| Clare County Library | Songs of Clare |
|
The Devil and the Farmer’s Wife (Child 278; Roud 160) 
Mikey KelleherQuilty and Depford, London Recorded in London, 1977
Carroll Mackenzie Collection
|
 |
|
He said me, 'Old man I’ve come
for your wife.' The devil he hoist her up on his back. There were two young little devils there tied up in
chains. The devil he caught and shoved her up on his back. He says, 'Here my poor man there’s she is back
safe and well.' Old Nick said, 'The women were worse than the men.' |
||
| “While this story is
very old and is to be found world-wide the ballad wasn’t found in
English in the oral tradition until quite late. Francis J Child’s
earliest text was polished in the middle of the 19th century, though scholars
have claimed it to be ‘ancient’. It was widely popular in
England and Scotland and in the south of England it acquired a whistled
chorus said to be connected to the old custom of ‘whistling up the
Devil’. Scots poet Robert Burns re-wrote the ballad as a poem; Mikey
Kelleher’s reference to ‘Kellyburnbraes’ indicates that
his variant is a version of this.
Whistling always carried the belief of bad luck, notably when done on board ship, but most of all when done by women: ‘A whistling woman and a crowing hen bodes no good to God nor men.’ (Rural English saying). It was hugely popular with American country singers; Tristam Coffin writes of the numerous versions collected in New England: ‘Certainly, the scolding wife, one who
can rout the devil himself, has left her mark on folklore from India
and Russia to the Western countries. This particular anecdote concerning
her is a favorite of the American informant. With a similar song, ‘The
Devil in Search of a Wife,’ it was also popular among the printers
of nineteenth-century London broadsides. Originally, it must have concerned
a contract in which a farmer hired the devil to do some plowing in exchange
for a member of the family. The farmer, in many texts, worries that
he may lose his eldest son and is relieved when his wife is taken.’”
|
||
<< Songs of Clare |
||