Summary Of The Poem By Billy Collins

The murder, also to be committed via drowning, is no longer a random act of evil, but becomes a crime motivated by greed: when the false priests proposes to elope, he tells the heroine to bring “the gold where eer it be” (l.10), and he even goes as far as demanding that she hands over her expensive clothing before he kills her (l.21-36). May Collins clearly fell for a regular marriage impostor.
Ironically, this greed gives May Collin the opportunity to trick the impostor and save her life. She appeals to his sense of honour, reminding him that “It does not fit a mansworn man / A naked woman to see” (l.39,40) and asking him to turn around as she undresses. He complies, and May Collin manages to throw him into the sea instead of being pushed in herself.
A striking difference between H and the previous versions is the end. After
Soon enough, the wife spots her lover's cloven foot and realizes that she has followed the devil on his ship. Her despair about the discovery is expressed through bitter weeping, a common device in popular ballads. Strong emotions are not spelled out to the reader, but expressed though signs and gestures (Hoffmann 19,20). Before she dies, the unfaithful wife catches a glimpse of both heaven's “pleasant hills / That the sun shines sweetly on” (l.49,50) and hell's mountain “dreary wi frost and snow” (l.53,54), giving the ballad an unusual moralistic quality. The immediate contrast between the two symbolic spheres encourages the listener or reader to examine the unfaithful wife's choice, and even takes the focus away from her actual death in the last stanza. Although it has been established that Christian themes are rare in popular ballads, when they do appear, the spiritual fate of the woman is more important than her earthly