#old english ballads

[sictransitgloriamvndi]

The Fairies Farewell Lament: Old Abbies (1864) - Birket Foster

[atomic-chronoscaph]

art by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1910s)

[fictionadventurer]

I don't think we talk often enough about how amazing a poet J.R.R. Tolkien was.

I just read The Lay of Arthur and it was amazing. I got to the battle scene and was so caught up in the excitement and the sound that I just had to read it aloud. It was its own kind of adrenaline rush. I haven't been caught up in poetry like that in a long time.

[lepetitdragonvert]

A Book of Old English Ballads by George Wharton Edwards

1910

Artist : Hamilton Wright Mable

Phillida and Corydon

[peaceinthestorm]

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (1872-1945, British) ~ The Book of Old English Songs and Ballads - 08 : "Pride and Ambition here Only in far-fetch metaphors appear", 1915

[uwmspeccoll]

Publishers' Binding Thursday

It's an Arts and Crafts Publishers' Binding Thursday this week, with A Book of Old English Ballads featuring illustrations by American painter, illustrator, and author George Wharton Edwards. Published in New York by the Macmillan Company, the book includes an introduction by American essayist, critic, and editor Hamilton W. Mabie. The illustrations and cover are done in the Arts and Crafts style, which flourished between 1880 and 1920. This book was published in 1896 at the height of the Arts and Crafts movement.

The cover has the same rather ornate design as the title page, which features a harpist playing under a lit lamp. The illustrations are detailed and the decorations equally so. The spine features the title, illustrator, and introducer in ornate fonts.

View more Publishers' Binding Thursdays here.

-- Alice, Special Collections Department Manager

[dailyenglishvoca]

Today's song is a ballad for an old man by MCandyx featuring the Vocaloids Akito and Haruka

Content warning: glitching/TV static effects, themes concerning death (including both suicide and homicide)

[queenwendy]

Anyone who thinks those cliché fanfic summaries that are like “five times bob tried to help jill, and one time he succeeded” clearly haven’t read Howard Pyle’s 1883 The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood

[sassafrasmoonshine]

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale (British, 1871-1945) • Who is Sylvia • 1919 • Series: The Book of old English songs and ballads • 1920

[muirneach]

i really like this guys songs but his vocals are so bizarre its kind of like he’s reading off a page with no idea what the song actually sounds like. which tbh could be true since he’s just copying child ballads and whatnot but he’s accompanying himself on guitar so clearly he has SOME idea what he wants the melody to sound like. love his tendency to sing one line really fast and the next normally and then also mispronounce everything either for no reason or to hit the syllable count. all in all very bizarre but still somehow very enjoyable

[yeah-thats-probably-it]

#in the german translation they do away with all subtility (not that there was much in the first place) and jeeves doesnt just call the poem #a drawing-room ballad when bertie asks where the quote is from but instead describes it as an 'old english love ballad'#which. firstly does 1819/20-ish count as old english. #secondly. and more importantly. that is absolutely what it is. that is a love ballad. #They tell me she is happy now the gayest of the gay / they hint that she forgets me too i heed not what they say /#Perhaps like me she struggles with each feeling of regret / but if she loves as i have loved she never can forget #also jeeves was gone for LESS THAN TWO WEEKS

I love when Jeeves goes away for a vacation or to help another household or whatever, and Bertie immediately compares himself to some young man of his acquaintance who’s lost his girlfriend. 

[intheholler]

the appalachian murder ballad <3 one of the most interesting elements of americana and american folk, imo!

my wife recently gave me A Look when i had one playing in the car and she was like, "why do all of these old folk songs talk about killing people lmao" and i realized i wanted to Talk About It at length.

nerd shit under the cut, and it's long. y'all been warned

so, as y'all probably know, a lot of appalachian folk music grew its roots in scottish folk (and then was heavily influenced by Black folks once it arrived here, but that's a post for another time).

they existed, as most folk music does, to deliver a narrative--to pass on a story orally, especially in communities where literacy was not widespread. their whole purpose was to get the news out there about current events, and everyone loves a good murder mystery!

as an aside, i saw someone liken the murder ballad to a ye olde true crime podcast and tbh, yeah lol.

the "original" murder ballads started back across the pond as news stories printed on broadsheets and penned in such a way that it was easy to put to melody.

they were meant to be passed on and keep the people informed about the goings-on in town. i imagine that because these songs were left up to their original orators to get them going, this would be why we have sooo many variations of old folk songs.

naturally then, almost always, they were based on real events, either sung from an outside perspective, from the killer's perspective and in some cases, from the victim's. of course, like most things from days of yore, they reek of social dogshit. the particular flavor of dogshit of the OG murder ballad was misogyny.

so, the murder ballad came over when the english and scots-irish settlers did. in fact, a lot of the current murder ballads are still telling stories from centuries ago, and, as is the way of folk, getting rewritten and given new names and melodies and evolving into the modern recordings we hear today.

305 such scottish and english ballads were noted and collected into what is famously known as the Child Ballads collected by a professor named francis james child in the 19th century. they have been reshaped and covered and recorded a million and one times, as is the folk way.

while newer ones continued to largely fit the formula of retelling real events and murder trials (such as one of my favorite ones, little sadie, about a murderer getting chased through the carolinas to have justice handed down), they also evolved into sometimes fictional, (often unfortunately misogynistic) cautionary tales.

perhaps the most famous examples of these are omie wise and pretty polly where the woman's death almost feels justified as if it's her fault (big shocker).

but i digress. in this way, the evolution of the murder ballad came to serve a similar purpose as the spooky legends of appalachia did/do now.

(why do we have those urban legends and oral traditions warning yall out of the woods? to keep babies from gettin lost n dying in them. i know it's a fun tiktok trend rn to tell tale of spooky scary woods like there's really more haints out here than there are anywhere else, but that's a rant for another time too ain't it)

so, the aforementioned little sadie (also known as "bad lee brown" in some cases) was first recorded in the 1920s. i'm also plugging my favorite female-vocaist cover of it there because it's superior when a woman does it, sorry.

it is a pretty straightforward murder ballad in its content--in the original version, the guy kills a woman, a stranger or his girlfriend sometimes depending on who is covering it.

but instead of it being a cautionary 'be careful and don't get pregnant or it's your fault' tale like omie wise and pretty polly, the guy doesn't get away with it, and he's not portrayed as sympathetic like the murderer is in so many ballads.

a few decades after, women started saying fuck you and writing their own murder ballads.

in the 40s, the femme fatale trope was in full swing with women flipping the script and killing their male lovers for slights against them instead.

men began to enter the "find out" phase in these songs and paid up for being abusive partners. women regained their agency and humanity by actually giving themselves an active voice instead of just being essentially 'fridged in the ballads of old.

her majesty dolly parton even covered plenty of old ballads herself but then went on to write the bridge, telling the pregnant-woman-in-the-murder-ballad's side of things for once. love her.

as a listener, i realized that i personally prefer these modern covers of appalachian murder ballads sung by women-led acts like dolly and gillian welch and even the super-recent crooked still especially, because there is a sense of reclamation, subverting its roots by giving it a woman's voice instead.

meaning that, like a lot else from the problematic past, the appalachian murder ballad is something to be enjoyed with critical ears. violence against women is an evergreen issue, of course, and you're going to encounter a lot of that in this branch of historical music.

but with folk songs, and especially the murder ballad, being such a foundational element of appalachian history and culture and fitting squarely into the appalachian gothic, i still find them important and so, so interesting

i do feel it's worth mentioning that there are "tamer" ones. with traditional and modern murder ballads alike, some of them are just for "fun," like a murder mystery novel is enjoyable to read; not all have a message or retell a historical trial.

(for instance, i'd even argue ultra-modern, popular americana songs like hell's comin' with me is a contemporary americana murder ballad--being sung by a male vocalist and having evolved from being at the expense of a woman to instead being directed at a harmful and corrupt church. that kind of thing)

in short: it continues to evolve, and i continue to eat that shit up.

anyway, to leave off, lemme share with yall my personal favorite murder ballad which fits squarely into murder mystery/horror novel territory imo.

it's the 10th child ballad and was originally known as "the twa sisters." it's been covered to hell n back and named and renamed.

but! if you listen to any flavor of americana, chances are high you already know it; popular names are "the dreadful wind and rain" and sometimes just "wind and rain."

in it, a jealous older sister pushes her other sister into a river (or stream, or sea, depending on who's covering it) over a dumbass man. the little sister's body floats away and a fiddle maker come upon her and took parts of her body to make a fiddle of his own. the only song the new fiddle plays is the tale about how it came to be, and it is the same song you have been listening to until then.

how's that for genuinely spooky-scary appalachia, y'all?

[drawingdroid]

Knight Carrying Child 1920 by Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale

Found in the book, The Book of Old English Songs & Ballads, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1920

[movingg-picture]

Targtower Family + Art

🐉 In Time of Peril (1897) by Edmund Blair Leighton 🐉 The Two Princes in the Tower (1878) by John Everett Millais 🐉 Illustration from the Book of Old English Songs and Ballads (c. 1910)

[justplaggin]

endless list of fascinating ding yuxi facts in no particular order

his ideal job besides acting would be museum guard bc he'd get to admire the exhibits all day for free

majored in directing at shanghai theatre academy

gets embarrassed when dubbing his own scenes

used to be a lanky little dude and thus thought dayu (big yu) would be a fitting nickname to use. now he's all buffed up and goes by xiaoding (little ding)

named his fandom haitang bc there's an animated movie called dayu haitang (big fish & begonia)

irl disney princess: animals inexplicably swarm him no matter where he goes (real)

self-proclaimed disney princess

has insane chemistry even with inanimate objects but apparently it's because he's severely nearsighted

thinks his best angle is the back of his head

had to explain slang words and exemplified by looking straight into the camera and saying *in perfect english* "you look SNATCHED in that t-shirt"

played a white cat demon

adopted a white cat and named it after his character

played another white cat demon

adopted two more cats off the street by putting down his backpack and waiting to see if they hop in or not (they did)

adopted a puppy from one of his shows when it grew too big and had to be replaced for continuity

checks fandom posts and questions for him daily and replies with puns so elaborate they require time to be deciphered, memes and/or pictures of his pets

early in his career won an acting reality show

played (among other unhinged characters) a zebra on said show

fans made throwbacks to it to celebrate his recent surge in popularity, newer fans were horrified and said they were worse than antis. he promptly went online to defend his longtime fans by saying they're 'old friends that his journey couldn't have been possible without'

recognizes fans irl and stops to chat with them

used to write down fans' usernames for live q&as

an ai cover of him singing went viral so he recorded his own cover and released it

generally does things his fans ask him to/don't even ask but he sees online and thinks they'd enjoy. even went bungee jumping bc he promised to

hyperaware of his surroundings to the extent that he's the first to catch anyone who stumbles in a 10m radius

gets shoujo vision whenever he sees a plushie and can't help petting it (well-known fact but also. caught in 4k on national tv)

pranks other actors he's traveling with by mingling in with the paparazzi and pretending he's one of them

was often spotted eating alone in restaurants, famous celebs commented saying he should tell them if he wanted to hang out, he was genuinely baffled bc he didn't see why being by himself would be such a big issue

got his driver's license at 29 and now can't stop bringing it up in every conversation

when asked to drive he said he doesn't dare go over 10kmph

his english name is ryan. who even is that. every time he's called that a fan gets a jumpscare. but! on extra cool occasions, he is very much a ryan

has his big break in a hit series every other 4 years (the real deal this time though 🙏)

likes getting new acting jobs bc it means. haircuts for free!! (he thinks spending pocket change on himself in his free time isn't a priority but bought on sight 1218 magazines featuring a co-star just to show support)

shocked veteran actors with his dedication after getting near-drunk in order to make such a scene more convincing (he's allergic to alcohol)

bawls his eyes out at wrap-up ceremonies because after months of filming he'll miss being called by his character's name all the time

whenever a series of his finishes airing, he tries to learn a new craft in order to make an art piece as a send-off gift (recent ones: clay pottery and sand art)

has a beautiful singing voice and loves ballads but never really gets to officially sing, recently bc of his newfound success he was invited to perform on a music show and during the stage he was more scared than when bungee-jumping

thinks acting is like borrowing someone's life so he wishes to help his characters live to the fullest

in the last 2 months covered the entire scale of: [no bodyguards] -> highest popularity level possible on weibo, achieved only by 3 other much more famous actors -> brand event of his supposed to be held in a mall had to be urgently moved to the nearby 60.000-seat olympic stadium because the fans kept coming; the stadium reached max capacity and the brand had to state that it wasn't a concert (🆕️)

is a cat

[anemoiawithatouchofobsession]

I have never forgot about the song, so I will try and translate the lyrics:

낮부터 내린 비는 이 저녁 유리창에 이슬만 뿌려 놓고서 The rain that's falling since the day is only leaving dewdrops on this glass window on this evening 밤이되면 더욱 커지는 시계 소리처럼 내 마음을 흔들고 있네 It is shaking my heart, just like the sound of the clock that only grows louder when the night falls. 이 밤 빗줄기는 언제나 숨겨놓은 내 맘에 비를 내리네 Tonight, the rain streams are constantly raining down in my hidden heart 떠오른 아주 많은 시간들 속을 헤매이던 내 맘은 비에 젖는데 My heart, which is wandering through all those times I am reminded of, is getting soaked by this rain 이젠 젖은 우산을 펼 수는 없는걸 But I cannot open up my soaked umbrella anymore now 낮부터 내린 비는 이 저녁 유리창에 슬픔만 뿌리고 있네 The rain this evening that's falling since the day, is only sprinkling sadness on this glass window 이 밤 마음속엔 언제나 남아있던 비워둔 빗줄기처럼 Tonight, just like the empty rain stream which is always staying in my heart, 떠오른 기억 스민 순간사이로 내 마음은 어두운 비를 뿌려요 Is sprinkling dark rain in my heart, in between moments of remembrance 이젠 젖은 우산을 펼 수는 없는걸 I cannot open up my soaked umbrella anymore now 낮부터 내린 비는 이저녁 유리창에 슬픔만 뿌려 놓고서 The rain that's falling since the day only sprinkles sadness on this glass window this evening 밤이되면 유리창에 내 슬픈 기억들을 이슬로 흩어 놓았네 And when the night falls, my sad memories will be scattered like dewdrops on the glass window

WHY is this the most dramatic song of the 80s, tell me. It sounds straight out of a depressing tragic movie. the lyrics are also so so pretty and descriptive : 낮부터 내린 비는 이 저녘 유리창엔 이슬만 뿌리고 있네... the rain nthat has been raining since the morning is only leaving dew drops on my window in the evening.