Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England — Reading Companion

A Battle with a Beast: The Felon Sewe

The longest excerpt in the collection is 'The Felon Sewe of Rokeby,' a poem that describes a fierce combat between Friar Middleton and his brethren and a savage sow. The language is deliberately archaic, even for 1857: words like 'warlo' (warlock), 'grizely,' and 'brayded' (brandished) evoke a medieval register. The sow is no ordinary animal—she is called a 'fiende' and a 'warlo,' and her ferocity is such that the friars are 'faine to flee awaye.' The poem is structured in two 'fittes' (cantos), with a narrative that includes sealed bonds, a warden who hires champions, and a climax where Gilbert Griffin sonne and a bastard son of Spaine confront the beast. The sow bites through armor and breaks a sword, but is eventually subdued and carried to Richmond in panniers. The poem ends with the friars singing 'Te Deum,' thanking God and Saint Francis for victory without loss of life.

Oral Roots and Editorial Framing

Bell and Dixon’s editorial apparatus emphasizes the oral and manuscript origins of the texts. The title page states the poems were 'taken down from oral recitation and transcribed from private manuscripts, rare broadsides and scarce publications.' This framing positions the collection as salvage ethnography, preserving a vanishing peasant culture. The inclusion of multiple versions of songs—such as two 'Barley-mow Song' variants from different counties—highlights regional variation. The editors do not modernize spelling or syntax, retaining forms like 'scho' for 'she' and 'thayme' for 'them,' which gives the texts a rough, authentic texture. The contents list shows a deliberate mix of genres: moralizing poems like 'The Vanities of Life' sit alongside bawdy ballads like 'The Crafty Lover; or, the Lawyer Outwitted,' suggesting the editors aimed for a comprehensive portrait of peasant expression.

Recurring Motifs: Work, Death, and the Supernatural

Several pieces in the collection share thematic preoccupations. Work songs like 'The Painful Plough' and 'The Useful Plow' celebrate agricultural labor, while 'God Speed the Plow, and Bless the Corn-mow' explicitly invokes divine favor for farming. Death appears as a personified figure in 'A Dialogue betwixt an Exciseman and Death' and 'The Messenger of Mortality,' where it is treated with grim humor. The supernatural is not limited to the Felon Sewe: 'The Midnight Messenger' and 'The Outlandish Knight' involve ghostly or otherworldly elements. These recurring motifs—labor, mortality, and the uncanny—suggest a worldview shaped by the rhythms of rural life and the precariousness of existence. The collection thus offers not just entertainment but a record of the values and fears of the English peasantry.

Readers approaching this collection should attend to the editorial choices that shape the text: the retention of archaic spellings, the inclusion of multiple variants, and the mix of genres. The poems reward close reading for their linguistic quirks and narrative surprises, such as the sudden shift from piety to violence in 'The Felon Sewe.' Comparing the songs across regions can reveal how oral traditions adapted to local contexts. This is not a polished literary anthology but a documentary record of voices that were, in 1857, already fading from memory.

That old book of peasant songs stayed with me oddly—that fierce sow of Rokeby, so raw and strange. It made me think how these voices carry on, wild and unpolished. A similar feeling lingers in Robin Hood A collection of all the ancient poems, songs, and ballads, now extant, relative to that celebrated English outlaw. To which are prefixed historical anecdotes — Inside the Classic, like hearing an old friend’s voice through leaves.