Cecil Sharp's Note 70 (1916)
No. 70. Ruggleton’s Daughter of Iero
This song, of which I have only collected one variant, is a version of a very ancient ballad, the history of which may be traced in Child’s English and Scottish Ballads (No. 227), and in Miss Gilchrist’s note to “The Wee Cooper of Fife,” in the Journal of the Folk-Song Society (volume ii, pp. 223, 224). In some versions the husband is deterred from beating his wife through fear of her “gentle kin.” To evade this difficulty he kills one of his own wethers, strips off its skin, and lays it on her back, saying:
I dare na thump you, for your proud kin,
But well sall I lay to my ain wether’s skin.
(See “Sweet Robin,” in Jamieson’s Popular Ballads, volume i, p. 319.)
This motive is absent from the present version, of which it may or may not once have formed part. For it is possible to argue that the “wether’s skin” motive is an addition, which became attached to an older and simpler form of the ballad. The facts, as they stand, admit of either interpretation.
There is yet a third variation of the story in “Robin-a-thrush (see English County Songs, The Besom Maker, English Folk Songs for Schools, etc.), in which the story is still further curtailed by the omission of the wife-beating episode. In this latter form, it becomes a nursery nonsense-song, which relates in humorous fashion the ridiculous muddles made by a slovenly and incompetent wife. Its connection with “Ruggleton” or “Sweet Robin” is to be inferred from the title and refrain, “Robin-a-thrush,” which as Miss Gilchrist has pointed out, is probably a corruption of “Robin he thrashes her.”
I have collected another song which has some affinity with “Ruggleton.” Here the husband married his wife on Monday; cut “a twig of holly so green” on Tuesday; “hung it out to dry” on Wednesday; on Thursday he “beat her all over the shoulders and head, till he had a-broke his holly green twig;” on Friday she “opened her mouth and began to roar;” and, finally,
On Saturday morning I breakfast without
A scolding wife or a brawling bout.
Now I can enjoy my bottle and friend;
I think I have made a rare week’s end.
The same motive is to be found in “The Husband’s Complaint,” printed in Herd’s Manuscripts, edited by Dr. Hans Hecht (p. 106).
The words given in the text are almost exactly as they were sung to me. I have, however, transposed the order of the words “brew” and “bake” in the fourth and fifth verses, in order to restore some semblance of a rhyme. Clearly there was some corruption; but whether my emendation is the correct one or not, it is difficult to say. There is a fragment, quoted by Jamieson, in which the verse in question is rendered:
She wadna bake, she wadna brew,
(Hollin, green hollin),
For spoiling o’ her comely hue,
(Bend your bow, Robin).
There is, too, a version in The Journal of American Folk-Lore (volume vii, p. 253), quoted by Child, which is closely allied to the song in the text. In this variant, the following stanza occurs:
Jenny could n’t wash and Jenny could n’t bake.
Gently Jenny cried rosemaree.
For fear of dirting her white apurn tape.
As the dew flies over the mulberry tree.