"...the Wit of a Woman It Comes in Handy, At Times in an Hour of Need": Some Comic Ballads of Married Life
by David Atkinson
Western Folklore, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Winter, 1999), pp. 57-84
[not proofed, tables not added]
"...the wit of a woman it comes in handy,/At times in an hour of need": Some Comic Ballads of Married Life
DAVID ATKINSON
Of the small number of comic ballads included in the last volume of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Child 1882-98: nos. 273-283, 290), several (including those to be discussed in detail here) have enjoyed considerable popularity with traditional singers. It is also the case that this small body of material is somewhat reinforced by the presence of comic or humorous elements elsewhere in the ballad repertoire (Nicolaisen 1992; Roberts 1951; Smith 1923). It is even conceivable that the seeming neglect that Child accorded the comic ballads could have had as much to do with failing health and the desire to see the edition completed as with a con- scious disdain for this kind of song. Howbeit, whilst there are only a relative handful of comic items in the canons of Child (1882-98) and even of Laws (1957; 1964), there are actually substantial numbers of humorous nar- rative songs extant elsewhere, especially on broadsides. By studying closely a fairly small number of comic ballads from tradition, it is possible to estab- lish connections both with other parts of the Child corpus, and with this larger body of anglophone comic balladry, and so to contribute to the (scholarly) rehabilitation of the comic ballads (following Buchan 1992). The Child and "Child-type" ballads considered here, which are all con- cerned in one way or another with facets of married life, are therefore offered as paradigms and not as paragons.
Fortunately, the daunting mass of humorous narrative songs has been intensively studied by German scholars who have not only analysed and classified them, but have also drawn attention to generic and geographical affinities of these anglophone comic ballads, or Schwank songs or ballads as they are termed in the absence of an equally precise English phrase (Roth 1977; 1980; Wehse 1975; 1979; 1980; 1982; 1985). Schwank ballads can be defined in relation to their structure; and Wehse offers a couple of useful summary definitions in English:
schwank is a humorous narrative of one or more episodes. The dramatic conflict reaches its height towards the end of the tale or song culminating in a punchline- a surprising or expected solution, usually the inversion of the initial situation, evoking laughter. In the present tradition the genre is often reduced to a joke. This genre, however, gives a mere skeleton of a story, whereas in a schwank the action is leisurely built up until it reaches its climax. The emphasis of a schwank is in the telling of the story and the action preceding the final solution, on the development of the events and not so much on the final comic surprise. (Wehse 1982:133; also 1975:326)
the narration of a humorous event working toward a comical conflict of climax such as a punch line and/or a surprising reversal of situation. This structure can be compared to a game, in which two rivals try to get the bet- ter of each other. The superior position of one or the other opponent may be reversed once or several times, and the person expected to win the "game" is thus rendered inferior. The reversal is caused by such devices as ruses and witty retorts. (Wehse 1980:223)
Classification of the ballads then focuses upon the different thematic areas of conflict with which they deal (Wehse 1979; 1982). The broad subject areas include courtship; matrimony and family; ruses (which include outwitting the Devil); stupid or naive actions; humorous narratives con- cerning the clergy and religion; animal stories and fables; and encounters between royalty or nobility and ordinary citizens. There are, of course, subdivisions within these categories; but in fact a substantial majority of the songs are concerned with amatory, erotic, and marital situations. The ballads deal with seemingly everyday matters, and to an important extent with characters from the middle ranks of society rather than the more aristo- cratic milieux often associated with the Anglo-Scottish classical ballads. At the same time, the Schwank structure, centring upon oppositional conflicts or confrontations, means that great importance attaches to different kinds of ability and cleverness among their characters.
The interest of German scholars in these anglophone comic ballads has also helped create an awareness of their international affinities. In particular, anglophone comic ballads about adultery have been shown to have a surprisingly high number of close parallels in German ballads on the same subject, structured in the same way (Roth 1977; 1980). The materialistic representation of everyday life and the social milieu characteristic of both anglophone and German ballads also invite comparisons with Nor- wegian jocular ballads (Solberg 1990; 1993). The Schwank format, with its emphasis on cleverness, confrontation, and reversal, is suggestive of cross-generic affinities with the treatment of similar themes, in North America as well as Europe, in fabliaux and novelle, cante fables (e.g. Halpert 1942; Halpert and Widdowson 1996: I, 511-521), and especially in Schwank tales. Notably, comic ballads in English and German tend to have closer parallels with prose tales than do other kinds of ballad, while still supporting the principle of complementary distribution of subject matter between tales and songs within the same cultural area (Roth 1980: Shuldiner 1978).
Child's comic ballads fall within similar thematic fields to the Schwank ballads, dealing as they do with matrimony, sexual adventures, and decep- tions involving honest men and thieves. Four of them, which can be readily related to the Schwank ballads on both structural and thematic grounds (and are all in fact listed in Wehse 1979), are described here as comedies of married life. These are "Our Goodman" (Child 274), "Get Up and Bar the Door" (Child 275), "The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin" (Child 277), and 'The Farmer's Curst Wife" (Child 278). Two further narrative songs which can usefully be considered along with them are "Father Grumble" from the Laws canon (Laws Q 1), and "The Devil and the Feathery Wife" ("The Politick Wife") (Roth 1971:177-179; Spring 1988; Wehse 1979: no. 410). Unlike many classical ballads in which marital union is conceived as an ideal state which is either romantically achieved or tragically thwarted, these comic ballads of married life touch on some of the domestic difficulties that may arise after characters are joined in matrimony (a distinction which in certain respects recalls that between the bulk of Shakespeare's romantic comedies and The Taming of the Shrew).
Hodgart (1962:17) thought that the comic ballads at the end of Child's collection had "not much to do with the narrative ballad," although he did concede that they are "constructed rolund a central episode in some- thing like the ballad style." This "central episode" comprises a confrontation between two main characters, the outcome of which is to a greater or lesser extent dependent on the respective abilities or cleverness of the two characters. This confrontational structure of the comic ballads is readily analysed as an interaction of two tale roles (Buchan 1992), tale roles being the interactive functions served by the characters within a nar- rative (Buchan 1982:159-161; 1991b:61-62). Even though probably the bulk of the Child ballads manifest a three tale role interaction (Buchan 1982), some other very important sub-generic groups do also conform to the two tale role, confrontational pattern. The most significant of these are the wit combat ballads, along with the most characteristic of the revenant ballads (Buchan 1985; 1986). In addition, there is a small group of romantic ballads- 'The Knight and Shepherd's Daughter" (Child 110), "Crow and Pie" (Child 111), "The Baffled Knight" (Child 112), and "The Broom of Cowdenknows" (Child 217)-- which can be considered as being just over the romantic-comic border, and these are also largely dependent on the interaction of two tale roles (Buchan 1992:293).
These structural similarities are thus suggestive of where the affinities of the comic ballads lie within the Child corpus. They are, moreover, sub- stantially reinforced by thematic considerations. Although the ballads of matrimonial conflict are most readily described in terms of their shared theme (i.e. as marital comedies), it is immediately apparent that in both 'The Farmer's Curst Wife" and 'The Devil and the Feathery Wife" the con- test is as much between the woman and the Devil as between husband and wife. Outside of the small group of wit combat ballads, 'The Farmer's Curst Wife" provides the only other widespread instance of the appearance of the Devil in the Child corpus (see Buchan 1991b: 69-72).1 In a couple of instances, wit combat ballads have specifically been noted as recalling 'The Farmer's Curst Wife." These include a version of "The Elfin Knight" (Peacock 1965: I, 6 [A]) which introduces the Devil in two opening stanzas which parallel those of "The Farmer's Curst Wife" (Coffin 1977:210); and a version of "The False Knight upon the Road" (Creighton 1932:1-2) performed with a levity which gives it a tone approaching that of "The Farmer's Curst Wife" (Doucette and Quigley 1981:9).
Thus by virtue of their narrative dependence on certain kinds of abil- ity or cleverness, as well as the interplay of gender relations and supernatural relations, and in view furthermore of their congruity at the structural level, an affinity can be traced between these marital comedies and the wit combat ballads. As a result, it may be that the marital comedies in particular, and the comic ballads in general, can be seen as lying closer to the mainstream of balladry than has been admitted. Their immediate affinity may lie with the "black sheep" (Coffin 1983), but the wit combat ballads themselves connect with other supernatural (especially ballads; and these in turn interrelate with ballads of the tragic/romantic group. Indeed, a pattern of affinities becomes apparent more or less throughout the Child corpus as soon as structural classifica- tion is attempted on any scale (Buchan 1982; 1985; 1986; 1989; 1991a, b).
The wit combat ballads comprise "Riddles Wisely Expounded" (Child 1), 'The Elfin Knight" (Child 2), 'The False Knight upon the Road" (Child 3), "KingJohn and the Bishop" (Child 45), "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" (Child 46), "Proud Lady Margaret" (Child 47), and certain versions of 'The Unquiet Grave" (Child 78). Their confrontations turn upon questions to be answered, seemingly impossible commands to be fulfilled or else countered, and wish-assertions to be met with counter-assertions. When confronted in such a way, in order to give an effective response a character requires competence in the patterns of thinking intrinsic to the tra- ditional genre of riddling; wide-ranging knowledge of the human, natural, and supernatural worlds; and the quick-wittedness, moreover, to apply that competence and knowledge when faced with a supernatural being or when placed in a critical predicament in human relations (Buchan 1985:384- 388). In short, the wit combats are explorations of cleverness and knowing, subsumed in the idea of wit, or "cunning" (Buchan 1985:395).
In three types, "Riddles Wisely Expounded," "The Elfin Knight," and "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship," women characters find themselves in confrontations either with men, who present themselves as potential partners of varying sorts, or with unmortal beings. The unmortal is the Devil in "Riddles Wisely Expounded" and "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship," and variously the Devil, an elfin being, or a revenant lover in '"The Elfin Knight" (Buchan 1991b:70-71; Coffin 1977:224; Table 1 gives ref- erences to some specific texts). In "The False Knight upon the Road" a child is confronted by the Devil. In "Proud Lady Margaret" a woman is involved in a confrontation with an unmortal, a revenant who turns out to be her dead brother. In "The Unquiet Grave," too, a woman may be confronted by a revenant, who is her dead lover, but the genders can also be reversed. Only one type, "King John and the Bishop," is altogether without any element of the supernatural, and it happens to be the only one which describes a confrontation between two men. A characteristic of this ballad sub-genre, then, is that it juxtaposes gender relations and relations with the supernatural world, and the common factor in this interplay lies in the abilities displayed by the women characters.
The outcome of these ballads is most conveniently described in terms of the two tale roles of the wit combat ballads, designated Poser and Matcher (Buchan 1985; Table 1). [2] The former initiates the confrontation by setting questions, giving commands, or making assertions. The latter, by answering, fulfilling, or countering them, or attempting to do so, brings the confrontation to some sort of conclusion. The Devil, where he is present, occupies the Poser tale role; and a mortal woman or child occupies the Matcher tale role, and by the exercise of wit avoids falling into the Devil's power. In the same way, a mortal woman eludes an elfin being or revenant in other versions of '"The Elfin Knight." A single exception seems to be a version of "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" in which the woman initiates the confrontation, but the Devil is unable to answer her final question, so that she again escapes his power. In "Proud Lady Margaret," however, a mortal woman Poser initiates a confrontation with a Matcher who is seemingly a suitor, but who turns out to be a revenant, and has answers to all her questions; the revenant brother uses the mastery so gained to hum- ble his sister's excessive pride. The situation in "The Unquiet Grave" is rather less clear, largely because it is often difficult to be quite certain which character is Poser and which Matcher; but it seems nonetheless that the successful handling of a wit combat by a mortal woman has the potential to avert a significant threat posed by the return of the dead (Atkinson 1994). [3]
Among wit combats between mortals there is in certain respects an even less straightforward pattern of character, tale role, and outcome. In "Riddles Wisely Expounded" a male suitor as Poser confronts a woman as Matcher, and she answers all his questions; yet he finally agrees to marry her only after she has already spent the night with him. Conversely, in "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" it is the woman who puts commands and questions to her would-be seducer, but he is able to respond to all of them, and she ends up in his bed-"next the wall." The phrase seems redolent of male sexual domination. "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" is some- times known as "Stock and Wall" (the "stock" being the outer side of a bed, away from the wall), and the woman "next the wall" has the appearance of being confined within the bed at her partner's will.[4] An unusual variation whereby "Captain Wedderburn's Courtship" ends, "And she man lye in his bed, but she'll not lye neist the wa" (Child 46 A), might allow the woman to salvage a little pride from the encounter.
In "The Elfin Knight" one character (most often the man, but it can vary) sets a series of seemingly impossible tasks, which the other success- fully counters in precisely the same way. As a result, the sexual relationship seems to be halted in a kind of indefinite stasis, and the outcome is left hanging in the air (the form best known as "Scarborough Fair"). The fact that the metaphorical connotations of the tasks posed in 'The Elfin Knight' can mean that the woman may be heard to say no, but be understood to mean yes, only serves to heighten this sense of ambiguity (Toelken 1995:113-124). Finally, in "King John and the Bishop" the king poses questions which the bishop as Matcher is unable to answer, but which a shepherd who steps into his place does answer successfully, thus averting the threat of death hanging over the clergyman.
The norm among the wit combat ballads, then, is for the functions of the Matcher tale role to be successfully carried through by whichever char- acter, though exceptions are possible. In addition, where the Devil, or a comparable unmortal such as the elfin knight, confronts a woman or a child, his intentions always remain unfulfilled, regardless of which tale role he takes. A woman's ability to elude a revenant, however, seems to depend rather more on the precise nature of its visitation. On the basis of the confrontations with the Devil especially, the wit combat sub-genre can reasonably be said to be concerned with a particular kind of empowerment available to women and children, the conventionally weaker members of the traditional community (Buchan 1985:395). In confrontations between mortals, however, the actual implications of the narratives are that much more equivocal. It is fair to say on the basis of the sexual encounters that the wit combat ballads are also concerned with empowerment in gender relations. Here, though, they allow for a variable perspective, or even pose a problem of perspective, which seems the more evident because of the juxtaposition of women's relations with men and with the supernatural world within this ballad sub-genre.
For Child's comic ballads, the two tale roles have been designated Tricker and Tricked (Buchan 1992; Table 2). These are perfectly good general descriptions of interactive functions which cover a considerable vari- ety of narrative situations; and once again the methodology of tale role analysis emphasizes the structural juxtaposition of two discrete narrative functions. It is, however, equally possible to take a slightly different view of the interactive narrative functions in the marital comedies in particular (and arguably in the other comic ballads, too). In this case, one tale role is identified with the initiation of a confrontation by the posing of a challenge of some kind; and the other embodies a response which brings the confrontation to some sort of conclusion. This formulation is clearly very similar to the way in which the confrontations of the wit combat bal- lads have been described. So, for the purpose of exploring affinities with the wit combat sub-genre, tale roles once more designated Poser and Matcher seem quite appropriate (Table 3).
In "'The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin," for instance, a man marries a wife of superior social standing, only to find that she will "neither bake nor brew" nor the like, for fear of spoiling her complexion. Her husband overcomes this problem by giving her a beating, having first wrapped her in a sheepskin on the grounds that her well-born relatives could not object to his tanning his own sheep's hide. After this, she expresses her willingness to carry out the domestic tasks. The wife initiates the confrontation, or poses the problem, and so occupies the Poser tale role. The husband, placed in the Matcher tale role, comes up with a solution to the problem and resolves it to his own satisfaction.
Conversely, in "Father Grumble" it is the husband who initiates the con- frontation, when he claims that he can do more work in a day than his wife could do in three. She accepts this as a challenge, and agrees to undertake his work on the farm, but insists that he take on her domestic tasks. He fails dismally at the work around the house, with results that are humorous in a slapstick sort of a way, while she (presumably, for the narrative concentrates upon his mishaps) shows herself to be competent around the farm. In this little marital vignette, the husband is an unsuccessful Poser, who admits defeat in the final stanza, and the wife a successful Matcher.
In "Get Up and Bar the Door" the husband again issues a challenge, by ordering his wife to bar the door, which has blown open with the wind, at a moment when she is quite obviously up to her elbows in making puddings. She refuses, but the confrontational nature of the narrative is then somewhat muted by the fact that they enter into a mutual agreement whereby the first to speak must get up and bar the door. Some travellers call in and, as the couple will not speak, make free with their food and drink. They are then about to insult the husband by shaving off his beard and kissing his wife, when he speaks out to protest. His wife is triumphant, for he has spoken the first word and must get up and bar the door. The husband, in that he initiated the confrontation, occupies the Poser tale role. The wife, who has risen to the challenge by keeping silence the longest, is once more a successful Matcher.
Closest to the wit combat form among all the marital comedies is undoubtedly "Our Goodman," where a husband comes home several nights in a row and each time finds evidence that his wife is entertaining a lover. Every night he questions her about what he sees, but she manages to put him off with seemingly mundane explanations. There is a markedly progressive effect to the sequence of questions and answers, as the focus of the husband's enquiries moves from the stable ("O what do these three horses here, without the leave of me?" 'These are three milking cows, my mother sent to me"), into the house ('"what do these three swords do here?" "They are three roasting-spits"), and towards the bedroom ("what do these three men in bed?" "They are three milking-maids"). In certain American versions the sequence can carry on to a further level of explic- itness: after the usual sort of concluding question and answer, "What's this head a-doing here?" "It's nothing but a melon," or a cabbage head, or a baby, come such variants as "What's this ass a-doing here?" "It's nothing but a pumpkin," and "What's this cock a-doing here?" "It's nothing but a candle." The progression, however, does not lead up to a reversal, but simply displays the wife's consistent ingenuity. In consequence it does appear that her husband is taken in, or is complaisant, or else is simply unable to act for whatever reason. The effect is that the husband, who returns home in the first place and starts asking awkward questions, occupies the Poser tale role; and he is outwitted by his wife as Matcher, who rises to the challenge with her continually inventive answers. [5]
Finally, there are two marital comedies which begin as if they are going to be confrontations between a husband and his "curst" (shrewish) or "scolding" wife, but which turn out in different ways as confrontations between the Devil and a woman. In one traditional version of "The Devil and the Feathery Wife" (from Peter Buchan; another version collected from Kitty Nicolson of Yell begins somewhat later in the story), a man "of mean degree," who is plagued by hunger and "a scolding wife," is one day confronted by the Devil. The Devil asks what is troubling him, "Sure ye want money to buy some bread,/Or pay some landlord's rent?" The man confirms this; and there is no more mention of the shrewish wife theme. The Devil (who calls himself Duncan) undertakes to relieve his poverty, striking a bargain with him that after seven years he must bring a beast that the Devil cannot identify; but if the Devil does manage to name it aright, then the man will have to accompany him to hell. The poor man grows rich, but at the end of seven years he falls into despair, and eventually his wife elicits the reason from him. However, "women's wit is very good,/Sometimes in present need," in Peter Buchan's text; "Wemen's work is very good,/In times o' present need," in Kitty Nicolson's; or, as sung by Martin Carthy (1982), "the wit of a woman it comes in handy,/At times in an hour of need." So she devises a plan whereby she strips stark naked and anoints herself with birdlime, and then rolls around in feathers until she has transformed herself into an unidentifiable beast. Her husband then presents her to the Devil, who admits he has been outwitted: '"Ye fairly hae defeat me now,/And a' the diels in hell." Thus the woman rises to the challenge set by the Devil as Poser, and successfully occupies the Matcher tale role, in which her husband can be considered unsuccessful.
The opening lines of "The Farmer's Curst Wife" sometimes describe how an old farmer "had a bad wife," creating an expectation that he might get the better of her, rather as in "The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin." It is the Devil, however, who initiates the confrontation which gives direction to the narrative, when he appears to the farmer and announces that he is going to take away one of the family. The farmer fears that this will be his eldest son, but is powerless to do anything about it, so he is more than glad when instead the Devil says that he is going to carry off his "scolding old wife." The farmer, however, is quite helpless and passive once again when the Devil brings his wife back. For the "old scolding woman" herself, the Devil certainly poses a problem or challenge, but she rises to it and batters some minor imps before she has to be turned out of hell and returned home. So the Devil as Poser is defeated by the woman as Matcher, and the husband can again be described as an unsuccessful Matcher.
As in the wit combat ballads, the norm in these marital comedies is that the Matcher tale role is successfully carried through by whichever character, the husbands in the two confrontations with the Devil representing the partial exceptions to prove this rule. Where he is present, the Devil always takes the Poser tale role, and he is always unsuccessful in his attempt to claim a mortal for his own. That the concern in such supernatural confrontations is specifically with the empowerment of women is emphasized in "The Devil and the Feathery Wife" by the necessity for the wife to come to her husband's aid in order to defeat the Devil; and in "The Farmer's Curst Wife" by the Devil's lack of interest in a man (the farmer's eldest son), as well as by the seeming ineffectualness of the husband when the Devil first appears. A comparable concern is evident in the remaining ballads of the group which focus on confrontations between husband and wife. Where mental ability- that is, wit of some kind- seems sufficient to resolve the confrontation, women are successful in the Matcher tale role. However, where physical force is additionally brought into the equation, in "The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin," a man is able to impose himself as a successful Matcher. This accords well enough with the view that throughout the Child ballads women characters are primarily dependent upon mental ability, or wit, in order to achieve some sort of personal success in their relationships with men (Stewart 1993).
Thus the marital comedies can reasonably be said to be concerned, like the wit combat ballads, with particular kinds of empowerment available to women in the traditional community. Again, when they are taken all together, the juxtaposition of gender relations and relations with the supernatural world emerges as a characteristic feature of this sub-generic group as well. All the same, the kind of wit, or cleverness and knowledge, displayed among the marital comedies as a group is undeniably less varied and instructive than among the wit combat ballads. In "Father Grumble" the wife shows a greater knowledge of the variety of human affairs than does her husband. In contrast, knowledge is beside the point in "Get Up and Bar the Door," where the wife wins the contest because she is able to keep silence for longer than her husband, although this could be regarded as a kind of negative verbal cleverness. In "Our Goodman" the wife's responses to her husband's questions certainly do display inventiveness, or at least quick thinking, which is perhaps given some substance by the very incongruity of the images she conjures up. The husband in "The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin" undoubtedly also shows a degree of cleverness, but success depends upon his backing it up with physical force. Of the two supernatural confrontations, only in 'The Devil and the Feathery Wife" is an effective combination of inventiveness and general knowledge invoked to outwit the Devil. Nevertheless, both there and in "The Farmer's Curst Wife," a degree of moral knowledge must be considered as necessarily implicit in the sheer determination of women to stand up to the Devil.
This slightly disappointing representation of wit in the marital comedies can be related to the fact that their characters are often drawn from among the gender-specific stereotypes of traditional and popular literature. In "Father Grumble," for instance, husband and wife are described solely in terms of their respective, complementary, and "proper" domestic functions. Indeed, it forms part of a larger tale/motif type which depends upon character attributes being gender-specific and which revolves around the restoration of stereotypical roles within marriage (AT 1408 The Man Who Does His Wife's Work; J2431 A man undertakes to do his wife's work). There are versions of such tales extant from at least as early as the sixteenth century and "The wyf of auchtirmwchty" (Moore 1951:90-91).
"The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin" belongs to a tale/motif type in which a husband beats his cat for not working, while his lazy wife has to hold it, so that she is scratched by the cat and is therefore simultaneously punished; in certain texts, instead of a cat, an animal's hide, or other object, is beaten on the wife's back (AT 1370 The Lazy Wife, W111.3.2 Cat beaten for not work- ing). A version of this type is the sixteenth-century verse tale Here begynneth a merry Ieste of a shrewde and curste Wyfe, lapped in Morrelles Skin, for her good behauyour, mentioned by Child (1882-98: V, 104) as a possible source of the ballad story, and also at one time considered as a direct source of The Taming of the Shrew. Shakespeare's play can be considered a literary version of a closely related tale type in which the youngest of three sisters is a "shrew," whose husband shoots his dog and his horse for their disobedience, which has the effect of bringing his wife to submission; this is then demonstrated in public by a wager among men as to who has the most obedient wife (AT 901 Taming of the Shrew, T251.2 Taming the shrew, see Brunvand 1966). The disobedient wife and the husband's ultimate resort to violence, whereby he outdoes her in shrewishness, are effectively narrative requirements of both of these "taming of the shrew" tale types, which revolve once more around the restoration of conventional masculine and feminine roles within marriage. The one possible innovation in the Child ballad is the way in which the husband employs the device of the animal hide not only to bring his wife to a state of submissive obedience but also to circumvent her family's disapproval.
Such stories comprise part of a widespread narrative tradition of misogyny, which also lies behind the eponymous heroine of "The Farmer's Curst Wife." This ballad belongs with other tales in which a mortal man has to put up with an unruly woman, whom even the Devil finds himself unable to endure (e.g. AT 1164B Even the Devil Cannot Live with a Widow, 1164D The Demon and the Man Join Forces;, T251.1.2.2 Man in hell declares that life there is much better than on earth with his wife). A good example from popular literature is a seventeenth century broadside, "A Pleasant new Ballad ...How the Devill, though subtle, was gul'd by a Scold" (Roxburghe Ballads 1869-99: II, 367-71). The traditional ballad is given a literary turn in Burns's "Kellyburnbraes."
"Get Up and Bar the Door" belongs to another widespread tale/motif type (AT 1351 The Silence Wager, J2511 The silence wager), in which character attributes are presented as gender-specific at least insofar as it is most often the woman who speaks first (Brown 1922:292). In contrast, in the bal- lad it is almost invariably the man who speaks out and has to bar the door. [6] There are some analogous texts, though, in which the husband speaks first, out of jealousy at the attentions being paid to his wife; and in a French version he specifically taunts her with being a "cackler," but when she challenges him to the trial at silence he speaks first, and her success means that she remains mistress of the house (Child 1882-98: V, 97-98; Brown 1922:309). So the stereotype of the jealous husband is set against that of the inveterately talkative woman. On the other hand, it is possible that part of the point of the narrative is that the character who keeps silent the longest is actually the more foolish, risking everything for a slight advantage (Brown 1922:293-294).
The cuckolded husband is a gender-specific character with a time- honoured place among comic narratives, and this is perhaps suggested by the rather generic descriptions of tale/motif types that would seem to embrace "Our Goodman" (e.g. AT 1419 The Returning Husband Hoodwinked; K1510 Adulteress outwits husband), alongside the more specific motif which is keyed to the ballad (K1549.4 Lover leaves horse outside house as husband comes up). It is only in '"The Devil and the Feathery Wife" that the nar- rative seems less constrained by the stereotypes of traditional and popular literature. Even here a "scolding wife" is mentioned at the beginning of the text, but in this case the character seems not actually to bear out the description. The ballad belongs to a tale type which does not explicitly rely on gender-specific character attributes, but is characterized by the out- witting of the Devil (AT 1091 Who Can Bring an Unheard-of Riding-Horse [cf. 1183* Saying within Gunshot what Wild Game is Before one]; K216.2 Bringing the devil an unknown animal).
In the ballad confrontations between husbands and wives, the unsuc- cessful characters are those who remain most obviously confined within their gender-specific stereotypes. The corollary is that those who are suc- cessful are those who manage to transcend the relevant stereotype and/or who impose a stereotypical role on the other character. Wit in the marital comedies can therefore be usefully defined in terms of the ability to manipulate the stereotypes that attach to married life in both oral and written tradition. The supernatural confrontations among this group of ballads represent an extension of this idea, so that the shrewish wife stereotype is either rendered irrelevant or else is given a new dimension as the character takes on not her husband but the Devil himself.
Nevertheless, the stereotypes of traditional and popular literature can also be seen as markers of ways in which aspects of human behaviour are socially constructed. Social constructs, of course, correspond in some degree to the kinds of consensual norms of conduct which traditional cul- tural forms such as the ballad might be expected to reinforce. These might include such things as the expectation that a wife should be obedient and not "shrewish," or that a husband should be able to satisfy his wife sexually. However, in creating narrative action around behavioural stereotypes, the comic ballads also help expose some of the mechanisms and some of the implications lying behind the social construction of behavioural patterns.
The gendered division of labour, for example, has almost certainly been held as a communal norm, in theory if not always in practice. Yet while ridicule (employed in "Father Grumble") might be considered a tolerable method for the enforcing of such a consensus, the same would not necessarily be true of physical violence (used in '"The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin"), even though it represents a means to the same end. In consequence, while the structure of these comic ballads can be conveniently described through tale role analysis, and this also usefully defines their cultural field of reference (described above in terms of different kinds of empowerment available to women in the traditional community), there is nonetheless the potential for a tension to exist between structure on the one hand and actual cultural implications of particular ballad types and ver- sions on the other. As has already been suggested with regard to the wit combat ballads, there is a question of perspective, which is again complicated by the interplay of gender relations and relations with the supernatural world.
For "Our Goodman" structural analysis showed power within a marriage residing with a wife who has apparently admitted a lover (and in some versions three different lovers at once) into the marital home. As the sequence of nights progresses, it may become increasingly evident that everyday logic would demand to know why her husband does not simply stay at home (Toelken 1995:22). Instead he becomes a stereotypical cuck- old, not least as a result of the relentless application of his wife's visually incongruous wit (from which it is quite evident that she is never going to admit fault);[7] and it is no easier to take his part than that of the deceived husbands of medieval and renaissance literature. There is even an argument that it is not altogether clear whether his wife is actually committing adultery (although the ramifications of the idea that she is not in fact doing so might be thought to extend too far beyond the boundaries of what is, after all, a fairly short narrative), the point being that the husband is not himself discharging his marital duties (Toelken 1995:22). In consequence, the wife can be seen as responding justifiably to an unsatisfactory relationship, most obviously in the numerous versions in which her husband habitually comes home drunk.
Yet in other versions the husband merely comes home to discover evidence of illicit doings; and in one his wife is said to beat him with a poker, so that he might well put off his return (Sharp 1932: I, 267-268 [A]). Moreover, even though the progression of questions and answers does not lead to a showdown, it is certainly possible to hear retorts like "A mustache on a cabbage head/I never did see before" or "an ass hole on a pumpkin/I never seen before" as being sufficiently sardonic to indicate that the hus- band is in fact fully aware of the situation, but indifferent to it (Buchan 1992:291). The result is a balanced tension in the relationship between hus- band and wife, or a stasis which might recall "Scarborough Fair." Here, the nuances of performance are likely to be of some import, but probably more important would be the preconceptions of singer and audience. The cuckold is a type of "unmasculine" behaviour; but to recognize that need not be the same as to condone adultery. Structure and cultural function do not simply and neatly coincide. Alongside other means for imposing or maintaining a consensus (the much-discussed custom of "rough music," "skimmington," or "charivari" suggests itself as a far more direct means of employing musical expression to reinforce communal norms of sexual conduct), a ballad like "Our Goodman" seems rather to invite a vicarious exploration (and enjoyment) of its theme than to assert a unitary view of it.
In "The Devil and the Feathery Wife" the confrontational structure, which seems to accord well enough with quasi-Christian religious tradition, ought perhaps to provide a clearer guide to cultural functioning. Yet even here there is a potential tension between this structure and the stereotypical characterization of the woman, in Peter Buchan's version at least, as "a scolding wife," who is nonetheless decidedly more clever than her husband. This tension is made the more evident by a structural anal- ogy which can be drawn between the Devil and the husband as (male) characters who are both unsuccessful in their respective tale roles. This allows a reading whereby the ballad's "humour" derives from the complicity of these two characters to degrade and bestialize the wife, as a punishment (it is assumed) for her "scolding" tongue (Spring 1988). It might be added that the image which persists from the ballad is, of course, that of the woman as a strange beast. Cited in support of this reading is the reworking of the Peter Buchan version by A. L. Lloyd, recorded by Martin Carthy (1982). [8] It ends with the Devil's line about the wife, "shes worse than the demons of hell" (emphasis added in Spring 1988: 145). This is quite strongly reminiscent of "The Farmer's Curst Wife"; and the argument is that it emphasizes the complicity between husband and Devil, and signifies that the husband cannot escape his real persecutor. In contrast, Peter Buchan's version itself simply ends with the Devil's admission, 'Ye fairly hae defeat me now,/And a' the diels in hell" (Kitty Nicolson's version has him say that the feathery wife is "enough to frighten me and mair,/Than a' the deils in hell"). Yet Martin Carthy's notes to the song maintain that it "is surely about the demon- stration of true love."
It seems that much has to depend on the weight that may or may not attach to the brief reference to "a scolding wife," which could serve as an indicator of the ballad's dependence on gendered stereotypes, or which could equally pass virtually unnoticed among the generalized remarks of Peter Buchan's opening stanza. In 'The Farmer's Curst Wife," of course, the shrewish wife motif is much more to the fore. Again, the presence of a supernatural scheme which accords with quasi-Christian tradition, and which determines the structure of the ballad, ought to provide a fixed perspective on the story. Certainly, in some versions the farmer's wife appears proud enough of her vic- tory over the Devil; and occasionally her husband praises her handling of the supernatural confrontation. In one unusual version the woman herself is the farmer (so that the shrewish wife motif is lacking altogether), and she goes voluntarily to the gates of hell in full confidence of her ability to han- dle the confrontation with the Devil (Flanders 1960-65: IV, 104-105 [C]). The contrast with a man's ability in the same situation is implicit from a version in which the farmer, seeing the Devil coming back from hell, runs away so that he will not take him instead (Bronson 1959-72: IV, 185 [17]). Versions from Missouri and Nova Scotia have the devils "strung on a wire," and it has been suggested that this alludes to mystery plays (Belden 1940:95). Indeed, the entire serio-comic treatment of the Devil and his subordinates is reminiscent of their representation in medieval pop- ular drama, where the comic mode is always in the end subservient to Christian theology. Yet the farmer himself does not usually view the affair in this light at all. Having thought that the Devil was going to rid him of a shrewish wife, he complains on her return along such lines as "Now, old woman, on earth you must dwell;/You are not fit for heaven, and they won't have you in hell," or "she was born for a curse;/She's been to hell and she's ten times worse." In some versions she beats him when she gets back home, so that there is a continuing opposition between husband and wife, and the ballad ends, "So now you see what a woman can do,/She can conquer all Hell and her husband too." When the Devil returns her, saying, "I have been a tormentor the whole of my life,/But I neer was tormented so as with your wife," he indicates, much more distinctly than in '"The Devil and the Feathery Wife," that he shares the discomfort experienced by the farmer at the hands of his "curst wife." She is cast as the real tormentor; and there is again a structural analogy between the Devil and the husband as unsuccessful characters within their respective tale roles. Within the nar- rative the husband is, of course, entitled to a misogynistic point of view (though there is certainly an inherent perversity in the idea that a human character should be any the worse for being turned out of hell), even if it can also be held to betray the anxiety of a man in the presence of a "strong" woman. Rather more surprising is a version which has the wife herself state, "What I can do I never can tell;/I ain't fit for heaven and they won't have me in hell" (Sharp 1932: I, 280-281 [F]).
There is, then, a distinct paradox in the characterization of a woman who has the ability successfully to withstand the Devil, but who is nonethe- less stereotyped as a "curst," "scolding," or plain "bad" wife. Some of the aphoristic stanzas which conclude the ballad, and which have the appear- ance at least of belonging more to the singer than to any of the characters, perpetuate this paradox. Among them are diametrically opposed couplets: "You see the women is worse than the men,/If they get sent to Hell, they get kicked back again"; and 'The women they are so much better than men,/When they go to hell they're sent back again." A first glance might suggest that there should be a preference for one or other of these endings in line with the gender of the singer, but that is not clearly so. Maggy Murphy (1996) of Fermanagh, for instance, sings, "It's true that the women are worse than the men." It is maybe in any case a crude assumption that is deaf to the voice of irony. In fact, 'The Farmer's Curst Wife" allows a con- siderably more ambivalent engagement with different kinds of power manifest amongst women than is contained in such neat conclusions. Of all the marital comedies, the domestic violence theme might be thought to lend "The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin" the greatest cultural immediacy, not least because the ballad's structure appears to endorse the husband's conduct. But in fact it is not at all clear that a ballad about wife- beating need be understood as in any straightforward way condoning the practice. There is a useful analogy to be drawn with erotic folk songs which, while they may serve on one level as sexual fantasies, have also been shown historically to delineate boundaries of behaviour normally accept- able to the community, even while transgressions have undeniably occurred (Gammon 1982). Similarly, then, while domestic violence would probably be demonstrable at just about any time and place in which "The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin" has been current, the ballad could also allude to social constraints on domestic conduct. In certain versions the husband merely beats his wife with a stick, without any of the "cleverness" of the sheepskin trick, which seems to heighten its underlying brutality. [9]
Somewhat differently, there are a few versions in which, in spite of the sheepskin device, the husband appears to panic and run away when his wife threat- ens to tell people about his treatment of her (Cox 1925:159-160 [A], 160 [B]). All the same, by identifying physical force as the underlying basis for patriarchy the ballad still poses a barely concealed threat to disobedi- ent women. While imposing a conventional scheme of gender relations, the husband in "The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin" is also (usually) resisting his wife's social pretensions, and more generally a system of social relations which requires his deference to her "gentle" kinsfolk.
In this respect the ballad narrative appears to add something to the tale type of The Lazy Wife. The common Scottish title '"The Wee Cooper o' Fife" is particularly suggestive of a sense of social insignificance which the husband seeks to overcome in the face of his wife's "proud kin." The ballad can even end on a note which contains a hint of something approaching class consciousness: "A' ye wha hae gotten a gentle wife/Send ye for the wee cooper o Fife." In this regard, too, the real effect of the ballad could again be to delineate boundaries of acceptable behaviour, and so to reinforce deference. It is, however, worth noting that while the depiction of the subjection of a wife to her husband might be thought to pose little challenge to the sta- tus quo, the subjection of a woman of "gentle" birth to a husband of lower social standing might be considered to do so. In consequence, the narrative seems to encompass the potential for conflict between two different patterns of social order, within marriage, or in society at large.
The veneer of humour in the ballad might well suggest the vicarious enjoyment of a male fantasy combining domestic authority with social defiance. It could just as well be added, though, that the weakness of the 'joke" betrays the insecurity and anxiety that must underlie such a fantasy. Indeed, the 'joke," depending on how it is taken, says something about the entire intellectual basis for the idea of masculine authority within marriage, and thence for the whole range of socially constructed behaviour within patriarchal society. In other words, cultural function in ballads like these cannot be derived directly from narrative structure. Rather, structure merely indicates that the texts provide environments for discourse about power and gender. An initial key to the extent to which they do actually function in this way can then be sought in their contexts. Certainly, stereotypical characters root the texts in the social constructs of patriarchal society.
In some degree, therefore, the ballads help reproduce that social structure and affirm it as a norm; and it is a norm which is no doubt adequate as a broad description of their performance contexts in anglophone communities over perhaps as much as the whole of the period of their existence. However, contexts can still vary widely within that overarching description, and it is difficult to con- ceive that even in tight-knit communities there could not be significant shades of opinion over such a contentious area as gender relations. The problem then arises that the definition of context begins to fragment. A communal norm may be invoked, for instance as regards a subject such as wife-beating; but the norm is often defined by transgressions against it, and these necessarily posit alternative points of view. Even in so-called "high context" groups, in which experience and attitudes are sub- stantially shared, and which often provide the setting for traditional singing, not only can different "meanings" for the same song coexist but they can even be such as to give rise to transient tensions within the group.[11] Again, an individual singer may give a persuasive account of a par- ticular song, but cannot expect to retain control over its meaning once it has passed into the public domain."
The images which are most memorable from the comic ballads discussed here-ballocks on a candle or an ass hole on a pumpkin; a naked woman, coated in birdlime and feathers, being led on all fours; a "gentle" wife beaten in a sheepskin; an old man shaved in pudding broth-can without too much difficulty be related to the "material bodily principle" and the principle of "degradation" described by Bakhtin (1968) as characteristic of a culture of carnivalesque humour. The ballad characters and the narrative situations in which they find themselves-the triumphant scold, the cuckolded husband, the wee cooper who defies the class system, the wife who stays silent longer or does her husband's work better than he-present, to a greater or lesser extent, examples of inversion or the world turned upside-down in a carnivalesque manner. The carnivalesque, though, is characterized more than anything by its capacity for ambiguity and ambiva- lence, or multiple meanings (Burke 1978:182-204). There should, then, be no real surprise that comic ballad texts should be capable of comprehending multiple meanings. Certainly, it is critical to such aesthetic merit as these comedies of married life possess that they contain the potential to generate simultaneously a variety of different perspectives, and once these are conceded it is no longer altogether possible to close off any one of them.
Although not usually numbered among the finest of the ballads in Child's edition, the comic ballads provide useful environments for dis- course, not least because the comic mode is supposed to invite a quasi-physical reaction through laughter. The audience can smile or laugh outright at some of the innuendoes of "Our Goodman," or equally might refuse to acknowledge anything particularly funny about "The Wife Wrapt in Wether's Skin" or "Get Up and Bar the Door." There is also the opportunity to express concurrence with or dissent from the general response of the group, in part by controlling this physical reaction. Rather than, or as well as, simply reinforcing the communal consensus through proscription and the delineation of boundaries, the ballads allow (or invite) the vicarious exploration of their narratives and motifs. In this way they could probably also act as a kind of cultural safety-valve for straightforward domestic tensions, as well as for unsanctioned desires, rebellious impulses, and psychological anxieties of various kinds (on the principle that laughter cancels fear).
At the same time, cross-generic affinities suggest that this close focus on a small group of comic ballads of married life may have further ramifications. As noted at the beginning, other anglophone comic ballads, often on broadsides, also deal in a more or less humorous way with subjects like marital quarrels, adultery, or outwitting the Devil. Schwank ballads in German as well as English, Norwegian jocular ballads, cante fables, Schwank tales, fabliaux, and other humorous prose narratives all treat similar themes in a comparable manner, characterized by reversals and inversions. While lending support to the principle of complementarity between bal- lads and tales, the comic ballads also offer closer parallels with tales than ballads of other kinds. This particular group of marital comedies can there- fore be considered as in some degree representative of a much broader range of both traditional and popular comic literature. But the marital comedies also demonstrate clear structural and thematic contiguities with the more intensively studied ballads of the Child canon. On these grounds, then, there is some justification for studying a seemingly slight sub-group on the margins of mainstream balladry. Not only do they make it possible to go some way towards the breaking down of canonical and generic barriers, but they also shed some light on the way in which "Child-type" ballads at large might work.
London, England
Table 1.
[upcoming]
Table 2. Tale roles in comic ballads (modified from Buchan 1992)
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Table 3. Tale roles in marital comedies
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Notes:
1 The cloven-footed demon which appears in a few (mainly Scottish) versions of 'James Harris (The Daemon Lover)" (Child 243) may be connected with the Romantic/Gothic imagination (cf. Reed 1988). See also "The Laird of Waris- ton" (Child 194 A).
2 For the supernatural types and versions among the wit combat ballads, Buchan (1991b:66) later re-designated these tale roles Bespeller and Bespelled, in order to emphasize their similarities with other groups of supernatural ballads; but also reaffirmed that Poser and Matcher "apply accurately at a very concrete level of analysis and. . . cover both the supernatural and the secular types and versions of the group." For the present purpose, it is essential to identify the continuity between supernatural and gender relations which runs through the sub-genre.
3 In most versions of "The Unquiet Grave" which include a series of seemingly impossible commands, they either meet with no response at all or are merely re-phrased by the Matcher into the form of a rhetorical question commencing "How can I...?" The assignment of characters to tale roles is substantially dependent upon punctuation which may or may not provide an accurate indication of the speakers. Unfortunately, the one text, from the Baring- Gould manuscripts, in which a mortal woman clearly does carry out tasks set by her dead lover gives grounds for suspicion concerning its traditional status. The argument that the episode in "The Unquiet Grave" can be usefully explained in terms of the characteristics of ballad wit combats is not, however, crucially dependent on its authenticity. Shields (1983) offers an alternative analysis of the stanzas in "The Unquiet Grave" as an instance of the rhetorical device of adynaton ("impossible") in ballads (albeit an aberrant example), referring to the irreversible separation of the lovers.
4 After the eponymous hero of "King Henry" (Child 32) submits to spend the night with the loathly lady, he awakens to find the fairest lady that ever was seen, lying "atween him and the wa," seemingly in a gesture of sexual submission.
5 A partially remembered version gives an indication of three of the pairs of questions and answers, and ends in prose, '"Then he catches her on something she can't explain and has no answer for" (Barry, Eckstorm, and Smyth 1929:316- 317 [B]). If remembered correctly, this would, perhaps uniquely, reverse the normal pattern.
6 In an Irish traveller's tale, or cante fable version of the ballad, from Mikeen McCarthy, called "Go for the Water," the woman speaks first, but it is maybe to be noted that she is the man's sister rather than his wife (Early in the Month of Spring 1986).
7 Toelken (1995:22-23) discusses some aspects of performance which can serve to reinforce the inexorable logic of the verbal humour in this respect.
8 This is somewhat curiously described as being "still performed in the oral tra- dition in this country" (Spring 1988:143): Lloyd was, and Carthy is, a prime mover in the post-war revival of folk song in England.
9 Compare '"The Holly Twig" (Laws Q 6), which tells of a man who discovers that he has married a terrible scold; he goes to the woods and cuts a twig with which he gives her a severe beating; a little devil then comes to take her away, and the husband finds himself at peace once more.
10 Toelken (1995:53-55), for instance, describes the singing within a non-seafaring family group of a song ("Rolling Home") believed to have been sung by their seafaring ancestors, which also recalls exploits attributed to those ancestors. This in turn elicits responses reflective of contemporary ethical per- spectives which, as it happens, vary along gender lines. In other words, the song permits the vicarious exploration of its motifs, and so provides a ground for dis- course even within its present-day context.
11 Neal and Robidoux (1995) advocate a "phenomenological" conception of folk- lore texts, which requires their meaning(s) to be co-created by their audience, in much the manner suggested here.
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