Expanding a Traditional Ballad: Tam Lin in the Picture Book Fantasies of Jane Yolen and Susan Cooper
Main Article Content
Abstract
Tam Lin is one of the better known of the traditional Scottish fairy ballads. This highly romantic story of a young woman who rescues her lover from the Fairy Queen was noted in written sources as early as the sixteenth century. Although the ballad itself, set in the wild border lands of Scotland, appears to be unique to the Scottish people, folklorists have connected the story with Greek popular traditions older than Homer (Child 336) The story has also been linked to other traditional ballads and tales, including Thomas the Rhymer, The Faerie Oak of Corriewater, Alice Brand, The King’s Daughter Jane, and Beauty and the Beast, and it has been described as the canonical ballad ("Legends"). In more recent times, the story has continued to inspire artists, writers, and musicians. Tam Lin has even entered the electronic age with an extensive web site devoted to the discussion and interpretation of the ballad.
Downloads
Article Details

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Materials published in the Children's Folklore Review (CFR) remain the property of their authors. CFR encourages authors to honor the journal with exclusive rights to their work for the period of one year following its initial publication; however, authors may offer their work for reprint as they see fit. Submissions may be withdrawn at any point during the review process. Once the material has been published in CFR, however, it becomes part of the CFR record and cannot be removed.Likewise, CFR may emend the appearance of materials to maintain a consistency of design, but will make only make changes to the text when requested by the author. At the author’s request, and with the agreement of the editor, additions and amendments may be added as separate files to the table of contents.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Derivative License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
- While CFR adopts the above strategies in line with best practices common to the open access journal community, it urges authors to promote use of this journal (in lieu of subsequent duplicate publication of unaltered papers) and to acknowledge the unpaid investments made during the publication process by peer-reviewers, editors, copy editors, programmers, layout editors and others involved in supporting the work of the journal.