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Oh dig me a grave long, narrow, and deep,
Covered all over with lilies so sweet,
That I may lie in it and take my sleep,
Away from false maidens forever.!
Now she kissed his cold lips in her sorrow
And the lears told the depth of her grief
And before the sun sets on tomorrow
It will bring to young Nancy relief.2
Lyrical song bears other marks of pathos in relation to mourning, such as lovers
parting "never to meet again,"3 everlasting memory of loved one, unrecoverable joy in life,
etc.:
I'm very lonely now, Mary, for the poor make no new friends,
But oh they love the better still the few our father sends;
and you were alii had, Mary, my blessing and my pride,
There's nothing else to care for now since my poor Mary died.
I'm bidding you a long farewell, my Mary kind and true,
But I'll not forget you, darling, in that land I'm going to;
For lhey say there's bread and work for all, and the sun shines always there,
But I'll never forget my Mary were it fifty times as fair. 4
SlH.:h ostentatious expression of the victim's grief has powerful moralizing potential.
If not her deceitful lover, "God in his mercy" hears her plea for death, grallling even thaI of
her unborn child in answer to her motherly concern. Heaven fully sanctions ViclOrian
morality and mourning, and 10 the victims of evil or fate it now grants relief as it once
granted rest:
"So I'll go down in some lonely valley and there I will lay down,
And pray 10 the Almighty God 10 have mercy on my souL"
Where she kissed her baby's pale cold lips and laid it by her side,
She cast her eyes to heaven, the son and mother died. 5
Oh now I am leaved as a poor distressed widow,
Scarce twelve months married as you may plainly see,
Me 10 beg for my bread among cold hard-hearted strangers.
Kind heavens look down on my infant and me!6
IPcacock, Songs 2: 442, st. 7.
2MUNFLA JTlS 78-236. p. 191, Sl. 8.
3Pcacock, Songs 3: 721. st. 9.
4 Peacock. Songs 2: 463, st. 4-5.
5PC