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Sheath And Knife

from More Bad News .​.​. by Broadside Electric

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about

Can you people stand one more Child ballad? A friend suggested that this ballad outscores "Babylon" on the Disgust-O-Meter (I'm paraphrasing), so of course we had to work up our own version. While the body count is relatively low, there are extenuating circumstances which push this one over the top. A son and daughter find themselves in a jam, and they choose the ugly way out. Later, the King and his son struggle over some of the finer points of pre-Freudian symbolism.

We took our version of the lyric from Child No. 16. The melody is from an anonymous 16th century French madrigal, which we'd had on the back burner for a while, pending a bright idea. The tune at the end is a dance from Dospat, Bulgaria.

lyrics

It is talked the world all over,
The king's daughter goes with child to her brother.
Go down to the broom no more.

He's brought his sister to the deer park,
Brought his bow and arrows fast to his back.
Go down …

She said: "When you hear me loudly cry,
Shoot your arrow and there let me lie."

"And when you see I am lying dead,
Bury me with a turf at my head."

Now when he heard his sister cry
His silver arrow he did let fly.

He's dug a grave that was long and deep,
And buried his sister with her babe at her feet.

When he came to his father's hall
There were music and minstrels and dancing and all.

"Son, oh son, what makes you so sad?
At such a meeting you might be glad."

"Father, oh father, I've lost a knife
I loved as dear as I loved my life."

"And I have lost a finer thing,
I lost the sheath that the knife was in."

"Hold your tongue and make no din.
I'll buy you a sheath and a knife therein."

"All the ships e'er sailed the sea
Won't bring such sheath and a knife to me."

credits

from More Bad News .​.​., released June 18, 1996
(words trad./melody anon.)

with Dospatsko Horo (trad.)

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Broadside Electric Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Broadside Electric is a five-piece electric folk band from Philadelphia, PA (US). They have earned a reputation for thoroughly original arrangements and painstaking research into traditional English, Celtic and Eastern European music. Broadside Electric has been at turns called “Pennsylvania’s answer to Steeleye Span” and “folk music’s answer to death metal.” ... more

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