The Revenants in 'The Wife of Usher's Well'
The Revenants in 'The Wife of Usher's Well': A Reconsideration
by Martin Puhvel
Folklore, Vol. 86, No. 3/4 (Autumn - Winter, 1975), pp. 175-180
The Revenants in 'The Wife of Usher's Well': A Reconsideration
by MARTIN PUHVEL
THE famous old[1] Scottish ballad 'The Wife of Usher's Well' has been justly appreciated for its almost classically simple yet moving conveyance of deep emotion. It has, however, puzzled readers with the seeming vagueness and lack of firm outline of its ghost elements. It initially briefly reports the loss on a sea voyage of the 'three stout and stalwart sons' of the wealthy 'carline wife' and goes on to tell of her yearning for their return:
I wish the wind may never cease,
Nor fashes in the flood,
Till my three sons come hame to me
In earthly flesh and blood.[2]
This fervent wish of mother love comes true - only, alas, partially and for a fleeting period of time - when the ghosts of the sons turn up:
It fell about the Martinmass,
When nights are lang and mirk,
The carline wife's three sons came hame,
And their hats were o the birk.
It neither grew in syke nor ditch,
Nor yet in ony sheugh,
But at the gates o Paradise
That birk grew fair eneugh.
The Wife bids her maidens prepare a feast since 'my three sons are well'. Then she makes for them a bed 'large and wide' and sits down at the bedside. With the crowing of the cocks heralding dawn the sons know that their leave is over and they must return: 'Gin we be mist out o our place / A sair pain we maun bide.' They depart with a tender farewell to their mother and the home of their youth.
It has been generally assumed that the ghosts of the lost sons come from Paradise, on 'compassionate leave'. This conclusion is of course based on the statement that their hats are of (the bark of) birch growing at the gate of Paradise. Yet, do they truly seem souls in heavenly bliss? How can there be severe punishment - 'a sair pain' - in the glorification of heaven? May the poet, or perhaps the composer of an earlier version, not rather have in mind Purgatory, a state of approaching bliss, yet generally conceived as a place of pain? If so, they may be close to or on the very threshold of the gate of Paradise but not yet inside it. Their state may thus resemble that of King Hamlet, like whom they were probably overtaken by sudden death, 'unhousel'd, unanointed', were given leave to return on a mission and have to return at cock crow.
It would of course be unwise positively to credit the popular poet or poets with close familiarity with the theological Christian concepts of afterlife and the Catholic distinction between Paradise and Purgatory; yet the question is intriguing and worthy of some thought, especially in the light of the not infrequent role of Purgatory[3] in the widespread tradition of the annual return of the spirits of the dead in early November, the main object of interest in this consideration.
It is stated that the lost sons return 'about the Martinmass', - XI November. This festival was generally one of thanksgiving for the gathering in of the harvest, involving in places a good deal of celebration and feasting. Since, however, the poet does not specify this very day as that of the miraculous event, one can merely conclude that it takes place some time, probably not late, in November. Perhaps the widespread tradition of the return of the spirits of the departed generally attached to All Souls' Day (2 November) or the immediately preceding Halloween is lurking at the back of the poet's mind. One may quote Frazer in this connection:
Not only among the Celts but throughout Europe, Hallowe'en, the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter, seems to have been of old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionatek insfolk. It was, perhaps, a natural thought that the approach of winter should drive the poor shivering hungry ghosts from the bare fields and the leafless woodlands so the shelter of the cottage with its familiar fireside.[4]
Frazer points[5] to a wealth of evidence showing that the originally pagan festival of the dead - christianized into All Souls' Day and as such made to co-exist with its offshoot All Saints' Day[6] - has been celebrated in many European lands, such as Brittany and other parts of France, Belgium, Bavaria, Austria, Bohemia, Estonia, and Italy. At these celebrations, in places surviving well into our century, the ghosts were believed to come to the homes of their relatives, where they were welcomed with various rituals, generally involving feasting and other means of hospitality and propitiation. Most important in this connection, Frazer points to evidence of this tradition having been prevalent in Britain:
In our own country the old belief in the annual return of the dead long lingered in the custom of baking 'soul-cakes' and eating and distributing them on All Souls' Day.[7]
This custom[8] sometimes had a corollary - 'souling'. Thus in Shropshire All Saints' Day was known as 'Souling Day', on which poor children, and sometimes men, were wont to go 'souling'; this meant that they went round 'to the houses of all the more well-todo people within reach, reciting a ditty peculiar to the day, and looking for a dole of cakes, broken victuals, ale, apples, or money'.[9]
This practice seems to have been particularly prevalent in the western counties - Shropshire, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Lancashire, Herefordshire, and Monmouthshire,[10] thus counties bordering on or close to Wales - not improbably an indication of basic Celtic influence.[11] And in Wales itself poor peasants were until early nineteenth century wont to go about begging for
bread on All Souls' Day. This custom, it is claimed, 'was a survival of the Middle Ages, when the poor begged bread for the souls of their departed relatives and friends'.[12] On the Scottish western island of St Kilda, again, it was the custom to bake on All Saints' Day a large cake in the form of a triangle, furrowed round; it had to be all eaten that night.[13]
As the possibility that the lost sons in 'The Wife of Usher's Well' are, or originally were, thought to come from Purgatory has been raised, it may be of interest to note that in some lands the ghostly visitors on All Souls' Day are indeed thought to be souls in that state of penance. Thus the Germans of Bohemia used to fill a lamp with butter, light it and set it on the hearth so that the revenant might with the butter anoint the burns received in the fire of Purgatory.[14] The same custom was prevalent in the Tyrol.[15] Among the Celtic Bretons the dead were at least sometimes thought to come from the pains of Purgatory.[16]
The returning sons in the ballad are, of course, on the surface at least, hardly reminiscent of the silent, invisible revenants of All Souls' Day. They are obviously visible - as of course they must be in order to foster in their mother the pathetic illusion that her 'three sons are well'. They also speak, even if it is not made clear whether they directly address anybody but each other. There is no indication as to whether their mother tries to touch them, or whether they participate in any way in the feast she orders in celebration of their return. The whole concept of them is obviously left vague and indeterminate and the idea of ghosts wearing hats of birch bark is quite incongruous. In short, there is an aura of unreality about them, a dream-like quality that may almost make them seem hallucinatory, figments of their mother's imagination, till the spell is broken by the crowing of the cocks and they relate themselves by speech to the realities around them.
Perhaps there lies in this aura of dream-like unreality an affinity with the imaginary revenants of the traditional November feast of the dead, perhaps even a hint of inspiration by the latter concept, but, if so, it, too, remains veiled by the vagueness and mystery of the haunting ballad. The most that can be said with any assurance is that it does not appear unlikely that the time of the return of the revenants in the poem is inspired by the popular tradition of the fleeting visit home of the departed in the period of the age-old feast of the dead,[17] in Christian times generally All Souls' Day. It may be a question of a degiee of confusion between the early November celebration of this day and that of Martinmass,[18] or perhaps the exact date is, like so much else in the poem, left deliberately vague.
NOTES:
1. Initially published by Sir Walter Scott in 1839 in Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, this ballad is generally thought to hark back to the fifteenth or sixteenth century.
2. A couple of more recently discovered variants replace this element with a prayer to Christ - apparently a pious christianization of the folklore motif of the fervent, hyperbolically expressed wish that somehow bears a degree of fruit.
3. See pp. 177-8
4. Sir James Frazer, The Golden Bough, 3rd ed. (New York, 1935), part VII, vol. 1, pp. 225-6.
5. Ibid., part IV, vol. 2, pp. 69-8o. All ensuing references to Frazer are to this volume.
6. Ibid., p. 81 f.
7. Ibid., p. 78.
8. The baking of 'soul-cakes' was also prevalent on the continent (see Frazer, pp. 70-2 and 74). At times, and probably originally, these were offered as food for the spirits of the deceased - as indicated by their being sometimes placed on graves - but were often eaten by their relatives or friends or given to beggars, which was supposed to benefit the dead in some way, perhaps by proxy, in the same way as eating and drinking at funeral wakes was believed to do.
9. C. S. Burne and G. F. Jackson, Shropshire Folk-lore (London, 1883), p. 381.
10. See Frazer, p. 79.
11. In North America children go around on Hallowe'en in masks representing bogies, goblins, witches, and the like, asking for handouts of candy, apples, money, etc., the request being generally expressed as 'Trick or treat?' - the former word implying a penalty if bounty is lacking. This custom is doubtless related to, perhaps directly derived from souling, though the disguise obviously reflects the parallel tradition of Hallowe'en as the night of witches and other creatures of evil.
12. Marie Trevelyan, Folk-lore and Folk-stories of Wales (London, 1909), P. 255.
13. Frazer, p. 80.
14. Ibid., p. 72.
15. Ibid., p. 73.
16. Ibid., p. 69.
17. It may be noted that among the Latvians hospitality was extended to the souls over a period of time - from Michaelmass, 29 September, to the Day of St Simon and St Jude, 28 October (see Frazer, p. 74).
18. It may be of interest to note that while among the Estonians the dead were traditionally invited for meals on All Souls' Day or food was placed on graves, on 'Martin's Day' - 10 November. - 'Martin beggars', mummers dressed in all kinds of curious garments, were wont to go around asking for handouts and hospitality, in reward for singing and dancing. This custom, surviving well into our century, indeed witnessed by the writer as a child, clearly has an affinity, perhaps a distant connection, with souling and its American counterpart. The date - 10 November - obviously represents a one-day deviation from that of Martinmass, apparently intended to make it coincide with Martin Luther's birthday - an example of Lutheran adoptive adaptation of Catholic holidays.
One may also note that it has been suggested (see A. Tille, Die Geschichte der deutschen Weihnacht [Leipzig, n.d.], p. 23 f.; O. Schrader, Reallexikon der indogermanischen Altertumskunde [Strassburg, 1901], p. 395) that among Teutonic peoples Martinmass of old marked the beginning of winter, a time whence, as among the Celts, the beginning of the New Year was dated. It was a time when in many lands, in Europe and elsewhere (see Frazer, pp. 53, 55, 62, 65) the festival of the dead was celebrated, as among the Celts as Samhain, I November, the presumed source of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, which, Frazer suggests, spread to other European peoples, 'who, while they preserved their old feasts of the dead practically unchanged, may have transferred them to the second of November'. (Frazer, pp. 81-2.)
In the light of all this it appears not altogether inconceivable that the time of the ghostly visit in our ballad may in fact be influenced by an old association of Martinmass with the return of the dead, even if there is no surviving evidence of this from Britain.