Child Garden

It's been a few years since I've weeded and raked and bedded out my collection of ballads. They were looking just a little mossy and forlorn. Drawing on Halewijn Vandijk's magnificent Child Ballad Database, which lists well over 10,000 recorded versions, and on eMusic's excellent stock of independent labels (they carry Topic, oh joy), I've been laying out whole pleached alleys of new songs to wander through. Just now, I have 3025 Child-ballad tracks (some of them excruciating, many glorious). Since I last looked, several people have ventured on the unrecorded: I now have "Judas" (Child 23), one of the very earliest of texts, and two fine and very different takes on "Hind Etin" (Child 41), until now sung only in Norwegian or in field recordings locked away in archives. I have a "Queen of Elfan's Nourice" (Child 40) that isn't bloody "Elf Call."

There are ballads for which my One True Version exists (Martin Carthy's take on "Willie's Lady," remade from Ray Fisher's); there are some I love turn and turn-about (June Tabor's and Frankie Armstrong's takes on "The Duke of Athole's Nurse"/"Little Duke Arthur's Nurse"), and half-a-dozen of Child 200 ("Raggle-Taggle Gipsies," "Black Jack Davy," "Seven Yellow Gypsies"). And there are ballads for which I've yet to find the perfect form, the perfect balancing of words, voice, storytelling, tune, and accompaniment.

What are your best-loved versions?

Nine