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List Of Folk Songs By Roud Number
This is a list of songs by their Roud Folk Song Index number; the full catalogue can also be found on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website. Some publishers have added Roud numbers to books and liner notes, as has also been done with Child Ballad numbers and Laws numbers. This list (like the article List of the Child Ballads) also serves as a link to articles about the songs, which may use a very different song title. The songs are listed in the index by accession number, rather than (for example) by subject matter or in order of importance. Some well-known songs have low Roud numbers (for example, many of the Child Ballads), but others have high ones. Some of the songs were also included in the collection ''Jacobite Reliques'' by Scottish poet and novelist James Hogg. The Index The index is a database of nearly 200,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by ...
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Roud Folk Song Index
The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London Borough of Croydon. Roud's Index is a combination of the Broadside Index (printed sources before 1900) and a "field-recording index" compiled by Roud. It subsumes all the previous printed sources known to Francis James Child (the Child Ballads) and includes recordings from 1900 to 1975. Until early 2006, the index was available by a CD subscription; now it can be found online on the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library website, maintained by the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). A partial list is also available at List of folk songs by Roud number. Purpose of index The primary function of the Roud Folk Song Index is as a research aid correlating versions of traditional English-language folk song lyrics independently documented ove ...
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The Three Ravens
"The Three Ravens" () is an English folk ballad, printed in the song book ''Melismata'' compiled by Thomas Ravenscroft and published in 1611, but it is perhaps older than that. Newer versions (with different music) were recorded right up through the 19th century. Francis James Child recorded several versions in his Child Ballads (catalogued as number 26). The ballad takes the form of three scavenger birds conversing about where and what they should eat. One tells of a newly slain knight, but they find he is guarded by his loyal hawks and hounds. Furthermore, a "fallow doe", an obvious metaphor for the knight's pregnant ("as great with young as she might go") lover or mistress (see " leman") comes to his body, kisses his wounds, bears him away, and buries him, leaving the ravens without a meal. The narrative ends with "God send euery gentleman / Such haukes, such hounds, and such a Leman". Text of the ballad The lyrics to "The Three Ravens" are here transcribed using 1611 orthog ...
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The Three Butchers
"The Three Butchers", "Bold Johnson", "Dixon and Johnson" or "Johnson-Jinkson" (Roud # 17; Laws L4) is a traditional English folk ballad telling the story of how two or three butchers defeat seven or more robbers. There are a large number of versions of the song going by a variety of different titles.http://www.lizlyle.lofgrens.org/RmOlSngs/RTOS-Johnson.html Old Songs: Johnson-Jinkson Synopsis Two or three butchers, variously name Johnson, Dixon, Jinkson, Jackson, Dickie amongst others, are travelling on horseback when they see a naked woman tied up by the side of the road. They give her a coat and put her on one of their horses but it turns out that she is the bait for a band of robbers and she gives the signal that the trap has worked. The brigands spring out of their hiding place and set on her would-be rescuers. One of the butchers wants to run away but the other elects to fight and proceeds to kill all but one of the highwaymen, who runs away. The woman then kills this butcher ...
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The Cruel Ship's Carpenter
"Pretty Polly", "The Gosport Tragedy" or "The Cruel Ship's Carpenter" () is a traditional English-language folk song found in the British Isles, Canada, and the Appalachian region of North America, among other places. The song is a murder ballad, telling of a young woman lured into the forest where she is killed and buried in a shallow grave. Many variants of the story have the villain as a ship's carpenter who promises to marry Polly but murders her when she becomes pregnant. When he goes back to sea, either he is haunted by her ghost, confesses to the murder, goes mad and dies, or the ship will not sail. He denies the murder and is ripped to pieces by her ghost. "The Gosport Tragedy" evolved into "The Cruel Ship's Carpenter" and "Pretty Polly", losing many of the specifics of the original. "The Gosport Tragedy" There are a number of extant broadside copies of "The Gosport Tragedy", the earliest known version. It is a lengthy ballad composed of rhymed couplets, sixteen verses ...
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The Daemon Lover
"The Daemon Lover" (Roud 14, Child 243) – also known as "James Harris", "A Warning for Married Women", "The Distressed Ship Carpenter", "James Herries", "The Carpenter’s Wife", "The Banks of Italy", or "The House-Carpenter" – is a popular ballad dating from the mid-seventeenth century, when the earliest known broadside version of the ballad was entered in the Stationers' Register on 21 February 1657. History and different versions There are a number of different versions of the ballad. In addition to the eight collected by Francis James Child in volume IV of his anthology ''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads'' (versions A to H), others can be found in Britain and in the United States, where it remained especially widespread, with hundreds of versions being collected throughout the years, around 250 of them in print. In comparison, only four new variants were recorded in the UK in the time between Child's death in 1896 and the second half of the 1960s, all of them befor ...
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The Dowie Dens O Yarrow
"The Dowie Dens o Yarrow", also known as "The Braes of Yarrow" or simply "Yarrow", is a Scottish border ballad (). It has many variants (Child collected at least 19) and it has been printed as a broadside, as well as published in song collections. It is considered to be a folk standard, and many different singers have performed and recorded it. Synopsis The song describes an unequal conflict between a group of men and one man, concerning a lady. This takes place in the vicinity of Yarrow. The one man succeeds in overcoming nearly all his opponents but is finally defeated by (usually) the last one of them. In some versions, the lady (who is not usually named) rejects a number (often nine) wealthy suitors, in preference for a servant or ploughman. The nine make a pact to kill the other man and they ambush him in the "Dens of Yarrow". :There lived a lady in the West, :I neer could find her marrow; :She was courted by nine gentlemen :And a ploughboy-lad in Yarrow. :These nine s ...
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Scarborough Fair (ballad)
"Scarborough Fair" ( Child 2, Roud 12) is a traditional English ballad. The song, which is a variant of The Elfin Knight, lists a number of impossible tasks given to a former lover who lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. The "Scarborough/Whittingham Fair" variant was most common in Yorkshire and Northumbria, where it was sung to various melodies, often using Dorian mode, with refrains resembling "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" and "Then she'll be a true love of mine." It appears in Traditional Tunes by Frank Kidson published in 1891, who claims to have collected it from Whitby. Republished in 1999: The famous melody was collected from Mark Anderson (1874–1953), a retired lead miner from Middleton-in-Teesdale, County Durham, England, by Ewan MacColl in 1947. This version was recorded by a number of musicians in the 20th century, including the version by the 1960s folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel, who learned it from Martin Carthy. History The lyrics of "Scarborough ...
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The Elfin Knight
"The Elfin Knight" () is a traditional Scottish folk ballad of which there are many versions, all dealing with supernatural occurrences, and the commission to perform impossible tasks. The ballad has been collected in different parts of England, Scotland, Ireland, the US, and Canada. As is the case with most traditional folk songs, there have been countless completely different versions recorded of the same ballad. The first broadside version was printed before 1674, and the roots of the song may be considerably older. Synopsis In the oldest extant version of this ballad (circa 1600-1650), an elf threatens to abduct a young woman to be his lover unless she can perform an impossible task. She responds with a list of tasks which he must first perform, thus evading rape. The plot is closely related to "Riddles Wisely Expounded" ( Child Ballad #1), in which the Devil proposes to carry off a woman unless she can answer a number of riddles. Later versions invert the direction of desire ...
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The Baffled Knight
"The Baffled Knight" or "Blow Away the Morning Dew" () is a traditional ballad existing in numerous variants. The first-known version was published in Thomas Ravenscroft's ''Deuteromelia'' (1609) with a matching tune, making this one of the few early ballads for which there is extant original music. The song was included in such notable collections as ''Wit and Mirth, or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Pills to Purge Melancholy'' by Thomas d'Urfey (1719–1720) and ''Reliques of Ancient English Poetry'' by Thomas Percy (bishop of Dromore), Thomas Percy (1765). Versions were collected in England, Scotland, the USA, Canada. One version was recorded by Cecil Sharp from John Dingle (Coryton, Devon, 12 September 1905). The "Blow Away the Morning Dew" version was used in the third movement of Ralph Vaughan Williams' ''English Folk Song Suite'' (1923). Norfolk fisherman Sam Larner sang this same melody to Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger in 1958-60, then was filmed performing the song in 1962. S ...
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Lord Randal
"Lord Randall", or "Lord Randal", () is an Anglo- Scottish border ballad consisting of dialogue between a young Lord and his mother. Similar ballads can be found across Europe in many languages, including Danish, German, Magyar, Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ..., Swedish language, Swedish, and Sorbian languages, Wendish. Italian language, Italian variants are usually titledL'avvelenato ("The Poisoned Man") or "Il testamento dell'avvelenato" ("The Poisoned Man's Will"), the earliest known version being a 1629 setting by Camillo il Bianchino, in Verona. Under the title "Croodlin Doo" Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802), Robert Chambers published a version in his "Scottish Ballads" (1829) page 324 Summary Lord Randall returns home to his mother after ...
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The Cruel Mother
"The Cruel Mother" (a.k.a. "The Greenwood Side" or "Greenwood Sidey") () is a murder ballad originating in England that has since become popular throughout the wider English-speaking world. According to Roud and Bishop :''Widely collected in Britain and Ireland, and in North America, 'The Cruel Mother' has clearly struck a chord with singers over a number of generations. We will never know quite why, of course, but in performance the combination of the matter-of-fact handling of a difficult subject and the repeated rhythmic refrain often creates a stark and hypnotic tale, which is extremely effective.'' Synopsis A woman gives birth to one or two illegitimate children (usually sons) in the woods, kills them, and buries them. On her return trip home, she sees a child, or children, playing, and says that if they were hers, she would dress them in various fine garments and otherwise take care of them. The children tell her that when they were hers, she would not dress them so but m ...
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