The Wife of Usher's Well

The very beginning of the poem introduces us with a woman living at Ushers
Well. She was wealthy and gifted with three strong and robust sons. She sends
them overseas, though we dont know why. But we can guess that she does so
with the intention of providing them with education. She cannot help putting
up with the emotional suffering sprouting from detachment from her sons.
After a week or several weeks, she is informed that her sons have succumbed
to death. The cause of their decease is not clearly hinted at; yet it is possible to
conjecture that they get drowned in the sea. She starts lamenting over their
death from the instant she learns about the incidence. She wants them back
anyhow. She accuses the sea and the wind of being the murderer of her sons.
On November the eleventh, she, by means of her magic spell, succeeded in
getting her sons back. But alas! They came not in flesh and blood but as a
ghost. They came wearing hats made of birch which grow at the gate of
paradise. It is supposed that hats made of birch tree protect the dead from the
living man.

She was overjoyed at their arrival and ordered her maids to arrange a feast to
celebrate the return of her sons. Being dead, they cannot eat anything. She
prepared bed for them to sleep but she sat down beside the bed. The wife
doesnt want to sleep but unfortunately she falls asleep. But they cant because
they are lifeless. At dawn, on hearing the crowing of a cock, the eldest of the
sons tells the youngest that they must leave at once. But the youngest one
insisted that they stay a little while because the cock crew only once. Again the
eldest son said that they will lose the place in heaven if they are not back in
time. In addition, they will be inflicted punishment. They felt empathy for
their mother at the thought that she will be subject to frenzy upon waking in
the morning. But they are under an obligation to go back. They bid farewell to
their mother who is still asleep. Since they are brought up in this cottage
(byre), they sense emotional attachment to it. But it is the quirk of fate that
they have to bid adieu to the house. But the poem leaves us amidst a mystery
telling us about a young woman. At the end, the sons take leave from that
mysterious bonny lass who kindles fire in their mother.

The folk ballad The Wife Ushers Well exquisitely delineates a mothers
tremendous love for her children. The mother wants her children back at any
form, even as ghosts. The sons, too, carry out their duty by returning form
heaven at the call of their mother. The poem, indeed, exhibits the negative part
of obligation. They want to stay further. But, owing to their obligation toward
heaven, they are to go back. Here, death is not portrayed as being stiff or rigid.
It is depicted in a less horrifying manner.

Ballad stanzas.

We get that the traditional ballad stanza consists of four lines,

rhymed abcb. The first and third lines have four stresses, while the second and
fourth have three.
They hadna been a week from her,
A week but barely ane,
Whan word came to the carline wife,
That her three sons were gane.

Repetition.

A ballad has a refrain, a repeated section that divides segments of the story.
Many ballads also employ incremental repetition, in which a phrase recurs
with minor differences as the story progresses.
"Fare ye weel, my mother dear!
Fareweel to barn and byre!
And fare ye weel, the bonny lass
That kindles my mother's fire!"

Dialogue.

In a narrative genre, ballads often incorporate multiple

characters into their stories. Often, since changes of voice were communicated
orally, written transcriptions of oral ballads give little or no indication that the
speaker has changed. Writers of literary ballads, the later poems that imitate
oral ballads, sometimes play with this convention.
Below is the example of dialogue;

"Fare ye weel, my mother dear!

Fareweel to barn and byre!
And fare ye weel, the bonny lass
That kindles my mother's fire!"

Third-person objective narration.

Ballad narrators usually do not speak in the first person (unless speaking as a
character in the story), and they often do not comment on their reactions to
the emotional content of the ballad. So, we think that the stanza below is the
third-person objective.
"I wish the wind may never cease,
Nor fashes in the flood,
Till my three sons come hame to me,
In earthly flesh and blood."

Period

Because it describes the return of the ghosts of three sons who return to their
mother at Martinmas, the feast of St. Martin was held on November the
eleventh, one of the Scottish quarter days. It is usually referred to as
Martinmas but pronounced Martimas. It was the same day as Hallowe'en in
the old calendar.
We also find that even the author and origin of the ballad are
not known, but is commonly dated as being 17th century. It first appears in
print in Scotts Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in 1802.