> Waterson:Carthy > Songs > The Lion’s Den
The Bold Lieutenant / The Lion’s Den / The Fan / The Lady of Carlisle
[
Roud 396
; Master title: The Bold Lieutenant
; Laws O25
; G/D 5:1056
; Henry H474
; Ballad Index LO25
; Bodleian
Roud 396
; LadyCarlisle at Old Songs
; DT LDYCRLIL
, LDYCRL2
; Mudcat 65185
, 168721
; trad.]
Katherine Campbell: Songs From North-East Scotland Nick Dow: Southern Songster Gavin Greig: Folk-Song of the North-East, Gale Huntington, Lani Herrmann, John Moulden: Sam Henry’s Songs of the People John Holloway, Joan Black: Later English Broadside Ballads Maud Karpeles: Cecil Sharp’s Collection of English Folk Songs Peter Kennedy: Folksongs of Britain and Ireland John Ord: Bothy Songs and Ballads James Porter and Herschel Gower: Jeannie Robertson: Emergent Singer, Transformative Voice Cecil J. Sharp, Charles L. Marson: Folk Songs From Somerset,
Mrs Maguire of Belfast sang The Lion’s Den in August 1955 to Sean O’Boyle (BBC recording 24842). This recording was included on the anthology Fair Game and Foul (The Folk Songs of Britain Volume 7; Caedmon 1961; Topic 1970). The album’s booklet noted:
The theme of this folk ballad, known in the Kentucky Mountains as well as in the back country of Britain, has turned up also in fine art literature. The original incident is said to have taken place in the 16th century during the reign of Francis I of France. Schiller used the story as the basis for Der Handschuh (1797). Leigh Hunt wrote a poem about it called The Glove and the Lions. Robert Browning wove the tale into one of his dramatic romances called The Glove.
Lucy Broadwood, in FSJ 20, p. 260, points out that, while folk song variants end with a happy marriage, the literary versions have an ironic conclusion; the hero throws the glove into the face of the lady and takes his leave of her. One Scots folk version doubles the happy ending as follows:
It was not long till the King got notice,
Two of his lions they were slain,
He was not in the least displeased,
But gave him honour for the same.
He has raised him from a third lieutenant
A?id made him Admiral of the Blue;
So the next day they both got married,
See what the power of love can do.
Ewan MacColl sang The Lion’s Den in 1956 on his Riverside album Scots Street Songs. He noted:
The source of this ballad has been traced bark to 16th century Spain, from which have also come the several literary rewritings of the ballad theme by Schiller, Leigh Hunt, and Browning. All three poems kept to the story of the original source in making the hero show contempt for his lady for having endangered his life for a whim. The oldest broadside version, however, departs from the literary tradition making the lucky suitor marry the lady, and it is apparently from this tradition that the folk have derived the ballad sung here. The tune and three verses were learned from Jeannie Robertson of Aberdeen. The additional text is from Ord’s Bothy Songs and Ballads.
Peggy Seeger sang The Lady of Carlisle on her 1957 Topic album Eleven American Ballads and Songs, reissued in 1996 on her Fellside CD Classic Peggy Seeger, Alan Lomax commented in the original album’s sleeve notes:
(Lomax & Seeger, Our Singing Country). I recorded this Kentucky mountain version of the old English broadside ballad from deep-voiced, guitar-picking Basil May in Salyersville, Kentucky, in 1937. Old Basil, who took to drinking an infusion of Jamaica ginger during the Prohibition years and suffered from the complaint called ‘jakeleg’, did not know or care, that his favourite ballad dates back to a medieval French country tale, which Robert Browning adapted in his narrative poem, The Glove.
Dillard Chandler sang The Carolina Lady in a 1965 recording on the 2005 Smithsonian Folksongs anthology of old love songs and ballads, Dark Holler. John Cohen noted:
The song is also known as The Lady of Carlisle, The Bold Lieutenant, and The Glove. Although there is not much documentary evidence of lions’ dens in England, Europe, or America, this story reflects the fantasy of European classical poetry and 19th-century Romantic literary tradition. Supposedly, the ballad started in Spain, and by the 16th century had spread to Italy and France. It was known also in German (as “the Glove”, with a courtly moral). However, most versions in oral tradition came from 19th-century English prints. Sharp collected 4 versions (#66) in Kentucky. It is one of the few ballads with a ‘happy ending’.
John Faulkner sang The Bold Lieutenant on the Critics Group’s 1966 Argo album, A Merry Progress to London. Jim O’Connor noted:
Wild animals were kept in the Tower from early times for the King’s pleasure.Henry III had a lion and an elephant there, and Edward II a leopard. Proof that the lions were still there in 1686 is found in a story of that date contained in the Ashmole Collection in the Bodleian Library, Oxford entitled, “A True Relation of Mary Jenkinson Who Was Killed by One of the Lyons in the Tower on Munday the 8th of February”.
The story of The Bold Lieutenant is an old one. Browning made use of it in The Glove, one of the “Dramatic Romances”. There are several broadside texts available all ending with the happy marriage of the lady and her bold lover. In the literary versions, however, the suitor retrieves the glove, flings it in her face, and departs. This version is from vol. 5 of the Folk Song Journal.
Eddie Butcher, an Irish farmer from Magilligan, Co Derry, sang this song as The Fan on his 1976 Leader Records album, Shamrock, Rose & Thistle and as The Lion’s Den on his 1976 Free Reed album, I Once Was a Daysman on which Graeme Kirkham noted:
This was another of the more than 700 songs Sam Henry collected in North Ulster and published week by week between 1924 and 1938 in The Northern Constitution of Coleraine, complete with brief notes and tonic sol-fa notation. The song seems to have been widespread in Ulster at one time and has also been well known in Scotland.
Cecil Sharp noted the earliest version of the story in a 17th century French autobiography, the events supposed to have actually happened at the court of François I. Sharp collected versions of the ballad in Somerset and in the Appalachians and it has also turned up widely along the north-eastern seaboard of the USA and Canada. Other titles for the song are The Fan and The Bold Lieutenant.
Pentangle sang this song as Lady of Carlisle in 1972 on their album Solomon’s Seal. Their singer Jacqui McShee also sang The Lady of Carlisle with Fairport Convention on their 2017 anniversary album 50:50@50.
Nimrod Workman sang Bold Sea Captain on his and his daughter Phyllis Workman Boyens’s 1974 Juno album Passing Thru the Garden, and he sang The Carolina Lady on a bonus track of the 2011 Musical Traditions CD reissue of his 1976 Rounder album Mother Jones’ Will. Mark Wilson noted:
According to Malcolm Douglas:
The underlying story is quite old, and appeared in Les Mémoires de Messire Pierre de Bourdeilles, Seigneur de Brantôme (1666, Discours 10e). Schiller based his Der Handschuh (1797) on it, as did Browning his The Glove, and Leigh Hunt, his The Glove and the Lions. De Brantôme asserted that the original event took place in the reign of Francis I (1515-1547). (See Journal of the Folk Song Society, V (20) 1916, p.258-60). In literary forms, the victorious suitor, having recovered the glove, rejects the lady for her pride and presumption; but as a popular song it has acquired a conventional happy ending.
As an additional antecedent, Duncan Emrich (American Folk Poetry) cites an eighteenth-century broadside entitled The Distressed Lady, or a Trial of True Love. In Five parts (with fifty-five stanzas). American singers are often befuddled by the military identification of the two brothers, which appears in an old broadside as:
One of them bore a captain’s commission,
Under the command of bold Colonel Carr
The other he was a noble lieutenant
On board the Tiger Man of War.Nimrod, however, simply skips the problematic verse. He employs the usual lower strain to Wayfaring Stranger as his air; I believe that Basil May’s well-known version on Library of Congress AFS 001 essentially represents the same setting adapted to the major chords of his guitar playing. A good version by Doug Wallin can be found on MTCD503-4 and his cousin Dillard Chandler sings similar versions on both Folkways FA 2418 and Rounder 0028.
Roy Harris sang The Lady of Carlisle on his 1977 Topic album By Sandbank Fields. His 1997 live recording of The Lion’s Den from the The White Lion folk club in Wherwell, Hampshire, was published in 1999 on his WildGoose CD Live at the Lion. He noted on the original album:
Hearing the American ballad singer Dillard Chandler sparked my interest in this song. His version was too American for me to sing without parody, but Bert Lloyd gave me one from Suffolk. Actually it’s from Velvet Brightwell of Leiston, father of Jumbo Brightwell, a noted singer.
Doug Wallin sang The Carlisle Lady to Mike Yates on 23 May 1983 at his home in at Crane Branch, Madison County, Northern Carolina. This recording was included in 2002 on the Musical tradition anthology of songs, tunes and stories from Mike Yates’ Appalachian collections, Far in the Mountains Volumes 3. Mike Yates noted in the accompanying booklet:
Originally a blackletter broadside, in five parts, titled The Distressed Lady, or A Trial of True Love. Cecil Sharp collected four sets from Kentucky singers in 1917 (and three from singers in Somerset in 1908), and a number of versions have also turned up in Ireland and Scotland. Dillard Chandler, a first cousin of Doug’s mother Berzilla, recorded the song for John Cohen in 1965 (Rounder CD 0028) and the superlative performance by Basil May, from Kentucky, is available on Yazoo CD 2014. A later recording of Doug Wallin singing this ballad may be heard on Smithsonian Folkways SF CD 40013. Interestingly, and understandably, many Appalachian singers have changed the title from The Carlisle Lady to The Carolina Lady.
Keith Kendrick sang The Lion’s Den with Barry Coope in 1988 on the BBC Radio Derby cassette The Derby Tup Presents and unaccompanied in 1997 on his CD Home Ground. He noted on the latter album:
“Frailty—thy name is woman!” Well not if the text of this song is anything to go by! Lifted from the Folksinger’s Bible, Folksongs of Britain and Ireland by Peter Kennedy.
Sara Grey sang Lady of Carlisle in 1990 on her Harbourtown album Promises to Keep. She noted:
This song also known as The Bold Lieutenant was collected from Mrs Jenny Combs of Berea, Kentucky and appears in Folk Songs of the Appalachians. It also appears in Gavin Greig’s Folk-Song of the North-East, the Journal of the Folksong Society, Folk Songs From Somerset, and W.R. Mackenzie’s Ballads and Sea Songs of Nova Scotia. I have ‘made’ this version from two separate versions from Irene Saletan of Cambridge, Massachusetts and Larr Cann of Bodmin, Cornwall respectively.
Martin Carthy sang The Lion’s Den in 1999 on Waterson:Carthy’s third album Broken Ground. He commented in the album sleeve notes:
On the second Aldermaston march I met a bloke who taught me two songs. The first was a thing called Tee Roo which is The Devil and the Farmer’s Wife, and the other was The Lady of Carlisle which I have loved since then but fancied singing an English version if I could find one. The Lion’s Den is it, and it comes from a Somerset singer called Charles Neville who met and sang several songs for Cecil Sharp a few years before the first world war. He sang it in five four time and in the major key but with his posthumous permission (hoho) I sing it in free time and in the minor key. Apart from anything else it contains an interesting, not to mention downright mysterious (in an older sense of that word) notion of what constitutes Royalty, and it sure as hell ain’t defined in blood terms.
Sandra and Nancy Kerr sang The Lion’s Den on the 2004 anthology Evolving Tradition Volume 4.
Alcie Gerrard sang The Bold Lieutenant on the 2017 Appalachian ballad tradition anthology Big Bend Killing.
Lucy Farrell sang The Lady of Carlisle in a 2021 video about Carlisle Castle in Cumbria. This is part of a video series Songs of England which explores traditional songs and their connections to historic places. It was commissioned by English Heritage and the Nest Collective.
Lyrics
Mrs Maguire sings The Lion’s Den
In London City, there lived a lady,
Who was possessed of a vast estate
And she was courted by men of honour,
Lords, Dukes, and Earls on her did wait.
There was two brothers, who became lovers,
And both admired this lady fair;
And both to gain her they did endeavour
And how to please her was all their care.
The older one, who being a Captain,
The greater part of his love did make,
The younger one said that he would venture
His life and fortune for her sweet sake.
Now she said: “I’ll find a way to try them
And see which of them will the sooner start,
And he that will behave the bravest
Will be the governor of my heart.”
She ordered her coachman for to get ready,
For to get ready at the break of day,
The lady and her two warlike heroes
To the Tower Hill they did ride away.
And, when she came to the Tower Hill,
She threw her fan into the Lion’s Den,
Saying: “He who wishes to gain my favour
Will bring me back my fan again.”
Out spoke then the older brother,
So distress-ed all in his mind,
“To hostile danger I am no stranger
And to face my foes I am still inclined.
But here where lions and wild beasts arc roaring,
For to win them I do not approve,
So therefore, madam, for fear of danger
Some other champion must gain your love.”
Out bespoke then the younger brother
With a voice of thunder both loud and high, –
“To hostile danger I am no stranger
I’ll bring you back, love, your fan or die.”
He took his sword and went in among them,
The lions fawned and fell at his feet,
And then he stooped for the fan and got it,
He said“ "Is this it, my darling sweet?”
The lady then off her coach sat weeping
Thinking that he would be the lions prey –
[2 lines missing]
But when she saw her brave hero coming
And unto him no harm done
With open arms she did embrace him,
Saying: “Take the prize, love, you so dearly won.”
Jacqui McShee sings The Carolina Lady
Down in Carolina lived a lady
She were most beautiful and gay
All determined to live a lady
And no young man could her betray.
Up rode two loving young brothers to see her
Saying, “Pretty fair maid, will you marry me?”
“No, kind sir, it were never intended.
Only one man’s bride could I ever be.
But meet me here tomorrow morning
Upon this case we will decide.”
Then she called for a horse and buggy
It were ready at her command.
Over hills and woods she rambled
Until she came to the lion’s den.
And when she seen them both a-coming
She threw her fan in that lion’s den
Saying, “Which of you shall gain this lady,
Will return to me my fan again?”
Up stepped this brave bold lieutenant,
“Madam, I am a man of war
Madam, I’m a man of honor,
But I’ll never lose my life for love.”
Up stepped this brave bold sea captain,
“Madam, I am a man of war
Madam, I am a man with honor,
I’ll return to you your fan again.”
Down into the lion’s den he wandered,
Until he tore it out again.
And when she seen her love a-coming
And no harm to him were done
She fell likewise all in his bosom
Said, “Here’s that prize that you have won.”
Up stepped this brave bold lieutenant,
Says, “Madam, I am a man of war
But over hills and woods I’ll ramble
And my face you’ll see no more.”
Waterson:Carthy sing The Lion’s Den
Down in St James’s there lived a lady
And she was a beauty fine and gay,
She was determined to live a lady,
No man on earth could marry she.
Unless it be a man of honour,
A man of honour and high degree;
And there there come two loving brothers,
This fair young lady for to see.
And the first of them had a captain’s commission,
Belonging to our colonel’s corps,
And the other he was a bold lieutenant
On board of the Tiger man of war.
She ordered coachmen for to get ready,
All to the tower for to drive them
And there she’d spent one single hour
The lions and the tigers for to see.
Lions and tigers made such a warning,
All in the den she threw her fan,
Saying, “Which of you to gain a lady
Will go return my fan again.”
And then up spoke the faint-hearted captain,
“Lady, your offer I can’t approve.
All in that den that great den of danger
I never will venture my life for none.”
And then up spoke the poor lieutenant,
His voice did ring so loud and clear,
“All in that den that great den of danger
My life I will venture for you my dear.”
So in that den he straightly entered,
Lions and tigers both fierce and grim;
But he’d never seen any hint of danger
But he looked so fierce at them again.
And there they saw that his blood was royal
Down at his feet they all did lie.
And when he stood and the fan he gathered
And so he brought him safe away.
Jacqui McShee sings The Lady of Carlisle
Down in Carlisle there lived a lady
And she was a beauty fine and gay;
She was determined to stay a lady,
No man on earth could her betray.
Unless it was a man of honour,
A man of honour and high degree;
And there approached two loving soldiers,
This fair young lady for to see.
One being a brave lieutenant,
A brave lieutenant and a man of war,
The other being a bold sea captain,
Captain of the ship that had come from afar.
And then up spoke that brave young lady,
Saying, “I can be but one man’s bride.
But if you’ll come back tomorrow morning
On this case we will decide.”
She ordered her a span of horses,
A span of horses at her command;
And down the road these three together,
They rode ’til they come to the lion’s den.
And there they stopped and there they halted,
Those two soldiers stood gazing round;
And for the space of half an hour
That young lady lay speechless on the ground.
And when she did recover
Threw her fan in the lions’ den,
Saying, “Which of you to gain a lady
Will return my fan again.”
And then up spoke the brave lieutenant,
He raised his voice both loud and clear,
He said, “You know I am a dear lover of women,
I will not risk my life for love.”
And then up spoke the bold sea captain,
He raised his voice both loud and high,
He said, “You know I am a dear lover of women,
I will return your fan or die.”
In the lions’ den he boldly entered,
The lions being bold wild and fierce;
He walked unharmed and in a moment
He did return her fan again.
And when she saw her lover coming,
Seeing no harm to him was done,
She laid her head all upon his bosom,
Saying, “Here is the prize that you have won.”
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Steve Willis for corrections.