"The Fair Flower of Northumberland" (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...

 25, Child 9) is a folk ballad

Ballad

A ballad is a form of verse, often a narrative set to music. Ballads were particularly characteristic of British and Irish popular poetry and song from the later medieval period until the 19th century and used extensively across Europe and later the Americas, Australia and North Africa. Many...

.

Synopsis

A Scottish knight is taken by the Earl of Northumberland. The knight persuades the Earl's daughter, the fair flower, to free him and come with him to Scotland, by promising to marry her. As soon as they reach his home, he tells her to return to Northumberland as he already has a wife and children. She pleads with him to take her as a servant, or to kill her, both of which he refuses. Terrified, she returns. In some variants, her father or stepmother complains of how easily her love was won, but in all, her mother or father blames the seduction on Scottish treachery, and says that she will have gold and lands to get her a husband.

Commentary

There are no variants of this ballad in other languages than English and Scots, though many of the elements have parallels. Parts of it parallel "The Nut-Brown Maid

The Nut-Brown Maid

"The Nut-Brown Maid", also known as "The Nut-Brown Maiden", is a ballad included by Thomas Percy in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry.-Synopsis:...

", where the hero tells the heroine that he has nothing to give her, and is plighted to another women, but in that ballad, that is only a test, and he reveals himself as her true and wealthy lover.

Many of the same motifs are found in Child Ballad 48, "Young Andrew

Young Andrew

-Synopsis:Andrew seduces Helen and tells her he will fulfill his promise to marry her only if she brings him her father's gold. She does. He robs her not only of it but all her clothing. She goes home, naked. Her father is furious. Her heart breaks, killing her, and her father regrets it...

".

As an example of the same elements in other traditions, several Serbian

Serbian language

Serbian is a form of Serbo-Croatian, a South Slavic language, spoken by Serbs in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and neighbouring countries....

 and Bulgarian

Bulgarian language

Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...

 ballads about epic hero Prince Marko

Prince Marko

Marko Mrnjavčević was de jure the Serbian king from 1371 to 1395, while de facto he ruled only over a territory in western Macedonia centered on the town of Prilep...

have a fairly similar plot: Marko is imprisoned in an Arabic country, but is secretly aided and set free by the daughter of the Arab king in exchange for his promise to take her with him and marry her - a promise that he soon regrets and breaks. In some versions, she then asks him to take her at least as his slave, or else kill her. However, unlike the British ballads, the Balkan versions have Marko actually kill the Arab maiden; his motive is that as an Arab she is dark-skinned, which is considered unattractive, and/or that he is afraid of being mocked by his friends at home for having an Arab wife. He then builds numerous monasteries, churches, fountains, roads and other public facilities in her memory, striving to atone for his sin towards her and God.

External links

• The Fair Flower of Northumberland with history