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'"The Cruel Mother"' (Child 20, Roud 9) is a murder ballad.^[1]

Contents

Synopsis

Variants

See also

References

External links

Synopsis

A woman gives birth to one or two illegitimate children (usually sons) in the woods, kills them, and buries them. She, going home, sees a child, or children, playing, and says that if they were hers, she would dress them in various fine garments and otherwise take care of them. The children tell her that when they were hers, she did not dress them so but murdered them. Frequently they say she will be damned for it.
Some variant open with the account that she has fallen in love with her father's clerk.

Variants

This ballad exists in a number of variants; one contains a number of verses that appear to stem from "The Maid and the Palmer".^[2] A closely related German ballad exists in many variants: a child comes to a woman's wedding to announce himself her child and that she had murdered three children, the woman says the Devil can carry her off if it is true, and the Devil appears to do so.^[3]

See also

★ Joan - a Joan Baez album that includes "The Greenwood Side", a variant of "The Cruel Mother"

References

1. Francis James Child, ''English and Scottish Popular Ballads'', "The Cruel Mother"
2. Francis James Child, ''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads'', v 1, p 218, Dover Publications, New York 1965
3. Francis James Child, ''The English and Scottish Popular Ballads'', v 1, p 219, Dover Publications, New York 1965

External links

★ ''The Cruel Mother''

★ ''The Cruel Mother'' with historical commentary

★ ''Fine Flowers in the Valley'' variant

★ An MP3 recording of The Cruel Mother by Kentucky ballad singer Daniel Dutton