[WorldUrbanLegend] Fair Charlotte

 

This is a cautionary tale about a young girl named Charlotte who refuses to dress warmly. She sets out for a sleigh ride to a New Year’s ball but ultimately freezes to death along the way.

The ballad of "Fair Charlotte" is based on a poem by Seba Smith, first published on December 28, 1843, in a Maine newspaper called The Rover, under the title "The Corpse Going to the Ball." Folklorist Phillips Barry notes that Smith's work is based on an incident mentioned in a 1840 article from the New York Observer titled "The Corpse Going to the Ball." This article discusses an event that occurred on January 1, 1840, although it does not specify the location, claiming it to be true. Furthermore, the beginning of the story references "Death at the Dressing Table," a narrative from a 1838 work that describes a vain young woman suffering from heart disease who decides to attend a ball but dies while getting ready due to the cold in the room. The moral of this story critiques vanity, emphasizing that "I have seen hundreds of corpses from natural causes or violence, but I have never witnessed a scene as wondrously satirical of human vanity as a corpse dressed for the ball." Subsequently, various newspapers reprinted this tale, and one version of Smith's poem was set to music, creating the ballad. In the 20th century, Almaida Lee sang a version of this ballad titled "Young Carlota."