“The Mod­est Cou­ple” from “The Bab Bal­lads” humor­ous­ly por­trays the extreme bash­ful­ness of a cou­ple, Peter and Sarah, from their betrothal in infan­cy until their exceed­ing­ly mod­est mar­riage. Their rela­tion­ship is char­ac­ter­ized by exces­sive shy­ness, with both par­ties faint­ing and blush­ing at mere intro­duc­tions. This shy­ness per­sists despite the Baron’s (Peter’s father) attempts to nor­mal­ize their inter­ac­tions, which both Sarah and Peter find coarse and alarm­ing.

Their mod­esty reach­es a peak when, at the legal age for mar­riage, their wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny is con­duct­ed in sep­a­rate church­es via tele­graph to avoid any direct con­tact, show­cas­ing an absurd lev­el of timid­i­ty and pro­pri­ety. Even when it comes time to leave togeth­er post-cer­e­mo­ny, Sarah refus­es to ride in the same car­riage as Peter, lead­ing to them leav­ing in sep­a­rate vehi­cles, fol­lowed by a third car­riage for the coach­man, empha­siz­ing their deter­mi­na­tion to main­tain deco­rum at any cost.

The bal­lad con­trasts their behav­ior with that of Peter’s broth­er, Alphon­so, and Sarah’s sis­ter, Em, who exhib­it a direct and unabashed approach to their rela­tion­ship. Alphon­so’s straight­for­ward pro­pos­al to Em, who read­i­ly accepts, serves as a stark jux­ta­po­si­tion to the main cou­ple’s over­ly cau­tious courtship and mar­riage.

This sto­ry high­lights the absur­di­ties of adher­ing too strict­ly to soci­etal expec­ta­tions of mod­esty, sug­gest­ing that there’s a bal­ance to be struck in mat­ters of love and mar­riage. While Peter and Sarah’s actions are pre­sent­ed as more hon­or­able com­pared to the brazen­ness of Alphon­so and Em, the poem ulti­mate­ly cri­tiques their imprac­ti­cal­i­ty, offer­ing a comedic take on the virtues of mod­esty and the social rit­u­als of courtship.