Tam Lin [Child 39]

DESCRIPTION: Janet goes to Carterhaugh to pull flowers. She meets Tam Lin, who makes her sleep with him. She finds herself pregnant, and demands Tam Lin marry her. But to do so, she must rescue him from thralldom to the Elven queen. With difficulty, she does so.
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1769; perhaps cited in 1549 (see notes)
KEYWORDS: magic pregnancy marriage rescue shape-changing
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland,England) Ireland US(NE)
REFERENCES (24 citations):
Child 39, "Tam Lin" (15 texts)
Bronson 39, "Tam Lin" (4 versions plus 1 in addenda)
Bronson-SingingTraditionOfChildsPopularBallads 39, "Tam Lin" (3 versions: #2, #2.1, #3,1)
Chambers-ScottishBallads, pp. 186-193, "The Young Tamlane" (1 text)
Greig/Duncan2 330, "True Tammas" (1 text)
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 86, "A Fairie Sang"; Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 99, "Janet and Tam Blain" (2 texts)
Dixon-ScottishTraditionalVersionsOfAncientBallads II, pp. 11-20, "Tam-a-Line, the Elfin Knicht" (1 text)
Scarborough-ASongCatcherInSouthernMountains, pp. 250-254, "Tam Lane" (1 text; tune on p. 422) {Bronson's #4}
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 136-141, "Tam Lin" (1 text)
Leach-HeritageBookOfBallads, pp. 38-43, "Tam Lin" (1 text)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 2, "Tam Lin" (1 text)
Friedman-Viking/PenguinBookOfFolkBallads, p. 41, "Tam Lin" (1 text)
Grigson-PenguinBookOfBallads 23, "Tam Lin" (1 text)
Gummere-OldEnglishBallads, pp. 283-289+360, "Tam Lin" (1 text)
Hodgart-FaberBookOfBallads, p. 129, "Tam Lin" (1 text)
Buchan-ABookOfScottishBallads 27, "Tam Lin" (1 text)
Tunney-WhereSongsDoThunder, pp. 163-169, "Tamlin" (1 text)
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishBallads, pp. 449-453, "The Young Tamlane"; pp. 453-454, "Tom Linn" (2 texts)
Darling-NewAmericanSongster, pp. 28-31, "Tam Lin" (1 text)
DT 39, TAMLIN1* TAMLIN2* TAMLIN3
ADDITIONAL: Emily Lyle, _Fairies and Folk: Approaches to the Scottish Ballad Tradition_, Wissenschaflicher Verlag Trier, 2007, pp. 110-111, "Tam Lin" (1 text plus an excerpt); pp.116-117, "Lady Margaret" (1 text, 1 tune, a much-worn-down version from Betsy Johnson); pp. 118-119, "[Leady Margat]" (1 text); on pp. 119-121 Lyle compares various texts of "Tam Lin" with portions of several other ballads
Katherine Briggs, _An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblines, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures_, 1976 (I use the 1977 Pantheon paperback), pp. 449-453, article "Young Tam Lin, or Tamlane" (1 text plus discussion)
Iona & Peter Opie, The Oxford Book of Narrative Verse, pp. 32-37, "Tam Lin" (1 text)
James Kinsley, editor, Burns: Complete Poems and Songs (shorter edition, Oxford, 1969) #558, pp. 658-663, "Tam Lin" (1 text, 1 tune, from c. 1796)
Roud #35
RECORDINGS:
Anne Briggs, "Young Tambling" (on Briggs2, Briggs3, Briggs4)
Eddie Butcher, "Saturday Night is Hallowe'en Night" (on IREarlyBallads)
A. L. Lloyd, "Tamlyn (Young Tambling)" (on Lloyd3)
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Seven Virgins (The Leaves of Life)" (tune)
NOTES [1286 words]: Liner notes to Eddie Butcher's recording: "This short 'chantefable' includes verses of 'Tam Lin.'" Roud makes this #294 with other "Tam Lin" derivatives. - BS
Carterhaugh, also mentioned as the site of magic in "The Wee Wee Man," "is a plain at the confluence of the Ettrick and Yarrow in Selkirkshire" (Scott).
The idea of gaining a lover who is changing shape has ancient roots. We find it in Ovid's "Metamorphoses," where Peleus (the father of Achilles) has the problem of coupling with his wife Thetis.
The problem was, Thetis was very attractive, and a lot of the Gods (including Zeus and Poseidon) wanted her for themselves. But there was that prophecy that her son would be greater than his father. (This is the prophecy that finally got Prometheus free of his torture, because he knew who was involved and Zeus didn't).
Once the gods knew that Thetis was the dangerous party, they decided to wed her off to a mortal so she could have a son and they could get back to the serious business of hitting on her. They chose Peleus, and held a great marriage feast (it was at that feast that Eris threw out the Apple of Discord, causing the fight between Aphrodite, Athena, and Hera which led to the Judgment of Paris, and hence to the abduction of Helen and the Trojan War).
The gods could marry Thetis off; they couldn't make her like it. Peleus found himself in the interesting position of having to locate and, in effect, capture his wife. Given help from the gods, he found Thetis in a cave and attempted to couple with her. To defeat him, she turned into a bird, a tree, and a tigress. The latter scared him off, but eventually he caught her while asleep (Metamorphoses XI.225ff.).
Similar stories are told, e.g., of the devil -- one legend of Saint Dunstan says that Satan tried to lure the saint into sexual immorality by showing up as a pretty girl and making a move on him, but Dunstan, who was working as a smith, caught the devil by the nose with his tongs. The devil tried many changes of shape, but Dunstan did not let go until Satan took his own shape. Freed, the Devil flew off and left Dunstan alone (Simpson, pp. 63-64).
The idea of repeated transformations, or transformations from one form to another, is even older in classical mythology; it's Thompson type D610, In the Odyssey, we see it in the story of Proteus, who is a shape-shifter. Menelaus and his men need the god's advice, but Proteus always resists using his prophetic powers, usually by changing his shape. But Menelaus and his men are told how to deal with it, and they succeed: Robert Fagles translates:
First he shifted into a great bearded lion
and then a serpent --
a panther --
a ramping wild boar --
a torrent of wine --
a tree with roaring branchtops --
but we held on for dear life, braving it out.... (Homer/Fagles, pp. 138-139; Book IV, lines 512 and following in Fagles's numbering).
Richard Lattimore offers
First he turned into a great bearded lion,
and then to a serpent, then to a leopard, then to a great boar,
and he turned into fluid water, to a tree with towering branches,
But we held stiffly on to him with enduring spirit.... (Homer/Lattimore, p. 77; Book IV, lines 455-459 in Lattimore's numbering).
Even more specific to "Tam Lin" is Thompson type D757, "Disenchantment by holding an enchanted person during successive transformations."
Dixon-ScottishTraditionalVersionsOfAncientBallads quotes a possible mention of this song from Wedderburn's Complaynt of Scotland (1549): He refers once to a dance of "thom of lyn," and elsewhere to the "tayl of yong tamlane." But Lyle, p. 110, points out that the full reference in the latter case is to "the tayl of the 3ong tamlene and of the bald braband," with the meaning of the latter item being unknown. (Cf. Complaynt, p. lxxix). Hence we cannot prove that either of these is this piece, even if it's the same story. Indeed, Dixon hints that the references might be to "Tom o' the Linn," which appears to be the song we index as "Brian O'Lynn (Tom Boleyn)." Murray, who edited the Complaynt, suggests on the other hand that "The Bald Braband" is a separate (lost?) romance (Complaynt, p. lxxix).
Lyle catalogs a number of parallels to other ballads, noting especially (pp. 123-126) a link to "The King's Dochter Lady Jean" [Child 52]. The points of lyric contact are interesting, but "Tam Lin" is at the heart a ballad of the supernatural, "Lady Jean" an incest ballad. The only fundamental point they have in common is rape.
Some versions of the ballad end with the Queen of Fairie, deprived of Tam Lin, being forced pay another tithe to hell. Lyle, p. 128, connects this to the legend of changelings four, e.g., in "The Queen of Elfan's Nourice" [Child 40]. The story is that the Elven people carried off unbaptized infants to pay their tithe. The difficulty with this link is that it implies that Janet could have saved Tam by bringing in a priest to have him baptized, rather than going through the rigamarole on Hallow's Eve.
Nonetheless Wimberly, pp. 390-391, follows a hint from Child and argues strongly that there is a baptism ritual involved -- it's just that the versions of "Tam Lin" have so disordered the transformations that this is no longer true. Presumably the transformations continued until Janet could bring Tam to water (perhaps a holy well?) and throw him in. From that, he would emerge "an utter naked man" -- but also cleansed of the taint of the Queen. This raises interesting questions about the possibility of re-baptism (which most sects would deny is possible), but maybe such analysis is too much to ask of a ballad. (There is also the problem that Faerie is normally considered morally neutral, e.g. in the romance "Sir Orfeo" it is separate from both heaven and hell, and so also in the ballad "Thomas Rymer" [Child 37].)
Scott knew a story that Tam Lin continued to have relations with the Queen even after Janet took him away. Boklund-Lagopolou, p. 157, seems to suggest that the whole point of the song is a sexual relationship between Tam and the Queen. This feels wrong to me; I think Scott's legend post-dates rather than predating the ballad.
For observations on shape-shifting in ballads, see the notes to "The Twa Magicians" [Child 44]. Lyle, p. 139, argues that the use of elements of other ballads in "Tam Lin" implies that it was compiled by a ballad-maker who did not believe in the literal truth of the elements. In other words, if I understand her right, there was no underlying folktale; it was composed as fiction.
Briggs, volume A.1, p. 502, does not say quite the same thing, but she does call the song "a compendium of Scottish fairy beliefs." She also notes that Sir Walter Scott turned the idea into the poem "Alice Brand." "Alice Brand" is a long and complex poem, being sections XII-XV of "The Lady of the Lake" (pp. 154-156 of Scott-Works), with other elements, but it is clear that Scott did have traditional ballads in mind when he wrote it.
Interestingly, Hallow's Eve is not the only night of a wild hunt, and the Elven Queen not the only leader. Hole, p. 59, reports a legend of King Arthur and his men riding a ghostly road on Christmas Eve.
According to Williams, p. 48, "On the plain at Carterhaugh, which is situated where the Ettrick and Yarrow meet about a mile north of Selkirk, there are two or three rings where grass never grows. People say these are fairy rings which survive from the time of Tam Lin.... - RBW
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishBallads "Tom Linn" has 26 stanzas instead of Child 39D's 34. The source is Child's 39Db (see Child's notes and Maidment, A New Book of Old Ballads (Edinburgh, 1844), #16 pp. 54-60, "Tom Linn" "taken down from the recitation of an old woman"). - BS
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