Folklore: a ballad where he attends own funeral??

Subject: Folklore: a ballad where he attends own funeral??
From: Art Thieme
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 01:06 PM

I don't mean Finnegan's Wake!

Can anyone suggest a BALLAD where a person attends their own funeral??! A friend wants to find one, and I'm not coming up with anything.

Art hieme

Subject: RE: Folklore: a ballad where he attends own funer
From: GUEST,alan bard
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 02:11 PM

the dying cub fans last request?

I was thinking you were the person most likely to come up with the answer....

Irish: Isn't it grand boys to be bloody well dead? (Look at the coffin?)

The Ballad of Ebenezzer Scrooge, time to start writing...

can't remember how close "pore jed (jeb) is dead" from Oklahoma. Jud!

Did you ever thing as the hearse goes by.

Subject: RE: Folklore: a ballad where he attends own funeral??
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 02:50 PM

Well, there's Willie's Lyke Wake (Child #25) where he not only attends his own funeral but stands in as the corpse.

Subject: RE: Folklore: a ballad where he attends own funeral??
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 04:46 PM

Art, one that I often sing is The Irish Wake. It usually gets a lot of laughs. It's in the DT as Pat Malone Forgot That He Was Dead.

Subject: RE: Folklore: a ballad where he attends own funeral??
From: Joybell
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 05:56 PM

"Long Black Veil" -- not a ballad I realize -- has the teller of the tale describing his own hanging and then his awareness of his lover at his grave. Was he also at his funeral, though, I wonder? Of course he was actually dead.
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: Folklore: a ballad where he attends own funeral??
From: GUEST,^&*
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 06:04 PM

The Brown and the Yellow Ale fits the description nicely - although it's a lot less obvious what's happening in this English language version than in the original Irish (Gaelic) versions of the song.

Subject: RE: Folklore: a ballad where he attends own funeral??
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 06:07 PM

Willie's Lyke Wake (Child 25)
Finnegan's Wake - the corpse isn't dead
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: Folklore: a ballad where he attends own funeral??
From: Susan of DT
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 07:50 PM

I can't remember the name or Child #, but there is a ballad where an English woman wants to marry a Scot, which the family won't permit, so she asks to be buried at the third kirk over the border, takes a sleeping draft and is carried over the border, where her lover rescues her from the coffin and marries her.

Subject: RE: Folklore: a ballad where he attends own funeral??
From: NOMADMan
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 08:46 PM

That would be "The Gay Goshawk," (Child #96) in which an English woman takes a potion to appear dead, after extracting a promise from her father that, should she die, he will send her body over the border so that she might be buried near her Scottish lover. The family, of course, opposed the romance. Her brothers carry the coffin to Scotland in accordance with the promise. By the time they arrive, the effects of the potion have worn off, and the lady shares bread and wine with her lover. The goshawk served as a message-carrier between the lovers.

Regards,
John

Subject: RE: Folklore: a ballad where he attends own funeral??
From: Susan of DT
Date: 05 Sep 10 - 09:56 PM

Thanx, John

Subject: RE: Folklore: a ballad where he attends own funeral??
From: Art Thieme
Date: 06 Sep 10 - 01:39 AM

Way to go folks! It is much appreciated.
Art