"The Cruel Mother" (a.k.a. "The Greenwood Side" or "Greenwood Sidey") (Roud 9, Child 20)See also : is a murder ballad most likely originating in Scotland, or England that has since become popular throughout the wider English-speaking world.The Ozarks: An American Survival of Primitive Society By Vance RandolphFrancis James Child, English and Scottish Popular Ballads, "The Cruel Mother"
According to Roud and BishopRoud, Steve & Julia Bishop (2012). The New Penguin Book of Folk Songs. Penguin. .
Widely collected in Britain and Ireland, and in North America, 'The Cruel Mother' has clearly struck a chord with singers over a number of generations. We will never know quite why, of course, but in performance the combination of the matter-of-fact handling of a difficult subject and the repeated rhythmic refrain often creates a stark and hypnotic tale, which is extremely effective.
Synopsis A woman gives birth to one or two illegitimate children (usually sons) in the woods, kills them, and buries them. On her return trip home, she 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 would not dress them so but murdered them. Frequently they say she will be damned for it.
Some variants open with the account that she has fallen in love with her father's clerk.
Variants This ballad exists in a number of variants, in some of which there are verses where the dead children tell the mother she will suffer a number of penances each lasting seven years, e.g. "Seven years to ring a bell / And seven years porter in hell". Those verses properly belong in "The Maid and the Palmer" (Child ballad 21).Child (1882), p. 218 Variants of "The Cruel Mother" include "Carlisle Hall", "The Rose o Malinde", "Fine Flowers in the Valley", "The Minister's Daughter of New York", and "The Lady From Lee", among others. "Fine Flowers of the Valley" is a Scottish variant. Weela Weela Walya is an Irish schoolyard version. 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.Child (1882), pp. 219–20
Ballad scholar Hyder Rollins listed a broadside print dated 1638, and a fairly complete version was published in London in broadside ballad format as "The Duke's Daughter's Cruelty: Or the Wonderful Apparition of two Infants whom she Murther'd and Buried in a Forrest, for to hide her Shame" sometime between 1684 and 1695.Cazden, Norman, Herbert Haufrechtt, and Norman Studer. Folksongs of the Catskills. Albany: SUNY Press, 1982. 251-252. Print.
This ballad was one of 25 traditional works included in Ballads Weird and Wonderful (1912) and illustrated by Vernon Hill.
Recordings
Album/Single Performer Year Variant Notes False True Lovers Shirley Collins 1959 The Cruel Mother Dear Companion: Bonnie Dobson Bonnie Dobson 1960 The Cruel Mother The Folk Songs of Britain, Vol. IV: The Child Ballads 1 Thomas Moran 1961 The Cruel Mother Recorded 1954. Although the refrain of this version is that of "The Cruel Mother", the actual verses belong to a different song, Child Ballad no. 21, "The Maid and the Palmer" (aka "The Well Below The Valley") Four Strong Winds Ian & Sylvia 1964 The Greenwood Side The Judy Collins Concert Judy Collins 1964 The Cruel Mother The Long Harvest, Vol. 1 Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger 1967 see note Album contains three versions of The Cruel Mother, one variant called "Down By the Greenwood Sidey-O", and another called "The Lady From Lee". Ballads Hedy West 1967 The Cruel Mother Joan Joan Baez 1967 The Greenwood Side A Beacon from Mars Kaleidoscope 1968 The Greenwood Sidee The Sweet Primroses Shirley Collins 1970 The Cruel Mother Landfall Martin Carthy 1972 The Cruel Mother The Voice of the People Vol. 3 Lizzie Higgins 1988 The Cruel Mother Recorded 1975 Tempted and tried Steeleye Span 1989 The Cruel Mother Duše mé lásky Asonance 1994 Krutá matka Czech translation Legacy Old Blind Dogs 1995 The Greenwood Side The track is titled "The Rose and the Lindsey O'." Ye Shine Whar Ye Stan! Jock Duncan 1996 The Cruel Mother Live at Newport Ian & Sylvia 1996 The Greenwood Side Recorded live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963.Flesh and BloodMaddy Prior1997The Cruel Mother Songs Of Experience Cindy Mangsen 1998 The Cruel Mother Jolly Rogues Together Simply English 1999 The Cruel Mother Shantalla Shantalla 2000 Fine flowers in the valley Greenwood Side Lothlorien 2000 Greenwood Side A Day Like Today Emily Smith 2002 The Cruel Mother No Earthly Man Alasdair Roberts 2005 The Cruel Mother Wolverley Summer of Love 2007 Stuart Estel 2007 The Cruel Mother To The Ground Kerfuffle 2006 Down By The Greenwood Side In The Shadow of Mountains Bella Hardy 2009 Cruel Mother Miss Hardy omits 'The' from the title but it is nonetheless a variant of the folk song. Lady Diamond Bryony Griffith & Will Hampson 2011 The Lady of York From the singing of Jim Eldon. Born to wonder EP Louise Jordan 2011 The Cruel Mother Here's to those we could not save The Imaginary Suitcase 2012 Fine flowers in the valley Old Light: Songs from my Childhood & Other Gone Worlds Rayna Gellert 2012 Cruel Mother Outsiders Chris Foster 2013 The Cruel Mother Revival Bellowhead 2014 Greenwood Side Fiona Hunter Fiona Hunter 2014 The Cruel Mother Twice Told Tales 10,000 Maniacs 2015 Greenwood Sidey Anna & ElizabethAnna & Elizabeth2015Greenwood Sidey Murmurs Nancy Kerr, Martin Simpson and Andy Cutting 2015 Cruel Mother Shirley InspiredGraham Coxon2015The Cruel MotherThe Essential Gretchen PetersGretchen Peters2016The Cruel MotherRecorded 2011 and a bonus track on Blackbirds Here in the Deep Dave Heumann 2016 Greenwood Side CYRM ØXN 2023 Cruel Mother Cruel Morher || Edan Archer || 2016 || Cruel Mother ||
See also List of the Child Ballads Down by the Greenwood Side (opera)
References
External links The Cruel Mother The Cruel Mother with historical commentary Fine Flowers in the Valley variant "The Cruel Mother / Greenwood Sidey / Fine Flowers in the Valley / The Lady of York"