Annotation:Maid in Bedlam
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MAID IN BEDLAM. Scottish, Air (whole time). G Major. Standard tuning (fiddle). One part. "Maid in Bedlam" [Roud 605] is a song that appears in Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, vol. 1 (1787) and Calliope (1788), and on broadside song sheets. The melody is closely related to "Gramachree," and in fact "Maid in Bedlam" was directed to be sung to "Gramachree" in The Scots Nightingale (2nd ed., 1779). [Ed. there are other melodies with similar titles, but musically unrelated, such as Aird's "Gramachree is a Sup of Good Drink" and "Gramachree Molly," although the "Gramachree Molly Asthore" in John Murphy's A Collection of Irish Airs and Jiggs (n.d., p. 13) is a version of the 'Gramachree/Maid in Belam' tune. "Maid in Bedlam" was a drastic reworking of an earlier song in which a black, George Sighous, was in Bedlam for his mad love for an English girl Bedlam was the commonly used name of Bethlehem Royal hospital which housed the insane.. It's on a single sheet song with music, c 1740, called "The Black's Lamentation", The lyric begins:
Abroad as I was walking
One evening in the spring
I heard a maid in Bedlam
So sweetly for to sing
Her chain she rattled with her hands
And thus replied she
Chorus: I love my love
Because I know
My love loves me
Source for notated version:
Printed sources: Edinburgh Repository of Music, vol. 2, 1825; p. 1. Johnson (Scots Musical Museum, vol. 1), 1787; pp. 46-47.
Recorded sources: Transatlantic Records TRA 348, The John Renbourn Group - "A Maid in Bedlam" (1977).
See also listing at:
Hear Jon Boden sing the song at "Folk Song a Day" [1]