairport Convention, carried on today by people like Loreena McKennit. Ewan McColl, who did come from a family of traditional singers, coined the term to describe his work with the Child ballads, where he went out and learned the songs recorded in Child, the way people were currently singing them; he wanted to distinguish his performances from that of his informants, who were "traditionalists." McColl was also traditionalist, when dealing with material from his own family, but revivalist when working with other people's material -- see the distinction? Bands like Fairport Convention, et al. are purely revivalist, in that their songs, as they arranged and performed them (multiple singers working in harmony, instrumental accompanment, electric amplification, etc), would not be reproduced in a traditional context, which relies upon one performer, unaccompanied. This distinction gets a bit fuzzier with people like Mike Waterstone, a gypsy performer; he had an enormous fund of traditional material from his own family, but, as a professional performer, wouldn't be enough to sustain him indefinitely, so he learned new songs wherever he went. Is he traditional or revivalist? There's also been a bias, in a lot of more purist-minded collectors, to view material collected from educated informants as somehow compromised in its integrity -- it's not the "real" folk material. But some studies indicate that in some cases, the best performers are the most literate/educated in the community. Not always, but enough to show that "pure" and "authentic" are very difficult to pin down.
Whew! Sorry that was so long. But the material is so interesting, and there's so many complicated permutations in the analysis that one could go on for hours. Some good scholars to read are Tristam Coffin, Thomas Burton (_Some Ballad Folks_), and David Buchan (_The Ballad and the Folk_).
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catja1
Registered User
(4/17/02 1:41:17 pm)
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Tam Lin
"Tam Lin" is great, one of my favorites. Actually, for a long time, folklorists didn't think this song existed in the folk repretoire -- the belief was that it only circulated about in text form, since nobody had ever found a tune for it. As it turns out, they just weren't looking in the right places! I think it was either Ewan McColl or A.L. Lloyd who stumbled across singer Duncan Williamson, a tinker living in a shack, who sang "Tam Lin" for him. Since then, there have been several versions collected from traditional singers, including a lovely, hypnotic performance by Mike Waterstone, which I have on tape. I believe Steeleye Span based their version on Duncan Williamson's tune.
As regards the question of rape, Robert Thomson pointed out to me that bride-stealing was a very common practice in Scotland, and there is a ballad entitled, I think, "Eppie Moray," wherein the hero steals the heroine, but doesn't take advantage of her; in the morning, she tells him that if he'd had sex with her, she'd have married him, but since he didn't, he's obviously not man enough to be her husband! It seems to me that "Tam Lin" effectively inverts this bride-stealing -- it's husband stealing! To read "he never once asked her leave" as the account of a forcible rape seems a bit reductive and literalist to me; the events of the rest of the story, as well as the cultural context, don't seem to bear this out. In Waterstone's version, particularly, this event is cheekily read as Margaret's (his name for Janet) initiative: she "runs down to the Chaser's Wood/ as fast asshe could tear" in the beginning; when she plucks the rose, she sasses him cheerfully, informing him "I shall pull, pluck, break or bend a branch/ and I won't ask leave of thee." In this case, when Tam Lin "took her by the lily-white hand / down to where the grass it grows so green / and what they've done, well I just couldn't say / but he never once asked her leave," the last line stands more as a symmetrical response to her words, than as a literal description of the act -- it's a stylistic choice, not a moral judgement.
There do exist other ballads which feature strong female characters, but they're not as well-known. "Lady Isabella and the Elf-Knight" (Child 4, I think), also known as "The False Knight" or "The Outlandish Knight," among other titles, is a nifty Bluebeard-esque song where the heroine, elopes, only to find her husband intends kill her; she escapes by ordering him, when he demands she disrobe, to turn his back to preserve her maiden modesty, at least for a moment. He obliges, and she promptly pushes him into the river in which he intended to drown her. It's like "Fitcher's Bird," and other tales of the AT 311 stripe, in that the heroine's cleverness often involves feigning a traditional maidenly virtue (modesty, lack of curiosity) that she clearly does not possess, and that she's rewarded for not possessing.
Okay, I'm tired of typing. I could probably ramble on much longer,
but I'll spare you all!
Catja
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Kerrie
Registered User
(4/17/02 5:20:14 pm)
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Songs...
If you're looking for musical renditions, here are a few to check out:
Loreena McKennitt- "The Bonny Swans" (The Twa Sisters), "The Lady of Shallott," "The Highwayman," "The Stolen Child," almost anything by Loreena.
www.quinlanroad.com/non_flash.html
Kate Price- "The Stolen Child," "Ballad of the Bog"
www.hrmusic.com/artists/kpart.html
Various artists have done songs based on the story/tradition of the Hunting of the Wren:
www.noblenet.org/year/tty12sts.htm
(We had a discussion of some of the wren songs when I was searching for a topic for a Winter Holiday story.)
Soft whispers and valley blossoms,
Kerrie
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tlchang37
Registered User
(4/17/02 5:42:26 pm)
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traditional ballads
In speaking of Appalachian ballads, has any else seen "The Song Catcher" with Janet McTeer and Adian Quinn?
Tara
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Judith
Berman
Registered User
(4/18/02 6:29:25 am)
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Re: Ballads (long and annoyingly academic, sorry!)
Thanks, Catja, for supplying some of the references that have disappeared into the crevices of my brain. Child's at least I hadn't forgotten!
I should say that I wasn't espousing the old "out of India" historical transmission theory about folk materials in the Indoeuropean areas. Nor, speaking as a North Americanist (and an accidental Boas scholar), I'm well aware of the distinctions between "race," language and culture, do I suppose that IE folk narratives, etc., are necessarily handed down with noun declensions and blue eyes (or whatever linguistic and genetic features one might pick instead.) From the same standpoint, though, it's also strikingly obvious that there is a great deal of commonality among folk materials in areas where IE languages are spoken, especially when you compare them to entirely different bodies of tradition, and it makes sense to presume that it is due to some combination of shared (deep) (pre-)history and constant interaction over the course of millenia. The Indian origin theory, incidentally, is in conflict with archaeology and IE language reconstruction, which, to the best of my recollection -- this is not at all my area -- now suggests the IE homeland (if there was a single one) is north of the Black Sea.
This is also not to say that I'm proposing an "IE substrate" or whatever, as some kind of deterministic or primary explanation for anything -- it's merely an observation that something of the kind must exist. There is also, clearly, what my adviser liked to call a "paleolithic substrate" in northern European materials that links them in some ways to Siberian and North American materials. For example: circumpolar shamanism; the bear-ceremony complex. There's a lovely Norwegian movie of about 10 or 15 years ago called, I believe, "Pathfinder," that brings this into sharp focus. Against the backdrop of invaders with iron tools, there is a shaman and his successor, a vision of an animal spirit-guardian (a reindeer), a ritual for a slain bear (brown, not polar). I also recall reading elsewhere some accounts of16th century Finnish shamans' narratives, in which the magical flight and battles with the enemy shamans took place on skis!
The bears, along with the Finnish witches, were one of the things I loved about THE GOLDEN COMPASS. Guess I've got bears on the brain! Apologies if all this is OT.
Judith
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Kerrie
Registered User
(4/18/02 8:08:29 am)
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Re: Ballads (long and annoyingly academic, sorry!)
"I also recall reading elsewhere some accounts
of16th century Finnish shamans' narratives, in which the magical flight and battles with the enemy shamans took place on skis!"
There is a book published by Houghton Mifflin called "The Race of the Birkenbeiners" by Lise Lunge-Larsen and illustrated by Mary Azarian which sounds like the story you describe:
www.houghtonmifflinbooks....ber=590009
Soft whispers and valley blossoms,
Kerrie
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Heidi
Anne Heiner
ezOP
(4/18/02 9:26:33 am)
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Re: Ballads (long and annoyingly academic, sorry!)
Extremely interesting topic, especially since I have been revisiting traditional songs of late, too. I haven't been studying, just enjoying and savoring songs I hadn't listened to in a while.
And, Tara, yes, I saw "Songcatcher" a few months ago and really enjoyed it. My husband and I referred to it for days afterwards which is always a good recommendation for a movie. I thought of it right away when this topic began. Plus I just enjoyed the movie's setting and the two hour trip home to the South it gave me.
Heidi
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Otherworld
Registered User
(4/18/02 5:46:54 pm)
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Re: songs to tales and responces etc
Thanks to every one for all this thought provoking information. it's stimulated and re-awakened lots of things in my mind, to say nothing of song lines - Linguistics and genetics. sorry this is so short but will get back soon
just to throw a new idea in to the pot.... how about contemporary singers/musicians that are creating a new folklorist mythology ..ie Bjork
mart
She, i think is developing the fairport/steeleye/planxty/june tabor/martin carthy [to mention just the british] theme but at the same time creating a blend of fairytale of past and present
best regards
otherworld
martin
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Judith
Berman
Registered User
(4/19/02 5:43:00 am)
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Re: Ballads (long and annoyingly academic, sorry!)
The source for the Finnish shamans' narratives (which sadly did not contain any of the narratives), was an academic publication, one of those things you find that is a lot more interesting than why you originally took the volume off the shelf.
I don't know of the Lunge-Larsen book you mention, but I'll keep an eye out for it!
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Terri
Registered User
(4/19/02 7:47:27 am)
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Re: Ballads (long and annoyingly academic, sorry!)
Catja: I love long, academic, and informative posts, and I bet others here do too -- don't apologize!
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Gregor9
Registered User
(4/19/02 1:04:14 pm)
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Re: Ballads (long and annoyingly academic, sorry!)
Catja,
I second Terri. This is how I learn from this board. You're a tremendous resource and you're sharing! Thank you.
Greg
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Jess
Unregistered User
(4/19/02 1:48:51 pm)
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Tam Lin
Catja,
This is fascinating. I worked with a professor back in my music days that
did a lot with Appalacian music. Musically, it is also very unique in
that it hasn't changed much in the last 200-300 years and is modal. I
have some vague recollection about the story of the man in the tinker
shack. Wasn't there a PBS special or something that centered on these
old ballads and their "rediscovery"? My guess is your professor
was involved in the cataloging from what you have said. Any knowledge?
I have been reading this thread with fascination, but have had nothing
to add at all. Keep the comments coming.
Jess
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Gail
Unregistered User
(4/20/02 5:32:39 am)
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Tam Lin & Thomas
the Rhymer
I am enjoying this thread. Just want to add a comment that I did include
a chapter on the ballads Tam Lin and Thomas the Rhymer and their "history",
the critical interpretations that I could locate, and the various reworkings
in literary formats (including the graphic versions of Charles Vess) in
Tales, Then and Now. I have gathered as much information as I could find
about the two ballads under one roof, so to speak.
By the way, it was these two ballads that sparked my interest in the reworkings
of folktales and ballads and started me writing an article -- which has
since grown into the two books that Heidi has so graciously featured on
her title page. I think it is not only the fascination with the world
of the faery but the fact that the two ballads tell of the return from
that world and the consequences and ramifications of walking in both that
drew me to them.
Gail
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Terri
Registered User
(4/20/02 7:21:55 am)
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Re: Tam Lin & Thomas
the Rhymer
Gail, your publisher still hasn't sent us a review copy of Tales, Then
and Now, for Year's Best review. Any chance of nudging them?
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Midori
Unregistered User
(4/21/02 4:02:35 am)
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Tam Lin
I agree with Catja that it's hard to read the first encounter between
Tam Lin and Margaret as rape, exactly. I always felt there was a lot of
repressed sexuality driving the song before that moment---Margaret, dressed
in black, sewing (ugh...in summer for heaven's sake!) fleeing to the woods
just to get flowers and that wonderful line about "she pulled them
branches down, me boys, she pulled them branches down." I always
thought of her angry and sexually pent up. But there is a kind of nice
imaged symmetry--Tam Lin is also repressed, locked in his transformation--and
he pulls at her sleeve in much the same way she has pulled at the branches
of the greenwood of which he has become a part.
For me the strength of the song was always that the woman was heroic for
a gender specific reason-the ability to give birth--to both a child and
a lover. Some of the versions really layer this on, pulling out all the
stops of pagan and christian imagery--I have a Scottish version of Margaret
pregnant as she can be, in a stable, grabbing Tam Lin and after freeing
him from his enchanment, promptly giving birth. Mary/Margaret in that
female trinity of Virgin (after he wasn't quite mortal when he impregnated
her) Mother and Bride.
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Terri
Registered User
(4/21/02 6:51:18 am)
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Re: Tam Lin
Midori, your post reminded me that your first novel, Soul String, has
Tam Lin elements. Sorry that I didn't list it before!
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Gail
Unregistered User
(4/23/02 9:29:10 am)
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review copy
Terri, I will nag them today! Gail
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