# The Cruel Mother

"The Cruel Mother" (a.k.a. "The Greenwood Side" or "Greenwood Sidey") (Roud 9, Child 20) is a murder ballad originating in England that has since become popular throughout the wider English-speaking world.
According to Roud and Bishop
    Widely collected in Britain and Ireland, and in North America, 'The Cruel Mother' has clearly struck a chord with singers over a number of generations. We will never know quite why, of course, but in performance the combination of the matter-of-fact handling of a difficult subject and the repeated rhythmic refrain often creates a stark and hypnotic tale, which is extremely effective.

## Synopsis

A woman gives birth to one or two illegitimate children (usually sons) in the woods, kills them, and buries them. On her return trip home, she sees a child, or children, playing, and says that if they were hers, she would dress them in various fine garments and otherwise take care of them. The children tell her that when they were hers, she would not dress them so but murdered them. Frequently they say she will be damned for it.
Some variants open with the account that she has fallen in love with her father's clerk.

## Variants

This ballad exists in a number of variants, in some of which there are verses where the dead children tell the mother she will suffer a number of penances each lasting seven years, e.g. "Seven years to ring a bell / And seven years porter in hell". Those verses properly belong in "The Maid and the Palmer" (Child ballad 21). Variants of "The Cruel Mother" include "Carlisle Hall", "The Rose o Malinde", "Fine Flowers in the Valley", "The Minister's Daughter of New York", and "The Lady From Lee", among others. "Fine Flowers of the Valley" is a Scottish variant. Weela Weela Walya is an Irish schoolyard version. A closely related German ballad exists in many variants: a child comes to a woman's wedding to announce himself her child and that she had murdered three children, the woman says the Devil can carry her off if it is true, and the Devil appears to do so.
Ballad scholar Hyder Rollins listed a broadside print dated 1638, and a fairly complete version was published in London in broadside ballad format as "The Duke's Daughter's Cruelty: Or the Wonderful Apparition of two Infants whom she Murther'd and Buried in a Forrest, for to hide her Shame" sometime between 1684 and 1695.
This ballad was one of 25 traditional works included in Ballads Weird and Wonderful (1912) and illustrated by Vernon Hill.

## Recordings

| Album/Single | Performer | Year | Variant | Notes |
| False True Lovers | Shirley Collins | 1959 | The Cruel Mother | |
| Dear Companion: Bonnie Dobson | Bonnie Dobson | 1960 | The Cruel Mother | |
| The Folk Songs of Britain, Vol. IV: The Child Ballads 1 | Thomas Moran | 1961 | The Cruel Mother | Recorded 1954. Although the refrain of this version is that of "The Cruel Mother", the actual verses belong to a different song, Child Ballad no. 21, "The Maid and the Palmer" (aka "The Well Below The Valley") |
| Four Strong Winds | Ian & Sylvia | 1964 | The Greenwood Side | |
| The Judy Collins Concert | Judy Collins | 1964 | The Cruel Mother | |
| The Long Harvest, Vol. 1 | Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger | 1967 | see note | Album contains three versions of The Cruel Mother, one variant called "Down By the Greenwood Sidey-O", and another called "The Lady From Lee". |
| Ballads | Hedy West | 1967 | The Cruel Mother | |
| Joan | Joan Baez | 1967 | The Greenwood Side | |
| A Beacon from Mars | Kaleidoscope | 1968 | The Greenwood Sidee | |
| The Sweet Primroses | Shirley Collins | 1970 | The Cruel Mother | |
| Landfall | Martin Carthy | 1972 | The Cruel Mother | |
| The Voice of the People Vol. 3 | Lizzie Higgins | 1988 | The Cruel Mother | Recorded 1975 |
| Tempted and tried | Steeleye Span | 1989 | The Cruel Mother | |
| Duše mé lásky | Asonance | 1994 | Krutá matka | Czech translation |
| Legacy | Old Blind Dogs | 1995 | The Greenwood Side | The track is titled "The Rose and the Lindsey O'." |
| Ye Shine Whar Ye Stan! | Jock Duncan | 1996 | The Cruel Mother | |
| Live at Newport | Ian & Sylvia | 1996 | The Greenwood Side | Recorded live at the Newport Folk Festival, 1963. |
| Flesh and Blood | Maddy Prior | 1997 | The Cruel Mother | |
| Songs Of Experience | Cindy Mangsen | 1998 | The Cruel Mother | |
| Shantalla | Shantalla | 2000 | Fine flowers in the valley | |
| Greenwood Side | Lothlorien | 2000 | Greenwood Side | |
| A Day Like Today | Emily Smith | 2002 | The Cruel Mother | |
| No Earthly Man | Alasdair Roberts | 2005 | The Cruel Mother | |
| Wolverley Summer of Love 2007 | Stuart Estel | 2007 | The Cruel Mother | |
| To The Ground | Kerfuffle | 2006 | Down By The Greenwood Side | |
| In The Shadow of Mountains | Bella Hardy | 2009 | Cruel Mother | Miss Hardy omits 'The' from the title but it is nonetheless a variant of the folk song. |
| Lady Diamond | Bryony Griffith & Will Hampson | 2011 | The Lady of York | From the singing of Jim Eldon. |
| Born to wonder EP | Louise Jordan | 2011 | The Cruel Mother | |
| Here's to those we could not save | The Imaginary Suitcase | 2012 | Fine flowers in the valley | |
| Old Light: Songs from my Childhood & Other Gone Worlds | Rayna Gellert | 2012 | Cruel Mother | |
| Revival | Bellowhead | 2014 | Greenwood Side | |
| Fiona Hunter | Fiona Hunter | 2014 | The Cruel Mother | |
| Twice Told Tales | 10,000 Maniacs | 2015 | Greenwood Sidey | |
| Anna & Elizabeth | Anna & Elizabeth | 2015 | Greenwood Sidey | |
| Murmurs | Nancy Kerr, Martin Simpson and Andy Cutting | 2015 | Cruel Mother | |
| Here in the Deep | Dave Heumann | 2016 | Greenwood Side | |
| CYRM | ØXN | 2023 | Cruel Mother | |