158 PRIMITIVE PATERNITY 



favourite theme in Western folksong is that of the 

 lovers brought, like Tristram and Isolte, to a tragic end, 

 from whose graves two trees grow and intertwine their 

 branches as if they were joined in a lasting embrace. 

 In this country the incident is perhaps most frequently 

 associated with the name of the ballad of Fair 

 Margaret and Sweet William ; but it is also found 

 in several others. 1 There is hardly a country on the 

 continent of Europe in which it does not occur. It 

 has even been recorded among the traditions of the 

 Schluh in the south of Morocco ; the Kurds and 

 Afghans repeat it ; and it is familiar as far away as 

 China. It is obvious that the trees are merely the lovers 

 transformed. A Lesbian ballad says in so many 

 words that the bride poisoned by her mother-in-law 

 became a lemon-tree and her bridegroom who died 

 for love a cypress, and that every Easter, every Sunday 

 and feast-day the two lovers embraced. Another also 

 expressly identifies a reed growing from the bride- 

 groom's grave and a cypress growing from the bride's 

 with the unhappy lovers themselves. They wished to 

 embrace while living ; they do so now that they are 

 dead. 2 



Moreover the kind of tree thus growing from a 

 grave is often held to be an index of the character 

 of the deceased. Indeed among the Kirghiz every one 

 on whose grave a tree grows spontaneously is deemed 

 a saint. 3 In Iceland the mountain-ash is regarded 

 as sacred. A story localised in two places is told of a 



1 Child, Ballads, i. 96, and under the headings of the various 

 ballads there mentioned. 



2 Georgeakis et Pineau, 208, 220. 



3 Featherman, Tttr. 269. 



