Three Brothers in Fair Warwickshire

DESCRIPTION: "All four three brothers in fair Warwickshire, Three daring brothers you shall hear." The three turn to robbery. They rob Lord Granuvale. They are caught, tried, and condemned to die. They are 18, 19, and 20 year old. People are warned against bad company
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1978 (recorded from Danny Brazil)
KEYWORDS: robbery trial execution death warning mother
FOUND IN: Britain(England(West))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
ADDITIONAL: Roy Palmer, "'Birmingham Broadsides and Oral Tradition" -- essay found in David Atkinson and Steve Roud, Editors, _Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America: The Interface between Print and Oral Tradition_, Ashgate, 2014, pp. 53-54, "Three Brothers in Fair Warwickshire" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #3207
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Lamentation of W. Warner, T. Ward, & T. Williams" (theme)
NOTES [136 words]: Palmer connects this with a broadside, "The Lamentation of W. Warner, T. Ward, & T. Williams." Roud accepts the equivalence. There are certainly common elements -- the age of the young men (18, 19, 20), the fact that they are in Warwickshire, the fact that they rob someone whose name starts with "Gr...." But there are substantial differences, too. In the broadside, the three are not brothers; in the song, they are. The song adds a scene with the three brothers' mother bewail their fate. Only about half the verses have the same general contents. The song can't even decide whether it's in first or third person. My guess is that the song has taken on material from the broadside but that it either started as something else or was deliberately remade. Either way, I'd call it a separate although related song. - RBW
Last updated in version 4.4
File: AtRo053A

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