Patterns of Structure and Role Relationships in the Child Ballad in the United States
by Roger D. Abrahams
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 79, No. 313 (Jul. - Sep., 1966), pp. 448-462
ROGER D. ABRAHAMS
Patterns of Structure and Role Relationships in the Child Ballad in the United States
THE STUDY of the folklore of any group involves three interrelated steps: collection, comparison, and interpretation, Collection is more than the amassing of a body of materials. It also includes any other field data which point out how the lore reveals or integrates the life of the group: folk typology (what categories of expression the group itself uses); context and condition (when certain pieces occur, to whom they are addressed, and what response or range of responses they call forth); functions and rhetoric (how specific pieces or types work), and so on.
Through field data of this sort materials collected may provide means by which comparison may begin and interrelationships maybe established. Only through comparative analysis can the expressive styles or habits of the group be determined. Here one may compare various pieces of lore from the group in terms of content o r subject, linguistic form, dramatic structure, role relationships, and so on. Or one may look at those pieces which have a provenience wider than the group to compare the collected pieces with reportings from other areas in order to notice similarities or differences (borrowing a term from Von
Sydow, I have elsewhere described this process a s "oikotyping"[1]).
This comparative process reveals and clarifies the expression patterns of the group on the levels of linguistic and motor behavior, dramatic action, and valuational (especially aesthetic) concepts. The manifestation of these patterns involves
rejectiono f certainf orms or subjects,a s well as acceptance a nd elaboration of others. Such reactions function more covertly than overtly. Inasmuch as the reactions are conditioned by internal state (of the group and its culture) confronted
by external stimuli, the metaphor of the biological organisms seems most appropriate.
C onsequently, I have t ermed these positive or negative reactions "tropisms." The patterns revealed on the comparative level are the manifestations of one or more tropisms. Tropisms are active forces; collected materials are the results of the
configuration of tropisms on materials created or transmittedin the past but observed in the present. The purpose of this comparative scheme is to point out as far as possible all of the tropisms of the group. These patterns or tropisms when articulated and superimposed by the folklorist will be termed the tropotype of the group.[2]
In order to interrelate tropisms, one must enter the third phase of folklore study-interpretation. To synthesize meaningfully, one must use abstractions which come, not from the material collected, but from some external frame of reference: the analytic methodology of one or another social science or from aesthetic, descriptive techniques. The burden of the interpretative process is to show how the folklore of the group reflects and casts light on other aspects of its culture; that is, it must go one step beyond the articulation of patterns to the point where the patterns are meaningful in an holistic context. Tropisms, even tropotypes, are meaningless in isolation; they must be related t o other f acets o f the cultural life of the group.
A number of disciplines have developed techniques capable of casting light on various f acets of traditional expression. They have made it possible for us to discern tropisms of many different kinds, but the problem of synthetic interpretation remains. In a very real sense, folklore studies have been stuck at the comparative level for a long time.
Because o f the special n ature o f their problems, t he psychologist, the sociologist, the linguist, and even the anthropologisut tilizingt raditionael xpressionh ave generally not gone beyond the comparative level. More significantly, the folklorist
himself is still primarily concerned only with the development of comparative techniques and their practice. This is, of course, the expressed aim of those who follow the Finnish method: to establisha pattern o f transmission a nd dissemination for specific p ieces o f lore in international currency. More recently, a new technique of folklore study- structural analysis- has received a great deal of interest and discussion,b ut it, too, is limited in its aimst o the comparativele vel, ignoring its potential in regard to a more synthetic approach. Alan Dundes, perhaps the foremost p ractitioner o f this methodologyi n regardt o folklore,h as recently m ade important oikotypical discoveries in regard to Lithuanian and American Indian folktales,[3] yet in neither case has he made more than a passing attempt to relate these patterns t o those o f anyo ther t ypes o f folklore c ollected a mong t hoseg roups, muchl ess to types o f non folkloristic cultural phenomenon.
The intent here is to point out certain techniques by which tropisms may be determined in order that interpretive hypotheses may be formulated. No effort will be made to answer any speculative questions, but merely to show how such questionsc anb e asked o n the basis o f the data o bservable o n the comparative level. I will attemptt o isolatet ropismsi n regardt o dramatic structure a nd role relationship in a small corpus of materials and to speculate upon how such tropisms can
lead to insights into other aspects of the expressive behavior of the group and eventually t o an articulation o f part o f the group's w orld v iew.
Becauset his is an experimentael ssay,I am limiting my choice o f materials and methods of attack. The group with which the essay is concerned is the rural complex of the South and Midwest States from whom much traditional lore (especially
songlore) has been collected. The materials chosen are limited to the Child ballads which have been collected in those areas frequently. These songs were picked not because they are better than any others, but because frequency of their collection guaranteest heir representativen ature. Though the tropisms pointed to will be valid only in regard to these specific ballads, an attempt will be made in the final section to show that the same tropisms are operative not only on other songs, but also with other expressive aspects of the traditional behavior of this group. However, the fact that any patterns here are observed from the vantage of the library, are therefore highly speculative, and need to be checked in the field cannot be emphasized too strongly.
I.
The songs in Francis James Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads[4] are the most sought-after archaic expressions existing among American rural folk. Professor Child's work is our grandest monument of the antiquarian approach toward folklore. Child never did any field collecting himself; from the vantage of the library, using a combination of deplorable aesthetic dilettantism and admirable literary-historical scholarship, he established a rigid hierarchy of taste among American folksong scholars. Though we have a much clearer idea today of the repertoires of folksinging communities than he had or could have had, folksong collections published in this country are still invoking a separation between Child and non-Child materials.[5]
Results of this idolatry have been both positive and negative. On the one hand, the investigator is confronted with a body of materials which has been taken out of any folksinging context, isolated and flanked by headnotes and footnotes. On the other, we have a group of songs that have been actively sought in the field and well researched in the library; thus, we have a fuller record of the history, provenience, and dissemination pattern of these songs than any others in English.
Of the 305 ballads which Child included in his volumes, only 118 have been reported in North America. More important, only 36 of these are commonly found in ballad-singing communities, and these are therefore of greater interest to an investigation of the cultural imperatives of rural America. These ballads, in the usual Child order, are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10, 12, I3, i8, 20, 26, 49, 53, 54, 68, 73, 74, 75, 79, 8I, 84, 85, 93, 95, I05, I55, I67 (and 250), 200, 209, 243, 274, 277, 278, 286, 289, and 293.
A great majority of these American Child ballads fit clearly into two simple structural patterns. These we might term the morality and the romance modes. Both exhibit a simple dramatic movement from the initial dramatic conflict to its resolution, without much intermediate detail or dramatic complication. In the morality pattern, action is instituted by a violation of some sort and ended by an appropriate punishment. In the romance mode, action is begun because of a felt lack and ended with the elimination of that lack. However, patterns of this sort are observable throughout all of Western literature and elsewhere. It is in the analysis of the more concrete elements of the songs conforming to these modes that patterns of greater speculative importance become apparent.
Most of the American Child ballads which conform to the morality pattern are concerned with a violation in the form of murder and result in the death of the murderer. Exhibiting this particular structure are the ballads "The Two Sisters" (10), "The Cruel Mother" (20), "Lamkin" (93), "Sir Hugh or the Jew's Daughter" (I55), and in certain regards "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet" (73)
and "Edward" (I3). In these songs the description of the dramatic conflict and the consequent murder are generally the elements of greatest interest; the punishment is of secondary importance.
In "Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard" (81) the initial violation is adultery, but the description of the death punishment is pursued more graphically than any other element. "James Harris or The Demon Lover" (243) also involves an adulterous situation which is punished by death, in this case drowning. And "The Gypsie Laddie" (200) also involves marital infidelity, but only in some versions is it rewarded with something portrayed as punishment. In "The Cruel Mother," "The Gypsy Laddie," and "James Harris" permanent separation from abandoned children is regarded as a punishment, though not necessarily a final one. And in "The Wife of Usher's Well" (79), similarly, the separation of mother from children is regarded as punishment, though the mother's only clear violation is mourning too long and vociferously for her dead children.
"Geordie" (209), "Sir Andrew Barton" (167 and 250), and "The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin" (277) also conform to the morality pattern, but they differ from the others in this mode in their particulars. In the first, Geordie is killed for stealing; piracy is Barton's violation; in the third, a version of "The Taming of the Shrew," a newlywed wife is beaten for being disobedient to her
husband.
A few ballads are partially representative of the morality pattern. "The Mermaid" (289), for instance, ends with a death-punishment, yet the nature of violation which has occurred is not clear; the usual explanation is the unpropitious setting to sea on a Friday. "The Two Brothers" (49) and "Young Hunting" (68) involve murders and "Henry Martyn" (250) has a robbery, none of which crimes are punished in the course of the narrative. And in "Edward" (I3) and "Lord Randal" ( 2) neither the offense nor the punishment is actually rehearsed in the course of the ballad, although both contain a revelation of a murder and a clear
implication of a resultant loss of life for the criminal.
In the expression of violation and punishment in these songs, then, are certain particularizations of the morality pattern which reoccur and evidence a tropism. The violations preferred are murder and adultery. The punishments clearly favored are separation from children and death.
The Child ballads which fit into the romantic pattern are equally limited in their dramatic vocabulary. Most of the songs in this group begin with a lack which is a separation of two lovers and end with the elimination of that lack in a reunification. This is quite close in description to classic comedy, but how very different are the particulars of the dramatic movement in these ballads from those of comedy.
Comedy, characteristically, has the male as initiator of action, as the active partner in the protagonist camp, and it is he who generally maneuvers conditions in such a way that the unification transformation can come about. Quite the opposite occurs in these ballads. Here the male heroes are usually docile and apparently immobilized in their relation toward their loved ones:7 Young Beichan (53) is firmly ensconed in jail, Jemmy Grove (in "Barbara Allen" [843) is safely in bed, and John Hazelgreen (293) is back home, out of the picture completely. When the heroes act, it is generally to effect the separation from the loved one: Lord Lovel (75) simply rides away "strange countries for to see"; George Collins ("Lady Alice" [851) is, without explanation, "riding on a cold winter's night" when he is taken sick; both Lord Thomas (73) and Sweet William (74) marry
someone else, the former because of some bad advice from his father. Only Earl Brand (7) and the young cabin boy in "The Golden Vanity" (286) go out to fight for their loves, and both get killed for their troubles.
In only four of these ballads is wooing successful. In both "Young Beichan"
and "The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington" ( o5 ) it is the young lady who actively
overcomes the obstacles in the way of marriage. "John of Hazelgreen," on the
other hand, has the father of the groom taking the active role in arranging the
marriage (quite a change from comedy, where the father usually plays the role
of the "blocking" character). Only in "The Maid Freed from the Gallows" (95)
does the male lover actively come in to free his maid, though in well over half the
American variants there is either a reversal of sexes, and the savior is the girl,
or there is no indicationo f the sex of eithert he condemnedo r the sweetheartI. n
this regard, Coffin notes that one text carries this a step further and has the son
rescuedb y the mother" becausem otherl ove is strongert han 'sweethearlto ve'."
This role-reversali s one typical particularizationo f the romanticp attern as
found in Americanv ariantso f Child ballads.P erhapse ven more representativies
a transformationo f the patternf rom life into deatht erms.T his particularization
of the patternh as the usual separationo f lovers, but the transformationin reunification
occurs not in the marriage bed but in the shared grave. Lord Thomas
and Fair Annet do not find happiness and fulfillment in their love until they are
both butchered and dead, and even then the "other girl" joins them in the grave.
Similarly, Lord Lovel and Lady Nancy Bell, Fair Margaret and Sweet William,
Barbara Allen and Jemmy Grove, and George Collins and Lady Alice find final
union in the grave.S ignificantlyt,h e symbolo f this grislyl ove-makingt, he lover's
knot of red rose and green briar, is found attached to the conclusions of all these
ballads in one or more variants.
This strangely perverted romance pattern, then, shares some of the terms of the
morality ballad. If death is the reward of love, the whole business of love as the
initiating element of the story appears to be a violation as much as a lack. In the
morality,h owever,o ur disapprovaal t the originald ramaticc onflicti s obviousa nd
overt; in the death-romanceth e original love situationi s seemingly approved.
Only when we see the outcomes of the ballads do we realize that something more
covert is going on. Ultimately, similaritiesi n the two structuralp atternss eem
morei mportantt hant he differences.
II.
In this discussiont he structuralm odes have been particularizedb y recurrent
patternso f role behaviorw ithin the action-progressionI.n both the moralitya nd
romance modes, overt sexual behavior (or any "identifying" action) on the part
of the young male has been rewarded with death. This is clearer in the romance
pattern but also can be seen in such morality ballads as "The Demon Lover" and
"LittleM usgrave,"i n which the lovers are portrayeda s adulterersa, nd their actions
lead to the death of both themselvesa nd their partners.Y oung girl lovers,
on the otherh and,f are a little better.T his is clearesti n the ballad" LadyI sabela nd
the Elf Knight" (4) where the abductoris pushedt o death,b ut the young girl is
allowedt o returnh omeu ndetectedb y her father.
In manyo f the ballads,e speciallyt hose in the moralitym ode, an older castratory
woman initiates the action. "Lamkin," "Sir Hugh," and "The Cruel Mother" are
all stories in which children are cruelly butchered with knives, the ultimate in
castrationE. quallye masculatingis the murderesso f "YoungH unting."E masculation
is less complete, but not less insidious, in the actions of the numerous mothers
who smotherw ith their affection.T his character-typies renderedi n comic terms
in the heroineo f "TheD evil and the Farmer'sW ife" (278), who goes to hell and
beats the Devil and all the little devils just as she has her husband. Our Goodman's
(274) wife also emasculates-by cuckoldry. And in a real sense, Lady
Barnardb y her seductiono f Little Musgravec ausesh is castratoryd eath as well as
her own.
Equallys adistica nd considerablym ore mysteriousa re the characterrs epresenting
authoritativefa ther-figuresS. ucho gres are found in many Child ballads,b ut
in few of them do we learnm ucha boutt heirm otivationsT. hey areg enerallyf aceless
representativeosf power,o ften functioningm oreo ffstaget han on, but making
their influence felt throughout any song in which they appear. As already noted,
Earl Brand is defeated by his love's father (and seven brothers), but he fares much
bettert han most heroes, for he takes his adversariesw ith him to his grave. Less
fortunate are: Geordie, put to death, over the pleas of his wife, by the judge; Little
Musgrave, killed by his lord in the midst of his love feast; and the little cabin boy
of "The Golden Vanity," drowned by his captain because he presumed to the hand
of his daughter. Only the heroes of "Young Beichan," "The Maid Freed from
the Gallows," and "The Bailiff's Daughter of Islington" manage to overcome this
dreaded figure-and then usually not through direct male challenge but through
female deception.
"The Golden Vanity" is perhaps the most complete statement we have of the
defeated hero death-romancep attern. In this ballad, very widely collected in
America,t he actioni s precipitatedb y the confrontationb y an English ship of an
enemy (usually Turkish or Spanish). The valiant cabin boy offers to sink the
enemy, and the captain offers him his daughter if he can. He swims to the other
ship and bores holes in the hull, causing it to sink. As he swims back, the captain
from his vantageo f power capriciouslyr escindsh is offer, and the cabinb oy, who
has just exhibitedg reat valor towardt he enemy, suddenlya cquiescest o his captain'sc
ommanda nd drowns,g iving only the lameste xcusef or not vanquishingt he
captain as he had the enemy.
Though the cabin boy does not return home to any comforting mother to die
(the sea and "his messmates" perform her function), in many of the ballads in
which the lovers are defeated one or another of them does exactly this. One of the
commonplaces tanzasf ound in a numbero f AmericanC hild balladv ariantss tates
this explicitly:
Motherm, otherm, akem yb ed,
Make it long and narrow;
died for me today,
I'll die for him (her) tomorrow.
Perhaps the most extensive statement of this relationship between the child
wounded in love and the comforting mother is in "Lord Randal," where each
stanza is emotionally charged by an implicit comparison of the murderous sweetheart
and the too consoling mother. Each stanza is constructed around a question
couched in concerned terms by the mother and a self-pitying answer by the son.
This mother-son emotional tie is emphasized by the constantly repeated lines:
"Lord Randal, my son," and "My sweet little one" (or "My own darling one")
crooned by the mother, and Lord Randal's whimpering response "Mother, make
my bed soon,/For I'm sick at my heart and I want to lie down." As noted in that
strange variant of "The Maid Freed from the Gallows," mother love is stronger
than sweetheart love.
This composite picture of these role interactions is charged with movements
symbolic of restrictive authoritarian and puritanical attitudes. In every regard,
older characters stifle initiative in the young, either through overt, sadistic action
or through more insidious techniques of smothering. Efforts at independent action
on the part of the young are, more often than not, half-hearted. The young, especially
the young men, in the face of the power struggle of the generations,
acquiesce in docility, asking for affections based more on pity than attraction.
Young Beichan, for instance, first commits himself to love because he is locked
in jail, and his Turkish jailer's daughter takes pity on him. That most common of
Child ballads in America, "Barbara Allen," even more grandly illustrates this
masochistic pose. Jemmy, dying of love for Barbara, forces her to make the long
march to his house, where he receives her from his bed. His strategy is clear; she is
to feel sorry for him and thus give him comfort. The ploy doesn't work, however,
and comfort comes only in the death-union. Thus, in almost every way, initiative
is defeated and love with it, and only pity and its allied sentiments are left.
Most explicitly, erotic love is rejected in these ballads. Sex leads not to happiness,
but to sin, adultery, and death. Whenever a normal love encounter between a boy
and girl is suggested, some motive is injected into the story to defeat it: a fateful
event, parental advice, emasculation in the hands of an older person, or stubbornness
or flightiness on the part of one of the prospective pair.
This rejection of erotic love is observable by comparing the riddle ballads
"Riddles Wisely Expounded" (i) and "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" (46).
The former ballad concerns a riddle contest between the Devil and a young girl
in which the girl is able to preserve her innocence by her clever answers. "Captain
Wedderburn's Courtship" has, in some of its versions, the same riddles or
wisdom questions (such as "What is whiter than the milk? What is softer than the
silk?"), but in most renderings it uses a different set of wisdom questions ("How
can there be a cherry that has no stone?"). The major difference between the two
is in their frame stories. "Captain Wedderburn" also involves a contest between
an innocent girl and a pursuing male, but here the riddles are propounded by the
girl as a way of fending off her lover when he is trying to seduce her. His informed
answers allow him to accomplish his purpose, and the resolution finds the two in
bed enjoying themselves.
"Captain Wedderburn" has been collected in North America in only New
England and the Maritimes8 and the adjacent areas of Pennsylvania, New York,
and Michigan. On the other hand, songs using these riddles are common through-
out rural America in the form of "The Riddle Song," "I Gave My Love An
Apple," and "Peri Merie Dixie Dominee."[9] None of these has any vestige of the
delight of the chase found in "Captain Wedderburn." The first two are lyric sentimentalizations
of the theme, and the last has the riddles presented as gifts from
the girl singer's brothers! Here, then, we see a perfect retreat from and rejection
of a story of pleasurable indulgence of appetites. The riddles remain esoterically
erotic but probably not consciously so to the singers.[10]
This anti-erotic movement is, paradoxically, even more clearly observable in the
only two ballads of the Child canon consistently regarded as sexually obscene by
informants: "Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard" and "Our Goodman." The former
is the story of a young man lured into bed by the wife of a nobleman. Their
mutual enjoyment of the sexual experience is made evident in most reportings, but
the pleasure is short-lived due to the unexpected return of her husband. Both the
young man and his enamorata admit to enjoying themselves when questioned.
"How do you like my sheets?" the Lord asks. "Very well" each replies. And each
is killed on the spot in a most sadistic manner.
The anti-erotic element in "Our Goodman" is presented in farcical and masochistic
rather than in tragic and sadistic terms. This is a formulaic dialog song
in which a drunkard comes to know, without ever admitting it, that he is being
cuckolded. He comes home on a succession of nights to find increasingly suspicious
evidence that another man is having sexual relations with his wife. Though he
finally sees the other man in his bed, we know nothing of this other man except
that he is there. Clearly, the drunkard is being emasculated by the actions of his
wife and her lover, but he is docile, doing nothing about it except to make
humorous asides condemning his wife's excuses.
But we can tell from the behavior of the drunkard that he has willingly abdicated
his husbandly role in favor of that of the child. The drunkard is one of the
standard clown-figures in our folklore, the character who seems to be a man but
who through the limitations on his motor and mental activity imposed by alcohol
becomes a child. This is emphasized not only by Our Goodman's attitude toward
an obvious affront, but by his relationship with his wife. He asks questions of her
like a foot-stamping boy, and her ridiculous, evasive answers indicate that indeed
she regards him as little more than a child. We see by his reactions to her answers
that he sees through her act, but we never see him doing anything about it. He is
apparently content in his role, where he can get vicarious erotic pleasure by looking,
without having to accede to the demands of sexual performance.
The other man obviously fascinates and perhaps even scares him. The things
he notices about the usurper's presence all revolve around traditional symbols of
masculinity-the horse, the hat, pants, and finally the beard or mustache. In some
more explicit versions he even sees the other man's "thing" where his "thing"
ought to be. The other man, then, performs a role very much like the other authority
figures, but the drunkard has protected himself against the complete
emasculation of death by assuming the childlike pose. He fares only somewhat
better than most of our "heroes." But the result is a covert, sly eroticism: that of
the voyeur. Voyeurism is, of course, one of the few ways in which the masochist
can achieve pleasure. Such eroticism, however, is in a real sense anti-erotic from
the normal heterosexual point of view.
These two "obscene" ballads reject normal sexuality in favor of sadistic repression
on the one hand and masochistic, infantile regression on the other. Both
signify a retreat from maturity toward infantilism and the twitch-reactions of the
sado-masochistic set. Love is submerged or perverted, and castratory death or
some other limitation of action is substituted.
III.
The negative attitude toward most expressions of energy in action, exhibited
by these structural and role-relation tropisms, seems somewhat paradoxical-for
the stuff out of which ballads are purported to be made is narrative movement. "A
ballad is story. Of the four elements common to all narrative-action, character,
setting, and theme-the ballad emphasizes the first."1l However, the strongly
moral tone present in even most of those in the romantic mode underlies the fact
that these songs serve a didactic purpose and that they point out the sinfulness of
some actions, the futility of most.
This is most easily seen through yet another observable tropism, the technique
of compression of action during oral transmission, one often pointed out by previous
ballad scholars. "The ballad practiced a rigid economy in relating the action;
incidents antecedent to the climax are often omitted, as are explanatory and motivating
details. The action is usually of a plot sort and the plot often reduced to the
moment of climax; that is, of the unstable situation and the resolution, the ballad
often concentrates on the resolution, leaving the listener to supply details and
antecedent materials."[12]
This point is perhaps even more immediately understandable from the structural
point of view. In the American Child ballads analyzed, not only do the modal
patterns describe the basic outlines of the dramatic movements, but also the entirety
of that movement. In other words, there is in these ballads a direct causal
relationship between initial action and result, very often without any intermediate,
subsidiary movement.
Perhaps the most striking way of pointing this out is to compare these ballads
with a common folktale, say "Cinderella" or "Jack and the Beanstalk." No matter
which variant of these tales one deals with, the particularization of the dramatic
structure would be fairly complex and would involve a great many episodes (or in
Dundes' structural terminology, "motifemes") which would come between the
initiation of action and its conclusion. Both tales are clearly in the romantic mode.
The original lack in both is one of status and wealth, and the resolution involves
the liquidation of these lacks. But in both we are given many subsidiary characters
(helpers and hinderers) and many incidents by which the transformation is finally
effected.
This is not true of the American Child ballads. These songs, to be sure, begin
narratively near the climax of the action; more important, the climax seems to come
as a direct result of the impulse initiating the action. There is little concern with
preceding action or even motivation. The first scene of these ballads generally
provides an introduction to all of the characters involved, a brief explanation of
the dramatic conflict, and one action (or decision to act). In structural terms, this
is only one dramatic unit (motifeme). This original scene leads directly, in dra-
matic terms, to the climax of the action and the dramatic transformation which it
brings about; this also is only one motifeme. Typically, these two scenes are the
major and in many cases the only confrontations of the characters. In many ballads
there is an intermediary scene which does not further the progression of
events but which defines the characters in some way (the interview of mother and
daughter in "Lord Thomas and Fair Annet," the arraying of the wife and the calling
of her children in "The Demon Lover," the pledge scene in "Young Beichan,"
etc.) Thus, it seems fair to say that another structural tropism is apparent in these
songs: a tendency toward a dramatic movement of only two motifemes. Compression
of action is, in this way, capable of being expressed in objective structural
terms.
As Coffin points out, this tropism toward action compression is well exemplified
in the changes wrought in "Sir Lionel" in America, where it has become "Bangum
and the Boar."'3 The original ballad is clearly in the genre of medieval romance.[14]
It involves the progression of a number of motifemes between the statement of an
original lack situation (the virtuous lady under attack by a boar, the agent of a
giant) and the liquidation of the lack (the killing of the giant). Child's description
of the ballad story is:
A knight finds a lady sitting in (or under) a tree, who tells him that a wild boar has slain
(or worried) her lord and killed (or wounded) thirty of his men. The knight kills the boar,
and seems to have received bad wounds in the process. The boar belonged to a giant, or to
a wild woman. The knight is required to forfeit his hawks and leash and the little finger of
his right hand (or his horse, his hound, and his lady). He refuses to submit to such disgrace,
though in no condition to resist; the giant allows him time to heal his wounds, and he is to
leave his lady as security for his return. At the end of the time the knight comes back sound
and well, and kills the giant as he has killed the boar. . . The last quarter of the Percy
copy would, no doubt, reveal what became of the lady who was sitting in the tree, as to
which the traditional copies give no light.15
American variants are considerably shorter and describe only the killing of the
boar. Lost to the song is the giant. Typically, the boar is reported or sighted, regarded
as a danger, and killed. Sometimes Bangum blows a horn to attract the
beast. The whole story is told in two motifemes, with a minimum of description.
The ballad is a boisterous hunting song in American renderings, and something
of a comic one at that (the killing is often done with a wooden knife). The serious
romantic qualities of the early texts are no longer apparent. Significantly, in light
of our former observations, in most American variants the lady isn't even mentioned.
In those in which she does show up it is usually because of a confusion of
this song with that most common of animal mock-romances, "The Frog and the
Mouse," and even in these variants the "courtship" comes to naught.16
Perhaps an even clearer example of this movement toward a binary motifeme
structure is to be seen in "The Two Sisters." This ballad has been widely collected
on both sides of the Atlantic, but the English and Scottish representatives are both
longer and more complex structurally than those from America. The basic story
has one sister drown another because of favors shown by a knight-courter. The
crime is then compounded by a miller who drags her (sometimes alive, sometimes
dead) from the water, steals her finery, and shoves her back in. A harper or fiddler
then finds her body and fashions an instrument from its parts. The instrument
sings of the foul murder, and the wrongdoings are revealed and punished. The
structure of this song is reduceable to four motifemes: violation, a compounding
of the violation, a constructing countermovement by a supernatural intercessor,
and a final resolution of punishment.
American variants do not reduce the song to a purely binary structure, but they
do make a large step in that direction. The motif of the singing instrument is, in
the main, eliminated from American texts, leaving the double violation and the
punishment as the total dramatic movement. Though each of the violations must
be considered as motifemes, clearly the two are closely related, for the two wrongdoers
find retribution in the same stanza. A condensation of the action has occurred,
and a complicating incident has been eliminated. Such a pattern of story
reduction is observable in other ballads which tell stories of international provenience.
[17]
In these ballads, it can then be seen that actions which are not directly related
to the resolution are eliminated, even when they supply motivation important for
an understanding of the story. The climax of the narrative becomes so important
that much of the foreplay of the story is compressed or forgotten. It is almost as
if the singer wanted to complete the song as quickly as possible, or at least the
active part of the song. The tropism toward an expression of immobility in these
songs thus takes on a further dimension. Not only is heroic action denigrated or
defeated in the dramatic progression of these stories, but descriptions of any kind
of action are slowly eroded in the course of transmission.
IV.
The ballad uses three techniques for the telling of its story: narrative, dialog,
and monolog; that is, the ballad narrator may speak from the third person (narrative),
shifting first person (dialog), or solitary first person (monolog). Ballads,
being action songs, generally emphasize the narrative elements and utilize the
other techniques only to give immediacy to the drama. The more heroic the song,
the greater the reliance upon narrative and the less upon speech. However, as
argued above, these songs tend away from the heroic, and this is reflected in the
changing emphases in story-telling techniques.
Coffin, Gerould, and others have noticed a tropism, complementing actioncompression,
which causes the lyrical elements of certain ballads to be emphasized.
The example most often called upon is the Scottish ballad "Mary Hamilton"
( 173 ) In texts from Scotland the story tells of the seduction of a maid-in-waiting,
Mary Hamilton; the resultant birth of an illegitimate child; the child's murder by
Mary; her detection by the Queen; and Mary's execution. In these texts the songs
end with a complaint of the "last goodnight" sort, purportedly sung by Mary just
before she is to be hanged. Most of the texts of this ballad observed in North
America preserve only this lyric lament.18 Coffin also points to the retention of one
stanza from "Lizzie Lindsay" (226) and certain texts of "The Death of Queen
Jane" (I70) as examples of change to lyric emphasis.
This last, however, does not illustrate a complete accession to a lyric stance but
rather a step toward an intermediate position between ballad and lyric in reliance
upon formulaic repetition. The "Queen Jane" text involves a simple statement of
the Queen's problems in the delivery of her child and her calling for solace:
Queen Jane was in labor
For three days or more.
She grieved and she grieved
And she grieved her heart sore.
She sent for her mother
And her mother came o'er,
Said, "The Red Rose of England
Shall flourish no more."19
The entire song is then a repetition of this stanza, the only change being in the
person to whom the Queen calls.
This is hardly a lyric, but it does do something which lyric also does: it arrests
time or at least slows it down. And it does this through formulaic repetition. Such
change toward formula is, of course, the most extreme expression of a further
tropism often pointed to by ballad scholars, the progressive conventionalization
of balladt exts in oral transmission( the falling backo n diche methodso f description
and on commonplaces ituations). This formulaice xpressioni n balladsi s seldom
found, as it is here,d ivorcedf rom dialog. Formulaicd ialog is an intermediate
point betweenn arrativea nd lyric. If third-personn arrativei s generallyt he most
active song expression,a nd first-personly ric the least, dialog is somewhereb etween
them. When dialog becomes formulaic, action is further slowed down.
Though few examples of ballads mutating from narrative to pure lyric can be
found, many ballads do utilize formulaic dialog, and these songs are perhaps
betteri llustrationso f the tropisma wayf roma ctiont owardl yric.
Of the thirty-sixC hild balladso ften collectedi n North America,n ine are songs
almostt otallyd evotedt o dialog, and this dialog tendst o be formulaic.T heses ongs
are "Riddles Wisely Expounded," "The Elfin Knight" (2), "The Fause Knight
on the Road" (3), "Edward," "Lord Randal," "The Three Ravens" (26), "The
Maid Freed from the Gallows," "Our Goodman," and "The Mermaid." Of these,
few involve any action. Many have stanzas of action which do nothing but frame
the dialog and perhapsp rovidem otivationo f explanatorym aterial.F or instance,
"The Mermaid" generally begins with a stanza in which the ship sets sail and ends
with the ship spinningt hree times and sinking. Furthermorea, numbero f other
balladsn ot completelyi n dialog or formulac onstructionc ompressa ctionb ut continuet
o emphasized ialogt hato ften tendst o becomef ormulaic.20
The tendency toward lyric is another manifestation of the tropism away from
action. In structuralt erms, a narrativec alls for a minimum of two motifemes:
one a statement of dramatic situation; the other, its resolution. Unless a dialog
song or lyric has narrativef ramings tanzasi t generallyw ill not containt he motifeme
of resolutiona ndt ransformationT. he dramatics ituationb ecomess tatic,m ore
permanentr; esolutionsa reo nly implied.I n dialog songs, however,d ramaticin terplay
is still presented, and resolutions occur more often than in lyrics (see "The
Maid Freed from the Gallows"). Lyric folksongs portray the fullest arrest of ac-
tion and exploration of the emotion inherent in the dramatic situation, as expressed
by one of the principals.S ignificantlyi, n view of the commentso n the
defeated role relationshipsi n AmericanC hild ballads,m ost lyric songs in these
rural communities are totally masochistic in tone and situation. Typical of this
dramatic stance are the "forsaken love" and "last goodnight" songs, which are
found in abundance.
This tendencyt owardl yric is observableo nly in parti n the Child balladsb ut is
morec learlys een in a considerationo f the total repertoireos f folksingersa nd singing
communities. A high ratio of story-songs (over seventy-five percent by all
indications) are lyric or dialog songs. The ballad as a form seemingly has become
less and less prevalent-witness the few from the Child canon which have survived
effectively here.
V.
Americanv ersionso f Child balladsp ortrayi n formal, structurala, nd role-relationship
terms a world of extreme limitation and repression. Other aspects of
this singing traditione mphasizet hese characteristicsb,u t becauset hey are more
broadlya pplicablet han to just the Child ballads,t hey can only be outlinedb riefly
in this forum.S ongsi n the Anglo-Americantr aditiona ree xtremelyl imitedf rom a
formal point of view. They are stanzaic: strophic rather than stichic. Strophir
songs are shortert han epic (stichic) songs and rely on memorizationr athert han
improvisationT. hey arem ore "traditional"in this sense,m ore relianto n how they
were sung in the past and not on how they areb eing re-createdin the present.T he
past functions as authority, stifling the creative capacity of the individual singer.
The American rural singer emphasizes this by insisting that the songs belong to
the past, not to the performer. Consequently, the singer removes himself from
immediatei nvolvementi n the dramatics ituationo f the song. As AlmedaR iddle,
the greatt raditionals inger from Heber Springs,A rkansasp, uts it, you must "present"
these songs, not "perform" them. The distance between song and singer
must be emphasized in order to make it evident the song is a heritage from the
past.
Furthermoret,h e style in which these songs are "presented"h as been described
as equallyc ircumspecbt y Alan Lomax: "A tense throata llowedl ittle variationi n
local colour, but great delicacyi n ornamentation."[21] Th is stylistic restrictioni s
further emphasized by the rigid singing posture of the rural singer and by the
equallyr igid movementsw hich may accompanyth eir songs (rockingi n the chair
or keeping time with the forearm while keeping the upper arm stationary).
In every regard this singing tradition and the Child ballads that have persisted
within it seem to exhibit restrictionws hich would be far reachingi n psychological
and culturali mplicationi f verifiedb y future investigatorso f the cultureo f this
group.W e arep resentedw ith a world in which the authorityo f age and tradition
dominatesa nd destroysi nitiative;d ocilityb ecomest he characteristipco se for the
young; and alienation, defeat, and death make up the fabric of the human condition.
Inhibition and repressionc haracterizem any modes of expressionb oth
within the contenta nd structureo f the songs and in theirm annero f performance.
Characteristicpso inted out in this study have been derivedf rom materialsa lready collected. Many questions remain that can only be answered by effective
field collecting. Semi-isolatedr uralc ommunitiess till exist, though perhapst hey
are not as easily found as formerly. The folklorist can still find answers to many of
the questionsr egardingt he relationo f song materialst o othera spectso f rurall ife.
In formulatingh is answersh e may be able to lead others to understandinga nd
perhapse ven to effectivea id for the problemso f the poverty-strickeAn mericans
living in these areas. It is hoped that the methodology used here and the tropisms
isolateda nd analyzedw ill help futurec ollectorsw orkingi n Southernr uralA merica.
In orderf or them to be significantt hey must be relatedt o other facets of the
life of the people among whom these songs have persisted.
NOTES
i. Roger D. Abrahams, Deep Down in the Jungle ... Negro Narrative Folklore From the Streets
of Philadelphia (Hatboro, Pa., I964), Io-I2.
2. I have previously used the term "oikotype" in this broad sense (Deep Down in the Jungle,
10-12), as well as in the narrower sense of "local type" of a piece of international provenience,
but I have found this latter designation somewhat confusing.
3. "The Binary Structure of 'Unsuccessful Repetition' in Lithuanian Folk Tales," VWesternF olklore,
XXI (I962), 165-173; The Morphology of North American Indian Folktales (Helsinki,
1964), FFC No. I95. I am indebted to the author of these studies for illuminating discussion of
structural matters in general and especially in regard to the matters contained in this essay.
4. Francis J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Boston, I882-1898).
5. For example, Lester A. Hubbard, Ballads and Songs of Utah (Salt Lake City, I96I); Arthur
Kyle Davis, More Traditional Ballads of Virginia (Chapel Hill, I960); Helen H. Flanders et al.
Ancient Ballads Traditionally Sung in New England (4 vols.; Philadelphia, I960-I965). The separation
is further ratified by the compendia studies: Tristram P. Coffin, The British Traditional
Ballad in North America, The Bibliographical and Special Series of the American Folklore Society,
Vol. II (Philadelphia, I963, revised edition) and Bertrand Harris Bronson, The Traditional Tunes
of the Child Ballads (4 vols.; Princeton, I959-- )
6. My figures come from my interpretation of the materials in the revised edition of Coffin,
British Traditional Ballad.
7. Cf. Alan Lomax, Folk Songs of North America (Garden City, New York, I960), xxi.
8. The tropotypical pattern of the northeast United States and coastal Canada is much closer to
that of Scotland and Northern England, and thus many of the remarks made here concerning rural
America do not apply as fully to this area.
9. See Bronson, Traditional Tunes, I, 376-381, for a reporting of these tunes, plus the English
song "Don't you go a-rushing."
io. The "cherry without a stone" is probably as fully understood as the fiddle in "The Nightingale"
in the common naive renderings of that song in America. For what seems to be a contrary
view see G. Legman, The Hornbook (New York, 1964), 222.
ii. MacEdward Leach, "Ballad," Funk & W'agnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology
and Legend, eds. Maria Leach and Jerome Fried (New York, 1949), io6.
12. Ibid., io6.
I3. Coffin, British Traditional Ballad, 9.
14. Child, Popular Ballads, I, 209, cites the metrical romance Sir Eglamour of Artois as its antecedent,
but the situation is a romantic commonplace.
I5. Ibid.
I6. This discussion overlooks to some extent the problems inherent in the study of this ballad.
Bertrand H. Bronson has shown in "The Interdependence of Ballad Tunes and Texts," California
Folklore Quarterly, III (I944), I99-202, that American variants stem for the most part from a
broadside ballad, "Sir Eglamore," on the same theme, in which a wild woman is substituted for the
giant. This female ogre is subdued but not killed, and Sir Eglamore rides away crying "I forsake
it, /He that will fetch it (her), let him take it." Already this figure is less heroic than his counterpart
in the metrical romance, and the four-part structure has been weakened considerably. That his
actions become mock-romance deeds is no great surprise, and the song becomes comic and devoid of
female characters in America.
I7. See, for instance, the illuminating discussion of the relationship of "Lady Alice" and "Clerk
Colvill" (42) to the widely told story of the union of mortal and fairy in Barbara M. Craaster,
Journal of the English Folk Song Society, IV (I9O1-I913), 106-I09; Samuel P. Bayard, "The
Johnny Collins' Version of 'Lady Alice'," JOURNALO F AMERICANF OLKLOREL, VIII, No. 228
(April-June, I945), 73-103; Arthur Kyle Davis, More Traditional Ballads of Virginia (Chapel
Hill, 1960), I99-20I.
I8. See Coffin, British Traditional Ballad, II4-II5, I64-I72.
I9. Dorothy Scarborough, A Song Catcher in the Southern Mountains (New York, 1937), 254-
255.
20. A good exampleo f this is seen in the discussiono f "The Riddle Song" and "CaptainW edderburn'sC
ourtship,"w here only the riddle dialog is left. See also certaint exts of "The Wife of
Usher's Well" and "The Cherry Tree Carol" which center upon mother-son(s) dialog, the testament
verses in "The Two Brothers" and "Sir Hugh," plus the stanzas concerned with "How do
you like your bed, . . ?" in "LittleM usgrave"a nd "LadyM argareta nd SweetW illiam."
2I. Lomax,F olk Songs, xx. I am indebtedt o Lomax'd escriptioni n his brief introductiono f the
historicalb ackgroundo f Americanp uritanisma nd its influenceo n song and singing style.
The University of Texas
Austin, Texas