Willie O' Winsbury: A Song History
"Willie o Winsbury" is No. 100 in Francis James Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, whose second volume appeared in two parts in 1885 and 1886. Child's entry prints nine versions, lettered A to I (a tenth, J, followed in the volume's additions), drawn from Scottish manuscript collections such as those of Herd, Kinloch, Motherwell and Buchan, from printed stall copies, and from the Percy Papers, where an English text was sent in around 1775. The plot holds steady across them: a king, of Scotland in some copies and of France in others, comes home after a long absence to find his daughter carrying a child by Willie (or Thomas) of Winsbury. He swears to hang the young man, but once he sees how handsome Winsbury is, he offers him the princess and a rich dowry instead; Winsbury accepts the bride and turns down the gold and land. Child notes that Kinloch tried to tie the tale to James V of Scotland and his French bride, a theory Buchan rejected.[1]
Sir Edward Burne-Jones, King Sigurd the Crusader, wood engraving from Good Words, April 1862. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). It illustrates a different poem, about a Norse king; shown for its royal lovers, and it has no connection to the ballad.
The ballad travelled well beyond Scotland. The Traditional Ballad Index dates it to before 1776 on the strength of the Percy manuscript, and records it in England, Ireland, Newfoundland, Appalachia and New England; Cecil Sharp included a text titled "Lord Thomas of Winesberry" in his One Hundred English Folksongs.[2] The hero's name shifts readily: Child's two English copies already call him Johnnie Barbary or Johnnie Barbour,[1] Newfoundland singers made him Young Barbour,[2] and in Ireland the Donegal singer Joe McCafferty gave a version called "John Barbour," learned from his father, to the collector Hugh Shields on 24 August 1969.[3]
The version most revival singers know today, the Ballad Index observes, comes from Andy Irvine.[2] Irvine recorded it alone with his guitar on Sweeney's Men's first album in 1968, having pieced the words together from Child's versions. By his own admittedly uncertain account, he took the melody printed for the next ballad, No. 101,[3] which Child calls "Willie o Douglas Dale."[1] Here the sources differ: Mainly Norfolk identifies the air as that of No. 89, "Fause Foodrage,"[3] while the Ballad Index leans toward "Willie o Douglas Dale," adding that either way the pairing of words and tune is Irvine's, not a traditional one.[2] Anne Briggs sang it on her first solo album in 1971, with Johnny Moynihan on bouzouki, and later recordings include Pentangle's Solomon's Seal (1972), Dick Gaughan's Gaughan (1978) and Offa Rex's The Queen of Hearts (2017). The group Ye Vagabonds credit Irvine as the first singer they know of to use this melody.[3]
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