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Charles Vess
Unregistered User
(8/19/01 7:35:58 pm)
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About Mr. Fox...
Several years ago, while on a long road trip I was listening to a live broadcast of a folk singer who sang a song which he called MR. FOX. After a frantic search which turned up no paper or pen to jot down notes with, I hoped for the best and trusted to my memory to serve. Alas my brain acted as a sieve and all the details drained away. When I reached my destination I couldn't remember the singers name or even the program it was sung on... The song was similar in structure and in events (at least in the beginging) to LITTLE SIR HUGH. Two girls are playing with a ball. When it is thrown over the high wall of an enclosed courtyard, either both or one of them climbs the wall to retrieve the ball. There they encounter Mr. Fox who then contrives to have her maidenhead. The rest I've forgotten. I've never been able to find a recording of the song or a set of the lyrics (and with all the ballad books on my shelves it seems impossible!). There is a song with the same name sung by an English group by the name of Mr.Fox, but this is most certainly not that song. Does anyone on this board have any information on this song. Thanks.
Charles
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janeyolen
Unregistered User
(8/19/01 9:41:35 pm)
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Mr Fox
Charles:
The story "Mr. Fox" is a British/American version of the Bluebeard story. I have it in my FAVORITE FOLKTALES FROM AROUND THE WORLD collection which also has good notes at the back. (I don't mhave a copy here in Scotland.) Other varients are "Silver Nose" (Italo Calvino) and "Fitcher's Bird" (Grimms) and the latter I have retold in NOT ONE DFAMSEL IN DISTRESS with good notes, though I don't have that book here either.
I think the English groupn that sings it is Steeleye Span. Don't know the single singer version.
Jane
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Charles Vess
Unregistered User
(8/20/01 8:33:07 am)
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Thanks, but...
Thanks for responding so quickly Jane. I pulled your book down from my shelf and read through your telling and it doesn't seem to have the same story as the song I heard (or it could be that my memory is playing tricks with my head) but it IS the MR. FOX sung by the English folk rock group called Mr. Fox who recorded it on an album of the same name (Whew!!). A wonderful story but not the one I listened (or think I listened to).
The song I heard seemed to have a more sensual cast to the story line with the seduction and the ultimate loss of her maidenhead being the goal and not the murdering of various young girls.
Maybe I just need to write down "my" version of the story, but I'd love to hear that song again.
So it goes...
Charles
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janeyolen
Unregistered User
(8/20/01 12:53:46 pm)
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Seduction
Part of the Mr.Fox ethos IS the seduction element, Charles. He manages to seduce lots of young virgins and then kills them.<In some versions, it is because they do not follow his rules--looking in the forbidden room, usually. In Mr. Fox he just brings them home and murders them.> So I suppose the modern song just goes to the seduction part and not the other.
Jane
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Terri
Registered User
(8/21/01 12:31:13 am)
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Re: Seduction
Charles, I haven't heard the version of Mr. Fox that you refer to either, I'm afraid, but it sounds like a combination of the Angl0-Scots ballad Reynardine (which is, of course, another name for Mr. Fox) and another that I can't think of the name of off-hand (alas) but which is on one of the middle-period Steeleye Span albums, about children playing at the ball, the ball goes over a wall, the child (a boy, a girl? I can't remember...) goes to retrieve it, is met by a beautiful lady who feeds him, cuddles him, and stabs him to death. I don't have that particular Steeleye Span album anymore, but perhaps someone else here does and can name the song. All I remember clearly is the chorus, sung to an oddy upbeat pop tune: "Mother, mother, make my bed, make for me a winding sheet, etc."
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Terri
Registered User
(8/21/01 12:36:17 am)
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Re: Seduction
P.S. : You've read Neil Gaiman's version of Mr. Fox, haven't you? A long, delicious poem called The White Road published in our fairy tale anthology series. I think it was in the third one: Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears.
Maybe Greg knows the Mr. Fox variant you heard, since he's both a folk music fan and involved in research for a Fitcher's Bird/Bluebeard novel.
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Charles Vess
Unregistered User
(8/21/01 7:15:52 am)
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The steeleye song is...
Terri,
The Steeleye song you're refering to is LITTLE SIR HUGH off of their COMMONER'S CROWN album. And is about two little boys playing at the ball, following it into a courtyard and being slain by the woman they find there. It's a reference to a mideaval(?) historical event that took place in the city of York. The events in the ballad were used as the "excuse" to slaughter the Jews living in York (the lady being an "evil" Jewess murdering those "innocent" Christian boys). Ellen K. is using these events in her rendition of the ballad she claims to be working on for my own BALLAD collection.
I'll look up Neil's poem. I remember years ago he calling me up and reading it to me live. I didn't know that it had been published (but I'm not surprised at all)It was quite nice...
Charles
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Terri
Registered User
(8/22/01 12:27:12 am)
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Re: The steeleye song is...
Ah yes, Little Sir Hugh, that's the one. And Ellen Kushner is the perfect writer to do a rendition of it -- I can't wait! Well, I hope someone else here can identify your fox ballad, because I'm dead curious about it now too....
Speaking of foxes, a friend here on Dartmoor recently saw badger and fox parents come out of the large same network of tunnels beneath a tree at the edge of a field at dusk, followed by badger and fox cubs who then
romped around together, chasing and tumbling over each other. I've never heard of such a thing before, but this is an extremely reliable witness.
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Sharlit
Registered User
(8/22/01 7:43:37 am)
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Mr. Fox
Well,
Mr. Fox covered Mr. Fox on their album _Mr. Fox_.
And it seems to me that I've heard it covered again, but a quick once-over of the collection downstairs has failed to yield very much. I suppose it'll come to me.
Wait, isn't it on one of Ashley Hutchenses "The Guv'nor" volumes?
*hopes for help from the other folkies*
etc,
-charlotte
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