V. The Symbols
"The Maid" and "The Hangman" p. 97-107; footnotes (with some raw text) found at the end, as in the book. Not carefully proofed, but readable.
[Long explores the important symbols: "prickly bush" and "the golden ball" as well as "the gallows" and "the ransom." Although Long mentions the article "The Golden Ball and the Hangman's Tree" by Tristram P. Coffin, 1967 elsewhere, she fails to investigate his article here (possibly because much of this book may have already been written in 1967). She also fails to give examples and analysis within the British/American tradition claiming that variants have "borrowed heavily from independent narrative traditions" which are taken from fairy tales. She does not explore the West Indies/Missouri cante-fables, or African-America tradition (still derived from British Isles).
She concludes, "There is, then, no reason to suppose 'The Gallows Tree' to be the vehicle of sexual symbolism."
R. Matteson 2015]
V. THE SYMBOLS
THE HIGH DEGREE of concern for the symbolic potential of "The Gallows Tree" that has dominated English and American interest in the ballad was indicated in chapter I. My investigation of the texts has shown that the two major symbols upon which attention has been focused-the prickly bush and the golden ball- were more properly to be identified with extratextual materials than with the ballad itself. Those extratextual materials, a refrain and a series of stories and games, both developed late in the ballad's tradition and are associated with varying textual components. Curiously enough, the symbols manifestly and consistently present in the texts, the gallows itself and a cash-ransom formulation, have been almost universally ignored by previous investigators.
Assuming, nevertheless, that all four symbols are of equal relevance, there remains the question of whether the meaning usually attributed to the first two (loss of a maiden's virginity) is grounded in genuine folk tradition. This chapter will therefore be devoted to an exploration of the thorn bush, the golden ball, and rescue from the gallows in terms of their utilization in other traditional materials, including the poetry of the Middle Ages,[1]local legends, customs and beliefs tales, and balladry.
Concerning the "prickly bush," it was noted in chapter I that James Reeves, followed Anne Gilchrist and Lucy E. Broadwood in equating its symbolic values with that of the "golden ball," both representing (in Reeves's words) "a fatal love entanglement." Frank Kidson was somewhat more cautious in attributing specific content to the symbol, observing only that the refrain was "undoubtedly very old" and "of the mystic class."[2] The refrain has been recovered with Child 155 "Little Sir Hugh" as well as with "The Gallows Tree," a phenomenon that, it was suggested in chapter IV, might be accounted for in terms of melodic relationships. But James Woodall's study of "Little Sir Hugh" and its symbols is corroborative of Reeves's interpretation: although he discounted the possible sexual overtones of the hero's loss of his ball in the Jew's garden, thus failing of the kind of total interpretation urged by Gilchrist and Broadwood, he concluded that "Little Sir Hugh" was an allegory of sexual ravishment.[3] That a refrain centering on a "prickly bush" symbolizing the agonies of a victim of seduction should become attached to two narratives concerned with precisely such agonies seems plausible enough.
But when we seek elsewhere in oral tradition for evidence of the use of such a symbol for this purpose we meet with some difficulty. Immediate reference can be made to a popular English song of unrequited passion, "The Seeds of Love," as represented in the following variant stanzas:
My gardener he stood by,
He told me to take great care,
For in the middle of a red rose-bud
There grows a sharp thorn there.
I told him I'd take no care
Till I did feel the smart,
And often I plucked at the red rose-bud
Till I pierced it to the heart.[4]
She stooped down unto the ground
To pluck the rose so red,
The thorn it pierced her to the heart,
And this fair maid was dead.[5]
I put my hand into the bush,
And thought the sweetest rose to find,
But pricked my finger to the bone,
And left the sweetest rose behind.[6]
For often have I plucked at the red rosebud
Till it pierced me to the heart.[7]
I put my hand into one soft bush,
Thinking the sweetest flower to find,
I pricked my finger right to the bone
And left the sweetest flower behind.[8]
In June the red rose buds,
And that is the flower for me,
But on laying my hands on the red rose bush
I thought of the willow tree.[9]
I oftentimes have plucked that red rose-bush
Till I gained the willow-tree.[10]
Oftentimes I snatched at the red-a-rosy bud
Till I gained the willow tree.11
Wi' lightsome heart I pu'd a rose,
Fu' sweet upon its thorny tree;
But my fause lover stole my rose,
And ah! he left the thorn wi' me[12]
According to Child, the characteristic stanza here, beginning "I put my hand into the bush," was composed toward the end of the seventeenth century by a Mrs. Habergham (Child, V, 259); William Chappell identified it as the composition of Martin Parker some fifty years earlier (Chappell and Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, I, 278). The speaker in each of these variants is a girl; what may be noted, however, is that in only one instance, the last (composed by Robert Burns), is the rose actually plucked, not "plucked at," unless a willow tree replaces the pricking thorn.
The central symbol in these lyric stanzas, the plucking of a rose as evidence of a womans' readiness to surrender her virginity, is of verifiable antiquity in European tradition. Scott Eliott has documented the use of flower plucking as such a symbol in Child 4 "Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight," 5 "Gil Brenton," 39 "Tam Lin," 41 "Hind Etin," 52 "The King's Dochter Lady Jean," and 90 "Jellon Grame."[13] In these ballads, the chosen lover is usually a supernatural being and the pulling of the flower constitutes a trespass upon a fairy province.[14] A similar configuration occurs in the early Irish poem Imramh Brain, when (uniquely so far as Irish medieval traditions about other world journeys are concerned, a fairy mistress appears to summon Bran upon his journey after he has broken oft the branch of a mysterious apple tree and taken it into his house.[15] Such supernaturalization of the tradition, however, is of the kind attributed by Pohl and Vargyas to Scots-Scandinavian oikotyping; not only is the Imramh Brain atypical in Irish tradition,[16] but the equation of rose gathering with nubility, quite devoid of supernatural overtones, is well documented in Continental European tradition from the classical period to the present.[17]
The concomitant figure, in which the would-be plucker of the rose is pricked instead by thorns, is not so easy to relate to the plight of a maiden who has surrendered her chastity: as has been noted, both the failure to Pluck the rose at all and the substitution of a willow tree, notorious as a symbol of grief,[18] are more prevalent in the "Seeds of Love" tradition than is the interpretation provided by the poet Burns. But the situation is more clear in versions in which the speaker is male, not female:
I put my hand into the bush,
Thinking the sweetest rose to find,
But I pricked my fingers to the bone,
And left the sweetest rose behind.
If roses be such a prickly flower,
They should be gathered when they are green,
So he that finds an inconstant love,
I'm sure he strives against the stream.[19]
The fairest flow'r in Nature's field
Conceals the rankling thorn,
So thou, sweet flow'r! as false as fair,
This once kind heart has torn.[20]
But, gloveless, alack! with my hands in the thorn,
No roses I got, though I got my hands torn [21]
I saw a rose with a ruddy blush,
And thrust my hand into the bush,
I pricked my fingers to the bone,
I would I'd left that rose alone![22]
I wish my love was a red rose,
And in the garden grew,
And I to be the gardner;
To her I would be true.
There's not a month throughout the year,
But love I would renew,
With lilies I would garnish her,
Sweet William, thyme, and rue.[23]
I put my finger to the bush
To pluck the fairest rose;
I plucked my finger to the bone,
But ahl I left the rose behind.
So must I go bound and you go free?
Must I love the lass that wouldn't love me?[24]
The symbolic content here is as lucid as it is demonstrably traditional. The rose represents the desired maiden herself (here inseparable from her sexual surrender), as it does in the Roman de la Rose of Guillaume de Lorris;[25] the Rosa and the
Nightingale of Mohammed. Fasli;[26] and numerous other classical and medieval works.[27] Nor is corroborative material lacking in modern folklore: e.g., a nineteenth-century French song laments that
My lover has left rne
Because of a rosebud
That I gave him too quickly [28]
German superstitions associate red roses with loss of chastity. If a rose blooms in autumn there will be a weddinq. To test a girl's virtue, blindfold her and offer her a bouquet of mixed red and white roses; the state of her innocence will be revealed by the color of the flower she grasps first.[29]All of this coheres with the symbolic tradition discussed earlier; when a girl plucks a rose, it is implied that it is her intention to proffer it to the lover she has chosen, in token of the surrender of her own person. But a very clear distinction can be made between the willing and inviting female- who plucks such a rose and the reluctant one who, as the rose herself, maintains a thorny defense. The male wooer of the second set of song stanzas encounters thorns instead, of the rose he seeks; his desire is not consummated, and the thorns represent rejection and failure, not the aftermath of successful seduction. This is the meaning of the thorns of the Romance of the Rose (Robbins, pp: 34-37, 59) and the Rose and, the Nightingale (Wilson, Turkish Literature, pp. 306-311), of Orlando Furioso ("The young virgin, is like the rose
that neither flock nor shepherd draws near to while it rests alone and secure in a beautiful garden on its native thorn"),[30] and of a lyric by "Der Wilde Alexander" ("A rose there is- I weep her yet! / within so dense a thicket set, /No joys may come anear").[31]
This coherent,and enduring, symtrolic interpretation reconciles the rose, signifying a desirable woman, with pricking thorns, traditionally protectors of forbidden precincts not at all related to love. M. J. Schleiden has described the use of wild-rose hedges for such protection in medival legend (Die Rose, pp. 134-135, 195); Angelo de Guberritis, Franns Biichtold-sreubli, and Lutz Mackensen have documented the potency of thornbushes against witches and evil spirits, as well as against human aggressors, from even aerlier times.[32] The hedge of thorns which protects the castle of the sleeping Beauty (Aat410 KHM 50) is derived from this traditional association, although as Bachtold-Staubli, Mackensen, and Johannes Bolte have pointed out, it does not belong to the normative tradition of the tale[31]. That it is an ancient one is suggested by Pliny the Elder's notices
that a holly tree planted beside a house will ward off evil influences, and that it is disastrous for a thornbush to be struck by lightning.[32] Modern traces are observable in the English custom of decorating with holly at the Christmas season (Folkard' Plant Lore, p. 376) and the Germarione of planting thorn hedges around homesteads and commons.[33] In this connection, the branch broken by Bran in the medieval Irish poem assumes a different significance; for, as Wilhelm Mannhardt has shown, non-thorn-bearing trees have also been long honored as protective emblems in European tradition, and in many parts of Europe it is still a grave offense to break off a branch from such a tree.[34]
The rose-thorn-tree complex is thus a complicated one, but by no means obscure. Plucking or pulling roses is traditionally symbolic of nubility in a girl or woman, and may be ultimately related to the offense against a sacred precinct that is committed when one breaks a branch from a protective tree. Such a tree, in turn, is directly related to the thorns of the rosebush, which also have a protective function traditionally equated with the woman's intention to preserve her chastity.
Since roses are conspicuously absent from the "prickly bush" refrain with which we are concerned, it follows that the rose-thorn symbol, with its sexual referent, is irrelevant to the "Gallows Tree" situation. What is relevant is the "prickly bush" as the protector of a forbidden area, and the fact that attempted trespass upon such an area (i.e., any attempted violation by any person of any social tabu) is likely to impose its own punishment.[37] If the sexual-implications of rose plucking be insisted upon, it must be borne in mind that pricking by thorns in the erotic poetry of tradition is symbolic of failure to gain the forbidden precinct. Moreover, the reversal of the traditional sex roles in this respect initiated by Martin Parker (or Mrs. Habergham) has been stubbornly resisted by traditional singers in England, who almost invariably substitute a willow tree for a thorn in songs about lovelorn women and a male for a female if the line "I pricked my fingers to the bone" is retained. Among those traditional singers, of course, must be numbered those who accompany "The Gallows Tree" with the "prickly bush" refrain, not one of whom has proposed that the protagonist of the ballad is a girl (see chapter iii, "Conclusions").
The quest for sexual imagery encounters similar difficulties when it concerns itself with the "golden ball." Hedwig von Beit offered an etymological interpretation of the ball's significance in folklore corresponding to that of Gilchrist and Broadwood: from the Sanskrit word for "play," the Greek word" for "boy-prostitute," and the German word for "desire," she derived the conclusion that in ancient times balls were viewed" as the toys of Eros. When that deity tossed a ball to someone, it constituted an invitation not only to love, but to death-- "to immortality, the mystery containing both love and death."[38]
Such an interpretation coincides rather precisely with the incipit of Baring-Gould's story utilizing "The Gallows Tree":
There were two lasses, daughters of one mother, and as they came home from t' fair, they saw a right bonny young man stand i't' house-door before them. He had gold on t'cap, gold on t'finger, gold on t'neck, a red gold watch-chain-eh! but he had brass. He had a golden ball in each hand. He gave a ball to each lass, and she was to keep it, and if she lost it, she was to be hanged.
["Golden Ball," p.333 ]
But gifts of this sort in contemporary Germanic legend are bestowers of material prosperity, not love and death. Three reported by Max Luthi are representative:
Two citizens engage in a bowling match with a party of dwarfs, and each receives a ball as a parting gift. One of them decides his ball is too heavy to carry, and throws it away. The next day, the other ball has turned into gold.
A little man in a green cloak and a red pointed hat hides in the fleece of a poor man's goats balls which turn into gold, silver, pearls, and other precious stones; the poor man has only to leave something sweet each day at the doorstep for the little man and to keep the secret.
A poor shoemaker makes shoes for the dwarfs, and. receives each Friday as payment a snake, in whose stomach is a hare, in whose stomach is a golden ball. He is thereby kept prosperous until he boasts of his good fortune in the tavern, when the arrangement immediately comes to an end.[39]
Another traditional function for balls bestowed by supernatural beings, golden or otherwise, is that of rolling ahead of the folktale hero to guide him on a quest; this occurs, for example, in "The well of D'yerree-in-Dowan" [40] and "The Little Red Hairy Man" [41] as well as in French and German legends (HDA, v, 756, and Liithi, Die gabe, p. 92).
Closer to the tradition exemplified in most "Gallows Tree" variants, however, is a ball that is lost. Giraldus cambrensis included in his Itinerarium Kambriae the story of Eliodorus, who, running away from his schoolmaster, was escorted to a land beneath the earth by two diminutive blond creatures. He was able to journey back and forth at will until, in response to a request from his mother, he stole the golden ball that was the plaything of the underworld king's son. When he reached his home, he stumbled over the threshhold and the ball rolled out of his hands, to be instantly retrieved by two fairies who had followed him. Spitting and cursing at him, they carried it off, and he was never able to find his way to their country again.[42]
In the tale of "Gille nan cochla craicionn," a boy is enmeshed in difficulties when his ball falls into a courtyard, destroying the work of a woman silver craftsman; she restores the ball, but lays a spell upon the offender.[43] And in a Danish ballad, a similar incident places the boy in the power of a princess who forbids him to sleep or rest until he has performed for her an impossible task.[44]
To these last two tales, overlooked by Reeves, the situation of Child 155 "Little Sir Hugh" can certainly be related. But of the three patterns thus established for the "golden ball" of tradition (as the gift of a supernatural being which confers prosperity until the donor is slighted In some way; as a magical guiding object; and as a personal possession whose loss places its owner in the power of the finder), none is applicable to the situation of "The Gallows Tree." Baring-Gould's account departs from traditional legend in that the penalty for loss of the ball is death, not simply the loss of concomitant benefits.
Other tales of the "golden ball" group (see table 5) lack the supernatural character assigned by Baring-Gourd to the donor of the ball:
E1 Two girls are each given a golden ball to play with. Their mother says that if they lose them they will be hanged. The elder accidentally sends hers into a blacksmith's shop (cf. n. 43). The blacksmith returns the ball, but warns her that he will not do so again. She loses it in the same way a second time, and receives a second warning. The third time the blacksmith keeps the ball, and she is sentenced to be hanged.
E2 A certain king had three children, one son and two daughters, to each of whom he presented a ball made of gold; whoever lost the ball was to be hanged. The elder daughter lost hers in a neglected garden thickly overgrown with weeds and brambles. search proved unavailing, and she prepared to meet her fate.
E5 A rich lady possessed a golden ball, which she held in high esteem. A poor girl, her servant, had to clean the ball each day, under penalty of death if she lost it. One day when she was cleaning the ball near a stream it disappeared. The girl was condemned to die.
E14 A king had three daughters. He gave each a golden ball to play with, which they were never to lose. The youngest lost hers, and was to be hung on the gallows-tree if it were not found by a day named.
E20 There were three sisters named Pepper, Salt, and Mustard. Their father went on a journey and promised to bring back whatever they asked for; each asked for a golden ball. Their mother threatened to hang them if they lost their balls. Pepper lost hers, and her mother hanged her. [In this unusual version, the dead girl and her lover are turned into birds, after
which she is restored to life and they resume human shape.]
Here the golden ball is the gift of human parents, so that the parallel is closer to the ball-lost-in-courtyard syndrome. But the punishment is imposed by the donor, not the finder, and it is death, not involvement in subsequent adventures. For such a configuration there is no traditional analogue.
Still another inconsistent aspect is the sex of the loser of the ball, who in the traditions cited earlier was always male. Here, however, a parallel is immediately available in four eastern European variants of "Iron Henry" or "The Frog Prince" (AaT 440, RHM 1). A king gives his daughter a golden ball to play with, as in E2 and E14; the ball rolls away from her into a fountain, and is restored to her by a frog, who exacts in return a promise that he may sleep in her bed and dine off her plate (as in the dominant lost bail tradition). This version of the tale is extremely rare in oral tradition, for the lost object is usually a ring or a handkerchief;[45] in an even more generally known version, the one known to Sir Walter Scott,[46] the girl is sent to get water from the well. Nevertheless, the then-unique "lost golden ball" version was the one chosen by the Brothers Grimm. for inclusion in the first edition of their Kinder- und trausmiirchen, and it appeared in the English translations of that work by Edgar Taylor, [47] Lucy Crane,[48] Mrs. H. B. Paull and Mr. L. A. Wheatley,[49] and Mrs. Edward Lucas.[50]
Since the losing of a ball has in the legend and tale traditions outside the ballad complex been invariably associated with a male protagonist, and since this version of "The Frog Prince" is as exotic in oral tradition as it is widely circulated in print, Grimm's Household Tales in English translation is inescapably the most probable source for the lost golden ball, given to a daughter by her parents, of our "Gallows Tree" variants. Like Gilchrist and Broadwood, Hedwig von Beit attempted to interpret the ball in the Grimm tale as a symbol of lost virginity (Symbolik, II 36-37). Even if the version were genuinely traditional, however, her interpretation could apply only to the lost ball as the equivalent of the rose-gathering syndrome discussed earlier, that is, as emblematic of the readiness to abandon virginity.
Surrounding tradition makes it quite clear that the relationship of golden balls to sexuality is at most a tenuous and secondary one.[51] Psychologically balls in folk-lore can be said to represent in broad terms the individuality or selfhood of a human being (von Beit, Symbolik, II, 36-37; HDA,V, 757). Guiding and wealth-conferring balls bestowed upon mortals by supernatural beings may in these broad terms stand for the release of unsuspected powers in the personality, and balls that are lost can only mean a corresponding loss of control over subsequent events.
The lost key of three group E variants (E6, EB, E9) was also equated by Broadwood with loss of virginity. She cited "an old song" containing the lines, "Oh, if my love were a coffer of gold, / and I the keeper of the key" in evidence; but another "old song" shows that the referent for the key is not quite what she considered it to be:
Kytt hath lost her key, her key,
Good Kytt hath lost her key;
She is so sorry for the cause,
She wotts not what to say.
Good Kytt she wept, I ask'd why so
That she made all this mone?
She sayde, alas! I am so woo,
My key is lost and gone.
Kytt, why did you lose your key,
For sooth you were to blame,
Now every man to you will say,
Kytt Loss-key is your name.
Good Kytt she wept and cried, alas!
Her key she could not find,
In faith I trow in bowers she was
With some that were not kind.
Now, farewell, Kytt, I can no more,
I wott not what to say,
But I shall pray to God therefore
That you may find your key.
Kytr hath lost her key,
But I have one will fit
Her lock, if she will try.
And do not me deny,
I hope she hath more wit.
My key is bright, not rusty,
It is so oft applied
To locks that are not dusty,
Of maidens that are lusty,
And not full filled with pride.
Then, Kytt, be not too proud,
Bur try my ready key,
That still hath been allowed
By ladies fair a crowd
The best that ere they see.
You can but try, and then,
If it fits not, good bye;
Go to some other man,
And see if any can
Do better, Kytt, than I.
But never come back to me,
When you are gone away,
For I shall keep my key
For others, not for thee;
So either go, or stay.[52]
This manifestly bawdy symbol suggests that, properly understood, the thorns of the "Seeds of Love" song and the golden ball of the "Gallows Tree" variants might well refer not to the loss of virginity, but to an unwelcome chastity imposed by the male lover's withdrawal of his sexual favors. However, such an interpretation carries us very far indeed from the situation of "The Gallows Tree"; a more plausible, if disappointingly prosaic, explanation for the key figure may be found in its association in one text with "silken cloak." Both silkekjole "silken cloak" and guldkjae, "golden chain" are found among the possessions sought for ransom in the ballad's Scandinavian analogues, and the hypothesis of secondary, late, and sporadic borrowing from that tradition, with "key" a natural (and rhyming) substitution for kjae', is sufficient to account for the phenomenon (DGF, VIII,481).
Kdroly Kerdnyi and Clyde Kluckhohn have warned against the ascription of meaning to phenomenological symbols without taking careful account of the cultural and traditional context that alone can provide the articulation of that meaning.[53] In the materials here brought together we can see the value of their warning. Although the "prickly bush" is a verifiable symbol for rejection in love (at least when a rose bush is meant), the only connection that can be said to exist between the "golden ball" and sexuality is that which may occur if the finder of a lost golden ball should claim marriage as the price of his restoration. It may be argued that the nineteenth century, with its particularly repressive sexual taboos, could have given both symbols new meanings in the British Isles (see chap, iii, n. 65); but we have no record that this is true save that of the assertions of twentieth-century scholars, none of whom has furnished tangible supporting evidence. Again, it is perfectly true that individuals are capable of investing objects with meanings of considerable import to themselves (see Barry, "Folk-singer," pp. 59-76); but such meanings are private, and cannot be described as traditional unless they can be shown to be shared with a substantial number of individuals in precisely the same relationship to their referents.
The informants for "Gallows Tree"--"golden ball" variants have borrowed heavily and indiscriminately from independent narrative traditions. Variant E1 is closely related to "Gille nan Cochla Craicionn"; EZ and El4, to the Grimm version of "The Frog Prince"; E2, to German legendry and to "The Youth Who Went Forth To Learn Fear"; and E20, to some versions of AaT 42b (KHM 88) "Beauty and the Beast," in which a departing father promises to bring his daughters anything they may request. In each of these instances, the lost golden ball figures quite simply as an attractive rationalization for the ballad situation, borrowed from a printed source rather than from oral tradition and patently lacking in specific symbolic content for the narrators.[54] On the other hand, Eb, in which a servant loses the bail belonging to her mistress, is thematically very close to the variants in group C in which the imputed crime is theft; if the ballad can be said to have a tradition in this regard, then the bail in E5 has the same symbolic value of the cup, comb, watch, and thimble of those variants, namely that of a purportedly stolen object serving as a mechanism for justifying the death sentence.
A modern Irish folktale preserves the essence of the Welsh legend reported by Giraldus Cambrensis in the same death-penalty context:
A girl is kidnapped by the fairies and give' the task of caring for their golden hurley-ball, but she loses it when a neighboring farmer discovers it in his field and walls it up in his chimney. Searching for the ball, she encounters the farmer, who woos and. marries her. she dies a few days after the wedding, having fruitlessly explored the house for the missing ball. A mysterious tall man comes three times during the wake to ask the corpse if she has found the object; the third time, the priest asks what it is that he wants, the stranger explains, and the husband retrieves the ball from its hiding place and returns it to him. The priest demands that the stranger release the woman from her enchantment, and she is restored to life; the stranger disappears with the ball.[55]
It is obvious from these Celtic examples that supernatural beings whose golden balls are stolen or lost by mortals are both independent in folk tradition and quite capable of devising their own Punishments without recourse to institutionalized legal procedures.
It is appropriate, then, to turn to the only symbols that are constant and inarguable in the ballad's texts: the gallows and the terms of ransom. It has been proposed that the tradition is not really concerned, with ransom at all, but with the belief that a condemned man may be saved. from the gallows if a woman can be found that is willing to marry him.[56] Ballads based. on just such a theme can be found in both English[57] and German[58] tradition, together with variations in which a sister saves a brother by running naked three times around the gallows,[59] the executioner offers to marry the victim and is refused,[60] or the rescue is effected by an offer to substitute for the condemned person.[61] As Wilhelm Heiske and Hinrich Siuts have pointed out, the theme is an imaginative one-- Siuts considered it "purely literary"-- and based upon no actual custom.[62] In England, however, it is frequently bound up with precisely the situation of "The Gallows Tree": in "The Merchant of Chichester" (Chappell and Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, I, 320-325) the lady saves the victim by marrying him only after
The merchants of the town,
From death to set him free,
Did proffer there two thousand pound,
But yet it would not be.
The same failure is reported" in "The Downfall of William Grismond" (Chappell and Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, VIII, 70-71, 145):
But then my loving father his gold he did not spare,
To save him from the gallows
Ballads in the Child corpus offer similar negative testimony. In Child 72 "The Twa Clerk's Sons o' Owsenford" (A and C texts) the father's query, "Will ye grant me my two sons' lives / Either for gold or fee?" is denied; Child 182 "The Laird o' Logie," l9z "Jock o' the side," 191 "Hughie Grame," and 194 "The Laird o Wariston" all have variants in which "a' the gold o fair Scotland," '(a' the monie o fair Scotland," "a peck of gold and silver," "five hundred pieces of gold," or "white monie and gold" are mentioned as insufficient to obtain the release of the culprit. Child 209 "Geordie," however, centers upon the pardoning of a condemned criminal through the payment of a ransom. In this respect it is echoed by Laws Q37 "The Turkish Factor" (a young woman condemned to die for striking her mistress is released when a hundred pounds are paid);[65] by "The Confession and Repentance of George Sanders" (Chappell and Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, VIII, 72-75) in which a father three times casts himself into debt to save his son from the gallows; and by the stage song "Blueskin":
When to the Old Bailey this Blueskin was led,
He held up his hand; his indictment was read;
Loud rattled his chains; near him Jonathan stood,
And full forty pounds was the price of his blood;
Then hopeless of life
He drew his penknife,
To make a sad widow of Jonathan's wife,
But forty pounds paid her, her grief shall appease,
And every man round me may rob if he please.[64]
It is not only in latter-day balladry, moreover, that executions may be averted by a payment in cash; the thirteenth-century Haaelok the Dane twice refers to the possibility:
Utlawes and theves made he bynde,
Alle that he michte fynde,
And heye hengen on galwe-tre;
For hem ne yede gold ne fee.
[11.41-44]
For yif ich havede ther ben funden,
Havede ben slayn, or herde bunden,
And heye ben henged on a tre,
Havede go for him gold ne fe.
[11.1427-14.30] [65]
And a unique manuscript of The Seuen Sages of Rome includes a tale that has been found in no other written source and hence must have been supplied drectly from oral tradition:
Hyt was a squyer of thys contre,
And full welle louyd was he;
In dedys of armys and yn justyng
He bare hym beste yn hys begynning.
So hyt befelle he had a systur sone,
That for silver he had nome,
He was put in preson strong,
And schulde be dampned and be hong.
The squyer faste thedur can gon,
And askyd them swythe anon,
What thyng he had borne away,
And they answered and can say
He had stolen syluer grete plente,
Therefore hanged schulde he bee.
The squyer hym profurd, permafay,
To be his borowe tyll a certen day
For to amende that hy mysdede,
Anon they toke hym yn that stede,
And bounde hym faste fote and honde,
And cast hym in to preson stronge.
They let hys cosyn go a way
To quyte hym be a certen daye.
Grete pathes then usyd he,
And men he slewe grete plente,
Moche he stole and bare away,
And stroyed the contre nyght and day.
But upon the squyer thoght he nothyng
That he in preson lefte lyeing.
To that tyme came, as y you say,
But for the squyer came no paye.
He was hanged on a galowe tree,
For hym was dele and grete pyte.[66]
[My italics]
Except for the substitution motif in this narrative,[67] the account is strikingly reminiscent of the situation most frequently represented in "Gallows Tree" texts: the culprit is condemned for theft, but can escape the gallows if restitution is made. The "Blueskin" song suggests a possibility also attested. in legal annals, that a condemned murderer may escape punishment if an agreed-upon sum is paid to the victim's family. So runs a writ issued in Scotland during the thirteenth century "to the relatives and friends of B., commanding them to relieve him from the poverty into which he has fallen, and to free him from the fine which he incurred for the death of a certain person imputed to him 'quantum ad eadem Pertinet,'" and such cases have been documented for the reigns of Edward III, James I, and George III of England.[68]
There is, then, not a little evidence that the concept of ransom from the gallows by the payment of a sum of money was a recognized folk tradition in Britain from quite an early date, and that it was based at least in part upon actual legal practice. Crimes with which it is associated are murder and theft, the latter prevailing in the "Gallows Tree" tradition. Our conclusion that "Judge" antedates "hangman" in the tradition is supported by such evidence, in that fines can be arranged only with the sentencing magistrate; the removal of the setting to the gallows itself is explicable on the ground of surrounding tradition, in which rescue by means other than the payment of money is effected.[69]
A final word should be added on the subject of the death penalty as punishment for loss of chastity, since "The Gallows Tree" has been compared to Child 65 "Lady Maisry" and the heroine of that ballad is executed by her male relatives for becoming pregnant by an Englishman.[70] Medieval romance, the popular ballad, and legal history agree that adultery and fornication have been traditionally considered to be familial, or at most ecclesiastical, crimes;[71] that the classical punishment in such cases is burning, not hanging;[72], and the civil crime for which wayward damsels might be put to death is infanticide, not illicit love.[73]
There is, then, no reason to suppose "The Gallows Tree" to be the vehicle of sexual symbolism. The ballad dramatizes a familiar situation, dating from the early Middle Ages, but still a matter of easy reference in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: a criminal convicted of murder or theft could avoid the death penalty if his relatives were able to raise an agreed upon sum of money before the date set for his execution. Although the tradition normally related to a male protagonist, nothing prevents its adaptation to the case of a woman, provided the crime itself and the surrounding circumstances remained constant. But that such an adaptation has ever been capable of converting the tradition to one of lost and restored virginity is belied both by the absence of traditional verification for any such interpretation of the symbols involved. and by the tenacity with which the identification of the victim as male and the terms of rescue as "gold," "silver," and "money" "to pay a fee" have persisted in the ballad as oral tradition as opposed to the "tradition" that has heretofore been ascribed to it.
Footnotes to Pages 97-107
1. As Kenneth Jackson (The International Popular Tale and Early Welsh Tradition [Cardiff, 1961], pp. 2-4) and others have frequently had occasion to remark, a dichotomy between "folk" tradition and "learned" tradition developed only with the European Renaissance in post-Classical Western literature; Geoffrey Chaucer and Chretien de Troyes are only two of the many poets whose work shows an intimate acquaintance with the oral traditions that are still in circulation among the descendants of their contemporaries.
2. Frank Kidson and Mary Neal, English Folk-Song and Dance (Cambridge, 1915), p. 58.
3 James R. Woodall, " 'Sir Hugh': A Study in Balladry," SFQ, 19 (1955), 77-94.
4. J. H. Dixon, Ancient Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England, Percy Society publications 17 (London, 1816),223.
5. Sabine Baring-Gould and H. Fleetwood-Sheppard, Songs and, Ballads of the West (London, 1892), p. 227.
6. Harold Boulton, Songs of the Four Nations (London, 1893), p. 102.
7. Lucy Broadwood and H. Fuller-Maitland, English County Songs (London, 1899), p. 59.
8. Cecil J. Sharp and Charles E. Marsom, Folk Songs from Somerset,III (London, lgot), B2-BZ.
9. Collingwood Bruce and John Stokoe, Northumbrian Minstrelsy (Newcastle, 1892; facsir ed., Hatboro, Pa., 1965), pp.90-91; reprinted in John Stokoe and. Samuel Reay, Songs and, Ballads of Northern England (London, 1899), pp. 80-91.
10 Sharp and Marson, Folk Songs from Somerset,I (London, 1904), 2.
11. lbid., V (London, 1909), 19.
12 George Farquhar Graham, The Songs of Scotland, 5 vols. (Edinburgh, 1961), II,5. This version is from a poem, "Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon," composed by Robert Burns.
13 Scott Elliott, "Pulling the Heather Green," JAF 48 (lggb), gbT_261.
14 See also E. S. Hartland, The English Fairy and, Other Folk Tales (London, 1890), pp. 19-20; Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythotogy (London, I g7g), p. g04.
15 Kuno Meyer and Alfred Nutt, ?fte Voyage of Bran Son of Febal, Grimm Library, IV (London,
1895)' 2-5. In Echtra Cormac, the only other "voyage" text in which such a branch appears, it is
brought by a warrior and has the property of inducing sleep, like the broom of Child 48 .,Broom-
field Hill" (Whitney H. Stokes and E. Windisch, Irische Texte [ser. 3, vol. l], III [Leipzig, 18gl],
193-195, 2ll-213); cf. n. 38.
16 See James Carney, Studies in lrish Literature and. History (Dublin, l95b), pp. 280-ZgE. Given
the ecclesiastical and generally learned bent of the author of Imramh Brain, it would not be
going too far to suppose that he borrowed his branch from the sixth book of the Aeneid, (ree
Patrick w. Joyce, A short r{istory of lreland, fl-ondon, lgg4], pp. lbb-Ibg), bur see n. 36.
17. Angelo de Gubernatis, La mythotogie des plantes, 2 vols. (Paris, 1872-1882), Tl, B2Z; Charles
Joret, La rose dans I'antiquitd et au moyen tige (Paris,1892), pp. 30b-844; Richard Folkard, plant
Lore, Legends, and Lyrics,Znd ed. (London, lBgZ), p. b22.
18. See, e.g., Charles N{. Skinner, Myths and, Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits, and plants (phila-
delphia, l91l), pp.293-298. It may be noted, however, that this, too, is a relatively recent and
quais-sophisticated development of an ancient association of the rvillow with death.
19. W. Christie, Traditional Ballad Airs, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, lg?6), l, 227. A very slightly different variant is in William Hugh Logan, A Pedlar's Pack of Ballads and Songs (Edinburgh, 1869), pp. 336-357.
20. Pittman, Colin Brown, and Myles B. Foster, Songs ol Scotland, S vols. (London, 1877),II, 10.
21. Baring-Gould and Fleetr,vood-Sheppard, Sorzgs and, Ballad.s, p. l2b.
22 Ibid., p. l8b.
23 Lucy Broadwood, English Traditional songs and carols (London, lg0g), p. 6b.
24 Herbert Hughes, Irish Country Songs,4 vols. (London, 1g0g),I, 69.
25 Reference is to the English translation of Harly Robbins, The Romance of the Rose by
Guillaume de Lorris and lean de Meun (New york, 1962).
26 Reference is to the English translation of J. von Hammer-Purgstall and Epiphanius Wilson, in Turkish Literature, ed. Epiphanius wilson (New york, 1901), pp.z3r-3b7.
27 See, in addition to Joret, La Rose, pp. 305-344, M. J. Schleiden, Die Rose: Geschichte und Symbolik (Leipzig, 1873), pp. 46, 142, 153-154.
28 Eugdne Rolland, Recueil de chansons populaires (paris, lgg3), p.202.
29 E. Hoffmann-Krayer and Hanns BAchtold-stiiubli, IIDA,VII,77g.
30 Allan Gilbert, trans., The Orlando Furioso ol Ariosto, 2 vols. (New york, 1954), I, 8.
31. Frank Nicholson, trans., OId, German Loue Songs (Chicago, 1907), p. 168. (For this reference I am indebted to Barbara Seward, The Symbolic Rose, New York, 1960].) The German poers Herder and Goethe gave the theme a sophisticated twist in "Heid.enr6slein," a purported folk ballad: in their poems, the rose's defense is of no avail, and she must sufier herself to be broken by a youth who does not mind the pricks (Franz Magnus Bdhme, volksthilmliche Lieder d,er Deutschen im 1g. und 1 9. Jahrhundert, Leipzig, l ggb], pp. SO_OZ;.
32. Angelo de Gubernatis, Mythotog;e aes piantes T, 127_130; HDA,II, 3bB; HDM,I,40g.
33. HDA, rr, 359; HDM,I, 409-410; Johannes Bolte and Georg polivka, Ammerkungen zu d,en Kinder- und' Hausmdrchen d'er Brild,er Grimm, S vols. (Leipzig, tstz-toszs,r, 41442. Mackensen suggests that it entered the tradition through an association wiih the "sleep-thorn" of Scandinavian tradition (see n' 15 and rnge Boberg, Motif-Index of Early Icelandic Literature lcopenhagen, 1966], Dr364'2); schleiden further associated the "sleqr-thorn', with the "sleep-apple," a growth sometimes found on the stems of wild roses (Die Rose, p. 191).
34. H. Rockham, et al., trans., Natural Hiitory of Pling the Elder,l0 vols., Loeb Classical Library (London, 1938- 1942), rv, z26-82z, vr, g+gb (Books Xi, xvii, and XXrv, lxxii).
35 Heinrich Marzell, Die pflanzen im deutschen vorhsreben (Jena, rgzs;), pp. ag_b3.
36 Wilhelm Mannhardt , WaId_ und. Feld.kulte,2nd, ed., Z vols. (Berlin, 1904_190 b),I, g4_Zg, g0_51,
60-61' 70-71, rr,5,33,37.rn an otherwise perceptive and illuminating article ("An oral Canon for the Child Ballads: construction and Application," IFI 4 ltg67l, 75-101), J. Barre Toelken dismisses this pan-European tradition as "a sophisticated and far-off concept" (pp. 96-g2); I submit that the "breaking of a little bush" that motivates fratricidal murder in many variants of Child 13 "Edward" is more intelligible in these terms than it is as a figurative representation of incest, as Tristram p. Coffin urgred ("The Murder Motive in Edward," WF g [1949], g14_Blg). Toelken's position, that oral tradition in balladry must be distinguished from the "non-oral," is a sound one; nevertheless, it cannot be assumed that ballad imagery occupies a world divorced from other kinds of folk tradition, which deserve to be investigated before they are disclaimed.
37. The proverb, "no rose without a thorn," is related but distantly to the complex under discussion. Its implications are those exploited by Herder and Goethe in their "Heidenrcislein" poems (see n. 31), as is demonstrated by ,t,i-.ro,l, parallel proverbs in all western European languages: "no fire without smoke," "no grain without chaff," "no honey without poison," and so on. In
the sense of this proverb, the thorn, like smoke, chaff, and poison, represents not failure but the necessary and quite tolerable disad.vantages that are likely io "..o-pany any positive good. see SGRS, I, 480+84, and DSZ, II, 627-6gl ,IV,lTZg_I780.
38. Hedwig von Beit, Symbolih d,es Mrirchens, 2 vols. (Bern, IgbZ),II, g7.
39. Max Liithi, Die Gabe im Mrirchen und, in der sage (Zurich, 1949), pp. 39-44. Even this interpretation is by no means universal; balls, combs, rings, spinning wheels, and other objects more frequently appear as gifts entailing no special significance at all, according to Liithi.
40 Douglas Hyde, Besid'e the Fire (Londtn, l9l0t, pp. lzg-141. rn this tale, the ball is a silver one and guides the hero to the magic water his father needs to restore him to health.
41. Sidney o' Addy, Household Tales, collected. in the counties of York, Lincoln, Derby, and Nottingham (London, 1895), pp. 50-53. copper, silver, and golden balls are rolled by a grateful "little red hairy man" to lead ih" h..o to giant-killing adventures. This corresponds in the main to AaT 431A, with two Irish variants reported. The motir is Dl3l3.l, reported in Arabic, rndian,
and rrish tradition, and. occasionally occurs in AaT 4zb as wer.
42. James F. Dimock, ed.. Itinerarium Kambriae, Girald,i.,cambrensis opera, vr (London, 1969),
7-5-76 (lib' l, cap' 8)' In this very old British tale concerning a golden ball, the motif is theft-
just as it is in the majority of "Gallows Tree" variants that seek to account for the victim,s
jeopardy.
43 John Gregorson Campbell, The Fians: stories, Poems, and, Traditions, Argyllshire series, rv (London, lSgl), 260,274 (two different variants).
44. DGF 70 (II, 273-274, and III, 841).
45 Bolte and Polivka, anmerkungen'r, 5-7. of the four variants known to Borte in which the object lost by the princess is a golden ball, the other three were collected in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, two in eastern Germany and one, corresponding almost word for word to the Grimm selection, from a Latvian informant (E. vecken stedt, we:nd.ische sagen, Mrirchen und, aberglaubische Gebrriuche lGraz, 1880], p. 25a; E. Ktihn, Der spreewald, und, seine Bewohner [cottlius' 18B9], p' 143; Th. Ja. Treuland, sbornik materialou po etnografii izd.auajenij pri Daihouskom etnografiteskom Muzeli v Moscow, 1887], 148). Thompson's Motif-Index furnishes no references except to this text and its thiee imitators 1C+t.2,'C+Zly.
46. In a letter to the first translator of Kinder- und Hausmtirchen Scott expressed his delight at receiving the volume and added: "The Prince Paddock was . . . a legend well known to me; where a princess is sent to fetch water in a sieve" (Edgar Taylor, trans. German Popular Stories and Fairy Tales as Told by Gammer Grethel, rev. ed. London, 1878], p.305). In accordance with this version of the tradition is a variant published by the Grimms in volume ii of their first edition but dropped from subsequent editions and never translated (Wilhelm Flansen, Grimm's Other Tales, trans. Ruth Michaelis-Jena and Arthur Ratclifi [Edinburgh, 1956], pp. 16-18, 152).
47. Edgar Taylor's first translation was done in 1823 (German Popular Stories Translated from the Kinder und Hausmiirchen collected by M.M. Grimrn, 2 vols. [London, 1868]), with "The Frog Prince" appearing on pp. 205-210. A second edition followed in 1827, with "The Frog Prince" on pp. 209-211, and a third, entitled Gammer Grethel, with "The Frog Prince" on pp.227-232, in
1839. The revised edition noted above (n. aO) was the fourth.
48 Lucy Crane, trans., Household Stories from the Collection of the Bros. Grimm (London, 1882); "The Frog Prince," pp. 3?-36.
49 Mrs. H. B. Paull and Mr. L. A. Wheatley, Grirnm's Fairy Tales and, Household, Stories for Young People (London, 1895); "The Frog Prince," pp. 9-12.
50 Mrs. Edward Lucas, trans., Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (London, 1902), "The Frog Prince," pp. 79-85.
51 That is, in that on occasion a guiding ball or a lost ball treads to an encounter with the protagonist's future rnate, which is a far different thing from prior loss of virginity. Other instances of golden balls in traditional materials illustrate the fluidity of the symbol: a golden ball rolls into a group of playing children to announce the appearance of an ogre bent upon mischief (HDA,V,
7ffi-76\; a girl makes her escape from a giant by putting his golden ball, entrusted to her care, inside a golden ring and wishing herself horne (Addy, Household, Tales, Op. O-7); a political exile exhorts his sympathizers to "love not too much the golden ball, / But keep your conscience" (John Harland, Ballads and Sangs of Lancashire [London, 1875], p. 54). All of these "golden balls" are obviously symbols of power; even this attribution, however, is less pervasive in European tradition than that proposed by Banng-Gould and lacking in all narrative significance, the yellow sphere as the sut (HDA,V,75+=755).
52 E. F. Rimbault, A Little Book ol Songs and Ballads (London, IBSl), pp. 49-52.
53 Kdroly Kerdnyi, .Essays om a Science of Mythologl, trans. R. F. C. Hull, rev. ed., (New York, 1963), pp. l8-24; Clyde Kluckhohn, "Recurrent Themes in Myths and Mythmaking," Daedalus BB (1959), 268-279. Cornpare chap. i, n. 35.
54. Neither Baring-Gould's version of the cante-feble, which utilized the golden-ball-as-gift-of-little-man of German and English legend, nor the remaining variants, which retained from the Grimm tale only the golden-ball-given-to-girl-by-father-and-lost motif, can really explain the relatively wide distribution of the linking of the latter motif with "The Gallows Tree." As we have
seen, there is no evidence whatsoever for a traditional source for that motif. A possible solution lies in the huge and steady stream of inexpensive chapbook publications emanating from presses in Aberdeen, Faisley, Edinburgh, and Glasgow during the first half of the nineteenth century; according to F. J. Haney Darton, "there is direct evidence that [such publications] penetrated Southern nurseries," and that they "contained all the popular litelature of four centuries in a reduced and degenerate form: most of it in a form rudely adapted for use by children and poorly educated country folk. Who the adapters were no one can guess. They did not always make texts we should now choose for high moral tone" (Children's Books in England: Five Centuries of Social Life [Cambridge, Eng., 1932] pp. 79-87). It will be recalled that Baring-Gould had learned KHM 4 from such a chapbook; that some such adapter had grafted fragments of "The Gallows Tree" onto a manufactured tale involving the threat of death for the loss of the princess' golden ball borrowed frorn Taylor's translation, while perhaps incapable of proof, is at least a more credible hypothesis than that the convergence was spontaneous (see Walter Anderson, Zu Albert Wesselshi's Angriffen aul die finnische tolkloristische Forschungsrnethode, ACUT [I1] 33 iI936], 4445).
55 Collected from Seamus Mac a Baird, Innishigo, Co. Galway, 1960 (IFC MS 160?, pp. 25I-253).
56 William Andrews, "A Lancashire Ballad," NQ (ser. 6), 6 (1882), 269; .dllan M. Trout, "Greet-
ings," LCl, January 30, 1958. Cf. discussions in William Chappell and J. Woodfall Ebsworth, The Roxburghe Balloads, 5 vols. (Hertford, 18?l-1899), I,318-319, and Ne (ser.4),4 (1969), 2g4,4t7, 525;5 (1870), 95-96.
57 "The English Merchant of Chichester," Chappell and Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads,l, gZo-BZB.
58 "Die Drei Gefangenen," Erk-Bdhme 65c.
59 "Erldsung von Galgen,,' DVM ZZ.
60 "Die Bernauerin," DVM 6b.
61"The Noble Lord," in H. F. Birch-Reynardson, sussex songs (London, [n.d.]), pp. 8-9, and "Constance of Cleveland," Chappell and Ebsworth, Roxburghe-Ballads, VI, b7y-b75.
62 Wilhelm Heiske, "Rechtsbrauch und Rechtsempfinden im Volksti ed.,,, DJV Z (tgb6), 73-79; Hinrich Siuts, "Volksballaden-Volkserziihlungen (Motiv- und Typenregister)," Fabuh 5 Ig62), 72-89.
63 For a variant of Laws Q 37 from American oral tradition with notes, see Bertha McKee Dobie, "Tales and Rhymes of a Texas Household," In Texas and, Southwest Lore, PTFS 6 (1927), 56-65
64 Logan, Pedlar's pack, p. lb7.
65 W. W. Skeat, The Lay of Haaelok the Dane, EETS,extra series 4 (London, l868).
66. Karl Brunner, The Seaen Sages of Rome (Southern Version), EETS lg1 (London, 1933), xx,
204-205.
67. For a discussion of this theme in classical and medieval literature, see HDM,I, gbg-g5l.
68. Cosmo Innes, Lectures on Scottish Legat Antiquities (Edinburgh , lB72), p, ZZ4; W. S. Holds-
worth, A History af English Law, rev. ed., 14 vols. (London, 1956), II, g6g.-Th. t.rru.ity of the
concept is illustrated by the report of John A. and Alan Lomax that the father of Huddie
Ledbetter "tried to buy him out of the penitentiary, and. couldn't understand. why Captain
Flanagan wouldn't take his money and let t ir loy go home" (Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead
Belly [New York, 1936], p. 20), and by such Arnerican murder ballads as Laws ElO ..wild Bill
Jones," and Laws F6 "Rose Connolly," in which a death sentence for the protagonist is regularly
accompanied by stanzas in which the relatives try to purchase his freedom.
69 See, in addition to the examples cited above, an episod e in The Saga ol Grettir the Strong,
trans' G. A. Hight (London, 1914, 1929), pp. 140-142, and, AaT 4bl (for aiarianr of AaT 4bl from
Scots oral tradition, see "The Three Shirts of Canach Down," John G. McKay, More lVest Highland,
Tales Edinburgh and L,ondon, lg40], pp. 3a7469). rt is obvious that rescue from the gallows
itself takes many variant forrns, while rescue by payment of a large sum of money traditionally is
effected (or attempted) before that stage of the narrative is reached.
70 Anne Gilchrist and Lucy E. Broadwood, "Notes on Children's Game-Songs: The prickly Bush
(The Maid Freed from the Gallows) and trts Connection with the Story of the Golden Ball"
{rss 5 (tgl5), p. 234, and Dorothy Scarborough, on the Trail ol Negro Fotk-Song (Carnbridge,
Mass', 1925), p. 38. These assertions rnake no distinction between the hanging of .,The Gallows
Tree" and the burning of "Lady Maisry"; indeed, it is suggested that the ;prickly bush,, refrain
constitutes a reference to the bonfire materials of the latter.
71. A. Ewert, ed. The Romance of Tristan by Beroul (Oxford, lgSg), pp.26-27; Eugtne Vinaver,
ed' The Worhs of Sir Thomas Malory,3 vols. (oxford, lg47), rtI, tioE-n7g; Jonas Balys, Lithu-
anian Narratiae Folksong (Washington, D.c., 1954), p.17; Heiske, "R.echtsbrauch und Rechtsemp-
finden," P.76; Sir Freclerick Pollock and F. W. Ntaiilancl., The History of English Law before tie
Time of Ed,ward r, Z vols. (Cambridge, lgg5), lI,Z7Z,b4Z; William Andrewr,-Bygon, punishments
(London, 1931), pp. 213-221. Williarn E. Sellers ("Kinship in the British Ballads: The Historical
Evidence," sFq 20 (1956), 199-2i5) expressecl cloubt thar the kinship system upon which such an
offense would be based. obtained very generally at the time of the composition of rnost of the
British ballads (p. 20a); a satirical treatise, a Short Discourse why a lau should, pass in England, to
punish Adultery uith Death, published April 17, 1675, refers to Cromrvell's attempt to establish
adultery as a civil offense (The Harleian Miscellany,12 r,ols. ll-ondon, lBt0], VItrI, 66-6g; see also X,
240-241). Seller's opinion may not go far enough, for the versiorrs of Tristan amd. Lancelot cited
above are exceptional in the two traditions even for the period ilb0-1600.
72 Ewert, Tristan, pp. 26-27; Vinaver, Malory, xII, 1165-1 l;:B; Archer Taylor, .,'lfhemes Common
to English and German Ballaclry," MLQ I (1940), 30-31; Child, II, lt3; Karl von Amira,..Die
germanischen Todesstrafen," ABAI,II (P-H) 2l (1922),195-198. Andrews (punishmentr, pp. 90-96)
and John Laurence (a History of capital punishm,enr [New york, 1960], pp 6, g, 22) point out
that burning was until the end of the eighteenth century the preferred punishment for women, regardless of offense, although drowning (the method preferred in Lithuanian ballads according to Balys) was also favored for them (Andrews, punishments, pp. 87-89; Laurence, Capital punishment, pp. 10-11; Innes, Legal Antiquities,p. 59).
73. "Pwyll, Prince of Dyfed," in The Mabinogian, transl. Jones [rest of this footnote missing]