Lord Bakeman, who was taken by the Turks and put in prison, and afterwards released by the jailor's daughter, whom he married

A tale of an enterprising woman who eventually lands her man, “Lord Bakeman” is a very widely known folk song. The earliest record of “Young Beichan” (Child #53), the original Scottish song from which “Lord Bakeman” is derived, is from the second half of the eighteenth century, although the meter is quite mixed and to fit would require changes to the setting from verse to verse (Bronson, Singing Tradition 138-50). “Beichan” became “Bakeman” in some English and most American versions. The song should not be confused with the text entitled “Bateman’s Tragedy,” which is an entirely different narrative.

In the Coverly text, an Indian nobleman sails to Turkey on a lark and is taken prisoner. After some time, the jailer’s daughter frees him with one request, “All that I crave is your fair body.” They bargain to wait seven years. She sails to India to take him up on his promise and finds he has just married another. Hearing that she has come, he renounces his new bride and takes the newcomer as his wife, claiming to the abandoned bride’s mother that her daughter is “none the worse for me!”

The text circulated chiefly in garlands, on broadsides, and in oral tradition into the twentieth century (Roud #40; Coffin 63-65). Betsy Gaylord copied the entire text into her collection begun in 1798, calling it “Lord Baker” (220-21). She evidently wrote the song out and then proofed her text against a different version, making a number of corrections, and adding two verses (19 and 21). Her narrative is the same story as on the Coverly broadside but uses different words.