Ballad Country
This is the first writing I ever had published. It ran in The Living Tradition, back in 2002. It was up online for a while at the magazine's website, but now that it's gone and I have my very own LJ, I feel a rampaging need to share it with everyone once again. (Coincidentally, James D. MacDonald recently wrote a humorous article called something like "Everything I need to know about life I learned from folk music". I don't think he'd read this piece; we just had similar ideas at different times.) My article owes a lot to Diana Wynne Jones and The Tough Guide To Fantasyland.
Without further ado:
LIVING IN BALLAD COUNTRY
by April Grant
Some rules for survival.
1. You can’t trust any member of your family.
This is sad, but true. There is just no relative you can be sure of. If you have a sister, she will undoubtedly try to drown you, in a river or the sea, depending on which is handiest; if you have a brother, he’ll do one of two things. If you are female, he will murder you on your wedding day, out of sheer, unprintable jealousy. If you’re male, he’ll quarrel with you, pretend to get over his anger, challenge you to a “friendly” wrestling match, and while you struggle together, he’ll push you onto his knife, which he’s left sticking in the dirt with its point up, and then he’ll make out it was an accident.
Your father will be a mean old king with a trailing white beard. He does not have any fun himself, and therefore feels it his duty to take his children to task for enjoying themselves. If you are female, and you show up pregnant, he’ll give you holy hell-have your boyfriend beheaded, probably, toss the head in your lap, and then burn you at the stake, like as not. One of the laws in ballad country is that, if your daughter is with child and not married, you’re allowed, indeed you’re encouraged, to burn her at the stake in the front yard. You do not even have to get a bonfire permit from City Hall. The neighbors look over the fence: “What’s that smell? They’re not burning leaves, are they? Oh, no, it’s only their daughter.”
If your mother is alive, she’ll probably be just as much of a prude. She will wear a wimple, and do embroidery until her fingers cramp up. (A wimple is one of those veil things that go under your chin, as opposed to a snood, which goes over your hair.)
In nine out of ten cases, however, she’ll have died when you were little, and your father will have remarried. There is a high mortality rate on mothers in ballad country: most people have stepmothers.
These broads are in a class by themselves. If you thought the rest of your family was unpromising, just take a look at your stepmother. Go on, take a look, she’s right over there, clinging to your father’s arm and fixing you with a basilisk glare…
Makes your insides curl up, doesn’t she? All stepmothers are that kind of person. Possibly they’ve all been to the same college. (It’s a fact that the University of Dom-Daniel, under the sea near the coast of Cornwall, now offers a Bachelor’s Degree in Stepmother Studies, and an optional minor in Ill-Wishing.)
Most of them are witches (yours sure looks like one, my friend) but, witch or not, every one has a mean streak a mile wide. They often posess a good, if Gothic, fashion sense. Lots of black silk and wine-colored velvet-Villainess Chic-and they can always be trusted to have hair so dark it has blue highlights. This is a piece of color coding which comes in handy.
All the villains have black hair. This does not mean that the blonde people are all good guys-far from it. However, it gives you advance notice sometimes, which can be useful. If you see a figure in the distance with raven-black hair, and she’s heading towards you, run for your life.
But your own stepmother will get you by and by. She is a woman who isn’t pleased by anything, and most of all she detests the children of her husband’s first wife. No matter what you do, sooner or later she’ll poison you or transform you into a Laily Gawd-Help-Us that breaths fire. I can’t suggest any way of getting out of it…just consider yourself warned. Now:
2. Names: a brief primer.
Names come in handy. You can tell a lot about a person just by seeing what they’re called. For men, this applies to nicknames most of all. Here is a list of what you can expect.
Young-men with Young at the front of their names are oversexed and violent, and they tend toward homicidal jealousy. I warn you all, ye ladies fair: never take a Young for your boyfriend. He will kill you before many verses go by. If, despite my warning, you find yourself being pushed over a waterfall one dark night, it may comfort you as you go down for the third time (and it will be three times-things happen in threes around here) to know that you have a lot of brothers and they will wreak horrible vengeance on the man who killed you. So that is all right.
Oh, except for Young Hunting. He’s not like any of the other Youngs; instead of killing, his function is to get killed. He achieves this by having the monumental stupidity to approach his girlfriend, who’s holding a knife, and tell her he’s dumping her. If you see a trail of bloodstains, you’ll find Young Hunting at the end of it, gasping his last, “Let’s…just be friends…”
Men with Child at the front of their names are handsome devils who torture their girlfriends. Unfortunately, there are some women who fall for them nonetheless.
Men with the forename of Hind (so to speak) are rather mysterious people, and masters of disguise. Sometimes they have houses underground, in the roots of trees. They’re decent fellows.
Men who are called Clerk are nice, too. They wear wire-rimmed glasses and have that nervous, vulnerable air which makes women quiver with affection. Alas, these guys always seem to fall for the wrong girl. Either she has scary brothers, who kill the poor Clerk, or he gets seduced by a mermaid, who then strangles him with her nightie. It’s not fair, but there it is.
Guys called Lord, Sir, Prince or King will resemble one or another of the above personalities. In addition, they’ll be heavy drinkers, and be worn out most of the time from committing droit de seigneur all over the place.
Now, about women. There are five main names for women in ballad country. Janet, Maisry, Margaret, Ellen, Isabel. Walk into a crowded room and shout, “Hey, Ellen!” and heads will turn all over the place.
Women named Janet tend to be strapping wenches with loads of self-confidence, and they look good in green. They get pregnant if their boyfriends so much as look at them, and they also live to the end of the song-which is quite an achievement, around here.
A woman named Maisry will be plagued with brothers. If the brothers are the unpleasant sort, they will burn her at the stake. If she has only one brother, he’ll be a good guy, but something awful will be done to him by…guess what family member. Yep, you got it. Remember I said most stepmothers are witches? The brother will be turned into a thing like a huge gecko with a horse’s mane, and Maisry has to look after him and see that he is not butchered by guys in armor. On top of that, often Maisry herself is turned into a machrel, or a makrel, or a mackrell (a fish, I mean). This does not last forever, but it can seem like forever.
A woman named Margaret will have a little more control over what happens to her. She doesn’t mind graveyards, bones, worms or ghosts. If her boyfriend should happen to die, that does not prevent them from passing a loving, though clammy, night together.
Ellen is a sad case. Being called Ellen in this land is like walking around wearing a sign that says VICTIMIZE ME. Everyone picks on her. Some of her suffering comes about through her own bad judgement: she falls for guys whose forename is Child, and puts up with them long after the point when anyone with the good sense of a Margaret would have walked away. She is forbearing to the point of total masochism. Really, it’s depressing. She seems to have read the story of Patient Griselda far too many times. Let us leave talking of this sad case, and talk somewhat of the last lady on the list.
A woman named Isabel will go through horrible experiences…well, what else is new? Sometimes she comes out on top, sometimes not. On one hand, she might get pregnant by a man whose mother is a harridan, and then get drowned. That’s not good. On the other hand, Isabel may be turned by her own stepmother into a fire-breathing mermaid. That’s not good either, but it beats being dead. All the Isabel stories have to do with the sea. There’s probably a deep significance to that, if we could only find out what it was.
3. Some other things to watch out for.
Brothers. They travel in packs, and always in prime numbers: two, three or seven. They’re hot-tempered and armed to the teeth. They will make attempts on the life of any man who elopes with their sister. Usually they kill him, but sometimes he’s too much for them and he makes their heads roll.
Sisters. They, too, travel in packs, but not just in prime numbers: two, three, seven, twelve. Sometimes they kill each other, but mostly they just walk around looking beautiful, like a row of multicolored tulips.
Bonny boys who wad win hose an shoon. They are all over the place and there is no getting away from them. What they do is spread rumors. You want to watch out for the little twits.
Sex. This is often elaborate. “He mounted her on a milk white steed.” Tricky, but it’s nice if you can manage it.
Babies. These are inevitable. They happen to women very readily, partly because fertility is very high in ballad country, and partly because everyone’s just so horny there. The rule is that if you have made love once, you’re pregnant. A strange thing is that your family won’t be able to tell you are expecting until you’re about eight months along, and even then they’ll make you take your clothes off before they can be sure. Your parents are very, very nearsighted.
Animals. You will find that horses are color-coded according to speed. Black is speediest, brown is not so speedy, bay and dapple-gray are medium-slow, white is absolutely poky though picturesque. They can all talk. Hawks can talk too, and they are used to carry messages. Ravens and crows can not only talk, they can sing; they eat only dead men’s eyeballs. Corpses are so common that most ravens are too fat to get off the ground. And on that subject:
Pollution. Though the country is sylvan and beautiful, with green hills, waterfalls, oak, ash and thorn, green hollin, whins, heather on the moor, bonny broom, etc., there are dead bodies all over the place. The River Clyde is so full of corpses that there’s hardly room for the water. The flies are something terrible, and the Washer at the Ford has packed up and left in disgust.
Time. This is odd. You may get confused at first, because nothing happens in the past tense. Instead of saying, “He did such-and-such,” people say, “He has done such-and-such.” This is called the Presentish Tense; it is always used. No one knows why, but it would not do to flout convention.
Words. People say “gin” for “if” and “gar” for “make” and “wot” for “know”. A “leman” isn’t a citrus fruit, it’s a lover, and so is “fere”. “Casting kavils” means to draw lots…either that, or to go fly fishing, I forget which.
Right. Now you wot enough to be going on with.
Without further ado:
LIVING IN BALLAD COUNTRY
by April Grant
Some rules for survival.
1. You can’t trust any member of your family.
This is sad, but true. There is just no relative you can be sure of. If you have a sister, she will undoubtedly try to drown you, in a river or the sea, depending on which is handiest; if you have a brother, he’ll do one of two things. If you are female, he will murder you on your wedding day, out of sheer, unprintable jealousy. If you’re male, he’ll quarrel with you, pretend to get over his anger, challenge you to a “friendly” wrestling match, and while you struggle together, he’ll push you onto his knife, which he’s left sticking in the dirt with its point up, and then he’ll make out it was an accident.
Your father will be a mean old king with a trailing white beard. He does not have any fun himself, and therefore feels it his duty to take his children to task for enjoying themselves. If you are female, and you show up pregnant, he’ll give you holy hell-have your boyfriend beheaded, probably, toss the head in your lap, and then burn you at the stake, like as not. One of the laws in ballad country is that, if your daughter is with child and not married, you’re allowed, indeed you’re encouraged, to burn her at the stake in the front yard. You do not even have to get a bonfire permit from City Hall. The neighbors look over the fence: “What’s that smell? They’re not burning leaves, are they? Oh, no, it’s only their daughter.”
If your mother is alive, she’ll probably be just as much of a prude. She will wear a wimple, and do embroidery until her fingers cramp up. (A wimple is one of those veil things that go under your chin, as opposed to a snood, which goes over your hair.)
In nine out of ten cases, however, she’ll have died when you were little, and your father will have remarried. There is a high mortality rate on mothers in ballad country: most people have stepmothers.
These broads are in a class by themselves. If you thought the rest of your family was unpromising, just take a look at your stepmother. Go on, take a look, she’s right over there, clinging to your father’s arm and fixing you with a basilisk glare…
Makes your insides curl up, doesn’t she? All stepmothers are that kind of person. Possibly they’ve all been to the same college. (It’s a fact that the University of Dom-Daniel, under the sea near the coast of Cornwall, now offers a Bachelor’s Degree in Stepmother Studies, and an optional minor in Ill-Wishing.)
Most of them are witches (yours sure looks like one, my friend) but, witch or not, every one has a mean streak a mile wide. They often posess a good, if Gothic, fashion sense. Lots of black silk and wine-colored velvet-Villainess Chic-and they can always be trusted to have hair so dark it has blue highlights. This is a piece of color coding which comes in handy.
All the villains have black hair. This does not mean that the blonde people are all good guys-far from it. However, it gives you advance notice sometimes, which can be useful. If you see a figure in the distance with raven-black hair, and she’s heading towards you, run for your life.
But your own stepmother will get you by and by. She is a woman who isn’t pleased by anything, and most of all she detests the children of her husband’s first wife. No matter what you do, sooner or later she’ll poison you or transform you into a Laily Gawd-Help-Us that breaths fire. I can’t suggest any way of getting out of it…just consider yourself warned. Now:
2. Names: a brief primer.
Names come in handy. You can tell a lot about a person just by seeing what they’re called. For men, this applies to nicknames most of all. Here is a list of what you can expect.
Young-men with Young at the front of their names are oversexed and violent, and they tend toward homicidal jealousy. I warn you all, ye ladies fair: never take a Young for your boyfriend. He will kill you before many verses go by. If, despite my warning, you find yourself being pushed over a waterfall one dark night, it may comfort you as you go down for the third time (and it will be three times-things happen in threes around here) to know that you have a lot of brothers and they will wreak horrible vengeance on the man who killed you. So that is all right.
Oh, except for Young Hunting. He’s not like any of the other Youngs; instead of killing, his function is to get killed. He achieves this by having the monumental stupidity to approach his girlfriend, who’s holding a knife, and tell her he’s dumping her. If you see a trail of bloodstains, you’ll find Young Hunting at the end of it, gasping his last, “Let’s…just be friends…”
Men with Child at the front of their names are handsome devils who torture their girlfriends. Unfortunately, there are some women who fall for them nonetheless.
Men with the forename of Hind (so to speak) are rather mysterious people, and masters of disguise. Sometimes they have houses underground, in the roots of trees. They’re decent fellows.
Men who are called Clerk are nice, too. They wear wire-rimmed glasses and have that nervous, vulnerable air which makes women quiver with affection. Alas, these guys always seem to fall for the wrong girl. Either she has scary brothers, who kill the poor Clerk, or he gets seduced by a mermaid, who then strangles him with her nightie. It’s not fair, but there it is.
Guys called Lord, Sir, Prince or King will resemble one or another of the above personalities. In addition, they’ll be heavy drinkers, and be worn out most of the time from committing droit de seigneur all over the place.
Now, about women. There are five main names for women in ballad country. Janet, Maisry, Margaret, Ellen, Isabel. Walk into a crowded room and shout, “Hey, Ellen!” and heads will turn all over the place.
Women named Janet tend to be strapping wenches with loads of self-confidence, and they look good in green. They get pregnant if their boyfriends so much as look at them, and they also live to the end of the song-which is quite an achievement, around here.
A woman named Maisry will be plagued with brothers. If the brothers are the unpleasant sort, they will burn her at the stake. If she has only one brother, he’ll be a good guy, but something awful will be done to him by…guess what family member. Yep, you got it. Remember I said most stepmothers are witches? The brother will be turned into a thing like a huge gecko with a horse’s mane, and Maisry has to look after him and see that he is not butchered by guys in armor. On top of that, often Maisry herself is turned into a machrel, or a makrel, or a mackrell (a fish, I mean). This does not last forever, but it can seem like forever.
A woman named Margaret will have a little more control over what happens to her. She doesn’t mind graveyards, bones, worms or ghosts. If her boyfriend should happen to die, that does not prevent them from passing a loving, though clammy, night together.
Ellen is a sad case. Being called Ellen in this land is like walking around wearing a sign that says VICTIMIZE ME. Everyone picks on her. Some of her suffering comes about through her own bad judgement: she falls for guys whose forename is Child, and puts up with them long after the point when anyone with the good sense of a Margaret would have walked away. She is forbearing to the point of total masochism. Really, it’s depressing. She seems to have read the story of Patient Griselda far too many times. Let us leave talking of this sad case, and talk somewhat of the last lady on the list.
A woman named Isabel will go through horrible experiences…well, what else is new? Sometimes she comes out on top, sometimes not. On one hand, she might get pregnant by a man whose mother is a harridan, and then get drowned. That’s not good. On the other hand, Isabel may be turned by her own stepmother into a fire-breathing mermaid. That’s not good either, but it beats being dead. All the Isabel stories have to do with the sea. There’s probably a deep significance to that, if we could only find out what it was.
3. Some other things to watch out for.
Brothers. They travel in packs, and always in prime numbers: two, three or seven. They’re hot-tempered and armed to the teeth. They will make attempts on the life of any man who elopes with their sister. Usually they kill him, but sometimes he’s too much for them and he makes their heads roll.
Sisters. They, too, travel in packs, but not just in prime numbers: two, three, seven, twelve. Sometimes they kill each other, but mostly they just walk around looking beautiful, like a row of multicolored tulips.
Bonny boys who wad win hose an shoon. They are all over the place and there is no getting away from them. What they do is spread rumors. You want to watch out for the little twits.
Sex. This is often elaborate. “He mounted her on a milk white steed.” Tricky, but it’s nice if you can manage it.
Babies. These are inevitable. They happen to women very readily, partly because fertility is very high in ballad country, and partly because everyone’s just so horny there. The rule is that if you have made love once, you’re pregnant. A strange thing is that your family won’t be able to tell you are expecting until you’re about eight months along, and even then they’ll make you take your clothes off before they can be sure. Your parents are very, very nearsighted.
Animals. You will find that horses are color-coded according to speed. Black is speediest, brown is not so speedy, bay and dapple-gray are medium-slow, white is absolutely poky though picturesque. They can all talk. Hawks can talk too, and they are used to carry messages. Ravens and crows can not only talk, they can sing; they eat only dead men’s eyeballs. Corpses are so common that most ravens are too fat to get off the ground. And on that subject:
Pollution. Though the country is sylvan and beautiful, with green hills, waterfalls, oak, ash and thorn, green hollin, whins, heather on the moor, bonny broom, etc., there are dead bodies all over the place. The River Clyde is so full of corpses that there’s hardly room for the water. The flies are something terrible, and the Washer at the Ford has packed up and left in disgust.
Time. This is odd. You may get confused at first, because nothing happens in the past tense. Instead of saying, “He did such-and-such,” people say, “He has done such-and-such.” This is called the Presentish Tense; it is always used. No one knows why, but it would not do to flout convention.
Words. People say “gin” for “if” and “gar” for “make” and “wot” for “know”. A “leman” isn’t a citrus fruit, it’s a lover, and so is “fere”. “Casting kavils” means to draw lots…either that, or to go fly fishing, I forget which.
Right. Now you wot enough to be going on with.