Scarborough Fair (ballad)

"Scarborough Fair" (Child Ballad #2; Roud 12) is a traditional English ballad.[1] The song lists a number of impossible tasks given to a former lover who lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. Traditionally, the song had a wide range of tunes and lyrics, but one particular version gained popularity and was recorded by a number of musicians in the twentieth century, most notable Simon & Garfunkel.

Origins and variations

The lyrics of "Scarborough Fair" have much in common with a Scottish ballad titled "The Elfin Knight", one of the many ballads collected by Francis James Child,[2] and both songs are officially categorised as the same ballad. In "The Elfin Knight", an elf typically threatens to abduct a young woman to be his lover unless she can perform an impossible task ("For thou must shape a sark to me / Without any cut or heme, quoth he"); she responds with a list of tasks that he must first perform ("I have an aiker of good ley-land / Which lyeth low by yon sea-strand"). The song has been traced as far back as the 1600s, and dozens of versions existed by the end of the 18th century.

A number of older versions refer to locations other than Scarborough Fair, including Wittingham Fair, Cape Ann, "twixt Berwik and Lyne", etc. Many versions do not mention a place-name and are often generically titled ("The Lovers' Tasks", "My Father Gave Me an Acre of Land", etc.). The references to the traditional English fair, "Scarborough Fair" and the refrain "parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme" can only be traced to 19th century versions and the refrain may have been borrowed from the ballad Riddles Wisely Expounded, (Child Ballad #1), which has a similar plot.

Alternative refrains

The oldest versions of "The Elfin Knight" (circa 1650) contain the refrain "my plaid away, my plaid away, the wind shall not blow my plaid away". Some relatively recent Scottish recordings contain similar refrains such as "Blaw, blaw, blaw ye winds blaw... And the dreary wind's blawed my plaidie awa'". Other versions of "The Elfin Knight" contain one of a group of related refrains:

• "Sober and grave grows merry in time"
• "Every rose grows merry with time"
• "Every flower grows merry and fine"
• "There's never a rose grows fairer with time"
• "Yesterday holds memories in time"

These are usually paired with "Once (s)he was a true love of mine" or some variant. The "Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme" refrain of the "Scarborough Fair" variant may simply be an alternate rhyming refrain to the original based on a corruption of "grows merry in time" into "rosemary and thyme".

Lyrics

The lyrics, as published by folk song collector and music scholar Frank Kidson, begin:

"O, where are you going?" "To Scarborough fair,"
  Savoury sage, rosemary, and thyme;
"Remember me to a lass who lives there,
  For once she was a true love of mine.

"And tell her to make me a cambric shirt,
  Savoury sage, rosemary, and thyme,
Without any seam or needlework,
  And then she shall be a true love of mine.

"And tell her to wash it in yonder dry well,
  Savoury sage, rosemary, and thyme,
Where no water sprung, nor a drop of rain fell,
  And then she shall be a true love of mine."[3]

— Stanzas 1-3

Recordings and recent history

The Simon & Garfunkel melody and its origins

Mark Anderson (1874-1953), a retired lead-miner from either Newbiggin-by-the-Sea[4] or Middleton-in-Teesdale[5], County Durham, England, sang "Scarborough Fair" to Ewan MacColl in 1947. MacColl recorded the lyrics and melody in a book of Teesdale folk songs, and later included it on Matching Songs For The British Isles And America (1957), and on his and Peggy Seeger's The Singing Island (1960). An audio recording of Anderson's version was never made, although Alan Lomax recorded Mark Anderson singing several other songs in 1951.[4]

On the 1956 album English Folk Songs, Englishwoman Audrey Coppard learnt the song from Ewan MacColl and became the first to record the now famous melody.[6]

"Scarborough Fair/Canticle"
Side-A label of the 1968 US vinyl single
Single by Simon & Garfunkel
from the album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
B-side	"April Come She Will"
Released	February 1968 (1968-02) (single) 10 October 1966 (1966-10-10) (album)
Recorded	26 July 1966
Genre	Psychedelic folk baroque pop progressive folk
Length	3:10 (single edit) 6:22 (The Graduate soundtrack)
Label	Columbia
Songwriter(s)	"Scarborough Fair": Traditional "Canticle": Paul Simon, Art Garfunkel
Producer(s)	Bob Johnston
Simon & Garfunkel singles chronology
"Fakin' It" (1967) "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" (1968) "Mrs. Robinson" (1968)
Music video
"Scarborough Fair / Canticle" (audio) on YouTube
Alternative release
Cover of the 1968 Netherlands single

Martin Carthy learnt the song from the MacColl and Seeger songbook[7], and included it on his eponymous debut album in 1965, the same year he taught it to Paul Simon in London[8][9].

In April 1966, Marianne Faithfull recorded and released her own take on "Scarborough Fair" on her album North Country Maid about six months prior to Simon & Garfunkel's release of their single version of the song in October 1966.[10]

Simon & Garfunkel set Scarborough Fair in counterpoint with "Canticle" – a reworking of the lyrics from Simon's 1963 anti-war song, "The Side of a Hill",[11] set to a new melody composed mainly by Art Garfunkel.[7][12] "Scarborough Fair/Canticle" was the lead track of the 1966 album Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, and was released as a single after being featured on the soundtrack to The Graduate in 1968.[7] It was additionally released on the "Mrs. Robinson 'EP'" in 1968, containing three other songs from the film: Mrs. Robinson, April Come She Will, and The Sound of Silence.

The copyright credited only Simon and Garfunkel as the authors, causing ill-feeling on the part of Martin Carthy, who felt the "traditional" source should have been credited.[7] This rift remained until Simon invited Carthy to perform the song with him as a duet at a London concert in 2000.[7] Simon performed this song with The Muppets when he guest starred on The Muppet Show.

Before Simon had learned the song, Bob Dylan had borrowed the melody and several lines from Carthy's arrangement to create his song, "Girl from the North Country",[13] which featured on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan (1963), Nashville Skyline (1969) (together with Johnny Cash), Real Live (1984) and The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration (1993).

Simon & Garfunkel chart performance

Chart (1968)	Peak position
Australian Kent Music Report	49
Irish Singles Chart	5
US Billboard Hot 100	11

Recordings using different tunes

The earliest commercial recording of the ballad was by actor/singers Gordon Heath and Lee Payant, Americans who ran a cafe and nightclub, L'Abbaye, on the Rive Gauche in Paris. They recorded the song on the Elektra album Encores From The Abbaye in 1955.

The song was also included on A. L. Lloyd's 1955 album The English And Scottish Popular Ballads, using a melody recorded by Frank Kidson.

Reference

1. "The Elfin Knight / Scarborough Fair / Whittingham Fair". Retrieved 7 May 2020.
2. Child, Francis James (1894). The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Part 9. 9. Boston / Cambridge: Houghton, Mifflin and company / The Riverside Press. p. 206.
3. Kidson, Frank (1891). Traditional Tunes. Oxford: Chas. Taphouse & Son. p. 43.
4. "Can you decipher long-lost verse of historic dale song?". www.teesdalemercury.co.uk. Retrieved 10 August 2020.
5. "Alan Lomax Archive". research.culturalequity.org. Retrieved 10 August 2020.
6. "Smithsonian Folkways". Folkways.SI.edu. Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution. 20 March 2013. Retrieved 29 September 2016.
7. Humphries, Patrick (2003). "Scarborough Fair". Sold on Song. BBC. Retrieved 16 April 2012.
8. "Sold on Song - Song Library - Scarborough Fair". bbc.co.uk/radio2. BBC. Retrieved 23 November 2017.
9. https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/simon_garfunkel/scarborough_fair_chords_2007315
10. Unterberger, Richie. "North Country Maid - Marianne Faithfull | Songs, Reviews, Credits". AllMusic. Retrieved 29 September 2016.
11. "Song and Lyrics, Scarborough Fair/Canticle". PaulSimon.com. Sony Music Entertainment. Retrieved 10 July 2016.
12. Bennighof, James (2007). The Words and Music of Paul Simon. Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 21–24. ISBN 9780275991630. Retrieved 19 June 2015.
13. JK. ""...She Once Was A True Love Of Mine" - Some Notes About Bob Dylan's "Girl From The North Country"". www.justanothertune.com. Retrieved 23 November 2017.