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Death and the Lady

[ Roud 1031 ; Ballad Index ShH22 ; VWML COL/5/29 , COL/5/28 , CJS2/9/1158 ; Bodleian Roud 1031 ; Wiltshire 288 , 776 ; Mudcat 17303 ; trad.]

English Traditional Songs and Carols The Constant Lovers The Everlasting Circle One Hundred English Folksongs Songs of the West The Folk Handbook

The ballad Death and the Lady was collected in 1946 by Francis M. Collison from Mr Baker of Maidstone, Kent, and published in Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.L. Lloyd's Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. Shirley Collins sang this version in 1970 as title track of her and her sister Dolly's album Love, Death & the Lady. She also sang Death and the Lady on her 2016 album Lodestar where she noted:

Many English folk songs begin with the words “As I roved out one May morning”, a device for setting the song up, much as a fairy tale opens with “Once upon a time”. On this walk you might encounter your true love, or a seducer, or perhaps a long lost lover returned from fighting abroad for seven weary years. You might encounter the Devil, who you could outwit, or Death, who you couldn't.

Death and the Lady harks back centuries, but these words were noted down from a Mr Baker of Maidstone, Kent, in 1906, collector unknown. The tune is my own. The song puts me in mind of the sombre scene from Ingmar Bergman's 1975 film The Seventh Seal, where a Knight, returned home from the Crusades, plays a long game of chess with Death, on a lonely Scandinavian seashore. That was set at the time when the Black Death ravaged Europe, and this song may well have started its life then.

The John Renbourn Group sang Death and the Lady in 1977 on their Transdatlantic album A Maid in Bedlam.

Kate Burke and Ruth Hazleton sang Death and the Lady on their 2000 album A Thousand Miles or More.

Waterson:Carthy sang Death and the Lady in 2002 with somewhat different verses on their fourth album, A Dark Light. Martin Carthy noted:

Norma learned Death and the Lady from [the Cecil Sharp collection One Hundred English Folksongs (1916)]. It's a dark song here and she did what was second nature to the Watersons in their heyday, transforming the tune by altering just a couple of notes.

This video is from the 2009 Open University course “Norma Waterson: English Folk Singing”. It is available for free from iTunes:

Mike Bosworth sang Death and the Lady on his CD of songs from the Baring-Gould Collection, By Chance It Was. He noted:

Collected by Captain Hale Munro from an old man in Newton Abbott [ VWML SBG/1/1/460 ] . There are many forms of this folk tale in plays.

Bellowhead recorded Death and the Lady in 2006 for their CD Burlesque and Jon Boden sang it as the 7 May 2011 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day. He noted in the CD booklet:

The theme of a conversation between the grim reaper and a lovely young maiden has featured in European ballads, plays and paintings since the Middle Ages; existing English broadsides, also entitled The Great Messenger of Mortality and Life and Death Contrasted date back to the late 17^th century. A number of oral versions were collected in the south and south west of England during the early 20^th century, including the one published by the collector Alfred Williams in Folk-Songs of the Upper Thames (London: Duckworth, 1923), from which our version is derived. As Williams collected no melodies at all, the words were set to a reworking of Rakish Paddy, or Caber Feidh (The Deer's Antlers), claimed by both the Irish and the Scots.

Frank Purslow has written about the song in The Constant Lovers (London, EFDSS Publications, 1972), p. 121, and further studies can be found in the Journal of the English Folk Dance & Song Society 5/1 (1946), pp. 19-20, and Vaughan Williams and Lloyd's Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, now revised by Malcolm Douglas and issued as Classic English Folk Songs (London: EFDSS, 2005).

The Demon Barbers got Death and the Lady from Michael Raven's book Hynde Horn to the tune of The Gardener. They sang it on their 2008 CD +24db.

Maggie Boyle sang Death and the Lady in 2008 on Sketch's eponymous album Sketch.

Ian King sang Death and the Lady in 2010 on his Fledg'ling album Panic Grass & Fever Few.

Phillip Henry and Hannah Martin sang Death and the Lady in 2011 on their CD Singing the Bones. They adapted their lyrics from the version in the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs.

James Findlay sang Death and the Lady in 2012 on his Fellside CD Another Day, Another Story. He noted:

The classic story of bumping into Death whilst out and about. Such meetings are recorded in text as early as 16^th century. This song came from a Mrs. R. Sage of Chew Stoke [ VWML CJS2/9/1158 ] and is the only version of this ballad that Cecil Sharp collected in Somerset. Revd Sabine Baring-Gould noted very similar words in Songs From the West (no. 99) but to a different tune.

Bernie Cherry sang Death and the Lady on his Musical Traditions album With Powder, Shot and Gun. Rod Stradling nored in the accompanying booklet:

Although Roud has 110 instances of this wholly English song—all from printed sources of one kind or another—it would seem that it has only been collected from six traditional singers, and that there are no sound recordings. The text would imply a great age to the song, and Roud’s earliest entry shows it having been published in Carey, Sailor's Songbag, pp.38-39, in 1778.

Bernie: This is from the Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. “If life was a thing that money could buy, the rich would live and the poor would die.” Well, it isn't good job too!

Andy Turner sang Death and the Lady as the 26 May 2013 entry of his project A Folk Song a Week.

Peter Knight sang Death and the Lady in 2015 on Gigspanner's CD Layers of Ages and at the Gigspanner Big Band's concert at Nettlebed Folk Club in January 2017. This recording was released in the same year on their CD Gigspanner Big Band Live.

Nuala Kennedy sang Death and the Lady on her 2016 album Behave the Bravest.

The Dovetail Trio sang Death and the Lady on their 2019 CD Bold Champions. Rosie Hood noted:

Collected in 1946 by Francis M. Collison from Mr Baker of Maidstone, Kent [VWML COL/5/29, COL/5/28] . We came across this song in Ralph Vaughan Williams and A.L. Lloyd’s Penguin Book of English Folk Songs. We then adjusted a few of the words and the tune but it’s still the same song!

This April 2019 video shows them singing Death and the Lady live in a tunnel:

Matt Lazenby sang Death and the Lady on his 2020 EP Sweet Dreams of Life.

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