Textuality » 3A Interacting
THE HOUSE CARPENTER
"The House Carpenter" is an anonymous ballad that belongs to popular ballad. Right from the title the reader can understand that the house carpenter is a relevant person of the story. But reading the ballad I understand that there are two principal characters: a sailor man and a woman. There are also other two characters in the ballad: the woman's husband and her child. They are described their actions but not their characteristic and emotions.
The ballad is made up of fourteen quatrains and there is an irregular alternate rhyme. In the ballad it is present a dialogue between the sailor man and the woman. In the ballad there are a lot of repetition, alliteration and figures of sound because they are important to help memorization because the ballad is an oral form of poetry. For example, in the first stanza, in particular in the first line "well met" is repeated twice and "met, met, my" are an alliteration. In the second line you can find the repetition of "well met" again as refrain and in the third lines "salt, salt, sea" is an alliteration that has a repetition inside. In this stanza rhyme scheme is ABBB but the other stanzas rhyme in ABCB.
The first stanza is an introduction of the ballad and it describes the return of the lover. The second one describes the love of the sail man. Indeed he says he has given up the chance to marry the king's daughter and refused it to marry her. He declares his importance. In the third quatrain the woman says she is married to a house carpenter, and she isn't convinced to go with him because she is afraid of poverty and so she asks him if he is rich. In the fourth and sixth stanza the man convinced her to leave for the "grass grows green"
and the"salt, salt, see", that are alliteration that underline his supplication, and he promises her "six ship, six ship", an alliteration that evidences the quantity of the offer. In the seventh stanza the woman decides to go with the sailor man and leaves her baby and husband. After two weeks the woman misses her baby. The first line of the eighth stanza underlines the spend of time. She cries not for her husband but for her baby. The eleventh and twelfth quatrain describes that the ship on which they are travelling sinks. The repetition of the words "times around" make the reader understand that the ship was sinking very slowly. They died and see two kind of hills: the Heaven and the Hell. The woman thinks to go to Heaven but the sailor man explains to her love that they must go to dark and low hills. The latest two stanza are very important because in the Middle Ages religion was very important and it influences the people life. The house carpenter isn't described but it take an important place in the ballad. He represents the betrayed husband and the sin of adultery. The woman refuses him and decides to go with "evil". She is not worried about her sin but she misses only her baby. So the love in the Middle Ages brings the lovers in the Hell.