Gay Goshawk, The [Child 96]

DESCRIPTION: An English lass is forbidden to marry the Scot she loves. He sends a message by his goshawk. She asks to be buried in Scotland should she die. This granted, she feigns death. Her coffin is taken to where her lover waits; they are reunited
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1783/1799 (Riewerts-BalladRepertoireOfAnnaGordon-MrsBrownOfFalkland)
KEYWORDS: love separation death burial trick reunion
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland) Ireland
REFERENCES (14 citations):
Child 96, "The Gay Goshawk" (8 texts)
Bronson 96, "The Gay Goshawk" (2 versions, though the second, from Christie, is described by Bronson as "padded out with a second strain.")
Chambers-ScottishBallads, pp. 180-186, "The Gay Goss Hawk" (1 text)
Riewerts-BalladRepertoireOfAnnaGordon-MrsBrownOfFalkland, pp. 120-127, "The gay gos hawk" (2 parallel texts plus a photo of the badly-transcribed tune; also a reconstructed tune on p. 268)
Buchan/Moreira-TheGlenbuchatBallads, pp. 212-217, "The Goss Hawk" (1 text)
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 300-303, "The Gay Goshawk" (1 text)
Flanders-AncientBalladsTraditionallySungInNewEngland3, pp. 43-44, "The Gay Goshawk" (1 fragment, with lyrics typical of this piece but too short identify with certainty)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 60, "The Gay Goshawk" (1 text)
Grigson-PenguinBookOfBallads 43, "The Gay Goshawk" (1 text)
Gummere-OldEnglishBallads, pp. 265-269+358, "The Gay Goshawk" (1 text)
Buchan-ABookOfScottishBallads 17, "The Gay Goshawk" (1 text, 1 tune in appendix) {Bronson's #1}
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishBallads, pp. 5-7, "The Gay Goss-Hawk"; pp. 7-9, "The Jolly Goss-Hawk" (2 texts)
HarvardClassics-EnglishPoetryChaucerToGray, pp. 69-73, "The Gay Goss-hawk" (1 text)
ADDITIONAL: William & Susan Platt, _Folktales of the Scottish Border_, published 1919 as _Stories of the Scottish Border_, republished by Senate Press, 1999, pp. 63-69, "The Gay Goss-Hawk" (1 text)
Roud #61
NOTES [560 words]: Child comments briefly on the fact that this song employs a goshawk to carry a message rather than a nightingale (the bird usually used for love messages), or a dove (used as a messenger), or a parrot (which can talk -- although a few versions do refer to parrots). Indeed, in what is believed to be the oldest surviving Greek animal tale, "The Hawk and the Nightingale," the hawk is the nightingale's enemy and catches and eats it (Jones, p. 221). It is lines 202-212 in the Loeb edition of Works and Days (Hesiod/Evelyn-White, pp.18-19). This wouldn't be known in medieval England, but the tale ended up in collections of Aesop's Fables (giving us the tag "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"), and that of course was widely known! I don't think I can really explain why this song features a goshawk, but possibly I can offer some information that you can use to speculate.
There was an English scholar, Bartholomaeus Anglicus (Bartholomew of England), who wrote a Latin piece De Propriietatibus Rerum ("On the Properties of Things") which was translated into English in the fourteenth century (Fowler, p. 150). Bartholomew discerned four classes (not species) of eagles and hawks: the true eagle, aquila, "the queen of fowls"; the goshawk, aucipiter, "a royal fowl" (the group name for goshawks in modern nomenclature is "accipiters," though there are accipiters which are not called goshawks); the falcon, alietus, "bold and hardy" but with seemingly no personal significance; and the "royal falcon, herodius (Fowler, p. 158).
Chaucer, in the Parliament of Fowls, has a multi-tiered organization of birds. It starts with four great classes or types (a distinction going back to Aristotle; Chaucer/Benson, p. 1000, note on lines 323-329): birds of prey or plunder (which includes the eagles), the small birds that hunt worms (worm-fowl), the seed-eaters, and the waterfowl.
Within the plunderers -- which most scholars agree Chaucer is equating with the knightly class -- Chaucer distinguished five, arguably six, types. (Chaucer/Brewer, p. 80; Parliament of Fowls, lines 330-340. Pliny's Natural History had had six types; Chaucer/Benson, p. 1000, notes on lines 332-333):
-- The "ryle egle" [royal eagle] (line 330)
-- The "othere eglis" [other eagles] (line 332)
-- The "goshauk" (line 335)
-- The "gentyl facoun" [gentle falcon] (line 337)
-- The "hardy sperhauk" [hardy sparrowhawk] (line 338)
-- The "merlioun" [merlin] (line 339; merlins are hawks, but Chaucer lists them after quail, so he may not have meant them to be among the plunderers)
Elsewhere Chaucer will distinguish the Tercel and Formel eagles, but not here.
Chaucer says more of the goshawk than any of the other raptors:
Ther was the tiraunt with his federys dunne
And grey, I mene the goshauk, that doth pyne
To bryddis for his outrageous ravyne (lines 334-336), i.e.
There was the tyrant with his feathers dun [greyish-brown]
And grey, I mean the goshawk that does hurt/harm/seek
For birds (brides?) for his outragous rapine/greed/voracity.
Chaucer/Brewer, p. 115, note on lines 335-336, says, "Bartholomew quotes the opinion that the goshawk is cruel to its young, taking food from them when they are fledged, and driving them out of the nest."
Thus it is rather peculiar to see the goshawk, of all hawks, being treated as a good servant and helper. - RBW
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