The Unquiet Grave- Harvey 1941
The Unquiet Grave
by Ruth Harvey
Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Dec., 1941), pp. 49-66
The Unquiet Grave
BY RUTH HARVEY
IT would perhaps be well to preface this study of one of the most popular and beautiful of English folk-songs, by some lesser-known versions, including the only American examples I have seen, from Ballads and Sea Songs from Newfoundland, collected by Elisabeth B. Greenleaf and Grace Y. Mansfield. The American tunes in fact, still preserve many characteristic features found in the more familiar English tunes, the second one in particular resembling that published in Cecil Sharp's Folk- Songs from Somerset and a Lancashire-Yorkshire version.
Noted by R. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS. Sung by WV. HIRONS. DILWYN, 1909.
Cold blows the wind o'er my true love,
Cold blow the drops of rain;
I nev-er, nev-er had but one true love,
And in green-wood he was slain.
Sung by REV. GIBBS BULL,
Exploits, Newfoundland, 1929
How cauld those winds do blow, dear Laird,
What heavy drops of rain!
I never had but one true love,
And she from me was slain.
Sung by Mrs. ROSIE WHITE.
Sandy Cove, Newfoundland 1929
There's been falling, drops of dew, sweetheart,
And falling drops of rain.
I've only had but one sweetheart,
On the green fields he was slain.
I would do so much for my sweetheart
As any young maid may;
I"ll sit and mourn upon his grave
For a twelvemonth and a day."
When the twelvemonth and a day been up,
This young man rose and spoke;
"What keeps you mourning upon my grave,
You will not let me sleep?
Why do you weep? why do you mourn?
What do you want of me?"
"One kiss, one kiss from your lily-white lips,
That's all I want of thee."
"My lily-white lips are cold as clay,
And my breath smells vile and strong-
If you take one kiss from my lily-white lips
Your time it won't be long"
"Down yonder meadow where the grass grows green
Where you and I used to walk,
The prettiest flowers that ever we had seen
It is withered unto the stalk.
It is withered unto the stalk, sweetheart
And the leaves will never return
But since I have lost my own sweetheart
What shall I do but mourn?"
"Mourn not for me, my own true love,
Mourn not for me, I pray;
So I must leave you and all the whole world,
And go into my grave.'
More than once it has been observed that traces of the supernatural in English folk-songs are surpnsingly rare. Although English folk-lore is, or was, full of the liveliest traditions concerning ghosts, no one seems to have thought of celebrating their activities in song. For, on the one hand, the doings of some little local ghost would not be likely to find an audience outside its native "haunts"; and on the other, "local" folk-songs are usually inspired by a new and striking event, rather than by a long-standing tr adition with which everyone is familiar already. Songs with supernatural themes which struck a deeper and more universal note would incur the disapproval of the Church, unless they were directly sponsored by it, as are ballads of the miraculous, such as "Little Sir Hugh", or semi-didactic ballads, as "The Cruel Mother". Where traces of the supernatural persist in secular s ongs, they are usually reduced to abrupt, half-comprehended allusions, as the swan appantion in "Shooting of his Dear' or to crude and sentimental melodrama as in so many of the broadside ballads. The most notable exception to this rule is the ballad of "The Unquiet Grave".
The story of the dead lover returning from the grave to speak once more with the living is one of those dramatic and moving tales which have fired the imagination of folk-singers not onlyin England, but all over Europe. Nevertheless, among these many variations on the same theme, there is one group of ballads so closely connected as to make it almost certain that they are all descended from a single tradition. This group is confined to the Scandinavian countries, Germany, and the British Isles. It is impossible to determine with any certaintywhat was the original home of the tradition, or how and when it first took shape, but is it clearly of great antiquity, and the widespread popularity which it enjoys may largely be due to the fascination which these mysterious echoes from a remote past seem to have for the popular mind. So from Denmark we have "Aage og Else," from Sweden, "Sorgens Magt" (The Power of Grief), from Iceland the conclusion of " Helgakvida Hundingsbana ii" (the second lay of Helgi Hundingsbane), from Germany the ballads " Der Vorwirt" (The Former Husband), and " Der tote Freier" (The Dead Wooer), while from Scotland we have "Sweet William's Ghost" and from England "The Unquiet Grave" or "Cold Blows the Wind." " The Unquiet Grave" differs from most of the other versions of this theme in the absence of any precise narrative setting. For this reason Child considers it as a fragment or even a hotch-potch of verses from other ballads. We do not know the names
of the lovers, and there is not even a fixed tradition of the respective sex of the living and the dead. The visit of the ghost to the house of the beloved is entirely omitted, although it is an essential part of the tale in the Scottish and most of the foreign versions. The order of the stanzas is frequently altered, and corruptions occur often. Important motifs, such as the return of the troth-plight, are either discarded or reduced to a few disjointed and barely comprehensible lines.
The outline of the story, as it is common to all the versions, is as follows:- The living person, man or woman, is lamenting the death of the only true-love they have ever had, and takes a vow of mourning on the beloved's grave for the purely conventional period of a year and a day. At the end of that time the ghost speaks and reproaches the survivor for disturbing its rest in the grave by continual weeping. The latter begs for a last kiss. This request is refused, for to embrace the dead would spell doom to the living. The conclusion of the song varies from one version to another. Clearly then, the dominant motif of this song is the belief that excessive grieving for the dead interferes with their rest in the grave. It is a belief which is widely held throughout Europe and even in Oriental countries, and obviously goes back to the time when it was held that the spirit of the dead continued to dwell in the grave, and required to be equipped with all the necessities of life. In connection with this it is interesting to note that the "ghost" of these ballads is not a disembodied spirit, but rather an animated corpse, which is frequently indistinguishable from the living person. At the appointed hour it returns in a visible and natural way to the grave which is its home.[1]
So when Sweet William's ghost "evanished in a cloud of mist" we can dismiss the stanza as a later addition on internal as well as stylistic grounds. This belief concerning tears for the dead was probably evolved as a kind of protective device, to ensure that life should pursue its normal course unhindered by futile regrets for what was irrecoverably lost. Such an idea was easily brought into line with Christian beliefs, since grieving for the dead now appeared as a presumptuous and wicked opposition to the will of Providence. Although its true significance is now largely forgotten, it has been recorded as surviving up to the present day by many students of folk-lore. Walter Gregor in Folk-Lore of North-East Scotland states that it was believed that the spirits of the departed could not rest if the living gave way to excessive grief on their behalf, and similar traditions have been noted by Brand in Popular Antiquities, W. Henderson in Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, and Ella M. Leather in Folk-lore of Herefordshire. For survivals of this belief in other countries the reader is referred to Kelly, Curiosities of Indo-European Tradition and Folk-lore, and above all, to Child's introductory remarks to "The Unquiet Grave", which contain very numerous references to the popular traditions of the Persians, Indians, Celts, Slavs, Greeks, and the Germanic and Latin races.
In the group of ballads under consideration, the belief that the tears of the living disturb the dead plays a very important part, Not only is it the chief motif in "The Unquiet Grave", but in "Aage og Else" and in "Sorgens Magt" the girl "weeps her betrothed out of the grave", and the dead man reproaches her that every tear she sheds for him fills his coffin with blood. The contrasting stanza, namely, that his coffin is filled with roseleaves every time she is happy, is patently the invention of a later, more sentimental age. In the Icelandic Eddaic lay, Helgi appears to Sigrun drenched with blood, for every one of her tears falls heavy and cold, like blood, on his breast as he lies in the grave-mound. In "Der Vorwirt" the dead man asks that his wife may bring him a fresh shirt, as the old one is all dripping with her tears. The only one of this group in which the incident is entirely omitted is the Scottish "'Sweet William's Ghost." But in the " Twa Brothers" we are told that the sweetheart of the dead man weeps until
" She wept the stars adown from the lift
She wept the fish out of the sea."
The ghost remonstrates with her
"O cease your weeping, my ain true love,
Ye but disturb my rest."
Or, as the delightful version collected by Cecil Sharp from the Southern Appalachians puts it:
"Go home, go home, you rambling reed,
Don't weep or mourn for me."
It must be admitted that the attitude of the ghost in this version is by no means to be wondered at, since we are assured that "his true love put on small hoppers ... and went hopping all over her true love's grave for a twelvemonth and a day" until "she hopped her true love out of his grave, so he can't see no rest." A method of expressing grief which could hardly fail to wear out the patience even of the most stolid ghost, though possibly the original process of "harping" might have proved no less exasperating.
Again, in a couple of American versions of " The Wife of Usher's Well," one given in Child's notes and additions to this ballad, the other from H. H. Fuson's Ballads of the Kentucky Highlands, the dead children exhort their mother to desist from mourning
" For the tears you shed for us last night Would wet our winding-sheet".
The intensity with which this belief was enforced by popular tradition is shown by the passionate, and, to us, wholly unjustifiable resentment of the ghost towards the living. In many of the Slavonic versions of the "Suffolk Miracle" theme-one which has many points in common with "The Unquiet Grave" group-the dead man tries, and often succeeds, in tearing the girl, or at least her garments, in pieces, as a punishment for her grief on his behalf, and in one ballad the Virgin Mary is herself indirectly his accomplice in this revenge. A similar motif occurs in ballads where there is a different relationship between the living and the dead persons. In a Serbian popular song, quoted by Kelly, it is the sister who mourns for her brother until her tears annoy him to such a pitch that he changes her into a cuckoo. Wollner in his article " Der Lenorenstoff in der slavischen Volkspoesie" (Archiv fur slavische Philologie, VI, p. 243ff.) quotes the Russian tale of a girl pursued by the angry ghost of her mother, who was apparently suffering acute discomfort in her coffin as it was flooded with her daughter's tears. Only the crowing of the cock saves the girl from a dreadful fate. The tearing of the living in pieces was apparently a favourite method of revenge among ghosts, and in several ballads it must be admitted that our sympathies are all on the side of the ghost. In a popular melodramatic ballad known as "The Gosport Tragedy" or "The Cruel Ship's Carpenter" the ghost of the carpenter's sweetheart confronts him on board ship.-
" She stript him and tore him, she tore him in three,
Because he had murdered her baby and she."
Again in "Willie's Fatal Visit", one of Buchan's ballads, we have a lively passage in which a ghost-presumably that of a cast-off sweetheart-meets Willie coming from the house of his new love, and tears him to pieces, neatly distributing the "fragments" lone on each seat of "Mary's kirk". "The Unquiet Grave" seems to be the only one of the group of ballads under consideration which has preserved any trace of resentment on the part of the ghost, and that in two versions only, both from the same region. In the Scandinavian ballads the ahost is all tenderness and compassion; in the German ballad it speaks with a fretful peevishness, but no real anger; in Scotland it adopts a pleading, even wistful, tone; but in two West-Country versions of " The Unquiet Grave" collected by Baring-Gould, we have the stanza:-
"Now if you were not true in word (my own sweetheart)
As now I know you be,
I'd tear you as the withered leaves
Are torn from off the tree (That grew on yonder tree).
Here a new factor seems to have arisen as an explanation in part of the ghost's resentment- namely, the troth-plight, which binds the lovers even after death, so that neither can find rest until the bond has been formally cancelled. The return of the troth-plight is the dominant motif of all the versions of " Sweet William's Ghost", but it is entirely omitted from the Scandinavian ballads, as well as the German, and this would seem to indicate that it is a later development peculiar to the British Isles. In " The Unquiet Grave" there is only one explicit mention of the troth-plight, again from Baring-Gould's version:
"O I will now redeem the pledge,
The pledge that once I gave.
A kiss from off your lily-white lips
Is all of you I crave."[2]
Nevertheless, it seems highly probable that the "magic task" stanzas which occur in several versions are survivals of the lost troth-plight motif. The fulfilment of these tasks would be the condition upon which the troth would be returned. At least six versions contain this stanza, and they agree so closely as to preclude any possibility of casual interpolation from another ballad.[3] The following is a typical form of this stanza
"Go fetch me a nut from a dungeon keep,
And water from a stone,
And white milk from a maiden's breast
That babe bare never none."[4]
The first impossibility usually concerns the fetching of a nut from a dungeon, although Cecil Sharp's version has " Go fetch me water from the desert". In two versions the "nut" has been corrupted; in Groome's version to "note,"[5] and in the song from the Upper Thames to "naught," whereby the whole stanza has been turned into the negative, and has become perfectly meaningless. In Baring-Gould's version the word has been altered to " light".
In "Sweet William's Ghost," as has already been mentioned, this motif of the return of the troth-plight has assumed prime importance. The ghost does not come back to the living to protest against the troubling of its rest by the grieving of the girl, but solely because it cannot rest until the promise which binds it to the betrothed has been dissolved. Whereas in "The Unquiet Grave" it is the living person who demands to be released from his or her obligations to the dead, and who is to fulfil the task before this can be done, in "Sweet William's Ghost" it is the dead man who pleads for his faith and troth again, and who has to answer the questions put by the girl, before she will do as he wishes. These questions concern the different states of souls in the afterlife-What happens to the souls of unbaptised children? Where do the souls of women go who die in childbirth? and so on, and although the element of magic or impossibility, as in the English song, is lacking, there is surely no need to suppose with Child that these stanzas are later and unworthy accretions. When the ghost has answered the questions, the troth-plight is returned by means of various ceremonies. The most frequent of these is the laying of the hand on the breast of the dead man. In some versions this passage has been misunderstood and corrupted, but still the original tradition is easily recognisable.
Sometimes a wand of birch, or a silver key is laid on the dead man's breast, and in Herd's version which has been appended to "Clerk Saunders," the troth is, as it were, transferred to a wand, which is passed out of the window into the ghost's hands.[6]
In an American version[7] the roles of the dead and the living are reversed, but this is clearly a later corruption.
The ceremony of touching the breast or hand of the corpse at funerals, as a kind of charm against haunting, still persists in many parts of England and Scotland.[8] Even as far afield as China, according to the Countess Martinengo-Cesaresco," the spirit of an engaged girl would certainly haunt her lover-but there is a way to prevent it. He must go to the house where she died, step over the coffin containing her body, and carry home a pair of her shoes. Then he is safe."
Another method of formally breaking the troth-plight, which, after all, is still familiar today, is the ceremonial return of all the gifts which have passed between the lovers. When, as in so many of the folk-ballads, one of the parties was dead, this exchange could not take place without the appearance of the ghost to carry out its side of the bargain. So in a Bohemian folk-song the dead girl tells her lover to throw the kerchief and ring which he has given her into the depths of the sea. In a Norman ballad, however, they are to be given to the priest to have Masses said for the repose of her soul. The Catalan ballad " La muerte de la novia" (the death of the betrothed) tells a similar tale.
If these various precautions were neglected, disastrous would be the consequences. In the Irish folk-song which bears a great resemblance to " The Unquiet Grave" (Folk-Song Journal, Vol. VI, p.71) the dead girl warns the man against another marriage, which, she says " assuredly would be your destruction." Icelandic folklore has many tales of girls who have committed suicide in order that their spirits may plague the men who have broken faith with them. From Corsica comes the tale of a girl who comes back to seize the soul of her former lover on the night of his wedding to a more wealthy bride. In Austria it is the girl who marries again and is haunted by the man. It is not difficult to see the connection between such stories and the very popular ballad of "Fair Margaret and Sweet William" which, various factors suggest, has often been connected in the mind of folk-singers with "The Unquiet Grave."
If it wished, the ghost could resort to even more violent methods, and carry away the souls of the faithless living by force into the spirit-world. This theme, with its mixture of melodrama and moralising, commended itself to the writers of broadside
ballads, where it is of frequent occurrence.[9] Among genuine folk-ballads we have many versions of the Suffolk Miracle theme, while in the German ballad "Der tote Freier," in which the dead man comes back to claim the promise of marriage made by the girl, the lovers are united in Heaven. In spite of a later, Christian ending, the old pre-Christian belief has not entirely vanished. As the German folk-song expresses it
"Und wenn sich zwei versprochen....
Sie konnen nit selig werden,
Bis dass sie kommen zusamm"
("And when two are betrothed to one another, they can never find peace and happiness until they are united.")
Or as David Mallet so elegantly writes
"Such be the fate of vows unpaid,
And pledge of sacred love.
Though they may tempt the yielding maid,
They're registered above!"
Since the terrible consequences of neglecting to break off the troth-plight fell alike, on man or woman, living or dead, we cannot expect that all these different tales will agree as to the respective sex of the persons concerned, although there may be agreement among the members of the same group. In the Scottish and Scandinavian ballads of "The Unquiet Grave", where the story is told in much circumstantial detail it would be impossible to reverse the sex of the living and the dead without altering the whole story, and consequently there is unanimity among them on this point. In the English song, however, where there is no internal necessity for a fixed tradition of this sort, we have continual hesitation between the two possibilities. Thus among the versions which I have been able to trace, and which are not so fragmentary that they offer no evidence as to the sex of the speakers, I have found seven versions in which the ghost is that of the woman, and twelve in which it is the man who is dead. In spite of this hesitation, it seems certain that in the earliest version the ghost was that of the man. The line "In greenwood he was (or "lies") slain" is much more appropriate of a man than of a woman, and it is difficult to see a man taking the vow of weeping on his true-love's grave for a year and a day, whereas we have numerous other ballads[10] in which a lady makes a vow of prolonged mourning accompanied by various austerities, which seems to have been accepted without question as a suitable method of paying tribute to the dead. But most conclusive of all is the evidence of the other ballads of this group, where we find without exception that it is the woman who survives and is visited by the ghost of the man. The English versions where the opposite is the case may have possibly been influenced by such ballads as "Fair Margaret and Sweet William", which must have been known at a very early date in England, to judge by the often-quoted allusion to it in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Another interesting point in " The Unquiet Grave" about which there is considerable hesitation in the different versions is the mutual recognition or non-recognition of the lovers. In the majority of the versions the ghost recognises the girl who is
sitting on his grave, and comes directly to the point:
"What makes you weep down by my grave?
I can't take my repose."
But in three or four versions the ghost asks:-
"O who sits weeping on my grave
And will not let me sleep?"
whereupon the girl declares herself to be his former sweetheart. Here is the living who is not recognised by the dead. In the other ballads of this group, however, it is the dead who is not recognised by the living. So throughout "Sweet William's Ghost" the girl does not realise who her visitor is, and supposes him to be a member of her family (father or brother) or in one version (Child's F ) a robber. The same incident occurs in the German " Der tote Freier" and the Swedish " Sorgens Magt," but in the Danish, Else suspects at once the identity of her visitor. In many versions, even when the girl realises who the ghost is, she does not understand at once that he is not a living man. The inability of folk-singers to distinguish clearly between body and spirit in the nature of their ghosts has already been mentioned. Although we receive the impression that the ghost is an animated being, solid, tangible, endowed with speech and hearing, in exactly the same way as a living person, and often not to
be distinguished from such, the macabre tastes of a later age have not been able to resist the introduction of a more realistic note. Thus the breath of the ghost "smells earthy strong" or, as Buchan puts it "as the sulphur strong" (the fact of a ghost
having breath at all seems to surprise no one); so in "Der tote Freier" the girl remarks that her lover "smells of the grave." In Jamieson's version of " Sweet William's Ghost" (Child's F), Margaret asks where are his bonny arms that were wont to embrace
her. The ghost answers:
"By worms they're eaten, in mools they're rotten,
Behold, Margaret, and see."
Genuine primitive poetry does not usually tend to revel in the gruesome for its own sake. The original ghost would probably have been taken for granted as quite an every-day occurrence-these morbid embellishments go back to a time where ghosts
were not so much an accepted part of life as a pleasant device for making the flesh creep agreeably. Another sure sign of later accretion, at least in "Sweet William's Ghost," is the moralizing passage which follows the lines quoted above:
"And mind, for a' your mickle pride,
Sae will become of thee."
Here the ghost seems to have the "memento mori" function of the supernatural beings of the Dance of Death. So too, from "The Unquiet Grave" version collected in Surrey (Folk-Song Journal, Vol. I. p.I92) where the song concludes:
"So it's you, and I, and all must die,
When Christ calls us away."
It is only inevitable that a song which certainly goes back to pre-Christian traditions should have suffered modification during the centuries through which it has been handed down under the watchful eye of the Church. All elements of heathen magic
have disappeared from the story,[11] except for the "task" stanzas, and even they are no more intended to be taken as real "magic" than the graceful fantasy of "The Lover's Tasks" or "Scarborough Fair." Baring-Gould's stanzas about the brambleleaf,
which fell between the lovers and broke the power of the dead over the living, were introduced by the collector himself to provide a more effective conclusion to the song, and although the motif was taken from a genuine folk-tale,[12] it can hardly be regarded as an example of heathen survival in this song. While the crowing of the cock as a signal for the ghost's return, though undoubtedly pre-Christian in origin, has become too conventional to be considered as a real trace of ancient superstition. The only version of "The Unquiet Grave" in which the cock is mentioned is that from Herefordshire:
"The cock does crow and we must part,
I must return to my grave"
but it is of frequent occurrence in the other ballads of this group. Thus in "Aage og Else" we have the very old tradition of the successive crowing of the white, the red, and the black cocks. In " Sweet William's Ghost" the same motif survives:
"Up and crew the red, red cock,
And up then crew the grey"
In the German " Der Vorwirt" this belief has undergone a curious perversion. We are told that " the first dove of Heaven crows " and all the graves open, but when the " cock of Hell" crows, they must close again.
The last quotation is a good example of the manner in which originally heathen themes have been altered to fit the demands of Christianity. Explicit Christian allusions do not often occur in " The Unquiet Grave," apart from such lines as:
"My time be long, my time be short,
Tomorrow or today.
Sweet Christ in heaven will have my soul
And take my life away."
In the other ballads of this group they are more frequent. In " Aage og Else" the girl insists that her ghostly visitor must pronounce the name of Jesus, to prove that he is no evil spirit, before she will admit him. In the German " Der tote Freier" the
two lovers are reunited in Heaven:-
"Gott selber war der Priester
Der sie getrauet hat."
("God Himself was the priest who married them.")
In "Der Vorwirt" the dead man regrets that in the grave he can no longer hear the bells ringing, or the chanting of the priests. In " Sweet William's Ghost," as we have seen, the ghost is questioned about the condition of souls in Heaven or Hell; and here too we have a curious passage in some versions which seem to be a survival of something very old thinly veiled by Christian ideas. Since it only occurs in the Scottish ballad, it can hardly belong to the earliest stratum of tradition, but it is scarcely likely to be a modern addition. In all the versions the girl asks if there is room for her also in the grave, and the usual answer is "no," the reason given in these stanzas being that, while the dead man's father and mother stand at his head and feet in the grave, three hell-hounds are watching at his side and mounting guard over his soul. In Motherwell's version it is three former paramours and their children who stand at his head and side, while the hell-hounds are at his feet, and this, taken in conjunction with the stanza from the Newfoundland version[13] where the hounds are set, each to punish him for some past sin, seems to indicate that Christian moral conceptions have been superimposed on beliefs from a more remote past.
This eagerness of the living to share the grave with the dead is a feature of almost all the ballads of the group under consideration, except "The Unquiet Grave." The request is always refused and in the motives given for the refusal, we can again trace the partial influence of Christianity. Usually the ghost dissuades the girl from joining him in the grave by describing the wretched and unhappy existence of the dead- "down in the grave you see neither sun or moon," "down there you cannot hear the song of birds or the sound of the wind," "down in the dark grave it is like blackest Hell." This belief in the miserable state of the soul after death is very ancient, and the malignant hostility of ghosts in primitive tales was often supposed to spring from their resentful envy of those who still enjoyed life on earth. But elsewhere the ghost exhorts the girl to resign herself to the will of Providence, and to wait until she, too, is called away by God, or, in one version of " Der Vorwirt," to devote herself to the upbringing of her children.[14]
It has already been remarked that the English "Unquiet Grave" differs from the Scottish and foreign versions of this tale, in that it has much less "story" about it. The difference between the ballad proper, as represented by "Sweet William's Ghost" and the more lyric and song-like character of the English version is well shown by their respective opening stanzas. In the case of the Scottish ballad, we are plunged immediately into the action
"There came a ghost to Margaret's door,
With many a grievous groan".
whereas all the versions of " The Unquiet Grave" agree in an opening stanza which at once strikes the note of personal feeling, and evokes the correct "atmosphere" for the song:-
"Cold blows the wind to my true love
And gentle drops the rain.
I never had but one sweetheart
And in greenwood she lies slain."
What could happen to these moving and impressive lines when translated into "elegant" language is shown by the opening verse from Buchan's MSS.[15]
"Proud Boreas makes a hideous noise,
Loud roars the fatal flood
I loved never a love but one
In churchyard she lies dead."
The conclusions of the song are many and various, from the religious or the resigned, to the cynically light-hearted:-
" But since I have lost my own true love
I must get another in time."
Nevertheless, the most appropriate ending, and possibly (if speculation as to the genesis of a folk-song is permitted) that closest to the original type, sounds the note of eternal separation and of hopeless regret for former happiness, unrelieved by comforting hopes of a reunion after death:
"When shall we meet again, sweetheart?
When shall we meet again?
When the oaken leaves that fall frpm the trees
Are green and spring up again."
or, as the French folk-song puts it:
"La feuill' tombe' de l'arbre plus ne reverdira."
In the Newfoundland song "The Lover's Ghost" the graceful hyperbole of "The True Lover's Farewell" has replaced the restraint of the English version
"O when will I see you, my love" she cries,
"And when will I see you again?"
"When the little fishes fly, and the seas they do run dry,
And the hard rocks they melt with the sun."
Or, in an alternative conclusion which has much in common with the lyric type of "The Seeds of Love", the withering of flowers is used as a symbol of love brought to a tragic end by some catastrophe-in the one, faithlessness, in the other, death.
"O down in yonder grove, sweetheart,
Where you and I would walk,
The finest flower that ever I saw
Is withered to a stalk.
The stalk is withered and dry, sweetheart,
And the flowers will never return"
Here, surely, is the note on which this song should end: the grief of the living is not eased by the consolation of faith, nor by bitter outcries against the decrees of fate. There is only the poignancy of regret for happiness irrevocably lost.
THE TUNES
To find support for the theory of a unity of tradition behind this group of ballads, from the evidence supplied from the tunes is much more difficult than in the case of the words. The text of a song can pass from one country to another, and still retain a connection with the original which is quite unmistakable ; whereas a tune, encountering perhaps a new metre, or a different linguistic type, will be so profoundly modified, if it is not altogether discarded, that it becomes difficult to say with certainty how far apparent connections among a group of tunes are due to a genuine relationship, and how far they are only the result of chance. Thus, for instance, the American tunes to English folk-songs often show a remarkable likeness to tunes noted for the same song in England, when the metrical type remains the same, where there is no question of translation from one language into another, and, most important of all, where there has been no conflict between the national traditions of folk-music underlying the new song and those of the country into which the song has been adopted. When there is such a conflict, folk-singers will adapt the tune, consciously or unconsciously, to a type which is familiar to them, or will replace it entirely by some well-known tune which best seems to fit the text.
A second obstacle to the study of tunes from different countries is, that students of folk-ballads have only comparatively recently begun to consider the tunes of their songs as of equal importance with the words. In the standard collections of Continental folk-songs published during the last century little attention is paid to the tunes, if indeed they are included at all. I have not been able to trace any record of the tunes to the Scandinavian ballads, but a systematic search through such recent
collections as Professor Otto Andersson's Swedish-Finnish folk-ballads would probably show examples of a connection between North British and Scandinavian tunes.[16] Similarities between Scandinavian versions and the " Unquiet Grave'} tunes of southern England are now unlikely to appear.
In the case of the German ballads, a certain likeness does seem to exist, for example, between the opening strain of a Silesian tune " Der tote Freier," as published in the Dcutscher Liederhort edited by Erk-Boehme, and the beginning of the "Unquiet
Grave" tune from the Folk-Song Journal, Vol. 2, p.6,b. But this may be mere coincidence.
I have only seen two Scottish tunes to "Sweet William's Ghost" which are genuine.[17] The first is published in Rimbault's Musical Illustrations to Percy's Reliques, and, in a more florid arrangement, in Johnson's Musical Museum.[18] It seems to have nothing in common with the "Unquiet Grave" tunes. The second, published in Child's Musical Appendix, from the MS. of Mrs. Harris, opens in somewhat the same way as one of Cecil Sharp's tunes (F-S. J. Vol. 2, p. 7.c.) but apart from this it seems to have little in common with the English tunes. It is interesting to note that another tune from the Musical Appendix-that to " Proud Lady Margaret," another ballad of the return of the dead-is almost identical in the last phrase with one of Baring-Gould's
tunes to " The Unquiet Grave" (given in Songs of the West to " Childe the Hunter"). The tunes to " The Unquiet Grave" show considerable divergences among themselves.
This is not surprising, in view of the great popularity of the song, and the fact that it is almost invariably in a four-line stanza of a very common type, which would tend to produce modification of the tune more easily than a complex stanza form, requiring an unusual and less adaptable tune. Thus occasionally there has been contamination with other airs: the tune published in English County Songs (where two stanzas have been run together, to produce an eight-line unit) is a variant of the very familiar eight-line type, " Come all you worthy Christian men," while another tune published in the Folk-Song Journal, (Vol. I, p.I92, b) appears to have been influenced by "The girl I left behind me."
But apart from this there are wide differences in the versions, even from a single county.[19] Even as regards time there is no agreement-three-four and common time tunes occur side by side with six-eight variants, while frequently there is change of time within a single tune. The most marked general characteristic of these tunes is a drop in the melody at the end of the first strain (often in the form of two descending intervals of a third), followed by an octave leap (sometimes broken by passing notes) at the beginning of the second. Four or five versions show an identical falling cadence at the end of the tune, and this appears in a modified form in four others. Further, in several versions the first few notes of the second strain are repeated at the beginning of the third, and more than one version has the repetition of the whole of the last line or couplet, at the end of the verse.
All these characteristics occur in the American tunes to this song, and there are two tunes to American versions of " The Two Brothers," a ballad already quoted as having points of contact with "The Unquiet Grave," which bear a distinct resemblance
to this type as well. The Newfoundland tune to "Sweet William's Ghost" does not seem to have anything in common with the Scottish tunes, but it resembles the "The Unquiet Grave" type in the identical nature of the beginning of the second and
and third strains.
SOURCES OF VERSIONS OF "THE UNQUIET GRAVE"
Folk-Lore Record, Vol. I, p.6o (Child's A)
Notes and Queries, Series 5, VII. p.436 (Child's B)
Notes and Queries, Series 5, VII. p.387 (Child's C)
Buchan's MSS. I,268 (Child's D)
F. Hindes Groome, In Gipsy Tents (Child's E)
Charlotte Burne, Shropshire Folk-Lore, p.542. text (Child's F)
p.65I. tune
(This version also appears in Lucy Broadwood's English County Songs)
Hunt, Popular Romances of the West of England (Child's G)
Baring-Gould, Songs of the West, No. 6 (Child's H) (text and tune).
Songs of the West, No. 33 (tune and note).
Buchan's Ancient Ballads of the North ("Charles Graeme")
Ella M. Leather, Folk-Lore of Herefordshire (text and tune)
W. P. Merrick, Folk Songs from Sussex (text and tune)
Alfred Williams, Folk Songs of the Upper Thames (text only)
Cecil Sharp, Folk-Songs from Somerset, Ist series (text and tune)
Cecil Sharp, Folk-Songs for Schools (text and tune)
Folk-Song Journal
Vol. I. p.II9 (i text, I tune)
Vol. I. p.I92 (i text, 3 tunes)
Vol. 2. p.6ff (6 fragmentary texts, 6 tunes)
Vol. 5. p.I37 (i text, I tune)
Vol. 7. p.26 (tune only)
Elisabeth B. Greenleaf Ballads and Sea Songs from Grace Y. Mansfield J Newfoundland (1 text, 2 tunes)
(In conclusion, I must acknowledge a debt o f gratitude to Frank Howes, Esq. for kind permission to use his library during his absence; and to the Oxford University Press who allowed me to copy valuable information from their publications.- R.H.)
NOTES
NOTE 1. Miss Gilchrist writes on this point (i.e. the ghost's motive for its return to the world):
"A somewhat different treatment of the Unquiet Grave theme is found in the Danish and Swedish-Finnish ballad of the "Re-arisen Mother" (called in Denmark " Svend Dyring," in Sweden " The Stepmother") where it is combined with the motif of mother-love stronger than the grave. This ballad of many variants, which is in couplets with a double refrain, tells of a second wife who rl-treats and neglects the children of the first one, who in her grave hears her little ones crying pitifully in the night. Sometimes they are described as coming to weep upon it."
Miss Gilchrist particularizes a Danish version in the Kaempe Visir.
Miss Harvey also encountered this theme in German, Slavonic and other sources, but thinks the differentiation of mother-love points to a distinct origin.
A further point of some literary interest is added by Miss Gilchrist, who points out that the couplet which is sung by Nelly in Wuthering Heights (Chap. IX), whose source has evaded anyone looking for it amongst Scottish ballads, "was almost certainly
-taken from Jamieson's rendering of the Danish under the title of "The Ghaist's Warning," sent to Scott and by him dragged into his voluminous notes on The Lady of the Lake in an early edition (I827) of his poems. (This Paris edition was published by Galignani about the time when Emily Bronte was living in France.)" - Ed.
NOTE 2. The use of a wand in absolving from a vow may have being borrowed from the church. I have seen a medieval illustration of the use of a wand in absolution of a penitent. In Through Italy with Car and Camera the author, Dan Fellows Platt
saw in the church of St. Benedict, built above his cave at Subiaco, old confessional boxes, each provided with a wand with which the priest touched the penitent in granting absolution, "an implement to which our attention was here called for the first time." In "The Brown Girl" (Child, 295) or "Sailor from Dover," a young man "dangerous sick" and dying sends for his once scorned and now proud and resentful sweetheart to release him from his troth before he dies. First she gives him her rings, then She had a white wand in her hand, She strake him on the breast:
My faith and troth I give back to thee,
So may thy soul have rest.
But instead of weeping on his grave she declares that she "will dance and sing upon it for a twelvemonth and a day." Whether this is likely to disturb him less than weeping is left to the imagination.- A.G.G.
NOTE 3. There is ground for belief that the ceremonial touching of a corpse by those visiting it originated in the superstition of wilder days than ours that if the murderer laid a hand upon it the wound would bleed afresh at his touch, so that everyone successfully passing this test of innocence was cleared, and not liable to any haunting by the victim. In my own experience this touching was not confined to visits to dead persons (Mothers would say to their children "Touch it, so that you won't dream of it") - the fingers sometimes being laid gently on the forehead-but was also transferred to recumbent effigies. At one time I can remember the effigy of Lord Frederick Cavendish (assassinated in Phoenix Park, Dublin, during the Irish troubles) with the
forehead and nose blackened by the touch of ignorant sight-seers-specially awed by his tragic death. (It is better guarded since that period). - A.G.G.
THE TUNES
NOTE 4. In the early couplet pattern of English and (more numerous) Scottish ballads with interlined and caudal refrains, recognisable likenesses do exist between these and Danish and Scandinavian tunes. To cite four examples only, the English " Oak and the Ash," the Scottish " Bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond" and "Hynd Horn" (Motherwell's tune) are all reminiscent of a Danish ballad-tune noted in the Faroe Isles to a " Mermaid" ballad; while Frank Kidson's Yorkshire tune for " The Three
Ravens " has a likeness,to a Swedish folk-tune. Some of Christie's ballads from the north-east of Scotland possess double refrains which are suggestive of Scandinavian origin. - A.G.G.
NOTE 5. The first printed text of " Sweet William's Ghost" is found in Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany, (1746) but a tune first appears with the words in William Napier's Selection of the most favourite Scots Songs, I790. Ramsay described his collection as of the most choice songs, Scots and English, and John Glen (Early Scottish Melodies, 1900) suspects this ballad to be of English origin, noting the lines
Or is't my true love Willy
From Scotland now come home?"
and suggesting that the tune also may be English. It certainly has some resemblance to the old "Chevy Chase" tune. There seems no connection between the Scottish tune and the Somerset and Lancashire " Cold blows the wind." One would indeed not expect to find the same tune attached to such very different treatments of the theme- A. G. G.
Footnotes:
1. See note I on p. 64.
2. Is it permissible to see in the "kiss" a token of the return of the troth? Cf. the passage from "The Clerk's Twa Sons of Owsenford" where the lovers cancel their pledge to each other by an exchange of twenty kisses. But the romantic "prettiness" of this passage does not sound genuine.
3. Versions noted by Ella M. Leather in Herefordshire, Charlotte Burne in Shropshire, Alfred Williams from the Upper Thames, one of Cecil Sharp's, and one of Baring-Gould's versions, and that from In Gipsy Tents, by F. Hindes Groome.
4. For the last two "impossibilities" cf. " Glasgerion," Jamieson's Popular Ballads, Child's, A and B.
5. For a similar confusion, see the first stanza of " Hind Etin", Child's versions A and B.
6. See note 2, p. 65.
7. Ballads and Sea Songs fron Newfoundland, Elisabeth B. Greenleaf, (No.g.)
8. See note 3, p. 65.
9. So from the Douce collection, "The True Lover's Ghost", "Young Bateman's Ghost," "A Warning for Married Women," "The Chatham Tragedy" etc.
10 cf. " Bonny Bee Ho'm," " Clerk Saunders" in Child's D and E, Herd's fragment " The Lowlands of Holland," etc.
11. In many Slav ballads on similar themes, the dead man is roused from the grave by means of spells and incantations. May we see in the passage from Buchan's " Charles Graeme," where the girl harps on her dead lover's grave, a distant survival of this tradition? Cf. the passage from " The Twa Brothers" already quoted.
12. In many parts of England the bramble is still considered as a plant with powerful magic properties.
13. Folk-Songs from Newfoundland, collected and edited by Maud Karpeles. (Oxford University Press)
14 In the Eddaic Lay of Helgi the motives of the ghost for rejecting Sigrun's offer to share the grave with him, are rather peculiar: her amateur services are apparently unnecessary, since the function of waiting on the dead warrior has already been assigned to what appear to be distinguished and trained professionals.
15 One of the few traces of this song outside England. The other Scottish version- "Charles Graeme" -runs parallel with the English type for a few stanzas only. The rest of the song is such arrant nonsense that even Buchan declares the behaviour of the girl, as well as the ghost, to be somewhat unaccountable. I have only been able to trace one version in America.
"Sweet William's Ghost" is more popular in America, but the tradition never seems to have made its way into England. At least I have not found a single trace of its survival south of the Border.
16 See note 4, p 65.
17 Tunes are also published in Chambers's Twelve Romantic Ballads and Christie's Traditionlal
Ballad Airs, but these I have not been able to study.
18 See note 5, p. 66.
19. One exception to this is the Lancashire tune (F-S.J., Vol. 5, p. I37) which is obviously connected with the well-known Somerset tune.