on jean richie's ballads
a burnished, young sounding, ky accented, woman sings the hits of 18th century applachia, with no instrumenation what so ever.
themes:
woman leaves comfort for romance, gets neither (gypsy laddie-the third or version i have heard of this, the only one with the miserable coda)
man betrays his lover (false sir john)
man on the gallows begs everyone he knows to give him ransom (hangman-which is different then the version i learnt round the campire, and which is sung a tad too jaunty for me)
a sailor "the old salt sea", and is imprisoned for life by the turks, later is tied to giant tree and dies (lord bateman-maybe christian)
a woman falls in love with a sailor, turns out to be a demon, they all go to hell (lord thomas and fair offender)
a woman falls in love with a lord, but he is married to another, she follows, and is killed by the bride when the groom chooses her instead. (lord thomas and fair ellender-also when a women in these ballads dresses in white and/or green-they are fucked)
a ballad concerning a shipwreck (the merry golden tree)
a nonesense ballad, contains the lines "he found the bones of 1000 men" (old bangum)
a man, on his death bed, begs for his lover, and she turns out to be a cruel bitch (barbara allen, one of my favourite childe ballades, and the way this women moans the vowels is haunting)
a man loves a women so much, he takes her as a ghost (the unquiet grave, morbid and almost necrophillic)
a woman leaves when her lover marries someone else, she comes back and haunts the married couple(margaret and sir william, with dobro and guitar)
an eldery man courts a young women with gold and fur, (there lived an old lord, bling bling baby)
The Cherry Carol, which i will write about at length on nyplm tomorrow
a man tries to tell his lover that the blood on his sleeve is a mare, hound, and then found to be his brother in law (edward, also a new varration)
a man is too stupid to realize the bitch he loves has killed him. (randall, though not her legendary 20 minute version)
and the almost too long alduters tale little musgrave which i like because it is told almost all in a womens tone.