If you do touch my clay-cold lips,
Your time will not be long.”
Then comes a divergence in the various forms the ballad assumes. Its most common form is for the ghost to insist on her coming into his grave, unless she can perform certain tasks:—
“Go fetch me a light from dungeon deep,
Wring water from a stone,
And likewise milk from a maiden’s breast
Which never babe hath none.”
She strikes a spark from a flint, she squeezes an icicle, and she compresses the stalk of a dandelion or “Johnswort.” So she accomplishes the tasks set her.
Then the ghost exclaims:—
“Now if you had not done these things,