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BALLAD INDEX

 Down in the Willow Garden

 Matty Groves

 Wind and Rain


 Bloody Gardener

 Clyde Waters

 The Broomfield Hill

 The Butcher Boy / Go Dig My Grave

 The Sea Captain

Bloody Gardener

Roud 1700
A rich noble boy falls in love with a shepherds daughter. His mother, disapproving of the cross-class love, sends a letter to the girl pretending to be her son and asking her to meet in the garden, but hires a gardener to meet the girl instead, and ultimately kill her. He promises to leave flowers on her grave and takes out his knife to “cut the single thread of life”. 

After the girl is buried, her lover arrives to the garden looking for her, and a milk white dove tells him what happened. (Specifically it seems the dove flies to the fresh grave of the woman, droops her wings and bleeds from her “milk white breast”.  The boy returns to his mother accusing her of killing his love, and promises to “soon take flight” and join his darling. 

In this broadside from 1754  we see that the true loves are buried next to each other, and the hired murderer was also killed, leaving three graves at the end of this song.

Here’s what is interesting about this ballad:Often when songs cross the Atlantic from England/Scotland/Ireland to Newfoundland and Appalachia they lose some of their supernatural elements, but this song retains the magical dove who tells of the murder.   

And finally, I love this quote from A.L. Llyod (folklorist and communist): “Perhaps it was the contrast between the gardener’s gentle profession and his murderous nature that gave the ballad such a firm hold on the popular imagination.”

Listen to:
The Bloody GardenerMartain Carthy

For the hardcoare ballad fans



The Bloody Gardener Rachel Newton 

An easier listen 

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