An Annotated Bibliography of The Ballad of Tam Lin
Tyra Twomey
Masters Program
Chronological Bibliography, with Subdivisions for Undated Materials
To search a particular time period, follow one of these links:
To browse the chronological history of the ballad's appearance in writing, scroll down!
Undated Manuscripts, with Cross-referencing:
The Mansfield Manuscript (xxxx): see Frank Miller 1935, E. B. Lyle 1970.
W. Motherwell's a) Manuscripts, b) Note-books (xxxx): see Child 1882-98, Fowler 1968,
Buchan 1972.
P. Buchan's two folios (xxxx): see Dixon 1845, Child 1882-98, D. Buchan 1972.
The Glenriddell Ballad Manuscript, introduced by Robert Riddell (17xx): see Scott 1801,
Child 1882-98, Montgomerie 1968.
Campbell Manuscript (xxxx): see Child 1882-98.
Hastie Manuscript (xxxx): see Lyle 1971.
(for Crawfurd Manuscript, see Crawfurd 1826-8, Lyle 1996)
Chronological Bibliography with Annotations for Reviewed Items/Online Sources:
Murray, James A. H. The Complaynt of Scotlande: vyth ane Exortatione to the Thre Estaits to be
vigilante in the Deffens of their Public veil. 1549. Early English Text Ser. 17. London: N.
Truner & Co., 1872. New York: Kraus Reprint Co., 1975.
(Murray discusses at length the problematic nature of assigning certainty to the work's authorship to Wedderburn or any other specific writer. Volume includes, with the above, "an appendix of contemporary English tracts: The Just Declaration of Henry VIII (1542), The Exhortacion of James Barrysone, Scottisheman (1547), The Epistle of the Lord Protector Somerset (1548), The Epitome of Nicholas Bodrugan alias Adams (1548). Murray is credited for re-editing the originals and adding Introduction and Glossary.) Tract collection. Lists "the tayl of the Зong Tamlane" among a page-long record of titled tales told among shepherds in the narrative section headed "Actor," on page 63, and "thom of lyn" in a similar list of dances on page 66, in the same section.
Wedderburn, Robert. The Complaynt of Scotland 1550. A. M. Steward, Ed. Edinburgh: The
Scottish Text Society, 1979.
(Stewart argues clearly for Wedderburn's authorship in his introduction, specifically in contradiction to Murray's claims, and cites his date as the publication of the work in Paris; he contends that the writing of the Complaynt began in 1549 but was not concluded until the following year.) Tract collection. Complaynt itself is the same text as Murray's, with different pagination; mention of the tale occurs on page 50 and the dance on page 52.
Kirk, Robert. The Secret Commonwealth. 1690.
[see Stewart, R. J. 1990.] (1690 is the probable dated cited for the handwritten initial circulation of the text; Stewart lists additional publications by: " Ed. by A. Lang, David Nutt, London, 1893, and Ed. by S. Sanderson, Folklore Society, Cambridge Mistletoe Series," with biographical information about Kirk, no date given.) Text, concerning the "traditions of fairies and Second Sight that were widespread among" the Gaelic-speaking parishioners of this Scottish Episcopalian minister; makes no reference to the ballad of Tam Lin, but explicates and provides parallel example of beliefs synonymous with those common to all ballad-versions.
Herd, David, Ed. Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, Heroic Ballads, etc. 1776. Edinburgh &
London: Scottish Academic Press, 1973.
("First published 1776. Revised edition 1791. New edition (containing the pieces substituted in the edition of 1791 for those omitted from the edition of 1776) 1869. This edition 1973." Editor "R" (1869) includes notes of praise from Ritson, Scott, and others, summarizes suspected editorial history, and cites Herd's collection as including "the germs for many of Burns' imperishable lyrics.") Anthology. Ballad, "'Kertonha': or, The Fairy Court" appears under the heading "Scots Songs Part First Heroic Ballads, and Fragments" on pages 159-60. Child will name this version C, citing a 1769 publication.
Ritson, Joseph. The North-Country Choirster. Durham: L. Pennington, 1802.
[Not Seen] (public record lists the title extension as "an unparalleled variety of excellent songs. Collected and published together, for general amusement, by a Bishoprick ballad-singer. [Ed. by the late Joseph Ritson, esq.]" Not found in participating library network.)
Johnson, James. The Scottish Musical Museum; Consisting of Upwards of Six Hundred Songs, with
Proper Bases for the Pianoforte. 1787-1803. Additional Notes and Illustrations William
Stenhouse. v. 5 Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, London: Thomas Cadell,
1839.
(Rebound by Indiana University; stamp on inner leaf reads 1947. Volume 5 begins with the only undated preface; prefaces to volumes 1-4 are dated 1787, 88, 90, and 92, respectively, and volume 6 is dated 1803.) Anthology. Entry number 411, "Tam Lin," includes a two-line musical score (mapped to the first stanza of the ballad and presumed to apply to all) with the first-stanza lyrics printed corresponding to the notes, and the remaining stanzas following; the wording of the ballad is that cited by Child as 39 A, but the line-breaks between stanzas in this version appear consistently every four lines, leaving two alone at the conclusion. Ballad appears on pages 423-425.
Scott, Walter, Sir. Sir Walter Scott's Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 1801. Ed. Thomas F.
Henderson. v. 2 Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902.
(First publication: "Edinburgh, Dec. 31, 1801," with dedication to "His Grace Henry, Duke of Buccleuch" of "These Tales, which in elder times have celebrated the prowess and cheered the halls of his gallant ancestors" under the title Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, by Walter Scott. Subsequent editions 1802, 1803. Re-publication with editorial additions in 1833 by J. G. Lockhart.) Critical anthology. Entry "Tale of Tamlane" (p. 300-405) consists of a heavily footnoted critical introduction, (Scott's occupying pages 300-378; editorial additions, bracketed, extend from 379-87), and including a detailed analysis of fairy lore, recorded sightings, literary allusions, and term etymology from influential cultures, as well as a comprehensive look at Scottish traditions of lore and balladry, appearances and performances of the "Tamlane" tale, an accounting of sources (recitals and Glenriddell MSS, primary), version-variation, history and geography, and, in the later pages, an analysis of the comprehensive nature of and amendments to Scott's work and that of F. J. Child, followed by a version of the ballad, occupying pages 388-405 which, according to editorial additions, was shortened after the Minstrelsy's first edition. Version contains 67 numbered verses, whereas Child's longest will be 59.
Scott, Walter, Sir. Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border: Consisting of Historical and Romantic Ballads
Collected in the Southern Counties of Scotland with a few of Modern Date founded upon Local
Tradition. Ed. Thomas Henderson. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, xxxx.
(No dates given.) Anthology. Includes brief "Preface" by editor, entirely different in text to the "Editor's Prefatory Notes" in above edition; no inclusion of Lockhart's additions. Entry "The Young Tamlane" consists of Scott's footnoted introduction of the tale, with above-mentioned elements, occupying pages 288-327, and ballad on pages 327-334. Ballad text is identical to Blackwood publication, with fewer notes added, and no verse-numbering.
Crawfurd, Andrew. Manuscript. 1826-8.
[Unpublished. See Lyle, E. B., 1996.]
Dixon, James Henry, Ed. Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads. London: The Percy
Society, 1845.
(Contained within Early Literature v. XVI-XVII-XVIII (single binding; v. XVII "Early English Poetry, Ballads, and Popular Literature of the Middle Ages: Edited from Original Manuscripts and Scarce Publications"), The Percy Society, 1846.) Anthology. Dixon's preface of June 1845 credits the folios of P. Buchan as the primary source, and makes special additional mention of the collections of Ritson, Scott, and Motherwell as originating from the direct observation of minstrels in a general discussion on the practice of ballad-hunting. Ballad entitled "Tam-a-line, the Elfin Knight" appears on pages 11-20 of v. XVII. Child will record this as version 39 G, cross-referenced with the Motherwell and Buchan manuscripts.
Child, Francis James, ed. English and Scottish Ballads. Boston: Little, Brown, &Co., Cincinnati:
Moore Wilstach, Keys, & Co., 1857-8.
[not seen] (Item not found in participating library network. See Child, 1882-98.)
"Tamlane: An Old Scottish Border Ballad." 1862. Pamphlets. Aberdeen: Lewis & James
Smith, 1832-80.
(Pamphlets printed by several sources on various paper types/sizes, collected into a single binding, with table of contents including titles and publication dates handwritten in pencil on front cover. No editor/collector credited, no pagination.) Collection. "Tamlane" is a 45-verse ballad in only 4-line stanzas; version refers to Janet's "snood," calls Tamlane's father "Randolph, Earl Moray," and alludes directly to Janet's and Tamlane's knowledge of and love for one another as children before he was taken away.
Maidment, James, Ed. A New Book of Old Ballads. Bibliotheca Curiosa (Ser.), 1885. Edmund
Goldsmid, F. R. H. S., Ed. Edinburgh: Folcraft Library Editions, 1973.
Anthology. Preface includes general explanation of sources and intentions, with a warning to the "fastidious" that some lines might shock, and is dated November 1843. Ballad printed under the title "Tom Linn," entry 16, occupying pages 40-44 with the following footnote: "The following fragment of the interesting ballad of Tom Linn or Tamlane was taken down from the recitation of an old woman-it contains numerous deviations from the copy printed in the Border Minstrelsy, (Scott's Poetical Works, Vol. ii., p. 337,) and on that account has been included in this little volume." Child will record this as version D, cross-referenced with the Motherwell and Pitcairn manuscripts.
Child, Francis James, ed. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. 1882-98. 5 Vols. New York:
Dover, 1965.
(First edition 1882-98; extended publication of several volumes over the course of several years. Prior publication of partial content in English and Scottish Ballads 1857-8.) Critical anthology. Includes thirteen collected versions of the ballad. Precedes ballad-versions A-I with detailed commentary about sources and variations, using as reference work done by Burns, Riddell, Herd, Johnson, Scott, among others, and includes reference to the mention of the tale in Murray's edition of Vedderburn's Complaint of Scotland (1549). Also includes comparison to other similar tales from other cultures, some attributed to Scott's work. Ballad's identified primary sources include: Johnson's Museum (version A, the most commonly used by those citing Child, standard label: "Child 39 A"), Glenriddell MS, Herd, Motherwell's MS, Maidment's New Book of Old Ballads, Pitcairn's MSS, Motherwell's Note-Book, Buchan's MSS, Dixon's Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, Campbell MSS, Scott's Minstrelsy, Macmath's MS, and materials of Scott's not included: from "Laidlaw" and Hugh Irving. Ballads A-I and commentary occupy pages 335-58 of Vol. 2; additional notes and versions appear on pages 504-5 of Vol. 4 and 455-9 of Vol. 5.
Bates, Katherine Lee, Ed. Ballad Book. 1890. Granger Index Reprint Series. New York:
Books for Libraries Press, 1969.
Anthology. Details general reference lists for old ballad sources and credits all prominent workers to date in the collection field, including Child, Scott, Burns, Ritson, Percy, and Johnson. Ballad occupies pages 4-11 of the section entitled "Ballads of Superstition"; version corresponds with none of Child's ballads, although it has some verses in common with several, and some with the additional verses found in his notes of 1882; no specific source is given.
Odell, George C. D. "Simile and Metaphor in the English and Scottish Ballads." Diss.
Columbia College, 1890. New York, 1892.
Doctoral Dissertation (Philosophy). Introduction cites versions used as those collected by Child, other examined sources include Percy, Ritson, Scott, and Motherwell. Uses 'young Tamlane' and 'Tam-a-line" as exemplary of "Similes and Metaphors of colour" for their milk-white steeds, Janet's being "green as grass" when pregnant, and the "red-het" iron of Tam's transformation, and of "Similes and Metaphors drawn from Man as Man..." in the line: "was fine as ony queen."
Johnson, R. Brimley. Popular British Ballads Ancient and Modern. London: J. M. Dent & Co.,
1894.
("Illustrated by W. Cubitt Cooke, in Four Volumes. Vol. 1). Anthology. Introductory elements in T. O. C. cite the source for "The Young Tam Lin" as "Johnson's Museum, p. 423," and list other names by which the ballad can be known, geographical setting information, and the decisive comment: "the humorous verses of Tommy Linn (q. v.) have no connection with this ballad." Preface credits "Dr. Johnson" and Scott as sources for "the best traditionary ballads of England and Scotland." Ballad appears on pages 220-29; text, as referenced, matches Child 39 A.
Gummere, Francis B. Old English Ballads. 1894. New York: Russel & Russel, 1967.
(First published 1894 by Gin & Company.) Anthology. "Tam Lin," version corresponding with Child 39 A, appears on pages 283-9. Notes describe the ballad as taken from Johnson's Museum, and "freely used by Scott in compounding The Young Tamlane for his Mistrelsy."
Jacobs, Joseph. More English Fairy Tales. 1894. New York: Schocken, 1968.
(Original publication by G. P. Puttnam & Sons and David Nutt, 1894. Original publication by the same of English Fairy Tales in 1889. Original illustrations by John D. Batten. Alt. publication: Dover Books for Children, 1967, Knopf, 1993, and, in the German with English parallel translation, München: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1993.) Collection of re-tellings. Illustration "Janet casts the Flaming Sword into the Well" appears as the book's frontispiece. Prose re-telling occupies pages 159-162 and includes four quoted ballad stanzas of the last words of the Queen of Elfland, the last three of which coincide with Child 39 I. In the tale itself, truncated to avoid all mention of seduction or pregnancy (if indeed the source ballad included these elements, as Child 39 I does), has Tamlane tell "Burd Janet," a beloved childhood friend who has sought him out after his disappearance, of his impending sacrifice, and her rescue of him is standard, adding the particular of their marriage only after "young Tamlane had again been sained by the holy water and made Christian once more."
1901-1950:
Tappan, Eva March. Old Ballads in Prose. 1901. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin,
1929.
(Published in 1901. Copyright 1901, 1929. Illustrated by Fanny Y. Cory.) Short story collection. Preface includes author's claim to "have not often kept [her] story within the limits of the ballad narrative...ventur[ing] to ramble over Ballad Land as freely as did the ballad-makers themselves." Despite this disclaimer, the prose re-telling of "Tamlane," on pages 123-31 is only faithless with regards to its tale of origin in leaving out all possibility of Janet's pregnancy, by compressing the times of her and Tamlane's meetings into a single evening; like others, Tappan uses a childhood familiarity of the characters to make this decision believable. The only note added without justification from the ballad is her short scene wherein Janet darts to the church to procure the holy water she needs for protection from the "Queen of Elfinland," and the resident priest begs to be allowed to come along for her holy battle; she of course refuses his company.
Hart, Walter Morris. Ballad and Epic: A Study in the Development of the Narrative Art. Studies
and Notes in Philology and Literature Ser. 11. Boston, Ginn & Co., 1907.
Text. In an analysis of motives in the "Simple Ballads" chapter, "Fair Janet (in Tam Lin [39])" is praised for "possess[ing] not only the common courage which preferred lover to family, but the courage to meet and overcome the terrors of the dark night and eerie way, and of the transformation of her lover,-all as a matter of course." Other analytical mentions include motif discussions centering around father-daughter relationships, supernatural involvement, the night as a time for magic's occurrence, and the significance of Hallow-e'en as the setting for Tam Lin's transformation.
Lang, Andrew "A Collection of Ballads" 1910. Project Guttenberg. Sept. 1997. Accessed 2
Dec. 2001. <ftp://sailor.gutenberg.org/pub/gutenberg/etext97/cblad10.txt>
(Project Guttenberg free on-line version. "This etext was prepared from the 1910 Chapman and Hall edition by David Price;" Etext #1054.) Critical Anthology. Includes a general introduction with specific notes for several ballads, a specific post-note for each, and of "Tam Lin," a version identified as "Child, Part II., p. 340, Burns's Version" (Child 39 A). General introduction notes of "Tamlane" that "the current version, that of Scott, is contaminated, as Scott knew, by incongruous modernisms. Burns's version, from tradition, already localizes the events at Carterhaugh, the junction of Ettrick and Yarrow. But Burns's version does not make the Earl of Murray father of the hero, nor the Earl of March father of the heroine. Roxburgh is the hero's father in Burns's variant, which is more plausible, and the modern verses do not occur. This ballad apparently owes nothing to literary romance." Post-note includes historical appearances and sources.
Dixon, W. MacNeile. The Edinburgh Book of Scottish Verse 1300-1900. London: Meiklejohn
and Holden, 1910.
Anthology. "Tam Lin" appears numbered 63 under the general heading of "Ballads," and occupies pages 185-92. Text corresponds with Child 39 A.
Macleod, Mary. A Book of Ballad Stories. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Co., xxxx.
(Includes introduction by Edward Dowden, and illustrations by A. G. Walker, "Sculptor." Public record dates the book at "? 1880 1889," but latest date mentioned of sources in introduction is 1905; Macleod's date of death appears in public record as 1914.) Collection of re-tellings. Dowden's introduction gives credit to many ballad collectors and manuscripts, including Scott and especially Child, and explains that because their work is so scholarly, such re-tellings as these allow access to the stories to younger readers. Prose re-telling of "The Young Tamlane" appears on pages 56-64 and includes one introductory and one mid-tale illustration. Young Tamlane is a tiny fairy, standing no higher than Janet's knee, and the illness and sorrow which befall her when she parts from his company are explained by his casting of "a strange spell" over her. When she returns to Carterhaugh, he explains his plight of pending sacrifice, calls himself her "true love," and instructs her in the elements of his rescue, which she dutifully performs, turning him back into a human man, and earning her the standard reproach of the Queen of the fairies.
"Joanna Baillie." The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes. 1907-
21. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001. <http://www.bartleby.com/221/1017.html>
(Page notes excerpt as from "Volume XI. The Period of the French Revolution. X. Burns.") Article. Provides elementary biographical information about Ms. Baillie, a "poetess" some of whose works were included in Johnson's Museum; mention is made of a "Tam o' the Lin" among her works, but the song is listed as most likely a parody of "Tomy Lin," which piece, "related to a very old rime," others have disassociated with the ballad of Tam Lin.
"Funeral ballads." The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes. 1907-
21. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001. <http://www.bartleby.com/212/1714.html>
(Page notes excerpt as from "Volume II. The End of the Middle Ages. XVII. Ballads.") Article. Mentions "Tam Lin" as a ballad in which "commerce with the other world occurs," in a paragraph devoted to the evidences of "superstition, the other world, ghost-lore;" the ballad is described as "said by Henderson to be largely the work of Burns."
Wright, Harriet Sabra. New Plays from Old Tales, arranged for Boys and Girls. New York:
Macmillan, 1922.
(Illustrated by Leon D'Emo. Macmillan copyright 1921.) Book-length volume of play scripts with stage settings and costuming instructions. Introduces "Tamlane" with two quoted stanzas from Child 39 A (not identified) and the suggestion that "this dramatization of an old ballad" is appropriate for Halloween. Play features an old nurse who tells Janet who holds Tamlane and how to find him; he is her betrothed who disappeared on a hunt seven years before the play begins. Her conversations with him are compressed into a single meeting and involve her returning to him a ring as a token of her pledge to love him, after which he tells her how to set him free; his explanation of his capture occurs in a final scene back in the cottage of the nurse, with Janet.
Watt, Lauchlan Maclean The Scottish Ballads and Ballad Writing. 1923. The Folcroft Press,
Inc., 1969.
(First publication 1923, also by the Folcroft Press; no loc.) Text. In chapter titled "The Fairy Ballads," "Tamlane" is referred to as "the other great fairy ballad" to "Thomas the Rhymer," and is noted as being "in its foundation, undoubtedly ancient"; for this statement, the two references in the Complaynt of Scotland and Scott's collections are offered as proof. In describing the ballad itself, he notes the "immunity secured by the green mantle" that Janet must throw over Tamlane to save him, because "green was the fairy colour, and was evidently tabu to them," and quotes sections of verse from Scott's version.
Stewart, George R., Jr. "The Meter of the Popular Ballad." 1925. The Critics and The Ballad.
Eds. MacEdward Leach and Tristram P. Coffin. New York: Southern Illinois Univ.
Press, 1961. 161-85.
(First published "in Publications of the Modern Language Association, XL (1925), 933-62.") Article. Lists "Tam Lin" along with other ballads whose dipodic indices are given as examples of ballads with "four dipods instead of seven simple feet," as an example of "an apparent inversion in stress just before the caesura," and in several other equally technical lines of analysis in a study of metric patterns and similarities. Concludes on a basis of many elements that there is "little real doubt as to which represents the truer ballad style," citing "Tam Lin" as a "member[] of the ballad aristocracy."
Keith, Alexander. "Scottish Ballads: Their Evidence of Authorship and Origin." 1926. The
Critics and The Ballad. Eds. MacEdward Leach and Tristram P. Coffin. New York:
Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1961. 39-56.
(First published "in Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association, XII, 100-19 (Oxford, 1926).") Article. In analyzing the origins of Scottish ballads, note is taken of the catalogue mentions of "thom of lyn" among the "dance tunes which may be connected with modern ballads" and "the tayl of the young temlene" among the "pleys and storeis." Points out that the "allegiance" of ballads to dancing should not be assumed, because care is taken in the Complaynt to list dances separately from stories.
Quiller-Couch, Arthur, Ed. The Oxford Book of Ballads. Oxford: Clarendon, 1927.
(Dedicated to Francis James Child, Frederick James Furnivall, and John Wesley Hales) Anthology. General preface includes source and research credits to "Professor Child," among others, but the version of the ballad itself, occupying pages 4-13, does not correspond to any one of the versions in Child's 1882-89 publication, or Scott's from 1801.
Wimberly, Lowry C. Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads. 1928. New York: Frederick
Ungar, 1959.
(First published 1928.) Text, introduced in author's preface as "an exhaustive survey of those customs and beliefs that in the English and Scottish popular ballads center about religion and magic." "Tam Lin" appears as exemplary in discussions of different aspects of folklore throughout the text; transformations of the soul, animal-shapes, and the merging of the beliefs of fairy and ghosts are only a sample. Proposes as a measure of ballads' antiquity the presence of wolves in the transformation sequences (in Tam Lin, Child 39 G) demonstrating that the ballads' origin must have pre-dated the extermination of wolves in the British Isles.
Noel-Paton, M. H. The Hidden People: a play based on the ballads of Tam Lin and Thomas the
Rhymer. London. George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1933.
Playbook with script and stage directions. "Notes on the Play" include an introduction, suggestions for production, music, and costumes. Introductory information announces Thomas of Ercildoune as a thirteenth-century bard better known for his legendary namesake ballad of Thomas the Rhymer, and summarizes the plot of both ballads. "The Ballad of Tamlane... is fifteenth or sixteenth century," readers are told. The play itself is in five scenes. In the first, Tam Lin, living among the fairies, realizes that he is likely to be the Queen's next sacrifice, and fortuitously spies Janet, who appears fleeing the advances of a dull mortal suitor and wishing for an elfin-knight to be her love. His advancement upon her is more like a kidnapping, although one to which she, when she realizes his elfin nature, readily agrees. In scene two she follows the standard procedure for saving him; the Queen curses him, and he and Janet leave together. The remainder of the tale is a creative mix of elements of Thomas the Rhymer and pure imagination; Tam and Janet Lin have had seven children and become bored with one another; in the end, she returns selfishly to the now-rich suitor of her childhood, and Tam tries but fails to win his way back into the fairy court.
Miller, Frank, F.S.A., Scot. The Mansfield Manuscript: An Old Edinburgh Collection of Songs and
Ballads. Dumfries: Thos. Hunter, Watson, & Co. Ltd. 1935.
(Preface records the work "shortly [to] be printed in the Transactions of the Dumfriesshire and Galloway Natural History and Antiquarian Society"; entry dated Feb. 1, 1935.) Academic paper. Traces the known and speculative history of the Mansfield Manuscript through the possessions of several collectors, leaving its current location unclear. Reproduces several ballads from the original collection, "all exact," including "Tam Lin," introduced as "an unspoiled fragment-William Macmath" (a previous owner of the Manuscript). Transcribed ballad begins in the middle of the standard tale, and comprises seven hardly-punctuated verses that vary in meter and content from other recorded versions. "Bell's port," for example, is the name of the meeting-place, rather than any variety of "Miles Cross;" the heroine nor Tam Lin are named in the ballad, and no concordance is found with any of Child's ballads, nor any versions collected by A. Acland.
Scarborough, Dorothy. A Song Catcher in Southern Mountains: American Folk Songs of British
Ancestry. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1937.
Text. Chronicles Scarborough's collection of ballads in primarily Virginia and North Carolina, including anecdotal narrative, ballad texts, and musical notation. The text of "Tam Lane" included was actually collected by the author in from a Margaret Widdemer in Connecticut; Widdemer attributes the words and music to "the late Elinor Wylie" who in turn had learned the song from "her nurse, a woman from the northern marshes;" Wylie is also credited with describing the ballad as "very much the same as the version in Child's," but the ballad printed on these pages, beginning with "May Margaret" in her bower-window, while similar in story elements, does not compare in terms of versification with any versions appearing in Child's collection. Introduction and ballad occupy pages 250-55, and musical notation appears on page 422.
Myers, John Myers. Silverlock. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1949.
Full-length fantasy/adventure novel. Tells a satirical story of a traveling adventurer in a foreign land stumbling from scene to scene, with each taking the motif of a well- or less-well-known tale. In transition between Chapters 19 and 20 (entitled "Meetings at Miles Cross"), he encounters Janet in the woods, pregnant, weeping, and waiting for Tamlane to pass by in the company of the "wizards." He agrees to wait with her, and witnesses the scene of her retrieval of Tamlane, which is marked by her warding her position with holy water and following the requisite steps; upon her success, the female voice who has spoken out among the wizards cries out with jealousy, makes a version of the standard cursing comment about his eyes, and kidnaps the adventurer in his stead. Janet, not exactly a sympathetic character, is portrayed as "show[ing] every symptom of being a quitter except that she didn't quit," and Tamlane as being relatively passive to the entire affair.
Wells, Evelyn Kendrick. The Ballad Tree: A study of British and American Ballads, Their Folklore,
Verse, and Music. New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1950.
Text. Includes full-text versions of sixty ballads, of which Tam Lin is not one, but of the ballad in particular mention is made on several occasions, most concentrating on its participation in the chapter: "Reflections of the Supernatural in Ballads." Mention is made of the ballad, "which seems to have come from Scandinavia" because of references in Dutch ballads to golden head-dresses similar to that worn by Janet in several versions of the ballad, as exemplifying the ballad tendency of the use of present-tense, the power of a name used in a magic spell, supernatural transformation, the common theme of flower-picking as a way to summon the fairies, and fairy malevolence. Mention of the appearance of the ballad's title in the Complaynt of Scotland is also made.
Coffin, Tristram Potter. The British Traditional Ballad in North America. 1950. Rev. ed.
Supplement Roger deV. Renwick. Austin & London: Univ. of Texas Press, 1977.
(Includes additional preface and added material by the author added to a 1963 2nd edition.) Text. Recounts general summary of "story types" of "Tam Lane" under heading of "Tam Lin," adding in parenthetical reference to the expected storyline that "the holding of the knight through various horrible shapes that the fairies cause him to take and the throwing him into the well are lacking, while the fatherhood of Tam in respect to the girl's baby is not clear." Discussion of the tale's relevance to North America reads: "The Child MS text, from Margaret Reburn, an Irishwoman living in Iowa, can not be considered to be taken from American oral tradition. Neither can anything except the melody and the first stanza of the Scarborough text. Scarborough got these from Elinor Wylie. See Sgctchr So Mts, 250-251. The story in Scarborough's text follows Child closely." Additions include reference to Child's discussion of folklore and the critical analyses of Allison White (1955) and Jean B. Saunders (1958); Renwick's supplementary text adds no commentary related to this ballad.
Housman, John E. Phd., Ed. British Popular Ballads. 1952. Granger Index Reprint Series.
New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1969.
Anthology. Preface (Housman, 1951) gives credit to Child and subsequent editors of his works Sargent and Kittredge, and states its intention as "attempt[ing] a further reduction of Child's original work, from which all the texts and much of the introductory matter... have been chosen." Under heading "Ballads of the Supernatural," "Tam Lin" occupies pgs. 77-83, with a brief introductory excerpt which includes the "suggest[ion] that Burns is responsible for the lovely stanzas thirty-six and thirty-seven" and references to cultural bases for the tale in Cretan and pre-Homeric tales; it is unclear whether these elements originate with Housman or with Child. Ballad version A.
Wilson, Barbara Ker. Oxford Fairy Tales from Scotland. 1954. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,
1999.
(Illustrated by Joan Kiddell-Monroe, 1999. First published 1954 as Scottish Folk Tales and Legends.) Prose re-telling in short story collection. Pages 41-45 comprise the simple tale, in which Tam Lin reveals himself to Fair Janet as a captive yearning to return to the mortal world, and she agrees to his salvation with no mention made of his endangerment nor any possibility of pregnancy; she returns to save him from good-hearted love the very night they meet, which is never noted to be Halloween.
White, Allison. "Mother Goose Reread." Southern Folklore Quarterly. 19 (1955): 156-63.
Article. Discussion of the roots and origins of nursery rhymes; links "Pussy's in the well" with "Tam Lin" by saying the rhyme is "easy to associate with the ancient trial by drowning, the more so when we observe that the lad who put her in, 'Little Tommy Green,' was, in early printings, 'Little Tom O'Linne (1797) or 'Tommy Linn." "Such cats-into-water jingles show their link with the romantic ballad 'Tam Lin' (Child 39) in Tam Lin's command to Janet: 'Then throw me into well water,/O throw me in wi speed,'/ to free him from enchantment."
Leach, MacEdward, Ed. The Ballad Book. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1955.
(Simultaneous publication London: Thomas Yoseloff Ltd. Copyright Harper & Bros. 1955.) Critical Anthology. Includes extensive introductory material about ballad study and sources; cites Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads as "the most important collection of English and Scottish ballads in English," and clear details of earlier, similar collections. Re-prints "Tam Lin" version corresponding with Child 39 A.
Friedman, Albert B. The Viking Book of Folk Ballads of the English-Speaking World. 1956.
Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.
(Orig. published by The Viking Press, 1956.) Critical Anthology. General introduction begins with an anecdote of Scott's gathering of Scottish ballads from "old Mrs. Hogg," includes a discussion on the literariness of ballads, and notes at length Child's contributions to the world of collections. Records "Tam Lin" under the heading "Ballads of the Supernatural" with a specific introduction summarizing the ballad's plot, attributing the version to Robert Burns' contribution to Johnson's Museum (Child 39 A), and adds the following editorial note, as "a word of explanation" for the poem's final stanza: "it is not revenge that stirs the queen of fairy to wish that she had torn out Tam Lin's eyes and given him wooden ones. By failing to take this security precaution, she has allowed Tam Lin to return to the human world with all the secrets of fairyland." Ballad and introduction occupy pages 41-47.
Gower, Herschel. "Traditional Scottish Ballads in the United States." Diss. Vanderbilt
University, 1957.
("Doctor of Philosophy in English") Doctoral Thesis. In Chapter titled "What is a Scottish Ballad?" "Tam Lin" is discussed as "one of the finest of all recorded ballad texts," and "almost surely Scottish," but is said to have "failed by a margin to qualify for" the grouping of Child ballads recorded in American versions, because it "cannot be said to have become a part of American tradition-the circumstances were questionable under which it was recorded-it is withheld from the discussion," with the preceding quotation referenced to "See Coffin, p. 56" (corresponds with pages 50-1 of edition cited above).
Saunders, Jean B. "The Ballads as a Source of Nursery Rhymes" Midwest Folklore 8.4 (1958):
189-99.
Article. Refers to the conflicting views on the correlation by name and water-imagery of 'Tam Lin' to the nursery song 'Tommy Lin,' citing Allison White (1955) and the Opies as pro and con to the idea, and then proposes that if the Opies are right, and the nursery rhyme refers back to their suggestion of the popular song beginning 'Tom O'Lin is a Scotchman born,' that Child is mistaken in connecting the mention in the Complaynt of Scotland to the ballad of 'Tam Lin,' for it would be in reference to the song instead.
Bronson, Bertrand Harris, ed. The Traditional Tunes of the Child ballads; With Their Texts,
according to the Extant Records of Great Britain and America. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1959-72.
("Volume I, Ballads 1-53" published 1959.) Ballad texts and musical notation, corresponding with Child's collection numbers and information; includes authorial introduction to the work of Child and his followers. Of "Tam Lin" Bronson includes four musical variants on pages 327-31; "two appear to be Scottish, one Northern English (via the United States) and one Irish." "Lord Robinson's Only Child," "Tam Lin," and "Tam Lane" are the titles of the three recorded tunes with lyric correlations (the second to the Burns text in Johnson); the fourth tune is instrumental only but entitled "Janet of Carterhaugh;" Bronson acknowledges that it "depends for connection on its title." Sources for all tunes and lyrics are included.
McNeill, F. Marian. The Silver Bough: A Four Volume Study of the National and Local Festivals of Scotland. Glasgow:
William MacLellan, 1961.
Anthological Study of Traditions, Tales, and Folklore Associated with Festivals. Text pertaining to the Tam Lin story is found in Volume Three: A Calendar of Scottish National Festivals Hallowe'en to Yule. In "the Fairies" section of Chapter 1, "Hallowe'en" the story is associated with popular Hallowe'en beliefs: "it was believed that those who had been snatched to fairy-land might be recovered within a year and a day, but the spell for their recovery was potent only when the fairies made their procession on Hallowe'en. It was thus that Janet won back her lost love in the ballad of Tamlane" (p. 14); page 41 of the same section mentions that a good Hallowe'en party should have recitations of ballads such as Tamlane.
Friedman, Albert B. The Ballad Revival: Studies in the influence of Popular on Sophisticated Poetry.
Chicago & London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1961.
(Simultaneous publication in Toronto by Univ. of Toronto Press.) Text. General background and history of ballads and ballad collecting including discussion of primary figures and works. Speaking of Robert Burns in the chapter titled "The Difficulties of Imitation," Friedman writes "occasionally his net had drawn in a folk ballad-we owe to him a superb version of 'Tam Lin'-but... [he] much preferred folk lyrics to ballads."
Hodgart, Matthew, Ed. The Faber Book of Ballads. London: Faber and Faber, 1965.
Anthology. General introduction credits ballad collection-work to Child, Scott, and Burns, commending the latter on "faithfully...captur[ing] the spirit and style of folksong" and adding that "his hand can be seen in some stanzas of the version of 'Tam Lin' which he sent to the Scots Musical Museum." Ballad is included in the section headed "Scots Eighteenth Century," on pages 129-135, and corresponds with Child 39 A.
Muir, Willa. Living With Ballads. London: Hogarth Press, 1965.
Text. Chapter 8, "Story Material: Magic. Tam Lin" occupies pages 126-41; includes a detailed look at the dark powers of faerie, the timing of Hallowe'en, the magical elements of Tam Lin's seduction of Janet, the dangers inherent in failing at the rescue Janet attempts, the power of her use of his name, and the elements of his transformation, and compares elements to those appearing similarly in other ballads. Additionally, Muir uses the "admonitory [initial] verse tacked on to" the ballad as a reference to the common appearance of golden combs in the possession of maidens and the magical significance which could be attributed to them.
MacQueen, John, and Tom Scott, Eds. The Oxford Book of Scottish Verse. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1966.
Anthology. Text includes ancient and modern poems and songs from anonymous and listed sources, with a general introduction. "Tam Lin" listed under "Ballads" heading in T. O. C., attributed to "F. J. Child, English & Scottish Ballads, 1848." The ballad appears on p. 276-282, and corresponds to Child 39 A.
Davies, Anthea. A White Horse With Wings. New York: Macmillan, 1968.
(Illustrated by Brigitte Bryan. First published in Great Britain by Faber and Faber, Ltd.) Short story collection of prose re-tellings, in which "Tam Lin" occupies pages 33-47. The tale itself is told in an unusually moral tone; Janet is "headstrong and indulged as if she had been a son instead of a daughter," and her shaming involvement with Tam Lin, to whom she loses only her heart, with no mention made of her maidenhead, is because he is "a forbidden, elvish creature...who never set foot inside a church." The price the fairies pay to the "devil" must be "a Christian man," and Janet's rescue must take place within the sight of the stone cross; a thanks to God is the last thing they share before parting on their second meeting, and before moving from the spot of the rescue, on Halloween.
Fowler, David. A Literary History of the Popular Ballad. Durham, N. C.: Duke Univ. Press,
1968.
Text. Proposes that "the sudden appearance of so many fairy ballads in the eighteenth century" in Child, "all first appearing in David Herd's collection," when "prior to this time very little fairy lore had found its way into balladry," suggests that "Tam Lin" and the others were new ballads, composed in response to a growing interest in the folklore of popular tradition; gives as a reason, in analysis, "not their subject matter but rather their sophistication and self-conscious style," as exemplified by Tam Lin's explanation of fairy captivity to Janet, where older ballads would have let the mystery remain.
Montgomerie, William. "A Bibliography of the Scottish Ballad Manuscripts 1730-1825, Part
V, The Glenriddell Ballad Manuscript, Introduction, Robert Riddell." Studies in
Scottish Literature 6.2 (1968): 91-104.
Critical Bibliography of the original 12 volume manuscript, inc. notes on the whereabouts and histories of its elements. Introduction includes the following: "besides to the ballads in Vol. XI," dated 1791, in which "Tom Line" is indexed to page 84, "there is another version of 'Tam Lin' in Vol. VIII. The date of this volume is 1789." Entry Vol. VIII begins "An Old Song Called Young Tom Line (& Note) I forbid ye Maidens a' that wears Goud on your Gear...I'd taken out that heart o' flesh, put in a heart o' stane"; ref. by Montgomerie to Child 39 B; Vol. XI entry is similar except for occasional spelling.
Lyle, Emily B. "The Ballad Tam Lin and Traditional Tales of Recovery From the Fairy
Troop." Studies in Scottish Literature 6.3 (1969): 175-85.
Article. Compares the story elements of the ballad to other fairy-recovery tales primarily from Scotland and Ireland, drawing special attention to the way that the ballad incorporates a plethora of common motifs blended together in a way that shows "the fairies mov[ing] according to the fixed laws of their being" and the mortals free to make choices that, in this rare case, result in success. Of primary interest are the common themes of a grey or white horse always third or last in the fairy-raid, the day of Halloween as the most accessible day for the two worlds to overlap (in Irish tales, more often May-day), the danger inherent to the person being recovered should the attempt fail, and the piece of mortal clothing thrown over the captive to restore him/her to the human world; transformation were usually from other mythologies and used by the enemies to terrify the mortals rather than having a mortal involved in transformation.
Finlay, Winifred. Folk Tales from Moor and Mountain. New York: Roy Publishers, Inc., 1969.
(Illustrated by Victor Ambrus.) Short story collection. Prose re-telling titled "Tamlane" occurs on pages 16-25, and incorporates many story elements but leaves out any hint of sexual relation between the two, or of the pending sacrifice, and changes the sequence of colored steeds to colored banners carried by groups of riders; Tamlane's heart is won by Janet's visits to Carterhaugh, and it is for this reason alone that he asks her to free him from the Queen of the Fairies. Tale involves repetitive paragraph elements, allowing it to retain a ballad feel, and Miles Cross is a standing cross, rather than a cross-roads, as in some other versions; tale ends with a wedding.
Rundle, Anne. Tamlane. London: Hutchinson, 1970.
[Not Seen] ("Description: 119 p.: p., 21 cm." Item not found in participating library network.)
Briggs, Katherine M. A Dictionary of Folk-Tales in the English Language, Incorporating the F. J.
Norton Collection. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970.
Alphabetical Reference. Entry for "Tam Lin" on pages 501-2 summarizes the story in two paragraphs (some tales are told in narrative style, others as brief summaries); tale begins with "all girls who wore the gold of maidenhood were warned against going to Carterhaugh," and the matter of seduction is evasively addressed thus: "as soon as she had pulled a rose he started up and caught her. She answered him boldly, and he let her go back to her father's court; but it was soon plain that she was with child." Following the summary, a brief acknowledgement of sources lists Child's collection, then categorizes the ballad as "a compendium of Scottish fairy beliefs," listing some common ones after. Notes also that "Scott gives the same tale a literary form in 'Alice Brand'."
Lyle, Emily B. "The Opening of 'Tam Lin.'" Journal of American Folklore. 88. 1970: 33-43.
Article. Detailed technical analysis of the probability that the original version of the ballad began with what is now verse 6 of Child 39 K, and that exposure to other ballads over time, most prominently "Lady Jean" (Child 52), and also "Hind Etin" (Child 41), had added the stanzas to the popular version; the inclusion of overlapping stanzas to other recorded versions of "Tam Lin" in varying places in the tale is also mapped, in graphic forms and parallel text comparisons accounting for various preserved versions from various manuscripts. Also notes that the initial warning stanza of the most common extant versions of the ballad was almost certainly borrowed, but discounts Willa Muir's assertion that it was an addition by Burns, citing its appearance in the earlier Mansfield Manuscript.
Lyle, Emily B. "The Teind to Hell in Tam Lin." Folklore. 81. 1970: 177-81.
Article. Explores the folklore surrounding the ideas of the taking of humans by faeries for such reasons as "to sacrifice to the lords of hell," especially so that one of their own would not have to be sacrificed; notes derivation of the word "tiend" from "tenth," citing the Mansfield MS as offering in Tam Lin's verse "the 10th part goes down to Hell," but also the lack of similar derivation for the word "kane" ('payment in kind') appearing in some variants instead; draws parallels to both the belief and the "motive for the return to earth of a mortal who has lived for some time in the otherworld" between the ballads of "Tam Lin" and "Thomas of Erceldoune."
Lyle, Emily B. "The Burns Text of Tam Lin." Scottish Studies. 15. 1971: 53-65.
Article. Details the minute and larger-scale variations between the Burns text in Johnson's Museum and other extant copies from preceding time periods, to gauge alterations made by Burns in terms of their authenticity to other possible sources versus their invention at his hand. Gives precise source information for Motherwell's version, "from a Mrs. McCormick who lived in Paisley but had learnt this ballad in Dumbarton," and defends the probability that Burns was working with, in addition to texts known to be at his disposal, an unidentified form of the ballad "which has been called X." Handwriting evidence from various manuscripts is cited, and line-by-line analyses of multiple versions of verses are supplied. Also references a "Hastie MS (Burns: fols. 117r-120r)" in addition to Andrew Crawfurd's collection and other MSS well-mentioned herein (see Lyle, 1996).
Gardner, Helen Louise, Ed. The New Oxford Book of English Verse. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1972.
(Orig. Oxford Book of English Verse, Ed. by Arthur Quiller-Couch in 1910, does not include "Tam Lin" among its Anonymous ballads; neither does the newer 1999 edition Ed. by Christopher Ricks.) Anthology. Introduction notes Editor's re-evaluation of the original Oxford collection and addresses her decision to include a different distribution of works, including elements disproportionately ignored, such as Scottish works. Ballad appears on pages 356-361, between anonymous entries "Thomas the Rhymer" and "Sir Patrick Spence," which appear back-to-back in Quiller-Couch. Version contains elements of Child 39 A and B, with spelling variations.
Storr, Catherine. Thursday. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.
Childrens'/Young Adult Fiction. Chapter-book in which the ballad's tale runs throughout the modern-day story but subtly; "Bee" and "Thursday" the heroine and hero, are English teenagers, one at home with an illness and the other disappeared; school officials take an active part in the story's evolution. An old woman with a Celtic heritage and a belief in "the Good folks" attributes Thursday's disappearance to the land of faerie, and gives Bee the instructions for freeing him from what, in mortal terms is an emotional disorder for which he has been institutionalized. Bee saves Thursday by spending Midsummer's Night in his company, proving the strength of her love for him, and does incur her family's wrath in doing so, but no specific sexuality enters the story, and no personified Faerie Queen exists.
Buchan, David. The Ballad and the Folk. London & Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.
Text. In a detailed tracing of the sources of the manuscripts of collector Peter Buchan the contributions of James Nicol, who also added ballads to "Scott's Abbotsford MSS," "Tam Lin" (ver. Child 39 D) is cited as collected by Nicol and given to Charles Kirkpatrick Sharp as elements of his "Second Collection," as well as appearing "in Motherwell's MSS, though not in his Minstrelsy."
Haden, Walter D. "The Scottish 'Tam Lin' in the Light of Other Folk Literature." Tennessee
Folklore Society Bulletin. 38 1972:42-50.
Article. Classifies the ballad as "not historical" and "by no means epic or tragic, and...certainly not elegiac," but supernatural, with "principle motifs almost as universal in world folk-lore as those in international myths." Briefly compares the general concept of the ballad to works familiar to "Greek writers of antiquity," such as the tale of "Thetis' forced marriage to Peleus," and groups it with "a familiar kind of popular story known since the Brothers Grimm as the 'Swan Maiden' type, involving the transformation of a creature, either natural or supernatural, into a human being-or the reverse of this process." Continues with a swift survey of comparison of story elements to those in other myths and stories, primarily by use of a thorough array of direct quotations from previously annotated sources.
Ipcar, Dahlov Zorach. The Queen of Spells. New York: Viking Press, 1973.
(Simultaneous publication in Canada by Macmillan) Childrens'/Young Adult Fiction. Chapter-book set in the more likely nineteenth century; Janet is the daughter of a land-owning farmer who gives her the abandoned house on his property as a gift. She meets "Tom" Lynn there, and he gifts her with roses, which she returns to pick subsequently. Seven years pass between their first meeting and the occasion on which Janet, then eighteen, is impregnated; her father then, following the ballad, is both kind but disappointed and determined to find her a mortal husband. The unusual time-component of Tom's capture has him spending alternating time in both the real world and faerie through his childhood, thus allowing him to be known in Janet's community and of her age, while having dwelt for many years as the chosen of the Faerie Queen. Janet's Halloween rescue of Tom takes place over the course of an entire night of nightmare images in an otherworldly gypsy carnival, which is found to have been a six-month period by the following "morning"; Janet's father dies during this time, allowing an element of price-paying and darkness into the story. The ballad (Child 39 A) is reprinted on the final pages.
Garner, Alan. Red Shift. New York: MacMillan, 1973.
(Simultaneous publication in Great Britain by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd.) Young Adult Fiction. Science-fiction novel set primarily in modern England, with overlapping thread elements taking place during the English Civil War and the Roman occupation. In the central thread, Tom and Jan are a dating couple of young adults facing a separation; Jan goes away to nursing school and the remainder of the story is staged through their weekend visits to a town between their homes. A stone axe-head is a treasured item of purportedly magic relevance through this and the other story threads, one involving a band of violent bandits and a magic-working woman they take captive, the other centering in a town and involving a woman named Margery and two different men named Thomas, one a husband and the other a childhood lover. The relation to the ballad is vague and ill-defined; it seems to be madness from which Tom needs to be saved by Jan, and Thomas by Margery, and Macey, one of the bandit company, from the captive witch, and at the story's twisted-strand conclusion, Jan, who has by this point had sex with Tom, but also with another man, and Tom, who has sold the treasured axe-head which had meaning apparently only, in their time, to Janet, seem to lose each other in a cloud of modern confused indifference.
Pope, Elizabeth Marie. The Perilous Gard. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.
(Illustrated by Richard Cuffari.) Young adult fiction. Uses the ballad of Tam Lin intertextually, as a key offered to aid Kate, the heroine, in saving a young man named Christopher from being paid as the fairies' tiend to hell, for which purpose Kate herself also spends time in fairy captivity; as such the storyline has no need to adhere to ballad events, but elements of superstition and lore are strongly portrayed; in the rescue scene, the "holding" Kate does of Christopher is psychological rather than physical.
Grigson, Geoffrey, Ed. The Penguin Book of Ballads. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.
(Also U.S.A., Australia, Canada, New Zealand; reprinted 1977) Anthology. General introduction notes that "gapped or fragmented ballads were joined and tidied up by poets of the literate tradition, among them Burns (alive in both traditions) and Sir Walter Scott." Ballad, version corresponding with Child 39 A, occupies pages 68-74.
Briggs, Katherine Mary. An Encyclopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other
Supernatural Creatures. New York: Pantheon, 1976.
("Originally published in London as A Dictionary of Fairies by Allen Lane, Penguin Books Ltd.") Alphabetical Reference. Entry under "Young Tam Lin, or Tamlane" describes story as one "of which there are many versions, both in the Border country and in Aberdeenshire," and calls it "perhaps the most important of all the supernatural ballads because of the many fairy beliefs incorporated in it"; notes Child 39 A as the most complete version. A prose summary breaks off early in the tale "so vivid and so full of important detail that it would be a pity" to continue to summarize; the full text of all but the first five verses of Child 39 A are then included. End-note cross-references to other entries ("fairy rade," "knowe," "tiend," "shape-shifting") and notes the commonality of Tam Lin's name, with variants that appear in other songs and stories. Pages 449-53.
Jeffers, Susan. Wild Robin. New York: Dutton, 1976.
(Simultaneous publication in Canada by Clarke, Irwin, and Co. Ltd.) Illustrated Childrens' Fiction. Prose re-telling "based on Little Prudy's Fairy Stories by Sophie May," set in and around a farmhouse in a pre-technological but unspecified age, featuring a young, irritable boy named Robin and his sister Janet who loves him despite his disruptive, lazy behavior. Robin falls asleep shirking duty one day and is kidnapped by the Queen of Fairyland. In the faerie land he is treated to luxury but misses his home and sister, and one of the faeries, curious, sneaks back to Robin's home at night to spy on Janet. When he oversees her weeping, the creature with the stone heart is nonetheless moved to pity, and lets Robin in a dream show her the procedure to follow to save him. On the night that the faeries ride past the wooded crossing, Janet in her green cape pulls her brother in his terrifying black cape from the black (not white; the order of the rhyme is reversed) faerie-pony, throws her mantle over him, and wins the right to take him home.
Harrowven, Jean. The Origins of Rhymes, Songs, and Sayings. London: Kay & Ward, 1977.
Text. Under "Tam Lin" heading notes the existence, summarily, of "a story about a boy called Tamlin who was stolen by the Fairy Queen while sleeping underneath an apple tree" who "thought that 'fairy land was a pleasant place' but he was finally rescued by his true human love on Hallowe'en"; quotes two un-cited lines from Child 39A.
Niles, John D. "A Traditional Ballad and its Mask: Tam Lin." Ballads and Ballad Research:
Selected Papers of the International Conference on Nordic and Anglo-American Ballad Research.
Ed. Patricia Conroy. Seattle: Univ. of Washington, 1977: 147-58.
Article. Presents an in-depth analysis of the "mask" of Burns' writing as an artistic but preserving overlay to the traditional form and content of the ballad of Tam Lin, using as evidence order and word differences between his and others' versions of the ballad, elements of other popular ballads, and the precise use of literary devices of the Burns text published in Johnson's Museum and heavily quoted and referenced later; Niles categorizes particulars of this version as "sheer poetic invention," and "colored...thoroughly by the sensibility" of Burns, and chides editors and scholars for upholding the ballad as an example of anonymous "art of the folk."
Niles, John D. "Tam Lin: Form and Meaning in a Traditional Ballad." Modern Language
Quarterly. 38 (1977): 336-347.
("An earlier version of this paper under the title 'Tam Lin: A Ballad of Survival' was presented at the 1974 Annual Meeting of the American Folklore Society of Portland, Oregon.") Article. Suggests Child 39 B as a more authoritative general version for discussion, noting it as the earliest version collected in entirety and that which Burns used in the generation of A; quotes primarily from F and J texts, however. Proposes conclusively that despite the ballad's naming, Janet is its true protagonist, and its "main implicit themes" the "resolution of sexual fears and the release of the young from the tyrannical hold of elders;" summarizes the tale, within its artistic frameworks, as "the story of a man and a woman who survive."
Phelps, Ethel Johnston, Ed. Tatterhood and Other Tales: Stories of Magic and Adventure. New
York: The Feminist Press, 1978.
(Illustrations by Pamela Baldwin Ford.) Short story collection. Prose re-telling of "Janet and Tamlin" appears on pages 23-28; a following note acknowledges that "several old ballads about Janet and Tamlin from the Border Country of Scotland were used by the editor as a source for this story." The story itself keeps to an oversimplified storyline of the ballad, skipping over any references to sexual encounters, pregnancy or danger; Janet simply visits the well at Carterhaugh repeatedly and falls in love with Tamlin, who is an entirely unthreatening character, and rescues him not from danger to himself but for the sake of their desire to marry in the mortal world.
Wasserman, Julian. "Alchemy and Transformation in the Ballad 'Tam Lin'" Mississippi
Folklore Register. 15(1) 1981: 27-34.
Article. Links the imagery of gold associated with the ballad's heroine and the specific instance of the rod of lead as an element of Tam Lin's necessary transformation to "the popular notion in alchemy that gold begets gold;" the ballad itself is classified not as representing "the highly arcane philosophical alchemy which appears in the non-orally composed works of the scholastically trained authors of the period, but rather the folk concept of the magical transformation of matter." Explores the symbolic correlations between many elements of the ballad and alchemistic or metallurgic formulas of association, including the final scene's confrontation wherein the "Elf Queen," in wishing on Tam Lin wooden eyes, as light of the frequent alchemical juxtaposition of wood (base or peasant-like) to gold (pure or royal) "serves by way of contrast to underscore the purifying effect wrought upon the knight."
McDiarmid, M. P. The Scottish Ballads: Appreciation and Exploration. Proc. of Third
International Conf. on Scottish Language and Literature (Medieval and Renaissance).
1981, Stirling/Glasgow: Univ. of Sterling, 1981.
Article. In a general presentation of the sources, similarities, and poetic merits of Scottish ballads, McDiarmid devotes five full pages to a detailed examination of the plot and symbolism making "Tam Lyn" one of the "great" poems which "is continuously dramatic...suspenseful...complex and significant...felt truly to belong to the supernatural dimension that [the poet] created for it." He comments on the significance of the plucking of roses in stories, the possibility that "Miles Cross" was once "St. Michael's," and the suspicion that "the original story concerned the love of a woman for a water sprite; the name of the Lyne water which approaches Carterhaugh near Selkirk is significant."
Hunt, Roderick. Myths and Legends. Oxford Junior Readers Ser. 1. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1981.
[Not Seen] (Public record lists "Tam Lin" in T.O.C. "Desc.: 128 p.: p., ill. ... 22 cm." Item not found in participating library network.)
Shuldham-Shaw, Patrick and E.B. Lyle. Grieg-Duncan Folk Song Collection. Aberdeen, Scotland
: Aberdeen Univ. Press, 1981.
[Not Seen] (Item not found in participating library network.)
Opie, Iona and Peter, Eds. The Oxford Book of Narrative Verse. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1983.
(Introduction makes reference to the history of the anthology, including a prior publication of A Book of Narrative Verse in 1930, and the editorial decisions of inclusion/alteration from this source.) Anthology. Lists ballad as anonymous, p. 32-37. No source listed; ballad matches text of Child 39 A.
Jones, Diana Wynne. Fire and Hemlock. New York: Greenwillow Books, 1984.
Childrens'/Young Adult Fiction. Chapter-book set in modern-day England, in which a young girl named Polly befriends an adult musician named Thomas Lynn at a funeral in a neighborhood mansion that she has accidentally stumbled upon; the funeral turns out to be for the rich matriarch of an old family who will be revealed as a sorceress faking her own death every eighty-one years and sacrificing the lives of one of her male relatives every nine, to promote the family's power and her own immortality. Polly's friendship with Thomas develops during her childhood and then, at the urging of Laurel, the sorceress (and Thomas' ex-wife), the relationship is allowed to fade. As a college sophomore, finding again a picture taken from the magic-house years before, Polly reconstructs her memories of the time period, finds a way to get back in touch with Thomas, realizes that he's not so old after all, and on Halloween seeks to rescue him from his arrived moment of sacrifice, following the clues in the ballads of "Tam Lin" and "Thomas the Rhymer" which were included in a set of the many books Thomas had sent her during the course of their friendship. In an interesting turn of the final rescue, the now-adult Polly frees him from the spell not by holding on to him but by showing her love in letting him go (although some loophole of the spell allows them to be together after this). Quotations from both ballads are used as chapter-headings.
Sanhuber, Holly. Rev. of Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones. School Library
Journal. 31 Oct. 1984: 167-8.
Review. Provides a celebratory plot summary and praises the construction of the story's elements, stating that "the characters perform a stately dance macabre to the strains of the British ballads 'Tam Lin' and 'Thomas the Rhymer,' in which they implacably cold creatures of another world overreach themselves because they do not understand the steadfastness of human love." Recommends book to readers in grade 6 and above.
Rev. of Fire and Hemlock, by Diana Wynne Jones. Bulletin of the Center for Children's
Books. 38 Dec. 1984: 68.
Review. Describes the novel as a "highly original fantasy," with no mention of the ballads included as sources or otherwise; summarizes plot briefly. Recommends book to readers in grades 6-9.
Maier, Debra L. Rev. of Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones. Voice of Youth Advocates. 7
Dec. 1984: 266.
Review. Recounts plot and evaluates text "on two levels," including "a sophisticated recreation of the 'Tam Lin' ballad"; suggests that "knowledge of folklore is not needed, [but] it might help to clarify events."
Hammond, Nancy C. Rev. of Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones. The Horn Book
Magazine. 61 Jan./Feb. 1985: 58.
Review. Sets the novel "in the present but rooted in two romantic British ballads-'Thomas the Rhymer' and 'Tam Lin'" and characterizes it as "examin[ing] the nature of heroism and love," in which the author "skillfully orchestrates the stories-the ballads, adventure, and real life-into a reverberant composition...rich in literary allusion."
Greenland, Colin. Rev. of Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones. The Times Literary
Supplement. Nov. 29 1985: 1358.
Review. Refers to the text of the novel as "explicitly organized by a straightforward fairy-tale pattern derived from the ballads of 'Tam Lin' and 'Thomas the Rhymer," but indicates that most of the other elements of the book combine in a way to generate more mystery than is ever solved. Cites as a source for the imagery of the final duel T. S. Eliot's Burnt Norton. (Refers to "Lorelei," not "Laurel" when naming the magical matriarch.)
Lepow, Lauren. "'They That Wad Their True-Love Win': 'Tam Lin' and Jane Eyre"
Massachusetts Studies in English. 10(2) (1985): 110-126.
Article. Provides a speculative estimation of the probability that Charlotte Brontë was familiar with either the story or the ballad of Tam Lin prior to her writing of the novel, through, followed by a convincing analysis of parallel elements between the two stories, comparing Jane's name, independence and strength of character to Janet's, Rochester's name to Roxbrugh and the circumstances of his imprisonment to his mad wife and his necessary transformation to those of Tam Lin at the hands of the Fairy Queen, from which the heroine frees him; in Jane's case, her part is more psychological than Janet's is actual. Other parallels are drawn, including Janet's pregnancy to Jane's dreams of infants as well as her relationship with the child Adéle.
Vinge, Joan D. "Tam Lin." Imaginary lands. Ed. Robin McKinley. New York: Greenwillow Books, 1985. 181-212.
Anthological element. Short prose story in a fiction/fantasy collection, in which Jennet, the daughter of the Lord Ashwell and a long-disappeared woman who, it will be revealed, was part faerie and has returned to the other-world, begins the story preening before a mirror for a midsummer's festival, thinking about her lost mother, and fleeing to the fair with a gathering of young ladies from the town. Bored at the end of the evening with the village boys, Jennet sneaks out against her father's warnings to the ruins of Carter Hall, an estate left to her by her mother, where, plucking roses, she sets the traditional elements of the tale into motion; her sexual encounter with Tam Lin is given pivotal plot-relevance as well as descriptive attention. Her return to find him after her pregnancy becomes visible to her father is defiant and strong-she is going to claim a father for her child, with her own father's reluctant support. Keeping to the tale even in quoting her question to Tam Lin about how she will know him, the story ends with her wait at Milescross, her pulling of Tam from his ghostly-lit white steed, the shape-changing trial, and the curse of an ill-death upon her by the Faerie Queen. Optimistic, Tam Lin reminds her that all deaths are ill-deaths when they arrive, and, realistic, Jennet ends the story observing that although her future with him remains uncertain, at the very least it is the future that she herself has chosen.
Sullivan, C. W. III. "Traditional Ballads and Modern Children's Fantasy: Some Comments on Structure and Intent." Children's Literature Association Quarterly 11.3 (1986): 145-7.
Article. Analyses the use of ballads in selected children's books, specifically 'Tam Lin' in Ipcar's The Queen of Spells and Jones' Fire and Hemlock, crediting the authors for their uses and pointing out the difference between creative retellings (Ipcar) and intertextual references within a cyclical conception of time/story (Jones), deciding that in study the important question is "how good of a 'Tam Lin' story is told," and that in both cases the prognosis was good.
Flowers, Ann A. Rev. of Imaginary Lands ed. Robin McKinley. The Horn Book 62 1986: 459.
Review. Discusses collection in general and then particular stories, including that "'Tam Lin' by Joan D. Vinge is a sexually graphic but poetic and emotional retelling of the famous story of the rescue by his lover of a young man held captive by the Fair Folk."
Bratman, David. "Tam Lin in Literature." Khazad-dûm Discussion Group Report. Oct. 1986. 7
pars. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001 <http://www.mythsoc.org/kd1086.html>
("First published in the November 1986 issue of Mythprint.") Minutes from a discussion group. Explores the correlations between "a recording of the original ballad of Tam Lin as recorded by the eclectic folk group Fairport Convention," E. Pope's The Perilous Gard, and D. Jones' Fire and Hemlock, focusing on authorial decisions in the incorporation of ballad elements, and especially on the different ways the authors of the novels dealt with the issue of magic. Notes the absence of sexuality and the presence of the intertexual appearance of the ballad providing clues to the heroines in both stories, as well as the authors' dramatic difference in strategies to reconcile the fantastic with the actual.
Crossley-Holland, Kevin, Ed. Folk-Tales of the British Isles. London: Faber and Faber Ltd.,
1986.
(First published in 1985 by the Folio Society) Anthology. Collection's introduction gives historical perspective for folk tales; each section is introduced as a genre. Tale appears in ballad form, included under the "Fairies" heading, and is attributed in T.O.C. to "Scotland, Sir Walter Scott," but bears significant differences from Scott's recording of the ballad in Minstrelsy; some verses correspond exactly in word and spelling, and others differ; whole sections of verses in each do not appear in the other.
Lawrence, Ann. Summer's End: Stories of Ghostly Lovers. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1987.
(Woodcuts by Robert Kettell.) Collection of short stories, framed within a narrative featuring a storyteller and three adolescent sisters. Prose re-telling of "Tam Lin" follows the standard elements of the story, dealing with the fact and consequences of Janet's and Tam's sexual interaction without showing its occurrence. Janet and Tam Lin both possess believable characterizations, and the Fairy Queen makes clear that her cursing of Tam is an expression of her regret of the Fairy secrets she's allowed him to escape knowing; introduces the idea that an accidental curse by Tam's step-mother was what gave the Fairy Queen power over him in the first place, and because "a woman gave [him] to Them, a woman must recover [him]." Tale occupies pages 24-40.
Crossley-Holland, Kevin. British Folk Tales: New Versions. New York and London: Orchard
Books, 1987.
Versified re-telling, following, according to end-notes, "Scott but here and there added a line or a quatrain from some other source." Ballad appears in poem form on pages 270-82, and treats the circumstance of Janet's impregnation as factually as its original source. Notes on page 379 include a discussion of the ballad's inclusion of "a number of motifs familiar in folk tale" as summarized by a quoted selection from Katherine Briggs.
Mellon, Constance A., Rev. of British Folk Tales: New Versions, by Kevin Crossley-Holland.
School Library Journal 34 Jan. 1988: 72.
Review. Mentions "Tam Lin" as an example of a "less familiar tale" which will "delight both readers and listeners." Notes included pronunciation guide, and suggests text as appropriate for readers in grade 1 and up.
Burns, Mary M. Rev. of British Folk Tales: New Versions, by Kevin Crossley-Holland. The Horn Book Magazine 64 May/June 1988: 364-5.
Review. Describes the array of retellings included in the collection, including "representative ballads," of which "Tam Lin" is an example. Praises Crossley-Holland's use of imagery and stylistic ability, and notes the book's inclusion of a "pronunciation guide, sources, and notes."
The Ballad of Tam Lin the Elven Knight. San Antonio: The Press of the Unseen Unicorn, 1988.
[Not seen] (listed by source as "non-circulating;" public record lists selection as 21 p. in length, illustrated.)
Yolen, Jane. The Books of the Great Alta: Sister Light Sister Dark and White Jenna. New York: TOR, 1988-9.
(Listed by A. Acland as exempla of "stories related to or inspired by" Tam Lin.) Fantasy novel-series. Story centers around a strong female heroine who spends time in a goddess-ruled green land akin to faerie on her travels and rescues a love-interest, but no direct relation to the ballad appears.
James, Betsy. The Red Cloak. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1989.
Illustrated Children's Fiction. L.O.C. Summary notes book as a "free retelling of an old Scottish ballad." Jan and Tam are young children who grow up together in a small fishing village until the summer Tam disappears; Jan refuses to believe that he has died, and is told by an old woman how to win him back, for which purpose she is given a red (the usual is green) cloak to wear and to throw over him when pulling him, asleep in enchantment, from the white elf-horse. She holds him through the standard transformations and, at the end, wins back her friend. No setting or historical notes included.
Mayer, Marianna. Noble-hearted Kate: a Celtic tale. New York: Bantam Books, 1990
(Illustrated by Winslow Pels) Upper-level Children's Fiction. Prose story combining elements of the ballad of Tam Lin and the Orcadian tale "Kate Crackernut"; author insists in her preface that her book (and others in its series) "should be read not asworks of scholarshop or adaptation but as works of pure imagination." The tale follows initially the "Kate Crackernut" story, involving step-sisters Kate and Meghan trying to find the salmon of wisdom to find a cure to a curse cast upon Meghan by Kate's mother; along the way, Kate meets a prince named Miles, who is held captive by the fairy queen and must be freed according to the traditional elements of the ballad, including the shape-changing and Miles, the rider, needing pulled from the white horse in the fairies' train.
Munro, Alice. Friend of My Youth: Stories. New York: Knopf, 1990.
Adult Fiction Short Story Collection. Story titled "Hold Me Fast, Don't Let Me Pass" occupies pages 74-105 and includes an unfamiliar version of the ballad (most similar to Scott's, although in the short story his "Janet" is "Jennet") as an element of the story's setting; characters recite it and are motivated to thought by its words.
Yolen, Jane. Tam Lin: an old ballad. United States: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990.
Illustrated Children's' Fiction. Follows the ballad faithfully in telling the prose story of Jennet MacKenzie's rescue of Tam Lin, who she met at the haunted house she was set to inherit, from an enchantment on the Halloween after her sixteenth birthday; dodges the issue of sexuality entirely. Tam Lin is "the faery queen's favorite," grown to manhood and due to be ritually sacrificed, who reveals to her the details of his capture and his fate in the same night of their meeting; he says that he cannot be saved because he has dwelt in faerie so long that no morals who loved him still live, and Jennet offers to love him and save him. She returns on the appointed night with magic-spell components at his behest, and follows his instructions, holding fast as he changes into a lion, a snake, and a flame that she throws into a well and sprinkles with holy water, breaking the spell; the Earth he has bidden her bring in her pocket is used to magic the couple into a protected circle where the Faerie Queen's anger and magic cannot harm them. At the end of the book, they have rebuilt Carter Hall and begun a family within its walls. Includes a brief summary of the ballad's history with quoted verses on final page.
Wilms, Denise. Rev. of Tam Lin by Jane Yolen. Booklist 87 #2 Sept. 15, 1990: 158.
Review. "Yolen retells the Scottish ballad of Tam Lin in an elegently designed picture book for older readers. The story is romantic, recounting how a headstrong Scottish lass...rescues her true love from his faerie captors.... An author's note expands on the legend's history & various interpretations."
Crossley-Holland, Kevin. British Folk Tales: New Versions (section quoted). Parabola-
The Magazine for the Study of Myth and Tradition. 15 #3 1990: 85-7.
Quoted section of Crossley-Holland's versified re-telling. Includes the second half of the tale, beginning with a pregnant Janet's quest to find Tam Lin. Editorial (unidentified) commentary introducing the selection summarizes the first half of the tale, and attributes the source ballad as "collated by Sir Walter Scott from the printed and oral versions collected by him and published in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in 1802-3."
Stewart, R. J. Robert Kirk: Walker Between Worlds. Longmead, UK: Element Books, 1990.
<http://www.dreampower.com/Kirk_WBW/> 1997. Accessed 8 Dec. 2001.
(full text version available at website) Critical Edition of Text. Steward's presentation includes biographical introduction about Kirk (see Kirk, Robert, 1690) and a modern English transcription of The Secret Commonwealth with in-depth commentary, in which Stewart adds several references to the ballad as exemplary of Kirk's themes and observations, including "the perils of having a fairy lover," "the birth of a child and the death or rebirth of a man," and "the ancient theme of magical guardianship of a sacred site." Stewart notes the ballad as "preserved in collective oral tradition in Scotland until at least the late nineteenth or early twentieth century." "Young Tam Lin: Traditional Scottish ballad...from Celtic faery tradition" (no source for version supplied) and additional theme-related commentary appear in Appendix 3, on pages 126-37, referenced with a first publication by Stewart in The UnderWorld Initiation, 1986/89.
Cooper, Susan. Tam Lin. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books, 1991.
Illustrated Children's Fiction. Prose re-telling features a king's daughter named Margaret in an indeterminate time-period who runs rebelliously from the ladies' activities in her father's castle to the woods at Carterhays, which the others warn her is haunted by the Elfin knight who traps young girls, and whose association makes them unfit for marriage. In the woods, she meets Tam Lin, who is kind to her and spends with her a conversation-filled day, which, upon her return to the castle, she realizes was an entire week. Shamed by her family and friends, she returns the next day to the forest, where Tam Lin tells her his tale of capture, and that he can only be saved by a maid who loves him. Margaret offers her services, and on Midsummer's Eve follows his instructions to meet the riders at Miles Cross, pull him from his horse, hold him through his transformations, and with her green cape warm him when he emerges naked from the well. "One day we will have a child," he promises her at the end, as they ride together back to her father's castle.
Burns, Mary M. Rev. of Tam Lin, by Jane Yolen. The Horn Book Magazine 67 Jan./Feb.
1991: 78.
Review. Addresses first the ballad "describing the rescue of a human captive from the faerie folk on All Hallow's Eve" as characterized by "romance with overtones of terror and magic," and being "particularly relevent for today's audience" because the rescuer in the tale is a young woman rather than a young man, then Yolen's retelling, as "dramatic... captur[ing] the flavor and rhythm of the genre," and lends special praise to Mikolaycak's illustrations.
Gregory, Helen. Rev. of Tam Lin by Jane Yolen. School Library Journal 37 Jan. 1991: 109.
Review. Addresses historicity of ballad independently of Yolen's" "Yolen dates Tam Lin's ballad back to 1549; later on Robert Burns wrote what is perhaps the most familiar version. The most frequently anthologized prose version is Joseph Jacob's 'Tamlane,'...related to 'Wild Robin,' this is a tale of the faery queen's favorite, grown to manhood and due to be ritually sacrificed." Notes both Yolen's background notes and decision to leave "Jennet's pregnancy and other adult aspects of the tale" out of her telling, but calls it "lyrical and true to the spirit of the tale and time." Recommends book to readers of grades 3 and up.
Gregory, Helen. Rev. of Tam Lin by Susan Cooper. School Library Journal 37 May 1991: 88.
Review. Comparative analysis of Cooper's telling to Yolen's, the latter being the more highly praised throughout, although "both would be excellent additions to any folklore collection;" notes the lack of notes for sources/background in Cooper. Recommends book for readers of grades 1-4.
Heins, Ethel L. Rev. of Tam Lin, by Susan Cooper. The Horn Book Magazine 67
May/June 1991: 340-1.
Review. Calls the original ballad "characteristically full of action, swift and economical in the telling," and "one of the finest of the supernatural Scottish ballads." Cooper's rendering is noted to be "based on several versions," and Margaret's rescue of Tam Lin is described as being dependent upon the "steadfast love of a mortal maid;" Hutton's illustrations are acknowledged fitting the story, with their "idyllic, eerie, fearful, and ultimately triumphant" nature. Magazine lists the review under "folklore" heading.
Freedman, Jean. "With Child: Illegitimate Pregnancy in Scottish Traditional Ballads."
Folklore Forum 24 (1991): 3-18.
Article. Proposes that the purpose of ballads, rather than revealing the commonality communal creation, is to exemplify conflict and provide options for resolution; in this study the problem is that of unwed pregnancy as dealt with as a problem needing solution in several ballads including 'Tam Lin,' which she cites as showing "no punishment nor fear of [unwed pregnancy], no anguish, no men who can decide Janet's fate... present[ing] a world where in which women hold both material and spiritual power."
Muller, Robin. The Nightwood. Toronto: Doubleday Canada Ltd., 1991.
Children's fiction, illustrated by the author. Features an Earl's willful daughter, who, when forbidden attendance at a ball held at her father's castle, sneaks into the forest to attend the fairy ball instead; it is here that she meets "Tamlynne," the favorite knight of the feared Elfin Queen, who chides her for picking the special roses that allow mortals entrance into the elfin realm on this one night of the year. He allows her into the fairy ball, and she return to dance again with him on each full moon, growing more and more listless in the mortal world until she almost fades away; falling ill she stays away long enough to recover enough to sneak back out again, to have Tamlynne explain the terms of his enchantment, although rather than be sacrificed, his only danger is of becoming an elf forever. Elaine's, on the other hand, according to the old woman who knows the secret of freeing him, is far greater; if she succeeds, the Elfin Queen's anger will be so great that she will take Elaine's life instead. At the fateful hour, having completed the trial of Tamlynne's shape-shifting, Elaine is saved by the fortuitous arrival of the dawn.
Dean, Pamela. Tam Lin. The Fairy Tale Ser., Ed. by Terri Windling. New York: Tom
Doherty Associates, 1991.
Fiction. Full-length fantasy novel set in the 1970s in a Midwestern American college attended by Janet Carter, a professor's daughter. In the course of her studies, Janet befriends among an extended group of friends several young men, including Thomas Lane, who are revealed to be immortal members of a troupe headed by a powerful magic-wielding Professor Medeous. As the story, rich with sub-plots involving campus ghosts and traditions, friendships, the study of literature, Shakespearean actors surviving as faerie-consorts in the undergraduate classes, and seventies drug-experimentation, draws to its inevitable conclusion, Janet, who heretofore has been only friends with Thomas, begins a romantic relationship with him, finds herself pregnant, and attempts to pick herbs to end the pregnancy, at which point Thomas, stopping her, reveals that he is Medeous's captive, and that he needs her to pull him from his horse during their Halloween ride and break the spell; in this telling, it is clear that, were Janet not pregnant, she would be unable to save him, and Medeous's final cursing words are chillingly ambiguous. She threatens to turn him into a tree and refrains, promising instead that, at the next seven-year tithe, there will be two sacrifices, "and two dearer"; whether these two are Janet's other friends within her company, Janet and her yet-unborn child, or any other possible pair of victims is not revealed. The ballad (Child 39-A) is reprinted at the end of the novel, and references to this collection, as well as to a recorded "rather sedate" version by the band Fairport Convention are included in an end-note by the author. A blurb praising Dean's novel by Steven Brust is included.
Scarborough, Elizabeth. The Songkiller Saga. 3 Vols. New York: Bantam, 1991-2.
(Published simultaneously in Canada.) Fantasy novel series. Series storyline involves a plot by the devil to end the happiness in the world caused by songs; ballads and folk songs, being a prime target and the livelihood of the main characters, are central to the story's unfolding. Scottish ballad plots and elements, including references to "Tam Lin" occur mainly in the second book in the series, Picking the Ballad's Bones.
Robinson, Jane. Rev. of The Nightwood by Robin Muller. CM Archive 20.3 May, 1992. 4 pars.
Accessed 2 Dec. 2001. <http://www.umanitoba.ca/cm/cmarchive/vol20no3/nightwood.html>
Review. Acknowledges the book's storyline as "based on a Celtic folk tale," and commends the telling as demanding of its readers, being "sometimes...dark and scary;" praises the strong characterization of the heroine. "Highly" recommends the book to readers of grades 1-6, ages 6-11.
Guy, Sandra Marie. "'With Fairy Forth Y-Nome...' (SO, 1.169): A Study of the Fairy
Abductions and Rescues in 'Thomas Rymer,' 'Tam Lin,' 'Sir Orfeo,' and 'Sir Launfal."
Diss. Lehigh University, 1993.
Master's Thesis Dissertation. Considers commonalities and differences in the supernatural elements between these four selected tales, focusing on uses of imagery and its correlation to folk beliefs, in "TL," for example, noting the possibility that Janet's green mantle and the burning iron rod into which Tam Lin is transformed represent reversals of standard lore, as if the fairies casting the spells believed that things dangerous to them were also dangerous to mortals, or, as is also suggested, that the story elements were at some point mangled or reversed unintentionally by their tellers. Introduces the notion that the tales served as warnings not just against such common dangers as unwedded pregnancy, but against the very real beliefs of their originators, offering "practical information in how to be clever enough to prevail in meetings with the fairies."
Stewart, Polly. "Wishful, Willful Wily Women: Verbal Strategies for Female Success in the
Child Ballads." Feminist Messages: Coding in Women's Folk Culture. Ed. by Joan
Newlon Radner. Urbana & Chicago: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1993.
Article. Text makes no reference to the ballad, but author lists "Tam Lin" among examples of Child ballads that "depict women characters in antagonistic situations involving men," in the category titled "personal and cultural success." General textual bases for the section-title demand that, in these ballads, "women...gain what they want and...also meet cultural expectations for success," usually by means of unusual faithfulness, sacrifice, and verbal displays of wit.
Pratchett, Terry. Lords and ladies: a novel of Discworld. New York: HarperPrism, 1994.
Full-length fantasy novel. Text features, in one of several nested storylines, a plucky character named Margat who is betrothed to the young man that the Elf Queen wants to marry, and who begins the story in a green dress, but no transformation-scene of rescue takes place, the young man's name is no variation of Thomas, and the actual confrontation with the Elf Queen involves a mortal from a different sub-plot.
Wright, David. "Captives in Fairyland" The Encyclopedia of the Celts by Knud Mariboe. 1994.
Accessed 2 Dec. 2001. <http://www.ealaghol.demon.co.uk/celtenc/celt_c1c.htm>
Encyclopedic entry. Gives a broad account of types and motifs of fairy captivity in Celtic stories and ballads, including a discussion on ways and famous attempts of re-capturing a human who was stolen away, mentioning "Young Tamlane" as a story of a successful example of such an attempt.
Würzbach, Natascha, and Simone M. Salz. Motif Index of the Child Corpus. Trans. Gayna
Walls. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1995
(Translated from the original German manuscript by Gayna Walls.) Index. Concordance of thematic elements of the collected Child ballads, followed by summaries of each ballad. "39" ("Tam Lin") appears under the divers headings of "love against family's wishes," "longing," "meeting," "secret," "abortion," "abduction," "otherworldly being," "elf-queen," "captivity," "devil, pact with," "magic," "pregnancy," "birth," "help," "rescue," "greenwood," and "spell, breaking of," but interestingly not under such headings as "warning, disregarded," or "love, test of." Summary follows Child 39 A and assumes no variations, even of Janet's name.
Lyle, Emily B. Andrew Crawfurd's Collection of Ballads and Songs. Vol.2. Edinburgh: The
Scottish Text Society, 1996.
(Volume 1: same, 1975. Manuscripts compiled 1826-8.) Critical manuscript publication. Lyle's Vol. 1 introduction provides biographical information about Crawfurd and his collections, including his involvement in Motherwell's Minstrelsy. In Vol. 2, in her source analysis, she notes 'Tam Lin' as appearing in Crawfurd's MS, collected by Thomas Macqueen, from a Rachel Ro[d]gers of "Wallace Street, Ayr," titled A Fairie Sang, and "'Alexander Macdonnald, collier, Kilbirnie' gave Macqueen a stanza of Child 39 Tam Lin...which is placed by Crawfurd as: '4th stanza of the Fairie Sang'...in this edition." "A Fairie Sang" appears on pages 9-11, accredited to Rachel Rodgers, to which note pages 162-3 feature 8 additional verses found "in pencil in Macqueen's hand with the heading '25' added by Crawfurd." "Janet and Tam Blain" appears on pages 32-5, accredited to "A 'gangrel body' named Betty."
Skunk, J. T. "Tam Lin by Jesse Kirchner" The Transformation Story Archive 1996. 88 pars.
Accessed 2 Dec. 2001. <http://tsa.transform.to/animal/tamlin.html>
Prose re-telling. Includes standard conversations and elements of ballad's dialogue, but shifts jarringly; the morning after her meeting and sexual pairing in the flowers with Tam Lin, Janet somehow knows that she is pregnant, for example. It is Janet's mother who suggests her abortion, an element of the story missing from a majority of re-tellings; when Tam Lin appears to stop her herb-gathering, however, he neglects his usual mention of Janet's intent. A large proportion of the text is devoted to the transformation sequence at the end of the story, which takes place on the evening of the very day that Janet first returned home from her initial encounter.
McKillip, Patricia A. Winter Rose. New York: Ace Books, 1996.
Fiction. Full length fantasy novel incorporating many elements of the ballad story but incorporating many additional strains of plot/character as well; "Tam" is named Corbet Lynn and the ancient hall needing to be reclaimed belongs to him alone, but the otherworld is powerful, the un-named "queen" holds him in her thrall through curses and ancient promises from his grandfather's day, and to win him back, the heroine does have to physically hold him through a series of physical transformations, although the shapes he takes are of ivy vines and the forms of people, dead and living, that she knows, and their damage to her psychological rather than made by claws; the final element of transformation depicted is of fire, but rather than a brand, the burning bouquet of flowers that she would have held had she agreed to an otherworld wedding.
Windling, Terri. "The Music of Fairy" Endicott Studios. 1996. 34 pars. Accessed 2 Dec.
2001. <http://www.endicott-studio.com/forcbmof.html>
Article. General introduction to ballad lore and the inclusion of ballad tales into more modern fantastic works; includes first-hand account of author's travels to the areas in Scotland where "Tam Lin" and other ballads were originally collected. In discussing re-tellings and adaptations of "Tam Lin," Windling mentions P. Dean, E. Pope, A. Garner, P. McKillip, D. Jones, J. Vinge, and a different work by D. Ipcar than referenced above: A Dark Horn Blowing. Also references the poem "Tam Lin's Lady" by Liz Lochhead, appearing in her collections The Grimm Sisters and Dreaming Frankenstein, and includes a link to A. Acland's pages.
Brust, Steven, and Emma Bull. Freedom & Necessity. New York: TOR, 1997.
Fiction. Full-length fantasy/historical fiction novel with no direct reference made to the ballad or the specifics of its storyline, but with strongly influenced plot elements; the main characters include a willful, strong woman (Susan) who will go to any lengths to rescue her cousin/lover (James) from the depths of the political plots involving a secret-society of magic-workers within his own family, one of whose rituals involves a periodic sacrifice of a member's son/brother/father, for which the hero has been chosen. No physical shape-shifting is involved in the story's climactic ending; Susan does not even seem to directly intervene in the attempted murder, but she is pregnant and crouching in the cold and dark as a witness, willing, and she does participate, in the course of the story, in twice aiding James' establishment of his real/assumed identities after the faking of his own death, which more obliquely portrays the transformation themes of the ballad. The authors' acknowledgements include a "thank you" reference to Pamela Dean.
Stewart, R. J. Celtic Myths, Celtic Legends. London: Blanford, 1997.
(Color Illustrations by Courtney Davis. Line Illustrations by Sarah Lever. Author notes "'The Game of Chess' in Chapter 9 is reprinted (with some changes) from my Magical Tales, first published in 1990 by Aquarian Press.) Collection of tales and traditions. Chapter 9, titled "Tam Lin, or The Game of Chess (Scotland)" occupies pages 125-34, with introduction on 123-5 which reveals the Fairy Queen as "Morrighan," or the "Dark Goddess," associates the vessels for water and milk standing at the crossroads as "derived from actual ritual vessels, long preserved at many sites," and adds that "as in the original ballad, it is not clear in this story whether Janet is rescuing her lover or actually giving birth to him as a child." Tale itself is mystical and hypnotic, adding some elements with forceful purpose and others with no claim to clarity, leaving the ballad's impact intact and mysterious.
White, Kimberly Ann Kennedy. "'And he never once asked her leave': A Reinterpretation of
the Scottish Ballad 'Tam Lin.' Master's Thesis. U of Oregon, 1997.
Thesis. Considers the implications of rape as the defining mode of Janet's meeting with Tam Lin, and proposes that, rather than a romantic gesture, the rescue at the end of the tale served as the terms of a bargain between the hero and heroine; he needed to be freed from the fairy land, and she needed to procure a father and a name for her unborn child; also discounts the text as providing evidence that the Fairy Queen's anger was motivated by jealousy rather than simply the loss of her intended sacrifice, which in some versions causes herself to become endangered. Review of criticism summarizes the arguments of Muir, Lyle, Wasserman, Niles, Haden, P. Stewart, and Freedman.
Perry, Evelyn M. "The Ever-Vigilant Hero: Revaluing the Tale of Tam Lin." The Children's
Folklore Review. 19(2) (1997): 31-49.
Article. Outlines and compares the appearances and interpretation variations between the "original" ballad of Tam Lin and the tale's adaptations for children in Jane Yolen's Tam Lin, young adults in Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock, and adults in Pamela Dean's Tam Lin. Perry's main point is to bemoan the devaluation of children's literature in the way modern writers allow Good to "lose[] its force when there is no real threat, no Evil, to compare it to"; likewise, with the retellings, she frowns upon Yolen's choice to deny true danger and sexuality in the story, commends Jones' efforts to re-involve them, while questioning her success, and lauds Dean's product, while admitting that her audience-category is what allows her to tell the entirety of the tale.
Hixon, Martha Pittman. "Awakenings and transformations: Re-visioning the tales of
'Sleeping Beauty,' 'Snow White,' 'The Frog Prince,' and 'Tam Lin'." Diss. U of
Southwestern Louisiana, 1997. DAI 58 #3 Sept. 1997: 857A.
Dissertation Abstract (Unable to procure original from University). Focuses on the adaptations and reinterpretations of these tales to "new media forms, or to a specific age level or type of audience" or to "recast [them] to suit contemporary political and social paradigms," insisting that "'re-visioned' tales say much about the society that's produced them." Cites 'Tam Lin' as "a ballad that has recently proven to be popular with fantasy writers," and approaches this and other stories "beginning with the classic version and then surveying various contemporary retellings"; no mention in abstract of what version of the ballad is taken to be the "classic."
Doherty, Berlie, Ed. Tales of Wonder and Magic. 1997. Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick Press,
1998.
(Illustrated by Juan Wijngaard.) Children's collection of short stories by different authors/translators. Includes "Tamlane" as a prose re-telling by Winifred Finlay (1970; see Finlay's entry), on pages 39-53.
Corsaro, Julie. Rev. of Tales of Wonder and Magic by Berlie Doherty, Ed. Booklist. 94 #8 May
15, 1998: 1625.
Review. Addresses contents generally, calling almost all of the stories "mature in theme and significance," and listing "Tamlane" as an example of a well known Scottish romance; individual contributors "are not familiar nor are their backgrounds identified."
Paterson, Judy. Tamlane. Broxbrun: Amaising Publishing House Ltd., 1999.
[Not Seen] ("Retold by Judy Paterson; illustrated by Sally J. Collins." "Desc.: 30 p.: p., col. ill ;, 25 cm." Item not found in participating library network.)
Mistworks. "Tam Lin." The Fae Café. 12 May, 1999. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001.
<http://www.onr.com/user/samwise/fae/d_dreaming.html>
Ballad Version, attributed to "author unknown," under index-page heading "Fairies Around the World Required Reading;" modern spellings and name variations (the heroine is "May Margaret," the locale "Cartershay") separate this version from those in the traditional canon, but many verses are completely recognizable, suffering only these minute changes.
Keesey, Joann. "Tam Lin" Obsidian Magazine. Vol. 2 (1999) Accessed 2 Dec. 2001.
<http://obsidianmagazine.com/Pages/tamlin.html>
Critical re-telling, including discussion of the historical and geographical elements of the ballad's setting, the dominant themes and different plot elements of different versions, and the contributions of various critics to the body of the ballad's lore. Quoted version correlates with the lyrics performed by Freeport Convention.
Kerven, Rosalind. The Enchanted Forest: A Scottish Fairytale. London: Frances Lincoln,
1999.
[Not Seen] ("Desc.: 32 p.: p., col. ill. ;, 27 cm." Item not found in participating library network.)
Yolen, Jane. Not One Damsel in Distress: World Folktales for Strong Girls. San Diego, New York,
London: Harcourt, 2000.
(Harcourt division: Silver Whistle. Illus. by Susan Guevara.) Collection of children's prose re-tellings. "Burd Janet" appears on pages 48-56, and although the heroine's name is changed and many elements of the tale revealed in altered wording, the story itself, including the interesting exchange of offered bargains between Janet and the Fairy Queen, is neatly parallel to Yolen's illustrated publication of 1990. Source notes and background information appear on pages 108-9 and include mention of other "short story versions and three novels, which all use the ballad," including R. McKinley, P. Dean, D. Jones, and E. Pope. Tale-specific bibliography appears on page 115 but is unhelpfully brief; cites only Child as ballad source, as well as one folk-lore book and Yolen's own re-telling.
Greever, Ellen A. Rev. of Not One Damsel in Distress: World Folktales for Strong Girls by Jane
Yolen. School Library Journal. 46 #7 July 2000: 126.
Review. Gives an overview of contents, mentioning "'Burd Janet' (a Tam Lin variant)" as an example of a tale "likely to be recognized." Documents "ample source notes," records and explanations of Yolen's changes, and "a thorough bibliography." Recommends the book for readers in grades 4-7.
"Tam Lin A Scottish Legend." Seanchaidh. 31 Oct. 2000. 6 pars. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001.
<http://members.tripod.com/seanchaidh/tamlin.htm>
Prose re-telling. Site devoted to Celtic legends and historical tales. Re-telling is hasty, grammatically difficult, and truncated; "Seonaid's" meeting with Tam Lin and her rescue of him take place on the same day, with only her interest in his beauty to motivate her; no sexual encounter occurs.
Matthews, Caitlin. Celtic Love: Ten Enchanted Stories. San Francisco: Harper, 2000.
Short story collection. Untitled prose retelling begins with a bracketed introduction explaining that the "Scottish tale [is] derived from the 'Ballad of Tam Lin'" and provides a sentence-summary of the plot as well as a brief description of Halloween's origins in the festivals of Beltane and Samhain, adding "the conditions of Tam Lin's release affect Janet's life and that of her unborn child, which are at great risk." Like Finlay's, Matthews' Janet, when arguing with Tam Lin, makes the distinction between his rights to her property at night and hers by day. Janet's seduction is preserved, as well as her plight in needing a husband and the pressures put on by her household, which drives her to consider aborting her pregnancy by the gathering of herbs at the forbidden place of her and Tam Lin's meeting. Strong elements of Christian imagery are imposed upon the final scene of their marriage vows to one another behind the statuary at Milescross.
Dean Pamela. "Interview: Pamela Dean. By Mary Anne Mohanraj" Strange Horizons. 1 Jan.
2001. 98 pars. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001.
<http://www.strangehorizons.com/2001/20010101/pamela_dean.shtml>
Interview. Discusses various aspects of the author's life, and details many of her written works, including her 1991 publication of "Tam Lin," in which the author describes her own intent as "initially to retell the Tam Lin story;" creative elaborations on the original ballad are characterized by the author as "a love poem with jokes, to my college, and ultimately to the study of English literature."
Strates, Felix. "The Annotated Tam Lin." The Annotated Dean. 11 Mar. 2001. Accessed 2
Dec. 2001. <http://www.alittlebitofnotmuch.com/TAD/TL/index.html>
Chapter-by-chapter annotations for Pamela Dean's 1991 novel, providing source-information for the many quotes and literary allusions included in the dialogue elements of the novel's text. Interestingly, not a single line or reference to the ballad itself is made.
Acland, Abigail. "The Tam Lin Pages" 23 Sept. 2001. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001.
(Copyright Abigail Acland) Personal Website. This extremely valuable resource includes ballad's plot-summary, as well as 32 collected (sources cited) versions of the ballad itself, a bibliographic library of literature related to the story and surrounding ballad- or folk-lore, version-comparisons, translations, symbolism-keys, on-line resources, musical notations, links to recordings and on-line music files, geographic information about Scotland, the area surrounding present-day Carterhaugh, and their relation to the ballad, comparisons to (and text for) thirteen similar or related ballads and fairy-tales, theoretical/thematic essays, published parodies, guestbook, discussion board, and site-wide search engine.
"Tam Lin." Legends. 11 Nov. 2001. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001.
<http://www.legends.dm.net/ballads/tamlin.html>
(Linked to main site through "Ballads & Broadsides" section.) Link Page. Includes two-paragraph summary of the ballad's plot, history, and appearances in modern re-tellings, with links to several versions of the ballad, multiple re-tellings, essays, related articles, and related-theme pages.
Butler, Charles. "Alan Garner's Red Shift and the Shifting Ballad of 'Tam Lin'" Children's
Literature Association Quarterly. 26(2) 2001: 74-83.
Article. Thoroughly explores the complex relation between ballad elements and overarching themes with the multi-layered text of Garner's novel, finding psychological and thematic overlap and correlation that add meaning and possible interpretive slants to both the novel and the ballad itself; Butler considers gender-relations, time-shifts, the possible nature of fairy imprisonment and its connection, explored by numerous writers, to medical or mental withdrawals, the different unique and combined expressions of the ballad's mythology as expressed in Garner's novel, and includes an in-depth comparative look at the use of similar elements in C. Storr's Thursday. Provides background information about the story of the ballad itself, its use by other writers of children's fiction, the probable reasons for its popularity among such writers, and the implications of the overlap of these elements in the "difficult text" that is Red Shift. Also includes thorough source- and explanatory notes and text/web bibliography.
Walton, Jo. Tam Lin, a Barrayaran Shakespeare Play. 2001. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001.
<http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk/tamlin/tamlin.htm>
Play script with introduction. Author credits Pamela Dean's novel, as well as the works of Shakespeare and other elements unrelated to the ballad as inspirational. Story incorporates characters from Dean, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and of course the ballad itself, and is set in a time period as to correlate with Midsummer; no mention is made of whether Jones' Fire and Hemlock influenced Walton's identical naming of the man Janet is to marry instead of "Tom." Sexual elements of the ballad are dealt with casually but without shading. Interestingly, Walton addresses several issues treated ambiguously by other writers; that Janet must be pregnant to save Tom is stated outright, and the necessary tiend to hell is ultimately paid instead by Robin Goodfellow (contextually linked to the character of Robin Armin in P. Dean's novel).
Nelson, Lesley. "Tam Lin: John Renfro Davis" Folk Music of England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales,
and America. 1 Dec. 2001. 2 Dec. 2001.
<http://www.contemplator.com/folk4/tamlin.html>
Midi file with lyrics. (Lyrics given include only verses 1-10 of Child 39 A.) Tune (instrumental only) plays while site is loaded. Related information gives historical background for ballad. Related links for more background on Child and his collections, and additional versions of the ballad are included.
Alphabetical Bibliography with Annotations of Undated Websites Operational Sept. 2002
"Tam Lin" Realm of the Vague and Obscure. 11 pars. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001.
<http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Nook/3829/page1g.html>
(Includes non-functional links to main and continuing pages.) Prose re-telling, no author cited. Elegant and concise paraphrasing of original ballad, with no sexual encounter or resultant elements of pregnancies and possible abortions included; Janet's meeting and rescue of Tam Lin occur on the same day, the latter motivated by her pity for his plight as revealed in their initial conversation. Three images from unidentified sources are included; one is the back-cover illustration from P. McKillip's Winter Rose.
"Tam Lin: The Musical" Accessed 2 Dec. 2001.
<http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/VG/Tam-Lin.htm>
Promotional page. Cites "Tam Lin: The Musical... written by poet Katrina Porteous and Northumbrian musician, Alistair Anderson," as "the most exciting Northumbrian language and music event of the Millennium year," then offering some historical and plot-synoptic information about the work, an "emotional, haunting, and inspiring work, written entirely in Northumbrian dialect and performed in a single, unbroken piece of music incorporating tunes, songs, and chants-with almost no spoken dialogue," and an "outstanding addition to the County's musical repitoire." "The premiere performance of the musical took place on 14 October at the College Theatre, Ashington, performed by Bedlingtonshire Community High Youth Theatre."
Bond, Lahri. "Tam Lin (Republic Entertainment Inc.,1972 theatrical release; re-released on
video, 1999)" Green Man Review. 7 pars. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001.
<http://www.greenmanreview.com/tamlinthemovie.html>
(GMR previously published as "Folk Tales" in paper format. Updated weekly; orig. date of review not recorded.) Review. Details plot and elements of McDowell's film version of "Tam Lin" [not seen]; Bond recounts that the film sets the story in the English and Scottish Borders of the1960s, portrays the transformation scene as an LSD trip, and incorporates "first rate" costumes, sets, and "at times," acting, with, unfortunately, its "story adaptation going from surreal to silly." Includes link to A. Acland's "The Tam Lin Pages."
Inish, Rowan. "Pamela Dean Tam Lin (TOR Books 1991)" Rev. of Tam Lin by Pamela
Dean. Green Man Review. 7 pars. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001.
<http://www.greenmanreview.com/tam_lin.html>
(GMR previously published as "Folk Tales" in paper format. Updated weekly; orig. date of review not recorded.) Review. Thorough plot and influence analysis of Dean's novel, with links to the author's and editor's home pages as well as to A. Acland's "The Tam Lin Pages." Discusses authorial decision to "lift the story of Tam Lin out of 16th century Scotland," and praises profusely other elements of the novel, while noting its difficult nature for "a more casual reader."
Ketner, Mary Grace. "Janet and Tam Lin." Storied Women. 26 pars. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001.
<http://talesandlegends.net/Tamlin.html>
Prose re-telling. This re-telling is part of a storyteller's website, and links to other stories and storytelling resources. Author notes the past existence of the Tam Lin Webring but includes no links. Tale incorporates initial verse of Child 39 A, and repeats several lines throughout, giving oral resonance; version mainly follows standard form (Janet picks a single rose instead of two, the tale takes place over the specific course of two days, and the loss of Janet's maidenhead is referred to with both clarity and subtlety) is intended to be told aloud
Alphabetical Bibliography with Annotations of Undated Websites Non-Operational Sept. 2002
{Note: these entries are included not to tease the reader, but upon the hope that some sites might become operational again, or might soon be found at alternate addresses.}
"Anonymous Ballads and Songs." Bibliomania. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001
<http://www.bibliomania.com/0/2/277/133/20431/1/frameset.html>
[9/16/02 no server found] (Link opens to the text of "379 Thomas the Rhymer;" "380 Tam Lin" can be found on the following page.) Online Anthology. Version of "Tam Lin" corresponds in part with several Child versions, but in whole with none recognized; no source information of any kind is given.
Geliher, Andrew. The Tam Lin Text. Accessed 2 Dec. 2001.
<http://www.cam.anglia.ac.uk/~operag/music/tam_lin/tl_txt_anno.html>
[9/15/02 item not found] Annotated version of song text. Author notes: "this is the text to the song linked by threads which run through it. This is my interpretation of the song, and attempt to define what it is about this song that I find appealing." Includes a few brief links to several thematic mentions of aspects such as "colour;" most links jump the viewer to other verses bearing similar elements as the one selected.