" The theme of this ballad was common in many northern European languages. There are 125 different variants known in Swedish alone.
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 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.
This can inspire taunts from the younger about the older's looks.
However, in the Danish variant Der boede en Mand ved Sønderbro, the older sister takes the younger sister who has been intimate with a shared suitor down to a river indicating that they may both be washed clean (literally, 'white'), implying that the dark-light theme has broader implications; nevertheless the elder sister, in the act of drowning the younger over jealousy, thereby assumes upon herself any stain that could have been construed to have been upon the younger sister, as well as the act of murder which she has now committed.
In some variants, the story ends with the instrument being broken and the younger sister returning to life.
In a few, she was not actually drowned, but saved and nursed back to health;
she tells the story herself.
This tale is also found in prose form, in fairy tales such as The Singing Bone, where the siblings are brothers instead of sisters.
This is widespread throughout Europe; often the motive is not jealousy because of a lover, but the younger child's success in winning the object that will cure the king, or that will win the father's inheritance.
In Polish literature from the Romantic period, a similar theme is found in the play Balladyna (1838) by Juliusz Słowacki.
Two sisters engage in a raspberry-gathering contest to decide which of them gets to marry Prince Kirkor.
When the younger Alina wins, the older Balladyna kills her. Finally, she is killed by a bolt of lightning in an act of divine retribution.
A Hungarian version exists, where a king has three daughters. The older two are bad and ugly and envy the younger child sister because of her beauty.
One day, they murder her in the forest and place her corpse inside a fiddle. The fiddle plays music on its own and eventually is given to the royal family.
The fiddle does not play for the evil sisters, but the princess is restored to life once her father tries to play it.
The sisters are imprisoned, but the good princess pardons them once she becomes queen.
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.
When she wakes the tide is coming in fast and as she is drowning she sings the song, detailing her tragic end. "
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