The Brown Girl

The post for July is a little late this month. You wouldn’t believe the internet problems I’ve had so I won’t even bother telling you.

This months post is on two different groups of ballads, both called The Brown Girl, and I have been attempting to determine if there is any relationship between them.

Firstly, there is The Brown Girl, ballad 295 (a and b versions) in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, compiled by Francis James Child in the the late 1800s and now called the Child Ballads. This version, which is also the basis for the song on Steeleye Span’s album Rocket Cottage, tells the story of a ‘bonny’ brown girl whose lover spurns her with a letter telling her that she is ‘too brown’, and that he wishes to marry another, fairer girl. He then falls ill, with renewed love for her it would seem, and sends her another letter requesting that she come to visit him, as no doctor can cure him. She does pay him a visit, but only to laugh at him, and further curse him with a white wand, telling him that he is soon to die and that she will repay his falseness by dancing upon his grave.

She had a white wand all in her hand,
	 And smooth'd it all on his breast;
	 ‘In faith and troth come pardon me,
	 I hope your soul’s at rest.
295A.8	 ‘I’ll do as much for my true-love
	 As other maidens may;
	 I’ll dance and sing on my love’s grave
	 A whole twelvemonth and a day.’

The B version, which is longer, suggests that the Brown Girl is a witch and has made the man fall ill with love for her, which was certainly not his original condition when he dumped her for the fair maiden. Her supernatural powers are particularly inferred by the mention of the white wand (perhaps of the sort used by the goddess Bride) that she uses to send his soul on its way.

There is another set of English folk ballads, also known in Scotland and popular in the Southern U.S., some version of which are called ‘the Brown Girl‘. These concern a character called Lord Thomas and his fair love, who is called Ellender (Eleanor, Ellen, Ellenter) or sometimes Annette or Annie in the Scots versions. Betraying his love, Lord Thomas elects to marry the Brown Girl instead, because she has got ‘house and lands’, whereas Fair Ellenter, she has got none! In some versions it’s the other way around, and the Brown Girl is poor, in which case his decision to marry her makes little sense, so I prefer the version in which the Brown Girl is the richer of the two. In any event, he does not marry the girl he really wants.

Fair Ellenter is understandably heartbroken by this betrayal and decides to attend the wedding dressed up as fine as can be, so that she can upstage the plain Brown Girl, and Lord Thomas can see what he is missing. This act of presumption goes over pretty badly with the bride-to-be, who stabs her competition in the chest with a concealed knife. Lord Thomas then beheads the Brown Girl in revenge, and all ends very badly. This version is all over the internet but try here to begin with. The messageboard at Mudcat.org also has various threads on the subject which are useful.

In both sets of ballads, the Brown Girl is not the object of true desire, unless she makes the man fall in love with her by magic. Her brown skin colour may denote her lower class status, as she would have obtained it working out of doors, but together with the mention of her dark eyes, it may also be a reference to her Celtic blood, as opposed to the fair skin and blue eyes of her Anglo-Saxon rival. The ballads may both be references to racial relations between Celtic and Anglo-Saxon people and the dangers for Anglo-Saxon noblemen of becoming entangled with the ‘wrong sort’ of woman, either for love or money. Magic and murder seem to be the inevitable consequences.

As far as I can tell from a search of the internet there is no direct relationship between the two different Brown Girls. But I’d be happy to hear otherwise…
S. J. M.