The Two Sisters (folk song)

In some versions, this occurs after the musician has taken it to the family's household, so that the elder sister is publicly revealed (sometimes at her wedding to the murdered girl's suitor) as the murderess.

[3] Several historical resources are available via the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library, such as a manuscript of the melody and lyrics of a Scottish version entitled "Binnorie" from 1830.

[4] Cecil Sharp collected many versions of the ballad on both sides of the Atlantic, including one from a Lucy Dunston of Bridgwater, Somerset, England in 1909,[5] and another from a Jenny Combs of Berea, Kentucky, USA in 1917.

Its general Scandinavian classification is TSB A 38; and it is (among others) known as Den talende strengeleg or De to søstre (DgF 95), or Der boede en Mand ved Sønderbro[8] in Danish, Hørpu ríma (CCF 136)in Faroese, Hörpu kvæði (IFkv 13) in Icelandic, Dei tvo systar in Norwegian, and De två systrarna (SMB 13) in Swedish.

It has also spread further south; for example, as Gosli iz človeškega telesa izdajo umor (A Fiddle Made from a Human Body Reveals a Murder) in Slovenian.

In the Norse variants, the older sister is depicted as dark and the younger as fair, often with great contrast, comparing the former to soot and the other to the sun or milk.

In Polish literature from the Romantic period, a similar theme is found in the play Balladyna (1838) by Juliusz Słowacki.

The ballad also appears in a number of guises in Scottish Gaelic, under the name "A' Bhean Eudach" or "The Jealous Woman."

In many of the Scottish Gaelic variants the cruel sister murders her sibling while she is sleeping by knotting her hair into the seaweed on a rock at low tide.

Canadian singer and harpist Loreena McKennitt's song "The Bonny Swans" is a pastiche of several traditional variants of the ballad.

In Germany, there is a ballad called Das steinerne Brot (stone bread) which is also sometimes known as Zwei Schwestern (two sisters).

[12][13] Approximately 139 recordings have been made of authentic versions of the ballad sung by traditional singers, mostly in the United States and Scotland.