A lost reflex of the Tam Lin tradition
Oct. 31st, 2012 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rymenhildIn the traditional ballad of Tam Lin, as you know, Janet goes out into the wood of Carterhaugh, the terrain of the fairy knight Tam Lin, and Tam Lin impregnates her. Later, on Hallowe'en, Tam Lin is cursed to be the Fairy Court's tithe to hell, and only Janet can save him because of her power as Tam Lin's lover and as the mother of his unborn child.
I have recently unearthed evidence suggesting that there is a lost text of the Tam Lin tradition, a missing link, if you will, connecting the Tam Lin ballads and a more recent and better-known popular narrative, also associated with the discovery of sexuality, the gates between worlds, and the day of All Hallows’ Eve. Allow me to show you my argument.
Let us first consider Janet as she appears in the ballad versions. Janet, a virgin of good family, enters the woods of Carterhaugh, where she breaks a rose from a rosebush. Now, it is well known that the woods are a zone of danger, often sexualized danger (see, for instance, Sondheim 1987, et al.). Janet encounters a sexual threat in the woods of Carterhaugh. She may actively be looking for sexual danger, as we see when Janet herself breaks the unsubtly hymeneal rose (“pu’d a double rose, / A rose but only twa,” Child Ballad 39a lines 5-6), thus calling Tam Lin to herself. Janet thus keeps agency in her deflowering. She maintains agency later when she personally rescues Tam Lin from the terrifying and beautiful Fairy Queen and the gaping maw of hell.
The name Janet is of course powerful and symbolic. It is this name that brought me to recognize, at last, a late and corrupt text of the Tam Lin tradition. In this late text, the virgin Janet enters the dark wood, here rendered still darker by a raging storm, in (perhaps unwitting) search of sexual enlightenment. She is not, however, alone. Janet is accompanied by a young man, another virgin. They go together into a strange and forbidden castle, an otherworldly place beyond time’s power (where “time meant nothing, never would again.”) This castle, full of strange beings engaged in a mystical dance, is clearly an annex of Faerie; it is well known that fairies love to dance and sing. As we also know from Tam Lin, fairies are beautiful and seductive. Indeed, the master of the castle sexually deflowers both Janet and her companion, Brad. At this point the true dangers of Janet’s position become apparent, and we begin to see how the castle, as Faerie itself, is the place where life and death meet and become rebirth and where the world we know meets the worlds beyond our world.
The master of the castle, of course, is named Frank-N-Furter.
There are some peculiarities about Rocky Horror Picture Show as Tam Lin narrative. Although Brad is Janet’s first beloved, he lacks sexual desirability and experience, and therefore does not fully mirror the Fairy Knight Tam Lin. Brad resembles Tam Lin only insofar as he, like Tam Lin, must be protected, first (by Janet) from the threat of other tempting women, and then from the cannibal barbarity of the Faerie Court, Rocky Horror’s equivalent of the tithe to Hell.
In fact, the role of Tam Lin is doubled here; Frank-N-Furter carries the otherworldly power and sexuality of Tam Lin, while Brad carries his role as the weak lover who must be guarded by his lady. At the same time, Frank-N-Furter, both murderous and sensual, is also the threat that hangs over Brad, and Frank’s actions towards Brad parallel the Queen’s attempt to sell Tam Lin to Hell. Given his transgressively queer gender presentation, Frank is thus both Fairy Knight and Fairy Queen.
But is this Janet, the blushing maiden, truly the powerful and courageous Janet of the Tam Lin ballads? Janet’s color in Rocky Horror Picture Show is a naïve white, while the early Tam Lin Janet wears the green of the growing earth. Clearly Janet’s characterization has been substantially diluted during the transmission of the tradition.
I must therefore posit a lost text, a missing link that connects Child Ballad 39 to Rocky Horror Picture Show. Let us call it R’ (R prime), as the lost ancestor to Rocky Horror, which would obviously be marked with the siglum R. R’ must have divided Tam Lin into the twinned characters, mortal Brad and fairy Frank, and set both parts of the action, involving sex and hell, on a single All Hallows’ Eve night. But in this lost R’, Janet would still have been the brave and bold maiden of Carterhaugh. Janet would have gone openly and proudly to Frank’s bed, and would have guarded Brad with her own hands to keep him from being served at dinner or dragged to Hell. Janet would awake on All Saints’ Morning pregnant and overjoyed, the link between the fairy and the mortal worlds, connecting the world of time with the timeless, doing the Time Warp with her own body.
I have recently unearthed evidence suggesting that there is a lost text of the Tam Lin tradition, a missing link, if you will, connecting the Tam Lin ballads and a more recent and better-known popular narrative, also associated with the discovery of sexuality, the gates between worlds, and the day of All Hallows’ Eve. Allow me to show you my argument.
Let us first consider Janet as she appears in the ballad versions. Janet, a virgin of good family, enters the woods of Carterhaugh, where she breaks a rose from a rosebush. Now, it is well known that the woods are a zone of danger, often sexualized danger (see, for instance, Sondheim 1987, et al.). Janet encounters a sexual threat in the woods of Carterhaugh. She may actively be looking for sexual danger, as we see when Janet herself breaks the unsubtly hymeneal rose (“pu’d a double rose, / A rose but only twa,” Child Ballad 39a lines 5-6), thus calling Tam Lin to herself. Janet thus keeps agency in her deflowering. She maintains agency later when she personally rescues Tam Lin from the terrifying and beautiful Fairy Queen and the gaping maw of hell.
The name Janet is of course powerful and symbolic. It is this name that brought me to recognize, at last, a late and corrupt text of the Tam Lin tradition. In this late text, the virgin Janet enters the dark wood, here rendered still darker by a raging storm, in (perhaps unwitting) search of sexual enlightenment. She is not, however, alone. Janet is accompanied by a young man, another virgin. They go together into a strange and forbidden castle, an otherworldly place beyond time’s power (where “time meant nothing, never would again.”) This castle, full of strange beings engaged in a mystical dance, is clearly an annex of Faerie; it is well known that fairies love to dance and sing. As we also know from Tam Lin, fairies are beautiful and seductive. Indeed, the master of the castle sexually deflowers both Janet and her companion, Brad. At this point the true dangers of Janet’s position become apparent, and we begin to see how the castle, as Faerie itself, is the place where life and death meet and become rebirth and where the world we know meets the worlds beyond our world.
The master of the castle, of course, is named Frank-N-Furter.
There are some peculiarities about Rocky Horror Picture Show as Tam Lin narrative. Although Brad is Janet’s first beloved, he lacks sexual desirability and experience, and therefore does not fully mirror the Fairy Knight Tam Lin. Brad resembles Tam Lin only insofar as he, like Tam Lin, must be protected, first (by Janet) from the threat of other tempting women, and then from the cannibal barbarity of the Faerie Court, Rocky Horror’s equivalent of the tithe to Hell.
In fact, the role of Tam Lin is doubled here; Frank-N-Furter carries the otherworldly power and sexuality of Tam Lin, while Brad carries his role as the weak lover who must be guarded by his lady. At the same time, Frank-N-Furter, both murderous and sensual, is also the threat that hangs over Brad, and Frank’s actions towards Brad parallel the Queen’s attempt to sell Tam Lin to Hell. Given his transgressively queer gender presentation, Frank is thus both Fairy Knight and Fairy Queen.
But is this Janet, the blushing maiden, truly the powerful and courageous Janet of the Tam Lin ballads? Janet’s color in Rocky Horror Picture Show is a naïve white, while the early Tam Lin Janet wears the green of the growing earth. Clearly Janet’s characterization has been substantially diluted during the transmission of the tradition.
I must therefore posit a lost text, a missing link that connects Child Ballad 39 to Rocky Horror Picture Show. Let us call it R’ (R prime), as the lost ancestor to Rocky Horror, which would obviously be marked with the siglum R. R’ must have divided Tam Lin into the twinned characters, mortal Brad and fairy Frank, and set both parts of the action, involving sex and hell, on a single All Hallows’ Eve night. But in this lost R’, Janet would still have been the brave and bold maiden of Carterhaugh. Janet would have gone openly and proudly to Frank’s bed, and would have guarded Brad with her own hands to keep him from being served at dinner or dragged to Hell. Janet would awake on All Saints’ Morning pregnant and overjoyed, the link between the fairy and the mortal worlds, connecting the world of time with the timeless, doing the Time Warp with her own body.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 03:18 am (UTC)Double featuuuuure
Picture shooooow!
no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 03:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 03:28 am (UTC)please bring this to PCAS next year
*_____________*
no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 07:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 03:32 am (UTC)(Now, I've always maintained that the equivalent of the teind was being sent back to Transylvania, and that Frank-- who is of course the fairy queen-- had long been singled out for it, which is why he first tried unsuccessfully to recruit Eddie to go in his place, then built Rocky, but fell in love with his creation and didn't want to send him. Brad and Janet turn up just in time to be potential substitutes, but for some reason that doesn't work out either.)
no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 08:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 11:34 pm (UTC)The teind must come from Faerie itself. Janet and Brad are mortals, even if temporarily present in Faerie. Neither one has yet agreed to become a fairy knight. Rocky would have worked perfectly well.
In the end, Riffraff and Magenta, who may have been spies for Hell all along, carry off the entire court to hell at once, leaving behind Janet and Brad.
I still haven't quite worked that part out yet.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 03:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 04:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 04:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 04:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 04:16 am (UTC)EVEN FLOWERS HAVE THEIR DANGERS
TRANSYLVANIA IS EXCITING BUT
NICE
IS DIFFERENT THAN
GOOD
no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 06:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 11:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 04:26 am (UTC)Sadly, I don't have a Rocky icon on Dreamwidth.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 06:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 01:03 pm (UTC)To make it suitable for the Pseudo Society, you need only marshal the force of "Sir Degare" to further support your contentions; perhaps "SD" is an early text from which the TL and R family traditions have branched, and your research legitimates further investigation into this ongoing trope.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-01 01:48 pm (UTC)On a more serious note, I read a poem years ago that was kind of a modernization of Tam Lin, and I always loved the last lines--something like, "How is he going to handle the changes you're going through?"
no subject
Date: 2012-11-02 09:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-14 02:46 am (UTC)