ROBERT WILLIAMS BUCHANAN (1841 - 1901)

The Origins of ‘The Legend of The Stepmother’
(aka ‘The Dead Mother’)

     ‘The Legend of the Stepmother’ was first published in Idyls and Legends of Inverburn in 1865, where it was singled out for praise in several reviews. In the 3 volume Poetical Works published by H. S. King in 1874, the title was changed to ‘The Dead Mother’ and that title was retained for subsequent collected editions.
     I always felt that it had some connection to Buchanan’s subsequent book of translations of Scandinavian ballads, Ballad Stories of the Affections (1866), but I never pursued the matter. However, when I was adding the short piece about Buchanan in Ifor Evans’ English Poetry in the Later Nineteenth Century to the site, I came across the following:

“The Ballads of the Affections marked another new departure. Buchanan had gained some knowledge of Danish, which he here used to render a selection of Danish ballads, both ancient and modern. There had been some continuity of interest in popular Danish ballads since the beginning of the nineteenth century. Robert Jamieson had issued his collection in 1806, and Buchanan confessed that this was one of his models. George Borrow had also translated Danish ballads, and in 1860 Alexander Prior had issued an elaborate collection which was possibly used by Buchanan for his own work.”

Ancient Danish Ballads; Translated from the Originals by R. C. Alexander Prior, M.D. (London and Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1860) was available at the Internet Archive, and it contained the following chapter.

Volume I, Part II: Legendary Ballads. Chapter 35: The Buried Mother  (pp. 367-371):

XXXV.

THE BURIED MOTHER.

     This affecting tale is widely spread. It occurs in ballad form in all the Scandinavian countries, and according to Jamieson North. Antiq. p. 318 was once known in Scotland. In the Slavonian, Lithuanian and Esthonian languages there are ballads corresponding to it, but none of equal beauty with the Danish, if we may credit the opinion expressed by Mrs. Talvj in her Historical view of Slavic Literature.
‘The Danes have a beautiful ballad on this subject. It is one of the most affecting that we have ever met with. The Slavic nations certainly have nothing to compare with it in beauty, but the most of them possess songs on the same subject.’
     There is great variety in the names as they occur in different copies, and many important differences in the text, as might be expected in a piece sung in so many dialects and distant places.
     A Polish song of nearly the same general import will be found translated in Talvj’s Slavic Literature p. 399. The Norwegian ballad ‘Den vonde stiukmodir’ seems like an imperfect recollection of the Danish mixed with some other one. Lands, p. 542.

The buried mother.

Swain Dyring he journey’d up the land,
And won a lovely maiden’s hand;

Seven years she lived his home to share,
And seven the sweetest children bare;

But stalking through the land came death,
And stopp’d that gentle lady’s breath.

Swain Dyring rode again up land,
And gain’d another maiden’s hand.

He won his bride, and home she came,
A grim and harsh ill-favour’d dame.

When from her gilded wain she stepp’d,
The seven poor children stood and wept.

They stood, those little things, and cried,
But kick’d them off th’ unfeeling bride.

She gave them neither bread nor beer,
“Hunger and hate will be your cheer.”

She took away their bolsters blue,
“Bare straw shall be the bed for you.”

She took away their fire and light,
“In blind-house ye shall sleep all night.”

They cried one evening, till the sound
Their mother heard beneath the ground.

She heard it, as in her grave she lay,
'”But go I must their pain to stay.”

At God’s high throne she bent her knee,
“O let me, Lord, my children see.”

And such her prayer, and tale of woe,
That God in mercy let her go.

“But there on earth no longer stay,
When cock shall crow the dawn of day.”

Out from their chest she stretch’d her bones.
And rent her way through earth and stones.

As through the street she glided by,
Loud all the hounds howl’d to the sky.

She reach’d her husband’s courtyard gate,
And there her eldest daughter sate.

“O daughter mine, why so in tears?
How fare my other little dears?”

“No mother at all art thou of mine,
Thou’rt not like her, though fair and fine;

“My mother’s cheeks were white and red ,
But thine are pale, and like the dead.”

“And how should I be fine or fair,
When death has bleach’d the cheeks I bear?

“Or how should I be white and red,
So long, my child, as I’ve been dead?”

She found her children’s sleeping place.
And wet with tears each little face.

She nurs’d them all with mother’s care,
She comb’d and dress’d their silky hair.

The infant babe she took on lap,
And offer’d him the welcome pap.

Her eldest daughter then she sped,
To fetch Swain Dyring out of bed.

And when before her chair he stood,
She chid him thus in angry mood:

“I left thee store of beer and bread,
I find my children all unfed.

“I left thee bolsters of softest down,
And here on straw I find them thrown.

“I left thee many a good waxlight,
And here they lie in the dark all night.

“This warning take, thy duty learn,
’Tis ill for you, if I return.

“There’s crowing now the rooster red,
And back to the earth must go the dead;

“And now I hear the black cock crow,
Heaven’s gate is open, and I must go.

“Now crows the white return of day,
A moment more I dare not stay.”

Whenever hound was heard to whine,
They gave the children bread and wine.

Whenever hound was heard to bark.
They thought the dead walk’d in the dark.

Whenever hound was heard to howl,
They thought they saw a corpse’s cowl.

___

Following on from Prior’s introduction to ‘The Buried Mother’, this is from pp. 318-319 of Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, from the earlier Teutonic and Scandinavian Romances; being an Abstract of the Book of Heroes, and Nibelungen Lay; with translations of Metrical Tales, from the Old German, Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic Languages; with Notes and Dissertations edited by Robert Jamieson, Sir Walter Scott and Henry Weber (Edinburgh: Ballantyne, London: Longman, Hurst Rees, Orme and Brown, 1814):

     ‘As we have pointed out the particular resemblance which Ribolt bears to the Child of Elle, &c., it may be proper to observe, that we have selected the five which immediately follow it, as having, in their subjects and narrative, a more intimate relationship to ballads of our own country. Two of this class have already been given to the public in “Popular Ballads and Songs, &c.” Of these, “Fair Annie,” on the same subject with “Wha will bake my bridal bread, &c.” is one of the most interesting of the Danish Ballads; and the “Merman Rosmer,” which we intend still farther to illustrate, is a very curious relic of antiquity. In the Notes to “the Lady of the Lake” will be found two more, “The Elfin Gray” and the “Ghaist’s Warning.” The first of these is a favourable specimen of a large class of Danish Ballads, which, like many of our most wild and antient Scotish ditties, are founded on stories of disenchantment. The last I have not met with in the form of a ballad in Scotland; but on the translation from the Danish being read to a very antient gentleman in Dumfrieshire, he said the story of the mother coming back to her children was quite familiar to him in his youth, as an occurrence of his own immediate neighbourhood, with all the circumstances of name and place. The father, like Child Dyring, had married a second wife; and his daughter by the first, a child of three or four years old, was once amissing for three days. She was sought for every where with the utmost diligence, but was not found. At last she was observed, coming from the barn, which, during her absence, had been repeatedly searched. She looked remarkably clean and fresh; her clothes were in the neatest possible order; and her hair, in particular, had been anointed, combed, curled, and plaited, with the greatest care. On being asked where she had been, she said she had been with her mammie, who had been so kind to her, and given her so many good things, and dressed her hair so prettily.’

Which leads back to The Lady of the Lake by [Sir] Walter Scott (Edinburgh: Ballantyne, London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Miller 1810) and the following note to the Fourth Canto (pp. 376-381):

Here’s the Polish song mentioned in Prior’s introduction. From Historical View of the Languages and Literature of the Slavic Nations; with a Sketch of Their Popular Poetry by Talvi (New York: George P. Putnam, 1850), pp. 398-400.

     ‘Among the ballads of almost all nations we find some that illustrate the mournful and destitute state of motherless orphans. There seems to be hardly any feeling, which comes more directly home to the affectionate compassion of the human heart, than the pitiable and touching condition of helpless little beings left to the tender mercies of a stepmother; who, with her traditional severity, may be called a kind of standing bugbear of the popular imagination. The Danes have a beautiful ballad, in which the ghost of a mother is roused by the wailings and sufferings of her deserted offspring, to break with supernatural power the gravestone, and to re-enter, in the stillness of the night, the neglected nursery, in order to cheer, to nurse, to comb and wash the dear seven little ones, whom God once intrusted to her care. It is one of the most affecting pieces of popular poetry we ever have met with. The Slavic nations have nothing that can be compared with it in beauty; but most of them have several ballads on the same subject; and in a general collection, the “Orphan Ballads” would fill a whole chapter. The simple ditty which we give here as another specimen of Polish popular poetry, exceedingly rude as it is in its form, and even defective in rhyme and metre, cannot but please and touch us by its very simplicity.

POOR ORPHAN CHILD.

Poor little orphan is wandering about.
Seeking its mother and weeping aloud.

Jesus Christ met it, mildly to it spake:
“Where art thou roaming, poor little babe?

“Go not, go not, babe, too far thou wilt roam,
And goest e’er so far, not to thy mother come.

“Now turn and go, dear babe, to the green cemetery,
From out her deep grave thy mother will speak to thee.”

“Wo! at my grave who’s knocking so wild?”
“Mother! dear mother! it’s I, thy poor child!

         “Take me to thee, take me,
         Ill I fare without thee!”

“Go home, my babe, and thy strange mother tell,
She’ll wash thy tattered shirt and comb and clean thee well!”

         “When my shirt she washes.
         Sprinkles it with ashes.

         “When she puts it on to me,
         Scolds so grim and bitterly!

         “When she combs my head,
         Runs the blood so red.

         “When she braids my hair,
         Pulls me here and there!”

“Go thee home, my babe, the Lord thy tears will dry!”
And the babe went home, laid her down to cry.

Laid her down to cry, one day only cried;
Groaned the second day, and the third day died.

From his heaven our Lord did two angels send,
With the poor babe they did to heaven ascend.

From the hell our Lord did two devils send;
They took the bad stepmother and down to hell they went.’

___

And finally, Volume II of Francis James Child’s collection of English and Scottish Ballads (1860) contains the ballad, ‘The Cruel Mother’ which is possibly a related source for Buchanan’s version. The book is available at the Hathi Trust and two versions of the poem are given:

THE CRUEL MOTHER.

From Motherwell’s Minstrelsy, p. 161.

SHE leaned her back unto a thorn,
     Three, three, and three by three;
And there she has her two babes born,
     Three, three, and thirty-three.

She took frae ’bout her ribbon-belt,
And there she bound them hand and foot.

She has ta’en out her wee penknife,
And there she ended baith their life.

She has howked a hole baith deep and wide,
She has put them in baith side by side.

She has covered them o’er wi’ a marble stane,
Thinking she would gang maiden hame.

As she was walking by her father’s castle wa’,
She saw twa pretty babes playing at the ba’.

“O bonnie babes! gin ye were mine,
I would dress you up in satin fine!

“O I would dress you in the silk,
And wash you ay in morning milk!”

“O cruel mother! we were thine,
And thou made us to wear the twine.

“O cursed mother! heaven’s high,
And that’s where thou will ne’er win nigh.

“O cursed mother! hell is deep,
And there thou’ll enter step by step.”

___

THE CRUEL MOTHER.

From Kinloch’s Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 46.

     [THREE stanzas of a Warwickshire version closely resembling Kinloch’s are given in Notes and Queries, vol. viii. p. 358.]

THERE lives a lady in London—
     All alone, and alonie;
She’s gane wi’ bairn to the clerk’s son—
     Doun by the greenwud sae bonnie.

She has tane her mantel her about—
     All alone, and alonie;
She’s gane aff to the gude greenwud—
     Doun by the greenwud sae bonnie.

She has set her back until an aik—
     All alone, and alonie;
First it bowed, and syne it brake—
     Doun by the greenwud sae bonnie.

She has set her back until a brier
     All alone, and alonie;
Bonnie were the twa boys she did bear—
     Doun by the greenwud sae bonnie.

But out she’s tane a little penknife—
     All alone, and alonie;
And she’s parted them and their sweet life—
     Doun by the greenwud sae bonnie.

She’s aff unto her father’s ha’—
     All alone, and alonie;
She seem’d the lealest maiden amang them a’—
     Doun by the greenwud sae bonnie.

As she lookit our the castle wa’—
     All alone, and alonie;
She spied twa bonnie boys playing at the ba’—
     Doun by the greenwud sae bonnie.

“O an thae twa babes were mine”—
     All alone, and alonie;
“They should wear the silk and the sabelline”—
     Doun by the greenwud sae bonnie.

“O mother dear, when we were thine,”
     All alone, and alonie;
“We neither wore the silks nor the sabelline”—
     Doun by the greenwud sae bonnie.

“But out ye took a little penknife”—
     All alone, and alonie;
“An ye parted us and our sweet life”—
     Doun by the greenwud sae bonnie.

“But now we’re in the heavens hie”—
     All alone, and alonie;
“And ye have the pains o’ hell to dree”—
     Doun by the greenwud sae bonnie.

___

As well as ‘The Cruel Mother’ there are also ballads called ‘The Cruel Brother’ and ‘The Cruel Sister’, and the two which precede ‘The Cruel Mother’ in Child’s collection, ‘Lady Anne’ and ‘Fine Flowers In The Valley’, have definite similarities to ‘The Cruel Mother’. It’s a complicated business, so I’ll leave it there, except to say that I have yet to find a version as chilling as Robert Buchanan’s.

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