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A. L. Lloyd and Reynardine: authenticity and authorship in the afterlife of a British broadside ballad
Folklore, Dec, 2004 by Stephen D. Winick
In the summer of 1904, when I was on a holiday in Donegal, an old woman of Kilmacrenan sang me what was evidently a fragment of this ballad. She was nearly eighty years of age, and could remember only four lines: If by chance you look for me, Perhaps you'll not me find, For I'll be in my castle: Enquire for Reynardine (Hughes 1908, 33).
Hughes further recounted the old woman's claim that Reynardine was "a faery in Ireland who turns into the shape of a fox."
Inspired by his friend's tale of fairies, Campbell expanded on the fragment in The Mountainy Singer, a book of original poetry published in 1909. His version of "Reynardine" contains Hughes's original fragment plus two new stanzas:
Sun and dark he courted me-- His eyes were red as wine: He took me for his leman, Did my sweet Reynardine. Sun and dark the gay horn blows, The beagles run like wind: They know not where he harbours, The fairy Reynardine (Campbell [MacCathmhaoil] 1909, 11).
Here is the origin of the "sun and dark" formula in the revival "Reynardine." But the story does not end there. Hughes, in turn, remade Campbell's version of the song. His own 1909 work, Irish Country Songs, includes his original fragment plus one additional verse:
Sun and dark I followed him, His eyes did brightly shine; He took me o'er the mountains, Did my sweet Reynardine (Hughes 1909, vol. 1, 4-6).
Hughes had stated explicitly the previous year that his source knew only four lines of the song. DeNatale concludes that the stanza came from Campbell, a friend and correspondent of Hughes. DeNatale has also recognised the obvious similarity between Hughes's second verse and the final verse of the revival versions, such as the one by the group Fairport Convention quoted at the outset of the present article:
Sun and dark she followed him, His teeth did brightly shine, And he led her over the mountains, Did that sly, bold Reynardine (Fairport Convention 1969).
How did the "sun and dark" stanza get into the revival version? DeNatale speculates that on the strength of Hughes's book, it "entered oral circulation, eventually emerging as Tom Cook's version" (DeNatale 1980, 45).
As I will show, this is scarcely credible given the aforementioned stanzas from Hughes and Campbell. What DeNatale's analysis misses is that there is another typical revival verse, not in any pre-revival version of "Reynardine," that also owes a debt to these stanzas, namely:
Her hair was black, her eyes were blue, Her lips as red as wine, And he smiled to gaze upon her Did that sly, bold Reynardine (Fairport Convention 1969).
Clearly, this is indebted to Campbell's quatrain:
Sun and dark he courted me-- His eyes were red as wine: He took me for his leman, Did my sweet Reynardine (Campbell [MacCathmhaoil] 1909, 11).
The relation of the two descriptions is evident in the line "his eyes were red as wine": this was simply changed and expanded to "her eyes were blue, her lips as red as wine." The revival version, therefore, appears to be derived from this stanza.
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