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13.8.3. Ballads versus Mourning
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What of those hero(in}es "offended" by a third character or circumstance, yet rescued
and rehabilitated 10 life? What do the ballads teach through these exceptionally lucky
escapes: trust to chance and revenants in the last resort? On the basis of his talerolc
analysis of the fourteen ballad types featuring a revenant in Child, David Buchan
distinguishes a core group of five, in which the revenant makes a consistent appearance.
From their common structure,
a central relationship has been severed by the death of one member; this
person (or people, if children are involved) returns as revenant to rectify
an emotional imbalance in the life of the other caused in greater or lesser
part by the dislocation of the death.
he proposes their cultuml functioning:
The ballads of this subgeneric group explore the psychological states
generated by death and the severance of a relationship, and for the dangers
of these states provide remedies which will help the individual towards
adjustment and the restoration of balance. t
The types directly concerned by my questions (Ch 77. 78) belong to this core group.
and their ewfoundland versions suggest some meaningful variation in this respect.
Although variation between the British and local versions is minor in comparison with the
recurrence of plots and motifs, there is a fell emphasis in ewfoundland on the point the
subgenre wants to make.
To start with, the twenty-eight versions of "Sweet William's Ghost" (Ch 77) recorded
in the province attest the particular appeal of this ballad locally, unmatched in either the
British or American repertoires. The main idea of the plot, as Child indicates, is the dead
lover's return to his true love to ask back his unfulfilled troth plight. The girl does not
suspect that her visitor is a dead man. and objects that she will keep his love token until he
manies her with a ring. When he makes it clear that it is but his revenant speaking to her,
she finally returns his troth. She accompanies him back to the churchyard where his bones
are buried and wishes only to join him in the grave. He invariably answers that there is no
room for her there. On hearing the cock crow, he must go back to the dead. The
1Buchan, "Talc" 146 and 150. The author has confirmed and developed this proposition in
"Affinities" 333-39.