White Lady folklore tradition

“You know I didn't want to have to haunt you / But what a ghostly scene”

Uncle Jerry identifies the White Lady folklore tradition as a primary lens for the song. The narrator is dead but not fully dead, buried but not fully buried, haunting the antagonist in an almost ghostly form. He notes that the White Lady frequently screams because she has lost something precious, connecting to the lyric 'I still talk to you (when I'm screaming at the sky)', and that the stolen lullabies parallel the folk motif of a woman searching for a lost or stolen child, with the music itself serving as that child. Taylor's white costuming in the Eras Tour performance reinforced this reading for Uncle Jerry.

“So I leap from the gallows and I levitate down your street”

After watching the Eras Tour performance, Uncle Jerry identifies the white costume and levitation imagery as connecting to White Lady folklore, 'this is more of your woman in white, your white lady folklore.' He notes the juxtaposition of purity (white) with witchery, and Angela agrees.