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{{trope}}
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* In the Scottish ballad "The Twa Sisters", two constantly bickering princesses who have fallen in love with the same man go for a walk on the banks of a swollen river. One comes back and says the other one fell in and drowned. No one can find the body - but a few months later a wandering bard shows up with a harp made from the dead princess's bones and strung with her hair. The harp plays itself and sings that her sister pushed her into the river. In [[Patricia C. Wrede]]'s retelling of the story, there is a third princess, who knows her sister was [[Malicious Slander|a liar]] and suspects the harp might, too -- especially since there are lies in what it said.
** Loreena Mckennitt performs an excellent version of this ballad called ''The Bonny Swans'' (which is easily findable on [[YouTube]]).
** In yet another version (one with a particularly upbeat and sunny tempo), the elder sister's punishment for drowning her sibling is being boiled in lead. So much fun to sing with one's actual sisters!
* Ballads in general are full of this sort of thing. Perhaps the most horrifying of the lot is "Long Lankin" (Child #93), in which an itinerant serial killer murders a lord's baby (spectacularly averting [[Infant Immortality]] in the process) and then his wife:
{{quote|
we will stab him with a pin,
And the nurse shall hold the basin
for the blood all to run in."
So they pinched him and they pricked him,
then they stabbed him with a pin,
And the false nurse held the basin
for the blood all to run in. }}
** Followed by Long Lankin being hanged and the nurse being burned on a pyre at the end of the song.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Ballads]]
[[Category:Family
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