Here Beside Dwells a Rich Baron's Daughter (The Juggler)

DESCRIPTION: A baron's daughter says that she "would have no man that for her love sought her." Many try and fail, but a "juggler" creates the illusion of wealth and beauty and beds her. She awakes to see him as he is, and rejects him; he enchants her again
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1537 (Richard Hill MS., Balliol Coll. Oxf. 354)
KEYWORDS: nobility love rejection magic trick sex bawdy MiddleEnglish
FOUND IN:
REFERENCES (7 citations):
Sidgwick/Chambers-EarlyEnglishLyrics CL, pp. 251-253, "(no title)" (1 text)
Brown/Robbins-IndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #1194.5
DigitalIndexOfMiddleEnglishVerse, #1957
ADDITIONAL: Roman Dyboski, _Songs, Carols, and Other Miscellaneous Poems from the Balliol Ms. 354, Richard Hill's Commonplace Book_, Kegan Paul, 1907 (there are now multiple print-on-demand reprints), #98, pp. 115-116 "(The Juggler and the Baron's Daughter" (1 text)
R. T. Davies, editor, _Medieval English Lyrics: A Critical Anthology_, 1963, #175, pp. 284-286, "The magician and the baron's daughter" (1 text)
Celia and Kenneth Sisam, _The Oxford Book of Medieval English Verse_, Oxford University Press, 1970; corrected edition 1973, #257, pp. 535-536, "The Juggler and the Baron's Daughter" (1 text)
MANUSCRIPT: {MSRichardHill}, The Richard Hill Manuscript, Oxford, Balliol College MS. 354, fp. 509
NOTES [91 words]: This is attested only in Richard Hill's manuscript, and there is no evidence it is a song (it has a chorus, "Draw me nere, draw me nere, Draw me nere, þe joly juggelege": "Draw me near, draw me near, Draw me near, the jolly juggler" -- but it also has a very un-folk-like "bob" of four or five syllables at the end of each verse). But if it is a song, it sounds very folk-like to me, and the Hill Manuscript is very "folky," so I have very tentatively included the piece.
In this case, we should probably understand a "juggler" to be a magician. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.3
File: MSHBDRBD

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography