A.L. Lloyd – vocals
Dave Swarbrick – fiddle
Track 5 on the album First Person (1966)
Jack Orion was as good fiddler
As ever fiddled on a string,
And he could drive young women mad
With the tune his wires would sing.
He could fiddle the fish out of salt water
Or water from a marble stone,
Or the milk out of a maiden’s breast
Though baby she had none.
So he sat and played in the castle hall
And fiddled them all so sound asleep,
Except it was for the young countess,
And for love she stayed awake.
And first he played a slow, slow air
And then he played it brisk and gay,
And, “O dear love,” behind her hand
This lady she did say.
“Ere the day has dawned and the cocks have crown
And flapped their wings so wide,
It’s you may come to my bedroom door
And stretch out at my side.”
So he lapped his fiddle in a cloth of green
And he stole out on his tip toe,
And he’s off back to his young boy Tom
As fast as he could go.
“Ere day has dawned and cocks have crown
And flapped their wings so wide,
I’m bid to go to that lady’s door
And stretch out at her side.”
“Well lie down, rest you, my good master,
Here’s a blanket to your hand.
And I’ll waken you in as good a time
As any cock in the land.”
And Tom took the fiddle into his hand,
Fiddled and he sang for a full hour,
Till he played his master fast asleep
And he’s off to that lady’s bower.
And when he come to the countess’ door
He tirled so softly at the pin,*
And the lady true to her promise
Rose up and let him in.
Well he didn’t take that lady gay
To bolster or to bed,
But down upon her bedroom floor
Right soon he had her laid.
And he neither kissed her when he came
Nor yet when from her he did go,
But in and out of her bower window
The moon like a coal did glow.
“Oh ragged are your stockings, love,
And stubble is your cheek and chin,
And tangled is that yellow hair
That I saw late yestre’en.”
“My stockings belong to my boy Tom
And they were the first come to my hand,
And I tangled all my yellow hair
When coming against the wind”
He took his fiddle into his hand,
So saucy there he sang,
And he’s off back to his own master
As fast as could run.
“Well up, well up, my master dear,
For while you sleep and snore so loud
There’s not a cock in all this land
But has flapped his wings and crowed.”
Well, when he come to the lady’s door,
The fiddler tirled upon the pin,
Saying softly, “Here’s your own true love,
Rise up and let me in.”
She says, “Surely you didn’t leave behind
A bracelet or a velvet glove,
Or are you returned back again
To taste more of my love?”
Jack Orion swore a bloody oath,
“By oak and ash and bitter thorn,
Lady, I never was in your room
Since the day that I was born.”
“Oh then it was your little foot page
That falsely has beguiled me,
And woe that the blood of that ruffian boy
Should spring in my body.”
And home then went Jack Orion, crying,
“Tom, my lad, come here to me!”
And he hanged that boy from his own gatepost
High as the willow tree.
This is an adaptation of the tragic old ballad “Glasgerion” (Child 067), whose title character is a harpist-prince. His wonderful playing makes a princess, whom he has loved at a distance for years, fall in love with him. But his page Jack, a sneaky peasant’s son, disguises himself as his master and preempts him sexually with the princess. This leads to three deaths: the princess kills herself for shame when she learns she has slept with a servant; Glasgerion beheads Jack for betraying his master and dishonouring a princess; and finally Glasgerion falls on his own sword at having lost his love.
A.L. Lloyd’s excellent adaptation improves the narrative for a modern audience in at least one important way. The harpist-prince Glasgerion is demoted to a common fiddler of uncommon ability, so as to highlight the relations between social class, musical performance, and sexuality. The name “Jack,” a marker of low social class, is lifted from the Child ballad and reassigned to the protagonist.
“Orion,” in contrast, recalls Greek mythology via Chaucer, and evokes ancient and deep associations. In The Hous of Fame,** Chaucer mentions Orpheus the legendary harpist, as well as others renowned for the lyre, including “Orion … and the Bret[on] Glascurion,” the latter being an avatar of “Glasgerion.” “Orion,” moreover, is the name of one of the most prominent constellations in the northern hemisphere, mentioned in both the Odyssey and the Aeneid. Orion is usually embodied as a giant hunter with a belt and sword, and is thus a figure of dominant masculinity. But “Orion” sounds exactly like “O’Ryan,” a common Irish name. So Jack’s name shows him to be both lowly in social origin and extraordinary in talent, a combination appealing to a contemporary audience.
Lloyd’s version of the ballad has much to say about how male musical artistry can be irresistibly sexually attractive to females, as fundamental a preliminary to human mating as birdsong is in avian circles. It also shows how female sexual response to male musical performance can temporarily obliterate a gulf in social class. At the same time, it suggests that violent male sexuality may be misread by the female as the product of her desirability and tolerated, even approved by her, especially if she is motivated by the hope of conceiving a child. And then the narrative also dramatizes the age-old conflict between male generations, the younger perpetually attempting to supplant the older, and the latter’s typically brutal response when he realizes he has been duped by a younger rival.
Orpheus stands behind the opening two stanzas of “Jack Orion.” Poets for millennia have striven to outdo each other in hyperbolic descriptions of the effect of Orpheus’s music: trees bow down, the stormy sea is calmed, bears break into a dance, tigers listen enraptured, Hades weeps iron tears. Likewise, Jack’s fiddle induces water from a stone, drives women sex-crazy, and causes milk to flow from a virgin’s breast.
All this foreshadows the ballad’s connection between musical artistry and what evolutionists would term reproductive success. Jack may be a lowly musician, but the countess – the wife of an earl, so miles above him in the social pecking order – is extremely aroused by his fiddling. She invites him to her bedchamber under cover of darkness. Jack returns home and tells his servant boy Tom about the assignation. Tom lulls his master to sleep with some fine fiddling of his own, promising to wake him before dawn so he can visit the countess.
But Tom himself goes to the countess’s bedchamber, and softly plays his fiddle so well that she opens her door to him. Tom’s ragged stockings and tangled hair seem unfamiliar to her, but it’s dark and Tom-as-Jack offers a not very convincing explanation for both. Then he fucks her – the earl’s wife – on the floor, while the moon, guardian of female chastity, glowers disapprovingly through the window.
Tom’s violence is a product of urgency, as he must return to wake his master before sunrise. The countess doesn’t protest her rough treatment by Tom-as-Jack, even seems to expect it from him. The reason for her toleration is suggested later still, when she bewails her situation to Jack: “And woe that the blood of that ruffian boy / Should spring in my body.” We infer that she’d hoped to have been impregnated by Jack, so as to pass his genius on to her baby. Great musicianship, like the bird who outsings his rivals, is a sign to the female of extreme male reproductive fitness.
Then Tom goes back home and wakes Jack, who’s off to the countess’s chamber. When he knocks at her door, she’s bewildered but not entirely surprised. Did he leave one of his valuables behind, or is it just that he’d like some more of the same? He swears angrily that he has never been with her. So she, now furious, realizes that it was not Jack but his boy who had her on the floor. Jack, just as furious, rushes home and hangs Tom from his gatepost. The abrupt ending is not tragic like “Glasgerion,” as there’s nothing noble about Tom, the only one to lose his life within the frame of the narrative.
If we assume that the countess does conceive a child by Tom, and if we suspect from the ample evidence that Tom is a pretty good fiddler too, and as there is no mention of an earl-husband to wreak jealous vengeance, then perhaps the ending is appropriate: the countess – young and perhaps recently widowed – will bear a child fathered by a good musician and attribute paternity to her dead husband. Jack will be lucky to get off lightly for murdering his servant boy, however, as it’ll be hard for him to offer a convincing excuse. But all this is speculation outside the frame. Everything that happens within it is accountable according to the real world of familiar human relationships.
Albert Lancaster (“Bert”) Lloyd (1908-82), that GOM of traditional folk music, sang “Jack Orion,” accompanied on fiddle by the incomparable Dave Swarbrick, on his 1966 LP First Person. Lloyd’s voice may not be universally appealing, but it always has an absolutely authentic quality – in contrast, say, to the often over-egged Scottishness of Salford native Ewan MacColl. And “Jack Orion” is sufficiently transformed from its origin in Child as to count as Lloyd’s own composition. As Martin Carthy has written, “A.L. Lloyd has done exceptional work … in knocking into singable shape songs that were lost in tradition, but have attractive and not to say very powerful story lines: ‘Jack Orion’ is such a one.” Lloyd’s is undoubtedly the definitive version of this ballad.
The covers don’t quite measure up. Martin Carthy, also accompanied by Dave Swarbrick, sings a jaunty, a-bit-too-rapid version on his 1968 album But Two Came By. Bert Jansch’s efforts with and without Pentangle are best passed over in silence. Fairport Convention’s version of 1978 is too long; the fiddle cadenzas representing similar moments in the narrative serve to weaken the dramatic effect. Fay Hield’s version on Old Adam (2016) is more than acceptable, but I feel that this ballad, with its central themes of male musical performance and sexual rivalry, is better suited to a man’s voice.
*Doors, especially in Scotland, were formerly provided with a long, notched, iron handle on which a loose iron ring was hung. Instead of knocking, the visitor “tirled” the ring up and down over the notches of the “tirling pin,” or handle, making a rasping noise to rouse those within.
**Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Hous of Fame (later 14th century) is a long poem, a dream vision in three books: “Ther herde I pleyen on an harpe / That souned bothe wel and sharpe, / Orpheus ful craftely, / And on his syde, faste by, / Sat the harper Orion, / And Eacides Chiron, / And other harpers many oon, / And the Bret Glascurion” (Book III, lines 1201-8).
PS. I didn’t realize how lucky I was at the time, but I once heard A.L. Lloyd perform live. It was at the Wheatsheaf Hotel in Oak Street, Manchester in the early 1970s. The concert was in an upstairs room over the pub, and there can’t have been more that about thirty people who’d spread themselves informally over sofas and chairs. Lloyd perched on a central table, chatted to the audience, cupped his ear, and sang a couple of dozen songs entirely unaccompanied.
Holmström Ruddick 