Thematic Classification and "Lady Isabel"
by Eleanor R. Long
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 85, No. 335 (Jan. - Mar., 1972), pp. 32-41
Thematic Classification and "Lady Isabel"
ELEANOR R. LONG
AN INDEX FOR BALLAD TEXTS is long overdue: the concern expressed in these pages by George List in 1968 [1] has been the subject of three meetings of leading international ballad scholars[2] and of intensive study in every important folklore research center since 1966. List's proposal, that ballads be indexed by their "plot gists" (what D. K. Wilgus had earlier called their "narrative themes")[3] has achieved fairly wide, if not unqualified, acceptance. Nevertheless, the question of precisely what constitutes the "plot gist" of any given ballad remains a thorny one.
List sought to identify the plot gist of Child 4 "Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight" by examining unpublished texts recovered from the Indiana Archives of Traditional Music. By reasoning that what is retained in the singer's memory is most likely to be the "critical dramatic-narrative element," he found that for "Lady Isabel" this resides in the ruse by which the intended victim turns the tables on her would-be murderer, and proposed that "Lady Isabel' should be indexed accordingly, with cross references supplied for secondary crises and floating motives. There is only one serious objection to be made to List's reasoning, but that objection is serious enough to prompt a counterproposal. If a type-index is ever to be realized and to be useful to scholars seeking to establish textual traditions in balladry, it will have to be recognized that most ballads are composed of more than one narrative theme and that the "critical dramatic-narrative element" (which in his analysis is not very far from the "emotional core" established for Child 173 "Mary Hamilton" by Tristram P. Coffin[4]) is more likely to be a product of regional or linguistic oicotyping than anything inherent in the ballad proper.
Perhapst he greatest weakness of the Finnish geographical-historical method, as Nygard pointed out in his study of the "Lady Isabel" tradition,[5] is its reliance upon statistical evidence alone; that weakness is not ameliorated by statistical analysis of a small group of texts instead of hundreds, or by arresting the history of a ballad in 1968 instead of in 1835 (roughly where the Child canon stops).
A second weakness, nonetheless damaging to sound conclusions for its unconscious quality, is parochialism: it is remarkable how frequently folklore scholars find the version represented in the corpus of their own culture area to be the oldest or the best or the most significant aspect of the tradition in question.[6] Mindful of these temptations, I would like to reopent he "Lady Isabel" question in the broad context of international narrative themes. While no attempt will be made to duplicate the close textual analyses of Nygard, List, and Vargyas (whose contributiont o the question is an important one),[7] I think that it can be established that the relationship between textual tradition on the one hand and narrative theme on the other deserves a somewhat more cosmopolitan approach than has yet been ventured.
As I have noted, List found the plot gist of "Lady Isabel" to be the reversal syndrome known as the "Yorkshire Bite" or "Trickster Tricked" theme. On this basis, he summarily rejected an East German version in which the murderer is not foiled, although the victim's brother, summoned by virtue of a previous arrangement, arrives in time to avenge her death. Nygard also rejected as unproven a connection between "Lady Isabel" and the Bluebeard tradition in the folktale.[8]
Wilgus, however, has asserted a possible relationshipw ith the "Murdered Girl" syndrome of vulgar balladry (exemplified in "The Wexford Girl," "The Jealous Lover,"" The Gosport Tragedy," and a host of secondary b allads). Almost every ballad of this type can be traced to a historical event;[9] Anne Billings Cohen has determined that no fewer than six separate texts were composed about the murder of Pearl Bryan in 1896.[10] As Cohen's study showed, however, there is an irresistible tendency among folk singers to stylize the historical event in the direction of the stock traditional plot gist- the murderedg irl is pregnant, she is lured away from her home, she pleads on bended knees for her life, and her parents' sufferings are explicitly noted. A review of Child's and Nygard's materials shows the following "types" for the ballad in question:
1. A Dutch-Flemish version in which
a. Over the objections of her family, the villain lures the heroine from her home by singing a magic song.
b. They stop in the forest, where she sees a number of women's bodies hanging from gallows trees. He reveals his purpose of adding her to their number and offers her a choice of deaths (hanging, stabbing, drowning).
c. She chooses stabbing and asks him to remove his clothing so that it will not be ruined by her blood.
d. When he complies, she cuts off his head with his own sword.
e. She returns home, carrying his head with her.
2. A Scandinavian version in which
a. Over the objections of her family, the villain lures the heroine from her home by promising an extraordinarily advantageous marriage.
b. They stop in the forest, where a grave is prepared for her. He reveals his purpose of stabbing her and throwing her into it.
c. She offers to delouse his head first.
d. He goes to sleep with his head in her lap; she ties him up, and when he awakens stabs him with his own sword.
e. She returns home, encountering members of his household who question her about what has happened.
3. A German version in which
a. The villain lures the heroine from her home by promising marriage.
b. She complains of hunger and thirst; they stop in the forest, where she sees a number of women's bodies hanging from trees. He reveals his purpose of adding her to their number, and offers a choice of deaths (hanging, stabbing, drowning).
c. She chooses stabbing and asks him to remove his clothing so that it
will not be ruined by her blood.
d. When he complies, she stabs him with his own sword.
e. She returns home, encountering members of his household who question her about what has happened.
4. A second German version in which
a. The villain lures the heroine from her home by singing a magic song.
b. They encounter a talking bird, and she questions the villain about what the bird is saying; they stop in the forest, where she sees a number of women's bodies hanging from trees. He reveals his purpose of adding her to their number.
c. She asks permission to utter three calls (to members of the Holy Family or her own).
d. Her brother responds to the third call and hangs the villain with his own noose.
e. Her brother takes her home.
5. A third German version in which
a. The villain lures the heroine from her home by inviting her to go for a walk.
b. They stop in the forest, where she sees a number of women's bodies hanging from trees. He reveals his purpose of adding her to their number.
c. She asks permission to utter three calls (to members of the Holy Family or her own).
d. Her brother responds to the third call, finds her dead, and promises vengeance.
e. Her brother kills the villain on the spot or he is sentenced to execution later.
6. A French version in which
a. The villain lures the heroine from her home by inviting her to go for a walk before dinner.
b. She complains of hunger and thirst; they stop beside the sea. He reveals his purpose of killing her.
c. He tells her to remove her clothing so that it will not be ruined by the water.
d. She asks him to help her remove her shoes and stockings; when he complies, she pushes him into the water.
e. He asks for help and clutches at a branch, but she refuses and cuts off the branch.
7. A second French version in which
a. The villain lures the heroine from her home by his charm and wealth.
b. She complains of hunger and thirst; they stop beside a river or a pond. He reveals his purpose of killing her.
c. He tells her to remove her clothing.
d. Pleading modesty, she asks him to turn his head; when he complies, she pushes him into the water.
e. He asks for help and clutches at a branch, but she refuses and cuts off the branch.
8. An Anglo-American version in which
a. The villain lures the heroine from her home by promising an advantageous marriage. She robs her parents in preparation for the journey.
b. They stop beside the sea. He reveals his purpose of killing her.
c. He tells her to remove her clothing so that it will not be ruined by the water.
d. Pleading modesty, she asks him to turn his head; when he complies, she pushes him into the water.
e. She returns home, encountering a talking bird who questions her about what has happened.
9. A Polish version in which
a. The villain lures the heroine from her home. She robs her parents in preparation for the journey, although she must enter a forbidden room to do so.
b. They stop, and he reveals his purpose of killing her.
c. He tells her to remove her clothing and return to her mother.
d. She refuses, and he pushes her into the water.
e. Her petticoat catches on a tree stump, and she asks for help; he refuses and cuts off her petticoat."
10. Lajos Vargyas furnishes a tenth type from Hungary, "Anna Molnar" in which
a. The villain lures the heroine away from her husband.
b. They stop to rest under a tree. He asks her to delouse his head and forbids her to look up into the tree. When he goes to sleep, she looks up and sees a number of women's bodies hanging from the tree. She begins to weep, and he awakens.
c. He tells her to climb up into the tree.
d. She protests that he should go first; when he complies, she cuts off his head with his own sword.
e. She removes his clothes and puts them on in order to return home in disguise to test her husband's forgiveness.
Two of the Grimm Household Tales are important in relation to the Hungarian version.
11. "Our Lady's Child" (Grimm 3, AaT 710o)
a. In return for assistance, a man promises to a supernatural being "what is hidden in his house"-his unborn child, who is claimed by the fairy in due time (Rash Promise theme).
b. The child is taken to a castle, where she is forbidden to enter one of its rooms.
c. She looks into the room and sees four women reading; when she is questioned about it, she denies having done so. She is struck dumb and sent away from the castle.
d. She marries and bears children, but each one disappears and she is accused of having eaten them.
e. When she is about to be executed as a child-murderer, the supernatural being reappears; she confesses to having looked into the room, and her children are restored to her.[12]
12. "Bluebeard" (Grimm 62, AaT 312)
a. Over the objections of the heroine, the villain persuades her family to send her away with him by promising an advantageous marriage. She arranges with her brothers to come immediately if she ever calls to them for help.
b. She is taken to a castle, and forbidden to enter one of its rooms.
c. She looks into the room, and sees a number of women's bodies hanging there; when she is questioned about it, her husband reveals his purpose of adding her to their number.
d. She asks permission to pray first and calls to her brothers.
e. Her brothers respond to her call, stab the villain, and hang him with his own noose.
f. Her brothers take her home.[13]
The first of these stories, of course, is a version of the "Calumniated Wife" tradition- one that enjoys particularly wide circulation in Irish oral tradition and that probably underlies the Grendel episode in Beowulf.[14] The second is "Bluebeard," which List and Nygard considered irrelevant to the "Lady Isabel" situation. However, allowing for the intrusive nature of the "castle with one forbidden room" borrowed from the "Calumniated Wife" tale, this story corresponds precisely to the Hungarian ballad; the unwillingness of the victim (transferred in Dutch-Flemish and Scandinavian versions to her parents) motivates and accounts for the "call-for-help" ruse in German versions in which her brother performs the "Yorkshire Bite" function (or arrives too late to do so). Also to be noted in the Hungarian version is the "Gypsy Laddie" incipit (the eloper is a married woman) as opposed to the "Ribold and Goldburgh" incipit of Scandinavian and Anglo-American balladry; the delousing motif (traced by Vargyas to medieval St. Ladislas legends),[15] converted in Scandinavian versions to an offer by the heroine to delouse; and the "Female Warrior" denouement, which could account for the clothes-removing motif common to all versions in which neither delousing nor calls for help occur, even though the clothes-removing request does not occur in the Hungarian account.
Some of the versions of "Lady Isabel," then, properly belong to the "Bluebeard" narrative theme as outlined here: the heroine is lured by the promise of a profitable liaison, she discovers that others have been similarly lured to their deaths, she outwits her would-be murderer by a ruse involving preparation for her death (prayer, removal of the murderer's clothing, assistance with the removal of her own, or modesty), and brings about his death by the same means he had used for his previous victims. Neither the precise nature of the ruse nor the agent (the heroine or her brother) affects the ruse's functioning in the narrative; it is, therefore, the more suggestive that each trait considered here can be traced to the German- Hungarian archetype.
Some "Lady Isabel" versions, however, just as decisively do not belong to this narrative theme. The integrity of the "Yorkshire Bite" as the plot gist of the ballad is maintained regardless of whether the heroine is married or unmarried, whether she accompanies the villain willingly or unwillingly, what kind of ruse she perpetrates, or even what agency she uses to foil the slayer (except that it is invariably with his own weapon); one does have qualms, however, about admitting into the "Lady Isabel" canon on these terms the German and Polish versions in which no ruse occurs, and the heroine, not the villain, meets death. And what is to be made of the phenomenon reported by Nygard that, in his presumably secondary French version-characterized by "taking a walk," drowning in "the sea," and a ruse consisting of asking for help with her disrobing-even the "multiple murder" motif is missing?
Modern American vulgar tradition supplies the appropriate narrative theme for both these departures and for other traits in the "Lady Isabel" complex as well. Consider the following narrative structures:
13. Laws Fi ("The Jealous Lover,"." Fair Florella," "Pearl Bryan," "Nell Cropsey")
a. The villain lures the heroine from her home by promising to discuss plans for marriage.
b. She complains of fatigue; they stop in the forest.
c. She pleads on her knees for her life and that of her unborn child, but he stabs her.
Nygard thought that the heroine's plea of pregnancy in one French variant was "a contamination, a borrowing of the idea that pregnancy postpones a woman's execution, a theme not relevant here."[16] Phillips Barry thought that this ballad ("The Jealous Lover") was derived from the English broadside "The Murder of Betsy Smith"." Undoubtedly both the historical fact that the most common cause of sweetheart murder (to judge from inquest and trial reports) is the girl's pregnancy, and the traditional fact that pregnancy (as attested by this ballad and by Cohen's examination of newspaper accounts of the Pearl Bryan murder) "belongs" to the "Murdered Girl" syndrome are operative in the recurrence of the motif. In this respect "The Murder of Betsy Smith" and the anomalous French variant are more clearly "traditional" than the "Murdered Girl" versions in which pregnancy is not mentioned.
14. Laws F2 ("Pearl Bryan")
a. The villain lures the girl from her home by promising marriage.
b. She travels by taxi to meet him in a wood.
c. He decapitates her.
d. He is tried for her murder; her sister pleads on bended knee for the restoration of her head.
In this supposedly unique and relatively factual ballad, the victim shares her decapitated head with "Heer Halewijn," and it figures in the narrative at the same point, with the sister pleading for its return as a displacement from the victim's plea for her life. Cohen notes that not one single variant in the "Pearl Bryan" corpus (105 texts in all) omits a plea-and-refusal sequence, although the identity of the pleader and the nature of the plea vary, as this example shows. The courtroom scene, of course, functions as the brother's intervention does in the German versions; Cohen has identified it as an independent narrative theme ("Criminal Brought to Justice") that not infrequently amalgamates with ballads about criminal acts.
15. Laws F4 ("Poor Omie Wise")
a. The villain lures the heroine from her home by promising an advantageous marriage.
b. She meets him by a river.
c. She pleads on her knees for her life, but he pushes her into the river.
d. He goes to jail.
16. Laws F5 ("On the Banks of the Ohio")
a. The villain lures the heroine from her home by inviting her to go for a walk.
b. He leads her to the river.
c. He pushes her into the river.
17. P35 ("The Wexford Girl")
a. The villain lures the heroine from her home by promising to discuss plans for marriage.
b. He leads her to "a silent place."
c. She pleads for the life of her unborn child, but he beats her with a stake and throws her into the river.
d. He returns home, encountering a member of his own household who questions him about what has happened.
18. Laws P36 ("The Cruel Ship's Carpenter," "Pretty Polly," "The Gosport Tragedy")
a. The villain lures the heroine from her home by promising to discuss plans for marriage.
b. They stop in the forest, where a grave is prepared for her.
c. He stabs her and buries her in the grave.
d. He goes to sea; her ghost appears to his shipmates, who question him about what has happened. He dies.
Both German and Polish variants lacking a ruse and French variants lacking a multiple-murder motif are clearly part of this pattern; so are Scandinavian variants in which a grave is dug for the victim. The parrot of the Anglo-American version may be borrowed from another Anglo-American ballad (Child 68 "Young Hunting"), but it corresponds to the speaking birds of one German version and to the curious questioners of other Scandinavian and German versions and of the last two broadside ballads cited (Laws P35 and P36). As Vargyas observed, the choice of stabbing, drowning, or hanging in Dutch-Flemish and German variants very nicely recapitulates with the "Bluebeard" syndrome the alternatives provided by the two "Murdered Girl" prototypes; that is, victims are hanged in "Bluebeard," stabbed in one version of "The Murdered Girl," and drowned in the other. Even the decapitated head borne proudly home by the heroine of the Dutch-Flemish version has as much in common with the aftermath of the murder of Pearl Bryan (Laws F2, above) as with the Old Testament story of Judith and Holofernes-although the latter association, proposed by Sophus Bugge and dismissed by Child and Nygard, may after all be the genuine product of the same romantic and antiquarian spirit responsible for the "rune-song" of the Dutch- Flemish incipit, since this version of the ballad is almost certainly a secondary and artificial one.
Some "Lady Isabel" versions, then, belong on impeccable textual grounds to the "Murdered Girl" narrative theme, which has exerted considerable influence over the entire tradition. Sex and role reversal is palpable everywhere, thus lessening the importance o f the ruse: that is, the questions of who is initially persuaded by the villain, the victim or her parents; who requests the delousing procedure, the villain or the heroine; who is asked to disrobe, the villain or the heroine; who pleads for mercy and is refused, the villain or the heroine; who does the killing, the villain, the heroine, or her brother-all of these vary sufficiently to cast doubt on the real stability of the ruse itself.
Is it possible to determine which of these two is the real "Lady Isabel"? As I have indicated, List's procedure was overly parochial for classifying a ballad with such international and historical ramifications; in limiting himself to textual affiliations, in assuming the antiquity of supernatural traits,' and in failing to take account of Eastern European and prose narrative variants, Nygard also lay himself open to remonstrance. Surely what makes "Lady Isabel" " Lady Isabel" is not the consistency w ith which one or another narrative themes dominates its history, but its unique and remarkably stable unification of two narrative themes- the foiling of a multiple murderer and the murder of a pregnant sweetheart- by means of a third: the one that List identifiedc orrectlye nough, but that is borrowed from the fabliau tradition of "The Old Woman of Slapsadam" (Laws Q2), in which drowning is the specific agent as in "The Banks of the Ohio" (Laws F5), "The Wexford Girl" (LawsP 35), and French and Anglo-American versions of "Lady Isabel," but in which the victim (male in this case) foils a disloyal wife by a ruse, drowns her, and refuses to respond to her appeal for help.
"The Old Woman of Slapsadam" and its epigone "Johnnie Sands" (Laws Q 3) can be traced to AT 1380, which first appeared in ballad form in 1541 in Germany:
19. "Die Keskiichlein"
a. A woman seeks help in making her husband blind; by means of a ruse, he prescribes for himself a certain food.
b. When she complies, he pretends to be stricken with blindness and shoots the priest she is entertaining with his own bow and arrow (compare all "Bluebeard" variants); to evade execution, he asks her to help him drown himself (compare no. 6, above).
c. She leads him to the river (compare nos. 7, 9, 16, 17, above).
d. He turns aside, and pushes her into the water (compare French and Anglo-American" LadyI sabel"v ariants).[19] The Anglo-American versions omit the initial ruse and the murder of the interloper, but add a refused request for assistance (compare French and Anglo- American "Lady Isabel" versions and refused pleas for mercy in "Murdered Girl" variants) :
20. Laws Q2 ("The Old Woman of Slapsadam")
a. A woman wants to make her husband blind and feeds him a certain food.
b. He pretends blindness and asks her to help him drown himself.
c. She complies and leads him to the river.
d. He turns aside, and she falls into the river.
e. She asks for help and he refuses, pleading his blindness.
21. Laws Q3 ("Johnnie Sands")
a. A man is tired of his wife.
b. He lures her to the river by telling her that he wants to drown himself.
c. He asks her to tie his hands behind his back.
d. When she complies, he turns aside, and she falls into the water.
e. She asks for help and he refuses, pleading his tied hands.
If this derivation is accepted, the plot gists become even more clearly articulated. "Bluebeard" incorporates luring by a promise of wealth (either the girl or her parents respond to the lure, the other expressing reluctance), the hanging bodies of her predecessors, and her rescue by means of a ruse involving preparation for her death; "The Murdered Girl" incorporates luring by a promise of marriage, the prepared grave, and death by stabbing; and "The Old Woman of Slapsadam" incorporates a ruse involving a misdirected push, a subsequent refused plea for assistance, and death by drowning. (The same narrative theme occurs, of course, in Child 10 "The Twa Sisters.")
How, then, should "Lady Isabel" be classified and indexed? List's proposal for a cross-reference system is obviously a sound one, but in my opinion does not go far enough. "Lady Isabel" is by no meanst he only traditional ballad in which not one but several plot gists are concurrent, and the problem of which is primary and which is secondary is by no means so easy to determine as his procedure demands.
A workable and fruitful type-index must be one that is keyed, not to the identification of specific ballads in the forms in which we happen to know them or in which they are presently catalogued, b ut to the identification of such narrative themes as have been ascertained here. There is a single "Lady Isabel" (or "Heer Halewijn" or "Renaud le tuer des femmes"); it is, however, an indissoluble fusion of not one but three plot gists, which might be recognized in the United States as "Bluebeard," "The Jealous Lover," and "Johnnie Sands," in Germany as "Anna Miller," "Ulrich," and "The Blind Sexton and the Pope," and in Scotland as "May Collean," "The Wexford Girl," and "The Wily Auld Carl." Classification o f these plot gists, not of the ballads in the Child and Laws canons, is the only way in hich the vertical and horizontal dissemination of individual ballads can be adequately indexed; "Lady I sabel" could then be entered a s many times as need be, and its relationships to other narrative traditions rendered accessible to the international scholarship of the future.
University of Santa Clara
Santa Clara, California
------------------------------------
Footnotes:
1 George List, "Toward the Indexing of Ballad Texts," JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE, 81 (1968), 44-61.
2 Verdffentlichen zur musikalischen Volkskunde des Staatlichen Instituts fiir Musikforschung, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Freiburg, Germany, September 28-30, 1966; Brno, Czechoslovakia, April 10-12, 1969; Stavanger, Norway, August 21-23, I970.
3 D. K. Wilgus, "Ballad Classification," Midwest Folklore, 5 (1955), 95-100.
4 Tristram P. Coffin, "'Mary Hamilton' and the Anglo-American Ballad as an Art Form," JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE, 70 (1957), 208-214; reprinted i n The Critics a nd the Ballad, ed. MacEdward Leach and Tristram P. Coffin (Carbondale, Ill., 1961), 245-256.
5. Holger Nygard, The Ballad of Heer Halewijn, FFC 169 (Helsinki, 1958).
6. See Eleanor R. Long, "The Maid" and "The Hangman": Myth and Tradition in a Popular Ballad (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1971), 108-12I.
7 Lajos Vargyas, Researches into the Medieval History of the Folk Ballad (Budapest, 1967), 134-147.
8 I have not examined the discussions whose reasoning Nygard found inconclusive; in addition to remarks by Franz Magnus B6hme in Deutscher Liederhort, vol I (Leipzig, 1893-1894), 148, see Paul Kretschmer, "Das Mirchen von Blaubart," Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft zu Wien, 31 (1901), 62-70; and Marie Ramondt, "Heer Halewijn en Blauwbaard," Miscelanea J. Gessler, vol. 2 ('s-Gravenhage, 1948), o1030-1043. In 1964, Archer Taylor observed of the Anglo-American version that "in the many studies devoted to this ballad no one seems to have followed this clue"; see "The Parallels between Ballads and Tales," Jahrbuch fiir Volksliedforschung, 9 (1964), 104-115.
9. G. Malcolm Laws, Native American Balladry, rev. ed. (Philadelphia, 1964), 55-67.
10 Anne Billings Cohen, "The Pearl Bryan Story: A Study in Popular Stereotypes," M.A. thesis (UCLA, 1968).
11 Types abstracted from Nygard, Heer Halewijn, and Francis James Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, vol. i (New York, 1965), 22-54.
12 Johannes Bolte and Georg Polivka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmdirchen der Briider Grimm, vol. I (Leipzig, 1912), 13-14.
13 Ibid., 405-407.
14 See James Carney, Studies in Irish Literature and History (Dublin, 1955 ), 99- 101.
15 Vargyas, 142-146.
16 Nygard, 209.
17 Phillips Barry, "Fair Florella," American Speech 3 (1928), 441-447.
18 Long, 8; see also David C. Fowler, A Literary History of the Popular Ballad (Durham, N. C., 1968), 298-301.
19 The 1541 text, recapitulated here, was composed by Hans Vogel and appears in Martin Montanus Schwiinkbiicher (1557-1566), ed. Johannes Bolte (Tiibingen, 1899), 517-518. Versions by Hans Sachs are cited by Bolte (Anmerkungen, 125), together with other reprints.