Tom Linne
 

REVISED VERSION
Tom Linne (rev. 1)

“Anyone seen Tom Linne around?”
The bartender asked the guys
Who were drinkin’ late at the local bar
With old dreams in their eyes.

“ Tom Linne?” asked one, “the guitar dude?”
The bartender nodded his head.
“Maybe he’s sick— sheddin’—shacked up—
“Or could be the guy is dead.”

The bartender wiped a glass and frowned,
“Nobody’s seen him around—
“He’s missed seven weeks of gigs—
“He must’ve left town.”

That same night, in a house on the Hill,
Tom lay in a woman’s arms;
Enchanted he’d been by her beauty, her voice,
Never guessing she meant him harm.

For she was a witch, and men her prey—
The handsome, the gifted, the brave—
To make them her captives was all her pleasure:
One touch—they were enslaved.

“No more guitar, Tom,” she commanded.
In thrall to her, he agreed.
“And never, never love,” she said,
"Any woman but me!”

For seven weeks Tom had been her slave,
He did whatever she said.
But this night he found a secret way out
Left her lying naked in bed.

Down at the bar, his band was playing;
He stepped right up to the mic:
“I’m back,” he said, to claps and cheers,
“It feels so friggin’ right.”

Those who heard Tom play that night
Heard sounds they’d never forget;
He made that guitar sing and rave,
His fingers gone wild on the frets.

Later, cleaning his bloody fingers,
He looked up to see
Janet, who’d been the love of his life;
“I’ve been crazed, Janet,” said he.

Graceful, calm, Janet stood
With the smile that had won his heart.
“I’ll do anything, dear Tom,” she said,
“To keep you free from harm.”

Beneath the moon, beneath an oak,
Tom loved Janet well;
“You’re the only one who can set me free—
“Here’s how to break the spell.”

The witch’s house—the barred gate opens—
It’s midnight on Hallowe’en;
And out of the gate a dozen men walk,
Then— a limousine

With the witch inside. Her black eyes proud:
See the men controlled by my spells!
Her shoulders bare, and half her breasts;
Her necklace of precious gems.

Janet is waiting, holding her breath;
Tom’s first in that spellbound line.
She grabs him, and pulls him out of his place;
“This man,” she says, “is mine!”

A scream from the car—then in her arms
Not Tom, but a poisonous snake—
Still she holds on tight—the snake is gone—
A bear appears in its place—

But still she clings to the man in the beast—
Now a lion, wild—
For Tom’s the only man she loves,
And the father of her child.

Once more he’s changed—to an iron bar,
Hotter than fire can be—
And she’s thrown the bar into the river:
And now her Tom is free.

Curse you, Tom! screams the witch,
The first to escape from me!
If I’d foreseen, I’d have cut off your hands,
And left you with her to bleed!


ORIGINAL VERSION
Most of you probably know the original of this ballad, a 43 - stanza traditional ballad called "Tam Lin," one of the famous Child ballads from the Scottish borderlands, dated approximately mid-16th century. I’ve cut some of the material (43-stanzas? No way!) and updated the story (in accentual meter).

“shedding” is short for “woodshedding,” a musician’s term for isolating yourself to practice.

In English/Scottish folklore, pulling up roses has symbolic meaning, but I have not incorporated this in my version. You can find information here, if you’re interested: https://tam-lin.org/

Tom Linne

"Whatever happened to Tom Linne?
You remember him— good-looking as sin—
Plays a mean guitar in a local band.
Nobody knows where he’s been."

"Not even Janet?" "Nope, I asked."
"Maybe he’s shedding. Or some lucky chance
Sent the band out on a national tour
Or— he’s found a new romance…"
————-
When he lay in her arms, it all felt right,
But there was always a price to be paid:
She’d forbidden his music, silenced his voice;
For seven months he’d seethed—but he stayed.

Then one night he cracked, stole out of her house,
A mansion high on the east side of town,
In stockinged feet he slipped through the gate,
Caught a bus headed down, down,

Down to the club where his band was playing,
And Janet, in blue, standing next to the bar;
Eyes wide, she stared, and he saw her heart beating;
“I’m no ghost,” he said, and touched her arm

With fingers that made her heart turn over.
“I’ve given my promise: mum as a stone
I must be—but it’s nothing to do with you, Janet—
Let’s find a place to be alone.”

Under a willow tree, down by the river,
Janet and Tom as close as could be;
“My love,” he whispered, and held her tighter,
The enchantment failing, he was nearly free.

Janet went home to find her father;
“Father, it’s time I was married,” she said.
“And Tom Linne is my chosen man.”
“Him! I’d rather see you dead!”

Janet’s gone down to the willow tree
And she’s pulled up roses, one by one,
“Stop!” cried Tom Linne, springing up from the ground,
Don’t kill our child! Here’s what’s to be done…”
———————-
Just before midnight— the witch’s house—
The barred gate opens—it’s Hallowe’en—

And out of the gate a dozen men walk,
Dazed by the moon. Then, a limousine

With the witch inside. Her black eyes proud:
Look at the men controlled by my spells!
Her shoulders bare, and half her breasts,
She fondles her necklace of precious gems.

Janet is waiting, holding her breath;
Tom walks first in that spellbound line.
She grabs him and pulls him out of his place;
Holding him tight, she says, “This man is mine!”

A scream from the car—then in her arms
Not Tom, but a giant poisonous snake—
Still she holds on tight—the snake is gone—
A huge bear appearing in its place—

But still she clings to the man in the beast,
Though now he’s changed to a lion, wild,
For Tom Linne is all the man she loves,
And he is the father of her child.

Once more he’s changed—to an iron bar,
Hotter than any fire can be—
And she’s thrown the bar into the river—
And now her true love, Tom, is free.

A curse upon you, screams the witch,
Who has stolen this man of all men from me!
Had I only foreseen, I’d have put out his eyes,
And replaced them with wood from a willow tree!

I first heard the story of Tam Lin at an impressionable age on Fairport Convention’s classic folk-rock album Liege and Lief. A heady mixture of traditional folk songs and thumping guitar riffs. It’s curious that your retelling of the tale seems to place Tam Lin in that very same folk-rock band as Richard Thompson, with Sandy Denny as Janet. I guess rockstar guitarist and knight in shining armour do overlap.

.
(I think I hear the moderator's footsteps coming :D)
.

Thanks, Joe.

Tom Linne
 

Please explain, Jim.

.
Just wanted to give you a heads up. Far be it from me to play "police", but I would expect the board moderator to step in to let you know the following:

"You should post no more than one new thread per week in the Metrical, Deep End, and Non-Metrical Forums combined."



And welcome! Things are pretty laid back here in terms of letting the members police themselves but the limit on frequency of posting is one that is studiously kept in my experience.

But so far the moderator seems to be busy doing other things so you're good until...

Best,
Jim

.

Got it; thanks. I must have misread the date on which I posted the previous poem.

Hi Barbara,
Jim's right, sorry. I love your poem, but it'll have to be put on hold for a few days...

I'll reopen the thread during the week, as soon as it becomes elligible.

Jayne

Hi Barbara,
Your thread's open again.

Jayne

Thanks, Jayne. Comments, anyone?
Barbara

I haven't scanned much accentual meter, but I'm having fun placing beats. 4 beats per line here, right? There are a few that I can find only 3, and a couple I can't get less than 5. Are these intentional? Or should I point them out?

Narrative poems, especially ballads rooted in myth and folklore, are one of my guilty pleasures. Very enjoyable read, Barbara.
Glenn

Hi Barbara,
I too like a ballad but I struggled with this one. Perhaps because I didn't know the original. I found the narrative hard to follow (the fact that there are two shes/hers doesn't help) and it didn't feel as modern as I was expecting (stockinged feet, for instance.)
I think you could cut S8, it doesn't seem to make much of a contribution to your retelling (and the Linne/him/sin/been rhymes set up an expectation that isn't met.) Similarly stanzas 1 and 2 aren't doing much either.

I doesn't solve the (or maybe just my) narrative problem but perhaps a change in verse order might help?

10, 11, 12 // 3, 4, 5 // 6, 7, 9 // 13, 14, 15, 16

Regards,
RG

I love a good ballad too, Barbara, and enjoyed comparing yours with the Child version. A few thoughts:

I can get four beats out of every line if I work at it, but my first inclination is to give a number of them five or three. For example, to get four beats out of “Nobody knows where he’s been,” I have to stress both “knows” and “where,” which is unnatural for me. On the other hand, I’d naturally give “The enchantment failing, he was nearly free” four beats in speech, but that requires three consecutive unstressed syllables, which is normally taboo in metrical verse. Like Marshall, I’m not sure whether any of this is a problem for accentual meter.

There’s some clichéd language—the first two lines of S3, for example—but that may be less of a problem for a riff on a traditional ballad. “Stockinged” didn’t bother me, but the Yoda-speak “mum as a stone I must be” in S6L2-3 clashes with the natural, modern idiom you’ve chosen. S6L3 is one of the lines I want to give five beats, so how about something like:

“I’ve given my word to be mum as a stone,
but it’s nothing to do with you, Janet—

I’m not quite sure what “Tom Linne is all the man she loves” means. Is everything she loves? Is the only man she loves?

Typo: foresee.

I wasn’t going to mention this, because I have a talent for misreading everything that can possibly be misread, but I first thought Janet kept Tom locked up at home while she went to the club!

Yes, indeed, Joe. Thanks for your reply, and apologies for my own late one: the poem was put on hold for a while because I posted it too soon.--Barbara

Richard: Yeah, I had to track down the original to make sense of (especially) the animals. I recommend getting into the Gaelic swing with
https://www.futilitycloset.com/2009/...e-to-scotland/

Barbara, I paced 4 beats in all lines except:
Too few: Nobody knows where he’s been."
Too many: Holding him tight, she says, “This man is mine!”

Otherwise, I got confused by S2:
"Not even Janet?" "Nope, I asked."
as a dialogue between 2 unnamed characters. Maybe just continue the monologue, like: "Not even Janet has seen him around"

Lastly, I wondered why the witch would curse Janet by wishing blindness on Tom, as if his disability would be hurtful to her (or make him less desirable).

Tom Linne
 

Marshall, Glenn, Richard G., Carl--
Thank you all so much for reading and responding to this experiment! I'm so glad to learn the places where you got confused or wondered about the meter. Now I know what I need to fix.

As for the meter, you wouldn't think it would be that hard--four strong beats per line--but, as a couple of you noted, I don't always get it right. (Marshall, it's not intentional! and do feel free to point out specific places where I goofed.) ( Carl, three unstressed syllables between two stressed ones is permitted. Interesting to me--and possibly to others--I've read in two reliable sources that native English speakers feel uncomfortable with more than three unstressed syllables between the stressed ones, so this principle is true for prose, as well.)

Dana Gioia has an excellent article on accentual meter here: http://danagioia.com/essays/writing-...centual-verse/

"Tom Linne" is all the man she loves" would certainly be better as "Tom Linne is the only man she loves."

Richard, thanks for your suggestions for re-arranging the stanzas. I will definitely try this.

Carl, are you able to point to language in the poem that made you think Janet was keeping Tom a prisoner? Or was it something missing that made you think that way?

Did anyone pick up on the "beast in the man" idea (which is not in the original ballad)? If so, what did you think of it?

This experiment was tricky to do (though lots of fun) in part because, as you all probably know, ballads work primarily by the technique of "montage"--that is, they show scenes or dialogue, leaving out all the connecting narrative. It's often hard to figure out who's talking, and when. With the 43 stanzas of the original, I didn't always know what was going on! I might be working "in the tradition" to similarly confuse my readers--but I'd rather not do that. So thanks for letting my know about the places that you found confusing.

I'm pleased to find some other lovers of ballads here. Glenn--I'm so glad you found this an enjoyable read…must ballads be a "guilty pleasure," though…?

Thanks to all--Barbara

Tom Linne
 

Hi Marshall,
We just cross-posted. Thanks for that link and for your suggestions for clarifying the meter and what's going on in the story.

Actually, the witch is cursing Tom because he's figured out a way to escape her (and why that particular curse? I don't know: it's in the original.) If you have time, I'd like to know the language in the poem that made you think she was cursing Tom.

Thanks so much!
Barbara

Three unstressed syllables between two stresses is perfectly natural in speech, so I’ve always thought it should be doable in verse, but I’m usually told that the second of three non-stresses is always promoted. Accentual verse may escape this, though I wonder whether Gioia’s “implied fourth rule” might apply: “avoid metrical ambiguity by reducing or eliminating secondary stresses that might confuse where the beat falls.” Thanks for that article, btw; I’ll study it more closely.

There are clues that “she” in S3 is a new character, but it wasn’t quite enough for me on first reading—or for Richard, apparently—so I had Tom stealing out of Janet’s house and then running into her out on the town. No wonder she was shocked! This version doesn’t make much sense to begin with and gets loonier with every line, so it may require a legendary misreader like myself to take it as far as I did.

Thanks, Carl. I can see I have a lot of work to do to make this story less confusing! --Barbara

Hi Barbara,

I'm familiar with the song/ballad from Fairport Convention's version. It was fun to read your updated version. Here's how I'm reading it:

At the beginning, we overhear that Tom Linne has disappeared and not even Janet knows where he is.

In the second section, it sounds like Janet has forbidden his music, and he's put up with it for seven months, then he slips out of the house, and in to a bar and there's ... Janet. So, maybe the "she" in whose house he's been imprisoned in isn't Janet's but the Faery Queen (or her equivalent, "the witch" in this version), the mooted "new romance" of the first section? So the mansion is the green hill, and seven months are the seven years in the hill.

He reassures Janet he's not a ghost. This is because Janet doesn't know where he's been this past seven months. Now, this seems to imply they were already together, an item, before he was captured/enchanted (a difference from the original ballad).

They leave the bar and hang out by the river, and the enchantment of the Faery Queen/witch is fading as a result of their closeness. Later, on another visit, Janet picks a rose (in the original is to kill the child), which means that Janet is at this point pregnant. So this meeting by the river is the correlate of their first meeting in Carterhaw in the original ballad. Finding herself pregnant, Janet tells her father, who is having none of it. Janet needs/wants her father's permission to marry, and despairs when he won't give it.

The last section of the poem echoes the Tam Lin sequence I'm familiar with from the song. Janet rescues him from the Faery Queen and he changes form, but, as instructed, she doesn't release him, and so gets to keep him. And presumably doesn't care what her father says now she's got him back.


So, that's how I'm reading it. Some thoughts on the above.

It's not very clear in the second section that "she/her" is the witch. It reads like we're still taking about Janet, and so I found that section confusing until I worked it out. Maybe this could be made clearer somehow?

Given how closely you follow the plot of the original, it seems a little odd that Janet and Tom are already together (assuming I'm reading that correctly) before Tom is enchanted. But only really because I know the original, I guess.

The role of the father, and needing his permission to marry, seems rather at odds with the modern setting. Though I guess her father threatening to kick her out or disown her, and the father of her child not being accessible, would still make sense today. Still, maybe there's some scope for some other cause? Lack of money, desire for a career?

You might also think of a more modern alternative to the rose, I guess. That's also probably the only reference the reader won't understand without knowing the ballad. The rest, I think, stands on its own.

Another thing I wondered about is the relevance of Tom Linne's role as a guitarist in a band. It's mentioned in the opening and at the beginning of the second section, but doesn't seem to play a role or get developed in rest of the poem.


On the metre: like others, I'm finding it hard to hear a clear four beat metre in a quite a few of the lines here. Dan Goia says, "There is, in fact, only one steadfast rule: there must be an identical number of strong stresses in each line." And here you're going for four per line. But these, for example, seem to have three strong stresses:

But there was ALways a PRICE to be PAID

Or— he’s FOUND a NEW roMANCe…

And HE is the FATHer of her CHILD

I can make them four, I guess, but only if I artificially add a lot of stress to words that (to me) don't naturally have a strong stress. Some of the weak stresses are promoted, but they still don't, I think, become strong stresses as a result.

Some others I hear as 5 (or more) strong stresses. for example:

PLAYS a MEAN guiTAR in a LOcal BAND

I can make "plays" weaker, I guess, but it's the verb here, so again, I feel like I'd be imposing a rhythm that isn't naturally in the line.

And OUT of the GATE a DOZEen MEN WALK

You don't actually need "gate" in this line, since it's clear from the previous line, so that would give you an option to lose one stress.

i MUST be—but it’s NOTHing to DO with YOU, JANET

HOLDing him TIGHT, she SAYS, “This MAN is MINE!”

“STOP!” cried TOM LINNE, SPRINGing (UP) from the GROUND

I'd say this last one has at least five strong stresses. "TOM LINNE" is two strong stresses -- and you count it that way in the first line of the poem. I'd say "UP" is too, but maybe you're not counting that? I guess you can drop "Linne", since we'll know which Tom it is. And replace "springing up" with a verb with one stress and the same meaning.

Tiny point, but I'd prefer "Nope. I asked", because "Nope, I asked" reads a bit like "I asked nope".

best,

Matt

Hi Marshall (and apologies Barbara.)
I'd say thanks for the link, but ow! my aching head. That ain't no Gaelic, but Scots, a whole different kittle o' keilin.
Long may your crowdies loup.

RG.

Barbara, if you don’t know already, you’ll find Matt to be the best detailed critter we have here, but I still like to squabble with him about stressing.

I too initially gave this three stresses, but on second thought decided that the “Or,” set off by a dash, calls for an expressive stress.

I guess we’re saying, then, that promotions and demotions don’t count in accentual verse and that three or more consecutive unstressed syllables are fine as long it sounds natural. I think Barbara agrees, though here you caught her promoting “of.”

I find that verbs can easily lose their stress. Not any verb, perhaps, but here it works for me.

I think Barbara is actually going for this:

i must BE—but it’s NOTHing to do with YOU, JANet

But she herself said that four unstressed syllables in a row stretches English to the breaking point, so maybe it’s:

i must BE—but it’s NOTHing to DO with you, JANet

Too much ambiguity for me. I suggested a fix here, but for a different reason.

I think she wants:

HOLDing him TIGHT, she says, “THIS man is MINE!”

An unstressed “says” works fine for me here.

I agree about “UP,” but have no problem with an unstressed “springing” or “tom”:

“STOP!” cried tom LINNE, springing UP from the GROUND

That said, the unstressed “tom” is inconsistent with the name’s other appearances, so I like your suggestion to drop “Linne.”

On the whole, of course, I agree that more thought could be given to Gioia’s “implied fourth rule.”

It's not much of a spring if it's not stressed, though, I reckon. It takes a lot of effort to spring up from the ground! I can't easily say the line with the springing unstressed, especially with the pause/caesura necessitated by the comma preceding "springing".

HOLDing him TIGHT, she says, “THIS man is MINE!”

If this is the stress pattern desired, it might work better if "this" were italicised to make this more obvious. Because, after all, he's a man, a mortal: not a ghoul or a witch or an elvish knight. And at least in the original ballad, there aren't any other men around. I'd say that would be a reason to stress "man" over "this", or at least to be unclear which word was to be stressed.

Anyway, I guess we can agree that there are lines in the poem where the metre could clearer and less ambiguous. After all, we're disagreeing on the scansion. I'd say it would be better if the reader didn't have to spend time trying to figure out what is and isn't counting as a stress and where the beat lands. There are many lines here that aren't like this, I hasten to add, where the four stresses are clear and easy to hear. I reckon it's worth trying to make all the lines like that.

best,

Matt

As a phrasal verb, “spring up” would normally take its main stress on the second element. I’d tend to give “springing up” two full stresses, as you suggest, though I have no trouble demoting “spring-” if necessary.

It certainly would’ve saved us some time!

Barbara,
Here is my cursing confusion in the last stanza:

"A curse upon you...Who has stolen this man of all men from me!"
is aimed at Janet (who did the stealing) but the curse of blindness was aimed at Tom.
If it's all to be directed at Tom, maybe change L2 to "Who gave up the honor to love only me"

As for the meter, frankly I can flub up a sight-read of Dr. Suess because I don't know if his first anapest is 0, 1, or 2 headless. So I'm okay with a poem needing a second read to get a reasonable meter.

Yikes! I take a break from the Sphere for a single day, and come back to find even more comments on confusion--content and metrical--in the poem!
(I don't use smilies, but that's a joke.)

Thanks so much Matt, Richard, Carl, and Marshall. I do appreciate your taking so much time with this experiment. Your comments help a lot. (I always used to tell my writing students, "The reader is not inside your head." I seem to have forgotten that key piece of advice with this poem.)

Clearly, I must make it obvious that Janet and the witch are not the same person. I didn't want to go into how Tom was captured by the witch (it's a long segment of the original), but probably a mention would be helpful. It's also tricky to "update" a ballad, particularly one that has so many supernatural allusions that we no longer "get." I've got to think about this, too.

I like the idea, Matt, of doing more with Tom's identity as a guitarist, especially since it's because he's a musician that Janet's father objects to him.

Marshall, thanks for explaining your confusion about the curse. Must definitely clear that up.

And now, an attempt to clear up all the confusion about meter. (By the way, I hope those of you who engaged in trying to "fix" the meter enjoy that particular game. I'd hate to think I wasted your time.)

First, I should have said this poem is in ballad meter, which is accentual meter in which some lines may have three stressed syllables, with the last stress being "empty," presumably for an accompanying instrument to add a fill.

Second:The truth is that the system of metrical analysis taught in schools has never made any sense to me; for one thing, it breaks up the natural verbal phrase rhythms that make up poetic lines. This intuition was reinforced, first, when I read an essay by the composer Virgil Thomson about setting words to music. He said the words had to be set according to their verbal phrases.

I did a lot of learning about phrases as research for my second book (Spellbinding Sentences), and was even more convinced that they're the key to verbal rhythm, in prose--or in poetry.

Then I discovered Philip Davies Roberts' excellent, but little-known book, How Poetry Works. Roberts was a musician as well as a poet; in the book he makes clear that the main similarity between music and poetry is that they both have beat. Even more mind-opening, to me, was his assertion that in poetry, as in music, the beats must be isochronous.

What? I had never heard of this term before. (It means that the beats are regularly--more or less--spaced in time.). When I began writing poems this way, the beats being the strong stresses, I felt I had an approach to rhythm that made sense to me.

For instance, I'd read this line (Matt's version)
But there was ALways a PRICE to be PAID
this way:
BUT there was ALways a PRICE to be PAID, and if I were reading the line out loud, I'd have a slight pause after BUT.

I can see that I did slide five beats into some lines--can't remember why, now--so thanks for pointing those out.

So, how does Roberts' approach to rhythm work in practice? Though I'm still learning, I think it works quite well. You establish the number of beats you want in a line, and then you find words to fit in between the beats that will ensure the beats are isocronous. (Tapping your hand helps.)That's usually one to three unstressed syllables--but it could also be none, an effect I really like.

How many unstressed syllables you can fit between the beats depends, at least in part, on the sounds of the syllables. Syllables of longer duration can be tricky. But, then, you can also use longer sounds to fill the spaces between the beats with fewer syllables.

(And, naturally, while you're doing all this, you have to be making whatever kind of sense you're aiming for.)

What I love about writing this way is that it lets me feel the beats while also concocting verbal phrase rhythms that "go with" the beats. In other words, it's like having one instrument that's keeping the beat and another one playing the rhythms of the melody--except that with poetry, it's the same words doing both things! I
find this completely amazing and thrilling.

You may think all this sounds loony, but if you are interested and want to hear more, just let me know.

Thanks again to everyone's who's helped!

Barbara

Ballad metre, as the term is normally used, is an accentual metre that alternates between lines of 4 stresses, and lines of 3 stresses. The accentual-syllabic equivalent is called "common metre", though some people call it ballad metre too, I think.

Anyway, this isn't what your poem is doing. So, maybe you talking about something other than ballad metre? Are there ballads or folks songs where where it's four beats to a line by default, and the occasional three-beat line to be filled in by the music? I'm interested.

The original Tam Lin ballad alternates 4 beats with 3:

O I forbid you, maidens all
That wear gold on your hair,
To come or go by Carterhaugh,
For young Tam Lin is there.

I think it would be interesting to see your poem in ballad meter. It'd make it more folk-songlike, I think.

best,

Matt

Yeah, that alternation between four and three beats is one of the things I love about ballads. I first thought you had a modified ballad meter going in the first two stanzas (4-4-4-3) and was a little disappointed when it didn’t continue.

Tom Linne
 

Matt and Carl--Thank you again! I'll do it!

Matt-- "The Fair Flower of Northumberland" (#73 In The Oxford Book of Ballads) seems to have 4 beats per line:
It was a Knight in Scotland borne,
Follow my loue, leap ouer the strand:
Was taken prisoner and left forlorne
Even by the good Earle of Northumberland.

There may be others; I'm no expert.

Thanks Barbara,

Confusingly, a ballad doesn't have to be in ballad metre!

But if it's four beats a line alternating with three beats a line, that's called "ballad metre".

As in your example, there are ballads that are four beats to a line throughout. Often these include refrains as the second and fourth lines of each verse. This happens in the one you've quoted (with some variations). Also, check out Lord Randal, too, which also does this too. Thomas (the) Rymer is an example of a four beat ballads that doesn't have a refrain.

I was just intrigued by your description of a ballad that was mostly four beats, but some lines could be three beats.

Anyway, great news that you'll try to rewrite this in ballad metre. That's a lot of work. I'll look forward to seeing results.

Matt

Thanks, Matt. I really appreciate all the time you've taken with this. When I re-write in ballad metre, I'm also going to re-think the storyline, so it may be a while before this one shows up again.

Thanks to everyone who offered good suggestions, here's a new version of "Tom Linne." I lost most of the folklore associations in this version, but maybe that's okay. Note that Tom's fingers bleed because he hasn't played his guitar for seven weeks, and his callouses have softened. I'm looking forward to hearing comments on this version.

Hi Barbara,
no problems distinguishing between Janet and the witch in this version. This flows nicely.

That said, I didn't think it that clear that the local bar of verse one is the same bar that features in verse eight. If it is, and it almost certainly is, then I think some mention of his band should be made in the opening section. You could cut the final three lines of verse three (as the information is repeated later in the poem) and have them setting up or something.
I thought 'old dreams in their eyes' was very nice.

You've 'bartender' three times in those three verses, why not give him a name? (His being the bartender doesn't seem that relevant.) And why not name the bar?

It feels a bit light on what's motivating the witch. (And why Janet doesn't ask where he's been all this time?)

This felt, to me, like a weak line in the chain

For seven weeks Tom had been her slave,
He did whatever she said.
But this night he found a secret way out
Left her lying naked in bed.

What has changed for Tom that he's suddenly looking for a way out. Is the 'enamouring' wearing off?


RG.

Excellent questions, Richard. Thanks.

I really like what you’ve done with this, Barbara. I’m now grooving to the 4-3-4-3 ballad meter, and I even think the poem works as loose iambic, not just accentual. A few thoughts:

“Tom Linne?” asked one, “the guitar dude?”

You’ve got four beats, and in loose iambic, “the guitar dude” would be a double iamb, but as I sing along, I keep getting a hillbilly “GUI-tar.” It’s probably just me.

“He’s missed seven weeks of gigs—
“He must’ve left town.”

I can squeeze 4 and 3 beats out of these lines if I work at it, but 3 and 2 is easier:

“he’s MISSED seven WEEKS of GIGS—
“He MUST’ve left TOWN.”

That same night, in a house on the Hill,

Is the Hill a proper name, like the one in D.C.?

But this night he found a secret way out

You need some punctuation after “out.”

I assume he snuck out because his fingers were itching for the strings. If it needs spelling out, you could say something like that instead of “he found a secret way out.” I don’t suppose she actually had to lock him in or anything.

“It feels so friggin’ right.”

I’m not sure you need to italicize “right.” Wouldn’t an exclamation point do better?

He looked up to see

This is a little too easy to read as:

he looked UP (like “i’ve been CRAZED” two lines later)

Something like “He raised his eyes to see” would be metrically clearer.

“I’ll do anything, dear Tom,” she said,
“To keep you free from harm.”

He’s hardly had time to say anything, so I wonder why she thinks he’s in danger and she can do something about it.

“Here’s how to break the spell.”

How about an ellipsis in place of a period?

Then—a limousine

With the witch inside. Her black eyes proud:

I can’t help adding a full stop after “limousine” and am caught off guard every time by the continuation. Why not start the next quatrain with “The witch rode inside, her black eyes proud:”

Her necklace of precious gems.

This isn’t an independent clause and so fits uneasily into its sentence: “Her black eyes [are] proud … Her shoulders [are] bare … Her necklace of precious gems.” Could you restore a bit of the original line, e.g., “She fondles her string of gems.”

Still she holds on tight—the snake is gone—

There’s a temptation to stress “Still,” so I suggest dropping or moving it: “She still holds tight.”

And the father of her child.

Has she had time to figure this out? I don’t miss Janet’s father, but that episode did give some sense of passing time. I do miss the weird rose-pulling incident.

BTW, cutting off Tom’s hands is fiendishly appropriate, but the willow-eye punishment was wonderfully bizarre.

Thanks so much, Carl, for all your helpful suggestions. In this draft, I was primarily trying to get the rhythm right. Now I've got to return to the original ballad and decide on content I should add. I liked the rose, too, but I have no idea how to make that work!