False Lanky Collected by Bob Copper in about 1954 from George Fosbury of Axford, Hampshire: see Chapter Fourteen, pp. 114-122, of Songs and Southern Breezes for the details; and the appendix for these words.
This is Child 93: Lamkin; also known among other things as Long Lankin.
I'm sure Bob Copper won't mind if I include this longish section from Songs and Southern Breezes, pp. 117-120,s in which he describes collecting not only this song but also "False Lincoln". Read on and be prepared to be as amazed as Bob was!Of all George Fosbury's songs the last one he sang for me was the most compelling. He called it 'False Lanky'. There are numerous references to this song in the libraries usually under the title 'Lamkin', but up to that time no 'living' version had been found. It is considered to be a 'corrupt and relatively late version' of a very much older ballad included in Professor F. J. Child's collection of ballads published during the 1880s and 1890s. Its spine-chilling and gory narrative haunted my waking thoughts for days. I could not rid my mind of the terrifying thought of the threatened Lady offering her daughter to her attacker by way of ransom and being rejected with the following macabre and cynical reply,Go and fetch your darter Betsy,This type of ballad is usually based on fact and there is no reason to think that 'False Lanky' is any exception. A 'corrupt and relatively late version' it might have been but here, in George Fosbury's kitchen, I had stumbled across a living link with a dastardly murder of centuries before, which in itself must be a measure of the horror and revulsion felt at the time it was committed.
She may do you some good
She will 'old the silver basin
For to ketch 'er mother's blood ...On my next visit to London for a tape-editing session with Miss Marie Slocombe, who was in charge of the B.B.C. Library Archives and who applied her vast knowledge of English traditional music to the task of sorting the wheat from the chaff, I entered her office with elation and confidence and laid the tape of 'False Lanky' down with all the awe and reverence that might have been afforded the Dead Sea Scrolls.
* * * About ten days later and exactly three miles away I was listening to Ben Butcher sing some of the songs he had learnt as a boy from his father, George Butcher, in Storrington, Sussex. Ben was a gamekeeper and lived at Popham. He had served twenty-five years in the Royal Marines and the tang of the sea still savoured his talk.
'Walcum to Popham Harbour,' he said, leaning on the rail that surrounded a weed-fringed pond in front of a row of cottages in one of which he lived. I told him that someone had recommended him to me as a traditional singer and I could see at once that to be regarded as such pleased him no end. We stood talking while a solitary moorhen swam busily around the margins of a small island in the middle of the pond, popping in and out of the reeds like a shopper in the High Street. Ben reminisced on the old days when people had to make their own amusement in the home or at the pub at week-ends and I knocked on the door of his memory with a verse of 'We're all Jolly Fellows that follow the Plough'. The door was opened and I was welcomed in by Ben as he joined in the chorus. In the southern counties I think this is the most ubiquitous song of all. Sung to the tune of 'Villikins and Dinah', it crops up almost everywhere. From then on we got on famously.
We went into his cottage and after a while he said, 'I'll sing you "Cruel Lincoln". That's an' old en an' no mistake.'
He launched into the song with great enthusiasm and energy and even before he had finished the first verse I recognized the haunting tune and unforgettable theme of 'False Lanky'. There were certain differences it is true, both in tune and words, apart from the change in name of the subject, but being still under the spell of my good fortune in discovering George Fosbury, the possibility that the two versions were unconnected never occurred to me. I listened politely until the song was over. But my patience was not put to too great a test for Ben's excellent voice and his free, unbridled style of singing added a great deal of colour to the song.
'Fancy you knowing old George Fosbury's song,' I said.
'George who ?' he hollered, his eyes blazing. He had neither met nor heard of George although a mere three miles had separated them for the last twenty years. 'All the songs I'm singing is my grandfather's songs,' he continued with emphasis. 'My father died at eighty-one, mind you, and they was handed down from my grandfather to my father an' I got 'em now same as was given to me and I can assure you they are old songs.'
Credibility was strained to breaking-point. But Ben's open-hearted, forthright manner dispelled any cloud of doubt that might have been lurking in the back of my mind. I was stunned. It seemed that lightning had struck in the same place twice! Two living versions of a rare ballad, only marginally at variance, had been found within a stone's throw of each other though springing from two entirely different and widely separated sources. It was unbelievable. But it was true and the two recordings exist side by side in the B.B.C. Archives to prove it.
Says the Lord to the Lady, I am now just going out,
So beware of False Lanky in the dead hour of night.What care I for Lanky or any of his kin,
When the doors are all bolted and the winders all pinned?As soon as the Lord had got out of sight,
Then down comes False Lanky in the dead hour of night.He pinched that pretty baby which caused it to cry,
While the nurse sat a-singing hush-a-lully-bye-bye.I cannot keep it quiet with milk nor with pap,
Come down, you fair Lady, and take it in your lap.Down came the fair Lady not thinking any harm,
And there stood False Lanky for to catch her in his arms.False Lanky, False Lanky, spare me life for one treat,
You shall have as many smart soldiers as there's stones in the street.False Lanky, False Lanky, spare me life for one hour,
You shall have my daughter Betsy she's as fine as a flower.Go and fetch your daughter Betsy, she may do you some good,
She will hold the silver basin for to catch her mother's blood.There was blood in the kitchen, there was blood in the hall,
There was blood in the parlour where the Lady did fall.Oh, the nurse shall be hanged on the gallows so high,
False Lanky shall be burned in the furnace close by.False Lanky shall be burned in the furnace close by.
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