The Girl Who Got Up the Tree [The Robber Bridegroom]

Original Track ID

SA1957.8.B5

Original Tape ID

SA1957.008

Summary

Martha Reid describes a song in which a young woman arranges to meet her sweetheart under a tree. As night falls, the woman decides to climb the tree and wait. Instead of her lone lover, two figures pass by the tree [one of whom is the devil?], and the girl stays quiet for fear. After they have passed, she runs home to tell her mother. The next day, her sweetheart asks why she did not meet him, and she explains what happened.

The contributor does not recall any of the words.

Item Notes

This is actually a cante-fable (a tale with both spoken and sung sections) widespread in the English-speaking world; in England and the USA it is often known as 'One Moonlight Night', 'Mr Fox', 'The Oxford Student', or 'The Girl Who Got Up the Tree', among other names. It is generally grouped together under Aarne-Thompson tale type 955 - 'The Robber Bridegroom', and includes the motif G.661.1 [Ogre’s secret overheard from tree]. The sung portion of the cante-fable is often recalled as a fragment in itself, devoid of the full context of the story, and is accordingly given its own Roud number.

See:

Frank Kidson, Kate Thompson, 'Miscellaneous' in Journal of the Folk-Song Society, Vol. 2, No. 9 (1906), pp. 297-299
Frank Kidson, Alfred Moffat, 'English Peasant Songs with Their Traditional Airs', 1929
Katherine Briggs, 'British Folk-Tales and Legends: A Sampler' (London: Routledge, 1977), pp. 260-61
Katherine Briggs, 'A Dictionary of British Folk-Tales' (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1970), vol. A2 pp.360, 394-401, 448-50, vol. B2 pp. 103-4
James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps, 'Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales: A Sequel to the Nursery Rhymes of England' (London: John Russell Smith, 1849), pp. 49-50

Recording Location

Language

English

Genre

Song

Collection

SoSS

Classification

AT955 R17769

Source Type

Reel to reel

Audio Quality

Good