>In answer to J. J. Dias Marques' question about 'Alonzo the Brave', there is
>an analogue in English oral tradition, often called 'The Fair Maid of
>Clifton'. It was certainly widely popular in England as a broadside ballad, a
>recitation and a folk tale. An oral set was 'dictated by a schoolmistress'
>in Nottingham around 1835. It is printed in Katharine M. Briggs, Dictionary of
>British Folk-Tales in the English Language Part B Folk Legends, Vol. 1, 449-50
>>>(Routledge 1970-1). It is rather literary in style, but I don't have 'The
>>>Monk' with me to compare the versions. A 'rich and comely maid' promises to
>>>marry a young man Bateman, and they secretly exchange a token, a broken
>>ring. Then she meets a wealthy man, Germain, and agrees to marry him.
>Bateman
>>>threatens revenge and hangs himself before her door on her wedding day. His
>>>attempts to haunt her are at first frustrated by the protection given by her
>>>unborn child, but the first night after the birth she is carried away, 'to
>>>what place no creature knew, nor to this day can tell.'
>The Fair Maid is not based on Monk Lewis but on a seventeenth century
>>>broadside ballad 'A Godly Warning for all Maidens . . . To the Tune of, The
>Ladis (sic) Fall'. A copy in the Pepys
>>>collection in Cambridge (reprinted in W. G. Day's edition of the Pepys
>>>ballads, 1987: 1. 504) has a good woodcut of the devil carrying the
>>>unfortunate lady away to hell.
>>>The broadside was evidently very popular. It was reprinted and published in
>>>the eighteenth century as a prose chapbook, 'Bateman's Tragedy'. This story
>is curiously similar to the very popular Scottish and English non-supernatural
>ballad 'Young Beichan' or 'Bateman' in the Child collection (no. 53), but is
>not the same.
>
>I would be glad of any evidence that the Fair Maid of Clifton was ever sung.
>
>Gerald Porter
So would I, and also to know if it became really traditional and not just
popular, I mean: are there different versions of it, or is the text allways
the same?
J. J. D. Marques
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