We’ve been featuring this past couple of months, Allen on the classic Scottish and English anonymous lyric ballads. We’ll continue with just a few more. This transcript is taken (continuing) from his June 1 1980 class at Naropa University (then the Naropa Institute)
The Duke of Grafton & Johnie Cock [2022 – audio of these two ballads no longer available]
AG: “The Duke of Grafton“.This is another.. This is a rhythmic thing in “The Ballad of the Duke of Grafton“. And (there’s) also a very mighty image in it about the death of the Duke of Grafton, bringing his body to the church to bury – “They brought him to Portsmouth his fame to make known/And from thence to fair London, so near to the Crown/They pull’d out his bowels and they stretch’d forth his feet/They imbalmed his body with spices so sweet/So black was their mourning, so white was their bands/So yellow were the flambés they carried in their hands/The drums they did rattle, the trumpets sweetly sound/While the muskets and cannons did thunder all around – “In Westminster-Abbey, ’tis now called by name,/There the great Duke of Grafton does lie in great fame./In Westminster-Abbey, he lies in cold clay/Where the royal Queen Mary went weeping away.” – I like that – ” They pull’d out his bowels and they stretch’d forth his feet/They imbalmed his body with spices so sweet” – – “They pull’d out his bowels” – That’s a good ballad, strong ballad, line.
[“And the coat he wore upon his back/Was of the Lincoln twine”]
Then there is..oh, a very weird thing that comes from this time in a ballad called “Johnie Cock “Johnnie o’ Breadislee”] (it’s) a funny reference to America, which might turn us on to how to deal with contemporary imagery – “His coat it was of light Lincoln/ And his breeches of (the same/His shoes (were) of the American leather/And gold buckles tying them” – (So whatever that is? – I guess, fifteenth?, sixteenth-century?) – “His coat it was of light Lincoln/ And his breeches of the same/His shoes of the American leather/ And gold buckles tying them” – So, that must have been a new element to have to… and very modern, and people must have objected – “Why, you”ve got this weird American leather in there”, like, you know, (like) McDonald’s hamburgers ! – but it sounds a bit like Macdonalds hamburgers already! – “His shoes were of the American leather” – but you could… but, anyway, this is classic, (this) “American leather” is classic in “Johnny Cock”, the Ballad of Johnny Cock”)
[Audio for the above can be heard here, beginning at approximately forty-seven-and-a-half minutes in and continuing to approximately fifty-and-a-quarter minutes in]