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arc only the worse off! As traditional song sometimes teaches its lesson through the
demonstration of conduct to be followed,
Sleep on my poor infant, you know not of my wailing,
I will cease from deep pining, I will dry up my tears,
For God in His mercy He feeds those young mvens
Whilst we widows we must mourn for OUf brave Yolunlcers.\
but far more often through that to be avoided, this particular song showing the price of
slIch a "violation" is nal much of an oddity in the "crime does not pay" universe of song.
Its likeness to the song's sC[ling, plOI, dialogue, and development notwithstanding, it
is hardly conceivable that the novel shares its moral. No doubt, this particular treatment of
the romantic revenant theme reveals a point of contact or even intersection between high
and folk literature. Emily Bronte's upbringing on the vast knowledge of regional lore of
the unlettered Tabitha Ackroyd, one of her two servant/foster mothers largely explains this
hybridization. On the other hand, songs praising fidelity in death give evidencc that, like
thc Bronte novel, mortal grief in popular expression may signify passionate lovc in positive
terms. The case thus illustrates Aries's perception of the relationships of wrincn and oral
cultures in terms of "osmosis," MikharI Bakhtine's speaking of "reciprocal inOucnces"
between them or Le Roy Ladurie's finding that "Ie folklore fait parfois d'etranges
compagnons de JiI."2
If 110t a common moral, novel and song share a certain world view. Dead relatives
visiting their own, as Bennett suggests, not only carryon the tradition of Ihe good
supernatural, they also manifest a worldview in which the power of lovc triumphs ovcr
death or testifies 10 the continuity of earthly ties across its gulP This is an all comforting
conception, quite opposite, in fact, to the preceding one: Judgment and its threat of
damnation hold no place here. Rather than the rupture of earthly life, this intimate
communication across the grave affirms the "immortality" of the deepesl relationships.
Such consolation in the song as in the novel, in spite of Bronte's methodist background
t Pcacock, Songs 2: 433, st. 9; this indeed appears to be an exceptional example of such
courage in widowhood in the repertoire, the revenant classical ballad subgenre apart.
2 Ar ics, "Culture orale et culture ccrite," Le christianisme populaire: II'S dossiers de
/'histoire, sous la direction of Bernard Plongeron ct Robert Pannet (n.p.: Centurion, 1976)
227-40; Carlo Ginzburg, Le jromage et les vcrs: L'univers d'un meunicr du XVle siecle,
trans. Monique Aymard (Paris: Flammarion, 1980) 14, referring 10 Mikharl Bllkhtine,
L'oeuvre de Franr;ois Rabelais el fa cuflUre populaire au Moyen-Age el sous Itl Nenai.fS(Jnce
(Pllris: Gllllimard, 1970); Le Roy Ladurie 606,
3Bennett, Traditions 66.