CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
EN/FR
Search
Menu
Research dossier · Arts & Letters

The Daemon Lover

traditional song

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ7728605 ↗
Source-derived summary

"The Daemon Lover" (Roud 14, Child 243) – also known as "James Harris", "A Warning for Married Women", "The Distressed Ship Carpenter", "James Herries", "The Carpenter’s Wife", "The Banks of Italy", or "The House-Carpenter" – is a popular ballad dating from England of the mid-seventeenth century, when the earliest known broadside version of the ballad was entered in the Stationers' Register on 21 February 1657. There are different version of the tale, which typically describe a married woman who is lured from her home and family by a demon who masquerades as a former lover.

History and different versions

There are a number of different versions of the ballad. In addition to the eight collected by Francis James Child in volume IV of his anthology The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (versions A to H), others can be found in Britain and in the United States, where it remained especially widespread, with hundreds of versions being collected throughout the years, around 250 of them in print. In comparison, only four new variants were recorded in the UK in the time between Child's death in 1896 and the second half of the 1960s, all of them before 1910.

"A Warning for Married Women" (Child A)

The oldest version of the ballad – labeled 243 A in Child's anthology and originally signed with the initials L.P. – is generally attributed to Laurence Price, a prominent ballad writer of that time. The original, full title of the broadside was "A Warning for Married Women, by the example of Mrs. Jane Renalds, a West-Country woman born neer unto Plymouth, who having plighted her troth to a seaman, was afterwards married to a carpenter, and at last carried away by a spirit, the manner how shall be presently recited". The broadside does not seem to be a recasting of a pre-existing folk ballad in circulation, although it bears some similarities to other ballads, most notably a similarly named "A Warning for Maidens", also known by the title "Bateman's Tragedy" (Roud 22132).

"A Warning for Married Women" tells the story of Jane Reynolds and her lover James Harris, with whom she exchanged a promise of marriage.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Daemon Lover” as traditional song. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1657, 1896, 1910—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Daemon, Lover and traditional can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as traditional song. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7728605. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1657, 1896 and 1910.

Critical limits

Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “The Daemon Lover”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow The Daemon Lover primary sources, The Daemon Lover archive and Daemon research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Daemon Lover”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “The Daemon Lover” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.