The Murder Motive in "Edward"- Coffin 1949
The Murder Motive in "Edward" by Tristram P. Coffin
Western Folklore, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Oct., 1949), pp. 314-319
[proofed once, briefly, first footnote is missing]
The Murder Motive in "Edward"
TRISTRAM P. COFFIN
IN "Edward" and "Sven i Rosengard," Archer Taylor's extensive and definitive study of Child ballad 13, the author was unable to come to any satisfactory conclusion concerning the motive of the murderer in the original and now lost story. Citing the unique Finnish explanation, "Why did you stab your brother?" "Because he put my wife to shame,"' as unlikely, on the grounds that this important trait has disappeared from all other traditions of the song, and not completely understanding the Anglo-American motive, "What about did the plea begin?"
"It began about the cutting of a willow wand
That would never been a tree,"[2]
Taylor retires with the statement:
In any event, we cannot re-create the original with any confidence. The omissions, losses, and corruptions exemplified by our texts are quite in keeping with what we might expect. Ballad style gives the advancing stages of the action in high light and does not linger over or preserve explanatory details. Of course, the readiness with which details and even essential matters are lost increases with the degeneration of a ballad, and "Edward," we must remember, has been recovered only in the last stages of decay.[3]
Two years after Taylor published this, Phillips Barry, offering no references to back up his remarks, wrote in the Bulletin of the Folk Song Society of the Northeast that,
It is hard to escape the conclusion that The Two Brothers, Lizie Wan, in which a brother kills his sister for betraying their love, and Edward, a ballad of fratricide, in which the motive is the love of a pre-nubile girl, are spalds of a common stock. Certainly, they supplement each other like parts of a picture puzzle.[4]
By basing one's thinking on the writings of these two authorities, a reasonably safe conjecture as to the original cause of the murder in "Edward" can be made and supported. And, although I feel that Barry is not justified in his implication that the three songs are of a "common stock," and that he is not completely correct in his statement of the motive, I believe that his opinions open the way for a logical answer to this outstanding question concerning Child ballad 13.
Let me start my discussion by noting a number of points made by Taylor in his valuable study. Because his work is convincing and logical, and because no contrary evidence has presented itself since 1931, we may accept the following of Taylor's conclusions as valid.[5]
1. Much of the original story of the ballad is missing in current texts, although the Scandinavian tales retain in certain versions at least an inconclusive trace more of the old material than do the British.[6]
2. "Edward" was originally a British song which traveled to Scandinavia. The texts we now have represent two separate, degenerate traditions-one a modern British version that contains only vestiges of the old tale, and the other a Scandinavian version that is related to the modern English texts only through the extinct original.[7]
3. The ballad originally tells a story of fratricide; patricide, sororicide, and so forth, have entered the tale by chance substitution.[8]
4. The mother is not originally an accomplice to the crime but has entered into the song through its corruption with some similar tale.[9] This point is generally verified in America, where the absence of lines cursing the mother is, with a lone exception, universal.[10]
On these four points I feel that a sound framework for a hypothesis can be constructed. We can assume, now, that the motive for the crime in "Edward" is one that has vanished or been modified, and that it does not involve the mother as an accomplice but is concerned with a fraternal rivalry. At the same time, the British origin of the song leads me to feel that some indications of the nature of the original crime should still remain in England and America today, even if great degeneration has taken place.
Thus, the purest form of the "Edward" story that we have today in English speaking countries is the story of a man's murder of his brother and subsequent confession of that crime to his mother, who is not involved in the killing. Three major motives for the murder offer themselves in connection with the extant texts of the song and the four points cited above. These motives center about what appears to be an argument over the cutting of a tree or some similar spontaneous occurrence, rivalry over a mutual sweetheart (possibly the wife of one brother), and the incestuous love of one or both brothers for a sister.
The first motive, which is the one that survives in the American and modern British texts that give a reason for the crime, did not fully satisfy Taylor:
"This explanation may be a fragment, a substitute for some more intelligible motive, or even the original form."[11] It does not satisfy me either. In the first place, as such, it is scarcely a sufficient cause for fratricide, especially ballad fratricide, unless some well-known and well-established rivalry already existed between the brothers. In the second place, it has too many of the rural characteristics of the degenerate modern tradition of the song, and too few of the courtly traits of the version that Taylor classified as the original. And most important of all, as Barry points out in his review of Taylor's book, the "breaking of a little bush" is a kenning which refers to a little girl, according to the interpretation of a singer known to Cecil Sharp.[12] Such an interpretation must, of course, be respected, for it is scarcely likely that the folk would create the conception. Because of it--and the two points mentioned above--I think that the tree incident, as such, may justifiably be dismissed, and that the incident may be fused with the other two possible motives: sweetheart jealousy and incestuous relationship.
The second motive, jealousy over a mutual sweetheart, adequately satisfies the requirements we have set up, though there seems to be no good reason that a theme concerning two brothers who love the same girl should vanish or be modified throughout the entire tradition of the song. Sweetheart murder themes are common to balladry, have been created in our more recent songs, and seldom vanish from ballads of any land. Why, for example, would the "breaking of the bush" be forced into a story of this sort to replace a theme so universally current?
The third possible motive, incest, has, as a reason for the crime, all the advantages and none of the drawbacks of the sweetheart-murder theme. Incest is a motif that has consistently tended to drop out of ballad plots, to be modified and rationalized into something less sordid, less specific. In modern American texts of traditional songs incest motives are difficult to find. Even songs that still retained such themes when Child made his collection have tended to lose them since, and there are other ballads that long ago had such themes but have lost them in all or nearly all the extant versions.[13] Incest is the one motif most likely to be euphemized by the folk.
With all this material in mind, let us, then, approach "Edward" thinking of an incestuous relationship as the original cause of the crime. The English language texts of "Edward" are neither extremely common nor uncommon. Child printed but three versions, and there must be nearly a hundred American texts. Except for the mention or omission of the cause of the crime, there is little significant variation among these related songs. However, "Edward" is frequently found at the end of two other traditional ballads, Child, 49 and 51.[14] In fact, as a unit, it wanders more consistently than any other traditional song I know. There are two reasons for this: first, so much of the "Edward" story has been lost, and so general are the testament lines that remain, that the ballad is easily added wherever musical similarities[15] are favorable; and, second, there is something common to the stories of both "The Twa Brothers" and "Lizie Wan" that has attracted "Edward." The identification of that something is of importance here.
"The Twa Brothers" is the tale of a pair of youths who have a violent struggle in which one is killed. Although today the death is often attributed to an accident, undoubtedly the original killing was purposeful and over the love of a sweetheart. The purposeful murder could not exist in so high a percentage of texts found during the last two centuries were it not an integral feature of the original story. At the same time, "Lizie Wan" tells of a girl who is slain by her brother when he learns she is to have a child by him. Actually, then, there is little in common on the surface of these stories that might be expected to encourage a consistent, mutual attraction of "Edward." For, if "The Twa Brothers" appears to favor the drawing of a sweetheart-fratricide ballad to it, there is no reason that "Lizie Wan" should also absorb such a theme. Phillips Barry, however, in an article in the Bulletin of the Folk Song Society of the Northeast, cites "The Twa Brothers" as having also been an incest tale at the start, pointing out that the girl over whom the brothers fought was originally their sister.
The present version has wandered far from what was the original theme of the ballad. The oldest form of this theme, or radical, the fatal rivalry of two brothers for the love of their sister, is told of Cain, Abel and their sister Luluwa in The Book of Adam and Eve, an early Egypto-Christian hagiograph . . . Two southern texts (Sharp MSS, 882, 916) have kept the "brother-sister fixation."[16]
Barry thus gives the two songs a magnet in common for "Edward"-if we assume that "Edward," like the other two, was once an incest tale. My reasoning here is further substantiated by the fact that in America, where we have seen that the incest theme has tended to vanish, "Edward" is only once attached to "The Twa Brothers," which has lost the fixation motive, but is consistently found attached to "Lizie Wan," which is only just beginning to lose the brother-sister relationship. In addition, it must be noted that were either the sweetheart-murder motive or the music the "magnet" that has attracted "Edward" to the other two traditional songs, many more than one fusion of Child, 13 and "The Twa Brothers" would have occurred in America,
where both are so generally found.
In addition, it is likely that the testament ending, as used in England, has had a general relationship with the incest theme. However, it has been impossible for me to determine, with any exactness, the actual relationship, because of lack of evidence. Taylor expresses the opinion that the testament is the "proper ending" to the "Edward" story, although it has been replaced by or amalgamated with "never" stanzas in some traditions.[17] Whether or not the will was the original ending of this ballad, its presence in the song is significant in that ballads that tend to have this sort of ending are continually being related to incest themes. "Lizie Wan," "The Twa Brothers," "Edward," "The Cruel Brother," and "Lord Randal" are all found with testament endings. "Lizie Wan" is still clearly an incest story; Barry has suggested that "The Twa Brothers" is of a similar sort. Barry[18] also suspected "The Cruel Brother" of having an incest theme originally. And Taylor, although making no claims for incest as an original cause of the "Randal" crime-and there is absolutely no evidence to substantiate such a hypothesis-has suggested[19] that the song has come in contact with "The King's Dochter Lady Jean," some older version of that song, or a similar song.[20] "The King's Dochter Lady Jean" is, of course, an incest ballad. So is "The Bonny Hind," another traditional song, that has borrowed the name Randal in Child's only version. Now, while none of this material has significance separately, when it is collected and related to the whole possibility that "Edward" originally was a tale of intrafamily fixation the blend is startling.
If, then, "Edward" was originally an incest ballad it may have told of one of two kinds of crime: one resulting from one brother's attempts to protect his sister from the other brother's affections, the other resulting from jealousy between two brothers because of a mutual love of their sister. It seems to me impossible to establish even the grounds for a hypothesis along these lines. It is clear, however, that the original fixation motive for the crime vanished from the ballad partly because of the missing portions of the story and partly because a kenning for the girl was introduced in Britain. In Finnish tradition a change may have been made from love of a sister to love of a sister-in-law,[21] while elsewhere the reason for the quarrel has been modified and distorted through transmutation of the "breaking of the bush" into a rural quarrel. At the same time, however, clues to the original nature of the story remain in the association of "Edward" with other songs of incest, the tendency of the testament ending to relate itself with incest themes, and the retention of the "broken bush" motif in a good number of texts.
Such pieces fit well; together they provide a satisfactory indication that the hypothesis of incest as the cause of the "Edward" fratricide is sound. Standing alone, most of the points can be denied or attributed to wishful guesswork; standing together, they are not so easily thrust aside.
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Footnotes:
1. E. Lonnrot, Kantelar elikkd suomen kansan vanhoja lauluja ja virsid (4th ed; Helsinki, 1906), pp. x-xi, No. 4, "Velisurmaaja." Text FF B, in Archer Taylor's "Edward" and "Sven i Rosengard" (Chicago, 1931), pp. 61-62 (translated on p. 63); see also p. 24.
2. Francis J. Child, ed., The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (5 vols.; Boston and New York, 1883-1898, I, 167, No. 13A; Taylor, op. cit., pp. 68-69, text GE A, also quoted on p. 24.
3. Taylor, op. cit., pp. 24-25.
4. Bulletin of the Folk Song Society of the Northeast (hereafter cited as BFSSNE), No. 5, p. 6. The source of Barry's ideas are probably notes he found in the Cecil Sharp MSS, although I am not certain of this.
5. Barry, in a rather quizzical review of Taylor's work (see BFSSNE, No. 5, pp. 19-20), does not quarrel with these conclusions, although he does not always approve of Taylor's reasonings in arriving at them.
6. Taylor, pp. 7-8. See also Child, I, 167.
7 Taylor, op. cit., p. 55.
8 Ibid., p. 23.
9. Ibid., p. 39.
10 See Vermont Historical Society Proceedings, N.S., VII, 102. Here "Edward" is fused with "The Twa Brothers."
11. Taylor, op. cit., p. 24.
12. See BFSSNE, No. 5, p. 20.
13. See "Lizie Wan" (from Kentucky), in Cecil J. Sharp, comp., and Maud Karpeles, ed., English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians (London, 1932), I, 89, in which the incest motive for the murder is no longer clear, the moder traditions of "The Cruel Brother," "Babylon" (with its analogue, "Her Truels Dottre"), and "The Twa Brothers," discussed in this paper.
14 See also the Vermont text cited in footnote 10.
15 Musical similarities are difficult to fathom with respect to these songs, as the texts of the fusions are not clear in relation to the two original scores and are frequently without score at all. However, some work along these lines might be done by a qualified musician. At any rate, I do not believe musical similarities alone would be sufficient to cause the consistent body of fusions were not other factors also at work.
16 BFSSNE, No. 5, p. 6. H. M. Belden, Missouri Folk Songs, University of Missouri Studies, XV (1940), 33, neither denies nor accepts Barry's statements.
17 Taylor, op. cit., p. 29.
18 See Helen H. Flanders et al., The New Green Mountain Songster (New Haven, 1949), p. 94.
19 Modern Philology, XXIX, 105-107.
20 Taylor is careful to point out that no absolute claim for contact between the two ballads can be made on the basis of available texts.
21 In some American texts the murderer slays his brother-in-law.