The Maid Freed from the Gallows- Krappe 1941
The Maid Freed from the Gallows
by A. H. Krappe
Speculum, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Apr., 1941), pp. 236-241
THE MAID FREED FROM THE GALLOWS
BY A. H. KRAPPE
THE ballad known under the title The Maid Freed from the Gallows is known not only from the collection of Child but also from the classical treatise of F. B. Gummere, in which it is used with great skill to prove the author's well-known theory of ballad origins.[1] In that ballad, a girl condemned to die on the gallows, we are not told why, calls upon her father and her mother to rescue her, but in vain. Finally she calls on her 'own true love,' who without hesitation pays the ransom (or bribe) and thus frees the victim. We are not told, of course, of any consequences of this peculiar interference with the king's justice. In this form, the ballad reads like a commonplace document relating an event of a type that cannot have been uncommon in Merry Old England in the long period that lies between the Norman Conquest and the end of the eighteenth century. Suffice it to recall a scene in the opening chapter of Sir Walter Scott's admirable Heart of Mid-Lothian, supposed to have occurred in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the early part of the reign of George II. What puts us on our guard is the significant fact that the same ballad has been found elsewhere, with noteworthy variations.[2]
Closely related to the ballad is an English folk-tale from Yorkshire, derived, probably, from some ballad version, as may be inferred from the verses interspersed in the prose text.[3] In this version, a girl is to be hanged for having lost a golden ball. Standing at the foot of the gallows, she invokes her mother, then her father, and lastly her brother, all in vain. At long last her lover appears, who has succeeded in getting hold of the lost ball, at the risk of his own life. He presents it to the judges and thus saves her life.
In a German ballad from Westphalia, a girl, in the power of a mysterious 'skipper' and in danger of death, successively implores her father, her brother, and her love to rescue her. The two former refuse to sell their purple coats to save her life. Her lover sells his own person (apparently because he has no purple coat or anything else of value), and thus redeems her. [4]
The rationalist method of interpreting the old ballad poetry was ready at hand with the suggestion that the mysterious 'skipper' is simply a pirate who has abducted the heroine. Unfortunately, this explanation failed to explain why the girl's life should be in danger: pirates were certainly not in the habit of slaying their fair victims but preferred to sell them at a handsome profit.
This rationalist explanation was suggested in the first place by a Sicilian ballad printed in 1874. [5] There a young woman is abducted by Tunisian pirates on the eve of her wedding or after the birth of her first child. She implores her father, her mother, her brother, her sister, and her betrothed (husband) to ransom her. Only the latter is willing to pay the price. That there is some connection between this Sicilian text and the Westphalian version, is certain: to the repeated German invocation 0 Schipmann, 0 Schipmann corresponds the Italian Marinaru, marina, marona.
The same theme is known in Catalonia, where we find a ballad known under the title La Donzella.[6] There a girl is enticed on board a ship, which sails away after she has fallen asleep. In vain does she implore the captain-again the refrain is Marinere, bon mariner-to take her back to land.[7] As before, her father, her mother, her brother, and her sister decline to ransom her; only her lover is willing to pay the price demanded, and more, for her freedom. In a Swedish ballad, Den Borts&lda (the Girl sold into captivity), the heroine is sold to the captain by her very parents. Neither her brother nor her sister is willing to ransom her; but her betrothed sells five gold ships of his own to raise the sum required.[8]
In a ballad hailing from the Faroes, the heroine is abducted by Frisian pirates. Her father and her mother decline to ransom her; her betrothed gives two of his own ships to redeem her.[9] The ballad appears even to have reached Iceland.[10] From Sweden, our ballad was carried to Estonia and Finland, where a number of variants have been noted.[11]
In a Russian ballad, the theme has become visibly debased: a drowning girl vainly implores her father and her mother to rescue her; only her lover, invoked last of all, leaps into the water and saves her.[12]
Similarly in a Bulgarian ballad, a girl, while washing some linen, falls into the Danube; her parents do not dare to pull her out, but her lover rescues her from the waves.[13]
Lastly, according to a Santal story, a Sarsagun girl is entrapped by the Bonga Kora (apparently some sort of forest sprite) on the eve of her wedding. Her parents, her elder brother, her mother's brother and her father's sister are all equally unable to free her; but her intended husband succeeds at once and rides off with her. [14]
The situation of hero and heroine is reversed in a German ballad.[15] There the prisoner is a youth whom neither his parents nor brother or sister are able or willing to free; but the girl of his heart redeems him - by sacrificing her own virginity to the nobleman, his captor.
This situation, quite unique in Western and Central Europe, is very common in the East, e.g., in Russia and other Slavonic countries. [16] Thus in a Russian folk-tale, the hero has fallen into the power of a water sprite. He returns to ask his father to follow him and to redeem him. The youth rides straight into a hole in the ice which covers the river. The old man lingers long beside the hole but returns home discouraged. The mother is no more successful, as she likewise lacks the necessary courage. His young wife, however, nothing daunted, leaps into the water after him and redeems him. [17]
In a number of Greek ballads,[18] the hero, Iannis, an only son, is preparing for his wedding, when Charos appears to fetch his soul. Upon his prayer, Saint George declares that he may live provided his parents cede fifteen of the thirty years still allotted to them.[19] Both decline to make this sacrifice. Then the saint allows Iannis to make a corresponding request of his betrothed, who gladly accedes to it. Thus the wedding takes place.
In an Armenian story, the Angel of Death is about to fetch the soul of the hero, Kaguan Asian. His father and mother decline to die for him; but his bride Margrit gives her own life, and the hero recovers. God, however, has mercy on the couple: he resuscitates Margrit and takes instead the selfish parents.[20] This tale has a close parallel in a Macedo-Rumanian song outlined by the late Moses Gaster.[21] In this song, the hero asks in turn his father, mother, brother, and sister to take out a snake from his bosom. All refuse, except the maid of his love, who pulls out from his bosom, not a snake as he pretended, but a girdle of gold studded with diamonds.
In a Hebrew collection of exempla going back to the ninth century, the following story is told: [22]
To the son of Rabbi Reuben the Libellarius the Angel of Death appears in the form of an old man at the wedding festivities. He is treated with great respect on the advice of the prophet Elijah, since the father of the bridegroom had turned upon another old
man and had sent him down from his seat at the table. When the Angel appears in terrible form, first the young man's father, then his mother offer themselves in place of the son but, being frightened, run away. Only the young bride is not frightened and intercedes on his behalf. Death has compassion, and God grants to both husband and wife seventy more years.
It is clear at once that all the variants reviewed are based upon a common theme: a girl or a youth are doomed to die. An opportunity offers itself for a near relative or a sweetheart to ransom the victim, sometimes by taking her (his) place. The victim's own parents (brother, sister) decline; but her (his) true love is willing to make any sacrifice, even that of his (her) own life, to free the beloved. In reviewing the variants, three types may be roughly distinguished, corresponding to three stages in the ballad development. The most recent of these is represented by the English ballad: the maid is to be hanged, we do not know for what offense, and a ransom (bribe) is required to save her life:
Oh father, oh father, a little of your gold,
And likewise of your fee!
To keep my body from yonder grave
And my neck from the gallows-tree.
The father (and subsequently the mother) of the victim not only decline to part with their gold, but declare outright that they have come expressly to see her hanged:
None of my gold now shall you have,
Nor likewise of my fee;
For I am come to see you hang'd,
And hanged you shall be.
Again no explanation is given for this singular ferocity of the parents. An earlier stage of the ballad development is indicated by the South European and Scandinavian texts, which show the heroine in the power of pirates demanding ransom. These texts, evidently harking back to a time when piracy was of common occurrence, are logical and to the point. They would raise no further problem, were it not for a German variant in which it is not a question of freedom and captivity but of life and death, and where the heroine is redeemed by her lover taking her place at the oar of the galley, where we have, in other words, a thinly veiled symbolism of a vicarious sacrifice.
The most archaic and original stage of the ballad evolution is represented by the Oriental (Greek, Armenian, and Hebrew) texts. There the hero (for the victim is a youth) is to die outright: the Angel of Death (Charos) appears in person to fetch his soul. His parents decline to die for him or even to cede part of their lives to him. Only his bride declares herself willing and ready to sacrifice herself.
The name of Charos, the grim god of death of the modern Greeks, throws a flood of light on the true character of the mysterious 'skipper' of the Westphalian (and also the Scandinavian and South European) texts. Charos is, of course, identical with the ancient Charon, the ferryman of the dead; but this Charon was originally none other than the god of Death in person. [23] According to a widespread notion, the world of the dead is separated from that of the living by a deep water, a river or a branch of the sea.[24] Thus the god of Death quite naturally assumed the form of a ferryman or 'skipper' who comes to fetch the souls of men.[25] The 'skipper' or pirate of the texts referred to is therefore the god of Death in person, and the young man of the Westphalian ballad, in offering to take his place at the oar of the galley if the 'skipper' will allow his beloved to go free, thereby declares himself ready to die for her.
The fact that in the English ballad it is indeed a question of life and death sufficiently proves that the ballad-makers had understood the ancient theme. It is therefore likely that the archetype of the ballad goes back to some text, such as the Westphalian ballad, in which the process of rationalization had not yet obliterated the original meaning as is the case in the Sicilian, Catalan, and Swedish variants. It is equally certain that the English ballad originated in a rather more plebeian milieu, i.e., one not too fond of symbolism and which did not shrink from replacing the finer texture of the older form by the fairly coarse scene under the gallows. This fact may also explain the ferocity shown by the girl's parents.
So far, we have limited ourselves to the modern and mediaeval variants, the oldest of which, as we have noted, is a Hebrew text going back to the ninth century. The theme is, however, considerably older.
Euripides wrote a play on the same traditional theme, the moving story of the faithful Alkestis who voluntarily sacrificed herself for her husband, King Admetos, after the latter's father and mother had declined to give their lives for their son's.[26] Here, again, the story has a happy outcome: Admetos has offered hospitality to Herakles who, strong hero that he is, wrestles with Thanatos for the possession of Alkestis and rescues her from his clutches, returning her to the arms of her husband. What makes some connection between this story and the ballads certain is the significant fact that also in the Modern Greek and Armenian versions allusion is made to a wrestling match between the Angel of Death (Charos) and the hero.[27] Euripides' play itself is based on older ballads now irretrievably lost, relating the vicarious sacrifice of Alkestis for her husband.[28]
A happy ending was provided by fusing the old theme with another, equally ancient, which related the rescue of a woman from the clutches of Death by her brothers (Helen and the Dioscures and the English ballad of Burd Ellen), by her husband, [29] or by her lover (Lancelot and Guenaver). [30]
One more feature would seem to deserve some mention. In a number of variants, both Oriental and Western, Death makes his appearance as the preparations for the hero's wedding are in progress. This fact, which brings out and stresses a curious parallelism between wedding and funeral, between the wedding torch and the torch that lights the funeral pyre, constitutes one of the favorite themes of ancient Greek (and Roman) poetry and rhetoric.[31] It confers upon these ballad variants a distinctly classical flavor, which is traditional and not due to literary borrowings from classical poets such as Ovid.
The story of Admetos and Alkestis goes back to a very old stratum of Hellenic tradition; it is clearly a product of the ancient Aegean civilization. Its subsequent vicissitudes, in the course of its migration over the European continent and as far as India, of which a sketch[32] has been attempted in the foregoing pages, is another instance of the indebtedness of the European mediaeval and modern culture to the world of Argos and Mycene, Athens and Rome. To it we owe not only our scientific methods, the processes of abstraction and generalization, induction and deduction, but also not a few of the romantic themes that enchant the heart of the listeners to ballad recitals in the market place, at the fair, and by the fireside.
PRINCETON, N. J.
Footnotes:
1 F. J. Child, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Boston, 1888, No. 95 (pt. iv, pp. 346-355; pt. vIII, pp. 481 f.); F. B. Gummere, The Popular Ballad, Boston and New York, 1907, pp. 101 ff.
2 Child, op. cit., pt. III, p. 516; pt. v, pp. 90, 231.
3 William Henderson, Notes on the Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders, London, 1879, pp. 333 ff.; J. Jacobs, More English Fairy Tales, London, 1894, pp. 12 ff.
4 L. Erk und F. M. Bohme, Deutscher Liederhort, Leipzig, 1893-1894, I, 276.
5 S. Struppa, in Nuove effemeridi siciliane, N.S., Palermo, 1874, I, 528 ff.; cf. F. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, Heilbronn, 1879, pp. 223 ff.; for other Italian variants cf. Child, pt. ix, p. Q31 and pt. x p. 296.
6 Erzherzog Ludwig Salvator, Die Balearen in Wort und Bild geschildert, Leipzig, 1871, ii, 263 ff.; cf. Liebrecht, op. cit., pp. 231 f.; Manuel Mila y Fontanals, Romancerillo cataldn, Barcelona, 1882, p. 257, No. 261; Child, pt. iv, p. 347.
7. I remember from my own childhood a modernized version of the old theme, sung by a Rhenish servant girl: the heroine is made drunk by the wily captain, who sails off with her, to sell her in Constantinople, where she is to grace a Moslem harem. The girl's refrain is: 'Ach liebster Kapitan, ach lassen Sie das sein; Sie rudern, Sie rudern, Sie rudern mich hinein!'
8 Geijer och Afzelius, Svenska Folk-Wisor, Stockholm, 1816, I, 134; A. A. Afzelius, Swenska Folkets Sago-Hdfder eller Fdderneslandets Historia, Stockholm, 1839-1843, III, 77; Child, pt. iv, p. 347 f. For German variants cf. Erk-Bohme, op. cit., I, 271 ff.; Child, pt. iv, pp. 348 f.
9 Hammershaimb, in Antiquarisk Tidsskrift, 1849-1851, pp. 95 f.; Liebrecht, pp. 234 f.
10 Hammershaimb, loc. cit., pp. 20 f.; Liebrecht, p. 236.
11 Child, pt. Iv, p. 349; pt. vmI, p. 482; pt. ix, pp. 231 ff.
12 W. R. S. Ralston, The Songs of the Russian People, London, 1872, p. 298.
13 A. Dozon, Chansons populaires bulgares, Paris, 1875, pp. 98, 288; Adolf Strauss, Bulgarische Volksdichtungen, Wien-Leipzig, 1895, pp. 441 if.; Olive Lodge, Folk-Lore, XLVI (1935), p. 311.
14 C. H. Bompas, Folklore of the Santal Parganas, London, 1909, pp. 382 ff. This Indian variant sufficiently refutes the theory of A. Lesky, Alkestis, der Mythus und das Drama (Sitzungsber. d. Wiener Akad., phil.-hist. Kl., v. 203, Abh. II), pp. 34, 36, according to which the victim is a man or a woman depending on whether the life of a woman is of lower or higher value in the estimation of a given society. All that can be safely asserted is that in the Occidental variants the current ideas of chivalry were probably responsible for the reversion in the r6les of hero and heroine.
15 Erk-Bihme, I, 151 f.; cf. Liebrecht, p. 236; Child, pt. iv, p. 349.
16 Child, pt. iv, pp. 349 f.; pt. x, p. 296.
17 W. R. S. Ralston, Russian Folk-Tales, London, 1873, pp. 360 f.
18 B. Schmidt, Das Volksleben der Neugriechen und das hellenische Altertum, Leipzig, 1871, pp. 230 ff.; Griechische Mdrchen, Sagen und Volkslieder, Leipzig, 1877, p. 36; Hermann Liibke, Neugriechische Volks- und Liebeslieder, Berlin, 1895, p. 235; D. C. Hesseling, in Verslagen en Mededeelingen der K. Akad. van Wetenschappen, Afd. Letterkunde, 4. reeks, 12. deel, Amsterdam, 1914, pp. 28 ff.
19 On this theme, cf. Hesseling, loc. cit., p. 23; Stith Thompson, Motif-Index E 165.
20 B. Chalatianz, in Zeitsch. d. Vereinsf. Volkskunde, xIx (1909), pp. 368 f.
21 Folk-Lore, vii (1896), p. 229; Studies and Texts, London, 1925-1928, II, 920; cf. Slavonic Review, xII (1933-1934), pp. 175 ff.; Marcu Beza, Paganism in Roumanian Folklore, London, 1928, pp. 148 f.
22 Moses Gaster, Folk-Lore, vII (1896), pp. 240 f.; The Exempla of the Rabbis, London-Leipzig, 1924, p. 85, No. 139; Studies and Texts, II, 931 f.
23 Lesky, op. cit., pp. 74 ff.
24 Cf. my recent book La Genese des Mythes, Paris, 1938, pp. 217 ff.
25 L. Radermacher, Das Jenseits im Mythos der Hellenen, Bonn, 1903, pp. 90 ff.; Lesky, pp. 24 f.
26 Ed. Louis Meridier, Paris, 1925 (Association Guillaume Bude); cf. L. Bloch, Alkestisstudien, in Neue Jahrbiicher, 1901, vII, Q3-50 and 113-132; Hesseling, Euripides' Alcestis en de Volkspoezie, loc. cit., pp. 1-36.
27 Lesky, p. 35.
28 Ibid., p. 43.
29 Mon. Germ. Hist., xiII (Auct. ant., Chron. Min., III, 1894), p. 107; E. Maass, Orpheus, Miinchen, 1895, p. 151, n. 43.
30 Cf. Rheinisches Museum f. Ph7lologie, N.F., LXXX (1931), pp. 113-128; Revue Celtique, XLVIII (1931), 94-123.
31 H. Giintert, Kalypso, Halle, 1919, pp. 83, 97, 186, 191, 265; Achilles Tatius, I, 13; J. C. Lawson, Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion, Cambridge, 1910, pp. 554 ff., 597 f., 601 f.
32 For a more detailed study of this ballad-type by the geographic-historical method cf. E. Pohl, 'Die deutsche Volksballade von der "Losgekauften",' Folklore Fellows Communications, No. 105.