The story of Tam Lin is properly a ballad, rather than a fairy tale, but certainly falls under the general heading of folklore, and the climax of the story traditionally takes place on Halloween, so it’s a perfect way to start off the spookiest season! It’s a romantic adventure about a defiant young woman who goes where she wants, does what she wants, and owns the consequences of her choices. Through her loyalty and determination, she saves her true love from becoming part of the traditional fairy tithe to hell.
In case you aren’t familiar with the tale, here’s are the basic beats of the story (although of course there are variations in the names and many of the details, given that the tale has been retold and reimagined since the 1500s…)
Janet is the daughter of a lord who has given her a property called Carterhaugh. She heads over immediately to check it out and starts picking roses. Tam Lin, a knight, pops out (of the topiary, one imagines) and tells her off for being there. She snaps back and tells him it’s her property, she can be there if she wants, and sparks fly all the way.
When Janet returns home, her father notices she’s a bit green, and he suspects she may be pregnant. He demands to know the identity of the father, but Janet denies that it’s any of her father’s knights. She claims the babe’s father is no man on earth.
Janet visits Tam Lin again, and he tells her he’s going to be sacrificed as the fairy tithe to hell. However, she can save him if she waits for the Wild Hunt to ride by Miles Cross. He gives her signs to identify him among the host of fairies riding in the Wild Hunt (what he’ll be wearing and, more emphatically, what horse he’ll be riding) and instructs her to pull him down from his horse and hold him tight, no matter what. He warns her that the fairies will transform him into all sorts of creatures while she struggles to keep her grip, and then they’ll turn him into a burning brand, at which point she should dunk him in the water and turn him back into himself.
Janet follows the knight’s instructions, hanging on stubbornly as he’s changed into a lion and a snake and whatever else, then dunks him in the water when the time comes, and he’s restored to her. The fairy queen is greatly annoyed at losing her best knight, and proclaims that she wishes she’d simply turned him into a tree, rather than risk losing him. On that note, the ballad ends, with Tam Lin presumably safe from fairy magic.
I love this tale. Janet takes the lead in a way you don’t often see in fairy tales. She’s an instigator, troublemaker, and loyal lover all in one, defying tradition, her father, and the fairy queen in the process. Below are retellings that explore different aspects of the romance and different versions of the fairies, but all take their various Janets seriously, giving her full agency in her tale.
The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
Hazel knows better than to make a bargain with the fair folk who coexist with humans in the town of Fairfold. But when her brother Ben nearly gives up on making music, in spite of his magical gift for it, she makes a desperate agreement, offering seven years of her life in exchange for a chance for Ben to attend a prestigious music school. Ben has a breakdown and swears off music forever, but Hazel still lives in dread of the moment that she’ll be called upon to fulfill her end of the bargain. With tensions ramping up between the humans and fairies of Fairfold, Hazel realizes that her own choices may be pivotal in finding a way to save the human inhabitants of the town—and as she grows closer to the fairy changeling Jack, she has to decide who she can trust. Cleverly entwined with elements of a genderswapped Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, this deliciously romantic YA novel draws from elements of Tam Lin and other dark tales of fairy bargains gone wrong.
Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones
Jones’ 1985 YA novel follows nineteen-year-old Polly through the realization that she’s missing some of her memories, which are jarred back into her mind when she comes across an old book at her grandmother’s house. Slowly, she pieces together memories of a man she met when she crashed a funeral at age ten, and the strange, imaginative adventures they had together. She realizes that vast swathes of her life as she knows it are lies, obscuring her true memories of Thomas Lynn, a cellist under a strange curse. As Polly struggles with her own childhood demons, she’s haunted by her memories of Lynn and the forces determined to keep the two adventurers apart. Jones weaves elements of Thomas the Rhymer into the predominant Tam Lin storyline in this compulsively readable story of love and imagination.
“The Lady and the Fox” by Kelly Link, from White Cat, Black Dog
Miranda visits the Honeywells every Christmas, as her mother worked for them before ending up in jail in Thailand. The rest of the year is what she considers real life: dealing with school and trying to figure out how to reconnect with her mother. But for a little while each winter, she goes to the enchanting Honeywell family household and reconnects with the family friends. As a young girl, she spots a family member, Fenny, standing out in the cold, watching the festivities, and talks with him briefly. Over the years she looks for him again, half-believing she’d imagined the meeting, until another Christmas when it snows. Fenny—who can only visit when it’s snowing on Christmas day—has been lost for decades, but Miranda is determined to steal him back for herself.
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
Dean takes her time in this slow-burn academic romance—the romance is as much with the literary studies as with college boys. The book dives into Janet Carter’s years at Blackstock College in the early 1970s, and it takes a long time for the supernatural elements to emerge. Janet and her two roommates become entangled with Classics majors Robin Armin, Nicholas Tooley, and Thomas Lane. Slowly it becomes evident that all is not normal in the Classics department, and the boys are in the thick of it. As the story circles back each year to Halloween (and with a couple of ghosts to contend with), Janet must use her wits to understand the wild and eerie events that have unfolded over the centuries. Filled with rich detail, as well as literary allusions and commentary, this is a retelling for when you want to slowly savor a luxurious tale.
Winter Rose by Patricia McKillip
This gorgeous and chilly retelling centers on Rois, the wild younger daughter of a farmer. Her older sister Laurel has cared for her since their mother died, and is engaged to a sensible and sweet neighboring farmer. All seems well until Corbet Lynn returns to the village to rebuild his family home, a home that the locals believe was cursed when Corbet’s father killed his grandfather and fled. Rois can’t stay away from the woods around Corbet’s home, and she and her sister are drawn inextricably into the mystery of the curse and the Lynn family. Yet it’s Rois’ own nature that holds the key to saving all of them. With McKillip’s lovely prose evoking the beauty of the coldest winter nights, this one is sure to charm you.
Bonus! “Tam Lin” by Tricky Pixie
Modern mythic musicians S.J. Tucker, Alexander James Adams, and Betsy Tinney collaborated on this luring, hypnotic version of Tam Lin’s story, which puts the sexy back into the ballad. The emotional resonance of Tucker’s voice and Tinney’s gorgeous cello counterpoint transport the listener into the story, as Tam Lin and Janet fall in love. You’ll hear their longing for each other, and share Janet’s desperate determination to hold on to Tam Lin before the fairy queen can wrench him away again.
What other versions of Tam Lin’s story have you come across? Please share your favorites, whether in song, art, or story, in the comments!
I love Pamela Dean’s Tam Lin and usually reread it every autumn. I first read it in high school as it was on an English teacher’s shelf and as the daughter of a college professor, it made such a huge impression on me. I’m fairly sure its part of the reason that I studied Classics.
Oh yes, my mother and father both were staff at a university and my once and future girlfriend through high school and beyond had a English professor mother and an assistant dean father. I never _went_ to college but I’ve always been at home at them. Dean’s book sang to me.
I need to re-read it this fall.
I too reread this every autumn. I went to Swarthmore College in the early seventies, which was very similar to Carleton College, which I believe the fictional Blackstock College is meant to evoke. I love how the fae elements creep in subtly, but the best part is the friendship among the young women.
My Mom taught at Swarthmore, I grew up on that campus in the 80s and 90s and yes, reading it was so much like, oh I know this place. Yes, some of the best Fae in the world that I’ve read, how you almost have to look sideways to see them and lead me to authors like Charles de LInt, Emma Bull, Susanna Clarke and Seanan McGuire.
Dean’s retelling has been at the top of my list since being introduced to it in college.
For musical renditions it has always been Fairport Convention’s Tam Lin https://genius.com/Fairport-convention-tam-lin-lyrics
The short story “Cotillion” by Delia Sherman is a kind of meta retelling, since both protagonists are aware of the original.
An Earthly Knight by Janet McNaughton has both a retelling of Janet and Tam Lin and the ballad “Lady Isobel and the Elf-Knight.”
The version that I grew up with as a child was in *Tatterhood,* a collection of fairytales from around the world featuring heroines. Amusingly, the kid-friendly version skips over her getting pregnant and just has her family notice that she’s sad.
The artist and illustrator Charles Vess has a novel, The Queen of Summer’s Twilight, that mingles Tam Lin, Thomas the Rhymer, and various other bits of faerie mythos into a whole story.
A recent version (Child 39) by Anais Mitchell, who also wrote the musical Hadestown. Tam Lin: Anaïs Mitchell
Jo Walton did her own version, as a play à la Shakespeare, with influences from both Pamela Dean and Lois McMaster Bujold. Tam Lin, a Barrayaran Shakespeare Play
“The Changeling Queen” by Kimberly Bea is coming out next month! It’s a retelling of “Tam Lin” from the fairy queen’s perspective. I was surprised it wasn’t in the list at all, since my initial assumption was that this new retelling had inspired the list in the first place!
Oooh I’ll have to check it out!
Four lovely picture book versions, for those of you who want to introduce children to the story or who want a complete collection of published Tam Lins:
Betsy James, The Red Cloak, Chronicle Books, 1989 (reimagines Tam and Jan as children who are best friends)
Jane Yolen, illustr. Charles Mikolaycak, Tam Lin, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990
Susan Cooper, illustr. Warwick Hutton, Tam Lin, Margaret K. McElderry Books (Macmillan), 1991
Robin Muller, The Nightwood, Tundra Books, 2010 (first published in 1991 by Doubleday Canada)
So 1990 ±1 was the time when Tam Lin transmogrified into picture books!!
Thanks for the song link; I just ordered the one affordable copy of the Tricky Pixie CD I could find! Folksinger Sally Rogers performed the ballad in concert decades ago, and while that performance was never produced in a record/CD format, it was replayed on the WFMT folk music program “The Midnight Special.” It was the single most stirring recording of a traditional ballad I ever heard. I can still hear Sally’s voice ringing out, “Tam Lin, I’ve won! I’ve won!”
‘Tam Lin’ fascinates me. I recently read Joan Vinge’s short-story version in Imaginary Lands (1985), edited by Robin McKinley, and have been thinking on it since. The narrative largely follows tradition, but is well-written and makes it clear how much Janet’s agency is fundamental to the story in all of its forms. As a reader, I think I’d have preferred to read Vinge’s take on it first. My introduction to the story was with Delia Sherman’s Cotillion, which I enjoyed but which lost me a bit. I also liked Pamela Dean’s novel. But I suspect that being better-acquainted with the story of the original would have put the creative adaptations into better perspective for me.
“The Perilous Gard,” by Elizabeth Marie Pope” is inspired by Tam Lin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perilous_Gard). Set during the reign of Elizabeth 1, the Fairy Folk are the last of the Druids, hiding from the rest of Elizabethan society. They still believe in blood sacrifices every seven years to ensure fertility and the harvest. It is a really good book!
I remember Elizabeth Pope as the guest of honor at Mythcon XII, “A Festival in Faerie.” They showed the filmed version of the story, transmuted to 1970s culture, with a soundtrack from The Pentangle, singing the traditional ballad. Many, many years later the Pentangle recording was finally included on an anthology which collected a number of Pentangle tracks from their albums. Elizabeth Pope was a fine guest of honor, with lots of little stories along the way, as well as her guest of honor address. She had been a professor at Mills College.
Roses and Rot by Kat Howard can add to this list. In that story, a talented writer saves needs to save her sister, a talented dancer, from becoming part of the fairy court.
There can be but one: Sandy Denny and the rest of Fairport Convention (https://youtu.be/47z5n7p9B3I?si=GKwUoA03EuZDUX7j) — outstanding vocals, virtuoso ensemble playing, and notice that the story line repeatedly stresses the importance of her child throughout.
Number one on the annual Halloween playlist…
Well, I think of the Fairport recording first, but Steeleye Span and The Pentangle also recorded fine versions. And, of course, with Sandy gone, the annual Cropredy reunions for Fairport Convention have given us a number of other versions sung by both regular members and mostly by special guest singers. There is also an entire album devoted to exploring the story and different versions, some written fresh for the LP, by Frankie Armstrong with some other musicians/singers.
Another amazing musical version by The Imagined Village:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jYvgoBRbJO0
There’s also An Earthly Night by Janet McNaughton, a YA novel from the early 2000s. I haven’t read it in probably 15 years, but I remember liking it almost as much as Fire & Hemlock.
The Mediaeval Baebes’ version of Tam Lin is a favourite of mine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i7EX1tqkJQ
https://tam-lin.org/
A spectacular web site with books, movies, history, variants, etc. about Tam Lin.