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and beliefs, this counter-example of the behaviour to adopt towards a dead lover only
reinforces the point made by the standard piOlS.
Why, one wonders, does the girl grant him this kiss, knowing it will be fatal 10 her?
At the literal level, the girl apparently abuses her first lover's memory, and the ballad
shows her punished for her neglect of the social nanTI. In this role, she is an "offender,"
failing like her peers through moral irresponsibility. But, granting the ballad a feeling for
psychology, this seemingly "malevolent revenant" and his "unfaithful panner" might
metaphorically evoke the transitional ambiguity ofmouming. 1 The revenant might suggest
the reawakening of her love, lost but recently, and its request for a last kiss the temporary
persistence of her affection after her lover's death. She thus succumbs to her unhealed
wound, reopened on the eve of her wedding. Her granting this kiss apparently signifies
that their old ties, loosened by death and life's ongoing course, remain stronger than the
new ties she is aoout to make. Such an attitude would prove her premature commitment to
another love in spite even of her own consciousness and will. If so, the cultural statements
validate each other: the one, warning that one should not grieve for the dead excessively,
the other, that in order to secure one's own peace of mind, one should allow sufficient time
for the resolution of grief.
13.9. Ballad Moralily
The narrative contents of these ballads are never trivial: their plots evoke concerns
common to human experience, principally the achievement of love in marriage and the
resolution of grief in bereavement. The ballads show the proper time and disposition
necessary for the successful achievement of these rites of passage. To do so, they mostly
focus on some problematic situations which often end badly. Typically, a wedding turns
3Shiclds mentions two folk narratives dc!'veloping this plot. and which. as he suggests,
predate the romantic revival: "A long eighteenth-century narrative. Naflcy of YtumoUlh.
describes "the return of a dead sailor to claim in death the girl who was pledged 10 him
and who is ready to keep her pledge." Another narrative tcxt--nat surviving in oral
tradition--was Bafeman's tragedy, written at least as carly as the beginning of the
seveTltccnth-ccntury and tclling the story of a woman who brokc faith with her lovcr,
caused his suicide. was 'born away' by his ghost 'and never hcard of after.' In "Thc Dead
Lovcr's Return in Modern English Ballad Tradition," lahrbuch fiir Volksliedforschll.ng 17
(1972), 98-99.
1Two folklore studies underlinc this attitude, the second one with particular refercncc to
Ch 78: Arora 223-46 and Lindahl 165·85.