Lord Maxwell's Last Goodnight [Child 195]

DESCRIPTION: Lord Maxwell, having had his revenge on the Johnstones and soon to be executed for it, bids farewell to the places and people he has known
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1778 (Percy papers)
KEYWORDS: death execution revenge feud
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1608 - Murder of James Johnstone by Lord Maxwell
1613 - Execution of Maxwell for his crimes
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland)
REFERENCES (5 citations):
Child 195, "Lord Maxwell's Last Goodnight" (2 texts)
Bronson 195, "Lord Maxwell's Last Goodnight" (4 versions)
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishBallads, pp. 389-392, "Lord Maxwell's Goodnight" (1 text)
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 533-535, "Lord Maxwell's Last Goodnight" (1 text)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 151, "Lord Maxwell's Last Goodnight" (1 text)
Roud #4015
NOTES [131 words]: The events which led up to the execution of Maxwell are typical of the sort of feuding in which Scottish nobles were constantly engaged, and are detailed by Child. Even for a last goodnight, this song is amazingly frugal of details; the texts in Child say nothing of what Maxwell did, nor even what his fate will be. I was tempted to give it the keyword "nonballad."
David C. Fowler, A Literary History of the Popular Ballad, Duke University Press, 1968, p. 237, makes an interesting point about the text: Although Child prints it in quatrains, if we arrange it in eight-line stanzas instead, they often appear to take the form ababbcxc -- in other words, the rhyme scheme from one stanza carries across to the next. Which clearly hints at sophisticated, not popular, composition. - RBW
Last updated in version 5.1
File: C195

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