Thomas The Rhymer - Music Adapation

Music Adapation

The German version of Tom der Reimer by Theodor Fontane was set as a song for male voice and piano by Carl Loewe, his op. 135.

Recent versions of the "Thomas the Rhymer" ballad include renditions by the electric folk act Steeleye Span which recorded two different versions for their 1974 album Now We Are Six' and another for Present--The Very Best of Steeleye Span, released in 2002. Singer Ewan MacColl was also recorded his version of the ballad.

An outstanding earlier recording, in German, is by Heinrich Schlusnus, on Polydor 67212, of 1938 (78 rpm).

The English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams left an opera by the title of Thomas the Rhymer incomplete at the time of his death in 1958. The libretto was a collaboration between the composer and his second wife, Ursula Vaughan Williams, and it was based upon the ballads of Thomas the Rhymer and Tam Lin.

The British country/acid house band Alabama 3 drew upon the ballad of Thomas the Rhymer in a 2003 recording entitled Yellow Rose. Alabama 3's lyrics give the ballad a new setting in the American frontier of the 19th Century, where an enchanting woman lures the narrator to a night of wild debauchery, then robs and finally murders him. Yellow Rose was released as Track 11 of Alabama 3's 2003 album Power in the Blood (One Little Indian / Geffen).