This version of Child ballad #49 I learned from Helen Schneyer a number of years ago. While the text leaves some aspects of the story to the imagination, Joe Hickerson, at the Library ofCongress, reports that some scholars have interpreted the ballad as describing an incestuous relationship between Susie and her brother. One can't tell that from Helen's text. Regardless, it's a chilling song of mystery, magic, and love. (ET)
Will you go to the rolling of the stones,
The tossing of the ball,
Or will you go and see pretty Susie
Dance among them all?
Will you drink of the blood,
The white wine and the red,
Or will you go and see pretty Susie
When that I am dead?
They had not danced but a single dance,
Nor half the hall around,
When the sword that hung from her
brother's side
Gave him a dreadful wound.
They picked him up and they carried
him along
And laid him there on the ground,
And there he lay till the break of day,
Nor made no single sound.
Susie charmed the birds from the sky,
The fish from out the bay,
And she lay all night in her true-lover's
arms,
And there was content to stay.
(repeat first verse)