In the ballads of the other class, the young wife, grown desperate after eight years of suffering, asks to be taken back to her maiden home. Her husband's mother raises objections: the horses are in the meadow, the coachman is in bed. Then, she says, I will go on my bare feet. The moment her husband learns her wish, the carriage is at the door, but by the arts of the mother it goes to pieces on the way, and the journey has to be finished on horseback. The joy of her parents at seeing their daughter approaching was quenched on a nearer view: she looked more dead than quick. She called her family about her and distributed her effects. A great wail went up in the house when two sons were cut from the mother's side. (#C#, #J#, #K#, #L#, #W#: Grundtvig, 84 #C#; Kristensen, II, No 35 #A#, #B#, #C#; I, No 74 #C#.)
The first son stood up and brushed his hair: 'Most surely am I in my ninth year.'
The second stood up both fair and red: 'Most sure we'll avenge our dear mother dead.'[104]
Several of the most important ballads of the first class have taken up a part of the story of those of the second class, to the detriment of consistency. #F#, #G#, #H#, #O#, #P# (Grundtvig, 84 #F#, #G#, #H#, Kristensen, II, No 35 #F#, #G#), make the wife quit her husband's house for her father's, not only without reason, but against reason. If the woman is to die, it is natural enough that she should wish to die with the friends of her early days, and away from her uncongenial mother-in-law; but there is no kind of occasion for transferring the scene of the trick with the wax children to her father's house; and, on the other hand, it is altogether strange that her husband's mother and the rowan-tree chest (which sometimes appears to be the property of the mother, sometimes that of the wife) should go with her.
#Y#, 'Hustru og Slegfred,' Grundtvig, 85, agrees with the second class up to the point when the wife is put to bed at her mother's house, but with the important variation that the spell is the work of a former mistress of the husband; instead of his mother, as in most of the ballads, or of the wife's foster-mother, as in #C#, #D#, #J#, #K#, #M# (Grundtvig, 84 #C#, #D#, Kristensen, II, No 35 #A#, #B#, #D#), or of the wife's step-mother as in #A# only. The conclusion of 'Hustru og Slegfred' is rather flat. The wife, as she lies in bed, bids all her household hold up their hands and pray for her relief, which occurs on the same day. The news is sent to her husband, who rejoins his wife, is shown his children, praises God, and burns his mistress. Burning is also the fate of the mother-in-law in #B#, #I#, #O#, #P#, whereas in #F# she dies of chagrin, and in #G# bursts into a hundred flinders (flentsteene).