The White Fisher is
Child ballad
The Child Ballads are List of the Child Ballads, 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 ...
264, and
number 3888 in the
Roud Folk Song Index
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. Roud's Index is a combination of the Broadsid ...
.
Synopsis
A man tells his wife that they have been married only one month and asks why the child is
quickening
In pregnancy terms, quickening is the moment in pregnancy when the pregnant woman starts to feel the fetus's movement in the uterus. It was believed that the quickening marked the moment that a soul entered the fetus, termed ensoulment.
Medical ...
. The woman blames her pregnancy on a priest, or on a kitchen boy. When she gives birth, she tells her husband to toss the baby in the sea to drown, or, in some variants to sink or swim but not return to her without a white fish. Instead, he takes the baby to his mother and claims that he had a sweetheart over the sea, and this is his child. The wife grieves and refuses a drink from him, because having drowned her baby, he would poison her. He tells her that his mother has the child. In some variants, he tells her that she may see him as long as she does not call the child hers.
Traditional Recordings
The song has been recorded twice from traditional singers; both were recorded in
Aberdeenshire
Aberdeenshire (; ) is one of the 32 Subdivisions of Scotland#council areas of Scotland, council areas of Scotland.
It takes its name from the Shires of Scotland, historic county of Aberdeenshire (historic), Aberdeenshire, which had substantial ...
,
Scotland
Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...
by
James Madison Carpenter
James Madison Carpenter, born in 1888 in Blacklands, Mississippi, near Booneville, in Prentiss County, was a Methodist minister and scholar of American and British folklore. He received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from the ...
in the early 1930s and can be heard on the
Vaughan Williams Memorial Library
The Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (VWML) is the library and archive of the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS), located in the society's London headquarters, Cecil Sharp House. It is a multi-media library comprising books, periodi ...
website: one is sung by
Bell Duncan of
Forgue and the other by Elizabeth Robb of
Strichen
Strichen is a village in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It sits on the A981, connecting it to New Deer to the southwest and Fraserburgh to the north-northeast, and the B9093, connecting it to New Pitsligo about due west. The village got its nam ...
.
See also
*
Gil Brenton
References
External links
''The White Fisher''
Child Ballads
Year of song unknown
Songs with unknown songwriters
{{folk-song-stub