MB UNIUD

I am going to analyse the ballad: The Wife of Usher's Well.

The translation of the title into Italian is: La moglie del pozzo di Usher. From the title you can understand that the protagonist of the ballad is a woman because of the word "wife". You also can understand that she is married.  The ballad is organized into 12 four-line stanzas rhyming ABCB.

The ballad starts with the climatic episode, that is a typical feature of a folk ballad.

The function of the first stanza is to introduce the story: there is a wife who lives at Usher's Well and she is a wealthy wife. She has three sons and she had sent them over the sea.

So the first information we have from the first 4 lines are the protagonist of the ballad, her social status, her hometown and her economic position.

In the first quatrain you can find some typical features of a ballad. First of all the repetition of the word "wife". In the 2^nd line you can notice a syntactic deviation: the subject is placed at the end of the line (in a key position) so the word "wife" gains a lot of importance. There is an alliteration of the sound w in "wealthy", "wife", "was" which speeds up the rhythm of the line. In the 3^rd line there is an other alliteration of the sound "st" in the words "stout" and "stalwart".

The function of the 2^nd stanza is to inform the reader that the three sons had died: the composer tells that someone has said to the mother that her sons had died.

In this stanza there is the repetition of the word "week" and this is an incremental repetition.

There is also the alliteration of the sound w which recreats the sense of suffering of the mother.

The third stanza is similar to the second one: only the last line is different. The composer makes this choice because he wants to underline the tragic event of the death of the three sons and the mother's pain.

In the 4^th stanza the composer introduces dialogue or direct speech and the readers can listen the real words of the mother. The function of this quatrain is to tell the mother's wish: she would like her sons to go back and she would like to see them again. The last line is very important and it is full of meaning: "In earthly flesh and blood". It means that the mother wishes to see her sons alive. From the last line the reader can understand all the mother's grief.

The function of the 5^th stanza is to intoduce the theme of the supernatural: the resurrection of the three sons. The composer tells that in the time of S. Martino the three sons come back home.

But you have to consider a relevant line: "and their hats were of birk". The intelligent reader immediately understands that this is a metaphor: as the matter of fact this is an indirect way of saying that they are dead. The composer says that the wife's sons come back home in a grave of birk (synedoch).

In the 6^th stanza there is the dialogue form: the mother speaks.   

Talking about the birk the mother wants to talk about her sons. She loves them and she considers her sons very precious. The composer uses a metaphor: he speaks about the birk to refers to the three sons.

While we reading the ballad we can understand that there is a supernatural theme.

In the 7^th stanza the mother speaks and orders to blow up the fire and to bring water from the well. She believes that her sons will come back home that night. So she is preparing the house. But this is only a spell.

In the 8^th stanza the mother prepares a bed for her sons, she brings her mantel on the bed and waits for them. The wife seems to see her sons. From this quatrain the reader can understand the space: the mother is inside the house. The mother is under a supernatural spell.

The function of the 9^th stanza is to make the reader understand the time: cocks are crewing so it means that it is morning. There is the repetition of the word "red" in the first line of the quatrain.

In the last line of the stanza the oldest son speaks: he says that it is time to go away.

In the 10^th stanza the composer underlines the time: "the cock he hadna crawed but once and clapp'd his wings at a'". In the last two lines of the quatrain the youngest son speaks: he repeats that they have to go away.

In the 11^th stanza a son speaks. From the first line you can understand that it is morning. In the 2^nd line there is a relevant word "worm" which means "verme". It creates a ghastly scene: you can imagine that the three sons had resurrected from the world of the dead. But they have to come back to that world. It is a typical medieval conception: the resurrection and the salvation.

The function of the 12^th stanza is to conclude the ballad. It is in the dialogue form: a son speaks.

He greets his mother and his house.