The Bonny Birdy
The Bonny Birdy is Child ballad 82 (Roud 3972).
Synopsis
A knight is riding when a bird asks him why he is about so late and tells him his wife is with her lover. It had been a wild bird until the lover caught it and gave it to his love. She did not feed it well, so it is telling her story. It flew with the knight to her bower, and sang of how the lover should be away. The lady asks what reason there is for him to leave, and the bird sings that a man in bed with another man's wife should always leave quickly. The knight enters the bower and kills the lover.
Sources and recordings
The ballad was written only once, in 1783 (or shortly before), from Anna Brown, by her nephew, Robert Eden Scott,[1] and in the same year was sent by her father, prof. Thomas Gordon, to William Tytler with other 14 recorded songs (so-called Tytler-Brown MS).[2][3] At least one author points out that the song "is not represented in England" and considers it as a "Scottish version" of the well-known English ballad "Little Musgrave".[4]
References
- Kekäläinen, Kirsti (1983). Aspects of Style and Language in Child's Collection of English and Scottish Popular Ballads. ISBN 9789514104589.
- Publications of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society. Edinburgh Bibliographical Society. 1896.
- Alexander Keith, ed. (1925). Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads and Ballad Airs. Aberdeen: The Buchan Club.
- Francis James Child, ed. (1965). The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Dover Publications. (see , )