Who Killed Cock Robin?

British Folk Songs of Crime and Punishment

Stephen Sedley, Martin Carthy

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781789148589, 9781789145038
• eBook ISBN: 9781789145021
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: British History

Now in paperback, an entertaining and enlightening compendium at the intersection of two great British folk traditions: song and encounters with the law. At the heart of traditional songs rest the concerns of ordinary people. And folk throughout the centuries have found themselves entangled with the law: abiding by it, breaking it, and being caught and punished by it. Who Killed Cock Robin? is an anthology of just such songs compiled by one of Britain's most senior judges, Stephen Sedley, and best-loved folk singers, Martin Carthy. The songs collected here are drawn from manuscripts, broadsides, and oral tradition. They are grouped according to the various categories of crime and punishment, from Poaching to the Gallows. Each section contains a historical introduction, and every song is presented with a melody, lyrics, and an illuminating commentary that explores its origins and sources. Together, they present unique, sometimes comic, often tragic, and always colorful insight into the past, while preserving an important body of song for future generations.

HOMICIDE

There is both more and less to murder than deliberately killing another person. The intention may have been to kill someone else, but the killing is still murder. So is killing when the intention is not to kill but to do serious harm. Curiously, the modern European Convention on Human Rights authorizes killing ‘when absolutely necessary . . . in order to effect a lawful arrest’ – two things which, even in the ballad tradition, seem irreconcilable. Beyond these issues lie such questions as provocation – was the killer goaded beyond what a reasonable person can be expected to endure? – and the mental state which is today classed as diminished responsibility. Then there is killing in self-defence. There is little that is simple about homicide.

Many of these problems turn up in the ballad narratives. The young trooper McCaffery went to the gallows for shooting an officer he had no intention of harming. The Earl of Huntly when he killed the Earl of Murray held a warrant for his arrest. Lord Barnard, not unreasonably, thought Gil Norice was his wife’s lover, not her son. Whether the drowning of the outlandish knight, an admitted serial killer, was legitimate self-defence when the maiden could simply have ridden off is probably of more interest to lawyers than to singers.

THE BONNY EARL OF MURRAY

Ye hielands and ye lowlands

O where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl of Murray

And laid him on the green

He was a braw gallant

And he played at the glove

And the bonny Earl of Murray

Was the queen’s ain love

Lang may his lady

Look frae the castle down

Till she see the Earl of Murray

Come sounding through the town

Now woe be tae ye Huntly

And wherefore did ye sae?

I bade ye bring him wi’ ye

But forbade ye him to slay

He was a braw gallant

And he rid at the ring

And the bonny Earl of Murray

He might have been a king

Lang may his lady

Look frae the castle down

Till she see the Earl of Murray

Come sounding through the town.

IN FEBRUARY 1592, the Earl of Huntly secured the king’s commission to arrest his enemy the Earl of Murray and bring him to trial for abetting the Earl of Bothwell’s treasonable activities (in which Huntly himself had been involved). Murray, a Stewart and a famously handsome man, who had obtained the earldom by marrying the Murray heiress, was at his mother’s home at Donibristle with almost no retinue. He tried to fight Huntly off, but the house was set on fire and Murray was hunted down as he tried to escape. His body was left unburied in Leith (hence ‘laid him on the green’). His friends attempted to get Huntly punished, but the king would not act.

The suggestion in the ballad that Murray ‘was the queen’s love’ probably derives from the rumour that not long before his death the queen had been heard speaking fulsomely of him.

Of the known tunes, the earliest is found in Thomson’s Orpheus Caledonius (1733), but perhaps the handsomest, used here, was recovered in north America from the singing of an unnamed Scot who in 1906 had learned it from one of the Murray family. Bronson, acknowledging its modern currency, considers it to have ‘a mournful beauty’ but to be ‘not very folklike, or at any rate balladlike’. Not everyone will agree.

CHILD #181 ROUD #334

GIL NORICE

Gil Norice is tae the greenwood gane

Awa he’s with the wind

His horse is siller-shod afore

Wi’ shining gowd behind

He said unto his wee boy John

‘I see what ye dinna see

I see the first woman that e’er I loved

Or ever lovèd me.’

‘Here is a glove, a glove’ he said

‘Lined with the silver-gray

Tell her to come to the merry greenwood

To speak wi’ Gil Norey.’

‘Here is a ring, a ring’ he said

‘It’s a’ gold but the stane

Tell her to come to the merry greenwood

And ask the leave o’ nane.’

‘And tak tae her this sark o’ silk

Her ain hand sewed the sleeve

Bid her come tae the gay greenwood

And ask not Barnard’s leave.’

‘I daurna gang tae Lord Barnard’s castle

I daurna for my life

I daurna gang tae Lord Barnard’s castle

Tae twine him o’ his wife.’

‘Do I nae pay ye gowd,’ he said

‘Do I nae pay you fee?

How dare you stand my bidding,’ he said

‘When I bid ye tae flee?’

When he came to Lord Barnard’s castle

He tirlèd at the ri...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Prefaces
• Poaching
• Affray And Riot
• Homicide
• Piracy
• Arson
• False Accusation
• Incest
• Cheats and Thieves
• Fratricide
• Infanticide
• Sexual Assault
• Abduction
• Transportation
• Prison
• The Gallows
• Epilogue
• Select Bibliography