GUEST,padgett said, in part:

I reached the conclusion that the parrot was really her own conscience telling her not to have any qualms about her drowning the knight taking his money and his horses,

Padgett, I don't question your right to interpret a portion of this or any other song however you wish in your own mind. But when you suggest that the parrot was "really" the voice of her conscience, I wonder if you are suggesting that this was the meaning traditionally assigned in the singing and passing down of the song.

If we were talking about what I'll call "an authored song", then speculation as to the author's meaning is entirely proper (although your suggested meaning is rather unlikely in this particular case, in my opinion). But for a song which has come together through gradual accumulation and alteration, through the contributions of many singers over a long period of time, for one today to suggest that the surface meaning covers a hidden moralistic meaning is unwarranted.

And even if it were an authored song, there is nothing in the parrot incident that suggests the voice of her conscience salving her feelings.

The English and Scottish traditional ballads, in my opinion and understanding, are pretty up-front, telling a story of events and leaving the listener to his/her own interpretation. They don't tell you something like, "Oh, wasn't she terrible to kill that poor baby that she'd had out of wedlock?" And I don't think of any of the ballads that deal with a character's inner feelings, either.

Dave Oesterreich