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Proud Maisrie / The Gardener / The Gardener Child

[ Roud 339 ; Child 219 ; G/D 4:840 ; Ballad Index C219 ; trad.]

Ewan MacColl sang The Gairdner Child in 1956 on his and A.L. Lloyd's anthology The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Volume III, He also sang it accompanied by Peggy Seeger on guitar on their 1956 Tradition album Classic Scots Ballads where he noted:

This beautiful little ballad is a curious mixture of tenderness, passion, irony and plain waspishness. It is a perfect admixture of the qualities which make up the Scots character. The heroine of the ballad, for all her stiff-necked pride, is not averse to being wooed providing she gets the opportunity to return soft words with insult. The ballad appears to be unknown outside of Scotland. The version sung here was learned in fragmentary form from the singing of my mother, with additional stanzas from Greig's Last Leaves of Traditional Ballads and Ballad Airs.

Shirley Collins learned this ballad from the singing of Ewan MacColl and sang it as Proud Maisrie on her and Davy Graham's 1964 album Folk Roots, New Routes.

Owen Hand sang The Gardener on his 1966 Transatlantic album I Loved a Lass. He noted:

All the main sources of this ballad are Scottish. It was originally much longer but a few verses have been omitted here, though with no effect on the story.

Bert Jansch sang The Gardener in 1966 on his Transatlantic album Jack Orion.

Tim Hart and Maddy Prior recorded this song as The Gardener in 1969 for their second duo album Folk Songs of Old England Vol. 2. The sleeve notes commented:

A gardener offers to make a lady a robe made up of flowers if she will bestow her love on him. This romantic idea forms the basis of a most winsome and lyrical ballad. It is probably of Northern origin since most printed texts are Scottish, and was given to us by A.L. Lloyd, it being a collation of several printed versions.

Sue Brown and Lorraine Irwing sang The Gardener in 1997 on their WildGoose album Call & Cry. They noted:

This ballad of seduction, which is full of sexual imagery, appears in Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads, and as Child no. 219. Lorraine found it on a recording by Maddy Prior.

June Tabor sang The Gardener in 1999 on her CD A Quiet Eye.

Kate Burke and Ruth Hazleton sang The Gardener on their 2007 album Summer's Lonesome Tale.

Grace Notes learned The Gardener from The House Band's 1996 album Rockall and sang it in 2007 on their CD Northern Tide.

Mick West sang The Gairdner Chiel in 2009 on his Greentrax CD Sark o' Snaw. The album's booklet noted:

This song was popularised by Ewan MacColl, and printed in his books The Singing Island and Scotland Sings. In the notes, MacColl attributes the source to his mother, Betsy Henry, and has collated that with versions collected by Gavin Greig. Textually, in one version, Maisrie is at her “faithers door”, and in the other, she is at her “bower door”.

The key printed source for the tune is in Bronson (Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads) volume 3, where nine tunes are given. The MacColl/Henry one is tune 6. I have not been able to find this tune elsewhere.

Bronson also puts forward the view that “This piece sits uneasily in Child’s collection. It is both too little of a ballad, and too sophisticated and fanciful in symbolism.”

In his Additions and Corrections to volume V of the English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Child quotes material supplementary to The Gardener, which Reverend S. Baring Gould had sent him. One is a broadside printed in Edinburgh in 1765. This has elements of The Gardener, but also introduces—via a chorus—the song It's Braw Sailin', —

The gardener stood in his garden
And the prim rose in his hand
And there he spi’d his own true love
As tight’s a willy wand
Brave sailing here, my dear
And better sailing there
Brave sailing in my love’s arms
O give that I were there

Interestingly and conversely, William Motherwell has a version of It’s Braw Sailin’ in his manuscripts, which contains elements of the floral allusions found in The Gardener.

The gardener sent me a word
He pu ’d the rose for me
The willow, the prim rose, the red rose
But I denied all three
It's braw sailin’ here…

The first time Mick heard this was from Tom Gilfellon, but the version Mick performs here has been modelled around a collation by Ewan MacColl.

Rachael McShane sang The Gardener on her 2009 CD No Man's Fool. This video shows her at Shrewsbury Folk Festival in August 2009:

Rachael's Bellowhead band mate Jon Boden sang it as the 14 May 2011 entry of his project A Folk Song a Day. He noted in his blog:

Such a beautiful tune this. Steeleye [Span] borrowed it for a chorus for Wife of Usher’s Well, and who can blame them? Lovely lyric as well. I’ve decided to drop the last verse though because I’m less keen on it.

Lady Maisery sang The Gardener in 2011 on their CD Weave & Spin. They commented in their liner notes:

This is a very mysterious dialogue between a gardener and a woman who does not appreciate his flowery propositions. It's a Child ballad which Hannah [James] has adapted from a few different versions.

This video shows Lady Maisery at the Acoustic Sessions at Stanley Halls on 27 March 2018:

Rachel Newton sang all but verse 4 of Shirley Collins' Proud Maisrie in 2016 on her CD Here's My Heart Come Take It.

Steeleye Span sang The Gardener in 2016 too on their CD Dodgy Bastards. They noted:

This elegant ballad was first given to Tim Hart and Maddy [Prior] by Bert Lloyd, back in the 1960s. Its use of natural images to convey emotions is unusually poetic. In this version we have played with the tune, omitting the refrain.

Olivia Chaney sang The Gardener in 2017 on Offa Rex's CD The Queen of Hearts. She commented:

Maddy Prior has such a special voice, and although there are many versions of this song from the great era of folk-rock, I became obsessed with hers and […] Tim Hart's (from their 1969 album Folk Songs of Old England Vol. 2). It took me a long time to come up with an arrangement that felt my own and natural in its following of the strange contours of melody and rhythm that carry the mysterious text.

Chris Foster sang The Gardener in 2017 on his CD Hadelin. He noted:

A flowery proposition and a frosty denial. A few years ago, Jerry Simon, a fellow Yeovil Folk Club member from the 1960s, emailed me out of the blue and asked if I was still singing this song. By chance, I found an old notebook with the words that I used to sing. Now, after forty or more years, I've reworked the text and made a new arrangement.

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