The
very beginning of the poem introduces us with a woman living at Usher’s Well.
She was wealthy and gifted with three strong and robust sons. She sends them
overseas, though we don’t know why. But we can guess that she does so with the
intention of providing them with education. She cannot help putting up with the
emotional suffering sprouting from detachment from her sons. After a week or
several weeks, she is informed that her sons have succumbed to death. The cause
of their decease is not clearly hinted at; yet it is possible to conjecture
that they get drowned in the sea. She starts lamenting over their death from
the instant she learns about the incidence. She wants them back anyhow. She
accuses the sea and the wind of being the murderer of her sons. On November the
eleventh, she, by means of her magic spell, succeeded in getting her sons back.
But alas! They came not in flesh and blood but as a ghost. They came wearing
hats made of birch which grow at the gate of paradise. It is supposed that hats
made of birch tree protect the dead from the living man.
She
was overjoyed at their arrival and ordered her maids to arrange a feast to
celebrate the return of her sons. Being dead, they cannot eat anything. She
prepared bed for them to sleep but she sat down beside the bed. The wife
doesn’t want to sleep but unfortunately she falls asleep. But they can’t
because they are lifeless. At dawn, on hearing the crowing of a cock, the
eldest of the sons tells the youngest that they must leave at once. But the
youngest one insisted that they stay a little while because the cock crew only
once. Again the eldest son said that they will lose the place in heaven if they
are not back in time. In addition, they will be inflicted punishment. They felt
empathy for their mother at the thought that she will be subject to frenzy upon
waking in the morning. But they are under an obligation to go back. They bid
farewell to their mother who is still asleep. Since they are brought up in this
cottage (byre), they sense emotional attachment to it. But it is the quirk of
fate that they have to bid adieu to the house. But the poem leaves us amidst a
mystery telling us about a young woman. At the end, the sons take leave from
that mysterious ‘bonny lass’ who ‘kindles fire’ in their mother.
The
folk ballad ‘The Wife Usher’s Well’ exquisitely delineates a mother’s
tremendous love for her children. The mother wants her children back at any form,
even as ghosts. The sons, too, carry out their duty by returning form heaven at the call of their mother. The poem, indeed, exhibits the negative part
of obligation. They want to stay further. But, owing to their obligation toward
heaven, they are to go back. Here, death is not portrayed as being stiff or
rigid. It is depicted in a less horrifying manner.