A Maid That's Deep In Love: A Song History

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"A Maid That's Deep in Love" is one title of a cross-dressing sea ballad that the Roud Folk Song Index files as number 231 under the master title "The Rakish Female Sailor," and that G. Malcolm Laws catalogued as N12.[1] The Traditional Ballad Index, which heads its entry "The Maid in Sorrow (Short Jacket)," outlines the plot: a young woman disguised in sailor's clothes goes to sea in search of her sweetheart, turns aside the advances of a captain who is taken with her, and keeps her identity hidden until her departure from the ship.[2] The Index adds that the Irish singer Elizabeth Cronin used the tune of "The Lowlands of Holland" for her version.[2]

Hand-colored lithograph of the three-masted U.S. frigate Constitution under sail on a calm sea

Nathaniel Currier, U.S. Frigate Constitution, hand-colored lithograph, 1838–1856. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its subject; it has no connection to the song.

The ballad circulated on broadsides, including one from Storer of Bristol and, according to A. L. Lloyd, one from Firth of Pocklington in Yorkshire.[1] The earliest date in the Ballad Index is 1929, from Greenleaf and Mansfield's Ballads and Sea Songs of Newfoundland, and the Index lists versions from the Canadian Maritimes, New England, the American Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, and Ireland.[2] In England the BBC recorded Cecilia Costello singing it in 1951, and in 1952 Peter Kennedy and Sean O'Boyle recorded the Belfast singer Lal Smith.[1] Patrick Shuldham-Shaw's transcription of Mrs. Costello of Birmingham's singing appeared in the Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in December 1953.[3] Helen Creighton recorded Mrs. Stan Marshall of Truro, Nova Scotia, singing it in 1952.[1]

Lloyd recorded the song as "Short Jacket and White Trousers," first in 1962, and explained that he had patched a London ex-bosun's version with lines from the Newfoundland text.[1] Maddy Prior sang Lal Smith's version as "Maid That's Deep in Love" in 1968 on her first duo album with Tim Hart.[1] Pentangle opened their 1970 album Cruel Sister with "A Maid That's Deep in Love," with Bert Jansch playing dulcimer.[4]

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Sources

  1. Mainly Norfolk: "The Rakish Female Sailor / Short Jacket and White Trousers / Maid That's Deep in Love".
  2. The Traditional Ballad Index: "The Maid in Sorrow (Short Jacket) [Laws N12]".
  3. Folkinfo (Mainly Norfolk): "For I am a Maid that's Deep in Love".
  4. Mainly Norfolk: "The Pentangle" (discography, Cruel Sister).