"Get Up and Bar the Door" is a medieval ballad that
presents a humorous look at domestic life.
Though it was
written during the medieval period, the beginning of the poem certainly presents a scene
similar to one that might be often seen in our world today: a wife working hard at her
household duties and a husband sitting around giving her orders. Strong winds enter the
house through the open door, and the husband tells the wife to "Gae [go] out and bar the
door."
She, in summary, tells him to forget it. She's the
one who is busy working, not him.
They make a pact that
whoever speaks first will be the one to have to close and bar the door. They are both
stubborn, and stubbornness is really what the poem is about. You could say stubbornness
is the theme of the poem.
Both refuse to speak even when
two strangers, both male, enter their home at midnight and eat more than is proper or
appropriate. The strangers, assuming the couple can't speak, apparently assume
the husband and wife are stupid and helpless, and decide that one of them should shave
the husband with scalding water and the other should kiss the wife. Only then does the
husband speak up to defend himself and his wife.
The wife,
then, humorously, celebrates because she has won and her husband has lost--he spoke
first.
Humor in the piece comes from the stubbornness of
the two, as well as the wife's ignoring the fact that two strangers are violating her
home, and her celebrating because she has won the petty argument with her
husband.
Of course, looking at the poem with our
21st-century minds, we see a problem with the strangers assuming the couple are stupid
and helpless because they can't speak. That is an obviously inaccurate assumption, of
course, but probably typical of the medieval world.
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