User:Visviva/Sir Lionel (ballad)

Sir Lionel is a late-medieval folk ballad, catalogued as Child Ballad 18 and Roud No. 29. It tells the story of the Arthurian character Sir Lionel slaying a giant wild boar.

The song has much in common with a medieval tale about a knight who slays a terrifyingly fiendish boar in Sidon, in the fourteenth century romance of Sir Eglamour of Artois. The terrible swine is a frequent foe in romantic tales, for instance the beast Twrch Trwyth in Culhwch and Olwen.

The song has been recorded several times in the twentieth century, exclusively in the United States. The influential Appalachian folk singer Jean Ritchie recorded a version passed down through her family entitled "Old Bangum" on the album Ballads from her Appalachian Family Tradition (1961), with an Appalachian dulcimer accompaniment. John and Alan Lomax recorded two versions in the 1930s in Harlan, Kentucky and Austin, Texas. Several Ozark versions were also collected, and can be heard online courtesy of the University of Arkansas and Missouri State University.