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Scarborough Fair / The Elfin Knight

[Child #2; trad. arr. Martin Carthy]

Scarborough Fair was sung by Martin Carthy in 1965 on his first album Martin Carthy and included in the compilations The Big Folk, Shades of Folk, and Electric Muse: The Story of Folk into Rock, and in 1999 on Martin Carthy: A Collection. He sings a slightly different version on Wood Wilson Carthy, and yet another together with Bert Jansch on Acoustic Routes under the title The Elfin Knight. These two versions were both included as starting and closing track of the 4CD anthology The Carthy Chronicles.

Paul Simon had a big hit with this song in Martin Carthy's arrangement as title track of his album Parsley Sage Rosemary and Thyme. Free Reed's website has a link to streaming audio of a Paul Simon and Martin Carthy duet.

Martin Carthy commented in his first album's sleeve notes:

Folklorists and students of plant mythology are well aware that certain herbs were held to have magical significance - that they were used by sorcerers in their spells and conversely as counter-spells by those that wished to outwit them. The herbs mentioned in the refrain of Scarborough Fair (parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme) are all known to have been closely associated with death and also as charms against the evil eye. The characters in the Elfin Knight (of which Scarboro' Fair is a version) are a demon and a maid. The demon sets impossible tasks and on the maid's replies depends whether she will fall into his clutches or not. Child believed that elf to be an interloper from another ballad (Lady Isobel and the Elf Knight) and that he should rightly be mortal, but as Ann Gilchrist points out "why the use of the herb refrain except as an indication of something more than mortal combat?" Sir Walter Scott in his notes to Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border recalled hearing a ballad of “a fiend ... paying his addresses to a maid but being disconcerted by the holy herbs she wore in her bosom” and Lucy Broadwood goes as far as to suggest that the refrain might be the survival of an incantation against such a suitor.

Shirley Collins sang Scarborough Fair unaccompanied on her second album, False True Lovers. She commented in the album's sleeve notes:

Derived by MacColl from Cecil Sharp's English Folk Songs, [this] is a fragment of an extremely ancient ballad (Child No. 2, The Elfin Knight), common in all areas of Britain and North America. In the original song a girl hears the far-off blast of the elfin's knight horn and wishes he were in her bedroom. He straightaway appears, but will not consent to be her lover until she answers a series of riddles. This trait of test-by-riddle is a heritage from remote antiquity. The survival of this ancient piece of folklore is assured by the fact that all the couplets in this song contain gentle, but evocative erotic symbols.

Compare to this Nancy Kerr singing Whittingham Fair with some more verses on her and Eliza Carthy's eponymous album Eliza Carthy & Nancy Kerr. There is also the related title An Acre of Land sung by John Kirkpatrick on Brass Monkey's album Sound and Rumour. And Jim Copper recorded An Acre of Land for the BBC in 1952.

Lyrics

Martin Carthy sings	Shirley Collins sings
Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, Remember me to one who lives there, For once she was a true love of mine.	Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, Remember me to one who lives there, For once he was a true love of mine.
Tell her to make me a cambric shirt, Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, Without no seam nor needlework, And then she'll be a true love of mine.	Tell him to make me a cambric shirt, Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, Without a seam or needlework, And he shall be a true love of mine. Tell him to wash it in yonder dry well, Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, Where water ne'er sprang nor drop of rain fell, And he shall be a true love of mine. Tell him to hang it on yonder thorn, Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, Which never bore blossom since Adam was born, And he shall be a true love of mine.
Tell her to find me an acre of land, Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, Between the salt water and the sea strand, And then she'll be a true love of mine.	Oh can you find me an acre of land, Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, Between the sea foam and the sea sand, And you shall be a true love of mine.
Tell her to plough it with a lamb's horn, Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, And to sow it all o'er with one peppercorn, And then she'll be a true love of mine. Tell her to reap it with a sickle of leather, Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, And to thrash it all out with a bunch of heather, And then she'll be a true love of mine. Are you going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, Remember me to one who lives there, For once she was a true love of mine.

Acknowledgements

Transcribed from the singing of Martin Carthy by Garry Gillard.