Scarborough Fair (ballad)

"Scarborough Fair" (Roud 12, Child 2) is a traditional English ballad.^[1] The song lists a number of impossible tasks given to a former lover who lives in Scarborough, North Yorkshire. The "Scarborough/Whittingham Fair" variant was most common in Yorkshire and Northumbria, where it was sung to various melodies, often using Dorian mode, with refrains resembling "parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" and "Then she'll be a true love of mine."^[2] It appears in Traditional Tunes (1891) by Frank Kidson, who claims to have collected it from Whitby.^[3]

The famous melody was collected from Mark Anderson (1874–1953), a retired lead miner from Middleton-in-Teesdale, County Durham, England, by Ewan MacColl in 1947. This version was recorded by a number of musicians in the 20th century, including the iconic 1968 arrangement in counterpoint by the American folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel, who learned the ballad from Martin Carthy. A slightly different rendition of the ballad (referred to as "The Cambric Shirt", or "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme") had been recorded by John Lomax in 1939 in the United States.