The Three Jacks: Music
The Drowned Lovers / The Indian Queen
(The Three Jacks)
2007-10-11
The Three Jacks / Trad.
Under the title “The Mother’s Malison” (i.e. “Mother’s Curse”) or “Clyde Water” this Scottish tale of two cruel mothers and their drowned children is found (three variants) in Child’s seminal collection of early English and Scottish ballads. It is covered infrequently by folk performers (I first heard - and loved - the Nic Jones version). This version is much “rockier” than anything we have heard from anyone else.
The instrumental is another Stamates-suggested Elizabethan dance tune from the Playford Collection named “The Indian Queen” – from a play which tells a tale of lost love and of an Indian princess who loses her life by drowning. Apt, we thought . . .