“A
traditional ballad is a story in folk song form that is passed down the
generations. Although the traditional ballad is at the heart of
English-language folklore, the form itself and most of the oldest stories came
through Scotland from Norse origins.” Bennett Hammond.
The Dark
Side of Almeda Riddle
Many Ozarks ballads have a dark
side. Whether they are murder ballads or story ballads of death and natural
disasters, or even down-right scary ghost story songs, the folk songs of the
Ozark region looked square into the face of darkness just as surely as they looked into the light.
Arkansas singer and songwriter Almeda James Riddle was born near
West Pangburn, Arkansas in Cleburne County on November 21, 1898. In 1916, she married H. Price
Riddle and started a family near Heber Springs.
Her life had its share of light and darkness; of happiness and heartbreak. On November 25, 1926, she lost her husband and their young baby to a tornado.
“After the cyclone, my two
little sons and one daughter and I came back to my father’s farm in the
foothills of the Ozarks. But I always sang the ballads as did they. We all
loved them. I
still collected and from memory wrote some down. But until 1949 or 1950 after the children
were married and I had three grandchildren, I never had time to really sit down and write
all I remembered.”
Consequently, many times the emotions
of her life would be seen in her choice of what ballads to sing.
Almeda thought
of herself as more of a song collector than a song writer, though, and she believed the
songs themselves were more important than the performance she gave. Still, no
one can sing these songs without giving part of themselves, and therein is the
strange contradiction of Almeda Riddle finding solace in her own life in songs that
had origins hundreds of years in the past.
“Lady Margaret and Lord William,” is
a sad song of love lost turned into a ghost story turned into a dark death
ballad. It is as tragic as anything in Shakespeare. And like other classics, it
remains in our culture today. Most people may remember a similar version called
“Barbara Allen,” which shares the final verse about the doomed lovers turning
into vines in a flower garden. The most beautiful version I’ve ever heard was
by Art Garfunkel in the 1970s.
”Lady Margaret sat in her high hall window
Combing of her yellow hair
Leading his bride so fair.
She threw down that ivory comb
Back she tossed her hair
Down she fell to the high hall
window
And never more was seen there.”
The main
point of the story is that Sir William was of royal blood and Lady Margaret was
a commoner. So even though William loved Margaret, he was forced to marry a
bride of royalty.
So the Lady
Margaret dies of a broken heart, but her story is just beginning:
Now when day was done and night come
on
The people all asleep
Lady Margaret arose from her coffin
cold
Stood weeping at William’s bed feet
And it’s how do you like your bed
making
And it’s how do you like your sheet
There in your arms asleep.
But better would I like my old time
love
Were she in my arms asleep
Not weeping at my bed feet.”
William
awakes from what he supposes is a nightmare. He has no idea Lady Margaret is
dead. He realizes he still loves Margaret more than his new bride,
and this passion fills him with guilt and a fear of retribution.
“What an awful dream
I fear it means no good
I dreamed my room was filled with tears
My bride all drowned in blood
My new bride drowned in blood”
Williams
rides straight away to Lady Margaret’s house where he’s told:
“Lady Margaret lies in a coffin cold
Out there in the hall.”
William runs
to the coffin crying:
Turn down that shroud so fine
And let me kiss Lady Margaret’s lips
In life she oft kissed mine.
Her father took off the coffin lid
Her brother turned down the sheet
Three times he kissed her death cold
lips
And fell dead right at her feet.”
Almeda
Riddle later wrote, “Another supposition was that if any of the royal blood
touched a corpse, they died. That was death. And Lord William knew that would
mean his death when he touched her. That’s an English superstition.”
Citations: George West, “Riddle, Almeda James”
entry in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture.
George
West, Obituary for Almeda Riddle, Sing
Out! Magazine, Vol. 16, No. 2, April-May 1986. (pp. 46-47).
“A Singer and Her Songs: Almeda Riddle’s
Book of Ballads,” edited by Roger D. Abrahams, Louisiana State Press, 1970.
