Cecil Sharp's Note 02 (1916)

No. 2. Bruton Town

THE tune, which is a very striking one, is in the Dorian mode. The singer varied the last phrase of the melody in four different ways (see English Folk Song: Some Conclusions, p. 23). For two other versions of this ballad, “Lord Burlington’s Sister” and “In Strawberry Town,” see the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume ii, p. 42; volume v, pp. 123–127), where the ballad has received a very searching analysis at the hands of Miss Lucy Broadwood. It will be seen that the story is the same as that of Boccaccio’s “Isabella and the Pot of Basil” in the Decameron, and of Keats’s poem of the same name. It is true that “Bruton Town” breaks off at the wiping of the dead lover’s eyes, and omits the gruesome incident of the planting of the head in the flowerpot; yet up to that point the stories are nearly identical. The song was popular with the minstrels of the Middle Ages, and was made use of by Hans Sachs, who derived his version from “Cento Novelli,” a translation of the Decameron by Steinhöwel (1482). Hans Sachs names his heroine Lisabetha and retains the Italian tradition that Messina was the town where the rich merchant and his family dwelt. It is interesting to observe that this ballad is one of the very few that succeeded in eluding the notice of Professor Child.

The words of both the versions that I have collected were very corrupt, so that the lines given in the text have received some editing. For the original sets the student is referred to the Journal of the Folk-Song Society, quoted above.