"The Dreadful Wind and Rain"
Analysis of A 400-Year-Old Murder Ballad - Page 3

Story Details

• Two sisters are in love with the same man.
• The sisters lived in a bower, which is a private room, hall, or wing of the lady of the house. This indicates wealth and higher social standing.
• The younger sister was an attractive fair-skinned blonde, the older had dark hair and eyes with possibly olive-toned skin.
• The older sister was being courted at her home by a squire or knight (likely an arranged marriage) who fell in love with her younger sister during the courtship.
• The older sister planned to get rid of her younger sister before the courtship was ruined and talked her into walking down to the water to see their father's ships come into port ("father's fish-boats"). Once the younger sister is near the water (either a river bank or near the sea) standing on a large stone, her older sister pushes her into the water to drown her.
  
  It may be that the older sister used the wind and rain from a storm as an excuse for how her sister fell into the water and could be the origin of the refrain "Oh the wind and rain."
  
  
• Once the younger sister is in the water floundering she begs her older sister to rescue her and offers everything to get her to help, but she refuses as she knows that now her suitor will without doubt become her husband and she will have it all. The younger sister floats away swimming and sinking until she finally drowns floating lifeless on the water.
• She floats "downstream" to a mill pond, but because of conflicting details, it is possible that this was a tidal dam with a pond near the stream's mouth by the ocean. If that was the case, she may have floated downstream to the ocean or been pushed in at the ocean with the tide bringing her body into the mill pond at evening high tide. Having this occur in the late afternoon to early evening is supported by fishing ships returning to port, a miller's daughter preparing for an evening meal, and the afternoon high tide.
• Because of her white dress, blonde hair, and/or golden girdle around her waist, she appeared from a distance to be a golden or a white swan swimming or floating on the water. As she neared the dam she more clearly looked like a "fair maiden" to the miller's daughter who first saw her on the water.
• The miller closed the sluice gates on the dam and used a hook to draw the girl's body from the water onto the bank or shore. After that, he probably went back to get the mill going again. I can't explain why he never told anyone else or came back for her as he must have known who she was, unless he robbed her body and kept quiet. In one version the younger sister is still alive on the mill pond and offers the miller her jewelry to help her out of the water. The miller takes her jewelry but then pushes her out farther where she finally drowns. In either case, the miller must have recognized the fair maiden esp. if it was his son that was courting her older sister.
• While the miller was gone, a traveling minstrel happened upon the corpse of this attractive blonde maiden. Some versions of the story have the body decomposed enough to leave just bones and hair. It is possible that the minstrel saw her not long after she drowned but left and then came back months later to see if her remains were still there.
  
  Now, for some reason, he took her body parts and made either a harp as in two versions or a fiddle in most other versions. In one version, the ghost of the younger sister asks the traveling minstrel to use her bones and hair to make the fiddle. Although most versions have him using only bones and hair to make the fiddle, in one gruesome version, he used her eyes, ears, tongue, arms, legs, and toes as well.
  
  It may be he had no choice but to use her body parts to repair his instrument that was broken or to improvise one he was missing. Maybe he wanted to create a tribute to the dead maiden as a morbid master craft work. No matter what may have motivated this minstrel, I find it extremely hard to justify the desecration of a human body to make or repair a musical instrument, the idea horrifies me.
  
  
• At the hall of the home of the sisters' family where the minstrel was entertaining, the haunted fiddle calls out the murdering sister in song verse. The fiddle begins to sing in a woman's voice when it either plays itself or notes are struck by the fiddler. It is the ghost of the dead sister who then identifies everyone in the room and accuses the older sister of murdering her.
  
  In one version the miller is hung and the older sister is boiled in lead for what happened to the younger sister. This seems like an ending used for closure, to have justice prevail when it may not have after the older sister was accused.

This story disturbed me deeply as if I was somehow personally involved. When I presented this song to my brother who is a professional musician, he wondered why it endured for so long and continues to have such appeal. I responded that a love triangle and murder in an elite family would appeal to any audience past or present. However, I find it horrifying that in this story an innocent and attractive young girl gets murdered by her selfish sister with everyone else down the line taking advantage of her to the point that a traveling minstrel even uses her dead body parts to fashion a musical instrument to entertain with. When I think that this story was preserved in song and yet forgotten in written history, it leaves me feeling like it was covered up and begs to be revealed, at least for the sake of the poor younger sister.

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