ABSTRACT
Incest, the quintessential social taboo, permeated the folk imagination in wide cross-cultural spaces. Folksongs, in particular narrative ones such as ballads, provided an ideal vehicle for the public treatment of this troubling and yet omnipresent subject (Perry 2006). Brother-sister incest, a persistent phenomenon in patriarchal societies, is the subject of the song discussed in this chapter, a song known among the Eastern Mediterranean Sephardic Jews as “La [cantica de la] Santa Elena” (“The [song of] Saint Helen”) that was “baptized” by scholars El hermano infame (“The infamous brother”).
