Ed de Moel

Child Ballads - Narrative

The Three Ravens

    1. Melismata. Musicall Phansies. Fitting the Court, Cittie, and Countrey Humours. London, 1611, No 20.[foot-note] [T. Ravenscroft.]
    2. 'The Three Ravens,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xviii, No XII.
    Version A

a was printed from Melismata, by Ritson, in his Ancient Songs, 1790, p. 155. Mr. Chappell remarked, about 1855, Popular Music of the Olden Time, I, 59, that this ballad was still so popular in some parts of the country that he had "been favored with a variety of copies of it, written down from memory, and all differing in some respects, both as to words and tune, but with sufficient resemblance to prove a similar origin." Mother ell, Minstrelsy, Introduction, p. lxxvii, note 49, says he had met with several copies almost the same as a. b is the first stanza of one of these (traditional) versions, "very popular in Scotland."

The following verses, first printed in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and known in several versions in Scotland, are treated by Motherwell and others as a traditionary form of 'The Three Ravens.' They are, however, as Scott says, "rather a counterpart than a copy of the other," and sound something like a cynical variation of the tender little English ballad. Dr. Rimbault (Notes and Queries, Ser. v, in, 518) speaks of unprinted copies taken down by Mr. Blaikie and by Mr. Thomas Lyle of Airth.

The Twa Corbies

  1. Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, in, 239, ed. 1803, communicated by C.K. Sharpe, as written down from tradition by a lady.
  2. Albyn's Anthology, II, 27, 1818, "from the singing of Mr. Thomas Shortreed, of Jedburgh, as sung and recited by his mother."
  3. Chambers's Scottish Ballads, p. 283, partly from recitation and partly from the Border Minstrelsy,
  4. Fraser-Tytler Manuscript, p. 70.
1  As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies making a mane;
The tane unto the t'other say,
'Where sail we gang and dine to-day?'
2  'In behint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.
3  'His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady 's ta'en another mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.
4  'Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I '11 pike out his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
We'll theek our nest when it grows bare.
5  'Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sail ken where he is gane;
Oer his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sail blaw for evermair.'

'The Three Ravens' is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 145, No 23; by Henrietta Schubart, p. 155; Gerhard, p. 95; Rosa Warrens, Schottische V. 1. der Vorzeit, p. 198; Wolff, Halle der Völker, I, 12, Hausschatz, p. 205.

'The Twa Corbies ' (Scott), by Grundtvig, p. 143, No 22; Arndt, p. 224; Gerhard, p. 94; Schubart, p. 157; Knortz, L. u. R. Alt-Englands, p. 194; Rosa Warrens, p. 89. The three first stanzas, a little freely rendered into four, pass for Pushkin's: Works, 1855, II, 462, xxiv.

This page most recently updated on 15-Oct-2011, 09:54:14.
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