TAM LIN: Will the real Tam Lin stand up? (Part II)

What? A Mythos Monday on a SUNDAY? Blasphemy, I know. But Tam Lin deserves a second post, and I want tomorrow's Mythos Monday and it's nine female leads to get all the love they deserve. But don't worry. We'll keep this brief.

In Part I, I wanted to show one way you can read the ballad as an example of how to find meaning in an ambiguous story. I want to emphasize that "Tam Lin" is a ballad, which is an entirely different genre than the myth. While myths are connected to large traditions and world views, ballads don't hold such grand agendas and make it easier for us to find the meanings we want to find in them. Thus, the "Tam Lin" from Monday was progressive, forward-thinking, and dynamic.

You may have also noticed that I broke one of the major rules I established for myself in my first Mythos Monday about tension: I viewed the story through my own personal context. But I am most certainly not the only one who has. The premise of "Tam Lin" can be found in fantasy novels, modernized tales, renovated folksongs, and feature films. There are so many adaptations that there is no way we can talk about all of them here. This Vox article can provide some insight on the different artistic meanings that have been taken from the story over the years. Still, the question remains whether these stories are true to "the original."

But what is "the original?" You may remember from part one that Francis Child collected 305 different ballad types. But that doesn't account for the numerous versions that fall under each type. 305 ballad types is nothing compared to the over 1000 ballad versions found in Child's collections. While a type's versions all have the same essential plot, the actual details of those stories can vary drastically. Some included versions don't even come from Scotland or England. In some cases, a ballad type made its way to countries such as Ireland and the United States where the new listeners crafted their own poetry and musical setting.

One Scottish version is 39A, which was the major source for last week's interpretation. But that's only a tiny fraction of Tam Lin's story. In fact, there are nine total versions of Tam Lin included in The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Of course, they are all the same ballad type, so they should hit the same main plot points: a young maiden goes to a precinct guarded by an elf who is summoned the moment she picks a flower. The elf challenges her presence, and she returns home pregnant. Later, she comes back to the precinct where the elf tells her how he was abducted by the fairies and that he needs her to save him this Halloween night from being sacrificed to hell. The maiden follows his instructions which include pulling him from his horse and holding him as he transforms into many fearsome creatures. Eventually, the elf turns back into his mortal form, that of a beautiful, young knight.

That's it, right? That's the story we heard last week. But the details may matter more than we think. For example, writing has taught me that a character's name can have a huge effect on how an audience experiences a story. But Tam Lin isn't even "Tam Lin" in most of the ballad versions! He has been called everything from Tame Lane to Tom Lin to True Tammas. He's even been called Lord Robinson's Only Child, which may be the worst name for a character I have ever heard. "Janet" also has a complicated name inventory which includes Jennet, Leady Margat (I promise you that this is how it is actually spelled), and the maid of Katherine's hall. And the pattern continues as Carterhaugh becomes Chester's Wood, Kertonha, or simply "the greenwood."

Names are not the only difference between the versions and the way meaning and our experience of the story can change. Let's look at the scene when Janet returns home from her first encounter with Tam Lin. In 39A, her father is described as meek and mild in his demeanor as he asks his daughter the origins of her pregnancy. We never see his response to her explanation, as the next scene is her running back to Carterhaugh.

However, the response to Janet's pregnancy is not always so gentle. In the versions where this scene is actually included and not just skipped over, a knight is often the first to point out the pregnancy in front of the guests at the castle, to then be confronted by her father. In others, her mother or another woman tells her to abort the baby, naming the plant she must pick to abort the baby, such as in version F. When Margaret—as she is called in this version—returns to where Tam Lin lives, she doesn't pull the rose but the abortive herb. Is Janet going to Carterhaugh to summon Tam Lin, or does she have other plans in mind?

And the differences don't stop there. The length of each version ranges from 10 59 quatrains. Sometimes there is a warning at the beginning, and sometimes there isn't Sometimes the story ends on the Queen of the Fairies' final words, and other times it ends on Janet embracing her true love. Version C is just Tam Lin's directions to Janet, and there is no indication that she actually follows them. In version G, the couple is said to have never been seen again since the night they went against the fairies. I could go on and on.

With such varied interpretations and such little clarity in any of them, the interpretation potential is endless. Is Tam Lin a villain and Janet his victim who now bound to her assailant? Is Tam Lin a tyrant reformed into a hero through Janet's love? Or is he simply a damsel who needs his fearless heroine to save him from impending doom?

And every way the story has been interpreted, it has been by both artists and theorists alike. But more than often, recent retellings of the story take a more progressive approach to the story that emphasizes Janet's agency and strays away from any sexual scenarios that could be misconstrued as non-consensual. Basically, it is a Medieval story told in a very modern way, and we have to ask ourselves if that is okay or if it disrespects the original "intent" of the story.

To answer that question, I wanna talk a little about Shakespeare.

For the most part, Shakespeare adaptations are more progressive than anything experienced at the original Globe; that is, of course, excluding Kiss Me Kate, which somehow managed to be even more cringe-worthy than Taming of the Shrew. You've got gender-bent characters, all-black casts of Much Ado About Nothing, and even Julius Ceasers in the style of Donald Trump. How did we go from female-less casts to Fox News' worse nightmare? More importantly, are these renovations defacing the brilliance of Shakespeare or bringing it into a more enlightened age?

In this conversation, I often hear the word "intention" being thrown around. "Shakespeare didn't intend for women to be playing Hamlet." "Shakespeare didn't intend for Beatrice to be played by a beautiful black woman." But this strand of logic runs out pretty quickly for me. You could say Shakespeare didn't intend for his plays to be experienced outside of the theater or didn't intend for his plays to have electric light operators or sound designers. Unlike the witches in Macbeth, Shakespeare couldn't see into the future. Even though he wanted his works to last, he wasn't writing for audiences hundreds of years into the future.

Similarly, "Tam Lin" and many of the other Child Ballads were not intended for us, nor were they intended to contain some great moral or example for living. They were meant to be stories of entertainment, and part of the reason they are so exciting is because of their ambiguity. So trying to put the story into a narrative structure is already going against the intent of the original story. In order to have a good movie or book, you need a certain amount of clarity and thematic consistency. "Tam Lin" doesn't really have either. Because our Scottish ancestors didn't write the rules with us in mind, we have to make and break our own.

Yes, Tam Lin is a villain. He is also a hero, a victim, a lover, and so much more. We get to choose which of his many aspects we want to focus on. Who Tam Lin is has evolved as we have evolved, and if we let him, he will continue to evolve as long as we keep telling his story.

I want to end you with the adaptation that introduced me to the story of "Tam Lin." It is relatively faithful to the original story, but as we have discussed, what "the original story" is isn't simple. I hope Anaïs Mitchell's "Tam Lin" and the way she chooses to continue the legacy of this ever-changing story. Until next tomorrow, stay curious.

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Works Cited

Child, Francis James. The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Edited by Francis James Child, The Project Gutenberg EBook, vol. 1, Project Gutenberg, 2017, Gutenberg, <www.gutenberg.org/files/44969/44969-h/44969-h.htm#Ballad_39>

Niles, John D. “Tam Lin: Form and Meaning in a Traditional Ballad*.” Modern Language Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 4, 1977, pp. 336–347., doi:10.1215/00267929-38-4-336.

Porter, James. "Child, Francis James." Grove Music Online. 2001. Oxford University Press. Date of access 6 May. 2020, <https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000048785>