> Waterson:Carthy > Songs > The Lion's Den

The Lion's Den / The Fan / The Lady of Carlisle

[ Roud 396 ; Laws O25 ; Ballad Index LO25 ; trad.]

Eddie Butcher, an Irish farmer from Masgilligan, Co Derry, sang this song as The Fan on his 1976 Leader Rrcords album, Shamrock Rose & Thistle and as The Lion's Den on his 1976 Free Reed album, I Once Was a Daysman. The latter album's liner notes commented:

This was another of the more than 700 songs Sam Henry collected in North Ulster and published week by week between 1924 and 1938 in The Northern Constitution of Coleraine, complete with brief notes and tonic sol-fa notation. The song seems to have been widespread in Ulster at one time and has also been well known in Scotland.

Cecil Sharp noted the earliest version of the story in a 17th century French autobiography, the events supposed to have actually happened at the court of François I. Sharp collected versions of the ballad in Somerset and in the Appalachians and it has also turned up widely along the north-eastern seabord of the USA and Canada. Other titles for the song are The Fan and The Bold Lieutenant.

Keith Kendrick sang The Lion's Den with Barry Coope in 1988 on the BBC Radio Derby cassette The Derby Tup Presents and unaccompanied in 1997 on his CD Home Ground. He commented in the latter album sleeve notes:

“Frailty—thy name is woman!” Well not if the text of this song is anything to go by! Lifted from the Folksinger's Bible, Folk Songs of Britain & Ireland by Peter Kennedy.

Martin Carthy sang The Lion's Den in 1999 on Waterson:Carthy's third album Broken Ground. He commented in the album sleeve notes:

On the second Aldermaston march I met a bloke who taught me two songs. The first was a thing called Tee Roo which is The Devil and the Farmer's Wife, and the other was The Lady of Carlisle which I have loved since then but fancied singing an English version if I could find one. The Lion's Den is it, and it comes from a Somerset singer called Charles Neville who met and sang several songs for Cecil Sharp a few years before the first world war. He sang it in five four time and in the major key but with his posthumous permission (hoho) I sing it in free time and in the minor key. Apart from anything else it contains an interesting, not to mention downright mysterious (in an older sense of that word) notion of what constitutes Royalty, and it sure as hell ain't defined in blood terms.

Lyrics

Waterson:Carthy sing The Lion's Den

Down in St James's there lived a lady
And she was a beauty fine and gay;
She was determined to live a lady,
No man on earth could marry she

Unless it be a man of honour
A man of honour and high degree,
And there there come two loving brothers
This fair young lady for to see.

And the first of them had a captain's commission,
Belonging to our colonel's corps,
And the other he was a bold lieutenant
On board of the Tiger man of war.

She ordered coachmen for to get ready,
All to the tower for to drive shem
And there she'd spent one single hour
The lions and the tigers for to see.

Lions and tigers made such a warning,
All in the den she threw her fan,
Saying, “Which of you to gain a lady
Will go return my fan again.”

And then up spoke the faint-hearted captain,
“Lady, your offer I can't approve.
All in that den that great den of danger
I never will venture my life for none.”

And then up spoke the poor lieutenant,
His voice did ring so loud and clear,
”All in that den that great den of danger
My life I will venture for you my dear.”

So in that den he straightily entered,
Lions and tigers both fierce and grim;
But he'd never seen any hint of danger
But he looked so fierce at them again.

And there they saw that his blood was royal
Down at his feet they all did lie.
And when he stood and the fan he gathered
And so he brought him safe away.

Acknowledgements

The first version of “this” song Garry heard was performed by Ian (Tyson) and Sylvia, in the 1960s, as Down in Carlisle, on an LP which he suppose was called Ian and Sylvia (but might well have been called Four Strong Winds, because it included Tom Paxton's Four Strong Winds).
Many thanks to Steve Willis for corrections