The ballad - Index of

The Ballad
tions of relationship. Kinship ideals and etiquette
in ballads is a subject that demands a book
to itself ;
for in studying them we have to recognise
primitive conventions, and take for granted
conditions of
" family honour, as they did in the
golden world." We have noticed above (p. 29) a
simple case of the privilege of a brother, and
similar situations between brothers and sisters,
children and parents, are grafted on various
romances of marriage or bride-stealing. Again,
the theme of a double marriage, which first gives
us the tragedy of a deserted bride, evolves in the
next generation the highly complicated stories of
stepmothers, without whose aid, it would appear,
no lore or literature can go
far. Stepmothers,
however, are far less frequent in English balladry
than mothers-in-law. Mother and son form a
very close relationship ; indeed, one might
almost say that the ballads overlooked the tie of
paternity, and left that theme to be developed,
as the world progressed, by the artistic poets
such as those of the Oresteia and Hamlet : which
stories, as I write, Professor Gilbert Murray seeks
to show are akin. A remarkable exception to this
neglect of a father is shown in the excellent Scots
ballad of Bewick and Grabame. 1 Christy Grahame
and young Bewick are " sworn brothers "
after the ancient rite ;
their fathers get drunk
and quarrel, because Bewick can read and write
1
Third Series, 101.
46