Here’s how it appears on the page, with the tune she sang it to: This particular version was sung by a Mrs Russell of Upwey, Dorset, and transcribed in 1907. The words from the film version (Sproule’s 1970s version) are very close to those recorded in The Penguin Book of English Folk Songs, selected from the Journal of the Folk Song Society and edited by R. Since learning the song, and finding it unutterably sad, I’ve been wanting to know the history of the ballad’s transmission (somewhat complicated), if it is actually about Jane Seymour, the third wife of Henry VIII (it is), and whether or not Seymour did in fact have a caesarean section (maybe, maybe not). What really draws me to this song is its depiction of a woman in labour, told at times from her perspective, in her voice, and its recording of a possible caesarean section, with the inevitable outcome being the death of the woman as she gives birth to her child.
Ballad of jane meaning movie#
The past few weeks I’ve been learning to play “The Death of Queen Jane,” a 16th century ballad I first heard sung by Oscar Isaac in the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis. The tune used in the movie is a fairly recent one by Dáithí Sproule, composed in the 1970s and recorded by The Bothy Band in 1979, but the ballad itself, sung to different tunes, and transcribed in literary and vernacular variations I want to describe here, can be traced back to the late sixteenth century. There was fiddling and dancing on the day the babe was bornīut poor Queen Jane beloved she lay cold as a stone. If I lose the flower of England I shall lose the branch too.’ ‘Oh no,’ cried King Henry, ‘that’s a thing that I can never do. Will you open my right side and find my baby.’ ‘King Henry, King Henry, will you do one thing for me, Saying ‘What does ail you my Lady, your eyes they look so dim.’ King Henry was sent for, King Henry he did come, We will call on King Henry and hear what he may say. Oh no cried the women, that’s a thing that can never be.
Will you open my right side and find my baby. Good women, good women, good women as ye be
Til her women grew so tired they could no longer there.
Ballad of jane meaning full#
Queen Jane lay in labour a full nine days or more
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