October 2025 - "Unquiet Grave" (aka "Cold Blows the Wind")

The month of October is often associated with spooky tales of apparitions and ghosts. In that spirit, this month’s free tab offering is an arrangement of the 19th-century Irish folk ballad “The Unquiet Grave”, also known as “Cold Blows the Wind”. The story related in the ballad is actually much older, and similar accounts can be traced as far back as the 15th century. At its core, it tells the story of a young man (or sometimes a young woman) whose true love has passed away. As the protagonist mourns over the deceased’s grave, a ghost appears and complains that all the excessive mourning is preventing any hope of “resting in peace”. When asked for one final kiss, the ghost replies that it would result in certain death to the one still living. Different versions of the song paint a picture of very different outcomes. Sometimes the mourner leaves the ghost to find peace, sometimes something more tragic occurs.

It appears as Child Ballad #78 in the 10-volume work "English and Scottish Popular Ballads" published by James Francis Child in the late 1880s. Cecil Sharp collected over a dozen versions of the song for his anthology titled “English Folk Songs”. Many similar versions were subsequently collected in the Appalachian region of the United States in the early 1900s.

The lyrics have been set to several different melodies over the years, but one that is common both in the British Isles and the United States is the Irish tune presented here. Jean Ritchie recorded it on her 1961 album entitled “Ballads from An Appalachian Family Tradition”.

Here’s a link to a YouTube video of the tune being performed by the Irish folk singers Trevor Sexton and Ger O’Donnell:

Happy Halloween … and stay safe out there!

—Tull