The Crafty Farmer
traditional song
The Crafty Farmer is Child ballad 283, existing in several variants.
Synopsis
A farmer is traveling with a sum of money—sometimes because he must pay his rent for a long period of time, sometimes because he has sold a cow—when he falls in with a highwayman. He either admits to the money, or the highwayman has overheard where he keeps it. The highwayman demands it and the farmer throws the money (in saddlebags or sewed in coat) off the road. The highwayman goes after it, and finds it empty, or filled with straw. The farmer steals the highwayman's horse, and finds valuables in the highwayman's saddlebags.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Crafty Farmer” is traditional song. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Crafty, Farmer and traditional, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “traditional song” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7727940. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. 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.
- Identifying works and editions
- Tracing reception history
- Finding collection records
The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Crafty Farmer”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Crafty Farmer primary sources, The Crafty Farmer archive and Crafty research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “The Crafty Farmer”?
- Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
- Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “The Crafty Farmer” 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.