Keach i the Creel, The [Child 281]

DESCRIPTION: A clerk and a girl wish to keep company, but she cannot escape her parents' home. He plans to to meet her by going down the chimney in a creel The suspicious mother enters the room and is pulled up in the creel, then dropped by the startled rope-puller
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1827 (Kinloch)
KEYWORDS: courting father mother elopement nightvisit humorous
FOUND IN: Britain(England(North),Scotland(Aber,Bord)) Ireland US(MA,NE) Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (19 citations):
Child 281, "The Keach i the Creel" (4 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #12}
Bronson 281, "The Keach i the Creel" (38 versions)
Bronson-SingingTraditionOfChildsPopularBallads 281, "The Keach in the Creel" (5 versions: #1, #4, #14, #33, #35)
Dixon-AncientPoemsBalladsSongsOfThePeasantryOfEngland, Ballad #13, pp. 112-116,243, "The Keach I the Creel" (1 text)
Bell-Combined-EarlyBallads-CustomsBalladsSongsPeasantryEngland, pp. 295-297, "The Keach i' the Creel" (1 text)
Greig/Duncan2 317, "The Wee Toon Clerk" (20 texts, 15 tunes) {C=Bronson's #7, E=#38, F=#11, G=#10, H=#9, I=#18, J=#32, M=#2, N=#3, O=#31, P=#33}
Lyle-Andrew-CrawfurdsCollectionVolume1 25, "The Auld Wife and the Peat Creel" (1 text, 1 tune)
Barry/Eckstorm/Smyth-BritishBalladsFromMaine pp. 336-339, "The Keach i' the Creel" (1 text plus a fragment, 2 tunes) {Bronson's #5, #6}
Flanders-AncientBalladsTraditionallySungInNewEngland4, pp. 136-138, "The Keach i' the Creel" (1 fragment, 1 tune)
Ford-VagabondSongsAndBalladsOfScotland, pp. 277-280, "The Wee Toun Clerk" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #13}
Stokoe/Reay-SongsAndBalladsOfNorthernEngland, pp. 22-23, "The Keach i' the Creel" (1 text, 1 tune) {cf. Bronson's #4}
Cazden/Haufrecht/Studer-FolkSongsOfTheCatskills 133, "The Little Scotch Girl" (1 text, 1 tune)
Henry/Huntingdon/Herrmann-SamHenrysSongsOfThePeople H201, pp. 265-266, "The Ride in the Creel" (1 text, 1 tune)
Graham-Joe-Holmes-SongsMusicTraditionsOfAnUlsterman 64, "The Ride in the Creel" (1 text, 1 tune)
Tunney-StoneFiddle, pp. 92-93, "The Cetch in the Creel" (1 text)
Kinloch-TheBalladBook XVII, pp. 61-63, "The Covering Blue" (1 text)
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishBallads, pp. 35-36, "Keach I' the Creel" (1 text)
MacColl-PersonalChoice, ππ. 19-20, "The keach in the creel" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #1, although Bronson and MacColl list different sources}
DT 281, KEACHCRL*
Roud #120
RECORDINGS:
Michael Gallagher, "The Keach in the Creel" (on FSB5, FSBBAL2) {Bronson's #36, with the title "Hurroo-Ri-Ah"}
Jamsie McCarthy, "Coochie Coochie Coo Go Way" (on Voice15)
Larry Mulligan, "The Creel" (on IREarlyBallads)
SAME TUNE:
Moody to the Rescue (File: FowM005)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Cunning Clerk
The Wife and the Creel
The Rock in the Same Auld Creel
NOTES [330 words]: Kinloch's "The Covering Blue" omit the ride in the creel, but is obviously the same song (and Child included it as his "D" text). Thus, though most of the humor of the piece comes when the clerk hauls the auld woman up the chimney, the key point is the nightvisiting theme. - RBW
Whitelaw-BookOfScottishBallads is Child's source for text 281A. - BS
Although I'm sure this started as fiction, there is a surprisingly similar historical example, only with the woman doing most of the work. I learned of this from Davies: J. D. Davies, Blood of Kings: The Stuarts, the Ruthvens, and the 'Gowrie Conspiracy', Ian Allen, 2010, pp. 127-128. Dorothea Ruthven, the youngest daughter of the first Earl of Gowrie (for whose misadventures see "Tibbie Fowler (I)") was being courted by a man of much lower status, John Wemyss of Pittencrieff. Somehow he was allowed to visit her and stay the night at Ruthven. "THe peculiar layout of the castle should have ensured propriety: Wemyss was to lodge in one tower and Dorothea in the other, and at that time, there was no connection between the two buildings. Even so, the resourceful Dorothea managed to cross to the other tower before the doors were closed for the might, and made for Wemyss's room. Someone in the family, most likely a jealous sister, told the countess, who hobbled up the one stairway, confident she was blocking her daughter's only escape. Young Dorothea had other ideas. She ran up the stairs instead, got on the roof, and leapt the nine-foot gap to the battlements of the other tower, 60 feet above the ground. She dashed down to her own room, got into bet, and when her mother's frantic search finally led her back there, she found Dorothea seemingly asleep and had to apologize for unjustly suspecting her of illicit fornication. The apology was short-lived, for the next night Dorothea eloped and married Wemyss. To this day, the space between the two towers of Huntingtower Castle is known as 'the maiden's leap.'' - RBW
Last updated in version 6.1
File: C281

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