Lord Lovel

                    'It is silly sooth,
        And dallies with the innocence of love,
        Like the old age.'

        --Twelfth Night, II. 4.


The Text.--This ballad, concluding a small class of three--Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, and Fair Margaret and Sweet William being the other two--is distinguished by the fact that the lady dies of hope deferred. It is a foolish ballad, at the opposite pole to Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, and is pre-eminently one of the class meant only to be sung, with an effective burden. The text given here, therefore, is that of a broadside of the year 1846.

The Story in outline is extremely popular in German and Scandinavian literature. Of the former the commonest is Der Ritter und die Maid, also found north of Germany; twenty-six different versions in all, in some of which lilies spring from the grave. In a Swedish ballad a linden-tree grows out of their bodies; in Danish ballads, roses, lilies, or lindens. This conclusion, a commonplace in folk-song, occurs also in a class of Romaic ballads, where a clump of reeds rises from one of the lovers, and a cypress or lemon-tree from the other, which bend to each other and mingle their leaves whenever the wind blows. Classical readers will recall the tale of Philemon and Baucis.

Various other versions of this ballad are named Lady Ouncebell, Lord Lavel, Lord Travell, and Lord Revel.


LORD LOVEL

    1.
    Lord Lovel he stood at his castle-gate,
        Combing his milk-white steed,
    When up came Lady Nancy Belle,
        To wish her lover good speed, speed,
        To wish her lover good speed.

    2.
    'Where are you going, Lord Lovel?' she said,
        'Oh where are you going?' said she;
    'I'm going, my Lady Nancy Belle,
        Strange countries for to see.'

    3.
    'When will you be back, Lord Lovel?' she said,
        'Oh when will you come back?' said she;
    'In a year, or two, or three at the most,
        I'll return to my fair Nancy.'

    4.
    But he had not been gone a year and a day,
        Strange countries for to see,
    When languishing thoughts came into his head,
        Lady Nancy Belle he would go see.

    5.
    So he rode, and he rode, on his milk-white steed,
        Till he came to London town,
    And there he heard St. Pancras' bells,
        And the people all mourning round.

    6.
    'Oh what is the matter?' Lord Lovel he said,
        'Oh what is the matter?' said he;
    'A lord's lady is dead,' a woman replied,
        'And some call her Lady Nancy.'

    7.
    So he ordered the grave to be opened wide,
        And the shroud he turned down,
    And there he kissed her clay-cold lips,
        Till the tears came trickling down.

    8.
    Lady Nancy she died, as it might be, today,
        Lord Lovel he died as tomorrow;
    Lady Nancy she died out of pure, pure grief,
        Lord Lovel he died out of sorrow.

    9.
    Lady Nancy was laid in St. Pancras' Church,
        Lord Lovel was laid in the choir;
    And out of her bosom there grew a red rose,
        And out of her lover's a briar.

    10.
    They grew, and they grew, to the church-steeple too,
        And then they could grow no higher;
    So there they entwined in a true-lovers' knot,
        For all lovers true to admire.

Frank Sidgwick

Frank Sidgwick was an English writer, publisher, and scholarly editor. He was instrumental in popularizing ballad and folklore studies in the early 20th century. Sidgwick co-founded the publishing company Sidgwick & Jackson, which became known for its contributions to literature and scholarship. Though not primarily known as a poet, his editorial and publishing efforts significantly impacted the literary culture of his time, emphasizing the academic study of traditional songs and verses.

Frank Sidgwick

The Dæmon Lover

Frank Sidgwick, Simple Poetry

Brown Robyn's Confession

Frank Sidgwick, Simple Poetry

Clerk Sanders

Frank Sidgwick, Simple Poetry

Fair Annie

Frank Sidgwick, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Fair Margaret And Sweet William

The Text is from a broadside in the Douce Ballads, with a few unimportant corrections from other stall-copies, as printed by Percy and Ritson.

The Story is much the same as Lord Thomas and Fair Annet, except in the manner of Margaret's death.

    None of the known copies of the ballad are as early in date as The Knight of the Burning Pestle (a play by Beaumont and Fletcher, first produced, it is said, in 1611), in which the humorous old Merrythought sings two fragments of this ballad; stanza 5 in Act II. Sc. 8, and the first two lines of stanza 2 in Act III. Sc. 5. As there given, the lines are slightly different.

    The last four stanzas of this ballad again present the stock ending, for which see the introduction to Lord Lovel. The last stanza condemns itself.


FAIR ...

Frank Sidgwick

Lady Alice

The Text of this little ballad is given from Bell's Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England.

It should be compared with Lord Lovel.


LADY ALICE

    1.
    Lady Alice was sitting in her bower-window,
        At midnight mending her quoif,
    And there she saw as fine a corpse
        As ever she saw in her life.

    2.
    'What bear ye, what bear ye, ye six men tall?
        What bear ye on your shoulders?'
    'We bear the corpse of Giles Collins,
        An old and true lover of yours.'

    3.
    'O lay him down gently, ye six men tall,
        All on the grass so green,
    And to-morrow, when the sun goes down,
        Lady Alice a corpse shall be seen.

    4.
   ...

Frank Sidgwick

The Douglas Tragedy

There are here put in juxtaposition three versions in ballad-form of the same story, though fragmentary in the two latter cases, not only because each is good, but to show the possibilities of variation in a popular story. There is yet another ballad, Erlinton, printed by Sir Walter Scott in the Minstrelsy, embodying an almost identical tale. Earl Brand preserves most of the features of a very ancient story with more exactitude than any other traditional ballad. But in this case, as in too many others, we must turn to a Scandinavian ballad for the complete form of the story. A Danish ballad, Ribold and Guldborg, gives the fine tale thus:--

Ribold, a king's son, in love with Guldborg, offers to carry her away 'to a land where death and sorrow come not, where all the birds are cuckoos, where all the gr...

Frank Sidgwick

The Cruel Brother

The Text is that obtained in 1800 by Alexander Fraser Tytler from Mrs. Brown of Falkland, and by him committed to writing. The first ten and the last two stanzas show corruption, but the rest of the ballad is in the best style.

The Story emphasises the necessity of asking the consent of a brother to the marriage of his sister, and therefore the title The Cruel Brother is a misnomer. In ballad-times, the brother would have been well within his rights; it was rather a fatal oversight of the bridegroom that caused the tragedy.

Danish and German ballads echo the story, though in the commonest German ballad, Graf Friedrich, the bride receives an accidental wound, and that from the bridegroom's own hand.

The testament of the bride, by which she benefits her friends and leaves curses on her e...

Frank Sidgwick

Lord Thomas And Fair Annet

The Text is from Percy's Reliques (vol. ii., 1765: vol. iii., 1767). In the latter edition he also gives the English version of the ballad earlier in the same volume.

The Story.--This ballad, as it is one of the most beautiful, is also one of the most popular. It should be compared with Fair Margaret and Sweet William, in which the forlorn maid dies of grief, not by the hand of her rival.

    A series of Norse ballads tell much the same tale, but in none is the 'friends' will' a crucial point. Chansons from Burgundy, Bretagne, Provence, and northern Italy, faintly echo the story.

    Lord Thomas his mither says that Fair Annet has no 'gowd and gear'; yet later on we find that Annet's father can provide her with a horse shod with silver and gold, and four-and-twenty silver bells in his mane; s...

Frank Sidgwick

The Gay Goshawk

The Text is from the Jamieson-Brown MS., on which version Scott drew partly for his ballad in the Minstrelsy. Mrs. Brown recited the ballad again to William Tytler in 1783, but the result is now lost, with most of the other Tytler-Brown versions.

The Story.--One point, the maid's feint of death to escape from her father to her lover, is the subject of a ballad very popular in France; a version entitled Belle Isambourg is printed in a collection called Airs de Cour, 1607. Feigning death to escape various threats is a common feature in many European ballads.

It is perhaps needless to remark that no goshawk sings sweetly, much less talks. In Buchan's version (of forty-nine stanzas) the goshawk is exchanged for a parrot.


THE GAY GOSHAWK

    1.
    'O well's me o' my g...

Frank Sidgwick