The Folklore of Cornwall by Ronald M. James;

Author:Ronald M. James;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Book Network Int'l Limited trading as NBN International (NBNi)

Legends of the Dead

The Cornish story of ‘The Spectre Bridegroom’ draws on two ideas that are worldwide. The first is the belief that the dead occasionally walk among the living. The second is that sometimes supernatural beings have love affairs with people, usually with a tragic result. Both motifs are international and in turn have inspired a great deal of literature. Because the boundary between folklore and the written word is porous, each has influenced the other.22

Tales of ghosts permeate literature and have done so for thousands of years, with examples appearing in Homeric poetry, the Old Testament, continental medieval literature and Icelandic sagas. Counterparts in oral tradition are so widespread as to suggest that this was the case before the invention of writing. Although stories of hauntings are ubiquitous, it is generally accepted that most of the dead rest in peace. And yet, some do not. The Finnish scholar, Juha Pentikäinen, considers a belief in the dead who trouble the living because they lack an acceptable status in death. This concept applies nicely to the situation of ‘The Dead Bridegroom Carries off His Bride’, an observation of Uí Ógaín and O’Connor.23 In this case, the ghost cannot rest because of the intensity of the love he and his betrothed shared in life. In addition, many stories underscore the excessive nature of their secret vows and the fact that the lovers often employ magic to bind themselves together. There is an implicit warning here that one should not use supernatural means beyond Christian prayer and ceremony to affect outcomes.

Numerous examples of ill-fated, supernatural romances come to mind in European literature. These sorts of liaisons have inspired medieval stories of sexual encounters between elves and people, ballets featuring seductive swan-women, and modern novels and films with rakish vampires. The popularity of broadsheet ballads describing the ‘Spectre Bridegroom’ draws on this same fascination with what happens when people cross the barrier that separates the natural from the supernatural, all in the name of love.

For what appears to be the earliest printed expression of this specific motif, one needs to reach back to eleventh-century Scandinavian literature. The medieval collection of verse, The Poetic Edda, includes the ‘Second Lay of Helgi the Hunding-Slayer’. This describes how Helgi, a dead hero, returns from the grave on a horse to beckon his beloved Sigrún to him for one last night of conjugal bliss. The document hints at the age of the motif, but it also suggests that initially, the story may have played out differently: Sigrún willingly enters Helgi’s burial mound to lie with him. The poem subsequently relates that the heroine ‘lived but a short while longer, for grief and sorrow’. With this, the medieval text concurs with the conclusion of its more recent counterpart.24 This example suggests that for pre-Christian society, crossing the line into the realm of the dead in the name of romance could be seen as heroic. Nineteenth-century expressions of the story generally assert that no living person would want to enter the grave, even if it were the last resting place of a lover.

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