Lady Diamond is

Child ballad 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 '' ...

269 (

Roud The Roud Folk Song Index is a database of around 250,000 references to nearly 25,000 songs collected from oral tradition in the English language from all over the world. It is compiled by Steve Roud (born 1949), a former librarian in the London ...

112), existing in several variants. The story is derived from that of Ghismonda and Guiscardo from ''

The Decameron ''The Decameron'' (; it, label= Italian, Decameron or ''Decamerone'' ), subtitled ''Prince Galehaut'' (Old it, Prencipe Galeotto, links=no ) and sometimes nicknamed ''l'Umana commedia'' ("the Human comedy", as it was Boccaccio that dubbed Da ...

'' of

Giovanni Boccaccio Giovanni Boccaccio (, , ; 16 June 1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was som ...

Synopsis

A great king has a daughter (Lady Diamond, Daisy, Dysmal, or Dysie), who falls in love with his kitchen boy. She becomes pregnant. Her father demands to know the boy, and she tells him. He has the kitchen boy secretly murdered, but then, in most variants, brings his heart to his daughter. She dies. In most variants, the king laments the deaths.

Recordings

Steeleye Span Steeleye Span are a British folk rock band formed in 1969 in England by Fairport Convention bass player Ashley Hutchings and established London folk club duo Tim Hart and Maddy Prior. The band were part of the 1970s British folk revival, and we ...

recorded a version on their 1986 album ''

Back in Line ''Back in Line'' is the twelfth studio album by British folk rock band Steeleye Span. The album was released in 1986, after a hiatus of almost 6 years. It is their first album without founding member Tim Hart, who quit the music business ent ...

''. The 2011 debut album by Bryony Griffith & Will Hampson of The Demon Barbers is entitled ''Lady Diamond'' and features a recording of the ballad. In 1939, Alan Lomax recorded Aunt Molly Jackson singing “Lady Nancy,” a song she claimed to have written after reading the story in a book of English and Scottish Kings. Such outlandish claims were common with Jackson, although this is quite possibly the only known American version of Lady Diamond to be collected. Where and how she learned it remains a mystery. A corresponding Scandinavian ballad ( TSB D 390) exists in Danish ("Hertug Frydenborg",

DgF ''Danmarks gamle Folkeviser'' is a collection of (in principle) all known texts and recordings of the old Danish popular ballads. It drew both on early modern manuscripts, such as Karen Brahes Folio, and much more recent folk-song collecting activi ...

305), Swedish ("Hertig Fröjdenborg och fröken Adelin", SMB 172), and (fragmentary) Norwegian ("Frydenborg og Adelin") variants.

References

Child Ballads {{Folk-song-stub