History FamilyUnfriendlyDeath / Ballads

* 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 InfantImmortality in the process) and then his wife:

* The french song ''La blanche biche'' (the White Doe)tells the story of a young woman turning into the said animal every night because of a spell. She ends up killed by her own hunting brother, dismembered and cooked; then her severed head on the table speaks to the guests...

* 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 Creator/PatriciaCWrede's retelling of the story, there is a third princess, who knows her sister was [[MaliciousSlander a liar]] and suspects the harp might, too -- especially since there are lies in what it said.

* In the ChildBallad ''Literature/TheLordOfLornAndTheFalseSteward'', the false steward is executed, gruesomely, for his treachery.

* 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 PatriciaCWrede's retelling of the story, there is a third princess, who knows her sister was [[MaliciousSlander 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 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 PatriciaCWrede's retelling of the story, there is a third princess, who knows her sister was [[MaliciousSlander a liar]] and suspects the harp might, too -- especially since there are lies in what it said.