Lady Diamond [Child 269]

DESCRIPTION: The king's daughter Lady (Daisy) is with child by a kitchen boy. The king has the boy killed and a token (his heart) sent to Lady Daisy. She dies for love (prompting the king's deep regret)
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1823 (Sharpe)
KEYWORDS: royalty execution pregnancy death bastard
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Aber))
REFERENCES (10 citations):
Child 269, "Lady Diamond" (5 texts)
Bronson 269, "Lady Diamond" (4 versions)
Bronson-SingingTraditionOfChildsPopularBallads 269, "Lady Diamond" (3 versions: #2, #3, #4)
Dixon-ScottishTraditionalVersionsOfAncientBallads XIV, pp. 71-72, "Ladye Diamond" (1 text)
Buchan/Moreira-TheGlenbuchatBallads, pp. 35-36, "Lady Dysmond" (1 text)
Greig-FolkSongInBuchan-FolkSongOfTheNorthEast #162, p. 3, "Lady Dysie" (1 text fragment)
Greig/Duncan6 1224, "Lady Dysie" (2 texts, 2 tunes)
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 635-636, "Lady Diamond" (1 text, correctly titled but erroneously numbered as Child 264)
Grigson-PenguinBookOfBallads 37, "Lady Diamond" (1 text)
DT 269, LADYDIAM* LADYDIA2
Roud #112
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Willie o Winsbury" [Child 100] (plot)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
Lady Daisy
Eliza's Bowers
NOTES [725 words]: [A. L. Lloyd writes,] "Boccaccio re-tells [this story] in his tale of Ghismonda and Guiscardo, and in later years it was made into a play in England and elsewhere. Versified into a ballad, it was widely known throughout Western Europe and Scandinavia." - PJS
The link to Boccaccio was noted long before Lloyd; Child mentions it and many non-English analogies, and the link to the Decameron goes back at least to Dixon.
The tale is the first story of the fourth day, told by Fiammetta. In outline, the Decameron account is precisely "Lady Diamond," but there are also substantial differences. In "Lady Diamond," the girl is pregnant and the father forces the truth out of her; in Boccaccio, she is already a widow and her father discovers the truth accidentally; in "Lady Diamond," she dies for love, whereas in the Decameron, she takes poison, and the Italian tale ends with the king's repentance, something rare in the ballad.
With all that said, it's hard to doubt that the two spring from the same sources -- the image of the man's heart in a cup is hard to forget! Indeed, it seems likely that Boccaccio started the whole string of incident.
However, Child reports, ""The ballad is one of a large number of repetitions of Boccaccio's tale of Guisardo and Ghismonda, Decamerone, VI, 1. This tale was translated in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, 1566... and became the foundation of various English poems and plays." The implicit claim that Painter is the source of the English versions is in error; it was not the earliest English text by a third of a century.In 1532, Wynkyn de Worde had published "Guystarde and Sygysmonde" (Erler, p. 35). The blurb to this read:
Here foloweth the amerous hystory of Gustarde and Sygysmonde
and of theyr dolorous deth by her father
newly trāslated out of laten in to englysshe by Wyllȳ Walter seruant to syr Henry Marney knyght chanuceler of (the) duchy of Lancastre
The ending tells us
Thus endeth the amorous hystory of Guystarde and Sygysmonde. Imprinted at London in Fletestrete [Fleet Street] at the sygne of the Sonne [Sign of the Sun] by Wynkyn de Worde. In the yere of our lorde .M.CCCCC.xxxij
(Erler, p. 149).
Very little is known of William Walter, according to Erler, p. 154, but he is believed to have translated the text not from Boccaccio but from the Italian version by Leonardo Bruni. Walter very likely worked a decade or more before his piece was published, since Henry Marney died in 1523.
What is certain is that Walter did not edit the piece for the press; that task was undertaken by Robert Copland, a printer who often worked with, and had probably been apprenticed to, de Worde. Copland added a 28-line prologue, a 21-line introduction, and 98 lines of miscellaneous interruptions. (Reprinted on pp. 149-154 of Erler, but trust me, they have all the poetic merit of those "young girls, take warning" interjections in American old-time recordings -- i. e. less than none.) Francis, pp. 15-16, notes many of these editions: "In presenting this story, Copland gets so carried away that he interrupts it at several points to interpolate verses of his own. He does not neglect the opportunity either for some moralising verses by way of introduction," comparing "folysshe Guystarde" and "unwyse Sysysmonde" to Pyramus and "young wanton Thysbe." "He then successively castigates Fortune, for allowing Tancred himself to be the discoverer of 'theyr secret besynesse', pays tribute to the 'consauncy in loue of Sygysmonde', and finally berates Tancred 'in executying tyranny'."
So much for how authors of the time felt about the story.
What is certain, and needs no Boccaccio to tell it, is that a man who got a nobleman's daughter pregnant could expect no mercy. These daughters were intended to cement marriage alliances, and anyone who got them pregnant reduced their value in the marriage market. The punishments could be savage. For instance, Prestwich, p. 109, notes that the French King Philip IV flayed alive the knights who had had affairs with his daughters. By that standard, the king in this song was arguably merciful.
The delivery of a murdered man's heart is also well-attested. Doherty, p. 187, quotes a letter stating that, after the murder of Edward II, his heart (and head) were delivered to his wife Isabella -- although, in this case, she wanted them as proof of his death. - RBW
BibliographyLast updated in version 5.1
File: C269

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