BROTHERS, to Witter Bynner. His brother Charles
provided the illustrations and evocative decora-
tions in the volume.
The Ballad of the Brown Girlis Cullen’s revi-
sion of a British ballad entitled “The Tragical Bal-
lad of the Unfortunate Loves of Lord Thomas and
Fair Eleanor: Together with the Downfall of the
Brown Girl” that is believed to have been created
during the 17th-century reign of King Charles II.
Numerous versions of the song exist and range
from folk renditions performed throughout English
areas such as Devon, Yorkshire, and Staffordshire,
in Scotland, and throughout Ireland as well. Scot-
tish versions, according to folk and music histori-
ans, also revised the title to “Fair Annet.” It is the
sad and violent story of a flawed love triangle that
is doomed by color prejudice.
Written in traditional ballad meter, Cullen’s
200-line version focuses upon Lord Thomas, a
would-be hero, who is torn between two women.
He seeks advice from his mother and, while he
kneels at her side, describes the two very different
women for whom he has feelings. The first is Fair
London, a “lily maid, / And pride of all the south”
who is “full shy and sweet as still / Delight when
nothing stirs.” Lord Thomas admits that his “soul
can thrive on love of her / And all my heart is
hers.” While such a straightforward announcement
would seem to clarify matters, his mother requests
information about the second woman. “Is she as
sweet and fair,” she asks, to which the young suitor
replies that “[s]he is the dark Brown Girl who
knows / No more-defining name.” She later is de-
scribed as having “hair... black as sin is black”
and “eyes... black as night is black / When moon
and stars conspire” and a mouth that “was one red
cherry clipt / In twain.” Lord Thomas comments
on the social rejection she has faced and that “bit-
ter tongues have worn their tips / In sneering at
her shame.” When he confesses, however, that
“there are lands to go with her, / And gold and sil-
ver stores,” his mother, who “loved the clink of
gold, / The odor and the shine / Of larders bowed
with venison / And crystal globes of wine,” insists
that he marry the Brown Girl.
The bride-to-be, innocent of the materialistic
rather than emotional motives behind Lord
Thomas’s proposal, prepares for her wedding day.
She comes to him “as might / A queen to take her
throne.” The regality of the Brown Girl is not
feigned; according to the narrator, she “comes of
kings.” Just moments after Lord Thomas and the
Brown Girl “have made the holy vow / To share
one board and bed,” Fair London appears. In a sign
of great foreboding, Lord Thomas leaves the side of
his bride and escorts his former sweetheart into the
feast. Although she says that she has come to toast
him and his new bride, she promptly insults the
Brown Girl, protests interracial marriage, and
raises the ugly specter of racial segregation. “I
think she’s might brown,” she says caustically,
“Why didn’t you marry a fair bright girl... only
the rose and the rose should mate, / Oh never the
hare and hound.” When her groom fails to defend
her honor, the Brown Girl takes matters into her
own hands. She uses a serpentine dagger that is
part of her costume to kill her rival. Lord Thomas
then turns on his wife and uses her own hair to
strangle her in a savage moment that, given the
onlookers, is highly evocative of a LYNCHING.In
the moments that follow, he sinks quickly into
madness, chides his mother for her greed and self-
interest, commands his guests to “[g]o dig one
grave to hold us all,” and kills himself with the
same dagger that ended Fair London’s life. His last
instruction before dying is that the Fair London be
placed by his side and that the Brown Girl be laid
at his feet. The poem, a tortured account of racism
and racial hierarchy, ends with an eerie bucolic
scene: “... in the land where the grass is blue, / In
a grave dug deep and wide, / The Brown Girl
sleeps at her true lord’s feet, / Fair London by his
side.”
Cullen adapted the original version of the
poem to reflect American and African-American
issues. There are a number of differences between
the plots. In the original, the Brown Girl uses a
penknife, rather than a dagger that “a dusky queen,
/ In a dusky dream-lit land” once used to end her
life because of her unrequited love. Even more sig-
nificant differences emerge as well. The British ver-
sion includes details of Lord Thomas decapitating
the Brown Girl, flinging her head aside, and making
absolutely no provisions to bury her alongside him-
self and the white woman whom he loves. The
Brown Girl of Cullen’s poem has considerably more
agency and self-possession. Although she is doubly
victimized—scorned in public and abandoned inBallad of the Brown Girl, The: An Old Ballad Retold 23