Glasgerion is

Child ballad The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as '' ...

67, (

Roud 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 ...

145), existing in several variants.

Synopsis

Glasgerion is a king's son and a harper. He harps before another king, whose daughter arranges a tryst with him. He tells his servant to ensure that he wakes in time to make the tryst. The servant goes in his place and rapes the princess. She learns the truth and kills herself, sometimes because she can not offer herself as Glasgerion's bride. Glasgerion kills his servant and either kills himself as well or goes mad.

Motifs

The figure of Glasgerion was cited as a harper in

Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...

's ''

The House of Fame ''The House of Fame'' (''Hous of Fame'' in the original spelling) is a Middle English poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, probably written between 1374 and 1385, making it one of his earlier works. It was most likely written after ''The Book of the Duchess' ...

'' and

Gavin Douglas Gavin Douglas (c. 1474 – September 1522) was a Scottish bishop, makar and translator. Although he had an important political career, he is chiefly remembered for his poetry. His main pioneering achievement was the ''Eneados'', a full and fai ...

's ''The Palice of Honour''.

Adaptations

In the 1960s, when the song had long fallen out of the tradition, the scholar and revivalist singer

A.L. Lloyd Albert Lancaster Lloyd (29 February 1908 – 29 September 1982),Eder, Bruce. (29 September 1982A. L. Lloyd - Music Biography, Credits and Discography AllMusic. Retrieved on 2013-02-24. usually known as A. L. Lloyd or Bert Lloyd, was an English fo ...

‘took it out and dusted it off a bit and set a tune to it and, I hope, started it on a new lease of life’ under the name of ''Jack Orion''. This version, in which the harpist becomes a fiddler, appeared on his 1966 album ''First Person'' with

Dave Swarbrick David Cyril Eric Swarbrick (5 April 1941 – 3 June 2016) was an English folk musician and singer-songwriter. His style has been copied or developed by almost every British and many world folk violin players who have followed him. He was ...

on fiddle. In the same year

Bert Jansch Herbert Jansch (3 November 1943 – 5 October 2011) was a Scottish folk musician and founding member of the band Pentangle. He was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s as an acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter ...

made ''Jack Orion'' the title track of his

third album ''Third Album'' is the third studio album released by the Jackson 5 on Motown Records, and the group's second LP released in 1970, on September 18. ''Third Album'' featured the group's fourth consecutive No. 1 single on the US pop charts, " I' ...

. His voice is accompanied by his own guitar and that of

John Renbourn John Renbourn (8 August 1944 – 26 March 2015) was an English guitarist and songwriter. He was best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch as well as his work with the folk group Pentangle, although he maintained a solo care ...

; their collaboration here can be seen as one of the pinnacles of the so-called

folk baroque Folk baroque or baroque guitar, is a distinctive and influential guitar fingerstyle developed in Britain in the 1960s, which combined elements of American folk, blues, jazz and ragtime with British folk music to produce a new and elaborate form o ...

guitar style. ''Jack Orion'' later became part of the repertoire of Pentangle, the band that they formed along with

Terry Cox Terence William Harvey 'Terry' Cox (born 13 March 1937, in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire) played drums in the British folk rock bands The Pentangle, Duffy's Nucleus and Humblebums. He also drummed with several other artists, most notably Da ...

Jacqui McShee Jacqueline 'Jacqui' McShee (born 25 December 1943) is an English singer. Since 1966 she has performed with Pentangle, a jazz-influenced folk rock band. Biography McShee was born in Catford, South London. Her musical career began as a soloist in ...

and

Danny Thompson Daniel Henry Edward Thompson (born 4 April 1939) is an English multi-instrumentalist best known as a double bassist. He has had a long musical career playing with a large variety of other musicians, particularly Richard Thompson and John Mart ...

, and appears on their 1970 recording '' Cruel Sister''.

Martin Carthy Martin Carthy MBE (born 21 May 1941) is an English folk singer and guitarist who has remained one of the most influential figures in British traditional music, inspiring contemporaries such as Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, and later artists such as ...

and Dave Swarbrick performed ''Jack Orion'' on their 1968 album '' But Two Came By''. In the sleeve notes Carthy observed that ‘the song in its traditional form was, according to evidence at our is and A. L. Lloyd’sdisposal, not very widespread, which serves to highlight one of the curious features of the folk revival, that is, the many songs which were not at all common in tradition are very commonly sung in the revival and vice versa.’Carthy’s sleeve notes to ''But Two Came By'', quoted by Reinhard Zierke. The British

folk rock Folk rock is a hybrid music genre that combines the elements of folk and rock music, which arose in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom in the mid-1960s. In the U.S., folk rock emerged from the folk music revival. Performers suc ...

band

Trees In botany, a tree is a perennial plant with an elongated stem, or trunk, usually supporting branches and leaves. In some usages, the definition of a tree may be narrower, including only woody plants with secondary growth, plants that are u ...

included a version of ''Glasgerion'' in ''

The Garden of Jane Delawney ''The Garden of Jane Delawney'' is the debut album of United Kingdom, British folk rock band Trees (band), Trees. Track listing All songs written by Bias Boshell except where noted. # "Nothing Special" (Boshell, Unwin Brown, Barry Clarke, Dav ...

'', their 1970 debut album. Other renditions include one on Fairport Convention's 1978 album, Tipplers Tales (again with

on fiddle) and on Galley Beggar's 2015 album, Silence & Tears.. 'Jack Orion' also appears Fay Hield and The Hurricane Party's third album Old Adam (2016).

References

{{authority control Child Ballads Rape in fiction Fiction about suicide Year of song unknown