The Riddle Song: A Song History

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"The Riddle Song," often called "I Gave My Love a Cherry" after its opening line, is built on a simple game: the singer promises a sweetheart a string of impossible gifts and then, when challenged, shows how each one can exist after all. The Traditional Ballad Index traces the idea back to about 1430, to a Middle English lyric, "I have a yong suster," preserved in the British Library's Sloane MS 2593[1]. That medieval text stayed in manuscript for centuries; Musical Traditions notes that it did not appear in print until around 1830[2]. Modern listeners sometimes hear a double meaning in the cherry, but the Ballad Index cautions against leaning too hard on that reading, since most of the Sloane manuscript is religious verse[1].

Marco d'Oggiono painting of a young woman with long curling hair holding a bowl of cherries

Marco d’Oggiono, Girl with Cherries, oil on wood, ca. 1491–95. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Shown for its cherries; it has no connection to the song.

The song is closely tangled with the Scottish ballad "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" (Child 46), in which a lady agrees to the captain's advances only if he can solve her riddles[3], and American collectors in the first half of the 20th century often filed versions of the shorter song under the ballad's title[2]. Some scholars regarded "The Riddle Song" as an eroded remnant of the ballad, but the Ballad Index points out that its 15th-century ancestor makes it the older of the two, so if anything the borrowing ran the other way, though the two may be only loosely connected[1]. Musical Traditions likewise judges the shorter song probably far older; by its account the ballad first surfaces in Herd's manuscripts in 1776, with printed garland copies following from 1783[2].

Versions have been found in England, Scotland, the Canadian Maritimes and across the United States, including the Appalachians[1], and in America the usual form is a bare three-verse set, without the added stanzas found in some other versions[2]. Cecil Sharp noted it from a Mrs. Wilson of Pineville, Bell County, Kentucky, in 1917, and it appeared in English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (1932)[4][1]. Burl Ives included it on his 1941 debut album for Okeh[5], and he recorded it again for Decca on 15 March 1952[6]. Pete Seeger also recorded it[1].

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Sources

  1. Traditional Ballad Index: "I Gave My Love a Cherry".
  2. Musical Traditions: "The Riddle Song: Roud 330, ODNR 478" (Dungheap No. 27).
  3. Traditional Ballad Index: "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship [Child 46]".
  4. Kodály Center, University of Redlands, American Folk Song Collection: "Riddle Song, The #1".
  5. MusicWeb International: "Burl Ives: The Wayfaring Stranger, His 33 Finest (1941-1961)" (review).
  6. Discography of American Historical Recordings (UCSB): "Decca 88105 (78-rpm 10-in.). (Album K-68)".