Ballads: 'Annan Water' (Child ballad 215.5)

This ballad is included by Child, not under its own number, but as an appendix to ballad 215, 'Rare Willie Drowned in Yarrow, or, the Water o Gamrie'. Both 'Annan Water' and 'Rare Willie' belong to a group of ballads about people meeting their deaths by drowning which, in the way of folk songs, mix up with each other in the evolution of oral tradition, swap verses back and forth and share various important story elements. I imagine it must have been a bit of a headache deciding how to classify them under discrete ballad numbers. The texts of 'Rare Willie' (Child gives eight of them) differ quite a bit from each other, and several have a lot in common with ballad number 216, 'The Mother's Malison, or, Clyde's Water'—but they don't have so very much, besides the basic drowning plot, in common with 'Annan Water'.

Here, our unnamed protagonist is trying to cross the river Annan in order to see his love, Annie. After tiring out one horse and changing to another, he tries to persuade the boatman to take him across the river, but the boatman refuses. Desperate, he resorts to swimming across; the raging water overcomes him, and he drowns. It's a simpler, vaguer plot than 'Rare Willie' and 'Clyde's Water', but contains some lovely imagery and intriguing suggestions, and it's been a favourite of mine for a while, but I didn't know very much about its history and variations—so I decided to find out some more and do a post on it!

( Some opinions and lyrical detail )