Katharine Jaffray [Child 221]

DESCRIPTION: Squire courts farmer's daughter; father forbids her to see him. She is to be wed to another. He invades the wedding. The bride's brother challenges him; he says he comes in friendship and asks to kiss the bride. He takes her away from the hall
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1802
KEYWORDS: wedding nobility trick elopement disguise clothes
FOUND IN: Britain(England,Scotland(Aber,Bord)) Canada(Mar,Newf) Ireland US(SE,So)
REFERENCES (26 citations):
Child 221, "Katharine Jaffray" (12 texts)
Bronson 221, "Katharine Jaffray" (11 versions)
Bronson-SingingTraditionOfChildsPopularBallads 221, "Katharine Jaffray" (5 versions: #1, #5, #6, #10, #11)
Chambers-ScottishBallads, pp. 299-305, "Katherine Janfarie" (1 text)
Buchan/Moreira-TheGlenbuchatBallads, pp. 31-35, "Lochinvar"; pp. 97-100, "Kathrine Jaffrey" (2 texts, in the first of which -- despite the title -- the hero is called Lochnavar)
Greig-FolkSongInBuchan-FolkSongOfTheNorthEast #104, pp. 1-2, "Katherine Jaffray"; #156, pp. 1-2, "Katherine Jaffray"; #105, p. 3, "Katherine Jaffray" (1 text plus 3 fragments)
Greig/Duncan5 1024, "Katherine Jaffray" (4 texts plus 2 fragments on pp. 622-623, 1 tune)
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1 66, "Young Lochinvar's Courtship" (1 text)
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume2 108, "The Edinburgh Lord and the Country Maid" (1 text)
Barry/Eckstorm/Smyth-BritishBalladsFromMaine pp. 400-406, "The Squire of Edinburgh Town" (2 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #8}
Flanders-AncientBalladsTraditionallySungInNewEngland3, pp. 261-268, "The Squire of Eninboroughtown" (3 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #9}
Flanders/Ballard/Brown/Barry-NewGreenMountainSongster, pp. 141-144, "Katharine Jaffray" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #9}
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore2 39, "Katharine Jaffray" (1 text)
Moore/Moore-BalladsAndFolkSongsOfTheSouthwest 44, "Kath'rine Jaffray" (1 text, 1 tune)
Creighton/Senior-TraditionalSongsOfNovaScotia, pp. 79-83, "Katharine Jaffray" (2 texts plus 1 fragment, 1 tune) {Bronson's #4}
Creighton-SongsAndBalladsFromNovaScotia 11, "Katharine Jaffray" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #3}
Peacock, pp. 200-201, "Hembrick Town" (1 text, 1 tune)
Karpeles-FolkSongsFromNewfoundland 20, "The Green Wedding" (1 text, 1 tune)
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 578-579, "Katherine Jaffray" (1 text)
Friedman-Viking/PenguinBookOfFolkBallads, p. 271, "Katharine Jaffray" (2 texts)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 88, "Katharine Johnstone" (1 text)
Sharp-OneHundredEnglishFolksongs 16, "The Green Wedding" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #6}
Gummere-OldEnglishBallads, pp. 263-264+357-358, "Katharine Jaffray" (1 text)
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishBallads, pp. 63-64, "Katherine Janfarie"; pp. 64-65, "Catharine Johnstone" (2 texts)
DT 221, LOCHNGAR* LOCHNGR2* (the latter listed in some versions as Child 211)
ADDITIONAL: William & Susan Platt, _Folktales of the Scottish Border_, published 1919 as _Stories of the Scottish Border_, republished by Senate Press, 1999, pp. 102-107, "Katharine Janfarie," "Lochinvar" (1 text plus the Walter Scott poem)
ST C221 (Full)
Roud #93
RECORDINGS:
Clarence Bennett, "Hembrick Town" (on PeacockCDROM)
Nora Cleary, "The Green Wedding" (on Voice06)
Cecilia Costello, "The Green Wedding (Catharine Jaffray)" (on FSBBAL2)
Thomas Moran, "The Green Wedding (Catharine Jaffray)" (on FSBBAL2) {Bronson's #11}
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Harding B 11(2364), "The Squire of Edinburgh!," H. Such (London), 1849-1862; also 2806 c.11(72), "The Squire of Edinburgh!"; 2806 c.15(151), 2806 b.9(233), "The Squire of Edinburgh Town"
SAME TUNE:
The Bold Engineer ("O bully George B. has come from the west" [referring to George B. McClellan, and set to the tune of "Young Lockinvar" (sic.)]) (Wolf-AmericanSongSheets, p. 187)
Clearing the Kitchen and White House ("Old Tippecanoe has come out of the West") (Harrison campaign song, to the tune of "Young Lochinvar") (A. B. Norton, _Songs of the People in the Log Cabin Days of Old Tippecanoe_, A. B. Norton & Co., 1888 (available on Google Books), p. 61)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Lochingar
Lochnagar
Katherine Jeffreys
NOTES [324 words]: This is the inspiration for Walter Scott's poem "Young Lochinvar." - PJS, RBW
For the latter poem widely-reprinted poem (24 citations in Granger's Index to Poetry -- though most of the anthologies are the type which never contain anything else with folk roots), see e.g. Iona & Peter Opie, The Oxford Book of Narrative Verse, pp. 160-161. The poem, according to the Opies, was rewritten to fit into the book Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field, where he needed the hero to carry his bride north.
MidwestFolklore, Tristram P. Coffin, "The Folk Ballad and the Literary Ballad: An Essay in Classification," Volume 9, Number 1 (Spring 1959) pp. 14-15, briefly discusses how Scott adapted the traditional ballad to produce "Lochinvar," making the point that Scott has broken from standard ballad meter, using a "non-balladic galloping meter and chivalric trappings." This does make for a dramatic presentation, but it makes it probably less suitable for singing.
Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth place "The Squire of Edinburgh Town" among the secondary ballads -- those derived from but not identical to the Child Ballads. Child himself seems to have thought that "Squire" was a rewrite of "Katherine Jaffray." But Bronson (and Roud) lump them, and given the amount of common material and the lack of individual identity in "Squire," it seems to me proper to do the same. - RBW
Greig/Duncan5 quoting Duncan: "Child printed twelve versions of this; yet our two chief ones have no close correspondence with any of them. [B] is on the whole nearest to Buchan's version; yet not only does it omit a good many of his stanzas and put things differently, but it includes details that he does not have.... [A], though briefer, is quite an independent form, complete in itself. Though it frequently recalls other versions, it does not coincide throughout, even in a general way, with any one, many of its points being quite distinct, even in whole stanzas...." - BS
Last updated in version 4.4
File: C221

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