Songs have always travelled. I recently came across one that has versions across the English speaking world. It has been passed on by word of mouth for close to five-hundred years.
I started wondering how this song came to be written and what qualities it could have to give it such lasting appeal.
This song, about the sad fate of a woman called Molly Bawn, goes back to the 16th or 17th century and, while probably Irish in origin, can be found in England, Scotland, America, Canada and Australia. She may be called Molly Varden, Molly Whan, Molly Bond, Molly Van, Molly Bán, Molly Vaunder, Polly Von, Polly Vaughan, Polly Vaughn, Peggy Baun and other variations on the name. The song is sometimes called The Fowler, Jimmy Randle and The Shooting of His Dear.
The details of the story change depending on which version of the song you hear but the basic tale is of a hunter (or fowler in the Norfolk version) out with his gun as the sun is going down. Seeing what he thinks is a swan he takes aim and shoots. Only then does he realise that this isn’t a swan at all. It is his dearest love, Molly Bawn. She had been on her way to visit her uncle and, having been caught in a rain shower, wrapped her white apron around herself as she sheltered under a bush.
The huntsman (usually called Jimmy or Johnnie Randle) is beside himself with grief for what he has done but soon realises he has another problem to add to his woe. He must now be tried for murder. He is saved when Molly’s ghost appears and reassures Jimmy that he need not run away and can remain to face trial for he will not be convicted for the death of a swan. (In another version her ghost appears at the actual trial to ensure a safe outcome for Jimmy). Towards the end of the song, her dazzling and beautiful presence is likened to a mountain (or a fountain) of glittering snow standing high above the beauty of all others.
What does Molly Bawn tell us?
In his book The World in Six Songs, McGill University neuroscientist, Daniel J. Levitin, author of This is Your Brain on Music proposes that the use of songs is as old as humanity itself. He identifies six song types (friendship, joy, comfort, religion, knowledge, and love) that, in a non-literate world, were the means to preserve complex knowledge and social bonding for our species.
Songs have been used in all cultures to offer comfort and social connection. Songs were, and sometimes still are, used to preserve knowledge. The information held within a song can long outlast the song-creator for countless generations without anything ever being written down. Before computers, magnetic tape or books most of our cultural knowledge was stored in memorised songs and stories. Lullabies, dances, work songs and even the instructions for baking a cake or making a birch bark canoe were all stored in group memory as songs.
Thinking about the predicament of the hunter in Molly Bawn I remember, decades ago, reading a short newspaper article about a grandfather who accidentally killed his two-year-old grandson at home in a vehicle mishap. Every now and then the memory comes back to me and I’m haunted by my thoughts: How did he manage the guilt? Was he ever able to forgive himself? How did he go on with his life?
When such dreadful accidents happen, they are shattering. Technology is usually involved: a gun, a vehicle, drugs or a carelessly stored bottle of poison. Nature can be deadly but mankind has compounded the danger by inventing a host of complex tools that also double as brutal and sudden ways to end life. These things happen. The person who caused the accident must face their family, the community and the law under the most difficult of circumstances. Forgiveness is desperately needed. Nowadays there are professional therapists and other avenues to help sort things out. But what if you lived in a time when therapists and even books weren’t available to you?
A young man has accidentally killed the love of his life She was the woman he was going to marry and a rare beauty. His trauma runs deep. The community comes to his aid with the most powerful tool they know: song. They craft some words and a tune to help everyone get over what has happened. Not just a song for right now but one that can serve for others in similar situations for years to come.
The song acknowledges the error (the young man was indeed rash to be shooting a gun by the dim light of the setting sun) and then offers him a form of forgiveness. The words of forgiveness come to him not from the community but from the ghost’s own lips. Being forgiven by Molly Bawn’s ghost imbues the words with a supernatural force so that the effect goes deep. The song also instructs on how to pass a fair judgement. The ghost of the dead woman pleads for his freedom by instructing that he be judged not by the outcome but by the intent of his actions.
Molly Bawn lives on in song.
The song Molly Bawn is somewhat unusual in that there exist several source recordings by singers who learned the ballad by ear. It’s possible to hear the song as it was sung for decades and centuries past. I like this unadorned version sung by Packie Manus Byrne. Molly Bawn by Packie Manus Byrne
It sounds ancient and “folky” to us now but we should remember these songs were originally conceived, retained and performed largely without the aid of musical instruments and people didn’t tend to pass judgements about music as we do now.
The melodies and words changed over time, according to new situations, different audiences or from the natural erosion of memory and time. But if a song is strong enough its skeleton will hold firm to its original structure.
This version of Molly Bawn by The Celtic Connection is barely recognisable as the same song. Now in 3/4 time the earlier story of what happened to Molly Bawn has all but gone. In fact, it’s more of a dance. There remains however, a sense of her great beauty, as well as a sad and endlessly traveling lover who is now “in the distant west” possibly in Newfoundland, Canada (if the location of the recording artists is anything to go by). We hear about her in the past tense since “an angel took Molly Bawn away”.
Bob Dylan has recorded a version called Polly Vaughn It has a completely different feel and sound. It stays close to the original story but is now a rock song, though still loaded with meaning and power.
When you think about how dependent we are on electricity and technology we have obviously gained much in convenience. But I can’t help thinking that the old ways of keeping information stored in song memory had a baked-in resilience that has been sadly lost.