The Cruel Mother
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Synopsis
A woman gives birth to one or two illegitimate children (usually sons) in the woods, kills them, and buries them. She, going home, sees a child, or children, playing, and says that if they were hers, she would dress them in various fine garments and otherwise take care of them. The children tell her that when they were hers, she did not dress them so but murdered them. Frequently they say she will be damned for it.
Some variant open with the account that she has fallen in love with her father's clerk.
Variants
This ballad exists in a number of variants; one contains a number of verses that appear to stem from "The Maid and the Palmer". A closely related German ballad exists in many variants: a child comes to a woman's wedding to announce himself her child and that she had murdered three children, the woman says the Devil can carry her off if it is true, and the Devil appears to do so.
See also