There are a couple of superstitions or beliefs represented in "The Unquiet Grave" (Child #78). One (the main one) is that mourning over-much disturbs the dead. Mourning for as long as a year? Okay.

I'll sit and mourn all on her grave
For a twelvemonth and a day.

Longer that a year. At which point, the ghost—or the "revenant" ("returner")—rouses and speaks.

"Why sittest thou all on my grave
And will not let me sleep?"

It is also said that the tears of the mourner wet the winding sheet of the departed.

The second is the belief that if one kisses a corpse (even though the revenant is animated enough to speak, or sometimes even walk, it is still a corpse), one will die shortly thereafter.

I don't see the ballad as grisly at all. It's a beautiful ballad expressing the feeling of pain and loss of the surviving lover, and the concern of the departed that he should go on and live his life without her, not wanting him to join her in death. Therefore, she refuses his kiss.

The ballad seems to contain a general moral:   Life is for the living. Don't waste the rest of your life mourning for someone who is gone. Get on with it.

There is one goof in the lyrics that I hear many people making, and I believe that goof stems from a misprint in Cecil Sharp's One Hundred English Folk Songs. In fact, Joan Baez sings the goof, and repeats it in her song book, which may explain why I hear so many people singing it that way.

The goof is found in the verse:

Down in yonder grove, sweetheart,
Where we were wont to walk,
The fairest flower that e're I saw
Is witherèd to a stalk.

The typo is in the second line. The word "grove / grave." In Sharp's (and Joan's) book, the word "grave" is printed. Obviously, "grove" is the correct word. What kind of sense does the idea of two young lovers walking "in yonder grave" make? Whereas, in balladry as in life, lovers walk in groves all the time. Rarely in graves. Short walk. Not all that romantic. Besides, most other books I've seen containing the same version of the ballad use the word "grove."

The nicest and most effecting rendition of this ballad I have ever heard was by Andrew Rowan Summers on his Folkways album, "The Unquiet Grave." Several other fine ballads on that record, beautifully performed, with dulcimer accompaniment.

Don Firth