Gypsy Songs and Legends

Folk music has always followed people on the move, and this was particularly the case with the Scots Irish, many of whom left the British Isles from the 17^th century onwards to make a new life in America. Most of the songs and fiddle tunes they brought to the New World adapted to the different environment. But one theme retained much of the original, and that was the legend of the high-born lady leaving her lord to make a new life with a gipsy lover. British writer and musician John Phillpott traces the ancestry of a song that left a small group of islands, sailed over a vast ocean, and spread across an entire continent…

After centuries of bitter border warfare, the countries of England and Scotland eventually became united with the ascendancy of James Stuart to the English throne following the death of Elizabeth Tudor in 1603.

James I of England – formerly the sixth of Scotland – soon continued a process started by his predecessor, the voluntary relocation of his fellow Scots to Ireland, lured by the promise of land.

But as with the English before them, the Scots interlopers were not always welcomed by the indigenous Irish. And by the early 18^th century, many of what were now becoming known as Scots Irish, once again boarded ship to seek their fortunes in America.

They would have left with very few possessions. But if there was one thing that they took in great store, then that would be their music, destined to spread from immigrant port towns such as Philadelphia, across the Appalachian Mountains, and then into the new territories of Kentucky and Tennessee.

Along the way, many of the songs and fiddle tunes changed to reflect these new environments. But although the folk process was hard at work with the business of adaptation, some songs stayed faithful to the themes of the original story.

And if there was one subject that steadfastly refused to yield to new circumstances, then that was the eternal folk legend of the high-born woman becoming bewitched by the romance of the rambling gypsy.

The Raggle Taggle Gypsy originated as a Scottish border ballad and was the account of a rich lady who runs off to join the gypsies (or one gypsy).

Common alternative names are Gypsy Davy, The Raggle Taggle Gypsies O, The Gypsy Laddie(s), Black Jack David (or Davy) and Seven Yellow Gypsies.

The core of the song’s story is that a lady forsakes a life of luxury to run off with a band of gypsies. In some versions there is one individual, named Johnny Faa or Black Jack Davy, whereas in others there is one leader and his six brothers. In some versions the lady is identified as Margaret Kennedy, the wife of the Scottish Earl of Cassilis.

In a typical version, the lord comes home to find his lady “gone with the gypsy laddie”. Sometimes this is because the gypsies have charmed her with their singing, or even cast a spell over her.

He saddles his fastest horse to follow her. He finds her and bids her come home, asking: “Would you forsake your husband and child?”

She refuses to return, in many versions, preferring the cold ground, stating, “What care I for your fine feather sheets?”, and the gypsy’s company to her lord’s wealth and fine bed.

At the end of some versions, the husband kills the gypsies. In the local Cassilis tradition, they are hanged on the Cassilis Dule Tree.

The earliest text may be The Gypsy Loddy, published in the Roxburghe Ballads dated 1720. The first two verses of this version are as follows:

There was seven gypsies all in a gang,

They were brisk and bonny, O;

They rode till they came to the Earl of Casstle’s house,

And there they sang most sweetly, O.

The Earl of Casstle’s lady came down,

With the waiting-maid beside her;

As soon as her fair face they saw,

They called their grandmother over.

In the final two lines shown above, they called their grandmother over is assumed to be a corruption of They cast their glamour over her (i.e. they cast a spell), not vice versa.

This is the motivation in many texts for the lady leaving her lord. In others, she leaves of her own free will.

A version from 1740 appears in Allan Ramsay’s Tea-Table Miscellany, which included the ballad The Gypsy Johnny Faa. Many printed versions after this appear to copy Ramsay, including 19th century broadside versions.

Writer Nick Tosches, in his Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll, spends part of his first chapter examining the song’s history. The ballad, according to Tosches, retells the story of John Faa, a Scottish 17th-century gypsy outlaw, and Lady Jane Hamilton, wife of The Earl of Cassilis (identified in local tradition as John Kennedy 6^th Earl of Cassilis).

Lord Cassilis led a band of men and the gypsies – apart from one, who escaped – were caught and hanged on the ‘Dool Tree’ in 1643. Lady Jane Hamilton was imprisoned for the remainder of her life, dying in 1642. Tosches also compares the song’s narrative to the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.

However, differences between The Gypsy Loddy and The Gypsy Johnny Faa suggest that they derive from one or more earlier versions, so the song is most likely at least as old as the 17th century. 

The Scottish poet Robert Burns quoted the latter song in his Reliques of Robert Burns; consisting chiefly of original letters, poems, and critical observations on Scottish songs (1808).

Jeannie Robertson sang The Gipsy Laddies in a 1956 Riverside recording where she is accompanied by Josh MacRae on guitar. The album was titled Songs of a Scots Tinker Lady. 

Another recording in 1959 was released on her Topic album Jeannie Robertson. Hamish Henderson noted on both albums: “This classic ballad is widely known throughout the British Isles and America.

“In Scotland, the ballad is often associated with the Ayrshire house of Cassilis and is declared to be a ‘true’ ballad, although history does not bear this out. “However, the ballad tale, in which handsome gipsies beguile a noble lady by the sweetness of their singing, has naturally made it very popular with the Scots travelling folk.”

The 1961 Caedmon / 1968 Topic anthology The Child Ballads (The Folk Songs of Britain Volume 5) has a track The Gypsie Laddie that was spliced together from versions sung by Harry Cox, Jeannie Robertson and Paddy Doran.

Jean Redpath sang Gipsy Laddie in 1962 on her Elektra album Scottish Ballad Book. She noted: “There seems to be no particular historical basis for this fine ballad, although several events may separately have set the scene and provided the dramatis personae for the tale as it is told here.

“Tradition has it that one Lady Jean Hamilton wed John, 6^th Earl of Cassilis, but she was in love with Sir John Faa of Dunbar.

“While Lord Cassilis was in Westminster, Sir John, disguised as a gypsy, came to the lady, but was captured by the surprise return of her husband and hanged. Records show how common among the gypsies was the name Johnny Faa, which appears in many of the older British versions.

“From such a combination of sources the main elements of this ballad may have emerged. The many American versions vary considerably in details, and in this as in many other ballads, tend to differ from their Scottish counter­parts in two specific ways – tragic conclusions are usually resolved into happy endings, and all references to spells are omitted.”

Harry Cox sang Black-Hearted Gypsies O (or Black-Guarded?) to researcher Leslie Shephard on October 9, 1965. This recording was included in 2000 on Cox’s Topic anthology The Bonny Labouring Boy.

Shirley Collins sang a variant called Seven Yellow Gipsies on her 1967 album The Power of the True Love Knot. She noted: “With two handsome gipsies (Robin Williamson and Mike Heron of The Incredible String Band) clapping her on, the lady’s off again, with her lord in full pursuit.”

Harry Green from Tilty, Essex, England, sang The Blackguard Gypsies in 1967. This recording was released at the end of the 1980s on the Veteran label’s tape cassette Harry Green (VT135) and in 2010 on Veteran’s anthology The Fox and the Hare. A fuller version can be heard from Walter Pardon on the album A Country Life.

Martin Carthy sang Seven Yellow Gipsies on his 1969 album with Dave Swarbrick, Prince Heathen, and reissued on Martin Carthy: A Collection. He also sang it live in studio in July 2006 for the DVD Guitar Maestros.

Carthy noted on the first album: “There is a whole school of thought which seeks to show that ballads are records of historical occurrences. Possibly they are but I can’t see that it matters two hoots.

“The idea of a wife being taken by the gypsies is as old as the gypsies themselves. I have taken the liberty of filling the story out by plundering different versions.”

The folklorist A L Lloyd observed: It used to be thought that the ballad told a true story of the elopement, in the 17th century, of the young bride of the Earl of Cassilis (pronounced ‘Cassels’). It’s rubbish, as is so often the case when historical traditions get attached to ballads.

“But the ballad is a great favourite and considerably more than a hundred versions of it have been recorded in Britain, Ireland and America, to a variety of tunes.”

The great 20^th century American folksinger Woody Guthrie also recorded the song as The Gipsy Davy. Note Guthrie’s free use of spelling with the name and how in this version the cuckolded lord has become ‘the boss’.

It was late last night when the boss came home
He was asking about his lady
The only answer that he got,
She’s gone with the Gypsy Davey,
Gone with the Gypsy Dave.

Christy Moore sang The Raggle Taggle Gipsies in 1972 on his Trailer album Prosperous. He sang it in the next year on Planxty’s Polydor album Planxty.

And The Tannahill Weavers sang The Gypsy Laddie in 1976 on their Plant Life album in 1979 Are Ye Sleeping Maggie. They noted: “Rumour has it that the gypsy in this song was, in fact, a prince.”

The list goes on… and on. Dick Gaughan sang The Gipsy Laddies in 1977 on his album Kist o’ Gold. He noted on his now defunct website: “Perhaps the most common and widely distributed theme in balladry.

“This version is a collation from several other versions—I think I started out with Jeannie Robertson’s basic reading of it then over the years, as I heard verses in others which attracted me, I included them in one form or another. The guitar was tuned DAAEAE.”

Also in recent times, John Kirkpatrick and Sue Harris sang The Gipsy Laddie in 1977 on their Topic album, Shred and Patches. And Nic Jones sang Seven Yellow Gypsies in a BBC Folk on 2 session recorded on March 1, 1981. Like Shirley Collins’ version, this one is based on Paddy Doran’s.

Ray Fisher sang The Gipsy Laddies in 1991 on her Saydisc CD Traditional Songs of Scotland. She said: “Another song from the extensive repertoire of Jeannie Robertson from Aberdeen.

“The ballad of the Wraggle, Taggle Gipsies (also known as Seven Yellow Gipsies) has long been a favourite within the folklore of Scotland and England due to the widely held belief that the gipsies could cast spells on people and persuade even ladies of high degree to abandon their fine lifestyles and throw in their lot with the gipsies.

“It was thought inconceivable that such ladies went of their own free will, thus the perpetuation of the myth that the gipsies cast their ‘glamourie ower’ innocent folk.” The tune of this ballad is also known as Lady Cassilis’ Lilt.

Sandra and Nancy Kerr sang Seven Yellow Gypsies in 1996 on their Fellside CD Neat and Complete. They noted: A great favourite with travellers, this version was collected in Dublin from a man called John Riley.

“Sandra once sang this in a session when there was an audible gasp at the (then) shocking last verse about being in bed ‘with seven yellow gypsies’”.

The source of an American version of The Gypsy Laddie (Child 200) was Lily Bell Dietrick, of Morganstown, West Virginia. In 1949, George Korson printed it in his Pennsylvania Songs and Legends (John Hopkins, Philadelphia).

In some versions of the ballad the vengeful, cuckolded lord wreaks his revenge by hanging several of the gypsy gang. Ballad scholar Francis James Child suggests that the hanging of ‘Captain’ Johnnie Faa and seven gypsy companions in 1624, for ignoring the expulsion orders intended to drive them out of Scotland, may have given rise to the ballad.

Finally, yet another version of the story of the lady and her gypsy lover came from 80-year-old agricultural labourer Shadrach ‘Shepherd’ Hayden of Bampton, Oxfordshire, England, recorded by folklorist Cecil Sharp on August 21, 1909.

‘Jinky’ or ‘Jingy’ Wells, the noted Bampton fiddler, suggested to Sharp that he find ‘Shepherd’ Hayden and listen to him sing. Sharp paid him six further visits and noted down 27 songs from him.

During the last 400 years, from its origins in the dark and misty borderlands of the British Isles, to the Appalachian Mountains, the story of a lady who chooses to live rough with the gypsies rather than stay with her rich husband retains an eternal, philosophical truth that still resonates today.

For after all, it’s a subtle way for a country or gypsy singer to say: “We’re as good, if not better, than you are”.

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[headline image: AI generated, prompted by Angel Romero]