One of the side benefits of working on the SurLaLune fairy tale anthologies is that I am becoming more familiar with various Child Ballads. While I enjoy ballads, they hadn't inspired much research on my part until the last few years. (There just isn't the time to do everything that interests me!)
I previously posted about Clerk Colvill, Child Ballad 42, which I enjoyed as I edited Mermaid and Other Water Spirit Tales From Around the World
. The other ballad I included in the collected is Child 289 and I personally prefer it over Clerk Colvill. Most commonly known as The Mermaid, seven versions from Child appear in my book under various titles, including Greenland, The Seaman's Distress, and The Stormy Winds Did Blow. As I read it, Iwanted to listen to it, so I hunted some versions down on the internet. Here's the text to Child 289B, which more closely resembles many of the modern recorded versions. Actually, most of them tend to be a hybrid of 289A, 289B and 289C. The ballad draws from the superstition that when sailors spy a mermaid, a shipwreck is imminent.
ONE Friday morn when we set sail,
Not very far from land,
We there did espy a fair pretty maid
With a comb and a glass in her hand, her hand, her hand,
With a comb and a glass in her hand.
While the raging seas did roar,
And the stormy winds did blow,
While we jolly sailor-boys were up into the top,
And the land-lubbers lying down below, below, below,
And the land-lubbers lying down below.
Then up starts the captain of our gallant ship,
And a brave young man was he:
“I’ve a wife and a child in fair Bristol town,
But a widow I fear she will be.”
For the raging seas, etc.
Then up starts the mate of our gallant ship,
And a bold young man was he:
“Oh! I have a wife in fair Portsmouth town,
But a widow I fear she will be.”
For the raging seas, etc.
Then up starts the cook of our gallant ship,
And a gruff old soul was he:
“Oh! I have a wife in fair Plymouth town,
But a widow I fear she will be.”
And then up spoke the little cabin-boy,
And a pretty little boy was he;
“Oh! I am more grievd for my daddy and my mammy
Than you for your wives all three.”
Then three times round went our gallant ship,
And three times round went she;
For the want of a life-boat they all went down,
And she sank to the bottom of the sea.
One of my favorite versions isn't a recording for purchase, but a homemade video on YouTube which I am embedding below. I enjoyed the simplicity of the tune and the variations it offered on the ballad itself. Here it is:
As for recorded versions available for download, I preferred The Mermaid Song
by the Floorbirds.
Other versions you might prefer include The Mermaid
by The Pirates of St. Piran and The Mermaid
by Celtic Stew.
by Thomas Keightley. It has also been published under the title 
the version at 
. Katharine Briggs is important in the world of folklore and fairy tales. She was an expert in faerie lore, too. (I even wrote an article about her for Faerie Magazine last year.) She wrote a few books about faeries and their lore. The easiest to obtain these days is 
and 
by Carole G. Silver. This one is one of the most recent of the books listed here and important. No, this is not a collection of stories per se, but it is so wonderful to read the snippets and analysis that you really won't care.
by W.Y. Evans Wentz is another classic and easily found for free on the internet such as at 
. This is a short classic available all over the internet, see 
which would be quite lonely on your shelf without its companion, 