"Young Beichan", also known as "Lord Bateman", "Lord Bakeman", "Lord Baker", "Young Bicham" and "Young Bekie", is a traditional folk ballad categorised as Child ballad53 and Roud40.[1] The earliest versions date from the late 18th century, but it is probably older, with clear parallels in ballads and folktales across Europe. The song was popular as a broadside ballad in the nineteenth century, and survived well into the twentieth century in the oral tradition in rural areas of most English speaking parts of the world, particularly in England, Scotland and Appalachia.
Synopsis
Illustration by Arthur Rackham: Burd Isbel woken by Belly Blin, with the warning that Young Beckie is about to marry.
Beichan, who is often born in London, travels to far lands. He is taken prisoner, with different captors appearing in different variations, usually being a Moor or a Turk, though sometimes the king of France, before falling in love with his captor’s daughter. Lamenting his fate, Beichan promises to be a son to any married woman who will rescue him, or a husband to an unmarried one. She rescues him, and he leaves, promising to marry her.
He does not return. She sets out after him—in some variants, because warned by a household spirit, Belly Blin, that he is about to marry—and arrives as he is marrying another. In some variants, he is constrained to marry; often he is fickle. His porter tells him of a woman at his gate, and he instantly realizes it is the woman who rescued him. He sends his new bride home and marries her.
History
Elinborg waiting for Paetur, in a Faroese variant.
Parallels
This ballad is also known in Norse, Spanish, and Italian variants.[2] In a Scandinavian variant, "Harra Pætur og Elinborg" (CCF 158, TSB D 72), the hero set out on a pilgrimage, after asking the heroine, his betrothed, how long she would wait for him; she says, eight years. After the eight years, she sets out and the rest of the ballad is the same, except that Paetur has a reason for his fickleness: he was magically made to forget.[3]
Another British-derived folk song, "The Turkish Lady" (Roud 8124), appears to be somewhat related; it didn't diverge recently, being noted as early as 1768.[6]
Gilbert Beckett
According to the folklorist Frank Kidson, it has been "asserted, with every appearance of truth" that the protagonist is in fact Gilbert Becket, the father of Saint Thomas Becket, who was supposedly captured in the Crusades as in the ballad, released, and followed to London by a lady he met there. Kidson claimed that "Bateman", "Baker" and "Beichie" were all corruptions of "Beckett".[7]Francis James Child said "That our ballad has been affected by the legend of Gilbert Beket is altogether likely”,[8] suggesting that the two similar stories may have influenced each other.
Distribution
The ballad was very popular in print in the 1800s, with most broadsides descending from one printed in England around 1815, beginning "Lord Bateman was a noble lord..." (see texts below).[6] Most of the versions that ended up in America were derived from popular broadside versions, however some versions, such as one known to the Hicks-Harmon family of Watuaga County, North Carolina, seemed to have been passed on from an older British oral tradition.[6]
The influential Appalachian folk singer Jean Ritchie had her family version of the ballad recorded several times, including on her album Ballads from her Appalachian Family Tradition (1961).[21][22] Her fellow Appalachian Nimrod Workman sang his own traditional version on different occasions,[23] including on a YouTube video uploaded by the official Alan Lomax archive channel.[24] Other noted Appalachian musicians, such as Aunt Molly Jackson (1935),[25] Eliza Pace (1937),[26]Virgil Sturgill (1958)[27] and Buna Hicks (1961)[28] had traditional versions recorded.
The first four verses of the oldest version of the ballad, 'Young Bicham', Child's Version A, from 1783: (The second verse describes Bicham's captor boring a hole through his shoulder to harness him for use as a draft animal)[6]
In 1839, the illustrator George Cruikshank published an illustrated book called "The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman", which tells the story of the ballad.[31] This version was close to the popular broadside ballads of the nineteenth century and most of the versions which survived in the oral tradition until the twentieth century. The first four verses of this version (below) can be compared to the older "Young Bicham" version (above).
