An Annotated Bibliography of The Ballad of Tam Lin
Tyra Twomey
Masters Program
Introduction
The Ballad
"Tam Lin" is the best known of the several titles under which versions of and allusions to this anonymous Scottish ballad can be found. The title (almost always) names the ballad's secondary character, Tam Lin (known variously as Tamlane and Tom Lynn, among others), who begins the narrative a captive of the faerie queen, and ends it a freed and mortal man. The protagonist of the ballad's story is the young man's rescuer, a courageous and defiant young girl usually called Janet (but also in variations Margaret, Jenny, and less commonly Elaine); it is probably due to the strength of her character and the appeal of the "girl saves boy" storyline that so many modern writers have chosen as projects adaptations and re-tellings of this ancient tale.
Versions of the ballad were first recorded in the late eighteenth century. They appear amidst the treasures of a number of collectors of English and Scottish balladry, but the original was almost certainly considerably older than the dates of these efforts at recording the remnants of a culture believed to be endangered; the folk-tale elements of the ballad's story were already ancient in nature, a wide variety of similar but significantly altered versions were already available for collection, and a similarly-named "tayl" was mentioned as early as 1549 in a Scottish historical/political text.
Although the ballad appears in many versions in anthologies ranging in publication dates from 1776 to the present day, the most frequently referenced sources for later writers and anthologists, initially, were the collections of Sir Walter Scott and of James Johnson, who was a friend of ballad writer and collector Robert Burns'. The ballad itself was included in Johnson's Museum by Burns, whom later critics and scholars suspect of being instrumental in the particular wording of what was to become the most familiar version to readers; in F. J. Child's impressively comprehensive critical nineteenth-century collection, this is version A, and after Child's work was published, his became the singular authoritative source in the field.
As a song, the ballad has never knowingly ceased to be sung; although extant traditional tunes were not comprehensively collected until the twentieth century, by Bertrand Bronson, following the textual collections of Child, the folk music genre, always somewhere participating in a form of revival, is rich even today with CD recordings and mp3 files of old versions of the ballad, as well as newer adaptations or new tunes carrying the more ancient words; one Celtic band is even using the ballad-subject's name as their own.
From a literary perspective, the ballad has been an element of Scottish lore growing in recognition and interest since its time of collection; from a beginning of appearances only in anthologies and ballad-collections, the story of Tam Lin has traveled into a series of collections of prose ballad tales, studies of folk-lore, balladry, and regional literature, poetry anthologies, and fictional adaptations of the page, stage, and screen for both children and adults.
The Bibliography
This project has, as its goal, the organization of resources related to the various forms of the ballad of Tam Lin as collected by early scholars, adapted by later writers, and studied as poetry, legend, fiction, and history across the ages. Chronologically, initial entries are predominantly collections; critical and scholarly analyses follow after, and the predominant later twentieth-century and post-millennial entries are examples or reviews of fictional adaptations and the appearances of the ballad or its themes in folk-lore studies. Many works discussing the nature of balladry or its collection, as well as the legends and folk-beliefs of the people in whose land the ballad originated make reference to the song or to elements of its story, and I have tried to be equally thorough in their inclusion. Time constraints and the graduate student budget have prevented my viewing of several works whose locations are known to me; many other relevant sources may exist beyond the limits of my to-date exposure to the subject, but I have made mention of as many elements as I have encountered mention of myself. An entry of [Not Seen] follows citations of such "missing" elements, and I have included as much information about their contents and whereabouts as I could find.
Because of its thematic appearance in several works of modern fantastic fiction, the ballad of Tam Lin has, at this time, a significant web-presence. Many sites offer literary, geographical, musical, and legend/lore related resources to aid one's study of the ballad and its magical elements; many others are fan sites of dubious relevance to the serious study of the ballad's history and literary prevalence. I have tried to include here the most interesting and useful of the former, most of which contain links to other sites containing additional information; in no way do I claim the following work to be exhaustive of available on-line resources. The inconstant nature and continual evolution of web material cannot be escaped, but it is my hope that the sources listed will provide helpful starting points for any further web-research readers might wish to pursue.
At the time of its creation, this work-in-progress was a literary project for a literary research-methods class, and because I have neither an existing taste for or knowledge of the folk music-scene, nor the current time and interest to develop one, I have included almost no information on the ballad as sung or recorded musically; an interested scholar or listener should be able to find more than enough information to start a separate search of this relevant category of the research topic by following the varied links at Abigail Acland's website, www.tam-lin.org/music.html.
I have also come across mention of at least two film adaptations of the ballad from the 1970s and 80s, neither of which I have attempted to view; an interested party should peruse Acland's site and/or other web resource pages for links to movie and review information.
My gratitude is extended to the faculty and fellow graduate students who supported and encouraged me in my endeavors (and kept piles of hefty, old, unstable books from falling on my head), and to the staff of the Virginia Tech Inter-Library Loan (Illiad), without whose dedication to their work I would never have been able to make so much progress in my own.
Links to Annotations:
Chronological Bibliography, with Subdivisions for Undated Materials
Topical Bibliography, Sub-Sorted Alphabetically by Author
All Web Art copyright 1997-2002 by Karen Nicholas of Celtic Web Art.
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