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Author
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Comment
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cammykitty
Unregistered User
(11/9/05 5:35 pm)
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Scottish Ballad - Cruel Sister
Are any of you familiar with this Scottish Ballad "Cruel Sister" about a woman who drowns her sister over a love triangle with a knight? I'm doing ground work for a modern adaptation.
Where did you hear it or read it? Old Blind Dogs? Pentangle? There seems to be a few versions -- especially when it comes to the harp "made out of her breastbone." If you know any versions that get grislier than the harp -- or include more information about the musicians than they just saw this body and decided to make a harp out of it, please let me know. I know there's a version with a fiddle, but I've never actually been able to track it down.
Do you know of any books or articles that are about this ballad?
Thanks!
Katie
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evil little pixie
Registered User
(11/9/05 5:43 pm)
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Re: Scottish Ballad - Cruel Sister
Patricia C. Wrede wrote a wonderful retelling of the ballad in her Book of Enchantments. She includes source info in her afterward.
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cammykitty
Unregistered User
(11/9/05 5:53 pm)
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thanks
Thanks! Most excellent. I even have Pat's book at home. Here's another question - the chorus is "Lay the bent to the bonny broom." Huh? I'm taking that as a metaphor - place the warped/old/cruel beside the young/fair. Does that line mean something else to other people?
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Judith Berman
Registered User
(11/9/05 8:43 pm)
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Re: thanks
>Lay the bent to the bonny broom
I thought the broom in question, as it's bonny, must mean the bush, which has pretty yellow flowers. Don't have any idea what the rest means.
The Red Clay Ramblers recorded an Appalachian version. It's a good deal shorter than the Pentangle version, and the refrain is "Oh the wind and rain." The dead sister floats down stream to a mill pond, where the miller "fished her out with his long hook and line." Then "he made fiddle pegs of her little finger bones" and "he made fiddle strings of her long curly hair." "But the only tune that fiddle would play, was oh the dreadful wind and rain."
I forget the title, but I think you can find all the Red Clay Ramblers' music on iTunes.
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AlisonPegg
Registered User
(11/10/05 3:59 am)
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Re: Scottish Ballad - Cruel Sister
I'm not sure if this what you are looking for, but it's brilliant anyway !
The Twa Sisters
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Crceres
Registered User
(11/10/05 9:32 am)
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Bonny Swans
"Dreadful Wind and Rain" also shows up in Songcatcher, an excellent movie with a lot of Appalachian music. I've seen Binnorie in John Jacob's book of English fairy tales. "The Bonny Swans" is sung by Loreena McKennitt on two of her CDs, which is where I got my first exposure to the ballad.
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Charles Vess
Unregistered User
(11/10/05 10:37 am)
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Cruel Sister at WFC
This weekend at the World Fantasy Convention there was a young Japanese artist displaying paintings from his adaptation of this ballad. Lovely landscapes! He said that he had every intention of producing more adaptations. I'll look around for his card.
There are so many, many versions of this particular ballad. Have you tried going to any of the on-line ballad sites? They're a wonderful source of information.
Best,
Charles
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cammykitty
Registered User
(11/10/05 10:46 am)
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Re: Cruel Sister at WFC
Thanks for all the tips - I think it's time I listen to some appalachain music. & Twa Sisters - wild - some of they lyrics are identical and some seem like they've been pulled from another song I've heard before. Edinbrough Edinbrough is the refrain for a battle song by Tannahill Weavers I was listening to in the car this morning.
Also someone mentioned to me a similar story with brothers, where a mouthpiece for a horn is made from the body. Does anyone know this tale?
Charles, I saw his work at World Fantasy too and got a chance to talk to him at a party. I remember his name was Tanaka. Very cool man and cool work. It was kind of ironic because I'd already started working through the ballad in my mind as an actual story idea about a month before world fantasy. When I went into the art room, I took one look at his piece of the girl drowning and thought That's her! & then when I realized it really was her, we were using the same ballad. Wow. I hope he has luck finding a publisher. He said he first heard the ballad 25 years ago, so he's been working on that project, at least in his head for that long.
Thanks!
Edited by: cammykitty at: 11/10/05 10:53 am
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Colleen
Unregistered User
(11/10/05 11:17 am)
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Two Sisters
I know this one as Two Sisters. I used to work at the same company as a woman who played the harp and sang folksongs at various renaissance faires in the Michigan-Indiana area. I didn't know she did this until I ran into her at a faire one day - small world, indeed! Not long after that, I was visiting an aunt near Detroit and we went to an indoor flea market - and there I found a cassette tape for sale, recordings by the same woman. She sings Two Sisters on that one. Sadly, I've since lost the tape, so can't transcribe any of the lyrics for you.
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Writerpatrick
Registered User
(11/11/05 9:06 am)
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Re: Two Sisters
It appears to be basically the same story as "The Singing Bone." www.surlalunefairytales.c...gbone.html
I recall seeing a version of Two Sisters done as part of a fairy tale TV show. In it they used "Seasons In The Sun" with altered lyrics as the theme played by the harp.
I believe the show was made during the 60's, but I've been unable to find out anything about it. (It would seem to be a lost show. It may also have been a Canadian production, although I had the feeling it was made by a California university.)
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Judith Berman
Registered User
(11/11/05 9:08 am)
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Re: Two Sisters
I forgot to mention that Greg Frost did a story based on one or more versions of the ballad. Think it was for a YA anthology. Could it be reprinted in his recent collection ATTACK OF THE JAZZ GIANTS? (I have that book, can look through it later.)
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aka Greensleeves
Registered User
(11/11/05 5:29 pm)
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Re: Two Sisters
The Fall 2003 issue of "Paradox"
magazine features a retelling by Jennifer Barret (sp?) called
"The Harp that Sang."
edited b/c apparently my link isn't working. It should be: http://home.nyc.rr.com/paradoxmag/
Edited by: aka Greensleeves at: 11/11/05 5:30 pm
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evil little pixie
Registered User
(11/11/05 9:57 pm)
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Re: Two Sisters
Charles Harry Whedbee includes a story clearly inspired by the ballad in one of his books of legends and ghosts stories from North Carolina's Outer Banks. Unfortunately, I don't have the books here with me at college and I don't remember which one it's in -- there are at least five. In this version, the musician already has a lute, and he merely replaces a broken string with the girl's hair. I'll let you know which book it is when I go home for Thanksgiving.
Edited by: evil little pixie at: 11/13/05 2:55 pm
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LadyErmine
Unregistered User
(11/13/05 6:10 am)
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Cruel Sister
Hi Cammykitty - do excuse me if I'm teaching my grandmother (to suck eggs) but do you know the Child collection of English and Scottish Popular Ballads, which has numerous versions of this ballad - there is certainly a version in which the instrument is a fiddle - one title is The Bows of London, and it is available on cd, sung by Martin Carthy. There is also a novel based on the ballad, but, helpfully, I cannot immediately call the title to mind...
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Charles Vess
Unregistered User
(11/14/05 10:15 am)
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"Lay the bent to the bonny broom."
Well, the first thing to remember is that these songs come out of a very different culture than we live now. These story/songs were a intrical part of their way of life. You would have heard them being sung at any given moment during the day and not at a special concert that you made a special effort to get to and then paid to attend. Tam-Lim, The House Carpenter or Cruel Sister were that cultures equivilant of 'Desperate Housewifes' or 'Lost'. Most especially they eased your way through long boring everyday chores: hanging the washing, working in the fields, sweeping out your cottage or a castle hall. They weren't learned in a classroom or sitting in front of of CD player memorising the lyrics but orally from one 'mentor' to another. Sheila Kay Adams, a seventh generation ballad singer, who lives in the North Carolina hills near here has explained that she would attend to her chores with her grannie. Her grannie would sing one verse which she would repeat. Then the older woman would sing a second verse and Shiela would sing both the first and second verse back to her grannie and so on to the end of that particular ballad and over and over again until the song was thouroughly learned. So for me the repeated refrain of this particular version of the ballad has always meant that you were sweeping a dirty castle hallway putting enough effort into the task to 'bend your bonny broom'. But I could, as always, be wrong...
Best,
Charles
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Chris Peltier
Registered User
(11/14/05 1:27 pm)
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Re: "Lay the bent to the bonny broom."
Charles, I delighted in your description of the NC ballad singer and her grannie, as I grew up in the Appalachian mountains with my mom, a craftsperson with the Southern Highland Craft Guild. Southern Highlands has always been about perserving this culture, which has its roots in the Scottish Highlands.
In college I enjoyed learning about medieval weaving songs, since my mother made her living as a weaver. The rhythm of weaving lends itself to the making of music.
Loreena McKennitt has a version of this song based on traditional lyrics called "The Bonny Swans" on her CD, "The Mask and the Mirror". The drowned sister comes back initially as a swan, who is then made into a harp.
~Chandra~
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LadyErmine
Unregistered User
(11/14/05 5:43 pm)
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Bonny broom
To Charles Vess - "the bonny broom" which turns up in a lot of ballad choruses - "the broom blooms bonny and so it is fair" but "We'll never gang down the broom no mair" and "Broom, broom on hill" isn't actually a brush, but a flowering bush - it carries powerful suggestions of sexuality, often illicit - so perhaps the chorus suggests that one - or even both - of the sisters have misbehaved with the young man. The "bent" is coarse reedy grass.
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chirons daughter
Registered User
(11/16/05 11:32 am)
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Re: Bonny broom
It's also called "Binnorie." Try searching on that. It's one of the stories in which a musical instrument made form the remains of a murdered person identifies the murderer. Like Bro. Grimms' "The Juniper Tree."
Edited by: chirons daughter at: 11/16/05 11:33 am
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AlisonPegg
Registered User
(11/17/05 3:43 am)
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Re: "Lay the bent to the bonny broom."
Broom was a charm against witches and evil spirits and the bent or rush was a charm against the evil eye, so I guess it was a kind of spell. But the broom also has sexual connotations, so I think there's a double meaning there.
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Northerner4me
Registered User
(11/17/05 10:28 am)
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Re: "Lay the bent to the bonny broom."
I know it best as either "The twa sisters" or "Binnorie". It's one from the Child Ballads collection. It's still quite a popular ballad. I've certainly got it on record or tape somewhere in my collection. I'm almost certain to have heard it sung live too. I lived for a year in Aberdeen up in the north of Scotland, where there are some outstanding traditional balladeers and storytellers. I've probably heard Stanley Robertson singing this; it is certain to be part of his repertoire anyway.
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evil little pixie
Registered User
(11/24/05 5:43 pm)
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Charles Harry Whedbee
Found it! It's "The Magic Lute" on page 150 of _Blackbeard's Cup and Stories of the Outer Banks_. Still in print, so it should be easy to find. Good luck!
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