1. This article is about the ballad known as the Twa Sisters and enumerates the differences and similarities between the English, Scottish, and American variants. At the bottom of the article I will include some Scottish variants of the ballad and some American or English variants if anyone was interested in giving them a listen.

Traits of the song that are present in the Scottish tradition and not in the English tradition:

sisters living in a bower among the gifts to the elder sister being a ring and knife the eldest sister standing on a stone before throwing the younger in drowned sister’s hair being referred to as yellow a miller’s son or daughter finding the drowned daughter the rhyme of swan with dam (herein the woman is compared to a swan and is said to be found in the miller’s dam) musician taking three locks of the drowned sister’s hair to string their instrument English variants of the ballad are so few that it is perhaps easier to identify them through the lack of elements of the Scottish variant than by any presence of any particular element. Other characteristics of the English tradition:

the introduction of the ballad, specifically saying that the king had “daughters one, two three” the gift of a beaver hat the rhyme of swan and woman reference to the miller being hanged for the drowning of the younger sister The American tradition never contains the details in the Scottish tradition though many similarities between it and the English tradition can be found. Among (but not limited to) them are:

introductory stanza beaver hat as a gift failure to specify the hair as yellow also neglects the story of the body of the girl being turned into an instrument

1. I think that this article is a good look at what kinds of tropes and elements are commonly occurring in different versions of the folk ballad, though I would have liked to see more about how to differentiate the American from the English variants of the ballad.

2. "In finding traits characteristic of English tradition we are confronted with serious difficulties. The English ballads are few in number, so few indeed that the absence of the Scottish traits is perhaps a more reliable mark than any other."

Murder in murder ballads cannot be concealed for long and through the course of the ballad, there is always something that reveals the murder. In many folk ballads this is something that happens naturally but in a few this is revealed through supernatural means. This motif is called “murder will out”.

The specific folk ballads outlined in this paper that have an element of supernatural that is instrumental in revealing the murder are the Twa Sisters (Child 10), Sir Hugh (Child 155), Young Hunting (Child 68), and Young Benjie (Child 86).

“In the Scottish "Binorie" versions, for instance, the body is recovered from the water and buried without any further allusion to the murder. In North American versions, the younger sister's body is eventually found, but frequently not before she has already been fished out, still alive, by a miller who has seen her floating in his milldam, robbed her of her money or jewelry, and then thrown her back in to drown.”

mainly norfolk twa sisters

possible geographic origin of twa sisters ballad from Tristam P Coffin's "The British Traditional Ballad in North America."

twa sisters podcast

twa sisters twitter thread