Death as an Expression of Worldview in a Ballad Culture: The Evidence of Newfoundland

This study investigates death as an expression of worldview in Newfoundland tradition, and with particular attention given to its classical ballads. From the correlation of their people's life style and moral orientations (the pragmatic context), the views and values carried across genres (the symbolic context) and those expressed within the ballads (their poetic context), one claims to find articulated a coherent worldview upholding positive behaviour--in the face of death as in life. While this attitude is found expressed in traditional societies as well as in classical balladry, it pervades past and modern local tradition, and seems particularly appropriate to Newfoundland's maritime culture. The striking prominence of revenant types in the classical ballad repertoire and the exceptional courage of the heroine of the most popular "Sweet William's Ghost" (Ch 77) confirm local concern with bereavement and its successful resolution. This evidence for Newfoundland yields the proposition that, while the meanings carried in a cultural ballad corpus are essentially generic, they are actualized in dynamic relation with specific cultural contexts and worldviews.