Analysis of the ballad: The wife at Usher’s Well

Just considering the title the intelligent reader expects the main character of the ballad to be the old woman of Usher’s well, while is curios to find out if the ballad’s setting would be a realistic or fantastic one.

This short narrative poem respects the general features of the middle ages’ ballads:

The main topic of the poem is the supernatural, indeed the wife’s stout and stalwart sons, dead in the sea, at Martimass return to the mother’s house, coming out from the heaven. Besides the present ballad is a mixture of narration and dialogue, indeed whole the poem consists of a narration with some stanzas that are dialogues.

Going on reading the poem the intelligent reader can notice there’s the use of a very simple and popular language and a very simple syntax, indeed ballads were part of the popular culture and they were composed by the folk and addressed to common people, mainly unlitterate.

Another important feature of the ballads that can be found in this poem is the use of refrains, in particular in this poem the repetition of the second stanza, that marks an important turning point of the ballad. Indeed, this stanza introduces the narration’s real body, bringing the central topic of the death of the wife’s sons. The refrain was an essential feature of the middle ages’ ballads that were end out orally, indeed it makes the poem easier to memorize.

Finally, the ballad is characterised by a general lack of details: there’s an abrupt beginning, indeed the readers is brought in medias res by the narrator, and ending, indeed the narration is interrupted without a real conclusion (there isn’t a reply and a reaction of the woman after her sons return to the heaven). Furthermore, also the characters are only sketched, they aren’t introduced and they don’t have a physical and psychological characterisation, but they are only appointed.