Dear Siwan Rosser
One's first instinct is to say yes, there must be vision ballads in English
such as you describe in Welsh; but religious ballads seem not very common
in English. I'm no expert on broadsides, but I can't find anything in the
two volumes of Holloway & Black, and Black's 'Later Broadside Ballads'
covering the 18th C, apart from a few Free Mason songs. The English Ballad
tradition is very secular, and when it deals with religious stories tends
to do so in a biblical or quasi-biblical context - like the Cherry Tree
Carol or Dives & Lazarus (see Child 54-56) - and not usually the more
subjective Protestant approach. Even the international ballad of Mary
Magdalen was secularised in English (see Child 21 and Child's headnote on
it).
Jamie Moreia has mentioned the Cruel Mother. I suppose versions of James
Harris (Child 243 - 17thC) with the Demon Lover ending might be relevant in
that the adulteress has a vision of her lover as the devil before he sinks
the ship they are sailing away in. In all these ballads heaven and hell
are used as reward and punishment for socially good or bad behaviour rather
than a means to induce a religious conversion in the listener. You might
also look in Bronson at American versions of The Wife of Usher's Well
(Child 79).
Perhaps ballads of religious conversion were too hot for ballad printers to
handle - the government suspicion of 'heresy' and nonconformity was pretty
strong. Or perhaps their market was not interested: religion and popular
entertainment don't often mix - like having hymns at a National Lottery
draw. Or again, the scarcity may be an artefact: collectors of broadsides
then as now may not have seen religious tracts as collectable. Who makes
collections of Salvation Army 'War Cries'? However I don't know anything
of your kind that susvived in oral tradition either.
I pass. But would also refer you to the Norwegian 'Draumkvedet' which is
said to be a long Norwegian traditional ballad like a miniature Divine
Comedy, a vision of hell, purgatory and heaven. Rural Norway (particularly
in the S.W.) is still intensely protestant and evangelical - not wholly
unlike 18thC Wales.
It is possible that Wordsworth's '(Reverie of) Poor Susan' may contain
traces of the pattern you're after. See in particular the last stanza -
later cancelled - of the 1800 text, with its resemblance to the parable of
the Prodigal Son:
She looks, and her heart is in Heaven.../
Poor Outcast! return - to receive thee once more/
The house of thy Father will open its door, etc/
He wrote it after a trip to London in 1797 and we know he had been reading
broadside ballads - they led to 'Lyrical Ballads' 1798 and 1800. The
recall to the countryside could be a secular analogue of a heaven she has
lost. If you do find any English broadsides containing this kind of vision
I would be grateful if you'd let me know.
I hope these comments may be helpful, at least marginally.
Tony Conran, Bangor, Gwynedd
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