Collected by S. Elizabeth Bird
‘Lord Randal’ in Kent: The Meaning and Context of a Ballad Variant, Folklore, Vol. 96, No. 2 (1985), pp. 248-252, https://www.jstor.org/stable/1259648
Roud 10, Child 12
“When performing the song, the informant usually stresses the third line of each stanza heavily and melodramatically, until the final stanza, which takes on a slightly maudlin tone”.
S. Elizabeth Bird had this from her father-in-law, Douglas Tobin. She noted that “I have heard him sing the song often”. A version of the classic Child Ballad ‘Lord Randal’, it is closely related to the variant usually known as ‘Henry, my son’ – although the name Henry is not used here. This version is also unusual in identifying gypsies as the poisoners – usually the main character has been poisoned by a relative, normally his father, or a sister.
My informant recalls that he first heard the song as a small child, remembering that his older sister sang it often, with the same emphases. His 32-year-old son recalls his aunt using the threat, ‘I’ll sell you to the gypsies,’ when he and his brothers misbehaved as children. Furthermore, the informant remembers that in his community, gypsies were more than a fearful symbol, but were a very real presence, at least for part of the year. Born in 1922, he spent his childhood in Ramsgate, Kent, a hop-growing county that every summer attracted large numbers of itinerant hop pickers, including many gypsies. Gypsies would often visit houses to tell fortunes, sell clothes-pegs and other items, and the informant remembers ‘one woman in particular, or maybe it’s just a picture of a gypsy woman type – dark, dressed in unusual, bright scarves and big earrings.’ The children were warned to stay away from the gypsies, who ‘stole children’ and ‘were dirty.’ In thinking about the song, the informant said that ‘it certainly seemed to be part of that general thing; you had to be wary of gypsies.’ He added that although his sister sang the song jauntily, she would ‘try to scare us with the snakes and gypsies bits.’
The informant’s sister does not recall any role in initiating the change of the central evil character in the song; in fact she does not recall where she learned it herself. So it cannot be known when the addition of the gypsies motif took place.
Douglas Tobin had two sisters, both several years older than him – Marjorie (born 1909) and Eileen (born 1912).
‘Henry, my son’ has been collected in both England and Ireland. When the Irish singer Frank Harte recorded the song on his 1967 Topic LP Dublin Street Songs the album notes stated that “This inelegant version, now first recorded, is still popular among Dublin schoolchildren”. Given that Douglas Tobin’s father John was born in County Galway, it is possible that his version had an Irish origin. However the song was known elsewhere in East Kent in the same period: George Spicer learned his version while working in the Dover area, 1928-1935, from Tommy Goodban at The Wheatsheaf at Martin.