Scottish Ballad "The Wife of Usher's Well"

The Pocket University selection for January 4 is a Scottish ballad called The Wife of Usher's Well.

This is one of the ballads collected by Scott in his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, published beginning in 1802. Three volumes were published, with various editorial extensions as the publishing cycle continued, with a fifth edition published in 1812.  Project Gutenberg has  available as free e-texts Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the 3-volume 3rd edition published in 1806.

In The Wife of Usher's Well, we hear of a woman whose three sons were lost at sea together, and make a visit to their mother from beyond the grave, for one night.

The selection in Pocket University appears as though it has been abridged, in which form it suggests to me the possible play of supernatural powers or magic in bringing the sons to the mother for a visit. This edition is very close to what is in the Pocket University publication I am using, except that the ellipsis points that I took to indicate where an abridgement occured are not in that copy, but are in my Pocket University.

Looking around the web for the full version, it may be I am wrong about it being abridged in Pocket University, as nearly every other site has nearly identical verbiage for the ballad. The Child Ballads (collected by Francis James Child) has three versions of this ballad, identified as #79.  The one closest corresponding again has ellipsis points that suggest abridgement to me.

Looking to other sources of analysis, I apparently missed the "year and a day" concept, wherein one should mourn a lost loved one for a year and a day but no more, lest they return as revenants and bad things happen.  While this version of the story, at least as abridged, doesn't show anything particularly bad happening, the sons return from whence they came when the night is over.

I was curious to know what kinds of melodies might go with the Scottish ballads.  YouTube had several versions of Wife of Ushers Well. My favorite was this one.

Comments are welcome, though moderated.