Wife Wrapt in Wether’s Skin, The

“The Wife Wrapt in Wether’s Skin” is a traditional English ballad — Child Ballad No. 277, also known as “Dan Doo,” “The Wee Cooper o’ Fife,” and “Little Old Man Lived Out West” — carried across the Atlantic and widely collected in North America. The ballad is thought to derive from the prose tale The Wife Lapped in Morrel’s Skin, dating from the 16th century or earlier; the story follows a man who cannot beat his highborn wife directly, but wraps her in a wether’s skin and beats that instead, on the pretext that he is only tanning his sheepskin. Cecil Sharp collected a version from Mrs. Margaret (John) Clapp in New York, recorded as Folk Words p.3000 / Folk Tunes p.4160 in his manuscripts; a separate version appears in the Helen Hartness Flanders Collection at Middlebury College, Vermont. Notable recordings include Frank Proffitt’s “Dan Doo” on his Folkways album, Jean Ritchie’s “Gentle Fair Jenny” on British Traditional Ballads in the Southern Mountains, Volume 2 (Folkways FA 2302, 1961), and Edna Ritchie’s version on Folk Legacy FSA 003 (1962). Ewan MacColl recorded “The Cooper o’ Fife” in 1956 on the Riverside anthology The English and Scottish Popular Ballads Volume II, reissued in 2009 on the Topic double CD Ballads: Murder·Intrigue·Love·Discord; Jean Redpath recorded “Wee Cooper o’ Fife” in 1962 on her Elektra album Scottish Ballad Book, and Hedy West recorded it as The Wife Wrapt in Wether’s Skin on her Topic album Old Times & Hard Times.