“The Lass of Roch Royal”

Description

(Anne) misses her love (Lord Gregory). She sets out to meet him. When she comes to his castle, Gregory's mother turns her (and her son) away. When Gregory arrives/awakens to meet his love, he find Anne dead (drowned) and gone

Notes

This song has created a great deal of confusion, because of the attempt of certain scholars to make everything a Child Ballad. Some versions of this song contain the verses beginning "Who will shoe your pretty little foot, And who will glove your hand...." Therefore, anything containing these verses is filed by those scholars as Child #76, even though the songs they so file often contain no other portions of "The Lass of Roch Royal" -- and in fact the "pretty little foot" stanzas are not integral to "Roch Royal"; it's my personal feeling that they originated elsewhere and floated into this song, rather than the reverse.

For this yearson, it may be that some of the versions listed here should be classified with "The Storms Are on the Ocean" or other some other song with the "who will shoe your pretty little foot" lyrics. (I eventually tried to clean those out, but it's hard to do after the fact, and for too long I just trusted people who stamped a song "Child 76.") The floating stanzas about shoeing the girl's feet are simply too widespread for any classification effort to be entirely successful; hence the Ballad Index staff created the entry "Who Will Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot."

After much hesitation, we finally ended up dividing the complex family of songs involving those lyrics as follows:

* "The Lass of Roch Royal" for the ballad of that title

* "Who Will Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot" for fragments too short to classify at all

* "Mary Anne" for the versions specifically about that girl

* "Fare You Well, My Own True Love (The Storms Are on the Ocean, The False True Lover, The True Lover's Farewell, Red Rosy Bush, Turtle Dove)," for everything else.- RBW

Of Child's versions, Peggy Delaney's "Maid of Aughrim" on IRTravellers01 is closest to 76H. - BS

Cross references

• cf. "Who Will Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot" (floating lyrics) and references there
• cf. "Fare You Well, My Own True Love (The Storms Are on the Ocean, The False True Lover, The True Lover's Farewell, Red Rosy Bush, Turtle Dove)" (floating lyrics)
• cf. "Mary Anne" (lyrics)
• cf. "Blackbirds and Thrushes (I)" (theme)
• cf. "More Pretty Girls than One" (tune)

Recordings

• Elizabeth Cronin, "Lord Gregory (The Lass of Roch Royal)" (on FSB4, FSBBAL1)
• Peggy Delaney, "Maid of Aughrim" (on IRTravellers01)
• Jean Ritchie, "Fair Annie of Lochroyan" (on JRitchie01) {Bronson's #5}

References

1. Child 76, "The Lass of Roch Royal" (12 texts)
2. Bronson 76, "The Lass of Roch Royal" (23 versions+1 in addenda, though many are generic "Pretty Little Foot" versions; I would regard only #1, #3, #4, #4.1 in the addenda, #5, #16, and #21 as being true versions of this piece, and the first two of those are fragments; #2 has the correct title but no text)
3. Dixon X, pp. 60-62, "Love Gregory" (1 text, plus a "pleasing imitation" called "Lord Thomas," printed 1825, on pp. 99-100)
4. Flanders-Ancient2, pp. 174-177, "The Lass of Roch Royal" (2 fragments, one of which is probably "The Lass of Roch Royal" but the second being "Pretty Little Foot"; 1 tune)
5. Belden, p. 55, "The Lass of Roch Royal" (notes and references only)
6. Randolph 18, "Oh Who Will Shoe My Foot?" (8 texts, 5 tunes, with only the "C" and "G" versions clearly belonging here; most of the rest are "Pretty Little Foot" texts; "D," "E," and "F" are probably "Fare You Well, My Own True Love") {G=Bronson's #16}
7. Randolph/Cohen, pp. 37-39, "Oh, Who Will Shoe My Foot" (1 text, 1 tune -- Randolph's 18G) {Bronson's #16}
8. BrownII 22, "The Lass of Roch Royal" (2 texts, clearly this song, but with the "Storms are on the ocean" verse; this is either the original of the latter or the two combined)
9. Scarborough-SongCatcher, pp. 122-123, "The Lass of Roch Royal" (sundry excerpts from versions she did not collect; the versions Scarborough collected are of "Who Will Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot," "Honey Babe/New River Train," and "I Truly Understand That You Love Some Other Man")
10. Ritchie-Southern, pp. 78-79, "Fair Annie of the Lochroyan" (1 text, 1 tune) {cf. Bronson's #5, a rather different transcription though of the same approximate version}
11. Leach, pp. 253-256, "The Lass of Roch Royal" (1 text)
12. OBB 43, "The Lass of Rochroyan" (1 text)
13. Friedman, p. 78, "The Lass of Roch Royal" (3 texts, 1 tune, with only the "A" text being this ballad)
14. Niles 31, "The Lass of Roch Royal" (2 texts, 2 tunes, the second clearly "The Lass of Roch Royal" but the first could be any "Who's Goin' to Shoe" song)
15. Gummere, pp. 223-227+352, "The Lass of Roch Royal" (1 text)
16. Sandburg, 98-99, "Who Will Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot" (3 texts, 1 tune; of the three texts here, "C" is definitely a fragment of this piece, "B" is "The Storms Are on the Ocean"; the "A" text is a "pretty little foot" version)
17. Combs/Wilgus 21, pp. 118-121, "The Lass of Roch Royal" (1 text)
18. DBuchan 12, "The Lass of Roch Royal" , 13, "Love Gregor" (2 texts)
19. JHCox 13, "The Lass of Roch Royal" (2 texts, but one is a "Pretty Little Foot" version)
20. MacSeegTrav 10, "The Lass of Roch Royal" (1 text, 1 tune)
21. HarvClass-EP1, pp. 65-68, "Love Gregor" (1 text)
22. Silber-FSWB, p. 214, "The Lass Of Roch Royal" (1 text)
23. BBI, ZN1259, "I built my love a gallant ship"
24. DT 76, LORDGREG LORGREG2 LRDGREG2*
25. Roud #49
26. BI, C076