Suffolk Miracle, The [Child 272]

DESCRIPTION: A squire's daughter loves a lowborn man. The squire sends her away. In time her love comes to bear her home. His head hurts; she binds it with her kerchief. She arrives home. Her father says her love is dead. She finds his dead body wearing her kerchief
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1689? (broadside, dated to that year by Wood); a song with this name was in William Thackeray's broadside catalog by 1690
KEYWORDS: love courting separation death father lover ghost supernatural corpse travel horse grief
FOUND IN: Britain(England(South,West)) US(Ap,NE,SE,So) Ireland Canada(Mar,Newf)
REFERENCES (33 citations):
Child 272, "The Suffolk Miracle" (1 text)
Bronson 272, The Suffolk Miracle" (13 versions)
Bronson-SingingTraditionOfChildsPopularBallads 272, "The Suffolk Miracle" (3 versions: #1a, #2, #6)
Butterworth/Dawney-PloughboysGlory, pp. 22-23, "Its of a farmer all in this town (The Suffolk Miracle)" (1 text, 1 tune)
Williams-Wiltshire-WSRO Gl 90, "Lover's Ghost" (1 text)
Sharp-EnglishFolkSongsFromSouthernAppalachians 37, "The Suffolk Miracle" (4 texts plus 1 fragment ("C") that might be almost anything, 5 tunes) {Bronson's #4, #2, #3, #1a, #8}
Wells-TheBalladTree, pp. 217-219, "The Suffolk Miracle" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #3}
Barry/Eckstorm/Smyth-BritishBalladsFromMaine p. 314, "The Suffolk Miracle" (1 fragment)
Randolph 32, "Lady Fair" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #12}
Flanders/Olney-BalladsMigrantInNewEngland, pp. 145-147, "The Holland Handkerchief" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #7}
Flanders-AncientBalladsTraditionallySungInNewEngland4, pp. 50-62, "The Suffolk Miracle" (3 texts, 2 tune, all weeming somewhat mixed -- e.g. "A" has the rose-and-briar ending) {Bronson's A=Bronson's #10, B=#7}
Flanders/Ballard/Brown/Barry-NewGreenMountainSongster, pp. 86-89, "The Suffolk Miracle" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #10}
Cox-FolkSongsSouth 27, "The Suffolk Miracle" (1 text)
Gainer-FolkSongsFromTheWestVirginiaHills, pp. 84-85, "The Lady Near New York Town" (1 text, 1 tune)
Brown/Belden/Hudson-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore2 41, "The Suffolk Miracle" (1 text)
Brown/Schinhan-FrankCBrownCollectionNCFolklore4 41, "The Suffolk Miracle" (1 excerpt, 1 tune)
Morris-FolksongsOfFlorida, #169, "The Suffolk Miracle" (1 text, 1 tune) {Bronson's #11}
Davis-TraditionalBalladsOfVirginia 42, "The Suffolk Miracle" (2 texts plus a scrap which could be anything, 2 tunes, one of them for the unidentifiable fragment) {Bronson's #8, #5}
Moore/Moore-BalladsAndFolkSongsOfTheSouthwest 49, "The Farmer's Daughter" (1 text, 1 tune)
Creighton/Senior-TraditionalSongsOfNovaScotia, pp. 88-90, "The Suffolk Miracle" (2 texts, 1 tune) {Bronson's #6}
Peacock, pp. 407-408, "The Suffolk Miracle" (1 text, 1 tune)
Leach-TheBalladBook, pp. 645-649, "The Suffolk Miracle" (2 texts)
Quiller-Couch-OxfordBookOfBallads 175, "The Suffolk Miracle" (1 text)
Niles-BalladBookOfJohnJacobNiles 56, "The Suffolk Miracle" (1 text)
Huntington-TheGam-MoreSongsWhalemenSang, pp. 198-201, "The Suffolk Miracle" (1 text, 2 tunes)
Henry/Huntingdon/Herrmann-SamHenrysSongsOfThePeople H217, pp. 432-433, "The Lover's Ghost" (1 text, 1 tune)
McBride-FlowerOfDunaffHillAndMoreTradSongsInnishowen 40, "The Holland Handkerchief" (1 text, 1 tune)
Munnelly/Deasy-TheMountCallanGarland-Tom-Lenihan 12, "The Holland Handkerchief" (1 text, 1 tune)
Olson-BroadsideBalladIndex, ZN2961, "A wonder stranger ne'r was known"
NorthCarolinaFolkloreJournal, W. Amos Abrams, "Uncle Pat Fry: Yadkin County Minstrel or The Blind Balladeer of East Bend," Vol. XVI, No. 3 (Nov 1968), pp. 156-157, "The Suffold Miracle" (1 text)
DT 272, SUFFMRCL* SUFFMRC2 SUFFMRC3*
ADDITIONAL: Leslie Shepard, _The Broadside Ballad_, Legacy Books, 1962, 1978, p. 136, "The Suffolk Miracle" (reproduction of a broadsheet by John White, closely related to but not the same as Child's a)
ADDITIONAL: John Ashton, _A Century of Ballads_, Elliot Stock, London, 1887; reprinted 1968 by Singing Tree Press, pp. 110-114, "The Suffolk Miracle" (1 text)
Roud #246
RECORDINGS:
Freeman Bennett, "The Suffolk Miracle" (on PeacockCDROM) [one verse only]
Packie Manus Byrne, "The Holland Handkerchief" (on Voice03)
Nora Cleary, "The Holland Handkerchief" (on IREarlyBallads)
Dol [Adolphus G.] Small, "There Was an Old and Wealthy Man" (AFS, 1950; on LC58) {Bronson's #1b}
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Douce Ballads 2(207b), "The Suffolk Miracle" or "A Relation of a Young Man Who a Month After His Death Appeared to his Sweetheart," F. Coles (London), 1678-1680; also Wood E 25(83) [some lines illegible; "MS annotation following imprint: 1689"], Douce Ballads 3(88a)[many illegible lines], "The Suffolk Miracle" or "A Relation of a Young Man Who a Month After His Death Appeared to his Sweet[-]heart,"
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Maid of Sweet Gurteen" (theme)
SAME TUNE:
My Bleeding Heart (per broadsides Bodleian Douce Ballads 2(207b), Wood E 25(83) and Douce Ballads 3(88a))
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Sad Courtin'
The Richest Girl in Our Town
Lucy Bouns
NOTES [1225 words]: Child complains of this song, "This piece should not be admitted here on its own merits.... It is not even a good specimen of its kind. Ghosts should have a fair reason for walking, and a quite particular reason for riding...." Child prints the song for the sake of its foreign analogs.
Presumably Child thinks the ghost should do more, e.g. take the girl to the grave with him, as in the tale-type known from Burger's "Lenore" (Thompson #365, "The Dead Bridegroom Carries Off His Bride"). In those, it is sometimes a drowned sailor who comes to collect the girl.
All I can say is, the plot may be somewhat defective, but the full forms of the ballad itself are quite beautiful and pathetic. It does corrupt easily, though, as the Flanders texts show.
More interesting is the way the story is expressed. Legends of ghosts are of course common, and legends of the fate of spirit and body affecting each other not rare (e.g. if a living person slashes at a ghost, the ghost may appear to be intact but the corpse will bear a scar, perhaps healed). In this song, the ghost actually comes to bear an artifact. That is not often encountered.
The idea of a ghost leaving its grave for cause and then coming back bearing the mark of what it did may predate all those legends of Child's. One of the most famous collections of tales of the Middle Ages was the Golden Legend, which exists in many manuscript copies and was printed in translation by William Caxton. (I learned about what follows from Judy Ann Ford in Fisher, p. 138).
At the end of the story of Saint Julian, the Golden Legend wishes us to be clear that Saint Julian was not to be confused with "another Julian, no saint but a most wicked wrongdoer, namely, Julian the Apostate." (Ryan, p. 128)
Voragine, to blacken Julian, tells of him stealing a woman's gold and using it to procure the imperial throne (Ryan, pp. 128-129). Julian also studied magic, and persists in it despite chasing off an evil spirit by making the sign of the cross (Ryan, p. 129).
At the end of his life, he set out to conquer Persia. It is at this stage that the relevant miracle is recorded (Ryan, pp. 129-130). "When the emperor had advanced as far as Caesarea of Cappadocia.... Saint Basil met him and sent him four barley loaves as a gift. Julian was offended, disdained to accept the loaves, and in return sent Basel a bundle of hay, with the message, 'You have offended us with the fodder of irrational animals. Take back what you sent.' Basel replied, 'We indeed sent you with what we ourselves eat, but you have given us what you feed your beasts with.' To this Julian responded angrily, 'When I have subjugated Persia, I will raze this city and plow up the land, and it will be called not 'man-bearing' but 'grain-bearing.'
"The following night Basil had a vision in the church of Saint Mary in which he saw a multitude of angels, and in their midst a woman seated on a throne. The woman said to her attendants, 'Quickly summon Mercury to me! He shall put to death the apostate Julian, who in his insolent pride blasphemes me and my Son!' This Mercury was a soldier who had been killed by Julian himself for the faith of Christ and was buried in this church. Instantly Saint Mercury, whose arms [i.e. weapons] were preserved nearby, stood at attention and received her orders to prepare to fight. Basil woke up, went to the place where Saint Mercury lay at peace near his arms, opened the tomb, and found neither the body nor the weapons." He asked the watchman, who told him that, as of the last time he had checked, the weapons had been where they had always been.
"Basil then went back to his house, but in the morning came again, and in the usual place found the saint's body, including the lance, which was now covered with blood.
"Then someone came from Julian's army and reported as follows: 'While Emperor Julian was still with the army, an unknown soldier came up to him with his arms and his lance, put spurs to his horse... drove his lance through [Julian's] body, vanished, and was not seen again.' Julian, while he was still breathing, filled his hands with his blood... and tossed it in the air, saying, 'Galilean [the title he regularly used for Jesus], you have conquered!' With these words he expired miserably."
The only problem with this account is that it is effectively all wrong. Even the existence of Saint Julian is dubious: he was "almost certainly an entirely mythical saint. He has no date, no country, no tomb; his feast on 29 January in the Acta Sanctorum seems an arbitrary date" (OxfordSaints, p. 293)
Turning to Julian the Apostate himself, Ammianus, pp. 292-293, says that during a surprise skirmish with the Persians, Julian rushed out without his full armor to try to gain control of the situation when he was hit by a cavalry spear, "directed by no one knows whom." He survived for a while, but died some hours later (Ammianus, pp. 294-295. He has Julian talking at the end, without the "Galilean, you have conquered" bit). Ammianus does mention a rumor that Julian was kiilled by a Roman weapon (p. 301), but not by a ghost! Unfortunately, he had put his army in a very bad fix (in a note on p. 464, the translators suggest he knew he was in trouble and courted death so he wouldn't have to deal with the army's problems; Chadwick, p. 158, also mentions a rumor that he arranged his death in a fit of despair).
There was an early report that Julian flung his own blood skyward toward his gods and declared "Be satisfied," but it was not until 450 that Theodoret of of Cyrus changed his words to "Galilean, you have conquered" (Chadwick, p. 159).
Nor had he had to scheme to attain the imperial throne; he was the son of Constantine the Great's half-brother (Grant, p. 251, or see the genealogy on p. 202), and so part of the royal family; he also married Constantine's daughter Helena. Given commands on the borders of the empire, he proved competent enough that the suspicious emperor Constantius II set out to get rid of him. In effect forced into rebellion, the empire fell into his hands without real battle when Constantius II died in 361 C.E. (Grant, p. 252). He seems to have in fact strengthened the Empire (Grant, p. 253) before his fatal decision to attack Persian in 363.
There was a Saint Mercurius, according to WatkinsSaints, p. 167, but he died in the Decian Persecution more than a century before the reign of Julian. Of course there was no formal canonization process back then, so there could be other Mercuriuses who were called saints, or Voragine could have heard of Mercurius being martyred and confused his emperors, but there is again no evidence for this "Mercury" as described in the Golden Legend.
Ammianus's reference to a spear from an unknown source, and his later reference to the rumor that it was a Roman weapon, hints that he knew of the Christian account. But, obviously, he dismissed it. Nonetheless it appears the story is old -- though it seems unlikely that the account of a knight leaving his grave to do the deed goes back that far; it sounds like an elaboration of the Christian legend. The point, though, is that this sort of tale of a corpse leaving its grave is very old.
The "Holland Handkerchief" of certain versions is not a cloth woven in the Netherlands; rather, the adjective refers to the pattern of the weave. - RBW
Bibliography Last updated in version 6.5
File: C272

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography

The Ballad Index Copyright 2023 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.