I am delighted to be taking part in the blog tour for Bone Deep by Sandra Ireland. Sandra is a guest on the blog today and is talking about her novel and what inspired her to write it.
The Cruel Sister, a Border Ballad
Around the fire in the not-so distant past, you might have settled down to listen to a song of love and heartache, of sibling rivalry, betrayal and murder. All the ingredients, you might think, for a first- class soap, a Hollywood blockbuster or even a page-turning novel. This is the ballad of The Cruel Sister, often known as the Twa Sisters, which has inspired not only my second novel Bone Deep, but also work by countless other writers and artists from Alfred Lord Tennyson to Bob Dylan.
The ballad was first formally documented by Sir Walter Scott in his 1802 collection, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, but this macabre tale has crossed borders, oceans, and cultures, with more than 531 versions of the ballad currently recorded in countries all around the world, according to the Roud Folk Song Index, which catalogues traditional songs.
The challenge for me was how to incorporate this fascinating tale into a contemporary thriller. After all, I’m not an historical novelist and I like creating modern characters in very 21st century situations. However, the past is never far away. In Bone Deep, my protagonist Lucie is helping Mac, a rather eccentric academic, to organise her work. Mac is collecting old folktales and ballads, and I wondered what would happen if Lucie began to see herself in the tale of the Two Sisters…
The premise of the ancient ballad is simple but deadly. Two sisters go down to a body of water, sometimes a river, or the sea, but often, as in BoneDeep, a mill pond. The older sister pushes the younger one into the water and refuses to pull her out. At the last minute she realises what she’s done and tries to grasp her hand, but mostly it’s a case of murder most foul…
The motive is always jealousy. In some variants, the sisters are being two-timed by a suitor; in others, the elder sister's affections are not returned by the young man, and he proposes marriage to the younger girl. Invariably, the suitor arranges to marry the surviving sibling.
The body of the younger girl is recovered downstream by a very dodgy miller. If you want to know more, pick up a copy of Bone Deep!
ISBN: 978 1846974183
Publisher: Polygon Books
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