Tamlin, The ballad

I have been trying to put together an oral storytelling version of the ancient ballad Tamlin that I would be happy with for several years now. Tamlin is a very unusual ballad especially for the time in which it would had been conceived, similar versions of what we today call Tamlin are referred to as early as the 1500's but the first written version appears around 1776.
The elements that make Tamlin unusual is that this is a story about a young girl (Janet) who decides to take her fate into her own hands and defy her parents (more specifically her father) and the culture that pervades their lifestyle.
This is in a time when young women were used like cattle to barter better lands and power for their fathers own status. Sometimes these deals worked out well between bride and husband. Since women had little power they were at the mercy of men and if the brokered deal was a good one (with a decent man) then she would at least be taken care of but in most cases they were horrid arrangements.
I have done research off and on regarding Tamlin but it was while reading a blog at Sarah Beth Durst blog site that I finally found what I had been missing before.
Sarah is a youth writer and has her 1st book out called, "Into the Wild" which I am looking forward to finding and reading. In her blog she called Janet a' Kick-butt heroine' and goes on to justify her perceptions of Janet, making some very insightful remarks about the kind of person she is. I had read similar reviews before or interpretations but somehow what Sara said and how she said it got through to me. Anyway something clicked inside that dark corridor that I call my brain. A light came on. AllI had to do was find that stupid switch.
So after doing more research ,either in my books or on the net, I finally put down a version of Tamlin for oral storytelling. I will have to refine it, play with it and tell it several times before I get it somewhere in the ball park of a fianl version but now I have something substantial to play with. Also keep in mind that a storyteller seldom has a FINAL version. It is a thing of growth and reinventing. It will always be changing as I see more of the story in my mind with each telling but the cruz of the tale will remain the same.
I decided to go with the version I have in the 1902 Oxford Collections of Ballads by Arthur Quiller and Couch ( there are actually many versions of this ballad and some with quite different takes on the story). I stuck to there version fairly faithfully but took took the liberty of filling in some gaps that would had left a modern day audience in the dark.
The trouble with trying to do material like this is how to convert it in such a way that a modern day audience, (youth or older), would get the crux of Janet's delima and what kind of being Tamlin had become.
It is my personal opinion (though I did not exercise it in my version) that Tamlin is a dog. When he describes to Janet how he came to be with the Faery folk he says he fell from his horse while riding one day.
If I was to interpret how that sounds; it sounds like he was doing what he pleased how he pleased with whomever he pleased and got caught by the fae folk in the process. In truth Tamlin is pretty much a scuzz. He gets Janet pregnant. ( but I think this is her ultimate desire) as he has many others who have come to Carterhaugh and then uses her to save him.
Of course in the end, it all ends well because when he was human he stood to inherit his grandfathers lands. So Janet is not only saving Tamlin but herself and her child. Pretty smart little girl. She has broke away from her father's power over her and taken care of herself and her child all in one fell swoop. In her day and time this would had been unheard of and that is why this ballad is so important.
In every since of the word, it was different. It told a different story about entittlement and power and the system. Though the ballad is called TamLin it is in truth about the girl, Janet.
This just goes to show that the concept of equality has been hanging in the shadows for a long time. If you were to go back even further , to the dark ages, you would find that in some cultures women were worshiped and highly respected.
When I deal with material like this I try to keep an open mind as to what kind of audiences I would tell this to and how I would present the material. Often it just depends on how the audience itself reacts to what I am doing and saying. My goal is always quite simple. to share, to open minds and to make people currious. The Balllad of Tamlin offers all of this.