Geordie [Child 209]

DESCRIPTION: Geordie is taken (for killing a man or the king's deer). When word comes to his lady, she sets out to do all possible to save his life. In most accounts she raises his ransom, though in others Geordie is executed
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1792 (Scots Musical Museum)
KEYWORDS: execution hunting punishment rescue wife
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
1514?-1562 -- Life of George Gordon, 4th Earl of Huntly, claimed by some as hero of this song. He became Earl in 1524 when his grandfather died, and died in 1562 in the course of a rebellion against Mary Stewart
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber,Bord),England(All)) US(Ap,MA,MW,NE,NW,SE,So) Canada(Mar,Newf)
REFERENCES (60 citations):
Child 209, "Geordie" (15 texts)
Bronson 209, "Geordie" (58 versions)
Bronson-SingingTraditionOfChildsPopularBallads 209, "Geordie" (5 versions: #1, #4, #11, #40, #50)
Gardham-EarliestVersions, "GEORDIE"
Buchan/Moreira-TheGlenbuchatBallads, pp. 180-182, "The Lady O Gight" (1 text)
Greig-FolkSongInBuchan-FolkSongOfTheNorthEast #75, p. 1, "Gight's Lady" (1 text)
Greig/Duncan2 249, "Gightie's Lady" (11 texts, 6 tunes) {A=Bronson's #3, C=#37?, D=#34}
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 197, "The Stealing of the King's Deer" (1 text)
Kidson-TraditionalTunes, pp. 24-26, "Geordie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Reeves-TheEverlastingCircle 49, "Georgie" (2 texts)
Broadwood-EnglishTraditionalSongsAndCarols, pp. 32-33, "Georgie or Banstead Downs" (1 text, 1 tune)
Palmer-EnglishCountrySongbook, #42, "Spare Me the Life of Georgie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Palmer-SongsOfTheMidlands, p. 77, "Spare Me the Life of Georgie" (1 text, 1 tune)
OShaughnessy/Grainger-TwentyOneLincolnshireFolkSongs 8, "Georgie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud/Bishop-NewPenguinBookOfEnglishFolkSongs #136, "Geordie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Barry/Eckstorm/Smyth-BritishBalladsFromMaine p. 475, "Geordie" (notes only)
Flanders-AncientBalladsTraditionallySungInNewEngland3, pp. 231-235, "Geordie" (2 texts, 1 tune)
Newman/Devlin-NeverWithoutASong, p. 127, "Georgie" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Shoemaker-MountainMinstrelsyOfPennsylvania, pp. 162-163, "Charlie and Sally" (1 text plus a fragment) (pp. 140-141 in the 1919 edition)
Belden-BalladsSongsCollectedByMissourFolkloreSociety, pp. 76-78, "Geordie" (3 texts)
Randolph 28, "The Life of Georgie" (3 texts plus 1 excerpt, 2 tunes) {Randolph's A=Bronson's #36, D=#40}
Randolph/Cohen-OzarkFolksongs-Abridged, pp. 52-53, "The Life of Georgie" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 28D) {Bronson's #40}
Davis-TraditionalBalladsOfVirginia 39, "Geordie" (3 texts plus a fragment, 1 tune entitled "Georgie") {Bronson's #30}
Davis-MoreTraditionalBalladsOfVirginia 34, pp. 262-266, "Geordie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore2 38, "Geordie" (1 text, in which the condemned man is "Georgia"!)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore4 38, "Geordie" (2 texts plus 3 excerpts, 5 tunes)
Scarborough-ASongCatcherInSouthernMountains, pp. 213-215, "Geordie" (1 text, with local title "Georgy-O," plus an excerpt from Christie; 1 tune on p.411) {Bronson's #5}
Chappell-FolkSongsOfRoanokeAndTheAlbermarle 17, "Johnny Wedlock" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #49}
Moore/Moore-BalladsAndFolkSongsOfTheSouthwest 40, "Georgie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Flanders/Brown-VermontFolkSongsAndBallads, pp. 241-242, "Charley's Escape" (1 text from the Green Mountain Songster)
Greenleaf/Mansfield-BalladsAndSeaSongsOfNewfoundland 17, "Lovely Georgie" (1 text)
Creighton-MaritimeFolkSongs, p. 27, "Geordie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Creighton/Senior-TraditionalSongsOfNovaScotia, pp. 73-75, "Geordie" (2 texts plus 1 fragment, 1 tune) {Bronson's #23}
Pottie/Ellis-FolksongsOfTheMaritimes, pp. 52-53, "Geordie" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #23}
Gardner/Chickering-BalladsAndSongsOfSouthernMichigan 128, "Georgie" (1 fragment)
Musick-JAF-TheOldAlbumOf-William-A-Larkin 41, "Georgia" (1 text)
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 554-559, "Geordie" (3 texts)
Sharp-OneHundredEnglishFolksongs 9, "Geordie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Karpeles-TheCrystalSpring 3, "Geordie" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #18}
Thomas/Leeder-SinginGatherin, p. 31, "Charlie Condemned" (1 fragment, 1 tune) {Bronson's #33}
Niles-BalladBookOfJohnJacobNiles 53, "Geordie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Sharp-EnglishFolkSongsFromSouthernAppalachians 34, "Geordie" (4 short texts plus 2 fragments, 6 tunes){Bronson's #50, #31, #51, #30, #55, #41}
Sharp/Karpeles-EightyEnglishFolkSongs 24, "Georgie" (1 text, 1 tune -- a composite version) {Bronson's #30}
Gentry/Smith-ASingerAmongSingers, #17, "Geordie" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #31}
Wells-TheBalladTree, pp. 118-119, "Georgie" (1 text, 1 tune)
VaughanWilliams/Lloyd-PenguinBookOfEnglishFolkSongs, pp. 42-43, "Geordie" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #27}
Hodgart-FaberBookOfBallads, p. 135, "Geordie" (1 text)
Cox-FolkSongsSouth 23, "Geordie" (1 text)
Bush-FSofCentralWestVirginiaVol2, pp. 94-95, "Georgie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Gainer-FolkSongsFromTheWestVirginiaHills, pp. 75-76, "Georgie and Sally" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roberts/Agey-InThePine #27, "Geordie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Ord-BothySongsAndBallads, pp. 408-410, "Gight's Ladye"; pp. 456-457, "My Geordie, O, My Geordie O" (2 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #4}
MacColl/Seeger-TravellersSongsFromEnglandAndScotland 16, "Geordie" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishBallads, pp. 567-568, "Geordie" (2 texts)
Sedley/Carthy-WhoKilledCockRobin, pp. 261-265, "Geordie" (1 text, 1 tune)
Silber/Silber-FolksingersWordbook, p. 220, "Geordie" (1 text)
Olson-BroadsideBalladIndex, ZN279, "As I went over London Bridge"
DT 209, GEORDI GEORDI2* GEORDI4*
ADDITIONAL: James Johnson, The Scots Musical Museum (Edinburgh: Johnson & Co, 1792 ("Digitized by Internet Archive for NLS")), Vol. IV, #346 (second text) pp. 356-357, "Geordie - An Old Ballad") (1 text, 1 tune [of "A Country Life"]) {Bronson's #1}
James Kinsley, editor, Burns: Complete Poems and Songs (shorter edition, Oxford, 1969) #358, pp. 491-492, "Geordie -- An old Ballad" (1 text, 1 tune, from 1792)
Roud #90
RECORDINGS:
Harry Cox, "Georgie (Geordie)" (on FSB5, FSBBAL2) {Bronson's #24}
Paul Joines, "The Hanging of Georgie" (on Persis1)
Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger, "Georgie" (on ENMacCollSeeger02)
Bobby McMillon, "Georgie" (Fragment: Piotr-Archive #35, recorded 05/20/2021; too short to be certain it is this song)
William Ritter, "Georgie" (Piotr-Archive #31, recorded 05/08/2021; recording is very noisy)
Levi Smith, "Georgie" (on Voice11)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(1797), "The Life of Georgey," H. Such (London), 1849-1862; also Harding B 25(488), "Death of Georgy", W. Armstrong (Liverpool), 1820-1824; also Firth c.21(20), Harding B 11(2297), "Maid's Lamentation for her Georgy"
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Prisoner at the Bar (The Judge and Jury)" (plot)
cf. "Young Johnson" (theme of ransoming condemned prisoner)
cf. "George of Oxford" (theme and some lines) and source/stemmatic discussion there
cf. "The Death of George Stoole" (theme and some lines)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Death of Geordie
The Bog o' Gight
The Braes o' Gight
The Lady o' Gight
NOTES [1640 words]: The historical antecedents of this ballad are disputed. Some suggest that it is based on the life of George Gordon (1512-1562), Fourth Earl of Huntly, the son of Margaret Stewart, she being an illegitimate daughter of James IV. A blackletter ballad cited by Lloyd names Geordie as George Stoole of Northumberland, executed in 1610, but Lloyd suggests the ballad itself predates the 17th century. - PJS, RBW
The Huntly story really doesn't fit the song at all well. The 1560s were the period when Mary Stewart ("Mary Queen of Scots") returned to Scotland as a teenage widow after having spent a dozen years in France. In her absence, the Reformation had come to Scotland. It was a period of intense factionalism -- Catholics versus Protestants, pro- and anti-Mary elements (those factions were largely but not entirely the same), supporters of the Hamiltons versus the Lennox Stewarts as the heirs to the throne. And, according to Stedall-Maitland, the Gordons (including Huntly) were not aligned closely with any of these factions, but sought to feather their own nests.
"The character of the 4th earl belongs to that great tradition of independent Highland lords who throughout history have posed such problems for the central government -- since their policies... have in fact been consistently bent toward the aggrandizement of their own clans. Huntly had powerful royal connections: as the grandson of James IV by his natural daughter Margaret Stewart, he was, although thirty years older, Mary Stuart's first cousin (she always addressed both him and his son as 'cousin' in her letters), and since his own father died when he was a baby, he was actually brought up with King James V. Two of his nine sons were married to two daughters of the duke of Châterherault [the heir apparent to the throne until James VI was born]. His power extended across the north-east of Scotland in a formidable array of tangible castles, and intangible but effective family alliances" (Fraser, pp. 193-194).
The Huntleys had assembled this wealth in the reign of James IV, who had used them to break the power of the Lords of the Isles and rewarded them with much of the forfeited holdings (MacDougall, pp. 186-189 and especially p. 190).
"[Huntly] owned vast tracts of territory in Aberdeenshire, Banffshire and Angus and he was extremely wealthy. In 1530 he married Lady Elizabeth Keith, daughter of William, 3rd Earl Marischal, and they made their principal residence at Strathbogie Castle in Aberdeenshire. It was there that they brouggt up their nine sons and three daughters.... When he received visitors, Huntly sat in his hall beneath a quasi-regal crimson satin cloth of state embroidered with gold" (Marshall, p. 126).
Morrison, p. 84, declares that the Gordons were "the most difficult Catholic [family for Mary to handle]. The Earl of Huntly was the most powerful Catholic in the country, and held the important office of Chancellor. He was the chieftain of the north, rich in cattle and lands" -- though his military record wasn't great; he had been one of the senior officers at the Battle of Pinkie, where the Scots were heavily defeated (Magnusson, p. 327). Mary -- whose chief goal was already to become Queen of England after, or instead of, Elizabeth I, feared a Catholic rising because it would interfere with her hopes to succeed in England. And the Gordons were making trouble; Huntly's second son, John Gordon (Fraser says he was the third son), said to be the most handsome man in Scotland, had ended up in custody in the Tolbooth for brawling before he escaped. So now Mary had a Gordon fugitive on her hands (Morrison, pp. 84-85). So Mary's eyes were definitely on Huntly.
Huntly, according to Stedall-Maitland, p. 57, at this time was called upon to turn in a cannon that belonged to the crown, failed to do so, and was denounced as a rebel. He tried and failed to get support from the Hamiltons (i.e. the family of Châterherault, John Gordon's father-in-law; Châterherault's name was James Hamilton and his Scots title was Earl of Arran), then tried to get back into Queen Mary's good graces, with his wife as a go-between, and failed. He became a sort of a nomad, not daring to spend long in any one place.
Supposedly, according to Stedall-Maitland, p. 58 and Fraser, p 200, Huntly's wife consulted witches, who told her that his unmarked/un-wounded body would be at the tolbooth in Aberdeen the next day. Presumably interpreting this as meaning that he would be victorious, he planned to attack one of Mary's forces, which proved to be much larger than he expected. He and his brothers were captured, and Huntly had a heart attack or something and died on the spot. So the prophecy succeeded but did not mean what he expected.
According to Morrison, p. 87, Huntly had gathered his men on the Hill of Fare, but was hoping that the Queen's army would betray her. Mary's illegitimate half-brother, James Stewart, didn't trust his troops, but put the unreliable soldiers in front with the more reliable troops behind to push them forward.
"Steadily, doggedly, the men in the first company were thrust on. Nearly every one of them had a piece of heath stuck in his helmet as a secret sign that he was Huntly's man. When the combatants met, they cast aside their weapons and would have run, but Moray, with his relentless rear company, pressed them fiercely forward in the midst of the battle.
"Huntley's soldiers were forced to leave the hill, and when he saw then struggling in the marshy, quaking ground at the foot, hemmed in and trapped on every side, he knew he was defeated. Men were crowding round him, thrusting others aside, putting out their hands to grasp his horse's bridle for the honour of taking him prisoner. He was corpulent and weighted with armour: with the intense excitement he fell dead" (Morrison, p. 87).
(The Earl of Bothwell, who later became Mary's third husband, claimed that "Huntley... was seized as he travelled unsuspectingly about the country and secretly murdered on the orders of the Earl of Moray"; Drummond, p. 169. But Bothwell was an extremely unreliable witness and his story is uncorroborated. Moreover, Huntley wasn't the only member of his family to die in this way; in 1576, the fifth earl "deceased suddenly coming from the football"; Stewart, p. 94.)
Mary executed several other members of his family, but rehabilitated George Gordon, son of the old Earl, a couple of years later (Steadll-Maitland, p. 74; according to Morrison, p. 88, he "had taken no part in the strife"; Fraser, pp. 201-202 says he had some part in the revolt but was not present during the final stages, and adds that his younger brother Adam was also spared). When John Gordon was executed, the earl of Moray "forced his [half-]sister [i.e. the Queen] to be present" at the "mangled execution in Aberdeen" (Morrisson, p. 88). There is apparently a poem about this, with the lines "For Huntly's gallent stalwart son Was headed on the heading hill," but it is rarely printed.
James Stewart's reward, incidentally, was that Mary made him Earl of Moray, a title he coveted. Mary had promised it to him, but its property had been in Huntly's hands (Marshall, p.127). In essence, James conquered his own earldom (Stedall-Darnley, pp. 66-67.)
If the song is really about Huntly, much that we find in the common version is wrong -- e.g. the claim that the Geordie's lady was a "pretty fair maid" and that "three pretty babies I have born." Huntly's wife was Elizabeth Keith, the eldest daughter of Robert Lord Keith, and she had born Huntley nine sons and three daughters (! -- Hamilton, p. 166). From that standpoint, it's a better fit for Huntly's son, another George Gordon; by his wife Anne Hamilton this fifth earl of Huntly had three sons and a daughter (Hamilton, p. 168). He too died peacefully, in this case, in 1576.
The story is like this song in that Huntly's lady tried to intercede for him -- but unlike, in that Huntly was not in custody when she interceded. Huntly could have fled to the continent, e.g. -- he just didn't want to give up his position. So I really don't think this is the inspiration of, dare I say it, the "Standard 'Geordie'"?
To the above list of possibilities, I'm going to add one other possibility, though it is later than Lloyd's broadside. But it might have caused the song to be reshaped. According to Kybett, pp. 16-17, after the 1715 Jacobite rebellion, several peers (including, e.g., Lord Derwentwater) were condemned to death. One of them was William Maxwell of Nithsdale. His wife Winifred begged before George I for his life. Her request was refused, but she was granted a last visit -- and managed to help him escape.
I must admit to sometimes wondering if this is really a single ballad. In many texts, of course, Geordie is charged with murder. But in a few texts, such as Child's "H" and Ord's version "Gight's Ladye," the charge is poaching, and the whole feeling of the song (as well as the lyrics) is different. Coffin's notes in Flanders-AncientBalladsTraditionallySungInNewEngland3 observes that there are two endings, one with Geordie ransomed, one with him executed, and that these seem to form distinct family groups. I wouldn't be surprised if two separate songs were mixed.
On this point, see now Ben Schwartz's note below and, especially, his analysis filed under "George of Oxford." - RBW
Kidson-TraditionalTunes prints eleven of the Johnson Scot's Museum fourteen verse text (Child 209A). I believe only the Scottish ballad should be classified as Child 209 and that all others, English and North American, and Bodleian broadsides, are versions of "George of Oxford." I think the argument is futile because "George of Oxford" and its descendants are widely -- though not universally -- accepted as Child 209. See the discussion at "George of Oxford." - BS
BibliographyLast updated in version 6.8
File: C209

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