page_title: Child Ballads
section_title: Modern recordings
hierarchical_section_title: Child Ballads / Modern recordings
caption_attribution_description: English: From Thomas the Rhymer (retold by Mary MacGregor, 1908), originally captioned "Under the Eildon tree Thomas met the lady." The "lady" here is Queen of Elfland.
context_page_description: The Child Ballads are 305 traditional ballads from England and Scotland, and their American variants, anthologized by Francis James Child during the second half of the 19th century. Their lyrics and Child's studies of them were published as The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. The tunes of most of the ballads were collected and published by Bertrand Harris Bronson in and around the 1960s.
context_section_description: Many Child Ballads have subsequently appeared in contemporary music recordings. Burl Ives's 1949 album, The Return of the Wayfaring Stranger, for example, includes two: "Lord Randall" and "The Divil and the Farmer".
  In 1956 four albums (consisting of eight LPs) of 72 Child Ballads sung by Ewan MacColl and A.L. Lloyd were released: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Vols. 1–4.
  In 1960 John Jacob Niles published The Ballad Book of John Jacob Niles, in which he connects folk songs which he collected throughout the southern United States and Appalachia in the early 20th century to the Child Ballads. Many of the songs he published were revived in the Folk music revival, for example "The Riddle Song" ("I gave my love a Cherry"), which he connects with Child No. 1, "Riddles Wisely Expounded".
  Joan Baez sang ten Child ballads distributed among her first five albums, the liner notes of which identified them as such.
  British folk rock groups such as Fairport Convention, Pentangle and Steeleye Span drew heavily on the Child Ballads in their repertoires, and many other recording artists have recorded individual ballads. Harry Smith included a number of them into his Anthology of American Folk Music.
  In 2003 English folk singer June Tabor recorded the album An Echo of Hooves consisting entirely of Child ballads (210, 212, 161, 195, 191, 106, 74, 215, 88, 20, 58).
  Child ballad 95, The Maid Freed from the Gallows has appeared in several recordings of blues and rock bands, notably by Lead Belly as "Gallis Pole" and on the album Led Zeppelin III under the name "Gallows Pole."
  Child ballads also occasionally occur in the work of musical groups not usually associated with folk material, such as Ween's recording of "The Unquiet Grave" (Child 78) under the title "Cold Blows the Wind" and versions of "Barbara Allen" (Child 84) recorded by the Everly Brothers, Art Garfunkel, and (on the soundtrack of the 2004 film A Love Song for Bobby Long) John Travolta. In 2009, Fleet Foxes included "The Fause Knight Upon the Road" as the b-side to the 7" release of "Mykonos" (as "False Knight on the Road"). In 2013 US singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer released Child Ballads comprising seven songs from the Francis James Child collection.
  Child Ballads are also referenced heavily in James A. Michener's novel The Drifters.
caption: Illustration by Katharine Cameron of a retelling of the story of Child Ballad 37, Thomas Rymer and Queen of Elfland
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