Broken-Hearted Lover
[Davis; More Traditional Ballads of Virginia; 1960. Notes by Davis follow. Unfortunately for Davis, this is surely a ballad recreation by the Smiths.
Thomas P. Smith, formerly of NC, was an avid collector for The Brown Collection as early as 1915. He knew the Child ballads and either had printed material or access to it. unfortunately after moving to Virginia, he began submitting ballad recreations to Davis, written from print versions. The Brown collection did not publish one Smith MS ballad since it obviously was changed little from the Child version. The Smiths always found old versions attributed to a family member who learned it "seventy-five years ago." Certain their submissions to Davis are very suspect, and all of Thomas Smith's contributions to the Brown Collection must be questioned also.
Davis, for some reason, was blinded by their recreations and published a number of them in his "More Traditional Ballads" book- some, are the only versions found (Babylon -Child 14 and Jellon Grame- Child 90, King Orpheo Child 27, for example) in the US. The Smiths, along with Niles, Woofter and Gainer, stand as the greatest ballad recreators ever published. Davis really should have known better- as he did suspect some of the versions submitted but did nothing about about it. In this case, he wrote an article on the ballad, which is sad.
R. Matteson 2015]
THE UNQUIET GRAVE
(Child, No. 78)
A full discussion of this ballad and a first publication of its rare Virginia text by the present editor appeared in " 'The Unquiet Grave': A New-old Ballad from Virginia," English Studies in Honor of James Southall Wilson, university of Virginia Studies, IV (Charlottesville, Va., 1951), 99-110.
The ballad seems to be widespread in England, and is known in Scotland, but is extremely rare in American tradition. Child prints nine British versions: from Sussex, Suffolk (two), from Buchan's MSS. (Scotland), 'in Gipsy tents,' from Shropshire, from Cornwall, from Devonshire, and an additional fragment from Scotland. More recent English collectors- Cecil Sharp, Lucy E. Broadwood, A. G. Gilchrist, E. M. Leather, and Alfred Williams among others, have added more than a dozen English versions or variants, many of them with tunes. (See Davis article cited above for detailed references.) "This ballad, of which I have collected a large number of variants," says Sharp in one Hundred English Folk songs (p.xxvii), "is widely known and sung by English folksingers." On the other hand, no version of the song appears in the best known recent collection from Scottish sources, that of Gavin Greig and Alexander Keith, a fact which points to the more strongly English character and wider English currency of the song. Child surveys with his usual impressive scholarship the counterparts to this ballad in the popular traditions not only of the Scots but of the Persians, Indians, Celts, Slavs, Greeks, and the Germanic and Latin races.
Traces of the ballad in North America are few indeed. Greenleaf and Mansfield (pp. 25-26) found it in Newfoundland in 1929 (one full version and a one-stanza fragment, each with a tune); Niles apparently found it among the Kentucky hill-folk in 1936; in 1937 Halpert recorded a four-and-a-half-stanza version, plus tune, in New Jersey; and the Brown collection of 1952 (II 94,95) presents a text, without tune, from North Carolina. The manuscript of the Virginia text states that it was learned by the Smiths in December, 1912. and was sung by Mrs. Chaney Smith's mother seventy years before that. Perhaps the Virginia text may claim some sort of recorded North American priority. Most versions of the ballad are brief: six or seven stanzas, sometimes less, the longest (Child H) only eleven stanzas. The fact that several of these stanzas are very nearly repetitions of certain stanzas in "Sweet William's Ghost" (Child, No. 77) and "The Two Brothers" (Child, No. 49) has led Child to a suspicion "that this brief little piece is an aggregation of scraps." But he parts the suspicion aside, supposing instead that the ballad has survived only in an imperfect form. "Even such as it is, however," he rightly concludes, "this fragment has a character of its own" (II, 234). He might have spoken even more strongly if he had examined the numerous versions taken down from recent oral tradition, especially in England but also in America. Cecil Sharp, who knew many more texts and tunes of the ballad, speaks up much more strongly in commendation of it both as folk poetry and as folk music. See English Folk Song: Some Conclusions, pp. 99, 102, and elsewhere.
The ballad is essentially lyrical, but there is a basic story: A lover (man or woman) who has just lost his or her loved one makes a vow of mourning at the loved one's grave for a year and a day. At the end of that time, the dead lover asks who is weeping at the grave and disturbing his (her) rest. The living lover then identifies himself (herself) and craves one final kiss of the dead one's lips. The dead lover refuses, on the ground that the kiss of a dead person will mean death to the living. The ending is various: a direct end with the dead lover's refusal; a suggestion of the finality of death and the hopelessness of regaining former happiness in the symbol of the beautiful flower now withered; the ghost's more overt forbidding of such excessive mourning; sometimes (and less acceptably), the ghost's suggestion of patience and the consolation of religion.
The Virginia version is most closely related to Child A, but it seems artistically a finer ballad than Child A, because it lacks the pietistic-consolatory and distinctly anticlimactic final stanza of Child A:
"The stalk is withered dry, my love,
So will our hearts decay;
So make yourself content, my love,
Till God calls you away."
In contrast, the Virginia text ends, as one would wish it to, with the moving flower symbolism of the withering of beauty and love in the finality of death. The dead loved one speaks the final words:
"It is down in yonder fields so green,
Love, where we used to walk,
The beautifullest flower that ever was seen
Is withered now to a stalk."
Otherwise, there is a fairly close correspondency, stanza by stanza, to the first six stanzas of Child A-of course with many verbal variations. The two texts also agree in the important detail of the sex of the dead and living lovers. See the Davis article cited above for fuller detail.
The local Virginia title of "The Broken-Hearted Lover" is quite as appropriate as, if perhaps slightly less poetical than, Child's "The Unquiet Grave" or "The Restless Grave" of the North Carolina text. The Virginia title is, however, one also given to "The Dear Companion" and to other songs of frustrated love. Of the ballad, R. E,. Lee Smith writes, "I consider this a good song whether a ballad or not." He is right.
That the ballad is a rich repository of antique folklore or popular beliefs is clear: the talking ghost, the idea that excessive grieving for the dead interferes with their repose, the notion that the breath of a ghost smells strong and that the kiss of a dead person is fatal, the "magic-task" stanzas, the survival of the ancient troth-plight which binds the lovers even after death, and so on. ( See Child, Wimberly, Gerould, Davis, and others. ) Miss Wells (Tlte Ballad Tree, p. 145) even sees a Neoplatonic significance in the kiss of the clay-cold lips, and Miss Harvey (JEFDSS, IV, 63-64) asks whether it is permissible to see in the kiss a token of the return of the troth. In contrast to the inanity of many ballad ghosts, Gerould finds in the supernatural visitant of this ballad "exquisite poignancy" (The Ballad of Tradition, pp. 63-65) . The Virginia text-like other American texts of supernatural ballads, has lost some of these supernatural trappings but preserves the important ones and the essential character of the ballad.
AA. "The Broken-Hearted Lover." Contributed by R. E. Lee Smith, of Palmyra, Va. Sung by his brother, Thomas P. Smith, of Palmyra, Ya., and himself. Fluvanna County. December 1912. Learned from the singing of Mrs. Chaney Smith, who heard it sung by her mother seventy years before.
1 "Wind cold today, my love,
And some wee drops of rain;
I never had but one dear love,
And in the cruel grave she was lain.
2 "I do is much for my dear love,
As any young man will say;
I will set and cry on her grave
For one year and a day.
3 The one Year and a day being up,
The dead began to speak:
"Oh, who's weeping on my grave
And will not let me sleep?"
4 "It's me, my love, sets on your grave
And will not let you sleep;
For I crave one kiss from your fair lips
And that is all I ask."
5 "You crave one kiss from my-cold lips,
But my breath smells earthy strong;
If you have one kiss from my cold lips
Your days will not be long.
6 "It is down in yonder fields so green,
Love, where we used to walk;
The beautifulles' flower that ever was seen
Is withered now to a stalk."