The Lochmaben Harper

"The Lochmaben Harper" or "The Blind Harper" is a traditional British Folk ballad (Child # 192, Roud # 85) and is one of the ballads collected by Francis Child in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–1898).

A blind harp-player resolves to steal King Henry of England's brown horse, in some versions, as a result of a bet for substantial stakes. He tells his wife of his plans and that he needs their good grey mare to achieve them. She agrees, and tells him to leave the foal behind, as the mare will quickly return to her still suckling young. He sets off and, at Carlisle, he meets the king, who asks for a song. The harper replies that he'd rather have a stable for his mare. The king tells his stable boy to house the grey mare next to his own brown horse. Now the harper plays and sings so beautifully that he spellbinds his audience and they all fall asleep. He tiptoes out of the room, makes his way to the stable, tethers the two horses together and releases them. The good grey mare makes her way back home taking the stolen brown horse with her. When the morning comes, the harper falsely mourns the loss of his horse, saying that, as a result, her foal will die. The king tells him not to fret and makes good the harper's losses by paying him for the foal and three times the worth of the good grey mare. Thus the harper not only wins his bet but also gets handsomely remunerated for the animals that he never lost.

This is another of the songs Robert Burns came across and contributed to a Scots Musical Museum. It is one of several songs about blind harpers from all over Britain and Ireland (for example, On a Blind Harper, The Blind Harper (traditional Welsh Song), The Blind Harper of Johnson Hall, The Blind Harper of Tyrone and Lament for a Blind Harper) although Roud only indexes the one. Blind harpers crop up frequently in British folklore and one features in another Child ballad, The Cruel Sister, where he is called to play at the wedding of the surviving sister. There are a number of paintings of them including The Blind Harper of Conway (1792) by Julius Caesar Ibbetson. In fact, traditionally, a good proportion of harpists were blind and these were often the most accomplished, for example, Turlough O’Carolan from Ireland (1670–1738), Ruairidh Dall Morison from Scotland (1646–1725) and John Parry (Bardd Alaw) from Wales (1760–1765). It has been suggested that this is because blind people were encouraged to take up a musical instrument.

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