> A.L. Lloyd > Songs > Fair Margaret and Sweet William
> Shirley Collins > Songs > Lady Margaret and Sweet William
> June Tabor > Songs > Fair Margaret and Sweet William

Fair Margaret and Sweet William

[ Roud 253 ; Child 74 ; G/D 2:337 ; Ballad Index C074 ; VWML HAM/3/18/6 ; Bodleian Roud 253 ; trad.]

A.L. Lloyd sang Fair Margaret and Sweet William in 1956 on his and Ewan MacColl's Riverside album of Child ballads, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads Volume II. All of his ballads on this series were reissued in 2011 on his Fellside CD Bramble Briars and Beams of the Sun.

Pete Seeger sang Fair Margaret in 1957 on his Folkways album American Ballads and in 1963 on his Columbia live album We Shall Overcome: The Complete Carnegie Hall Recording 8 June 1963. He noted on the Folkways album:

This ballad was on of the first I ever learned, in 1935, from the country lawyer and old-time banjo picker of Ashville, North Carolina, Bascom Lunsford. My thanks to him. It is a medieval vignette, and the last verses describing the conversation between Lady Margaret's ghost and her false lover are as close as we get to superstition in this LP.

Hedy West sang Little Margaret in 1964 on her Vanguard album Hedy West Volume 2.

Trees sang Lady Margaret in 1970 on their CBS album The Garden of Jane Delawney.

Almeda Riddle from Heber Springs, Arkansas, sang Lady Margaret in 1972 on her Rounder album Ballads and Hymns from the Ozarks.

Martin Howley of Fanore, north-west Clare, sang this ballad as The Old Armchair in July 1974 to Jim Carroll and Pat Mackenzie. This recording was included in 2004 on the Musical Traditions anthology Around the Hills of Clare. The collectors noted in the accompanying booklet:

The ballad of Fair Margaret and Sweet William was first quoted in part in the Beaumont and Fletcher play The Knight of the Burning Pestle in 1611, the first full text being a broadside or stall copy published in Percy's Reliques in 1767.

While it has been found in the oral tradition in England and Scotland, it seems to have survived best among singers in the United States; all other sound recordings are American. The only other version to have turned up in Ireland was in the Percy manuscripts and had been written down by the mother of the Bishop of Derry in 1776.

Martin [Howley] learned his version “when I was very young” from a travelling woman named Sherlock some ninety years ago.

Shirley Collins sang this ballad as Lady Margaret and Sweet William in 1976 on her album The Power of the True Love Knot; it was also included in her anthology A Favourite Garland. She noted on the original album:

Another song from Jean Ritchie, as sung to her by Justus Begley of Hazard, Kentucky. There are more complete versions, but none I can find explain why Sweet William passed up Lady Margaret, or how she died or how he died. But with all its ambiguities, or maybe because of them, it remains the outstanding ballad of its type where the true-lover's knot triumphs over human pride, tragedy and death.

Dave Arthur with Pete Cooper and Chris Moreton (later Rattle on the Stovepipe) sang Little Margaret in 2003 on their WildGoose album Return Journey. They noted:

During the final session of a recent storytelling residency in a primary school, I gave the children the option of requesting anything that we'd done over the ten weeks, the top choice was the supernatural ballad of Little Margaret.

One of my sources for the song, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, the North Carolina lawyer, had actually learnt it from a nine year old girl. So it has gone full circle. He said of Little Marget (sic):

This fine text and melody is a centuries-old tale, with supernatural overtones that make it peculiarly effective. One time when visiting the Roaring Forks section of Madison County, N.C., I heard little nine-year old Alice Payne sing this song, just as given here. She had learned it from her mother and grandmother and had never seen a written copy.

So a song sent out into the world by a little girl in North Carolina, was loved and learnt by children in a village in the south of England seventy years later, and I'm sure some of them will be singing it to their children and grandchildren in years to come.

My other inspiration was a recording by banjo player, Obray Ramsey, played to me in Philadelphia, in the 1970s, by Kenny Goldstein. One of my all time favourite pieces of traditional singing. First quoted in Beaumont and Fletcher's The Knight of the Burning Pestle (1611):

When it was grown to dark midnight
And all were fast asleep
In came Margaret's grimly ghost
And stood at William's feet.

Fair Margaret and Sweet William probably did the rounds as a broadside ballad before being pinned between the pages of Ramsey's Tea-Table Miscellany (1740) and later Bishop Percy's Reliques (1765). It has been collected throughout Britain, America and Canada.

June Tabor sang Fair Margaret and Sweet William in 2003 on her CD An Echo of Hooves. Her version was collected by Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles from Jeff Stockton of Flag Pond, Tennessee in 1916. It is much older though; according to June Tabor's notes it was first mentioned in Beaumont and Fletcher's 1611 play The Knight of the Burning Pestle.

Mary Humphreys and Anahata sang Fair Margaret and Sweet William in 2004 on their WildGoose album Floating Verses. Mary Humphreys noted:

Collected by H.E.D. Hammond from Mrs Crawford, West Milton Dorset in May 1906 [VWML HAM/3/18/6] . We are not given any of the background to the disruption in the relationship between the two protagonists, but one can surmise that the reasons for Sweet William choosing a ‘nut-brown bride’ is the same as in many of the other love-triangle ballads— that of houses and land. Nut-brown was a derogatory term for a plain woman, that could also describe a sallow-skinned or sunburnt woman.

The verse relating to the rose and briar makes the end of the ballad a little less bleak for the listener. It is a motif that occurs elsewhere, notably Barbara Allen and Lord Thomas and Lady Eleanor.

Pete Coe sang Fair Margaret and Sweet William in 2010 on his Backshift CD Backbone.

Jim Moray sang Fair Margaret and Sweet William in 2016 on his CD Upcetera. He noted:

Words from Jeff Stockton of Flagpole, Tennessee, collected by Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles on 14 September 1916. The tune is my own.

Lyrics