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14 - The Daemon Lover

Songs

Janet Smith & Steve Mann
Demon Lover Variations
https://www.tompkinssquare.com/imaginational.html
Faun Fables
House Carpenter
https://faunfables.bandcamp.com/track/house-carpenter
Custer LaRue
The House Carpenter (The Daemon Lover)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00945D08Q/ref=pm_ws_tlw_trk1
David Grisman and Daniel Kobialka
The House Carpenter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV8a6aMYE2E
Anthony Branduardi
Il Falagname
https://www.amazon.com/Il-falegname/dp/B00GBQDIM4
Carolina Tar Heels
Can't You Remember When Your Heart Was Mine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix5ec-_LETs
Carl Peterson
House Carpenter
https://www.amazon.com/The-House-Carpenter/dp/B004JYU50I
The Ex
House Carpenter
https://theex.bandcamp.com/album/mudbird-shivers
Hedy West
House Carpenter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY1k4KMPOMA
Nickel Creek
The House Carpenter
http://smarturl.it/nickelitunes
Natalie Merchant
House Carpenter
https://www.nataliemerchant.com/albums/thehousecarpentersdaughter/
Bob Dylan
House Carpenter
http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/house-carpenter/
Harvesters
House Carpenter
https://www.amazon.com/House-Carpenter/dp/B000RKMHYA#
Shocking Blue
Daemon Lover
https://www.discogs.com/Shocking-Blue-Scorpios-Dance/master/264877
Diane Taraz
House Carpenter
https://www.dianetaraz.com/r-contact.html
A. L. Lloyd
The Demon Lover
https://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Lover/dp/B075FNQQHT
SubRosa
House Carpenter
https://subrosausa.bandcamp.com/track/house-carpenter
Dervish
The Banks of the Sweet Viledee
https://www.dervish.ie/midsummers-night
The Iron Horse
The Demon Lover
Rosaline Gregoree
The Demon Lover
http://www.rosaleengregory.ca/the-daemon-lover.html
Dave Von Ronk
House Carpenter
https://www.amazon.com/House-Carpenter-Album-Version/dp/B00CM1ORE0
The Handsome Family
The House Carpenter
https://www.amazon.com/The-House-Carpenter/dp/B001GPE8FQ
Pauline Scanlon
The Demon Lover
https://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Lover/dp/B0012N121K
Mark Phillips
House Carpenter
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULkcWapztB4
Bröselmaschine
House Carpenter
https://play.google.com/music/preview/Twmx4gtj4v5haswxaucdflm6dha?play=1&u=0
Kornog
Demon Lover
https://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Lover/dp/B001UDPGZ0
Alasdair Roberts
The Daemon Lover
https://alasdairroberts.bandcamp.com/track/the-daemon-lover

Citations/Sources

1] The Roud Folk Music Index hosted by the Vaughan Williams Memorial Libary at https://www.vwml.org/

2] Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/ (1)

3] "Demon-Lovers and Their Victims in British Fiction" by Reed, Toni. Published by Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky.

4] IMDB http://imdb.com (1) (2)

5] Mainly Norfolk https://mainlynorfolk.info/(1)

6] "The Devil in Scotland" by Gerard Carruthers. Iss. 3 of The Bottle Imp https://www.thebottleimp.org.uk/2008/05/the-devil-in-scotland/

7] "Is It True: Shirley Jackson’s “The Daemon Lover”" by Anne M. Pillsworth and Ruthanna Emrys https://www.tor.com/2017/08/09/is-it-true-shirley-jacksons-the-daemon-lover/

8] Child Ballad Database https://www.childballadrecordings.com/

9] Fresno State https://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/C243.html

10] "The Demon Lover"by Fairweather Lewis https://fairweatherlewis.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/the-demon-lover/

12] "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border" by Sir Walter Scott. Edited by Alfred Noyes (1979) The Mercat Press, Edinburgh

13] "The Demon Lover" short story in collection "The Bone Key" by Sarah Monette

14] "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" by Thomas Hardy

15] "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Bronte

16] "Dracula" Bram Stoker 

17] You [Netflix series]. (2018) Greg Berlanti & Sera Gamble

18] "My Demon Lover" (1987) directed by Charlie Loventhal and written by Leslie Ray

19]  Mudcat Forums https://mudcat.org/ (1)

20] "MAD, BAD & DANGEROUS: THE DEMON LOVER" by Satyros Phil Brucato https://satyrosphilbrucato.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/mad-bad-dangerous-the-demon-lover-part-i/

21] "The Book of Scottish Ballads" by Alexander Whitelaw (1845) Blackie

22] http://71.174.62.16/Demo/LongerHarvest?Text=ChildRef_243

23] Bluegrass Messengers http://www.bluegrassmessengers.com/ (1) (2)

Transcript

This is Every Folk Song, a podcast where I, Matt Aukamp, dig as deep into old english folk songs as I possibly can, following the order of the Roud Folk Song Index and then I take all that hard work and I just straight up give it to you guys for free. AKA, a podcast. Today, I'm looking at Roud 14, The Daemon Lover. Stick with us.

 

Roud 14, Child 243. The Daemon Lover. Or The House Carpenter. Or James Harris. It's a song with a fairly simple story. A woman's long-lost lover returns from out of the blue, begs her to come away with him, but she refuses. He's been gone for years, so long that she thought he'd never return. So she moved on, got married, had kids. He becomes indignant and yells at her “Do you know I could have married a princess? But I didn't! I came back to you!” When that doesn't work, he begs “I have gold, and ships, and servants, and I can take you away to an amazing foreign land” And with that, for some reason, she agrees. And she regrets it soon after. Whether it's because he's exaggerated his wealth, or because she misses her children, or because he's not quite the man he used to be –ahem, in one way or another-- she begins to weep. It's here he tells her that he's not taking her to any kind of paradise. It's hell to which they're bound. The ship sinks or he sinks it, and it takes the two of them with it beneath the sea.

 

A simple tale. With some variations, as we'll discuss. But that's the general idea. It's kind of sad and kind of spooky and... well... unsettling, is a good word for it. Because there's so much more here than it appears on the surface. And as it turns out, the song itself is the least complicated thing about this song.

So the first thing I want to do here, is I want to take a look at the moral of the story. In the story as you just heard it, did you extract a moral? Could you suss out who the bad guy is? How about who the good guy is? By it's structure of action and consequence, I think it's clear that it's a morality play of some sort, but... what the hell are we supposed to take from it besides a random, sad, cruel occurrence? The answers may seem obvious to you, but I think are incredibly complicated, and to illustrate this, I asked a few people these questions:

MONTAGE:

RACHEL: I think it's kind of your classic - the grass is greener on the other side. You always want something better than what you currently have...

PAT: I think the moral is to not be led into temptation because it could be the devil

BROOKE: I think the moral of the song is about cheating and why that's bad. you can see the wife was cheating on her husband and she gets sent to hell from it.

ALBERT: My first impression was of a love song but I got the feeling that that was not in fact the case

CHARLOTTE: I like how ambiguous it is. Is this actually her ex coming back to lure her to a watery grave and hell eternal, or is this the devil trying to tempt her away from the relationship she does have. And is he actually a devil

ALBERT: Is this not the man she was previously in a relationship with?

CHARLOTTE: I mean, it looks the same but he's got demon hooves and you think she would have noticed that...

BRITTA: He's promising something super normal.. Like, he says "I'm a ship's captain. I have these ships I have this crew." And she gets onboard the ship and she's like "Where is everybody?" and she gets on board anyway and she's aware that he's lying to her almost from the get-go. And he's like "Don't worry about it. We're going to Italy" Like she's willingly ignoring the fact that he's being dishonest this whole time.

ANN-CHRISTIN: It doesn't seem to be like, the most ambiguous of songs. She thinks her fiance from a few years ago is back but OH NO It's the Devil. But maybe someone can put a new twist on it, suited for the modern era. It's a bit old-fashioned.

MIKE: My takeaway is that it's ok to follow your instincts. This is a character that had fallen in love before and even if it was with an unsavory sort of character, it was enough of a connection that she felt it was important to leave the vows she had with another man and a family. I'm sure in this timeframe that would have been frowned upon deeply. She's probably feeling guilt but these two do sail off. And yes, in the end, the ship does sink. But in the end, all ships sink eventually.

ASHLEIGH: The moral I drew from this was: Leave things from the past in the past. And don't leave something that you currently have that you under-appreciate for something you used to have and want to rekindle

RACHEL: It's easy to be lured away by promises and by adventures, so you know, when he turns into the devil I guess it's not that surprising. But I guess it kinda bums me out a little bit. We always say things like "Don't want things you don't have" or "Be happy with what you have" and it's not that I disagree but... sometimes adventures are exciting. If you shoot for something, you can get something amazing.

ANN-CHRISTIN: If you're married and if your love who has been presumably dead-at-sea, stay faithful to your husband. Thats the moral. It was pretty bad of her to leave her husband and her children without saying a word but I don't think it's worth going to hell for

CAMERON: Stay true to your word, or else. There was some kind of oath, maybe they were married... you know, they mention vows. After getting on-board she sees his cloven foot which to me identified him as some sort of demon. So this brings in the religious undertones. Which led me to believe you shouldn't lie. You should stay true to your word. Adultery is a major sin.

ALBERT: Does there have to be a moral?

CHARLOTTE: So the moral for you is that sometimes weird, scary things happen?

ALBERT: I mean, first of all, I'm not convinced there is a moral at all. But second of all, does she in fact go to the bottom of the ocean? Or is that a metaphor for something else?

CHARLOTTE: Yeah maybe it is all metaphorical...

ALBERT: Theoretically, it could also mean that their relationship was in fact a sinking boat... In the sense that after coming back from wherever he was... which could also be a metaphor for... something... ah... I lost my train of thought for a second...

DAVID: I don't think the moral is too hard to miss there. It's a warning against greed, lustfulness, and running away from what you have to pursue something better. So be content with what you have and accept that there could be missed opportunities that you can't go back to.

CAMERON: Once she sees the black hill he tells her "Oh this is hell, where you and I must go" which led me to believe that she did something bad to him --broke this vow-- so he cast her down, sunk her and the ship beneath the sea because of this.

ANN-CHRISTIN: If I had to put this in the modern context I would say: Communicate. It is a horrible painful situation for everyone involved but communicate and be open about your feelings.

ASHLEIGH: Never let someone who found you disposable back into your life. Because if they found you disposable once, they'll just find you disposable again. There's a reason they left.

RACHEL: I dunno. Maybe what I'm trying to say is I'm a little bored of this trope. And I wish it was a little more aspirational.

BROOKE: So I think what the artist was trying to portray is that cheating is wrong and you shouldn't do it.

CHARLOTTE: Here she is walking away from one relationship to chase down this potentially toxic ex. So the boat that is sinking is all the promises he made her that things are going to be better and she should sail away with him. Moral of the story: Don't get mixed up with your exes. Actually, all my ex-girlfriends are great people.

BRITTA: No matter what this guy's promising you -- obviously you can't forsake your marriage vows-- but more so, you know you're heading down the path to hell when you start believing things that are obviously not true. Like this guy says that he loves you and he's promising you all these amazing things but you know that's not true. So if you know what to look for you can avoid the situation that this woman finds herself in. If you believe what this guy is telling you then you deserve to go to hell. Because you ignored the warning signs.

DAVID: I think there are two villains. One is the mariner tempting the woman away from her family. He's the personification of the devil or he's become a devil. And the wife who's run away from her family. Not a good move. She seems particularly tempted by the ships and the music; at least that's what you might read from it. She's damned herself and they're damned together.

PAT: I don't think there's really a hero in this story. I think its just a cautionary tale about a woman who has an ok life but I guess sees an opportunity for a more extravagant life. The true villain would be the devil that leads her into this more extravagant life only to drown her and send her to hell.

ALBERT: I think that maybe it's a warning that going in with another relationship when you're already married with someone is like selling your soul to the devil and going to hell.

CHARLOTTE: Yeah because it gave him control over her in order to send her to hell.

ALBERT: Yeah

CHARLOTTE: So stay at home. Stay with your husband. Or your ship will sink to the bottom of the sea.

DAVID: They're very moralistic, these folk tales. So that's it. End of message.

There's a lot to unpack there, but I think it's prudent that we jump back and look at The Demon Lover from a historical context,.

 

The song was first published by Laurence Price in 1657 on a broadside titled *deep breath* “A warning for married Women. By the example of Mrs. Jane Renalds, a west-Country Woan, born neer unto Plymouth; who having plighted her troth to a Sea-man, was afterwards Married to a Carpenter, and at last carried away by a Spirit: the manner how shall be presently recited.” In contrast, the most popular song at the time of recording this is called “The Box.”

 

Anyway, A warning for married Women. By the example of Mrs. Jane Renalds, a west-Country Woan, born neer unto Plymouth; who having plighted her troth to a Sea-man, was afterwards Married to a Carpenter, and at last carried away by a Spirit: the manner how shall be presently recited.

It tells the story of a lovely young woman named Jane Reynolds who was courted by many men, but pledged her love to one young man named James Harris. He took off to sea on some business and she waited for him, but news came back that he had died. So she mourned for a few years, then moved on. And was married. To a local ship's carpenter of renown, with whom she had 3 children. But then one night, the ghost of James Harris appears in her window when her husband is off on a business trip. She –at first-- refuses to leave with him, saying she's married. And he says “Look, I could have married a princess who was super rich, and I didn't!” So she's like... “ok, ok... but how can you even provide for me if I ran off with you?” And he says “I've got 7 ships full of stuff and guys and they're yours.” So she goes. And she's never heard from again. Really, she exits the song there. The husband comes home, finds her missing, and goes bonkers. Tears his hair, runs screaming through the streets, and then... he hangs himself. The last lines are about how the three children are left all alone, but it ends on a debate-ably hopeful note as it explains that God will provide for them.

 

That's a lot different details than the ballad you heard earlier, huh?

 

Jumping forward, the song takes on it's modern form under the name “The Demon Lover” in Scotland. It travels through England and Ireland in this form, and the story focuses more on the fate of the woman, than her family whom she left behind. And it takes another supernatural turn.

The story starts the same exact way, the presumed-dead lover returns. He's not described as a ghost this time. In fact, he's not described at all. He says all the same things. She kisses her children goodbye and leaves with him. However, this time, as they arrive at the ships, they're not as glamorous and numerous as she's been told. And there's either barely a crew or no crew at all. He still talks her onto the boat and they leave. A few weeks in, she learns that this isn't the man she thought he was, for she notices he doesn't have feet, but cloven hooves. She begins to weep that she misses her children and regrets leaving. She goes on to ask about some white hills in the distance “That? That's heaven” the man says “We're not going there” “What about those black hills?” she asks “Oh, that's hell. That's where we're going.” And suddenly – a twist!-- he grows as big as the boat and he smashes it with his hands and feet and they sink to the bottom of the sea.

 

The song then comes to America as the Irish settle in Appalachia. Its name changes again to “The House Carpenter” and the supernatural elements sort of fade away, but the focus stays on the woman.

 

She tells her lover, who reappears in her life, that she's married to a House Carpenter now and he gives her the same speech. She, again, agrees to go. A few weeks in, she begins weeping. He asks her if it's for her House Carpenter, and she says no, she's weeping because she misses her children. They talk about the hills of heaven and hell, like in the last version. And finally, in a deep twist of misfortune, the ships springs a leak and sinks beneath the sea.

So now that you're familiar with the way the song has evolved, I think it's time to jump back, and talk about that moral in more detail, and try to sort this thing out:

 

#1) This is not the first time on this show we've heard a story about the fear that a man's wife might run off with another. In “Raggle Taggle Gypsy,” a man was so upset that his woman ran off with someone else that he tracked her down and killed them both. First, this speaks to the anxiety of love. It's why we invented marriage. We're all so afraid of losing connection and the good things in our life that we'll dread our partner finding more happiness elsewhere more than we'll work to give that partner the happiness they seek right here. And in less enlightened times, women weren't viewed as something that, once married, you necessarily have to care for the happiness of. They were viewed as possessions that you could lose if you were careless with them. And that's the second thing it speaks to, the idea that when women run off, it's a mysterious thing that's someone else's fault. It's some trickery or magic or villainy. It's not just an exercise of will or an individual choice for their own happiness. And while that seems like a relic of a bygone time, it's also present today. The narrative when someone gets dumped is often that something was DONE to the person who was left. And this seems gender-agnostic, for what it's worth. And maybe we do it because it's hard to accept fault when something so hurtful is happening, but also maybe it's some leftover cultural remnant. A feeling of “how dare your property leave you. It must have gone crazy!” So this song is maybe some expression of anxiety about men's wives leaving them. And, as it moves forward in time – of course – in the Demon Lover and House Carpenter forms, the song becomes about punishing the woman for leaving.

 

#2) This is not the first time we've heard a tale about the dangers of women's youthful indiscretions! Remember the song about the thyme and the rue? One of the lessons of the earliest versions of the Demon Lover seems to be that the woman was foolish to promise herself to a man when she was so young. That promise came back to haunt her and cause her to leave her family behind. Perhaps this is reading too much into it, but it's a common theme in these ballads that women should feel ashamed of everything romantic in their youth. And the idea that it's hard to escape the ghosts of your past (whether they should be ghosts or not) is one of the base ideas of this story.

 

#3) As I mentioned before, the Daemon Lover versions of these tales has the woman being punished for her flight. She ran off, not even checking herself or thinking it through, and for her sins she was drowned at sea and sent to hell. She's even tauntingly shown heaven before this happens and told “You'll never go there, idiot.” This is different from the earlier versions of the ballad where she flies off and is never heard from again. It seems that people who were experiencing that anxiety I expressed before, felt that this wasn't a satisfying conclusion. And as that anxiety turned to anger, over the centuries, singers and writers had decided to make her fate both certain and harsh. We've seen this before with the difference between The Baffled Knight and Jock Sheep, a ballad about a woman outsmarting a –pardon the profane modern parlance-- fuckboi turned into anger about the man's fate... presumably by angry –again, pardon-- fuckbois who have been shot down before... and it turned into a story about tricking and mocking and raping the woman for revenge. Unfortunately, a quick look at Incel message boards and we'll see that this isn't a notion that we've entirely outgrown as a culture...

 

#4) This story has been a source of inspiration to many writers over the years. Especially in the modern era. And those stories show a different sort of anxiety. I'm going to get into this pretty deeply soon, but I'll touch on some of it now. Elizabeth Bowen wrote a story in 1945 about a woman being stalked and eventually abducted by a former pre-war lover, now a ghost, over a promise she made to be with him that she couldn't keep due to his death in World War II. This story was called “The Demon Lover.” Shirley Jackson wrote in 1949 about a woman obsessed with a man who rushed her into an engagement and disappeared into thin air, driving her into a place of psychological torture, and leaving a question of whether this man ever existed or not. The man's name was James Harris and the story was called... “The Demon Lover.” The themes that both of these tales –tellingly written by women, I think-- share are fear and loneliness... a sort of dangerous loneliness about being a woman in the world, being haunted by your past and your dreams of the future. A fear about what romantic commitment means to a woman and the depth to which it affects their life. About the ways one cruel,viscous or disturbed man can throw your life entirely off-track to the point of ending it entirely. About the loneliness of no one being willing to listen or take you seriously. Again, more on this in a bit.

 

So obviously, this is a morally complex ballad. Again, I'm sure it was intended as a straight-up morality tale, but – perhaps because of the wisdom of age – it becomes murky. Who is the evil one here? Is the woman evil for making a promise to the sailor and not keeping it? Is she evil for abandoning the House Carpenter? Is the sailor evil for seducing her and murdering her? What this does is speak to the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't nature of women in romance in society. If you sleep around, you're a slut. If you don't, you're a prude. If you stay with someone who mistreats you, you're an idiot. If you leave them, you're a harpy. If you don't stand up for yourself, you're a waif. If you do, you're a shrew. This tale represents that wholly. If she stayed, she'd be forswearing the oath to her former lover. If she leaves, she's forswearing the oath to her husband and responsibility to her children. And this is all completely atheistic about what she might WANT.

 

If we listen to people's interpretations of the morals, there are a lot of ideas that come up again and again. Don't be unfaithful. The grass is always greener. Don't be greedy. Appreciate what you have. If these are the morals, then the woman is the evil one in the story. But I wonder... who is this demon lover? Why is he here, tempting her in the first place? What would he have done if she said no? Why do we have expectations of how she should behave when put up against this monstrous morality test? Is he an agent sent from God to test the strength of her bond? Or is he a demon from hell, sent to tear her down and bring her to hell with him?

 

Let's listen to a song and while you do, I want to plant an idea. It's a famous paraphrase of a Margaret Atwood quote. It goes "Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."

There is a book written by a woman named Toni Reed. The book is called “Demon Lovers and their Victims in British Fiction.” I tried desperately to find Ms. Reed and bring her on this show, but after contacting her publisher, her university, and an old colleague of hers, I hit nothing but dead-ends. It's a shame, though, because this book is an incredible analysis of an archetype we don't discuss, but we see in fiction over and over. She called this archetype “The Demon Lover.”

 

Just a note here, I am going to be paraphrasing and interpreting a lot of this book in this next section of the podcast. If you are curious for more of this, check the book out, and also bracket this whole discussion under the citation “Demon Lovers and their Victims in British Fiction.” because even as I read these books and drew my own conclusions, it was Ms. Reed's thesis that I was holding in my mind the entire time and so she deserves most of the credit. Anyway...

 

Reduce this story to it's basic structure. A woman is going about the normal business of living her life when a man with ill intent intrudes upon her and either tempts or abducts her into utter ruin from which she will never recover. If you think for just a minute, I'm sure you can come up with at least A story that fits that description. Let's look at some here, the first four having been noted by Toni Reed:

 

Tess of the d'Urbervilles, a story of a woman who's father sends her on a social-climbing mission which leads her to the horrible villain Alec D'Urberville. He rapes her, and it ruins her reputation and her life for years until she's ultimately rejected by almost everyone she's ever loved. Having nowhere else to turn, she returns to Alec and his abuse until she becomes fed up, murders him, and is executed for it.

 

Wuthering Heights, a story of a woman who's life becomes entangled with her jealous, vengeful, and cruel-natured adopted brother Heathcliff's. She marries another man, but is deliberately haunted by Heathcliff though his petty acts of vengeance until she is driven mad and dies in childbirth. Meanwhile, Heathcliff marries another woman, impregnates her, and tortures her until she runs away. Through deceit, he ends up with custody of both children and marries them to each other. His own son dies, he claims all the property, leaving the young girl indebted to him. Then he, with no one else to take revenge on, gives into madness and himself dies.

 

Dracula, a story of a man who by his very nature as a mythical creature, seduces women into letting him into their homes and lives and beds and physically destroys them by sucking the actual life from their bodies and leaving them emotional and physical husks.

 

Think about the story of Persephone and Hades. Hades, with the consent of her father, abducts and rapes the young Persephone, dragging her literally to hell. When her mother finds out, she wreaks havoc and demands the return of her daughter. Before Persephone leaves, though, Hades tricks her into eating a fruit that ties her to the underworld so even though she can visit the surface, she can never truly leave. She returns for six months every year, where the land is fertile and bright and warm, but is forever condemned to spend the other six months underground, where she is miserable and angry as the queen of the underworld and all vegetation on the earth dies and is covered in cold and frost. This is how we have the four seasons, if you didn't know the myth.

 

And speaking of forbidden fruits, shall we mention the book of Genesis? Where poor Eve is seduced by the literal devil and deceived into eating the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, sharing it with her husband. For this, she and all of humanity becomes cursed by God to leave the garden, experience struggle, misery and death. And, not to put too fine a point on it, God says to her:

 

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;

with painful labor you will give birth to children.

Your desire will be for your husband,

and he will rule over you.”

Bluebeard is about a woman who is forced to marry an ugly, but wealthy, nobleman. She disobeys his order to stay out of a forbidden room and discovers he has serially murdered all of his past wives, which causes him to attempt to kill her too.

 

The Greg Berlanti/Sera Gamble show “You” (based on a novel by Caroline Kepnes) is about a man obsessed with love so much that he stalks women, invading every part of their lives until they love him. Then he uses manipulation, deceit, and ultimately violence to try and make them conform to what he believes the perfect partner to be. His obsession and his pathology ultimately lead to the ruin and death of his victims.

 

In researching this show, I found 7 distinct stories all called “The Demon Lover.” Two of which I described above. Another one is by Cecilia Holland, about a woman being seduced by an old wizard who promises her beauty and comfort, only she discovers he is an evil conjurer of illusions and wants to rape her and trap her for all eternity. One by Sarah Monette is about a man, actually, who takes a male lover that turns out to be a succubus, the man drains him of his life and will to live and the only way he can be overcome is to painfully and desperately ignore him. There's an old-timey radio serial where a woman becomes possessed by an Egyptian god of love and stalks a college professor. She pursues him rabidly until he kills her in self defense, is accused of murdering her in cold blood, stripped of his job, and locked in a psychiatric ward. I call that the “double-demon-lover”.

 

Is this getting exhausting? There are SO MANY of these stories! And why is this motif so common?

 

Let me quote several Toni Reed passages. Or yet, I know this episode is very bookish and dry, so I'll have some friends read them to break up the tone. You can take a break from my voice for a minute:

 

One possible explanation for the faithful perpetuation of the demon-lover motif is that historically men have had power over women and have protected that power by willfully subjugating women and more, by possessing them. Perhaps the demon-lover conflict expresses the collective oppression of women, and as a body of literature represents a collective warning to women not to deviate from male-defined roles, for those who do are punished.

*********

 

Archetypes duplicate identifiable features of society; archetypes and fictional characters, then, are not created in a vacuum but instead, mirror reality. If archetypes found in works of literature reflect actual roles played in society, then the demon-lover conflict may indeed reveal the quintessential struggle between the sexes identifiable in our patriarchal culture.

 

*********

 

As listeners, we respond to stories told in old ballads because we intuitively wish to complete ourselves through a process that Jung calls “Individuation.” In other words, we have a drive to confront our “shadows” in the art with which we identify, and in the same way, artists project their shadows when they create art.

 

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We respond to these stories out of our own fears and anxieties and we are drawn to them because of our urge to reconcile our destructive “shadow” selves with another side of ourselves-- the vulnerable victim. Demon-lover stories provide safe, objective ways to examine the dynamics of our own interior worlds. “The Demon Lover” and the literature patterned after the ballad reflect the same basic conflict – a conflict between aggression and victimization between power and powerlessness.

 

My interpretation is that the popularity of this motif is brought about by two things, fear and introspection. It's used as a warning by women of ways that society – and especially evil men-- can destroy them for straying from social norms. It's used by men to warn women not to try to step out from under their control. It's used by women to process their fears about the world they live in and the people they are – the feeling that maybe some decisions and pursuits of their own are not truly theirs but planted by the fear of being victimized. It's used by men to struggle with their own ugliness and confront, mock, yell at, or warn of the demons they have inside themselves. And I'm using men and women here as illustrations of their roles throughout history. I think the fears here can be gender-agnostic in individual situations. But as it relates to societal trends... it's valuable to look at this as a sign of patriarchy.

 

It's a powerful example for the difference in men and women's experience with former lovers. Men often feel their exes should be punished for hurting them. Women often fear that their exes will reappear suddenly or become violent and seek retribution. In this ballad, in demon lover stories, both often become true.

 

"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."

 

We have tracked so many ballads in this podcast that had a long legacy in music and poetry. Its interesting that this one has a long legacy in literature. The Demon Lover has inspires so so many stories that I bet it'd be impossible to track them all. Because those stories have inspired stories. And those stories have inspired stories. And I'm not comfortable in saying that the Demon Lover was the common ancestor, because we know this motif existed before... see Persephone and Eve... but it's safe to say that it's a pretty large marker on the journey.

 

By the way, I mentioned that I found 7 stories called “The Demon Lover” and I only described 5 of them. One is dystopian movie about the pornography industry and the last one is... well, this...

 

A sexy madcap comedy about a man in New York City who is cursed by a witch into a literal demon when he becomes sexually aroused... and the quirky woman who falls in love with him! It ends with a fight on a castle that for some reason is in the middle of the city.

 

Oh, and here's another song called “Demon Lover” by Shocking Blue that has nothing to do with the ballad, but if you tilt your head a little bit, you can see how it totally fits into this motif:

I know every episode of this podcast has a different flavor. And this one is the taste of old books. I've been very wordy and expository and for that I apologize, but there's just SO MUCH going on here. I spent so much time on literary analysis I didn't get to share with you some of the weird or awful and shocking things about this ballad I dug up. Like this list of places the Lover says he'll take the woman:

 

salt salt sea, deep blue sea, sweet willie, italy, villadee, sweet dundee

 

and how no ones sure what most of those are. Or the terrible moment I was listening to the Almeda Riddle version of the song and this horribly racist word came up and I won't even play it you can seek it out yourselves. Or that based on some clues in the song and the likely time period, Gerard Carruthers speculates that when the lover went off to sea, it was possibly as a member of Robert the Bruce's invasion of Ireland. But alas, I spent too much time on the ethical social and literary aspects of the song, today's just not a day for fun. It's okay. We need that sometimes.

 

And it's not just me. There are literally dozens, if not hundreds, of essays out there on this ballad. I myself read almost a dozen in writing this episode. I will include as many as I can on the website for you all to browse if you're feeling froggy and still looking to jump.

 

But here's what I'm taking away here, and it's something I've tried to do a lot in recent years. I'm taking this information, and as a cisgendered man, I'm using it to re-examine my own relationships to and with women. It's so deeply entrenched in our culture to feel possessive of women. And feel threatened by their senses of agency. We've been conditioned to ignore their fears about men. We've been empowered in our fiction and in our music to scrutinize the intents and actions of women and the decisions they make and react with horror and anger to things like infidelity and perceptions of greed or ungratefulness. I'm not trying to lecture, just telling you all what I've been examining in myself. And I've found that there are a lot of actions in my past that were informed by things like jealousy and making a woman responsible for the fragility of my own ego. I know I've benefited passively and actively from women's fears of my or societies reactions to their wants and needs. And as I go forward in life, I know it's not all going to go away instantly, but I want to try keep that in mind and work to overcome those patterns in myself.

 

Just a little thought to close it out.

Thanks as always to Steve Roud and the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library all for the existence of the Roud Folk Music Index. And in this episode in particular to Toni Reed --wherever you are-- for her incredible book which inspired so much of this episode.

And thanks to the following artists who's music is played throughout this episode:

Mark Phillips, Pauline Scanlon, Broschelmachine, Handsome Family, Alasdair Roberts, Kornog, Rosaleen Gregory, The Iron Horse, Harvesters, Bob Dylan, Natalie Merchant, Dave Von Ronk, David Grisman & Daniel Kobialka, Janet Smith & Steve Mann, Dervish, Nickel Creek, SubRosa, Hedy West, Carolina Tar Heels, Custer LaRue, Faun Fables, A.L. Lloyd, The Ex, Diane Taraz, Anthony Broussardi
 

If you liked the music you heard, please go seek it out and download it and pay for it and be one with it. I have it all listed at everyfolksong.xyz, as well as the music from every other episode of this show and links to where you can purchase it all.

 

You find me on any social media using my full name matt a-u-k-a-m-p or email me at mattaukamp@gmail.com . I truly and honestly love to hear from you. And in addition to hearing from you all I love to get REVIEWS because it brings other people to the show. If you haven't, it'd be a kindness to me to go do that. And, if you're feeling like doing me an EVEN BIGGER KINDNESS, I do have a donate button on the website.

 

I believe the next episode y'all will hear is kind of a special one. It's a bug I got in my brain that I spent a year trying to get out and it's definitely different than any other episode I've done. Look forward to that within the next month or two, I think.

 

However, the next regular-ass episode will come out at some point and it will center on Roud 15 – The Cruel Ships Carpenter... or, as it's more commonly know, Pretty Polly. It's a murder one. A pretty dark and depressing murder one... So, until then... Take care, folks.

Extras

An extended breakdown of the morals of The Daemon Lover

EFS Daemon Lover Morals MontageArtist Name
00:00 / 13:08

Provided by: Charlotte Levy & Albert, Ashleigh Stoneman, Brooke Gray, Britta Fogerty, Cameron Fogerty, Mike Callahan, Rachel Sinnott, David Reinstein, Ann-Christin Pfeifer, & Pat Reber

A List of stories which employ the Demon Lover motif

An incredible scan of the original printed broadside of "A Warning for Married Women"

Found at Broadside Ballads Online, cropped, and shared under Creative Common License. View a higher quality, unedited scan here: http://ballads.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/view/edition/23937

WarningtoMarriedWomen.jpg
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