The Famous Flower of Serving-Men
- The Famous Flower of Serving-Men
The Famous Flower of Serving-Men or The Lady turned Serving-Man is Child ballad number 106.[Francis James Child, "English and Scottish Popular Ballads", [http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch106.htm "The Famous Flower of Serving Men"] ] Child considered it as closely related to the ballad The Lament Of The Border Widow or The Border Widow's Lament. [Francis James Child, "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads", v 2, p 429, Dover Publications, New York 1965] ]ynopsis
A woman's husband and child are killed by agents of her mother (or, sometimes, stepmother). The woman buries them, cuts her hair, changes her name from "Fair Elise" or "Fair Elinor" to "Sweet William", and goes to the king's court to become his servant. She serves him well enough to become his chamberlain.
The variants split, sharply, at this point. The common variant is that the king goes hunting and is led into the forest by a white hind. When it vanishes, he is in a clearing, and a bird, the dead husband, laments what happened to his love. The king asks, and the bird tells the story. The king returns and kisses Fair Elise while she is still dressed as a man. Often her mother/stepmother is executed, and usually the king marries her.
Occasionally, the king goes hunting, and the woman laments her fate, but is overheard; when the king is told it, he marries her.
In "The Border Widow's Lament", the woman laments, in very similar verses, the murder of her husband by the king; she buries him and declares she will never love another.
Versions
Martin Carthy took the fragments and reworked the ballad, drawing on lines from other ballads. He set it to a tune used by Hedy West for the Maid of Colchester.In 2005, he won the award for Best Traditional Track for 'Famous Flower of Serving Men' in the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards.
Ellen Kushner's novel "Thomas the Rhymer" includes elements not only of that ballad but also "The Famous Flower of Serving-Men".
References
External links
* [http://sniff.numachi.com/~rickheit/dtrad/pages/tiFLRSERV2;ttFLRSERV2;ttFLWSERV2.html "The Famous Flower of Serving Men"]
* [http://mysongbook.de/msb/songs/f/famflowe.html "The Famous Flower of Serving Men"]
* [http://www.bartleby.com/243/166.html "The Lady turned Serving-Man"]
* [http://www.lyricallegend.co.uk/songs.php?artist=steeleye+span&title=famous+flower+of+serving+men&lang= Steeleye Span version]
Wikimedia Foundation.
2010.
Look at other dictionaries:
List of the Child Ballads — This list of the Child Ballads contains all the 305 ballad types in Francis James Child s collection Popular English and Scottish Ballads , collected in the 19th century, colloquially known as the Child Ballads; see this for further general… … Wikipedia
The Disasters of War — Plate 3: Lo mismo (The same). A man about to cut off the head of a soldier with an axe.[1] … Wikipedia
The Bold and the Beautiful — Genre Soap opera Created by William J. Bell Lee Philip Bell … Wikipedia
List of The Story of Saiunkoku characters — The following is a list of characters from the light novel, anime and manga series, The Story of Saiunkoku. Contents 1 The Hong clan 1.1 Shūrei Ko 1.2 (Seien Shi)Seiran Si … Wikipedia
The Idler (1758–1760) — This article is about the 18th century series of essays. For other publications called The Idler, see The Idler (disambiguation). The Idler was a series of 103 essays, all but twelve of them by Samuel Johnson, published in the London weekly the… … Wikipedia
Roud Folk Song Index — The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of 300,000 references to over 21,600 songs that have been collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is a combination of the Broadside Index (printed sources before… … Wikipedia
The Nanny — For other uses, see Nanny (disambiguation). The Nanny Format Sitcom Created by Fran Drescher Peter Marc Jacobson … Wikipedia
Characters of the Yakuza series — Yakuza series story chronology Prologue Yakuza / Movie Version Yakuza 2 Yakuza 3 Yakuza 4 This is a main characters guide to Sega s video games and movies franchise Yakuza also known as Ryū ga Gotoku ( … Wikipedia
Netherlands, The — officially Kingdom of The Netherlands byname Holland Country, northwestern Europe. Area: 16,033 sq mi (41,526 sq km). Population (2002 est.): 16,142,000. Capital: Amsterdam; Seat of Government: The Hague. Most of the people are Dutch. Languages:… … Universalium
Enchanted forest — In literature, an enchanted forest is a forest under, or containing, enchantments. Such forests are described in the oldest folklore from regions where forests are common, and occur throughout the centuries to modern works of fantasy. They… … Wikipedia
