Undead Lovers: The Unquiet Grave

An interesting contrast between European folk songs and their American counterparts is in the presence of the supernatural. Old world folk ballads are full of references to ghosts, fairies, witches and curses and the like, while the American tales seem to omit supernatural references almost entirely, or substitute the Devil for any otherwordly presence.

This likely has something to do with the religious leanings of the initial colonists, and the Protestant idea that anything magical was connected to the Devil, though a more romantic take on it would be that the old fairies and ghosts of the colonists' homeland were bound to their old haunts and were left behind by the long sea voyage.

Whatever the reason, it's almost a given that if an English-language song contains supernatural elements, it's almost always one collected in the UK or Ireland, and it's rare to see a direct American variation. This week's Dead Lover ballad, "The Unquiet Grave" (Child 78, Roud 51) is just such a song, with many variations in its native England, but nothing much found on this side of the Atlantic prior to the 20th Century.

Wow, that's an old video... anyway.

This story is told in the first person, and, unlike many of our songs, starts out telling you that the speaker's "one true love" is dead right away. The narrator says they will spend a year and a day mourning on their lover's grave. Things get creepy when, after all that weeping the ghost of the deceased appears and complains that their still-living lover is disturbing their rest. Things get even creepier when our narrator demands a kiss from the "clay cold lips" of their dead love, who, being the more sensible of the pair refuses on the grounds that it would be fatal for their beloved. In many versions, the ghost then sets a set of impossible tasks for the living lover to complete, in this case a nut grown underground, water from a stone and milk from the breast of a virgin.

The "riddle" portion of the song is pretty interesting. I always assumed that they were components for a spell to make it possible for the living lover to share a kiss (or more) with the ghost without dying, but I've also read from other sources that this song reflects a belief that when one of an engaged couple dies, the survivor is still permanently bound to them, and the impossible tasks represent a ritual to free them. Or it might be taken that the ghost is just making these demands to make their lover go away for a while and allow them some rest.

This song also calls to mind the Irish ballad "I Am Stretched on Your Grave," which comes from a translation of a Gaelic poem that was set to music by an Irish folk-rock band called Scullion in the 1970s (and covered by many since, including this excellent version by Kate Rusby). In this case there is no ghost, but the narrator still takes the mourning at the graveside beyond what most would consider reasonable.

This song also takes on the idead that excessive mourning is a bad thing, with both the narrator's parents and the "priests and the friars" apparently pretty worried about the young narrator, but "Unquiet Grave" takes it a step further with the idea that the mourning is not only bad for the living, but can harm the dead. It's actually not an uncommon idea in religions and folk beliefs, either, that prolonged or showy displays of grief are bad for the departed,but I suspect that in both cases the real point is for the living to learn to move on after a loss.