Poetry and Poetics–Lit 204

When discussing The Douglas Tragedy in Friday’s class, ambiguities regarding the tone of the poem were raised. While the plot of the poem was one of a serious, romantic tragedy, someone in class pointed out the lines “I’ll gang, I’ll gang, Lord William,” She said, “For ye have left me no other guide” are funny, implying that the tone of this poem may have intended to be more comedic. Although there is no way of truly knowing the intention of the author(s) of this poem, I find the ambiguity in tone significant, as the readers interpretation of the ambiguity ultimately affects the purpose and meaning of the poem. If interpreted as a serious tragedy, I interpret the purpose of this poem, in the context of the time, to be a warning against going against your family’s wishes. However, if I interpret it as a comedy, the poem points out how men are committing bad actions while the woman have no power and can only watch. Therefore, its purpose is not as a warning but instead to shed light on the sexism in traditional romantic tragedies.

This ambiguity brings up a broader question about interpreting poetry. Is the intended meaning (by the author) of the poem the only valid one? As long as it is supported by evidence, can an unintended meaning or alternative interpretation of a poem be valid as well? I realize that as the intended meaning of The Douglas Tragedy is unknown, and as a result, both these interpretations are valid. Therefore, these questions are directed more towards poetry in which the intended meanings by the authors are more known.

I found “The Three Ravens” to be a particularly difficult poem to deal with, not because it is dense, but because the content leaves me with many questions unanswered. Starting in the first stanza, the second (“Down a down, hay down, hay down”), fourth (“With a down”), and seventh (“With a down derry, derry, derry, down, down”) lines do not make a whole lot of sense.  In the sixth stanza, we are introduced to a “fallow doe” who inexplicably makes it past the fallen knight’s hounds and hawks, somehow lifts him up on her back, and even more incredibly is able to bury him, and then dies.

After doing some research, I have found some clarification. For the confusing lines in the opening stanza, Vernon Chatman believes that the second line can be taken as “Dejected all dejected, thou hast dejection, thou hast dejection” and the fourth line as “Utterly dejected.” For the seventh line, he offers the possibility that Derry, a city now known as Londonderry and a site of many battles in the Middle Ages, could be the setting of the poem. As for the “fallow doe,” Chatman writes that it was common for Irish clans to be named after animals; therefore, this doe could in fact be the knight’s lover or wife, being referred to as the name of their clan, which would fit in with the last line. However, he also offers the possibility that the doe is a hybrid of doe and woman. I actually like the latter explanation more. It fits in with the mythical and even sacred theme of this poem. The “doe” is able to easily make it through the barriers that guard the dead knight and also has a strong emotional connection with the knight as a human lover might (she kisses his wounds, buries him according to Catholic ritual, and is referred to as his lover). These are just possible answers to questions that are probably not meant to have a right answer.

Here is a link to the Chatman article:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/4318039

True love, in its modern usage, is scarce; we desire “soul mates” who understand our complexities and share our viewpoints like no one else can. It arrives at the end of a long journey. It requires us to impress each other without putting on a performance. We are told that true love is impervious to erosion by time, or distance, or any of the impediments to our other relationships, and that any love that falls apart with time must not have been “true love.”

“The Douglas Tragedy” presents love differently. The love that Margret and William share isn’t rare at all; Margret admits this in line 27, stating, “True loves I can get many a ane.” Their love hasn’t been nurtured tenderly; the poem gives us the impression that William and Margret are recently acquainted. Maybe William courted her, and made a show of his status as a lord. Ultimately, their true love is severed, not only by their deaths, but by Margret’s father, Lord Douglas, who uproots William’s briar. This “true love” is a fleeting force that drives William to murder and embitters Lord Douglas. Maybe this is because lives were more uncertain when “The Douglas Tragedy” was written, and time couldn’t be wasted rooting around for the perfect match. Whatever the reason, it would be a stretch to call the relationship between Margret and William “true love” in the modern sense of the phrase.

Modern depictions of true love portray it as an eternal force, evident in Simon & Garfunkel’s adaptation of the Scottish ballad “Barbara Allen,” entitled “Barbriallen.” Like “The Douglas Tragedy,” “Barbriallen” features a rose and a briar sprouted from lovers’ graves, entwined in a “true love’s knot,” but it does not include a character like Lord Douglas, and implies that the protagonists’ love persists beyond the grave.

Modern ballads, like “Barbriallen,” solve their conflicts, and feature a love that cannot be broken, but there’s an argument to be made that real love is somewhere between “Barbriallen” and “The Douglas Tragedy.” Dismissing all fleeting loves as “untrue,” is a No true Scotsman situation.

https://www.britannica.com/art/ballad#ref503612

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/simongarfunkel/barbriallen.html

In “Lord Randall,” I was really struck by the repetition (epistrophe) that the mother uses at the end of the first line of every stanza, as well as Lord Randall’s refrain (“For I’m wearied wi’ huntin’, and fain wad lie down) that ends every stanza. For me, these repetitions gain new semantic and sonic power as the drama of the exchange builds. The end of the poem, in which we discover that Lord Randal left his lover “hell and fire” (l. 39 of 40 ll.), reminds me of the volta (turn) of a Petrarchan sonnet, or the twist in a short story. For me, the revelation that his lover poisoned him imparts new meaning on the final repletion of “For I’m wearied wi’ huntin’, and fain wad lie down.” I’m guessing that not too many of the illiterate lower classes (who would have listened to and sung this poem) would have related to Lord Randall as he commands his mother around after hunting; however, perhaps they could more easily relate to the act of being poisoned by a lover—albeit in the allegorical sense of betrayal instead of literal poisoning.

In pop culture today, the love song often defines the ballad in the collective consciousness. If you search for “2000’s ballads” on google, you’ll get some variety of “love” songs by the likes of Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey, and Beyoncé. It’s interesting to attempt to delineate what the boundaries of poetry are here. Is music poetry? Are some songs poetry and not others? The ballad was originally a form meant to be sung to music—and often intended to be consumed by an illiterate population—are there any possible parallels here to the modern “ballad”?