Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: Mrrzy
Date: 11 Nov 15 - 06:42 PM

Joe, that's my thread, which caused me to revive this one, ha ha. Not by chance but design.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 11 Nov 15 - 01:15 AM

Just to make the point, which nobody appears above to have done, that 'Villikins' is not really relevant, being merely a music-hall travesty of this theme, often attribd to its original singer in 1850s, Sam Cowell, and so not actually a traditional part of it. It was a big hit, known nationwide in all classes. It will be remembered that Lewis Carroll's Alice had a cat called Dinah. In fact, the Liddell family of Christ Church Oxford, where Carroll {Dodgson} was a mathematical fellow and the Rev Dr Liddell, the original Alice's father, was Dean [ie Chaplain & so head of the college - see below], actually had two cats who were called Dinah and Villikins. NB also, in case it had not occurred to you, that 'Villikins' is a C19 cockney pronunciation [with its odd transpositions of v & w -- see Dickens passim, esp the Weller father & son in 'Pickwick Papers'] of the familiar name Wilkins.

Christ Church chapel, BTW, is huge for a college chapel, and actually serves as Oxford's cathedral. "The college is associated with Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, which serves as the college chapel and whose dean is ex officio the college head." Wikipedia

≈M≈

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: LadyJean
Date: 10 Nov 15 - 09:36 PM

Find a book called Green Hills of Magic by Ruth Ann Musick. She suggests that The Suffolk Miracly story must have originated in Eastern Europe.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: Joe_F
Date: 10 Nov 15 - 06:57 PM

By chance, a thread on Sweet William's Ghost has just popped up.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 10 Nov 15 - 09:30 AM

OK, found an old Ghost Ballads album (Dean Gitter) and it has a great ghost song where I refreshed a separate thread to get the last words, ha ha, that I can't understand, it's the Ghost of Sweet William; in my version she asks for a kiss but is refused, and she's alive at the end of the song, but in the version in the Trad she dies at the end.

I *knew* there were others.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 20 Jan 05 - 12:37 PM

Art - hee hee!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 19 Jan 05 - 02:26 PM

If I've trivialized this in order to find humor therein, sorry 'bout that people. Finding the humor of it gets me by these days. This is a fine topic worthy of note, and I should've known better.

BUT, isn't "neckrophelia" where the term "necking" comes from? What about "rubber-necking" and condoms?

Art

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 18 Jan 05 - 02:17 PM

I put a list of links to Suffolk Miracle material in thread  The Weeping Lass. All the tune examples in Bronson are from the USA and Canada, but more recently, versions of the song have been found still current in both England and Ireland.

The Little Penknife discussion is at The footboy (Canadian ballad), but I don't think it really has very much to do with The Suffolk Miracle, though there are certainly similarities in the opening verses, which may perhaps have been borrowed from an example of that song such as the one Child referred to.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 18 Jan 05 - 02:16 PM

Ooh, sounds fascinating, and in need of a new folk song!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Storyteller
Date: 18 Jan 05 - 09:08 AM

Mrrzy, Malcolm Douglas has already written in a Mudcat thread about The Suffolk Miracle of the Cornish folk tale cited by Child as the example of the fuller story of the song. In the present state of the Mudcat I can't easily locate this thread, but it is out there somewhere.

Child does say of The Suffolk Miracle that: "This piece could not be admitted here on its own merits....I have printed this ballad because in a blurred, enfeebled, and disfigured shape, it is the representative in England of one of the most remarkable tales and one of the most impressive and beautiful ballads of the European continent."

Child then summarises the Cornish folk tale before citing other specimens from all over Europe of the tale of the Spectre Bridegroom. His rescension of the tale is worth giving here:

"A lover, who has long been unheard of, but whose death has not been ascertained, roused from his last sleep by the grief of his mistress (which in some cases drives her to seek or accept the aid of a spell), comes to her by night on horseback and induces her to mount behind him. As they ride, he says several times to her, The moon shines bright, the dead ride swift, art not afraid? Believing him to be living, the maid protests that she feels no fear, but at last becomes alarmed. He takes her to his burial-place, and tries to drag her into his grave; she escapes, and takes refuge in a dead-house (or house where a dead man is lying). The lover pursues, and calls upon the dead man within the house to give her up, which in most cases, for fellowship he prepares to do. At the critical moment a cock crows, and the maid is saved."

In an intriguing footnote Child adds ..."I have a copy learned in the north of Ireland in 1850 (and very much changed as to form), in which the scene is laid "between Armagh and County Clare.""

This otherwise unidentified copy sounds suspiciously like a variant of a song identified elsewhere by Malcolm Douglas and Martin Ryan as The Little Penknife sung by John Corry of Tyrone.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: Tannywheeler
Date: 17 Jan 05 - 12:31 PM

I don't remember all the details of Th' Unquiet Grave. Instead of a kiss, I remember the dead lover tells the mourner to get over it, sweetie,and get ON with your life.

Does anyone remember? In the Joanne Woodward movie The Three Faces of Eve -- the event which triggers the split in her character's personality is the traumatic forcing of the child to kiss the dead -- gran'ma? aunt? -- in the coffin.               Tw

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Joe_F
Date: 17 Jan 05 - 10:57 AM

Mack/Misophist says: "I don't know a lot about lyrics but I do know a little about history. In the days when most people died at home, the 'last kiss' was a common ritual in the English speaking world; very common in the 1800's, before that, I'm not sure. At any rate, it would be an obvious thing to add to a song."

In the story "Odour of Chrysanthemums" by D. H. Lawrence (1911, and probably true to life), the body of a miner, suffocated in a cave-in, is delivered to his house. His widow, after removing his clothes but before washing him, "laid her hand on him, in claim. He was still warm, for the mine was hot where he had died.... Elizabeth embraced the body of her husband, with cheek and lips."

--- Joe Fineman    [e-mail]

||: Clowns, not clones. :||

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 17 Jan 05 - 08:21 AM

What did Child say?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 15 Jan 05 - 02:42 PM

She Moved Through the Fair wasn't intended as a revenant song at all; John McCormick seems to have substituted "dead" for "dear" when he made a commercial recording of it; probably by accident. The rest is history (and a great deal of romantic misunderstanding).

I've read the Shields piece, which is convincing. Although versions of The Grey Cock occasionally show up with ghosts in them, these can invariably be shown to have been imported from other songs: usually Willie O or The Unquiet Grave, from what I remember.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Storyteller
Date: 15 Jan 05 - 12:50 PM

The more I think about this I think that Mrr has hit on a really good question; generally in balladry and folklore the dead don't come back to haunt the ones who loved them except for overpowering reasons. So in Sweet Willam's Ghost he comes back to reclaim the plighted troth and thus gain release for his spirit, while in The Unquiet Grave the dead lover (who is either male or female in differing versions) is prevented from resting at peace by excessive mourning. The living are warned not to kiss the dead as a friendly piece of advice.

So The Suffolk Miracle on the face of it doesn't make any sense; and neither do those other songs of revenants such as She Moved Through the Fair or the versions of The Grey Cock as sung by Cecilia Costello where the night-visting lover is a ghost.

I think that Professor Child had quite a lot to say about underlying story of The Suffolk Miracle, and I've seen references to an article by Hugh Shields (which I haven't read myself) suggesting that the revenant variations of The Grey Cock are a late embellishment.

Mrr has raised some really interesting questions about dead spirits here. There is a lot going on in some of these ballads which could tell us about old beliefs.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 14 Jan 05 - 10:54 AM

In French the little death (la petite mort) is still the orgasm, or so people are taught in advanced French classes; I've personally never heard that said.

And Villikins probably didn't have to even swallow the poison if this theory of mine is true...

I thought that what Tom Lehrer said about necrophilia was something about the childhood necrophiliac who fulfilled his boyhood ambition and grew up to be coroner ... at which point a few people laughed... so Tom added "The rest of you can look it up when you get home!" and everybody laughed...

And the corpses being kissed, or desired to be kissed, had always been beloved in life; I don't know of any song where they mourn some stranger out of their grave?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: CapriUni
Date: 13 Jan 05 - 07:01 PM

From Art Thieme: Sounds to me, by those descriptions/noises/machinations, that one of them or both was/were having an orgasm!!

I don't think I want to visualize that...

Did you know that in the 17th century, "to die" was a euphenism for having an orgasm (among the living, that is)? As a noun, it was known as "the little death" -- presumably because for a moment or two, your senses tune out... If that's common in the language, not surprising there are romantic ghost songs. Doesn't mean that all those folks were into necrophilia, though... ;-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: squeezeldy
Date: 13 Jan 05 - 04:52 PM

In the original poem "The Unquiet Grave," the dead beloved is a woman. The gender is usually adjusted to fit the singer...

In the song "Anachie Gordon," he "kissed her cold lips 'til his heart has turned to stone, and he died in the chamber his love, she lies in."

Nothing like a couple of cheerful ghost songs for a gloomy winter day. I feel much better now!!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Storyteller
Date: 13 Jan 05 - 02:18 PM

As Tom Lehrer may have said; necrophilia can be dead boring.

Fair Eleanor seems to survive one kiss of George Collins' "lilywhite lips" but the news of his death is too much for six pretty maids of London Town. What's going on there? (Don't tell me - I'm probably better off not knowing.)

How about Villikins though, who kissed Dinah's corpse ten thousand times over, and then swallowed the poison?

Poor Willie in Cecilia Costello's "The Grey Cock" is also a bit off colour when he comes to visit his true love.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: Mrrzy
Date: 13 Jan 05 - 01:29 PM

But what a way to go!

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 12 Jan 05 - 10:32 PM

Sounds to me, by those descriptions/noises/machinations, that one of them or both was/were having an orgasm!!

I don't think I want to visualize that...

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 12 Jan 05 - 10:14 PM

Almost immediately.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Mrr at work without cookie
Date: 12 Jan 05 - 11:42 AM

Art, I don't know those songs, sorry. Thanks, malcolm douglas, for an example of kissing HER clay cold lips (isn't anything else cold in folklore?) - does he then die soon?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Snuffy
Date: 12 Jan 05 - 09:04 AM

Isn't the corpse usually female in The Unquiet Grave, too?

(Got into Cat through backdoor so can't search - or log in)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 12 Jan 05 - 02:36 AM

But of course they do. Here's one:

So he ordered the grave to be opened wide,
And the shroud he turned down,
And there he kissed her clay-cold lips,
Till the tears came trickling down.

Lord Lovel. Child 75H; from a London broadside of 1846.

He then dies of sorrow and we get the usual "rose and briar" finale. Mind you, the following extra verse appeared in the same year:

Then he flung hisself down by the side of the corpse,
With a shivering gulp and a guggle,
Gave two hops, three kicks, heaved a sigh, blew his nose,
Sung a song and then died in the struggle - uggle - uggle
Sung a song and then died in the struggle.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: beetle cat
Date: 11 Jan 05 - 08:26 PM

and they are always "clay cold" lips. not just any old corpse.

another example: Bonny Light Horseman (when boney commanded..)
and no, the men dont kiss their dead lovers clay cold lips, they just commit suicide.

~mary.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 11 Jan 05 - 05:55 PM

Mrr GUEST,

As I said, it happens in the songs I mentioned above !!

It doesen't happen at all in the songs you mention.

So, are you asking, "Why doesn't it happen in those songs?"

I do suspect it doesn't happen in those songs just because...

...because it's not in those songs. Never was in there---all through the lives of the songs.

Even in the song "The Cat Came Back" -- it wasn't in that song either.

And that song has NINE long LIVES---as we all know.

Besides nobody wants to kiss the ghost of a dead cat that didn't come back-----finally.

(Art Thieme)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: Cluin
Date: 11 Jan 05 - 04:08 PM

It may happen, GUEST. I walk a twisted path.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 11 Jan 05 - 04:06 PM

I am thinking of the other ghost ballads I know - nobody ever tries to kiss the Flying Dutchman, Miss Bailey (the token female ghost) wasn't visiting anybody who loved her, nor did Captain Smith try to kiss her, so is it just the Unquiet Grave and the two brothers ones after all?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 10 Jan 05 - 07:12 PM

Songs like The "Sailor Boy" (English), "The California Boy" (1849 California gold rush), "The Pinery Boy" (Wisconsin lumber woods variant)----All the same song. A grand illustration of the Folk Process in action. One song from Britain went to Wisconsin and then on to California. No known author or composer. Same story---variations in the tune. Changes in geography and economics DICTATE the different vocations of the "boys".

And the ghost and the kiss are preserved in all three songs.

Art Thieme

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 10 Jan 05 - 11:27 AM

Scoville, the question is whether wishing to be kissed once one is a corpse is the same thing as wishing that one's loved one die, since in all the songs where someone wants to kiss the raised dead loved one, the kisser is warned by the ghost/risen corpse not to, or death will be the result. That is why I wonder if, in The Suffolk Miracle, the woman then dies. i don't know of any where the risen corpse is the one doing the kissing, do you? And I think you meant presage, which means be an omen of, rather than preclude, which means prevent?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Scoville
Date: 08 Jan 05 - 11:54 PM

There aren't any mobile corpses in "Little Darling Pal", are there? Isn't the protagonist there a girl who has been jilted and wishes she were dead; she wants a kiss AFTER she has died (don't ask me why . . . ).

I didn't know that being kissed by a mobile corpse was supposed to preclude death on the part of the [kissee?]. Most songs I know of that involve kissing corpses do not involve reanimated corpses, and the kissing verse is usually the last so we never know what happens to the living participant. I always assumed the protagonist was asking for one last gesture of mercy from someone who had caused them suffering.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Jan 05 - 08:58 PM

Oh, and Alan S, yes, I hadn't thought of that one. Is he trying to kill her, posthumously if you will, for betraying him in the first place?

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: Mrrzy
Date: 08 Jan 05 - 08:57 PM

Lots of others, Joe; in every version of the Two Brothers that I know (not the civil war one, the one where one brother kills the other over a women) there murderous one takes his dying brother, buries him (usually with his bible at his head his psalter at his feet, his bow and arrow at his side that sounder he will sleep), and on the way the dying brother gives him lies to tell the loving relations who ask where he is, except he is to tell the truth to the loving woman. Said loving woman (Suzanne in my favorite version) then mourns the birds out of their nests, and mourns young Johnny out of his grave where he couldn't get any rest - except in the version where she actually puts on small hoppers and hops both far and near till she hops the small birds right off the briars and her true love out of his grave - now, what are these hoppers? High-heeled shoes? - and then you get the line about My lips they are so bitter he said, my breath it is so strong, if you take one kiss from my clay-cold lips your time will not be long. Also, in the Unquiet Grave, she gets him up before trying to kiss him.

Are there any where the MAN so mourns that the WOMAN rises? Or is it just that men rise anyway, nudge nudge wink wink>

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: frogprince
Date: 08 Jan 05 - 07:06 PM

Joe, I was going to try to be decent and resist sharing this. It was in the Detroit newspapers about 18 years ago; I guess it happened in the Detroit area, but I no longer remember for sure. An uh...
socially-adjustment challenged individual murdered his girlfriend and buried her in the yard. After a couple of days he got lonely for her, so he dug her up again for a little more lovin, then buried her again. I came in for the nightshift and found the crew reading it; this was a foundry, with a bunch of salty characters, but that grossed them out one and all.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: Joe Offer
Date: 08 Jan 05 - 04:12 PM

I've always had the impression that most of these kissable corpses were supine and immobile, and I've wondered if activities other than kissing took place. I do see one version of Suffolk Miracle with a mobile corpse. Are there others?

-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST
Date: 08 Jan 05 - 02:41 PM

Cluin, you're one truly twisted individual!

Should our paths ever cross, I owe you a beer! ;-)

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: mack/misophist
Date: 08 Jan 05 - 01:50 PM

I don't know a lot about lyrics but I do know a little about history. In the days when most people died at home, the 'last kiss' was a common ritual in the English speaking world; very common in the 1800's, before that, I'm not sure. At any rate, it would be an obvious thing to add to a song.

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: Cluin
Date: 07 Jan 05 - 09:18 PM

I'm a necrophiliac and I'm okay
I kiss cold lips and brush maggots away

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Allan S.
Date: 07 Jan 05 - 07:16 PM

What about "Little darling pal of mine" Last verse

There are three things that I mourn for
Thats my casket, shroud, and grave
When I'm gone dont mourn ore me
Just kiss the lips you've betrayed

Subject: RE: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: frogprince
Date: 07 Jan 05 - 05:16 PM

Yuuuuck!

Subject: Folklore: Kissing Walking Corpses
From: GUEST,Mrr at work
Date: 07 Jan 05 - 04:58 PM

Hi all - in almost all the murder ballads/songs of death where the loved one mourns their true love out of their grave for one last kiss, the dead person warns the lover not to kiss them or they will die too, the live person, that is. EXCEPT in The Suffolk Miracle where she kisses the ghost - so, will she die now? And where does that come from, the idea that once you raise them from the grave you can't kiss them anway? Also, what about Mary who said Unscrew that lid, turn back that shroud so fine, that I may kiss his cold cold lips for I'm sure he'll never kiss mine - what happens to her, are there any other versions of that song, called, I think, George Collins?
-Mrr the Macabre