346 NOTES. THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL. This ballad, which introduces a small group dealing with the supernatural, was printed by Scott in the Minstrelsy ; Child, III, 238 f. — Allingham patches with two stanzas, inserted after 11, from a version of The Clerk's Twa Sons o* Owsenford (printed by Child as B, with The Wife of Usher's Well)y and actually adds another stanza (of his own?) *to complete the sense/ See T%e Ballad Book J pp. 32 ff., 375. But we are more than content with the noble simplicity of A; and Allingham, gaming little or nothing by his borrowing, has lost pitiably by his inventing. A touch in version B is that the mother wraps her sons in the mantle ; in A she wraps herself in it. Allingham thus * completes the sense * by making the brother remark : Our mother has nae mair but us ; See where she leans asleep ; The mantle that was on herself, She has happ'd it round our feet. It is not said in our ballad that the sons have come back to protest against their mother's excessive grief (see Child, III, 238); but this motive is so common in folk-lore that we add for comparison a ballad called The Unquiet Grave, printed by Child, III, 236: 1. * The wind doth blow tonlay, my love, And a few small drops of rain ; I never had but one true-love. In cold grave she was lain. 2. * I'll do as much for my true-love As any young man may; I'll sit and mourn all at her grave For a twelvemonth and a day.' 3. The twelvemonth and a day being up, The dead began to speak:
- O who sits weeping on my grave,
And will not let me sleep ? ' 4. * 'Tis I, my love, sits on your grave, And will not let you sleep ; For I crave one kiss of your clay-cold lips, And that is all I seek.' Digitized by LjOOQIC
