minstrel: Child ballad # 14, question of date

[Lisa and Ken Theriot]

Odde wrote:

[I'm writing because I'm trying to find out the date of Child Ballad #
14, called either Baby Lon, Babylon, Bonnie Banks of the Virgie-O, or
Three Sisters.  I looked in Compleat Anachronist # 11 (Traditional
Ballads), and it lists it as 1598 from a manuscript (without saying
which one).  Everywhere else I look says that it's from between about
1850-1910.]

Hey, Odde!

You actually asked several different questions there.  "How old is the
oldest extant version of Child X" and How old is this specific version
of Child X" are two different things.

CA#11 is the one TSivia wrote, so writing Dani won't help you decipher
the comment you saw.  If I can't figure it out, I'll ask TSivia.  In
general, the dates TSivia cites are either mentions of the ballad by
title or description, or underlying story material.  For example, for
Child #31, "The Marriage of Sir Gawain", Child gives only one version, a
fragment from a manuscript copied around 1650 and published in 1794; but
the story appears as the Wife of Bath's Tale in Chaucer circa 1400, so I
think TSivia has the early date.

Back to Babylon... Child A version dates to 1827, Child B version dates
to 1776.  Child cites a published variant in Danish to about the same
(1776) and a variant in Swedish "as old as the last half of the 17th
century".  The "Bonnie Banks of the Virgie-O" version is Canadian and
dates from the 20th century; the British versions that name a river have
it as "The Bonnie Banks O Fordie" (near Dunkeld, in Scotland).  Of
course the oldest Swedish version places it near Linko"ping (ballads are
like urban legends, they're always true, but they happened the next town
over where my brother's cousin-by-marriage runs his cows...).  There are
two melodies that were published (by Kinloch and Motherwell) in 1827;
they are the oldest given by Bronson (the font of all ballad melodies).

I'll let you know what TSivia says.


Adelaide