Lamkin, a musical news flash of the 16th century: artisan gets stiffed, gets even.

There are songs with stories, called ballads. In the days before the internet, people used to entertain each other by singing them. On a long dark night (candles are expensive) people might sit together and share these story-songs.

Folks had gory tastes in those days just as they do today. Nowadays people go to slasher movies; back then, there were slasher songs.

Lamkin was a stonemason. He built a castle for a rich guy. The rich guy didn't pay the bill. Lamkin got ticked off. The rich guy bought a ship and sailed away. The family nanny was in cahoots with Lamkin and she let him in the castle one night. Lamkin stabbed the rich guy's wife and baby to death. He and the nurse die on the gallows.

In most versions of the story, there is an older child, a daughter. When the mother hears Lamkin downstairs, and Lamkin announces he's gonna kill her, she nobly offers her daughter up to him instead. Lamkin says, "Well, ok, send down your daughter and I'll kill her, but then I'll kill you too," so the mother tells the daughter to wait upstairs and goes down to her death.

To do your research, you have to know all the names a song is known by. Besides the names you'll see below, this song is known as "False Linfinn," "Squire Relantman," and probably another ten variations.

Numerous versions of this harsh story are found in Scotland, England, and America; the basic plot, however, varies little...

The unmotivated action of Lamkin in his brutal killings would suggest that the basic story has been lost. Why would Lamkin kill the lady and her baby just to avenge the wrong of the lord's not paying him, when he realizes he would be hanged for the deed?

The Devil was sometimes referred to as Wearie. Could it be that the original story was a fairy (later Devil) capture story, and that Lamkin is killing his wife for running away with a fairy lover?

Barry advanced the theory that Lamkin was originally a leper and killed the baby to secure blood to wash himself and so effect a cure...

Later the leper became a mason because masons were said to mix blood with their cement. But this is rather wide speculation.

Lamkin is Child Ballad #93. Francis Child was an Englishman who obsessively collected many variants of certain songs which recur over and over again across England and Scotland, sometimes in Ireland too, and he even came to America and was delighted to find people singing "his" ballads in our Appalachian mountains and by the North Carolina shoreline, as well as in Maine and all sorts of places in between.

He was a tidy guy, so he numbered all his favorite stories, and you can find them referred to by their Child Ballad numbers in many, many books.

Sadly, though, he wasn't interested in the tunes. All ballad singers are sad about that, because the people from whom he stole ("collected") the songs probably sang them to some melodies that are now lost forever.

A scholar named Bertrand Harris Bronson issued a four-volume collection published by Princeton University Press (1959-1972) called The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads. It's out of print and I've never seen it.

But then in 1974 he issued a volume called The Singing Tradition of Child's Popular Ballads and I've owned this book for a long time. So whenever I get interested in a ballad, this is where I go first. Bronson collected versions of these songs from England, Scotland, Ireland, and America.

He has six different tunes for Lamkin:

1. "False Lamkin," from Cambridge, England;
   
2. "Bolakins," from Elk Park, NC;
   
3. "False Lambkin" from Perryville, Ohio;
   
4. "Old Lamkin" from Lee County Kentucky;
   
5. "Lambkin" from Scotland (1578);
   
6. "Long Lankin, or Young Lambkin" from Bournemouth, England.

See what I mean about the name?

You'll also find that the lyrics of the song vary greatly from version to version. Some are long and complete, some are fragmented and don't rhyme, if you're not a purist you may decide to take a few verses from a few different versions of the song.

In this case, I didn't like any of Bronson's tunes, but I think I did crib some of these verses.

I was rolling the problem of "Lamkin" around in my mind when I went to visit my son in Middletown, Connecticut. While he was busy with something I went to the library and looked up their ballad collection.

I found a book I don't own: Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New England... correlated with the numbered Francis James Child Collection," compiled and edited by Helen Hartness Flanders (her ballad collection is housed at Middlebury College in Vermont).

Volume II, Ballads 53-93, had nine pages of Lamkin versions! A bonanza!

I xeroxed the pages and brought them home to gloat over.

It didn't used to be easy to find a particular song. My collection of folksongs from the British Isles contains unlabeled, generic white cassettes given to me by Robert Rodriques, a blind DJ in New York City who loves obscure English folksingers. I thought the original version I fell in love with might be on one of those cassettes...

Or maybe it was on one of the cassettes I got from a fan who claimed he was a lord of some Scottish estate where they make booze, except something happened with his inheritance and now he was knocking around the United States...

I found a few of these unlabeled cassettes, and listened, but I didn't find Lamkin. However, I started to get the idea that Dave Burland was the singer I sought.

So I emailed him and he kindly sent me his version of the song. You can listen to it if you promise to then visit him on MySpace and say hello from me (Jane Peppler):

Dave Burland doing Lamkin
Dave Burland on MySpace (I like his version of Skewball there).

I was interested to see he used two tunes in his version. Sadly, neither of them was the one I remembered but I liked them both.

And I thought his idea of using two tunes was great. Lamkin is a long ballad, and I was afraid people (me included) might get bored, so this was a good idea.

I wrote to Phil because I knew he sings "Long Lankin." He kindly sent me his version of the song, it's available on his website and, same deal, you can listen as long as you go say hi to him for me on his MySpace page! He's very good on the open-tuning guitar and his wife has a beautiful voice.

Phil Cooper singing Long Lankin
Phil Cooper and Margaret Nelson on MySpace

OK, his tune wasn't the one I was looking for either.

So eventually, I settled on having three tunes, cycling three verses in each tune before moving to the next, twice. That gave me 18 verses, barely enough to tell the story of Lamkin if I left out the daughter in the window.

I changed each of these tunes at least a little to fit my inner picture of the story of Lamkin.

• I decided to start with the tune collected from Lily M. Delorme in Cadyville, NY, from the Helen Hartness Flanders book. Here is the score, and a midi file. Here's Lily's tune:
  
  

  Midi file for Lamkin - Delorme

  
  
  Here's the tune after I massaged it a little:
  
  

  Midi file for my version of that tune 1

  
  
  
• For the next tune, I started with Dave Burland's first tune...
  
  

  Midi file for Dave Burland's first tune

  
  
  ... but it was a little too cheery to sit well with the other tunes, so I tweaked it into a minor-key melody:
  
  

  Midi file for my version of that tune

  
  
  
• I ended with my favorite of the versions I'd been listening to, the second of Dave Burland's tunes:
  
  

  Midi file for Dave Burland's second tune

  
  
  And here it is as I sing it, with some augmented seconds in it to add to the "mystery" and also, to go well with a strange chord I had in mind for Bob to play in his accompaniment:
  
  

  Midi file for my version of that tune

Many versions of this song have 30 verses or more! A modern audience would never sit still for that. So I had to prune it down to the absolute minimum. I sat with all my different texts, I pored over the lyrics and figured out which verses were essential in moving the story along. Everything else had to go. I was sad about that but you have to be realistic. You don't want people shaking their watches and holding them up to their ears to see if they've stopped working.

Long Lankin

Said my lord to my lady, as he mounted his horse:
"Beware of Long Lankin that lives in the moss."

Said my lord to my lady, as he rode away:
"Beware of Long Lankin that lives in the hay."

"Let the doors be all bolted and the windows all pinned,
And leave not a hole for a mouse to creep in."

So he kissed his fair lady and he rode away,
And he was in fair London before the break of day.

Tlhe doors were all bolted and the windows all pinned,
Except one little window where Long Lankin crept in.

"Where's the lord of this house?" Said Long Lankin,
"He's away in fair London." said the false nurse to him.
"Where's the little heir of this house ?" said Long Lankin.
"He's asleep in his cradle," said the false nurse to him.

"We'll prick him, we'll prick him all over with a pin,
And that'll make my lady to come down to him.'

So he pricked him, he pricked him all over with a pin,
And the nurse held the basin for the blood to flow in.

"O nurse, how you slumber. O nurse, how you sleep.
You leave my little son Johnson to cry and to weep."

"O nurse, how you slumber, O nurse how you snore.
You leave my little son Johnson to cry and to roar."

"I've tried him with an apple, I've tried him with a pear.
Come down, my fair lady, and rock him in your chair."

"I've tried him with milk and I've tried him with pap.
Come down, my fair lady, and rock him in your lap."

"How durst I go down in the dead of the night
Where there's no fire a-kindled and no candle alight ?"

"You have three silver mantles as bright as the sun.
Come down, my fair lady, all by the light of one."

My lady came down, she was thinking no harm
Long Lankin stood ready to catch her in his arm.

Here's blood in the kitchen. Here's blood in the hall
Here's blood in the parlour where my lady did fall.

Her maiden looked out from the turret so high
And she saw her master from London riding by.

"O master, O master, don't lay the blame on me
'Twas the false nurse and Lankin that killed your lady."

Long Lankin was hung on a gibbet so high
And the false nurse was burnt in a fire close by.

Recorded by Steeleye Span on Commoner's Crown and by Carthy & Swarbrick
on But Two Came By
Child #93

This blood chilling tale is from the archives of Prudhoe Heritage.
Whittle Dene Castle - the lair of evil Long Lonkin

• Philip starts work on Nafferton Tower...
  
  On the A69, [near] Whittle Dene, hidden by trees and bushes, are the bare remains of what was to have been Nafferton Tower.
  
  Philip de Ulecote, a royal Forester of Northumberland in the reign of King John, started to build the tower there, about 1215... Philip had not received a licence from the king to build his tower. Work ceased, and no attempt was ever made during the succeeding centuries to finish the building [which] gradually decayed into ruins.
  
  
• Enter the villain - Long Lonkin
  
  A notorious villain called Long Lonkin made the place his hide-out. He was, apparently, a thief, robber, murderer and a most unpleasant person. One of his victims was the owner of a pele tower, Welton Hall, only a mile or so to the north-west of Lonkin's Lair. Lonkin formed a relationship with a maid servant from Welton and she became his accomplice in a plan to rob her master.
  
  
• Murder in the Night
  
  According to the legend, one night when the master of Welton was away on business, the maid unlocked a door and admitted Lonkin into the hall. Unable to find any valuables he roused the lady of the hall and her child, and demanded that they tell him where the treasures where hidden.
  
  They refused, and in a temper he killed them both and threw the bodies into a nearby burn. Lonkin escaped with whatever he had managed to steal.
  
  When the master returned he set out to find Lonkin and inflict his revenge. Exactly what occurred is not known. Some say that during a chase Lonkin fell into a burn and was drowned. Others say that Lonkin hanged himself in a fit of remorse, and yet others that he was simply hanged! The fate of the maidservant is not known.

Sources: Northumbrian Heritage, by Nancy Ridley, 1968. Ordnance Survey, NZ 072 660. History of Northumberland, Vol.XII, 1926.