'What's this? what's this, Lady Margaret?' he says,
'What's this you want of me?'
'One sweet kiss of your ruby lips,
That's all I want of thee.'
'My lips they are so bitter,' he says,
'My breath it is so strong,
If you get one kiss of my ruby lips,
Your days will not be long.'
(I, 439, B 10-12.)
Sir Walter Scott has remarked that the belief that excessive grieving over lost friends destroyed their peace was general throughout Scotland: Redgauntlet, Note 2 to Letter XI. See also Gregor's Notes on the Folk-Lore of the North-East of Scotland, p. 69. We have recent testimony that this belief survives in England (1868), Folk Lore Record, I, 60. It was held in Ireland that inordinate tears would pierce a hole in the dead: Killinger, Erin, VI, 65, 449 (quoting a writer that I have not identified).
The common notion is that tears wet the shroud or grave-clothes. Scott relates a story of a Highlander who was constrained to come back and say to a kinswoman: My rest is disturbed by your unnecessary lamentation; your tears scald me in my shroud.
Mrs Grant of Laggan tells a similar story. An only sister had lost an only brother. Night after night she sat up, weeping incessantly and calling upon his name. At length her brother appeared to her in his shroud, and seemed wet and shivering. "Why," said he, "am I disturbed with the extravagance of thy sorrow? Till thou art humble and penitent for this rebellion against the decrees of Providence, every tear thou sheddest falls on this dark shroud without drying, and every night thy tears still more chill and encumber me." Essays on the Superstitions of the Highlanders of Scotland, ed. New York, 1813, p. 95 f.
A dead boy appears to his mother, and begs her to cease weeping, for all her tears fall upon his shirt and wet it so that he cannot sleep. The mother gives heed, her child comes again and says, Now my shirt is dry, and I have peace. Grimms, K. u. H. märchen, No 109.
In another form of this tradition a child has to carry all its mother's tears in a large pitcher, and cannot keep up with a happy little band to which it would belong, 'Die Macht der Thränen,' Erk, Neue Sammlung, III, I, No 35=Wunderhorn, IV, 95, Liederhort, p. 8, No 3, Mittler, No 557; Hoffmann u. Richter, p. 341, No 290; Börner, Volkssagen aus dem Orlagau, pp 142, 152; or lags behind because its clothes are heavy with these tears, Geiler von Kaisersberg's Trostspiegel, 1510, cited by Rochholz in Wolf's Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie, II, 252; Thomas Cantipratensis, Bonum Universale, "l. ii, c. 53, § 17," about 1250; or the child collects its mother's tears in its hands, Müllenhoff, No 196.
A wife's tears wet her dead husband's shirt in the German ballad 'Der Vorwirth:' Meinert, p. 13=Erk's Wunderhorn, IV, 96, Erk's Liederhort, p. 160, No 46a, Mittler, No 555; Hoffmann in Deutsches Museum, 1852, II, 161=Wunderhorn, IV, 98, Liederhort, p. 158, No 46, Mittler, No 556; Peter, I, 200, No 15.
Saint Johannes Eleemosynarius and a couple of his bishops are fain to rise from their graves because their stoles are wet through with a woman's tears, Legenda Aurea, c. 27, § 12, Grässe, p. 132, last half of the thirteenth century (cited by Liebrecht); and Saint Vicelin, because his robes are drenched with the tears of his friend Eppo, Helmold, Chronica Slavorum, l. i, 78, p. 15, ed. Lappenberg, last half of the twelfth century (cited by Müllenhoff).