Oil on linen, 2004
Bangum sat by the riverside,
he saw the waters, deep and wide.
There's a wild boar in these woods,
oh hunter,
who'll crack your bones
and suck your blood.
Hunter blow your horn!
If you would this wild boar see,
blow a blast, he'll come to thee.
Bangum put the horn up to his mouth,
oh hunter,
and blew a blast
both North and South.
Hunter blow your horn!
The wild boar came in such a rush,
he broke his way through oak and ash.
They fought thoughout the day.
oh hunter,
till at last the wild boar
ran away.
Hunter blow your horn.
Bangum followed him to his den,
and saw the bones of a hundred men.
...............................................................................
I learned this ballad as "Old Bangum" from Jean Ritchie. Her version has a refrain,
"Dillum down dillum, Killy caul cuttle down, killy caul corn,"
that this ballad apparently picked up in America. Francis Child lists it as
"Sir Lionel" in his compendium "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads" (1882)...&
that is where I picked up the "oh hunter, hunter blow your horn" refrain.
Concerning origins, Jean sent this comment to me; "The Ritchie Family source
for this particular version of "Bangum and the Boar" is Mom's cousin, Ellen
Fields, who lived up Mace's Creek in our community of Viper, Kentucky. She was
a dear and gentle old lady, shy and sweet, but loved to sing the old songs."
The story of this ballad is an evocative one....I dreamed of being in the landscape
of this ballad years ago, and I've never forgotten the dream image of the slickened
earth at the entrance to the wild boar's den.
Perhaps it is a stretch to keep this one in the bag along with Shakespeare's
"Venus and Adonis" (itself derived from a Greek myth)...but the connection of
goddess (virgin/mother/crone) in charge of swine (fertility/death) is, according
to comparitive mythologists, found everywhere that pigs were raised in ancient
times.
Upon finding her beloved Adonis slain by the boar he hunted, Venus proclaims;
For he being dead, with him is beauty slain,
and, beauty dead, black chaos comes again.
Then:
'Since thou art dead, lo! here I prophesy,
Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend;
It shall be waited on with jealousy,
find sweet beginning but unsavory end;
Ne'er settled equally but high or low;
That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe.
(And after a whole list of dire predictions, lastly:)
'Sinc in his prime death doth my love destroy,
They that love best their love shall not enjoy."
Now you know.