"The Cruel Mother" (Child 20, Roud

Roud Folk Song Index

The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 300,000 references to over 21,600 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world...

 9) is a murder ballad

Murder ballad

Murder ballads are a sub-genre of the traditional ballad form, the lyrics of which form a narrative describing the events of a murder, often including the lead-up and/or aftermath...

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Synopsis

A woman gives birth to one or two illegitimate children (usually sons) in the woods, kills them, and buries them. On her return trip home, she sees a child, or children, playing, and says that if they were hers, she would dress them in various fine garments and otherwise take care of them. The children tell her that when they were hers, she did not dress them so but murdered them. Frequently they say she will be damned for it.

Some variants open with the account that she has fallen in love with her father's clerk.

Variants

This ballad exists in a number of variants; one contains a number of verses that appear to stem from "The Maid and the Palmer

The Maid and the Palmer

"The Maid and the Palmer" or "The Well Below The Valley" is Child ballad 21 and a murder ballad. Because of its dark and sinister lyrics , the song was often avoided by folk singers. It is claimed that Tom Munnelly was largely responsible for preserving the song...

". A closely related German ballad exists in many variants: a child comes to a woman's wedding to announce himself her child and that she had murdered three children, the woman says the Devil can carry her off if it is true, and the Devil appears to do so. Variants include "Carlisle Hall", "The Rose o Malinde", "Fine Flowers in the Valley", "The Minister's Daughter of New York", and "The Lady From Lee", among others. "Fine Flowers of the Valley" is a Scottish variant.

Ballad scholar Hyder Rollins listed a broadside print dated 1638, and a fairly complete version was published in London in broadside ballad format as "The Duke's Daughter's Cruelty: Or the Wonderful Apparition of two Infants whom she Murther'd and Buried in a Forrest, for to hide her Shame" sometime between 1684-1695.
This ballad was one of 25 traditional works included in Ballads Weird and Wonderful (1912) and illustrated by Vernon Hill (sculptor)

Vernon Hill (sculptor)

Vernon Hill was a sculptor, lithographer and Illustrator.-Biography:Vernon Hill was born in Halifax and undertook formal training in print-making from an early age, being apprenticed as a lithographer in his early teen....

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Recordings

The Sweet Primroses >

Album/Single	Performer	Year	Variant	Notes
False True Lovers	Shirley Collins Shirley Collins Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE is a British folksinger who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s...	1959	The Cruel Mother	.
The Judy Collins Concert The Judy Collins Concert The Judy Collins Concert was a 1964 live album by American folk singer Judy Collins, which included combined traditional folk material with songs by Bob Dylan and Tom Paxton...	Judy Collins Judy Collins Judith Marjorie "Judy" Collins is an American singer and songwriter, known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records ; and for her social activism. She is an alumna of the University of Colorado.-Musical career:Collins was born and raised in Seattle, Washington...	1964	The Cruel Mother	.
The Long Harvest, Vol. 1	Ewan MacColl Ewan MacColl Ewan MacColl was an English folk singer, songwriter, socialist, actor, poet, playwright, and record producer. He was married to theatre director Joan Littlewood, and later to American folksinger Peggy Seeger. He collaborated with Littlewood in the theatre and with Seeger in folk music...  and Peggy Seeger Peggy Seeger Margaret "Peggy" Seeger is an American folksinger. She is also well known in Britain, where she lived for more than 30 years with her husband, singer and songwriter Ewan MacColl.- The first American period :...	1967	see note	Album contains three versions of The Cruel Mother, one variant called "Down By the Greenwood Sidey-O", and another called "The Lady From Lee".
Joan Joan (album) Joan was a 1967 album by Joan Baez. Having exhausted the standard voice/guitar folksong format by 1967, Baez collaborated with composer Peter Schickele , on an album of orchestrated covers of mostly then-current pop and rock and roll songs...	Joan Baez Joan Baez Joan Chandos Baez is an American folk singer, songwriter, musician and a prominent activist in the fields of human rights, peace and environmental justice....	1967	The Greenwood Side	.
A Beacon from Mars	Kaleidoscope Kaleidoscope (US band) Kaleidoscope was an American psychedelic folk and ethnic band who recorded 4 albums and several singles for Epic Records between 1966 and 1970.-Formation:...	1968	The Greenwood Side	.
Shirley Collins Shirley Collins Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE is a British folksinger who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s...	1970	The Cruel Mother	.
Landfall Landfall (Martin Carthy album) Landfall is an album by Martin Carthy, released in 1971.Carthy made this album in the year he left Steeleye Span. The song "Cold Haily Windy Night" is a re-recording of the same song on Steeleye's album Please to See the King. In contrast to the richly resonating sound on that album, here...	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...	1972	The Cruel Mother	.
Flesh and Blood	Maddy Prior Maddy Prior Maddy Prior is an English folk singer, best known as the lead vocalist of Steeleye Span.-Early life:...	1997	The Cruel Mother	.
Live at Newport	Ian & Sylvia	1996	The Greenwood Side	Recorded live at the Newport Folk Festival Newport Folk Festival The Newport Folk Festival is an American annual folk-oriented music festival in Newport, Rhode Island, which began in 1959 as a counterpart to the previously established Newport Jazz Festival... , 1963.
Songs Of Experience	Cindy Mangsen	1998	The Cruel Mother	.
No Earthly Man	Alasdair Roberts	2005	The Cruel Mother	.
Wolverley Summer of Love 2007	Stuart Estell	2007	The Cruel Mother	.
To The Ground	Kerfuffle Kerfuffle Kerfuffle were a four-piece English folk band, originally formed in 2001 around the East Midlands and South Yorkshire regions of the UK, initially comprising Hannah James , Sam Sweeney , Chris Thornton-Smith and Tom Sweeney . Thornton-Smith was replaced by Jamie Roberts in 2007...	2006	Down By The Greenwood Side	.
In The Shadow of Mountians	Bella Hardy Bella Hardy Arwen Arabella Hardy, known professionally as Bella Hardy, is a contemporary folk musician, singer and songwriter from Edale in Derbyshire...	2009	Cruel Mother	Miss Hardy omits 'The' from the title but it is nonetheless a variant of the folk song.
Lady Diamond Lady Diamond -Synopsis:A great king had a daughter , who fell in love with his kitchen boy. She became pregnant. Her father demands to know the father, and she tells him. He has the kitchen boy secretly murdered, but then, in most variants, brings his heart to his daughter. She dies...	Bryony Griffith & Will Hampson	2011	The Lady of York	From the singing of Jim Eldon.

External links

• The Cruel Mother
• The Cruel Mother with historical commentary
• Fine Flowers in the Valley variant
• An MP3 recording of The Cruel Mother by Kentucky ballad singer Daniel Dutton