Note Note — No 6 “COLD BLOWS THE WIND, SWEET-HEART”

6. Cold blows the Wind. The words originally reached me as taken down by the late Mrs. Gibbons, daughter of Sir W.L. Trelawney, Bart., from an old woman, who, in 1830, was nurse in her father's house. Since then we have heard it repeatedly, indeed there are few old singers who do not know it. There are two melodies to which it is sung, that we give here, and that to which "Childe the Hunter" is set in this collection. The ballad is always in a fragmentary condition. The ballad, under the title of "The Unquiet Grave," is in Professor Child's "British Ballads," No. 78. He gives various forms of it. The idea on which it is based is that if a woman has plighted her oath to a man, she is still bound to him, after he is dead, and that he can claim her to follow him into the world of spirits, unless she can redeem herself by solving riddles he sets her. See further on this topic under "The Lover's Tasks," No. 48. Verses 8 and 10 are not in the original ballad. I have supplied them to reduce the length and give a conclusion.