What Blood?- Stevens (VA) 1922 Davis E
[From Davis- Traditional Ballads of Virginia, 1929. His notes follow. This is a stanza from Berkshire Tragedy and can hardly be classified as a version of Edward. Bleeding from the nose is part of several Child ballads (among them 208, 216) but not Edward. The name Willie is also not part of Edward.
The Mother's Malison (Clyde's Water) Child 216- As sung by Miss N. Watson, Whitehall 1905
Young Willie stands in his stable
And combing down his steed
And looking through his white fingers
His nose began to bleed.
A nosebleed is considered an omen of bad luck. Barry has commented (BFSSNE Vol. 1) that "Edward (Child 13) E, (Page 124) is from "The Bloody Miller." The same motif of the nose-bleed (collected by Stone) is found already in the one of earliest broadsides of "The Wittam Miller", reprinted in Roxburghe Ballads, VIII, 629.
R. Matteson 2014]
EDWARD
(Child, No. 13)
This ballad, like the preceding, is a colloquy between mother and son. The son has killed some one, usually a father or brother, and the mother by persistent questioning extracts the truth from him. The final stanza in Child usually implicates the mother. All the Virginia texts, however, are strikingly filial: the mother is never cursed or implicated in the murder, nor is the father ever
the victim. The tragedy is always fratricidal, with the "little brother" as victim. They are more closely related to Child A than to B, in form, in language, and in the identity of the victim, but the absence of the mother-cursing stanza and her implication in the guilt distinguishes them sharply from all the Child versions. Whether this change is the result of American filial sentimentality or of an unconscious rationalization of a somewhat unnatural conversation, there is some loss of dramatic force at the close. For a man to say that he will be back
When the sun and moon set on yonder hill,
And that will never be
is an inadequate substitute for the compressed meaning when he tells his "ain mither deir" what he will leave her:
The curse of hell frae me sall ye beir,
Sic counceils ye gave to me O.
In Virginia the ballad is usually known by its repeated first line, as " What Is That on the End of Your Sword?" "What Is That on Your Sword So Red?" and "How Come That Red Blood on Your Coat?" American texts are few. See Bulletin, Nos. 2-4, 6, 9; In Campbell and Sharp, No. 7 (North Carolina); Hudson, No. 5 (and Journal, xxxlx, 93; Mississippi); Pound, Ballads, No. 9; Sharp, Songs, I, No. 1 (Tennessee); Shearin, p. 4; Shearin and Combs, p. 7; Perrow reported the ballad from Kentucky in a letter to Kittredge (1914).
E. [What Blood?] No local title. collected by Mr. John stone. Recited by Miss Thelma Stevens of Igo, Va., King George County, September 11, 1922.
1. "Willie, my son, what have you done,
What blood all over your clothes?"
He mumbled out with all his might,
"Been bleeding out of my nose."