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The Farmer's Curst Wife is a traditional English language folk song listed asChild balladnumber 278 and number 160 in theRoud Folk Song Index.
The lyrics of the ballad are sometimes sung to the melody of the songLillibullero.[1]
Robert Burns based his 1792 poem "Carle of Killyburn Braes" on the ballad.
A farmer has a wife who causes him stress. One day, theDevil takes her away toHell. In Hell, the wife commits violent acts. She makes life in hell so bad that the Devil brings her back to her husband.[2]
WhenCecil Sharp visited theRitchie family ofViper,Kentucky in 1917 on his journey to collect traditional songs, he was excited to hear their version of the ballad (which they called "The Little Devils"), because it included a whistled refrain that Sharp had read about having once existed in Britain.Jean Ritchie recalled the tale of her sisters Una and Sabrina learning the lyrics of the song from their uncle Jason in order to sing it to Cecil Sharp,[3] whose transcription of their performance can be viewed via the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.[4]
Alan Lomax recordedJean Ritchie singing the song in 1949, and the recording is freely available online courtesy of the Alan Lomax archive.[5] She then recorded the song in 1952 on her albumSinging the Traditional Songs of Her Kentucky Mountain Family. The Ritchie family version ends with the humorous verse:
Oh the women they are so much better than men,When they go to hell they get sent back again.
Lots of other version were collected in the United States. TheAppalachian musiciansNimrod Workman,[6]Horton Barker,[7]Texas Gladden[8] andAunt Molly Jackson[9] all recorded their own traditional versions of the song around the middle of the twentieth century. Elsewhere in the US,James "Iron Head" Baker[10] andOllie Gilbert[11] had their versions recorded. Texas Gladden's 1932 recording can be heard online via theUniversity of Virginia Library website.[12]
A recording made byJames Madison Carpenter of a male singer inBampton,Oxfordshire in the 1930s can be heard on theVaughan Williams Memorial Library website.[13] Jimmy White ofWhittingham,Northumberland was recorded singing the ballad in 1954,[14] as was Alan Rogerson of nearbyWooler,Northumberland in 1958.[15]Walter Pardon ofNorfolk also recorded his traditional version.[16] English versions such as that ofGeorge "Pop" Maynard which can be heard on theBritish Library Sound Archive website,[17] include the whistling refrain that Cecil Sharp thought had been lost in Britain, albeit a different tune to the Ritchie version. It has also been recorded by a handful of Scottish singers.
The renowned piper, Seamus Ennis, recorded an acclaimed version in his 1957 album The Bonny Bunch of Roses. Another acclaimed version of the song is byThomas Moran[18]
The following lyrics were recorded in James Henry Dixon'sAncient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England (1857):
1 There was an old farmer in Sussex did dwell,
(chorus of whistlers)
There was an old farmer in Sussex did dwell,
And he had a bad wife, as many knew well.
(chorus of whistlers)
2 Then Satan came to the old man at the plough:
'One of your family I must have now.
3 'It is not your eldest son that I crave,
But it is your old wife, and she I will have.'
4 'O welcome, good Satan, with all my heart!
I hope you and she will never more part.
5 Now Satan has got the old wife on his back,
And he lugged her along, like a pedlar's pack.
6 He trudged away till they came to his hall-gate;
Says he, Here, take in an old Sussex chap's mate.
7 O then she did kick the young imps about;
Says one to the other, Let's try turn her out.
8 She spied thirteen imps all dancing in chains,
She up with her pattens and beat out their brains.
9 She knocked the old Satan against the wall!
'Let's turn her out, or she'll murder us all.'
10 Now he's bundled her up on his back amain,
And to her old husband he took her again.
11'I have been a tormentor the whole of my life,
But I neer was tormented so as with your wife.'
