ROUD 90: Geordie

AKA: Georgie, As I Walked Over London Bridge, Banstead Downs, The Life of Georgey, Young George Oxbury, The Warminster Song, The Life and Death of George of Oxford

Detail from a broadside titled “The Life and Death of George of Oxford: To a pleasant new tune called Poor Georgy”, printed in London in 1683.

This ballad exists in two main separate but intimately connected strains; one is a generalised “goodnight” (or pre-execution confessional) ballad commonly found in England, the other normally contains most of the elements of the former, but is more narrative in nature, and potentially could be tied to historical figures in Scotland and the Border regions. We have seen in this learning journey that sometimes a specific historical ballad can become generalised over time in the spirit of relevance popularity, but also it can happen in the opposite direction - a general fictional sentimental ballad can be repurposed and made specific to the current historical events of the day. In this case, the Scottish ballad is generally believed to be the older, despite our earliest record of the ballad being from the 17th century English broadside pictured above. It’s a good reminder that, tempting as it is to try and create some universally applicable theory of evolution for these songs, in reality each must be taken as a distinct entity, with its own set of factors contributing to its existence and development (the main one being luck; the good fortune that records of any kind have been found, and that its oral and written tradition has been documented).

Music

This story of the (possibly unjust) arrest of an outlaw, and the pleas for clemency from his beloved has gained appeal all over the world, mainly as a result of the relatively simple elegiac melody and accessible, tragic poetry found in English versions of the song. The Youtube playlist is long and I’m sure incomplete, and is remarkable in its wide ranging application, and even, as I always enjoy, has been given some striking translations into other languages.

The earliest recording we have was made by Percy Grainger in 1906, on the brand new technology of the day, a phonograph device, which used a vibrating needle to record music onto a metal disc coated in tinfoil. The resulting recordings are poor by today’s standards, but still they are a remarkable window into early 20th century folk song.

Another early recording comes from Virginia, from S.F. ‘Sam’ Russel, who sang it to esteemed collector Sidney Robertson on 13 November 1936.

During the mid-20th century folk revival, AL Lloyd spurred a concerted charge to record this ballad, with his version of the song a combination of two Somerset singers - the melody from Charles Neville of East Coker, and Mrs Overd of Longport, both collected at the start of the 20th century.

The ballad in similar forms was recorded on myriad occasions throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Martin Carthy recorded two versions, once in 1974 after hearing a recording of Mrs Louisa Hooper of Somerset singing it in 1942, and then, after hearing the version by traveller Levi Smith, again in 1998. It’s worth comparing them both here:

The earlier version is the most common found today. And very common it is too, not just in number but in geographic location, and musical genre. Here’s a quick tour of some of my personal favourites:

Ireland:

France:

Italy:

Techno:

Heavy metal power ballad, including face-melting guitar solo:

Classical:

The ballad also has a strong tradition in the US. Here’s legend of American traditional music Doc Watson singing it in 1966.

Sources

Child’s commentary can be found here, and here are the Roud index entries. A guide to many of the numerous recordings can be found on the Mainly Norfolk website.

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I should give credit to fellow Substacker Richard Elliott, who, last year in his Songs and Objects blog, wrote this long and compelling piece all about the ballad and his reactions to it. There’s a wonderful aside where he discusses the origins of the Italian offshoot briefly mentioned above. Highly recommended.

Geordie: A Song Itinerary

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A lot of the early discussion of this ballad centres around the true identity of the titular accused. Scottish ballad collector George Kinloch was one example, who delved into the history books and found what he considered to be the most likely candidate: George Gordon, Earl of Huntly. This he published in his “Ancient Scottish Ballads, Recovered from tradition”, published in 1827.

As Francis Child and other ballad scholars have pointed out, it’s as good a piece of evidence as any for attributing a traditional song to real life characters, but whether it is factually correct or not is another matter.

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One for the graphologists: I found this beautiful example of Robert Burns handwritten text for this ballad from 1790 on the Christies auction website.

Draft pages and audio guide