A. L. Lloyd and Reynardine: authenticity and authorship in the afterlife of a British broadside ballad

Folklore, Dec, 2004 by Stephen D. Winick

Second, the change to "his teeth did brightly shine" occurred after Lloyd's first arrangement of the song, and was almost certainly made by Lloyd himself. Even if a Tom Cook had given him the song--which, as we have seen, is highly improbable---it would have been the earlier version, without the word "teeth."

Third, a simple perusal of the Fairport Convention text will show that it was based at least in part on Lloyd's second version. Although there are numerous small differences, the line "his teeth did brightly shine" was, as we have just seen, almost certainly Lloyd's creation. This line is practically ubiquitous in British revival versions of the song, which means that almost all such versions appear to derive ultimately from Lloyd's.

Fourth, in Lloyd's second version, he continued the practice of using the work of known poets in his song creations. His second line, "among the springing thyme," is apparently taken from A. E. Housman's well-known poem "Bredon Hill" (Housman 1938, 28). Like Anderson, Campbell and Hughes, Housman was heavily influenced by traditional ballads; Laws refers to Housman's work as "the romantic folk ballad in modern dress" (Laws 1972, 113). Using a work like Housman's, then, would fit Lloyd's modus operandi apparent in both the first version of "Reynardine" and "The Recruited Collier": Lloyd apparently took the work of a poet who was influenced by folk ballads and borrowed lines of his verse to create a new or refurbished ballad of his own. [9]

The third and final piece of textual evidence will, I think, lay to rest any claim that a Tom Cook sang "Reynardine" for Lloyd, by confirming Lloyd's direct authorship of the ballad and his use of Hughes's and Campbell's versions for that purpose. DeNatale notes that Anne Briggs's version of the song derived from an "Irish song" (DeNatale 1980, 45). But he neglects to quote the whole sentence from the note, which states that the "words and tune of this version are adapted by me from an Irish original" (Briggs 1971; 1999, 33). DeNatale may have assumed that Briggs wrote this sleeve note, but on both the 1971 LP and the 1999 CD re-issue, the song notes are marked "written by A. L. Lloyd." In other words, in his notes to Briggs's 1971 version of "Reynardine," Lloyd finally stated the genesis of the song: he himself had adapted it from an Irish original (Briggs 1971; 1999, 33).

At the time Lloyd began tinkering with "Reynardine," there were four Irish texts published: a broadside by Healy of Cork (Roud 1994a), a single-verse fragment in Joyce's Ancient Irish Music (1873, 21), and Hughes's and Campbell's versions. Lloyd's adaptation almost certainly involved starting with Hughes's version as a base, and adding elements of other versions to create a new song.

Negotiating Authenticity: A. L. Lloyd and the Mystery of "Reynardine"

Having established that Lloyd created the revival "Reynardine," new questions arise: why did Lloyd revive the song, why did he change it as he did, and what were the effects of his changes? The answers lie in the conflicting conceptions of authenticity that troubled Lloyd's approach to folksong. Leslie Shepard beautifully summed up Lloyd's personality as "a romantic at odds with a scholar" (Shepherd 1986, 132), and it is precisely in their respective conceptions of authenticity that these two facets of Lloyd's personality were at variance.