> Folk Music > Songs > Lord Thomas and Lady Margaret

Lord Thomas and Lady Margaret

[ Roud 109 ; Child 260 ; Ballad Index C260 ; DT TOMARG ; trad.]

Helen Lindley sang Lord Thomas and Lady Margaret on her 2023 EP of rare Child ballads, Aweakening the Lady. She noted:

Lord Thomas and Lady Margaret (Child 260, Roud 109) is another of those overlooked ballads which somehow got left behind. It follows the theme of many traditional songs where a woman wronged in love finds she’s able to exact revenge. There are two versions of Child 260: in one the lady stays, albeit in a different area and in the other she flees abroad, but neither seem to have a tune. Most of the songs I either to choose to, or am commissioned to, rewrite are long and wordy ballads, full of dialect, but this was a much easier one to work with.

The story concerns the lovers, Lord Thomas and Lady Margaret. He goes hunting and she goes to see him but he (very unsportingly) gets his servants to chase her away sets his hounds on her. Margaret rides off to the next county, spies a young man and asks for help. He refuses unless she agrees to marry him, she says okay, and they happily ride off (I took an assumption that they already knew each other in some way!) One day, Margaret’s at the window sewing, sees a beggar who asks for help and she realised it’s the, now banished, former Lord Thomas. She refuses to help, citing his previous behaviour to her, but he threatens to kill her husband so, thinking quickly she invites him in for a drink but poisons it. She pretends to drink, he drinks lots and feels unwell, so she tells him of the poison and the reason; because he sent his hunting hounds to tear her to pieces. She says she’ll ensure he’s buried, which is most likely showing more courtesy to him than he did to her at a time when a proper burial was important to people.

The tackling of the reviving of this song was much easier than many of my others, the song wasn’t too long and needed much less dialect translation but did need a tune. In the folk song tradition it isn’t unusual for a song of murder and revenge to be treated to a jolly tune and this song lent itself to that. And the chorus jumped into my head really quickly—the line of ‘hunting high and hunting low’ and the twice repeated line of ‘by one, by two, by three’ in the song really did feel as though they belonged together in a chorus and the tune I composed for that became the hook for the whole song.

And so another song where a strong woman takes matters into her own hands is back!

Lyrics

Helen Lindley sings Lord Thomas and Lady Margaret

Lord Thomas has a-hunting gone to hunt the fallow deer-o,
Margaret to the greenwood went to see her lover there.
He looked o’er his left shoulder to see what might be seen-o,
And Margaret he saw nearby riding without a care.
Thomas called his servants all, by one, by two, by three-o,
“Hunt, go hunt that wild woman, go hunt her far from me.
They hunted high, they hunted low, the hunted o’er the plain-o.
The scarlet robes Margaret wore would ne’er again be seen.

Chorus (after each verse; twice at the end):
Hunting high and hunting low, by one, by two, by three-o
Hunting high and hunting low, by one, by two, by three.

Then Margaret spied a tall young man riding through the lanes-o,
She called to him as she got near for he was all alone.
“Some relief, I pray grant me, for I’ve been wronged in love-o,
I’ve been chased from my county,” poor Margaret she did groan.
“No relief, thou lady fair, will I grant unto thee-o,
‘Til you renounce all other men, my wedded wife to be.”
He set her on her milk white steed, himself upon the grey-o,
And cheerfully they rode away, chatting her and he.

“Lady Margaret one day sat on her window seat-o,
Singing to herself as she was stitching silken gowns.
There she saw a begging man wandering through the lane-o,
She saw he was that Lord Thomas who’d ran her from the bounds.
“Some relief, I pray grant me, thou’st seem a lady fair-o.
I was a lord before I was banished from my county.”
“No relief,” the lady cried, “will you get from me-o.
And if I had thee in my bower, thou hanged dead would be.”

“No, Margaret,” the lord replied, “such things will never be-o.
I’ll kill your husband with a sword and take thee off with me.”
“No, Lord Thomas,” Margaret cried, “such things must never be-o.
In my cellars I have wine; I’ll take a drink with thee.”
Margaret called her servants all, by one, by two, by three-o,
“Fetch three bottles of blood-red wine, this lord to drink with me.”
They fetched three bottles of blood-red wine, they’d been asked to bring-o
The lady with her fingers small poisoned them all three.

She took her cup in her slim hand with her slender fingers-o.
Put it to her rosy lips, but ne’er a drop did drink.
Lord Thomas with his manly hand took his cup to drink-o
He put it to his lips and supped without a care to think.
“I’m so wearied from this drink,” said Thomas to the lady-o
“Well, I was weary that fine day when you set your hounds at me.
I’ll bury you, oh Lord Thomas as poisoned you have been-o
And when my good lord home doth come, we’ll drink a toast to thee.”