Marriage and Retribution in 'James Harris (The Dæmon Lover)'
Marriage and Retribution in 'James Harris (TheDæmon Lover)'
by David Atkinson
Folk Music Journal, Vol. 5, No. 5 (1989), pp. 592-607
[Proofed once]
Marriage and Retribution in 'James Harris (The Daemon Lover)'
DAVID ATKINSON
'JAMES HARRIS (THE DAEMON LOVER)' (Child 243) is one of more than fifty of the texts among The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, edited by Francis James Child, to exist in an early printed broadside version (Child 243 A). [1] The broadside corresponding to 'James Harris (The Daemon Lover)' was entered in the Stationers' Register on 21 February 1657 as 'A warning for married women, by the example of Mrs. Jane Renalls, a west countrey woman, &c'.[2] It is extant in a copy which dates from around this time under the title of 'A warning for married Women' (see Figure I). [3] This text carries the initials 'L. P.' at the end, and has been] ascribed by Dave Harker to Laurence Price, a prolific writer of broadsides in the mid seventeenth century.[4] Price was also the author of broadside versions of 'Robin Hood's Golden Prize' (Child 147) and 'The Famous Flower of Serving-Men' (Child 106), which were entered in the Stationers' Register on 2 June 1656 and 14 July 1656 respectively. [5]
'A warning for married Women', the broadside version of 'James Harris (The Daemon Lover)', tells how a woman from Plymouth, called Jane Reynolds, was courted by a seaman, named James Harris, and how they secretly exchanged vows of marriage. The day was even set for their public wedding celebration, but in the meantime he was pressed to sea as a sailor. After waiting three years for his return, she heard that he was dead. A neighbouring carpenter, also having heard this news, then came to court her and they were quickly married. They lived together happily for four years and had three children. However, one night when the carpenter was briefly absent from home, the spirit of James Harris appeared. He had returned to take her away as his wife. She was reluctant to leave the carpenter and her children, but the spirit insisted, pointing out that he had forsaken a king's daughter for her sake. He promised to 'forgive all that is past' if she should go with him. She asked what means he had to support her, to which he replied that he had seven ships upon the sea, and this apparent wealth seemed to gain her consent. She left England in his company and was never seen again. When the carpenter returned to find her gone, he hanged himself, leaving the children fatherless: 'But yet no doubt but heavenly powers, / will for them well provide', concludes the broadside.
'A warning for married Women' was reprinted several times in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries before the appearance in print of a markedly different version entitled 'The Distressed Ship Carpenter' (Child 243 B). [6] This text opens not with the courtship and marriage vows of the seaman and the woman, who are both now anonymous, but with the sailor's return to entice his 'own true love' away from her ship-carpenter husband. He insisted that he had rejected a king's daughter for her sake, and again she was reluctant to go but was persuaded by assurances of his wealth. When they had not long been at sea, she started to weep for her little son left behind, but then both the mariner and the woman were drowned and never heard of any more, leaving the ship-carpenter to curse mariners in general for the abduction of his wife.
This 'standard' form of the ballad, beginning with the greeting between the James Harris figure and the woman, is then retained in versions taken down from singers by nineteenth-century Scottish collectors, and given various titles. In 'James Herries'\ (Child 243 C), Jeanie Douglas was enticed away from her carpenter husband by her 'first true-love', James Herries, who again stated that he might have married a king's daughter, and displayed evidence of his wealth. When she began to regret her husband and her son left behind in Scotland, he promised to show her the banks of Italy, but then told her that 'I brought you away to punish you / For the breaking your vows to me', and that he would show her instead the bottom of the sea. At that he reached up to the topmast and sank the ship drowning all on board, and leaving the carpenter to lament when he heard of his wife's flight. In 'The Carpenter's Wife' (Child 243 D), which is a fragment, the James Harris figure told the woman 'I am come to seek my former vows, / That ye promisd me before'. After they had set sail and she had begun to think of her husband and son, the James Harris figure promised to show her the banks of Italy, but then his countenance grew grim and he told her that he would show her the bottom of the sea, at which he threw her overboard into the main. 'The Daemon Lover' (Child 243 E, F) retains the mention of former vows at the beginning, the forsaken king's daughter, and the evidence of wealth. Once at sea, though, the countenance of the James Harris figure changed, and the woman started to weep, but this time because she had caught sight of his cloven foot, identifying him as the Devil. He then showed her the hill(s) of heaven, where she should never be, and the 'hill' or 'mountain' of hell where they were both destined to go, after which he sank the ship. 'The Damon Lover' (Child 243 G) is a fragment lacking the beginning of the story, but is otherwise essentially the same, althought he woman began to weep for her little son before she spied the cloven foot of the James Harris figure.
When the ballad has been collected from singers in North America, where it is one of the commonest of British ballads, it is often given the title of 'The House Carpenter', which reflects a significantly changed emphasis. In the versions which remain closest to the British ballad, they open with the return from sea of an old 'true love', who had forsaken a king's daughter whom he might have married, in order to entice the woman away from her house-carpenter husband. She simply went with him, although after some weeks she began to weep for the child whom she would never see again. The ship then sprang a leak and sank. Both the former vows and the supernatural element tend to be absent from North American versions, the loss of the latter being a characteristic process of the transatlantic dissemination of traditional ballads. [7] Similarly, these aspects are largely missing from the few versions collected in England in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which may indicate the influence of the printed text of 'The Distressed Ship Carpenter', or else that of North American versions, or both. [8] The ballad of 'The Daemon Lover', as sung by British revival singers of the later twentieth century, is often a composite piece.
[figure 1 figure 2)
The former vows and the nature of the revenant are therefore distinguishing features of the British, or perhaps specifically Scottish, versions of the ballad collected from singers. As such they require some explanation, since there is a degree less clarity of motivation in 'James Harris (The Daemon Lover)' than is usual in the ballads of Child's collection in which the dead return to visit the living. These revenant ballads have been divided into two groups, according to the number of different roles taken by characters in each tale. [9] In those of a core group with just two tale roles of revenant and visited, such as 'Proud Lady Margaret' (Child 47) or 'The Unquiet Grave' (Child 78), there are fairly evident explanations for the inability of the dead to rest and their consequent behaviour towards the living. However, 'James Harris (The Daemon Lover)' belongs rather with a second group of more diverse ballads, in which three more tale roles are superimposed on the two of the core group. In these, the motivation of the revenant is sometimes less than clear, as in 'The Suffolk Miracle' (Child 272), although the association with 'Willie's Fatal Visit' (Child 255) does suggest the return of the dead to punish a perceived sin. [10] Such a purpose is indeed apparent in 'James Herries', where the revenant is inspired by retribution, 'I brought you away to punish you / For the breaking your vows to me'. Nevertheless, in most versions of 'James Harris (The Dæmon Lover)' the behaviour of the ghost or dæmon in sinking the ship is rather perverse for a former lover come to seek the fulfilment of old vows, while as the Devil he is less than explicit about his reason for taking the woman away to hell. The appearance of the Devil himself is anyway very unusual in traditional ballads, and their revenants do not readily lend themselves to transformation into the Devil in the course of transmission. When on occasion human beings are threatened with hell (rather than a pagan otherworld), there is normally a very strong sense of just retribution, as in 'The Cruel Mother' (Child 20), a German analogue to which actually has Satan carry away the mother when she denies that the children are hers." The characteristic revenant of the traditional ballads, though, is rather 'the living dead man', who belongs literally in the grave. [12] Such, for instance, are the 'corpse o clay' in 'Sweet William's Ghost' (Child 77 F), the ghost who says that 'the wee worms are my bedfellows, / And cauld clay is my sheets' in 'Proud Lady Margaret' (Child 47 A), and the sons for whom the mother makes up a bed in 'The Wife of Usher's Well' (Child 79). The ghost of 'James Harris (The Dæmon Lover)' does, however, carry the woman across a water boundary, a common ballad motif, although this is amenable to a rather mundane explanation in James Harris' former occupation as a seaman. [13] There is also some suggestion of a physical location identified with the otherworld, as in several traditional ballads, in the 'hill' or 'mountain' of hell in 'The Dæmon Lover'. [14]
Fortunately, the existence of 'A warning for married Women', the broadside version of 'James Harris (The Dæmon Lover)', means that it may be possible to elucidate further the significance of the former vows and the nature of the revenant. The great advantage of early broadsides is that they can be assigned, if only with some difficulty since their publication was not always entered in the Stationers' Register, to a particular period and cultural context. The broadside trade flourished primarily in London in the later sixteenth century and the seventeenth century and beyond, producing new broadside ballads and reprints of old ones in numbers which indicate the existence of a considerable commercial market for such publications. Initially, this was largely metropolitan in scope but later it became more extensive. Many of the broadsides are journalistic in subject, and often rather moralistic in tone. They tend to be leisurely in their manner of telling a story, perhaps in part so as to fill out a folio sheet, and some are the works of identifiable authors. These are all characteristics which separate them from the traditional ballads of Child's collection. On the other hand, where traditional ballads exist in broadside form there is clearly some connection to be made between the different types of song, while bearing in mind the particular circumstances of broadside production.
One immediate consideration here is that Laurence Price's composition of 'A warning for married Women' does not necessarily represent the beginning of 'James Harris (The Dæmon Lover)'. It is quite conceivable that writers for the busy broadside trade sometimes simply wrote down ballads already in circulation, perhaps in the process altering them to accord with broadside conventions. There is some evidence that on occasion this did happen. Thus 'Lord Thomas and Fair Annet' (Child 73) has been shown to be a reworking of a European ballad represented by a French archetype known as 'Les Tristes Noces', and the central motif of the forsaken girl appearing at her lover's wedding can be traced in a French lyric of the twelfth century.[15] The version known as 'Lord Thomas and Fair Ellinor' exists as a broadside in copies of the later seventeenth century, and represents a quite considerable refashioning of the basic ballad into a form which has nonetheless become stabilized in England and North America by frequent reprinting. [16] 'Riddles Wisely Expounded' (Child 1) is found in a manuscript of the mid fifteenth century, and tales based upon such riddles are common in folklore.[17] A broadside version was subsequently entered in the Stationers' Register on 1 March 1675.[18] A slightly different and less conclusive instance is that of 'The Suffolk Miracle', which is nevertheless of interest because the role of the revenant bears some slight resemblance to that in 'James Harris (The Dæmon Lover)'. Here the widespread parallels to the central situation to be found in folk tales and ballads suggest that the English broadside version extant in copies of the later seventeenth century represents the localizing of a pre-existent motif.[19] Then references to stories and songs about Robin Hood as early as the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries make it seem probable that some of the Robin Hood ballads which were published in broadside versions were already in circulation. [20] Likewise, some of the historical ballads might well predate their appearance as broadsides. Thus sixteenth century and in broadsides of the seventeenth century. The deaths of the eponymous heroes of 'Sir Andrew Barton' (Child I67) and 'Johnie Armstrong' (Child I69) occurred in 1511 and 1530.[21] 'Sir Andrew Barton' is found in a manuscript in a sixteenth-century hand, but broadside versions of the two ballads were not entered in the Stationers' Register until 1 June 1629 and 26 March 1658 respectively. [22] Finally, Thomas Deloney's version of 'The Fair Flower of Northumberland' (Child 9) recorded in The Pleasant History of John Winchcomb (1597) might just offer a unique view of the author, who was well known as a writer of broadsides, taking down a ballad already in circulation; he describes how a group of 'maidens in dulcet manner chanted out this song, two of them singing the Dittie, and all the rest bearing the burden'. [23] The printed version comes close to the ballad as collected later from singers, but includes one or two turns of phrase which seem characteristic of broadside writing.
Harker's extensive reading of 'A warning for married Women', in the context of Laurence Price's other known work and of the broadside trade of the mid seventeenth century, has described it as essentially a tale of adultery (with a spirit) operating as a warning to married women not to transgress the bounds of matrimony. [24] Jane Reynolds is considered to be materialistic in going with her now wealthy former lover, James Harris, as well as unfaithful, lacking in proper concern for her family, and generally undisciplined. The story is thus represented as a reinforcement of prevailing patriarchal family relationships, in a manner quite compatible with Price's other known work, designed for a receptive contemporary market. The effect is, in fact, not unlike that of the North American ballad of 'The House Carpenter'. Nevertheless, the broadside raises a wide range of additional questions which are not fully answered by a largely secular reading.[25] In particular, the significance of the solemn vows made by Jane Reynolds and James Harris, and the nature of the revenant or spirit who takes her away, invite further investigation. These are, of course, precisely the features which distinguish the ballad of 'James Harris (The Daemon Lover)' as collected from British singers.
Fortuitously, 'A warning for married Women' can be connected with another, analogous, and apparently related broadside. This is entered in the Stationers' Register on 8 June 1603 as 'A warning for fayre maides by th[e] example of Jarmans wyfe', on 14 December 1624 as 'Bateman', and on 1 March 1675 as 'A godly warning for all maidens'. [26] It is extant in a copy probably dating from the mid seventeenth century, entitled 'A Warning for Maidens' (see Figure 2). [27] It tells the story of an unnamed woman in Nottinghamshire who secretly exchanged vows of marriage with her lover, Young Bateman. Afterwards, however, she denied her vow and married a widower named Jerman, 'Because he was of greater wealth, / and better of degree'. At this, Bateman warned her that she would never thenceforth be at peace and that he would have her, 'either now alive or dead, / when I am laid in grave'. He then hanged himself on the day of her wedding with Jerman. The bride subsequently fancied herself haunted by Bateman's ghost, which was constantly before her eyes, and which disturbed the night with cries and groans and reiterations of his determination to possess her. She was preserved just so long as she was pregnant with Jerman's child and consequently harbouring an innocent life, but, once it was born, Young Bateman's ghost came in the night and carried her away, never to be seen again. The final moral of the broadside is both an encouragement to maintain faith in love, and a more terrible warning of divine punishment for vow-breaking or perjury.
'Warning' titles are fairly common for broadsides which relate the exploits and unhappy ends of various wicked types of characters, but 'A Warning for Maidens' and 'A warning for married Women' are sufficiently similar to suggest a deliberate interplay. This is reinforced by the fact that in some copies of 'A warning for married Women', including the earliest known exemplar, dating from around the time of composition, the title 'Bateman' is one of those given for the common tune to which it was to be sung. This is perhaps best known as 'The Lady's Fall', the tune title given in 'A Warning for Maidens'. [28] The two broadsides are similar in length and in theme, and both present their stories as factual, with names and places specified. There are differences of detail in that in 'A Warning for Maidens' the time-scale is shorter than in 'A warning for married Women', the woman marries again while Young Bateman is known to be still alive, and it is the first rather than the second husband who hangs himself. The spirit does not quite engage the woman in conversation in 'A Warning for Maidens' as it does in 'A warning for married Women', but in both broadsides the ghost simply vanishes with its victim who is never seen again. There is, however, a more overtly moralizing mode of expression in 'A Warning for Maidens'. By way of comparison, 'A Warning for Maidens' opens with a declaration of moral purpose, while 'A warning for married Women' begins with a statement of fact. The more integral references to divinity in 'A Warning for Maidens' reveal that its context is more plainly one of popular Christian theology. The revenant is described 'James Harris (The Daemon Lover)' in the course of the broadside as 'ghost', 'spirit', and 'Fiend'. By the final stanza it is evident that it is both the restless spirit of the deceased husband come to reclaim his wife, and the instrument of God's retributive justice come to punish the guilty sinner.
[Figure 2 'A Warning for Maidens', from The Roxburghe Ballads, I, 500 By permission of the British Library
This dual emphasis is possible because, in early seventeenth-century England, according to ecclesiastical law which regulated such matters, all that was strictly required for the formation of a valid marriage contract was the mutual consent of the two persons involved. [29] The unqualified exchange of consent in words of the present tense, known as spousals de praesenti, constituted a marriage contract which was deemed irregular until publicly celebrated in church, but which nonetheless made the couple husband and wife with immediate effect. Any subsequent marriage with another partner would constitute a breach of precontract and be invalid. An agreement in words of the future tense, known as spousals de futuro, merely represented a promise to marry at some time yet to come. Either type of contract could be accompanied by a formal oath, which would make spousals de futuro almost as legally binding as spousals de praesenti. Not only could marriage by spousals quite legally be contracted entirely in secret, but such contracts were also considered binding in the sight of God:
albeit there be no Witnesses of the Contract, yet the Parties having verily, (though secretly) Contracted Matrimony, they are very Man and Wife before God; neither can either of them with safe Conscience Marry elsewhere, so long as the other party liveth; for proof is not of the Essence of Matrimony; and if it were, yet their Consciences shall be as a thousand Witnesses before the Tribunal of the immortal God, though it be otherwise in the Judgment of mortal Man. [30]
Promises of marriage could therefore be considered in the same light as other vows or oaths sealed by the invocation of God's name, so that to break them involved a kind of perjury. This is evident from the sermon 'Against swearing and periurie' among the homilies of the Church of England, which were read in parish churches and reprinted throughout the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The sermon distinguishes lawful and unlawful promises, and demonstrates by reference to the scriptures the threat of divine punishment for breaking the former or carrying out the latter. Among the legitimate promises are marriage vows, 'By like holie promise, the Sacrament of Matrimonie knitteth man & wife in perpetuall loue, that they desire not to bee separa[t]ed for any displeasure or aduersitie that shall after happen'. [31] Consequently, to break a marriage vow was to invite divine punishment, and popular theology as reflected in popular literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries incorporated the idea of the ready intervention of divine Providence in human affairs to punish individuals guilty of particular sins. Popular drama, news pamphlets, and broadsides all habitually interpret real or imagined events in terms of the operation of Providence. [32] This could involve either natural or supernatural means, but even spirits might act as agents of Providence. By way of illustration, the Devil appears in person to destroy a man who had murdered his wife and afterwards perjured himself in a broadside entitled 'Strange and true News from Westmoreland' extant in copies of the later seventeenth century.
In actual fact, the law which allowed marriages to be contracted in secret was plainly open to abuse, and often the system of spousals seems to have been inadequately understood and treated in a casual manner.[33] Although in medieval times the ecclesiastical courts had handled numerous cases of breach of precontract by both men and women, these were much less frequent by the seventeenth century.[34] It was becoming more the norm for marriages to be solemnized in church, not least because the civil law which regulated all the property arrangements involved in marriages recognized only those publicly celebrated in church. However, it was still not uncommon for couples to be contracted by one or other type of spousals prior to a church wedding. Marriage by spousals was replaced by civil marriage under the Commonwealth in 1653, and although it was reinstated with the Restoration and not properly superseded until 1753, as a legal system it increasingly fell into disuse as the seventeenth century progressed. Private and legally unenforceable contracts of a similar kind, however, may have continued to flourish. Another broadside, extant in a copy of the later seventeenth century, which incorporates the motif of the broken precontract, with the subsequent divine punishment of the offender through the intervention of Providence, is 'The Broken Contract; or, The Perjured Maiden'. Here a woman who made a vow of marriage with a merchant, but afterwards attempted to marry a knight, was struck dumb as the wedding ceremony was taking place, and then died within a day or two. A play which is modelled quite closely on 'A Warning for Maidens' is The Vow-Breaker; or, The Fair Maid of Clifton by William Sampson, which was published in 1636. Moreover, chapbooks re-telling the story of Young Bateman and his ill-fated wife were published throughout the eighteenth century under the title of Bateman's Tragedy; or, The Perjur'd Bride Justly Rewarded. The play appears to assert that the tale was a true one and took place ninety years previously, and it certainly looks as if it was familiar in the seventeenth century and quite probably earlier. More generally, there is a strong presumption that the connected motifs of the broken marriage vow and the return of the spirit to reclaim and punish his lawful wife were current in popular tradition. [35]
Thus the secret contract of marriage offers a key to the action of both 'A Warning for Maidens' and 'A warning for married Women'. The revenant spirit in the latter, as in the former, can be explained as the agent of Providence enacting a divine punishment for the woman's perjury. The broadsides therefore employ popular theology to reinforce their emphasis on fidelity in marriage. The title of the earlier one offers a warning to maidens as yet unmarried to enter into matrimony with care and then to keep their marriage vows or risk punishment. The title of the later one similarly offers a warning to women already married to keep their vows and remain faithful within marriage, on pain of punishment. It is to James Harris, though, that Jane Reynolds would have to be considered to be married, even when she has heard of his death and has born children to the carpenter, on this model. The difference between the two broadsides, represented by the fact that in 'A warning for married Women' the woman had heard of her husband's death, means that it appears to support an especially rigid insistence on marital fidelity. Moreover, the context of the two broadsides with their pointed titles suggests that female fidelity in particular is being promoted, which would generally accord with the treatment of women in Laurence Price's other known works, and may be why the apparently traditional motifs incorporated into 'A warning for married Women' appealed to him as a writer. [36] In addition, the comparison with 'A Warning for Maidens', in which the woman married Jerman for his wealth and status, may also shed some light on Jane Reynolds' curious questioning of the spirit as to his means. It might be inferred that Jane Reynolds could have accepted the carpenter, whom she describes as being 'of great fame', for the same reasons, rendering her materialism at least consistent. [37] Finally, in drawing upon the motif of the broken precontract and hence the whole system of marriage by spousals, which was falling into disuse at the time he was writing, Price was perhaps looking back towards a time when popular theology represented a more potent source of social control than in the later seventeenth century.
Undoubtedly, the process of printing and reprinting for an active broadside trade sustained the life of the form of 'James Harris (The Demon Lover)' represented by 'A warning for married Women'. By the time that the 'standard' form in which the ballad has been collected from singers first appeared in print as 'The Distressed Ship Carpenter', the legal, social, and theological climate which had given a place in the popular imagination to the efficacy of secret contracts of marriage, and also to the threat of the supernatural intervention of divine Providence in human affairs, was effectively superseded. This text accordingly lacks both the beginning part of the ballad, concerning the secret and subsequently broken marriage contract, and also the ghostly revenant. In later British versions collected from singers, there usually remains a fleeting mention of former vows, and the ghost is transformed into a 'dæmon' or the Devil himself. There is a strong probability that the alteration of the ballad in line with cultural change did not take place fairly suddenly in the eighteenth century, but rather over a period of time in oral circulation, perhaps interacting with print. The character whose cloven foot the woman suddenly spies in 'The Daemon Lover' provides the basis of a compelling but somewhat irrational supernatural ballad, the more terrifying because of the Devil's totally unexpected appearance. In the North American ballad of 'The House Carpenter', the woman plainly belongs with her carpenter husband and not at all with the former lover, so the sinking of the ship involves a degree of moralistic justice, but the effect is
largely one of chance. For earlier generations, though, it is reasonable to suppose that a ballad of 'James Harris (The Dæmon Lover)' would have shared some of the meanings of 'A warning for married Women'. Consequently, in this case the folklore of the traditional ballad, often classed as essentially pagan with only the occasional intrusion of Christian beliefs, has some basis in popular theology. The ballad, it seems, could have intimated both horror and retribution.
Notes
1 The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, edited by Francis James Child, 5 vols (Cambridge, Mass.: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, i88z-98), reprinted edition (New York: Dover, I965).
2 A Transcript of the Registers of the Worshipful Company of Stationers: From 1640-1708 A.D., [edited by G. E. Briscoe Eyre and Charles Robert Rivington], 3 vols (London: privately printed, I913-14), II, II4.
3 'A warning for married Women. By the Example of Mrs. Jane Renalds, a West-Country Woman, born neer unto Plymouth; who having plighted her troth to a Sea-man, was afterwards Married to a Carpenter, and at last carried away by a Spirit: the manner how shall be presently recited. To a gallant West-country tune, cal'd, The fair maid of Bristol; Or, Bateman, or, John True', University of Glasgow Library, Euing Collection of English Broadside Ballads, no. 377.
4 Dave Harker, 'The Price You Pay: An Introduction to the Life and Songs of Laurence Price', in Lost in Music: Culture, Style and the Musical Event, edited by Avron Levine White, Sociological Review Monographs, 34 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, I987), pp. 107-63.
5 [Eyrea nd Rivington]I, I, 62, 73.
6 'The Distressed Ship Carpenter', in The Rambler's Garland, Composed of some Delightful New Songs[ Newcastle?I,7 85?], pp. 5-7. Last L eaves o f Traditional Ballads a nd Ballad Airs Collected in Aberdeenshirbey the Late Gavin G reig, e ditedb y Alexander K eith (Aberdeen: Buchan C lub, 1925), p. I96, notes an earlier p rinting o f substantiallyth e same version in A Collection of Diverting Songs (1737), p. 466.
7 See Bertrand Harris Bronson, The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads with their Texts, According to the Extant Records o f Great Britain and America, 4 vols (Princeton N, .J.: Princeton University P ress, 1 959-72), III, 429-96. Of the many North American versions recorded here, only a few (nos 18, 84, 123, I41) include any mention of former vows, and
none has the Devil betrayed by his cloven foot.
8 See John Burrison", 'James Harris" in Britain Since Child', (1967), 271-84; Alisoun G ardner-Medwin', The Ancestry of "The H ouse-Carpenter": A Study of the Family History of the American Forms of Child 243', Journal of American Folklore, 84 (197I), 414-27.
9 David Buchan, 'Tale Roles and Revenants: A Morphology of Ghosts', Western Folklore, 45 (I986), 143-58.
10 Buchan, p. 155. Also belonging to this group is 'The Knight's Ghost'( Child 265), where the revenant returns to rectify a clearly d efined w rong.
11 Lowry Charles Wimberly, Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads (Chicago:U niversity of Chicago Press, I928), pp. 4I4-I5; Child, I, 219-20.
12 Wimberly, pp. 229-39.
13 See Wimberly, pp. 108-10.
14 See Wimberly, pp. 121-38; E. B. Lyle,' The Visions in "St Patrick's Purgatory"", Thomas of Erceldoune", "Thomas the Rhymer" and "The Damon Lover"', Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 72 (I97I), 7I6-22.
15 M . J. C. Hodgart, The Ballads, second edition (London: Hutchinsoni, 962), pp. 88-95.
16 Hodgart, pp. I04-05.
17 Child, I, I-3, 6-I4; Antti Aarne, The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography, translated and revised by Stith Thompson, second revision, FF Communications, 184 (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 19 61), no. 812.
18 [Eyre and Rivington], 1496.
19 Child, v, 58-65; Stith Thompson, Motif-Index o f Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative E lements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, F ables, Mediaeval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books and Local Legends, revised edition, 6 vols (CopenhagenR: osenkilde and Bagger, I95 5-58), E215; Aarne 365.
20 See E. K. Chambers, English Literature at the Close of the Middle Ages, Oxford History of English Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1945), pp. 129-37.
21 Child, III, 3 3 4-3 8, 3 6 z-67; IV, 5 O.
22 A Transcript of the Registers of the Company o f Stationers o f London:1 554-I1640 A.D., edited b y Edward A rber, 5 vols (Londona nd Birminghamp:r ivatelyp rinted,I 875-94), IV, 213; [Eyrea nd Rivington]I, I, 171.
23 T. D., The P leasant H istory o f John W inchcomb, ninth e dition (London, 1633), sig. F3r.
24 Harker, pp. I 5 6-59.
25 See Harker, pp. 1 3 5-3 9.
26 Arber, III, 236; IV, 13I; [Eyrea nd Rivington] I, I , 497.
27 'A Warning for Maidens: To the Tune of, The Ladies fall', British L ibrary, Roxburghe Ballads, I, 501.
28 Claude M. Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and its Music (New Brunswick: Rutgers U niversity P ress, 1966), pp. 368-71. The habit of referring to a broadside already in circulation for the tune was common. Simpson, p.370, refers to 'The West-countrey Gentlemans last Will & Testament', to be sung to the tune 'I am James Harris call'd by name, or Ladies Fall'. The other titles for the tune given in 'A warning for married Women' are 'The Fair Maid of Bristol' and 'John True'. Although the former has not been definitely identified, it is possible that it was chosen for its West Country associations. The latter relates to a broadside entitled 'Two unfortunate Lovers, or, a true Relation of the lamentable end of Iohn True, and Susan Mease', entered in the Stationers' Register on 13 June 1631. See Arber, iv, 254. A number o f early seventeenth-century broadsides went to the tune of 'The Lady's Fall', 'most of them dealing with crimes, monstrous births, or warnings of God's judgment' (Simpson, p. 369).
29 The leading a ccount o f the law concerning marriage contracts is Henry Swinburne, A Treatise of Spousals, or Matrimonial Contracts (London, i686). He was judge of the Prerogative Court at York and died in 1624, althoughh is work was not published until later in the seventeenth century when the laws he describes were largely superseded. See also Joseph Jackson, The Formation and Annulment of Marriage, second edition (London: Butterworth, 1969), PP. 7-27. 30 Swinburne, p. 87.
31 Certaine Sermons a ppointed by the Queenes Majestie, 2 vols ([London]I, 58 7), i, sig. F 6r. The language of this description comes close to that of the Roman Catholic doctrine which held marriage to be a divinely instituted sacrament, administered through the contract, to which many Protestant still largely held after the Reformation. See George Hayward Joyce, S. J. , Christian Marriage: An Historical and Doctrinal Study, second edition, Heythrop Series, I (London: Sheed' and Ward, 1948), pp. 182-83.
32 See Louis B. Wright, Middle Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935), PP.420, 459-63; Henry Hitch Adams, English Domestic; or, Homiletic Tragedy 1575 to 1642, Columbia University Studies i n English and Comparative Literature, 159 (New York: Columbia U niversity P ress, 1943), pp.1 8-24; Sandra Clark, The Elizabethan Pamphleteers: Popular Moralistic Pamphlets 1580-I640 (London: A thloneP ress,I 983), p. 89.
33 RalphA . Houlbrooke,T heE nglishF amily1 450-1700, Themes in British S ocial H istory (London: Longman, I984), PP. 78-80.
34 R. H. Helmholz,M arriageL itigationin Medieval England, C ambridge Studies in English Legal H istory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), PP. 57-66, 165-86; Ralph Houlbrooke, C hurch C ourts a nd the People D uring t he English R eformation 1520-1570, Oxford Historical Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 56-67; Martin I ngram', Spousals Litigation in the English Ecclesiastical Courts, c. 1350 - c. 1640', in Marriage and Society: Studies in the Social History of Marriage, edited by R. B. Outhwaite, Europa Social History of Human Experience (London: Europa P ublications, 1981), PP. 35- 57
35 See Thompson, E200, E210, E211, E2I4, E215, E221, N39I, Q252.
36 See Harker, pp. 145-48. It is doubtful, though, to what extent views such as Price's representa response to contemporary co nditions as regard marriage and the family, which may not have undergone much change in the course of the seventeenth century. See Houlbrooke, The English Family 1450-1700, p. 34. Nevertheless, texts aimed at upholding marital fidelity in a patriarchal society do often make examples of unfaithful women. By way of contrast, a man who failed to fulfil his vow of marriage to a woman is threatened with divine punishment for perjury in a broadside by Price's contemporary, Martin Parker, entitled 'The Distressed Virgin', entered in the Stationers' Register on 1 June 1629. See Arber, IV, 213.
37 See H arker, p. 137 . In the play and the chapbooks on the Bateman story, parental pressure to marry the more wealthy s uitor i s evident, a nd explains t he secrecy o f the marriage with Young Bateman.