speak to me, o murder child: analyzing child ballad 13
A lot of people who listen to folk music normally do not know where the songs they listen to and love come from. Because of this, the general populace of folk fans are unaware that the majority of the popular folk music that they listen to can be attributed to the work of one man. Beginning in the late 1860s, a Harvard professor by the name of Francis James Child began the arduous process of editing and publishing what would eventually be considered his masterwork, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The collection — now colloquially referred to as the Child ballads — was published in ten separate volumes beginning in 1882, and contains a total of 305 ballads with varied versions from across the European continent. A vast number of these ballads have become entrenched in popular culture through being adapted into various folk songs. While there are many that I would like to discuss, it is my intent to focus on the thematic elements and origins of ballad 13, also known as ‘Edward’.
My reasoning behind choosing ballad 13 is a simple one: it was the first ballad I ever heard in song form, and was released by a band that I greatly admire. The original version of goth fusion folk band American Murder Song’s song “Edward” was released in 2016 on the first of their four debut EPs, called I. Dawn. The band then released an alternate version of the song two years later on their album The Killing Place, with a differing tone and heavily modified arrangement. While these particular versions were heavily modified to fit the aesthetic of the band, the ballad and its origins as detailed by Child were far different.
Child details three versions of the ballad in volume one of the collection, though I will be focusing my attention on version B. Child took version B from Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and other Pieces of our earlier Poets by Thomas Percy, which was published in 1765, making it the oldest recorded version of the ballad. ‘Edward’ is formatted as a call-and-response in the two complete versions noted by Child, but version B differs in that it chooses to keep the refrains within the verses, giving it the feel of something more akin to an epic poem than a typical ballad. This particular trait also makes this version far easier to translate into a musical format due to the flow that already exists.
While American Murder Song has their own version of ‘Edward’, the traditional Celtic folk band Old Blind Dogs has their own. What sets Old Blind Dog’s rendition of ‘Edward’ apart for me was the choice to perform it in the old English as translated by Child. While it creates a more authentic listening experience, I feel it also allows for a deeper understanding of the ballad’s thematic elements, as hearing the ballad out loud can often assist in a higher understanding of the text. Ballad 13 tells the story of a young man named Edward — though he is called Davie in version A — who goes to his mother’s house with his sword dripping with blood; after making several excuses about the origin of the blood, he finally admits to murdering either his father or his brother for unknown reason, causing the mother to lament and ask what his punishment will be. Child notes that the themes of ballad 13 are found in two other ballads within the collection, ‘The Twa Brothers’ and ‘Lizie Wan’. Versions D, E, F, and G of ‘The Twa Brothers’, or ballad 49, bear the most striking similarities in theme to ballad 13, with similar verses in regards to the call-and-response conversation between a son and mother, as well as the same consequences for the actions of the main character. These same ideas are echoed in both versions of ballad 51, ‘Lizie Wan’, though the story discussed within that particular ballad is a far darker and more controversial variation than what is noted in ballads 13 and 49.
Child’s large collection of ballads has been planted deep within popular culture. Mainly seen within traditional and folk music, the prevalence of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads tends to go largely unnoticed. Unfortunately, due to the sheer size of the collection — which is the largest selection of traditional ballads to date at 305 — there are many that must be left out when attempting to analyze these ballads. However, it does allow me to focus on the ballads that contain the most important structural thematic elements and origins found throughout the collection, which is why I chose to focus first on ballad 13.
The initial collection was published in 1860, though the full collection of 305 ballads did not begin publication until 1882. The collection was not finished, however, until 1898, two years after Child passed.
The folk revival of the 1960s sparked a resurgence of balladeering. Most notably, there is a collection of acapella recordings of various Child ballads from the United Kingdom. This collection contains perhaps the most well known version of ballad 13, Paddy Tunney’s recording of “What Put the Blood?”, also known as “What Put the Blood on Your Right Shoulder, Son?”. However, more modern and popular artists like Kate Bush (who’s 1978 debut album The Kick Inside’s title song is inspired by ballad 51) and Anaïs Mitchell (who released an album in 2013 titled Child Ballads, which contained seven musical adaptations of various ballads in the collection) have continued the tradition of adapting these ballads.
The original version of this ballad features only Zdunich and Hendelman as the vocalists. The song was later featured on a compilation album titled Murder Ballads of 1816: The Year Without Summer, which combined all four albums in the series ( I. Dawn, II. Providence, III. The Reckoning, and IV. Wake).
This particular version of Edward is very different from the original, in that it is not sung in its entirety by Zdunitch and Hendelman. It features a child as the main singer, as well as a female chorus of background singers.
All ballads within the collection have at least two variations noted by Child. However, some versions of the ballad are either incomplete, styled as nursery or skipping rope rhymes, or are simply separately chronicled lyrical and textual variations of that particular ballad.
In addition to being the oldest recorded version of the ballad, it is also written in the original old English dialect. In its translation, Child makes several changes to make the text more readable for its new modern audience. This included some major edits to the ballad’s archaic English as Percy transcribed, such as changing ‘quhy’ to a more standard ‘why’ and ‘zour’ to the standardized ‘your’.
Child, Francis James, ed. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads: Part I. Cambridge, Ma: The Riverside Press, 1882.
Child, Francis James, ed. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads: Part II. Cambridge, Ma: The Riverside Press, 1884.
Percy, Thomas. “Edward, Edward: A Scottish Ballad.” In Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and other Pieces of our earlier Poets, edited by Thomas Percy, 53-56. London: J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall, 1765.
Malcolm, Jim, lead singer/guitar/harmonica. The World’s Room. Recorded by Old Blind Dogs, 1999. Green Linnet - GLCD 1201, 1999. Digital download.
Zdunich, Terrence and Saar Hendelman, vocalists/composers. I. Dawn. Recorded by American Murder Song, 2016. American Murder Song, LLC., 2016. Digital download.
Zdunich, Terrence, Saar Hendelman, et al., vocalists/composers. The Killing Place. Recorded by American Murder Song, 2018. American Murder Song, LLC., 2018. Digital download.
