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

Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...

's The House of Fame

The House of Fame

The House of Fame is a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, probably written between 1379 and 1380, making it one of his earlier works.-Overview:The House of Fame is over 2,000 lines long in three books and takes the form of a dream vision composed in octosyllabic couplets. Upon falling asleep the poet finds...

and Gavin Douglas

Gavin Douglas

Gavin Douglas was a Scottish bishop, makar and translator. Although he had an important political career, it is for his poetry that he is now chiefly remembered. His principal pioneering achievement was the Eneados, a full and faithful vernacular translation of the Aeneid of Virgil and the first...

'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 ‘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

Dave Swarbrick

Dave Swarbrick is an English folk musician and singer-songwriter. He has been described by Ashley Hutchings as 'the most influential [British] fiddle player bar none' and his style has been copied or developed by almost every British, and many World folk violin players that have followed him...

 on fiddle. In the same year Bert Jansch

Bert Jansch

Herbert "Bert" Jansch 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, as well as a singer-songwriter...

 made Jack Orion the title track of his third album

Jack Orion

Jack Orion is the third album by Scottish folk musician Bert Jansch, released in 1966. It contains a number of traditional songs, including the epic "Jack Orion": a ten-minute adaptation of the Child ballad "Glasgerion" which tells of a court fiddler’s attempt to seduce a countess and his servant's...

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

John Renbourn

John Renbourn is an English guitarist and songwriter. He is possibly best known for his collaboration with guitarist Bert Jansch as well as his work with the folk group Pentangle, although he maintained a solo career before, during and after that band's existence .While most commonly labelled a...

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

Folk baroque

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

 guitar style. Jack Orion later became part of the repertoire of Pentangle

Pentangle

Pentangle may refer to:*another word for a pentagram, a five-pointed star drawn with five straight strokes*Pentangle , a British folk-rock band*The Pentangle, the 1968 album by the band Pentangle...

, the band that they formed along with Terry Cox

Terry Cox

Terence William Harvey 'Terry' Cox played drums in the British folk rock bands The Pentangle, Duffy's Nucleus and Humblebums....

, Jacqui McShee

Jacqui McShee

thumb|300px|right|Jacqui McShee performing with [[Pentangle]] at the 2007 [[BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards]]Jacqueline 'Jacqui' McShee is an English singer. Since 1966 she has performed with Pentangle, a jazz influenced folk rock band.-Biography:McShee's musical career began as a soloist in British folk...

 and Danny Thompson

Danny Thompson

Daniel Henry Edward 'Danny' Thompson is an English multi-instrumentalist best known as a double bassist and businessman...

, and appears on their 1970 recording Cruel Sister

Cruel Sister

Cruel Sister was an album recorded in 1970 by folk-rock band Pentangle. It was the most folk-based of the albums recorded by the band, with all the tracks being versions of traditional songs...

. Martin Carthy

Martin Carthy

Martin Carthy MBE 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 Richard Thompson since he emerged as a young musician in the early days...

 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 [his and A. L. Lloyd’s] disposal, 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.’

The British folk rock

Folk rock

Folk rock is a musical genre combining elements of folk music and rock music. In its earliest and narrowest sense, the term referred to a genre that arose in the United States and the UK around the mid-1960s...

 band Trees

Trees (folk band)

Trees was an English folk rock band that existed between 1969 and 1972. Although the group met with little commercial success in their time, the reputation of the band has grown over the years. Like other folk contemporaries, Trees' music was influenced by Fairport Convention, but with a heavier...

 included a version of Glasgerion in The Garden of Jane Delawney

The Garden of Jane Delawney

The Garden of Jane Delawney is the debut album of British folk rock band Trees. Whilst nearly every song on the album appears to be a traditional folk song, this is actually only the case for about half of them, the others having been penned for the album by front-man Bias Boshell...

, their 1970 debut album.

Another rendition appears on a Fairport Convention

Fairport Convention

Fairport Convention are an English folk rock and later electric folk band, formed in 1967 who are still recording and touring today. They are widely regarded as the most important single group in the English folk rock movement...

 1978 album, Tipplers Tales

Tipplers Tales

Tipplers Tales is a 1978 album by Fairport Convention; recorded in only ten days, it was the last album the band recorded for Vertigo. Simon Nicol later wrote Dave Pegg would later say...

 (again with Dave Swarbrick

Dave Swarbrick

Dave Swarbrick is an English folk musician and singer-songwriter. He has been described by Ashley Hutchings as 'the most influential [British] fiddle player bar none' and his style has been copied or developed by almost every British, and many World folk violin players that have followed him...

on fiddle).