"The Unquiet Grave" is an Irish / English
folk song in which a young man's grief over the death of his true love is so deep that it disturbs her eternal sleep. It was collected in 1868 by
Francis James Child as
Child Ballad number 78.[1] One of the more common tunes used for the ballad is the same as that used for the English ballad "
Dives and Lazarus" and the Irish pub favorite "
Star of the County Down".
Synopsis
A man mourns his true love for "a twelve month and a day". At the end of that time, the dead woman complains that his weeping is keeping her from peaceful rest. He begs a kiss. She tells him it would kill him. When he persists, wanting to join her in death, she explains that once they are both dead their hearts will simply decay, so he should enjoy life while he has it.
Variants
The version noted by
Cecil Sharp[2] ends with "When will we meet again? / When the autumn leaves that fall from the trees / Are green and spring up again."
The motif that excessive grief can disturb the dead is found also in German and Scandinavian ballads, as well as Greek and Roman traditions.[4]
In 1941 the "Journal of the English Folk Dance and Song Society" Vol 4 no 2 included a long essay by Ruth Harvey. She compares motifs from "The Unquiet Grave" with other European ballads, including "Es ging ein Knab spazieren (Der tote Freier)" from Germany, and "Faestemanden I Graven" from Denmark.[5] She writes: "It is only inevitable that a song which certainly goes back to pre-Christian traditions should have suffered modification during the centuries."[6]
The Danish ballad "Faestemanden I Graven" was made into a short film, "Aage og Else" (1983).[7] Though not recorded till the nineteenth century, “The Unquiet Grave,” as a folk work, may date to the same period as those two seventeenth-century ballads. On the Fresno State University website, Robert B Waltz compares "The Unquiet Grave" with an older carol, "There blows a cold wind today," in the Bodleian Library MS 7683 (dated ca. 1500), but adds: "I must say that I find this a stretch; the similarities are slight indeed."[8]
Recordings
The composer
Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote several arrangements for "How Cold the Wind doth Blow (or The Unquiet Grave)". The best known, from 1912, is for piano, violin and voice. It was recorded in 1976 by
Sir Philip Ledger,
Hugh Bean and
Robert Tear. Catalogue It also appears on the 1989 recording Songs of Britten and Vaughan Williams by Canadian baritone Kevin McMillan.
A single-movement viola concerto by Australian composer
Andrew Ford used the melody of the ballad as its foundation. Written in 1997, the concerto is pieced together from melodic fragments of the ballad and it is only in the final few minutes that the full theme emerges.
The
Pennsylvania-based
alternative rock band
Ween recorded a version of the song (retitled "Cold Blows the Wind") on their 1997 album, The Mollusk. The liner notes jokingly describe the song as a traditional Chinese spiritual.
It was recorded and released as a duet between
Ian Read and
Ysanne Spevack in 2000, distributed by Tesco in Germany, and pressed up on blue vinyl with a letterpress gatefold cover under the band name Fire + Ice.[9]
The eleven-piece folk band
Bellowhead recorded a cover of Ween's version ("Cold Blows the Wind") for their 2010 album
Hedonism.
An electronic arrangement by Vladislav Korolev was sung by Lori Joachim Fredrics and premiered on April 13, 2013.
The German electronica/darkwave band
Helium Vola included a rendition on their 2013 album, Wohin?.
British folk singer/songwriter
Elliott Morris included an arrangement of "Unquiet Grave" on his 2013 EP, Shadows and Whispers.
British medieval folk-rock band
Gryphon recorded their interpretation of the ballad using the Dives and Lazarus melody on their 1973 debut album,
Gryphon.
English progressive rock musician
Steven Wilson recorded an arrangement of the song. It was the B-Side to "Cover version IV", one of a series of six singles, each consisting of a cover of a song written by another artist as the A-side, with the B-sides consisting of original songs (with the exception of "The Unquiet Grave"). The six cover versions and corresponding B-sides were released together on a compilation album, Cover Version, in 2014.