Areas of Tam Lin I have not researched, cannot substantiate, or
simply post to amuse and share.
Theories:
Is Tam Lin a harvest
figure?
Many years ago, I was told stories of ancient cultures having
"year kings". In these cultures, the Queen of the land would pick a
consort in the spring. For the spring, summer, and early fall, the
man would be given riches, the favor of the people, and share the
Queen's bed. At the time of harvest, in fall, he would be
sacrificed. He was symbolic of the fertility of the land, and his
death was meant to ensure that the spring would return again after
the winter was done.
I'm not aware of any culture that actually practiced this ritual,
for all that I heard about it in grade school. However, a number of
cultures do have mythologies which include harvest gods who die and
return. Before their death, they are usually crop and fertility
gods, then they die and travel to the underworld. In the underworld
they gain some special knowledge and return to the land of the
living to benefit their people. Osiris in Egyptian mythology
follows this pattern, as does Inanna in Sumerian. The Greeks had
the tale of Persephone, daughter of the harvest goddess Ceres, who
marries the god of the underworld Hades. In one Native American
tale, a warrior on a quest battles a stranger who dressed in gold
and green. When the stranger dies after several days of wrestling,
the warrior buries him, and a year later finds the first corn
growing on the grave. Ireland has the tales of John Barleycorn, the
straw man whose figure is burned in celebration of the harvest at
the equinox.
One of the traditional explanation for the stories and legends
about the faeries is that they are remnants of tales about and from
the succession of invaders to the northern British Isles, such as
Norse, Picts, and others. However, it is not an unreasonable
supposition that the faerie mythology is also partly mixed with old
fertility figure worship, as the faeries are also often portrayed
as capricious creatures of old knowledge who may bless of curse
mortals at their whim. The faerie land is described as green and
fertile, the faeries as youthful and beautiful, and they are to be
found in the deep woods. While the reasons for Tam lin's abduction
is never positively stated in the telling of the tale, overtones of
sexual activity run through many stories regarding faerie
abduction. If Tam Lin was taken by the faeries to be the Queen's
lover and he is being sacrificed in the fall, does he then
represent a harvest figure? The faeries do not state why they must
pay a tithe to hell, but if Tam Lin is a harvest figure then that
situation provides an explanation.
For more on human sacrifice and Scotland, please see The God of the Witches at comparative-religion.com.
For the sacrifice of kings, see The Golden Bough
Does Janet get pregnant at the
equinox, and if so, what does this mean?
This theory depends largely upon a number of assumptions regarding
the timing of events in Tam Lin. In versions which do not include
Janet's travel to her family home between her first encounter with
Tam Lin and his rescue, no accurate guesses can be made. However,
in the versions where Janet does travel to her family home, I've
found a slim thread of hints which suggest (to me at least) that
Janet conceives her child at the equinox. When Janet is at her
family home, she is observed to be looking a little green, and then
accused of being pregnant. This sounds to me like Janet is
suffering morning sickness. She then leaves to encounter Tam Lin,
and rescues him that night. The night is usually given as
Halloween, the last night in October. Based purely upon my own
observations of my friends who have been pregnant, the first signs
of morning sickness do not usually occur until after the first
period has been missed. If one assumes that morning sickness is
usually fully felt by about six weeks into the pregnancy but not
much earlier, and that the observation of Janet's morning sickness
takes place on Halloween (that is, she leaves to speak with Tam Lin
after the argument with her family), that would place the time of
the conception around the equinox, the end of the third week of
September. Having already established that Halloween was a time of
symbolic significance, can significance also be attached to the
equinox? If so, what?
Who is being born?
In almost every version of Tam Lin, Janet is explicitly stated as
being pregnant at the time of her rescue of Tam Lin. It does not
appear to be enough that she is brave, or that she loves him, but
that she must also be with child. The transformation he goes
through are varied and strange, but most end with Tam Lin in her
arms, naked, perhaps after a baptism, at least symbolically reborn.
Most versions also instruct her to cover him in her mantle, and
while this is traditionally a sign of protection, it can also be
seen as a swaddling of sorts. At least one version has Tam Lin
completing his transformations by passing through Janet's dress and
coming out at the lower hem. One visitors to this site has compared
the last transformation into a burning object to the sensation
experienced by a woman when a baby's head passes through the
vagina. A few authors have suggested that Tam Lin is not so much
being rescued by Janet as being born to her. Is the impregnation of
Janet by Tam Lin the creation of a new body for him to inhabit? Is
she possibly struggling through a birth as much as a trial? Is his
rebirth more than simply symbolic?
The man or the horse?
When Janet goes to rescue Tam Lin, she must find him among the
faerie troop and grab a hold of him. Most versions describe him as
the rider of a white horse, often with hair down, a hat, one hand
gloved and one hand bare, and other signals of his identity.
However, several versions not only omit these specific identifiers,
but leave it unclear as to whether Janet is throwing her arms
around Tam Lin's neck or the neck of the horse. Is it possible that
Tam Lin is already in the troop in a transformed state in these
versions?
Is there a political history to Tam
Lin?
While creating the section on Tam Lin and
the Families of Scotland I noticed that just about every family
mentioned in Tam Lin, whether Janet's or Tam Lin's, is a family
that figured prominently in the battles between King Robert of
Scotland and King Edward of England. Moreover, the families were
close allies of Robert, usually his chief allies and involved in
some of the bloodiest battles. Perhaps this was nothing more than
people trying to tie the story in with Scottish history, or perhaps
the romantic notions of those recording the ballad (SIr Walter
Scott is accused of this quite often) wished to give it a tie to
national identity in some sense, but could it mean something more?
Very few of the modern versions make any mention of the linneage of
the chief characters at all. Modern versions are not as interested
in the origins of the story. However, the story is said to be many
centuries old, and perhaps part of the reason it survived in
Scotland so well was the undercurrent of history.
Is Tam lin a reiving
ballad?
Back when I first started learning about the ballad of Tam Lin, I
heard it described as a "border ballad". Having little experience
with folksongs aand only a bit more with folklore, I assumed this
meant it was a story about the borders between this world and the
one of the faeries. When I learned I was wrong, and that the term
atually refered to human borders, specifically between Scotland and
England, I discarded the entire concept. However, I have returned
to the idea, even if it took me a few years. The border between
Scotland and England was a dangerous place to live for quite a few
centuries, as the two countries were often at war with each other,
or fighting battles between factions and clans within their own
borders. Along the border country, many groups only nominally made
their living by farming, and engaged rather a lot in the particular
Scottish form of raiding and theft known as reiving. There was even
a reiving season, starting in late summer and running until early
spring (when the nights were long). Cattle were the most often
stolen items, and it was standard practice to get all of your local
kin together to go out reiving to steal cattle from your enemy, who
would then get all of thier kin together to steal it back. When
armies would march through your town and burn down the crops,
living on the move and providing for your family by stealing from
your enemy made perfect sense. The practice was also a way of
winning honour and fame, as ballads were written about some of the
best known reivers.
Seeing as this was at least a well-known practice in the areas
that gave rise to the ballad of Tam Lin, the question becomes
how does the ballad of Tam Lin tie into the tradition of
reiving ballads?Now in Tam Lin, our male character can be
viewed as the equivalent to the cattle in this story. The faerie
troop would be the equivalent of a reiving band who captured Tam
Lin when he strayed too near the border between their world and
his. There were areas of Scotland that did perform sacrifices of
cattle at the New Year, and that was the traditional time to thin
down the herd for winter. The faerie troop's attempt to sacrifice
Tam Lin further ties into this imagery. Janet, therefore, is
engaging in reiving herself, waiting at a border (the crossroads)
to steal back what the other side has stolen from her.
Versions of Tam Lin
Exploring the Ballad of Tam Lin
The Music of Tam Lin
Comparing Tam Lin to Other Tales
The Music of Tam Lin
Scotland and Tam Lin
Tam Lin Oddities
Search Tam Lin
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