The Child Ballads

Child Ballad content -- playlists, recordings, fan content, interpretations -- from Tumblr and elsewhere.

[childballad]

An extremely brief guide to Child ballads.

What even is a ballad? Who is this ‘child’ and why are you capitalizing that word? What are all these numbers?

This post is a short and sweet introduction to traditional ballads and Child’s 305-song collection. It’s under a cut so you’re guaranteed the most up-to-date version!

WHAT IS A BALLAD?

Broadly speaking, ballads are narrative songs with a simple, repeating melody and rhyme scheme.

While there are many variants, traditional ballads sung in the British Isles and North America are often in quatrains (four-line stanzas) where the second and fourth lines rhyme.

The first and third lines are often in iambic tetrameter, with the second and fourth lines in trimeter. "Iambic" means an emphasized syllable follows an unemphasized one: dah DAH. Lines in tetrameter have eight syllables, while lines in trimeter have six.

Here's a stanza from Tam Lin (Child #39c): 

She let her seam fall to her foot, The needle to her toe, And she has gone to Chaster's wood, As fast as she could go.

WHO WROTE 'EM? WHERE'D THEY COME FROM?

The people did! The original authors of ballads are lost to history, and the songs appear in so many variants that there's almost never an identifiable "original" version.

Many of these ballads came to America with English, Scottish, and Irish immigrants who settled in Appalachia. Various traditions mingled, new ballads were written, and old ballads were passed on in new contexts.

SO WHO'S THE CHILD?

While researchers had been anthologizing traditional ballads since the late 1700s, Francis James Child's work in collecting and organizing ballads was foundational.

The "Child Ballads" are the 305 ballads collected and analyzed in Child's 'The English and Scottish Popular Ballads'. Each ballad has a number. Variants of ballads are collected under the same number and indicated with letters (ie, Child Ballad 39c).

WHY ARE PEOPLE INTERESTED? WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL?

Many of Child's ballads are dark, sad, and strange. They deal frankly with dark topics including murder, rape, and incest. There are appearances by strange men who may be serial killers or devils or fairies, depending on the variant. They're like a sprawling, strange, musical collection of fairy tales you never heard when you were in kindergarten.

SO WHERE DO I START?

OPTION A: Start with what seems interesting Start with our intro posts tag for highlights and suggested listening, then go from there. Also check out Tumblr's favorite Child ballad -- Tam Lin, #39.  It's weird, it's spooky, it's got a spirited lady protagonist rescuing her lover, it's got a lot of wonderful recordings available (and at least two novel-length adaptations). It is also our best-populated tag and has a dedicated website.

OPTION B: Start listening Listen to Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer's album Child Ballads, put any number of the Child Ballad playlists available on Spotify on shuffle, or see if your favorite artists have recorded any of the Child ballads.

WHERE DO I LEARN MORE?

Wikipedia had a convenient table that lists each ballad by name, number, and summary. Many of the ballads also have their own Wikipedia pages, which are linked from the table.

A useful intro essay on Child Ballads and the ballads in fantasy writing by Terry Windling: part one, part two.

Child was not terribly interested in the music of ballads. Bertrand Harris Bronson wrote about and cataloged many of the traditional tunes. 

Child Ballad Recordings catalogs many recordings of the songs, neatly organized.  

You're likely to run into the Roud Folk Song Index, a sprawling, modern index of folk songs.

Mainly Norfolk is an accessible, easy-to-browse resource. While not Child Ballad focused, they do have a Child Ballad Index.

Here’s a Spotify playlist of most of the ballads, in order. 

The Center for Computer Research in the Humanities at the University of Colorado Boulder has a massive concordance available for any highly specific research purposes.

[intheholler]

the appalachian murder ballad <3 one of the most interesting elements of americana and american folk, imo!

my wife recently gave me A Look when i had one playing in the car and she was like, "why do all of these old folk songs talk about killing people lmao" and i realized i wanted to Talk About It at length.

nerd shit under the cut, and it's long. y'all been warned

so, as y'all probably know, a lot of appalachian folk music grew its roots in scottish folk (and then was heavily influenced by Black folks once it arrived here, but that's a post for another time).

they existed, as most folk music does, to deliver a narrative--to pass on a story orally, especially in communities where literacy was not widespread. their whole purpose was to get the news out there about current events, and everyone loves a good murder mystery!

as an aside, i saw someone liken the murder ballad to a ye olde true crime podcast and tbh, yeah lol.

the "original" murder ballads started back across the pond as news stories printed on broadsheets and penned in such a way that it was easy to put to melody.

they were meant to be passed on and keep the people informed about the goings-on in town. i imagine that because these songs were left up to their original orators to get them going, this would be why we have sooo many variations of old folk songs.

naturally then, almost always, they were based on real events, either sung from an outside perspective, from the killer's perspective and in some cases, from the victim's. of course, like most things from days of yore, they reek of social dogshit. the particular flavor of dogshit of the OG murder ballad was misogyny.

so, the murder ballad came over when the english and scots-irish settlers did. in fact, a lot of the current murder ballads are still telling stories from centuries ago, and, as is the way of folk, getting rewritten and given new names and melodies and evolving into the modern recordings we hear today.

305 such scottish and english ballads were noted and collected into what is famously known as the Child Ballads collected by a professor named francis james child in the 19th century. they have been reshaped and covered and recorded a million and one times, as is the folk way.

while newer ones continued to largely fit the formula of retelling real events and murder trials (such as one of my favorite ones, little sadie, about a murderer getting chased through the carolinas to have justice handed down), they also evolved into sometimes fictional, (often unfortunately misogynistic) cautionary tales.

perhaps the most famous examples of these are omie wise and pretty polly where the woman's death almost feels justified as if it's her fault (big shocker).

but i digress. in this way, the evolution of the murder ballad came to serve a similar purpose as the spooky legends of appalachia did/do now.

(why do we have those urban legends and oral traditions warning yall out of the woods? to keep babies from gettin lost n dying in them. i know it's a fun tiktok trend rn to tell tale of spooky scary woods like there's really more haints out here than there are anywhere else, but that's a rant for another time too ain't it)

so, the aforementioned little sadie (also known as "bad lee brown" in some cases) was first recorded in the 1920s. i'm also plugging my favorite female-vocaist cover of it there because it's superior when a woman does it, sorry.

it is a pretty straightforward murder ballad in its content--in the original version, the guy kills a woman, a stranger or his girlfriend sometimes depending on who is covering it.

but instead of it being a cautionary 'be careful and don't get pregnant or it's your fault' tale like omie wise and pretty polly, the guy doesn't get away with it, and he's not portrayed as sympathetic like the murderer is in so many ballads.

a few decades after, women started saying fuck you and writing their own murder ballads.

in the 40s, the femme fatale trope was in full swing with women flipping the script and killing their male lovers for slights against them instead.

men began to enter the "find out" phase in these songs and paid up for being abusive partners. women regained their agency and humanity by actually giving themselves an active voice instead of just being essentially 'fridged in the ballads of old.

her majesty dolly parton even covered plenty of old ballads herself but then went on to write the bridge, telling the pregnant-woman-in-the-murder-ballad's side of things for once. love her.

as a listener, i realized that i personally prefer these modern covers of appalachian murder ballads sung by women-led acts like dolly and gillian welch and even the super-recent crooked still especially, because there is a sense of reclamation, subverting its roots by giving it a woman's voice instead.

meaning that, like a lot else from the problematic past, the appalachian murder ballad is something to be enjoyed with critical ears. violence against women is an evergreen issue, of course, and you're going to encounter a lot of that in this branch of historical music.

but with folk songs, and especially the murder ballad, being such a foundational element of appalachian history and culture and fitting squarely into the appalachian gothic, i still find them important and so, so interesting

i do feel it's worth mentioning that there are "tamer" ones. with traditional and modern murder ballads alike, some of them are just for "fun," like a murder mystery novel is enjoyable to read; not all have a message or retell a historical trial.

(for instance, i'd even argue ultra-modern, popular americana songs like hell's comin' with me is a contemporary americana murder ballad--being sung by a male vocalist and having evolved from being at the expense of a woman to instead being directed at a harmful and corrupt church. that kind of thing)

in short: it continues to evolve, and i continue to eat that shit up.

anyway, to leave off, lemme share with yall my personal favorite murder ballad which fits squarely into murder mystery/horror novel territory imo.

it's the 10th child ballad and was originally known as "the twa sisters." it's been covered to hell n back and named and renamed.

but! if you listen to any flavor of americana, chances are high you already know it; popular names are "the dreadful wind and rain" and sometimes just "wind and rain."

in it, a jealous older sister pushes her other sister into a river (or stream, or sea, depending on who's covering it) over a dumbass man. the little sister's body floats away and a fiddle maker come upon her and took parts of her body to make a fiddle of his own. the only song the new fiddle plays is the tale about how it came to be, and it is the same song you have been listening to until then.

how's that for genuinely spooky-scary appalachia, y'all?

[sounds-of-raine]

As a fellow lover of folk in general, and murder ballads specifically, I would love to offer some other recommendations for woman-friendly murder ballads. Most of these are very modern, but they are in the spirit of the ballads I grew up loving.

The River Knows-Molly Tuttle (A woman who knows she's in a murder ballad turns things around)

Caleb Meyer- Gillian Welch (A woman gets assaulted and kills the man who attacked her)

Old Time Angels- Po Ramblin Boys (The women killed in murder ballads get vengeance)

Griesly Bride- McKain Lakey (A man who thought he'd married a sweet young girl has an unexpected wedding night)

And a selection of more classic ones (plus one modern) that are less happy for their female characters, but no less beautiful. I am sticking to female singers here, because OP is right that their versions usually hit better.

Well Below the Valley- Saya Novinger (This one is dark. Incest, child murder, and guilt abound)

Darlin Corey- Meredith Moon (The life and death of a moonshiner named Corey)

The Highwayman- Loreena McKennitt (A woman and her outlaw lover are killed by British soldiers)

The Cruel Brother- Maeve Mackinnon (A woman is murdered by her slighted brother on her wedding day)

Banks of the Ohio- Dolly Parton (A man recounts how he murdered his lover)

[francisjameschild]

my niche interest! hello, I also have a lot to say about ballads!

Hm I'd like to suggest that folks not take these trends as hard rules, indicating omnidirectionality. I tend to think of ballads as open ammunition being tossed back and forth in the gender wars of oral tradition, flipping back and forth between viewpoints as different singers find ways to make them say different things.

Ballads were hardly a misogynist monolith-they were written by a range of individuals over a wide range of years, and many started out (far as we can tell) carrying women's voices, or have older variants that told more complete and often more empowering versions of their tales that may contain acts of violence against women but that could not originally be condensed to just that feature. Not as a rule by any means, but they're definitely a sizeable number of songs.

Some start out more feminist and lost their teeth over time, and some start out misogynist and gained more feminist frames. It'd be interesting to graph them all out over a timeline and see what trends emerge but also very difficult given the spiderwebbing of variants dating from different periods and going in different directions and the subjectivity of what counts as feminist or the reverse.

Anyhow here are some examples of songs that, far as I can tell, started out fairly feminist long before the 1940s:

Lady Isabel and the Elf Night: dates at least to the 17th c. Very similar to Pretty Polly and Omie Wise (okay also many others) plot wise but when Lady Isobel's courting lover reveals all the other women he's killed before, she kills him instead. Also there's often a parrot.

Fair Annie, an adaptation of Marie de France's late 12th c lai Le Fresne more. Where Annie, the mother of seven of her partner's children, is told to step aside, put out the welcome mat, and feign maidenhood so that he can marry someone new and wealthy. Upon the new bride's arrival she asks who Annie is and why she's crying, then reveals "Oh, we're sisters! Which means you can totally have my dowry and I'm not marrying that pos, you are, don't worry, I'm going the hell home." (emphasis mine but that's basically it)

Broughty Wa's, a Scottish song about outswimming your kidnapper while he sinks like a stone in your wake, known only from Amelia and Jane Harris, sisters who contributed to Child heavily and learned their repertoire from their mother who in turn learned them from "an aged nurse". more

Lady of Loch Royan: most versions of Lord Gregory, as it's known more often today, are the sad tale of a new mother knocking on her lover's door in the rain asking to be let in, only to be turned away by his mother who tells her to jump in the sea, which she does and he wakes up and runs after her, but too late. The two very similar likely oldest versions are an Appalachian variant recorded by Jean Ritchie and the version aggregated by Sir Walter Scott in 1802, unlikely to have been contaminated by knowledge of each other, indicate, "we have here a truly remarkable instance of a unique version of a ballad appearing in two widely separated places 150 years apart" (source), which should serve to underline how often the Appalachian versions might well be the closer-to-original surviving versions of these songs rather than remaining English and Scottish ones, and how difficult they are to date.

Anyhow most of the modern versions of this I hear are highly truncated, just sad Annie crying sweet memories outside of Lord Gregory's door then going off to drown, but the Sir Walter Scott version has her building a ship, meeting with robbers, breaking fairy charms, and being mistaken in her rain-soaked rage for a witch, warlock, or mermaid. I mean she still dies right soggily in despair (or in given how mad she seems in this version, possibly spite), but that's something, surely. more

And not a child ballad but I want to note that the Pretty Polly linked above (there are a bunch of songs by that name, including Lady Isobel, confusingly) is descended from a longer murder ballad called The Cruel Ship's Carpenter/ The Gosport Tragedy, which in it's fuller form most often ends with Polly's ghost appearing and tearing her killer into three pieces.

Ballads <3

*Also might I ask if it's a typo on Twa Sisters going back to the 10th c rather than the 17th I've heard more often, or if I might learn more about that early source? I'm very curious (maybe the related folktale type goes back that far or farther?) Off the top of my head I think Judas is the earliest Child ballad in the 13th c so if there's an earlier one I'd love to know.

[clarascuro]

Janet 

[tam--lin]

[ID: tweet by Maggie Stiefvater @mstiefvater that reads: “Some of you have never had to pull your true love out of a devilish procession and hold on to them tightly while they change from beastly form to beastly form and it shows” /ID]

[owlschemes]

Some of you have never watched your septannual tax payment to Hell escape, and it shows.

[graveyardrabbit]

Visit Original Link

[pinbitch]

look not everyone likes folk ballads and that is fine but willie of winsbury is 100% worth a listen because a plot point is the king finds this guy so damn attractive he just forgets to be mad at him and then offers him half his kingdom because he is just so hot

[lilliburlero]

Here’s Anne Briggs singing it.

[notquitelostnotquitefound]

Here’s Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer.

[reconditarmonia]

Pentangle, and you’re understating the case, OP! “‘Tis no wonder,’ said the king, ‘that my daughter’s love you did win / For if I were a woman as I am a man, my bedfellow you would have been.”

[effulgentpoet]

favorite Child Ballads

RIDDLES WISELY EXPOUNDED

What is greener than the grass and what is smoother than the glass? What is louder than a horn and what is sharper than a thorn?

In the earliest surviving version of the song, the devil proposes to abduct a maiden unless she can answer a series of riddles. The woman prays for wisdom, and answers the riddles correctly. In later versions, a knight puts a woman to test before he marries her. The woman knows the answers, and thus wins the marriage.  LISTEN  

[nottamunwood]

“…They’re fabulous stories; because they tell you immense amounts about people and how they treat each other, trick each other, cheat and chisel and love each other. There’s an extraordinary understanding of humanity in them. You do have to sometimes kick the buggers into life, find them a tune, give the lyrics a kick here and there. And they can take it; they’re fabulously resilient. I really do believe there’s nothing you can do to these songs that will hurt them—except for not singing them.”

— Martin Carthy, on the Child Ballads

[ljlerolland]

Tam Lin:  “A Rose But Only Two" 

Pen & Ink

© 2012

[peatbogpirate]

Was actually finishing a painting but then the song Johnny O’Braidislee came on & I got this image stuck in my head so here’s that instead

[norathebean]

🌹Tam Lin and Janet 🌹

[sharpnelshell-deactivated201905]

It had almost escaped my notice that it is now May, the month that dooms to a heartbroken death 99% of characters from folk ballads. So, if you suspect you may be a character from a folk ballad, for your own safety: 

don’t fall in love, don’t go by the river, don’t go to the sea, don’t talk to sailors, don’t gamble, don’t ramble, don’t go North, don’t go North-West, don’t stand in the wind, don’t dance with anyone named Sally, Sue, Mary, Ann, or Barbara, don’t go to the pub (but if you do go to the pub at least don’t drink, and if you do drink at least pay for your own drink, and if you are absolutely broke and have to let someone else pay for your drink then at the very least do try not to forget to toast everyone you know whom you think might be there very loudly and possibly multiple times), don’t lend money, don’t borrow money, don’t wish you had more money, don’t make plans to make more money, don’t start working for a new employer, absolutely do believe anyone who says they will try to kill you, curse you, or maim you, absolutely do believe anyone who says you might die, turn down every invitation to go a-hunting, horse-riding, or a-courting, be wary of flute players you meet on your path, don’t dance with satanic men in black coats, don’t marry off your daughters to the first man who’ll have them, and don’t promise your true love any herbs you can’t readily plant and gather in your own garden. 

There. That should just about cover you for 31 days. Heed the warnings and you may have a chance to last the month. Good luck.

[tiramisioux]

Fire and Hemlock - (1984) by Diana Wynne Jones

     “The truth between two people always cuts two ways.”

[hardtimekillingfloorblues-deact]

[nanshe-of-nina]

Favorite Songs || Murder Ballads

Banks of the Ohio She said, “Oh, Willie, don’t you murder me/ I’m not prepared for eternity.”

Long Lankin There was blood all in the kitchen/ There was blood all in the hall/ There was blood all in the parlour/ Where my lady she did fall.

Lord Randall “What d’ye leave to your true-love, Lord Randal, my son?/ What d’ye leave to your true-love, my handsome young man?”/ “I leave her hell and fire; mother, mak my bed soon/ For I’m sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.”

The Maid and the Palmer or The Well Below the Valley “Oh, there’s three of them lying under your bed-head/ Three of them under the hearth are laid/ Three more laying on yonder green/ Count, fair maid, for that makes nine.”

Omie Wise “Little Omie, little Omie, I’ll tell you my mind/ My mind is to drown you and leave you behind.”

Poor Ellen Smith Poor Ellen Smith how she was found/ Shot through the heart lying cold on the ground.

Pretty Polly “Polly, dear Polly, you’re guessing just about right/ I dug on your grave the best part of the night.”

The Twa Sisters or The Cruel Sister “Oh sister, sister, let me live/ And all that’s mine I’ll surely give.”/ Your own true love that I’ll have and more/ But thou shalt never come ashore.“

[shredsandpatches]

The English and Scottish Popular Ballads - Part 1: Child 1-26

This is something I’d been meaning to do for a while, so here is the first part of it. There’s a similar collection here; I’ve deliberately chosen different recordings where possible. Also, the Child Ballads are full of triggery things – I’ve asterisked for the most egregious of them, but if you aren’t familiar with the ballads and want to know what you’re in for, there’s a collection of summaries here. Shorter version: you can do a lot of damage with a little penknife.

Track listings are given by Child’s numbering rather than strictly numerically. Missing numbers are ballads I don’t have or that haven’t been recorded (lots of overlap there).

01. riddles wisely expounded - daniel dutton ◦ 02. the elfin knight - ewan maccoll & peggy seeger ◦ 03. false knight on the road - maddy prior ◦ 04. the outlandish knight - bellowhead ◦ 06. willie’s lady* - martin carthy & dave swarbrick ◦ 07. earl brand - custer larue ◦ 10. cruel sister - pentangle ◦ 11. the cruel brother** - martin simpson ◦ 12. lord ronald - custer larue ◦ 13. edward** - jean ritchie ◦ 14. the bonnie banks of fordie - nic jones ◦ 16. sheath and knife*** - eliza carthy ◦ 17. hind horn - giordano dall'armellina ◦ 18. sir eglamore - kate rusby ◦ 19. king orfeo - carol wood ◦ 20. cruel mother**** - martin carthy ◦ 21. the well below the valley***** - frankie armstrong ◦ 22. stephen - steeleye span ◦ 24. banks of green willow***! - spiers & boden ◦ 25. amang the blue flowers and the yellow (willie’s lyke-wake) - ewan maccoll ◦ 26. there were three ravens - baltimore consort

*weird pregnancy stuff **incest (subtextual) ***incest (textual) ***!non-incest version of a song that’s usually about (attempted) incest ****infanticide *****infanticide of incest babies

LISTEN HERE

[camwyn]

On the question of certain conditions posed by Scarborough Fair

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambric 

Cambric (US: /ˈkeɪmbrɪk/,[1]UK: /ˈkeɪmbrɪk/ or /ˈkæmbrɪk/),[2][3][4] or batiste, one of the finest and most dense kinds of cloth,[5] is a lightweight plain-weave cloth, originally from the French commune of Cambrai, woven in greige, then bleached, piece-dyed and often glazed or calendered. Initially it was made of linen; later, the term came to be applied to cotton fabrics as well. 

Assuming ‘cambric’ here to be treated as plainweave linen:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283288900_3D_PRINTED_TEXTILE_FABRICS_STRUCTURES 

The creation process of a 3D printed sample starts in a 3D CAD design software. For this project the opensource program  Google   SketchUp   is used to  design   plain  weave fabrics.  The   warp   and weft yarns  are created as separate components which are grouped together  to form one model that can be exported in a*.stl format file. Hereby the warp is oriented in z the weft in x direction 3D PRINTED TEXTILE FABRICS STRUCTURES (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283288900_3D_PRINTED_TEXTILE_FABRICS_STRUCTURES [accessed Sep 6, 2017].

Plainweave texture/structure available as an option in 3D printing. Linen? 

https://airwolf3d.com/2015/05/05/airwolf-3d-reviews-biofila-linen-filament/

Airwolf 3D recently tested bioFila Linen, an interesting new biodegradable product from the company, twoBEars in Germany. BioFila Linen does not actually contain linen fibers as is customary in many other PLA based materials. Rather, bioFila Linen is composed of organic material known as lignins that are suspended in a PLA matrix. Lignins are responsible for providing strength and rigidity to the cell walls of plants and are one of the main ingredients found in paper. 3D printed bioFila Linen has a texture that looks a lot like linen (hence its name) and, according to twoBEars, is capable of producing  rougher, more porous-looking textures at temperatures above 205°C.  

Close simulacrum available. Shirt-shaped templates easily obtainable. Therefore, we have material and devices to produce cambric in a shirt shape w/o seams or needlework.

HOWEVER.

Fabric production by 3D printing results in nasty stiff unpleasant material and the primary tech company aiming to 3D print clothing easily, Electroloom, gave up the ghost. https://www.wired.com/2017/05/the-shattering-truth-of-3d-printed-clothing/ 

In Electroloom’s case, Rowley and his collaborators took the raw components of fabric and created blends closely resembling those of existing textiles. When he set out to print his designs, however, his 3D printer spat out what he says looked like a “chaotic web.” It took countless iterations before they wound up with a soft flexible, foldable, lightweight, fibrous material that superficially resembled fabric. But even that concoction didn’t work. Give it a tug, and the material would tear. No good for clothing.

“When you have these fibers physically bonded [as in 3D printing], they aren’t going anywhere, whereas with a woven textile the fibers move and slide along each other,” Rowley explains. Electroloom shuttered last October.

So currently the technology does not exist to produce a convincing cambric shirt via 3D printing. But we’re working on it.

Will get back to you on the acre of land question after further research. Currently going w/definition of sea sand as ocean-deposited (or human-deposited-in-close-proximity-to-ocean, in the case of beach restoration) sediment composed of particles smaller than 2 milimeters and bigger than 0.0625 milimeters; below 0.0625mm it’s silt or clay and I’m going to need to do some shoreline composition lookups first.

[camwyn]

UPDATE: acre of appropriate land located.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Salt+Lagoon/@-38.1582068,144.7132675,262m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x6ad42dcd04614079:0x73aeb472291c529c!8m2!3d-38.1577755!4d144.7096293

This is a Google Maps satellite view of St Leonards, Victoria, Australia. More specifically it is a Google Maps satellite view of a portion of St Leonards adjacent to the following body of water:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Leonards_Salt_Lagoon

St Leonards Salt Lagoon is a former marine embayment, isolated by coastal deposition from Port Phillip Bay, at St Leonards, Victoria, Australia. It now forms a shallow and hypersaline lake, of about 50 hectares (120 acres), which is often dry.

We have a strip of land between a former piece of ocean, which is now isolated salt water, and the ocean itself, which the satellite photos show as having a sandy beach. Aside from the fact that The Bee Man has established a business in the area already there should be at least an acre available. No need for quibbling over the definition of sand or the percentage of soil grains above/below the appropriate size.