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Title: The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Volume I of 5)
Author: Various
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Volume I of 5)" ***
Transcriber's Notes
This book contains material in multiple languages, and numerous examples
of archaic, non-standard and dialect forms of English. Therefore no
attempts to standardize spelling would be appropriate. The only changes
to the text are to resolve typographical errors etc. which are listed at
the end of the book. Minor corrections to format or punctuation have
been made without comment.
This Plain Text version of the e-book includes unicode (UTF-8)
characters and diacritics which should appear in the following list:
ā macron
ă ĭ breve
ć ń ś ẃ acute accent
Č č ě Ř ř Š š ž caron/hacek
ȝ yogh
ł l with stroke (Polish etc.)
Œ œ oe-ligature
ş cedilla
† dagger or upright cross symbol
αβγδε Greek script
[a'] and ['s] denote editorial insertions of contracted forms, not
special characters: e.g. on page 299 [a'] is an editorial insertion of
"a'" (for "all"); on page 309 ['s] is an editorial insertion of "'s"
(for "has"?).
_underscore symbols_ represent italic typeface
~tilde symbols~ represent roman typeface within italics
ALL CAPS represent small caps typeface
#number signs# represent bold typeface
$dollar symbols$ represent gesperrt (s p a c e d o u t) text
^x or ^{x, y} represents superscript text
_x or _{xyz} represents subscript text
Bold mark-up is widely used to denote the distinctive font used by the
author for ballad version references.
Some sections of ballads are set in differently sized type and indicated
in the introductions. Usually this is smaller type, but in the case of
ballad 39, larger. These passages are indicated by means of further
indentation and side-lining (|) in the left margin. Ballad 53 versions M
and N are entirely in smaller type, but without explanation.
Footnotes have been numbered from [1] to [427] sequentially throughout
the whole volume, but are presented at the end of each ballad or section
to which they refer.
A line of 7 spaced dots indicates a missing line of poetry. A line of 7
spaced asterisks indicates missing poetry material of one or more
stanzas; this is distinct from a "thought break" or sub-section
separator of 5 widely spaced asterisks such as follow these notes.
* * * * *
THE ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH
POPULAR BALLADS
[Illustration]
THE
ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH
POPULAR BALLADS
EDITED BY
FRANCIS JAMES CHILD
IN FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME I
NEW YORK
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
This Dover edition, first published in 1965, is an
unabridged and unaltered republication of the work
follows:
Vol. I--Part I, 1882; Part II, 1884
Vol. II--Part III, 1885; Part IV, 1886
Vol. III--Part V, 1888; Part VI, 1889
Vol. IV--Part VII, 1890; Part VIII, 1892
Vol. V--Part IX, 1894; Part X, 1898.
This edition also contains as an appendix to Part X an
essay by Walter Morris Hart entitled "Professor Child and
the Ballad," reprinted _in toto_ from Vol. XXI, No. 4,
1906 [New Series Vol. XIV, No. 4] of the _Publications of
the Modern Language Association of America_.
_Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 65-24347_
Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc.
180 Varick Street
New York, N.Y. 10014
_To_
_FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL, ESQ._
_OF LONDON_
_MY DEAR FURNIVALL_:
_Without the Percy MS. no one would pretend to make a collection of the
English Ballads, and but for you that manuscript would still, I think,
be beyond reach of man, yet exposed to destructive chances. Through your
exertions and personal sacrifices, directly, the famous and precious
folio has been printed; and, indirectly, in consequence of the same, it
has been transferred to a place where it is safe, and open to
inspection. This is only one of a hundred reasons which I have for
asking you to accept the dedication of this book from_
_Your grateful friend and fellow-student_,
_F. J. CHILD._
_Cambridge, Mass., December 1, 1882._
ADVERTISEMENT TO PART I
NUMBERS 1-28
It was my wish not to begin to print The English and Scottish Popular
Ballads until this unrestricted title should be justified by my having
at command every valuable copy of every known ballad. A continuous
effort to accomplish this object has been making for some nine or ten
years, and many have joined in it. By correspondence, and by an
extensive diffusion of printed circulars, I have tried to stimulate
collection from tradition in Scotland, Canada, and the United States,
and no becoming means has been left unemployed to obtain possession of
unsunned treasures locked up in writing. The gathering from tradition
has been, as ought perhaps to have been foreseen at this late day,
meagre, and generally of indifferent quality. Materials in the hands of
former editors have, in some cases, been lost beyond recovery, and very
probably have lighted fires, like that large cantle of the Percy
manuscript, _maxime deflendus_! Access to several manuscript collections
has not yet been secured. But what is still lacking is believed to bear
no great proportion to what is in hand, and may soon come in, besides:
meanwhile, the uncertainties of the world forbid a longer delay to
publish so much as has been got together.
Of hitherto unused materials, much the most important is a large
collection of ballads made by Motherwell. For leave to take a copy of
this I am deeply indebted to the present possessor, Mr Malcolm Colquhoun
Thomson, of Glasgow, who even allowed the manuscript to be sent to
London, and to be retained several months, for my accommodation. Mr J.
Wylie Guild, of Glasgow, also permitted the use of a note-book of
Motherwell's which supplements the great manuscript, and this my
unwearied friend, Mr James Barclay Murdoch, to whose solicitation I owe
both, himself transcribed with the most scrupulous accuracy. No other
good office, asked or unasked, has Mr Murdoch spared.
Next in extent to the Motherwell collections come those of the late Mr
Kinloch. These he freely placed at my disposal, and Mr William Macmath,
of Edinburgh, made during Mr Kinloch's life an exquisite copy of the
larger part of them, enriched with notes from Mr Kinloch's papers, and
sent it to me across the water. After Mr Kinloch's death his collections
were acquired by Harvard College Library, still through the agency of Mr
Macmath, who has from the beginning rendered a highly valued assistance,
not less by his suggestions and communications than by his zealous
mediation.
No Scottish ballads are superior in kind to those recited in the last
century by Mrs Brown, of Falkland. Of these there are, or were, three
sets. One formerly owned by Robert Jamieson, the fullest of the three,
was lent me, to keep as long as I required, by my honored friend the
late Mr David Laing, who also secured for me copies of several ballads
of Mrs Brown which are found in an Abbotsford manuscript, and gave me a
transcript of the Glenriddell manuscript. The two others were written
down for William Tytler and Alexander Fraser Tytler respectively, the
former of these consisting of a portion of the Jamieson texts revised.
These having for some time been lost sight of, Miss Mary Fraser Tytler,
with a graciousness which I have reason to believe hereditary in the
name, made search for them, recovered the one which had been obtained by
Lord Woodhouselee, and copied it for me with her own hand. The same lady
furnished me with another collection which had been made by a member of
the family.
For later transcriptions from Scottish tradition I am indebted to Mr J.
F. Campbell of Islay, whose edition and rendering of the racy West
Highland Tales is marked by the rarest appreciation of the popular
genius; to Mrs A. F. Murison, formerly of Old Deer, who undertook a
quest for ballads in her native place on my behalf; to Mr Alexander
Laing, of Newburgh-upon-Tay; to Mr James Gibb, of Joppa, who has given
me a full score; to Mr David Louden, of Morham, Haddington; to the late
Dr John Hill Burton and Miss Ella Burton; to Dr Thomas Davidson.
The late Mr Robert White, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, allowed me to look
through his collections in 1873, and subsequently made me a copy of such
things as I needed, and his ready kindness has been continued by Mrs
Andrews, his sister, and by Miss Andrews, his niece, who has taken a
great deal of trouble on my account.
In the south of the mother-island my reliance has, of necessity, been
chiefly upon libraries. The British Museum possesses, besides early
copies of some of the older ballads, the Percy MS., Herd's MSS and
Buchan's, and the Roxburgh broadsides. The library of the University of
Cambridge affords one or two things of first-rate importance, and for
these I am beholden to the accomplished librarian, Mr Henry Bradshaw,
and to Professor Skeat. I have also to thank the Rev. F. Gunton, Dean,
and the other authorities of Magdalen College, Cambridge, for permitting
collations of Pepys ballads, most obligingly made for me by Mr Arthur S.
B. Miller. Many things were required from the Bodleian library, and
these were looked out for me, and scrupulously copied or collated, by Mr
George Parker.
Texts of traditional ballads have been communicated to me in America by
Mr W. W. Newell, of New York, who is soon to give us an interesting
collection of Children's Games traditional in America; by Dr Huntington,
Bishop of Central New York; Mr G. C. Mahon, of Ann Arbor, Michigan; Miss
Margaret Reburn, of New Albion, Iowa; Miss Perine, of Baltimore; Mrs
Augustus Lowell, Mrs L. F. Wesselhoeft, Mrs. Edward Atkinson, of Boston;
Mrs Cushing, of Cambridge; Miss Ellen Marston, of New Bedford; Mrs
Moncrieff, of London, Ontario.
Acknowledgments not well despatched in a phrase are due to many others
who have promoted my objects: to Mr Furnivall, for doing for me
everything which I could have done for myself had I lived in England; to
that master of old songs and music, Mr William Chappell, very specially;
to Mr J. Payne Collier; Mr Norval Clyne, of Aberdeen; Mr Alexander
Young, of Glasgow; Mr Arthur Laurenson, of Lerwick, Shetland; Mr J.
Burrell Curtis, of Edinburgh; Dr Vigfusson, of Oxford; Professor Edward
Arber, of Birmingham; the Rev. J. Percival, Mr Francis Fry, Mr J. F.
Nicholls, of Bristol; Professor George Stephens, of Copenhagen; Mr R.
Bergström, of the Royal Library, Stockholm; Mr W. R. S. Ralston, Mr
William Henry Husk, Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith, Mr A. F. Murison, of
London; Professor Sophocles; Mr W. G. Medlicott, of Longmeadow; to Mr M.
Heilprin, of New York, Mme de Maltchycé, of Boston, and Rabbi Dr Cohn,
for indispensable translations from Polish and Hungarian; to Mr James
Russell Lowell, Minister of the United States at London; to Professor
Charles Eliot Norton, for such "pains and benefits" as I could ask only
of a life-long friend.
In the editing of these ballads I have closely followed the plan of
Grundtvig's Old Popular Ballads of Denmark, a work which will be prized
highest by those who have used it most, and which leaves nothing to be
desired but its completion. The author is as much at home in English as
in Danish tradition, and whenever he takes up a ballad which is common
to both nations nothing remains to be done but to supply what has come
to light since the time of his writing. But besides the assistance which
I have derived from his book, I have enjoyed the advantage of Professor
Grundtvig's criticism and advice, and have received from him unprinted
Danish texts, and other aid in many ways.
Such further explanations as to the plan and conduct of the work as may
be desirable can be more conveniently given by and by. I may say here
that textual points which may seem to be neglected will be considered in
an intended Glossary, with which will be given a full account of
Sources, and such indexes of Titles and Matters as will make it easy to
find everything that the book may contain.
With renewed thanks to all helpers, and helpers' helpers, I would invoke
the largest coöperation for the correction of errors and the supplying
of deficiencies. To forestall a misunderstanding which has often
occurred, I beg to say that every traditional version of a popular
ballad is desired, no matter how many texts of the same may have been
printed already.
F. J. CHILD.
[DECEMBER, 1882.]
ADVERTISEMENT TO PART II
NUMBERS 29-53
I have again to express my obligations and my gratitude to many who have
aided in the collecting and editing of these Ballads.
To Sir Hugh Hume Campbell, for the use of two considerable manuscript
volumes of Scottish Ballads.
To Mr Allardyce, of Edinburgh, for a copy of the Skene Ballads, and for
a generous permission to print such as I required, in advance of a
possible publication on his part.
To Mr Mansfield, of Edinburgh, for the use of the Pitcairn manuscripts.
To Mrs Robertson, for the use of Note-Books of the late Dr Joseph
Robertson, and to Mr Murdoch, of Glasgow, Mr Lugton, of Kelso, Mrs
Alexander Forbes, of Edinburgh, and Messrs G. L. Kittredge and G. M.
Richardson, former students of Harvard College, for various
communications.
To Dr Reinhold Köhler's unrivalled knowledge of popular fiction, and his
equal liberality, I am indebted for valuable notes, which will be found
in the Additions at the end of this volume.
The help of my friend Dr Theodor Vetter has enabled me to explore
portions of the Slavic ballad-field which otherwise must have been
neglected.
Professors D. Silvan Evans, John Rhys, Paul Meyer, and T. Frederick
Crane have lent me a ready assistance in literary emergencies.
The interest and coöperation of Mr Furnivall and Mr Macmath have been
continued to me without stint or weariness.
It is impossible, while recalling and acknowledging acts of courtesy,
good will, and friendship, not to allude, with one word of deep personal
grief, to the irreparable loss which all who are concerned with the
study of popular tradition have experienced in the death of Svend
Grundtvig.
F. J. C.
JUNE, 1884.
CONTENTS
VOLUME I
BALLAD PAGE
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF PROFESSOR CHILD xvii
1. RIDDLES WISELY EXPOUNDED 1
(Additions and Corrections: I, 484; II, 495; III, 496;
IV, 439; V, 205, 283.)
2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT 6
(Additions and Corrections: I, 484; II, 495; III, 496;
IV, 439; V, 205, 284.)
3. THE FAUSE KNIGHT UPON THE ROAD 20
(Additions and Corrections: I, 485; II, 496; III, 496;
IV, 440.)
4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT 22
(Additions and Corrections: I, 485; II, 496; III, 496;
IV, 440; V, 206, 285.)
5. GIL BRENTON 62
(Additions and Corrections: I, 489; II, 498; III, 497;
IV, 442; V, 207, 285.)
6. WILLIE'S LADY 81
(Additions and Corrections: II, 498; III, 497; V, 207,
285.)
7. EARL BRAND 88
(Additions and Corrections: I, 489; II, 498; III, 497;
IV, 443; V, 207, 285.)
8. ERLINTON 106
(Additions and Corrections: III, 498; IV, 445.)
9. THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND 111
(Additions and Corrections: I, 493; II, 498; III, 499;
V, 207.)
10. THE TWA SISTERS 118
(Additions and Corrections: I, 493; II, 498; III, 499;
IV, 447; V, 208, 286.)
11. THE CRUEL BROTHER 141
(Additions and Corrections: I, 496; II, 498; III, 499;
IV, 449; V, 208, 286.)
12. LORD RANDAL 151
(Additions and Corrections: I, 498; II, 498; III, 499;
IV, 449; V, 208, 286.)
13. EDWARD 167
(Additions and Corrections: I, 501; II, 499; III, 499;
V, 209, 287.)
14. BABYLON; OR, THE BONNIE BANKS O FORDIE 170
(Additions and Corrections: I, 501; II, 499; III, 499;
IV, 450; V, 209, 287.)
15. LEESOME BRAND 177
(Additions and Corrections: I, 501; II, 499; III, 500;
IV, 450; V, 209, 287.)
16. SHEATH AND KNIFE 185
(Additions and Corrections: II, 499; III, 500; IV, 450;
V, 210.)
17. HIND HORN 187
(Additions and Corrections: I, 502; II, 499; III, 501;
IV, 450; V, 210, 287.)
18. SIR LIONEL 208
(Additions and Corrections: II, 500; IV, 451.)
19. KING ORFEO 215
(Additions and Corrections: II, 500; III, 502; IV, 451;
V, 211.)
20. THE CRUEL MOTHER 218
(Additions and Corrections: I, 504; II, 500; III, 502;
IV, 451; V, 211, 287.)
21. THE MAID AND THE PALMER (THE SAMARITAN WOMAN) 228
(Additions and Corrections: II, 501; III, 502; IV, 451;
V, 212, 288.)
22. ST. STEPHEN AND HEROD 233
(Additions and Corrections: I, 505; II, 501; III, 502;
IV, 451; V, 212, 288.)
23. JUDAS 242
(Additions and Corrections: V, 288.)
24. BONNIE ANNIE 244
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 452.)
25. WILLIE'S LYKE-WAKE 247
(Additions and Corrections: I, 506; II, 502; III, 503;
IV, 453; V, 212, 289.)
26. THE THREE RAVENS 253
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 454; V, 212.)
27. THE WHUMMIL BORE 255
(Additions and Corrections: V, 212.)
28. BURD ELLEN AND YOUNG TAMLANE 256
(Additions and Corrections: I, 507; III, 503.)
29. THE BOY AND THE MANTLE 257
(Additions and Corrections: I, 507; II, 502; III, 503;
IV, 454; V, 212, 289.)
30. KING ARTHUR AND KING CORNWALL 274
(Additions and Corrections: I, 507; II, 502; III, 503;
V, 289.)
31. THE MARRIAGE OF SIR GAWAIN 288
(Additions and Corrections: I, 507; II, 502; IV, 454;
V, 213, 289.)
32. KING HENRY 297
(Additions and Corrections: II, 502; IV, 454; V, 289.)
33. KEMPY KAY 300
(Additions and Corrections: V, 213, 289.)
34. KEMP OWYNE 306
(Additions and Corrections: II, 502; III, 504; IV, 454;
V, 213, 290.)
35. ALLISON GROSS 313
(Additions and Corrections: III, 504; V, 214.)
36. THE LAILY WORM AND THE MACHREL OF THE SEA 315
(Additions and Corrections: V, 214, 290.)
37. THOMAS RYMER 317
(Additions and Corrections: II, 505; III, 504; IV, 454,
290.)
38. THE WEE WEE MAN 329
39. TAM LIN 335
(Additions and Corrections: I, 507; II, 505; III, 504;
IV, 455; V, 215, 290.)
40. THE QUEEN OF ELFAN'S NOURICE 358
(Additions and Corrections: II, 505; III, 505; IV, 459;
V, 215, 290.)
41. HIND ETIN 360
(Additions and Corrections: I, 508; II, 506; III, 506;
IV, 459; V, 215.)
42. CLERK COLVILL 371
(Additions and Corrections: II, 506; III, 506; IV, 459;
V, 215, 290.)
43. THE BROOMFIELD HILL 390
(Additions and Corrections: I, 508; II, 506; III, 506;
IV, 459, 290.)
44. THE TWA MAGICIANS 399
(Additions and Corrections: II, 506; III, 506; IV, 459;
V, 216, 290.)
45. KING JOHN AND THE BISHOP 403
(Additions and Corrections: I, 508; II, 506; IV, 459;
V, 216, 291.)
46. CAPTAIN WEDDERBURN'S COURTSHIP 414
(Additions and Corrections: II, 507; III, 507; IV, 459;
V, 216, 291.)
47. PROUD LADY MARGARET 425
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 460; V, 291.)
48. YOUNG ANDREW 432
49. THE TWA BROTHERS 435
(Additions and Corrections: II, 507; III, 507; IV, 460;
V, 217, 291.)
50. THE BONNY HIND 444
(Additions and Corrections: V, 218.)
51. LIZIE WAN 447
52. THE KING'S DOCHTER LADY JEAN 450
53. YOUNG BEICHAN 454
(Additions and Corrections: II, 508; III, 507; IV, 460;
V, 218, 291.)
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 484
VOLUME II
54. THE CHERRY-TREE CAROL 1
(Additions and Corrections: II, 509; V, 220.)
55. THE CARNAL AND THE CRANE 7
(Additions and Corrections: II, 509; III, 507; IV. 462;
V, 220.)
56. DIVES AND LAZARUS 10
(Additions and Corrections: II, 510; III, 507; IV, 462;
V, 220, 292.)
57. BROWN ROBYN'S CONFESSION 13
(Additions and Corrections: II, 510; III, 508; IV, 462;
V, 220, 292.)
58. SIR PATRICK SPENS 17
(Additions and Corrections: II, 510; V, 220.)
59. SIR ALDINGAR 33
(Additions and Corrections: II, 510; III, 508; IV, 463;
V, 292.)
60. KING ESTMERE 49
(Additions and Corrections: II, 510; III, 508; IV, 463.)
61. SIR CAWLINE 56
(Additions and Corrections: II, 511; III, 508; IV, 463.)
62. FAIR ANNIE 63
(Additions and Corrections: II, 511; IV, 463; V, 220.)
63. CHILD WATERS 83
(Additions and Corrections: II, 511; III, 508; IV, 463;
V, 220.)
64. FAIR JANET 100
(Additions and Corrections: III, 508; IV, 464; V, 222,
292.)
65. LADY MAISRY 112
(Additions and Corrections: III, 508; IV, 466; V, 222,
292.)
66. LORD INGRAM AND CHIEL WYET 126
(Additions and Corrections: II, 511; III, 508; V, 223,
292.)
67. GLASGERION 136
(Additions and Corrections: II, 511; III, 509; IV, 468;
V, 293.)
68. YOUNG HUNTING 142
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; III, 509; IV, 468;
V, 223.)
69. CLERK SAUNDERS 156
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; III, 509; IV, 468;
V, 223, 293.)
70. WILLIE AND LADY MAISRY 167
71. THE BENT SAE BROWN 170
(Additions and Corrections: III, 509; IV, 469; V, 223.)
72. THE CLERKS'S TWA SONS O OWSENFORD 173
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; III, 509; IV, 469;
V, 293.)
73. LORD THOMAS AND FAIR ANNET 179
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; III, 509; IV, 469;
V, 223, 293.)
74. FAIR MARGARET AND SWEET WILLIAM 199
(Additions and Corrections: V, 224, 293.)
75. LORD LOVEL 204
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; III, 510; IV, 471;
V, 225, 294.)
76. THE LASS OF ROCH ROYAL 213
(Additions and Corrections: III, 510; IV, 471; V, 225,
294.)
77. SWEET WILLIAM'S GHOST 226
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; IV, 474; V, 225,
294.)
78. THE UNQUIET GRAVE 234
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; III, 512; IV, 474;
V, 225, 294.)
79. THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL 238
(Additions and Corrections: III, 513; V, 294.)
80. OLD ROBIN OF PORTINGALE 240
(Additions and Corrections: II, 513; III, 514; IV, 476;
V, 225, 295.)
81. LITTLE MUSGRAVE AND LADY BARNARD 242
(Additions and Corrections: II, 513; IV, 476; V, 225.)
82. THE BONNY BIRDY 260
83. CHILD MAURICE 263
(Additions and Corrections: III, 514; IV, 478.)
84. BONNY BARBARA ALLAN 276
(Additions and Corrections: III, 514.)
85. LADY ALICE 279
(Additions and Corrections: III, 514; V, 225.)
86. YOUNG BENJIE 281
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 478.)
87. PRINCE ROBERT 284
(Additions and Corrections: V, 295.)
88. YOUNG JOHNSTONE 288
89. FAUSE FOODRAGE 296
(Additions and Corrections: II, 513; III, 515; IV, 479.)
90. JELLON GRAME 302
(Additions and Corrections: II, 513; III, 515; IV, 479;
V, 226, 295.)
91. FAIR MARY OF WALLINGTON 309
(Additions and Corrections: II, 513; III, 515; IV, 479;
V, 227.)
92. BONNY BEE HOM 317
(Additions and Corrections: V, 229.)
93. LAMKIN 320
(Additions and Corrections: II, 513; III, 515; IV, 480;
V, 229, 295.)
94. YOUNG WATERS 342
(Additions and Corrections: III, 516.)
95. THE MAID FREED FROM THE GALLOWS 346
(Additions and Corrections: II, 514; III, 516; IV, 481;
V, 231, 296.)
96. THE GAY GOSHAWK 355
(Additions and Corrections: III, 517; IV, 482; V, 234,
296.)
97. BROWN ROBIN 368
98. BROWN ADAM 373
99. JOHNIE SCOT 377
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 486; V, 234.)
100. WILLIE O WINSBURY 398
(Additions and Corrections: II, 514; III, 517; IV, 491;
V, 296.)
101. WILLIE O DOUGLAS DALE 406
(Additions and Corrections: III, 517; V, 235.)
102. WILLIE AND EARL RICHARD'S DAUGHTER 412
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518.)
103. ROSE THE RED AND WHITE LILY 415
104. PRINCE HEATHEN 424
(Additions and Corrections: V, 296.)
105. THE BAILIFF'S DAUGHTER OF ISLINGTON 426
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518; V, 237.)
106. THE FAMOUS FLOWER OF SERVING-MEN 428
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518; IV, 492.)
107. WILL STEWART AND JOHN 432
(Additions and Corrections: V, 237.)
108. CHRISTOPHER WHITE 439
109. TOM POTTS 441
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518.)
110. THE KNIGHT AND SHEPHERD'S DAUGHTER 457
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 492; V, 237.)
111. CROW AND PIE 478
112. THE BAFFLED KNIGHT 479
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518; IV, 495; V, 239,
296.)
113. THE GREAT SILKIE OF SULE SKERRY 494
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518; IV, 495.)
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 495
VOLUME III
114. JOHNIE COCK 1
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 495.)
115. ROBYN AND GANDELEYN 12
116. ADAM BELL, CLIM OF THE CLOUGH, AND WILLIAM OF CLOUDESLY 14
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518; IV, 496; V, 297.)
117. A GEST OF ROBYN HODE 39
(Additions and Corrections: III, 519; IV, 496; V, 240,
297.)
118. ROBIN HOOD AND GUY OF GISBORNE 89
119. ROBIN HOOD AND THE MONK 94
120. ROBIN HOOD'S DEATH 102
(Additions and Corrections: V, 240, 297.)
121. ROBIN HOOD AND THE POTTER 108
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 497.)
122. ROBIN HOOD AND THE BUTCHER 115
123. ROBIN HOOD AND THE CURTAL FRIAR 120
(Additions and Corrections: V, 297.)
124. THE JOLLY PINDER OF WAKEFIELD 129
125. ROBIN HOOD AND LITTLE JOHN 133
(Additions and Corrections: V, 297.)
126. ROBIN HOOD AND THE TANNER 137
127. ROBIN HOOD AND THE TINKER 140
128. ROBIN HOOD NEWLY REVIVED 144
129. ROBIN HOOD AND THE PRINCE OF ARAGON 147
130. ROBIN HOOD AND THE SCOTCHMAN 150
131. ROBIN HOOD AND THE RANGER 152
132. THE BOLD PEDLAR AND ROBIN HOOD 154
(Additions and Corrections: V, 240.)
133. ROBIN HOOD AND THE BEGGAR, I 155
134. ROBIN HOOD AND THE BEGGAR, II 158
135. ROBIN HOOD AND THE SHEPHERD 165
136. ROBIN HOOD'S DELIGHT 168
137. ROBIN HOOD AND THE PEDLARS 170
138. ROBIN HOOD AND ALLEN A DALE 172
139. ROBIN HOOD'S PROGRESS TO NOTTINGHAM 175
140. ROBIN HOOD RESCUING THREE SQUIRES 177
141. ROBIN HOOD RESCUING WILL STUTLY 185
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 497.)
142. LITTLE JOHN A BEGGING 188
143. ROBIN HOOD AND THE BISHOP 191
144. ROBIN HOOD AND THE BISHOP OF HEREFORD 193
145. ROBIN HOOD AND QUEEN KATHERINE 196
146. ROBIN HOOD'S CHASE 205
147. ROBIN HOOD'S GOLDEN PRIZE 208
(Additions and Corrections: III, 519.)
148. THE NOBLE FISHERMAN, OR, ROBIN HOOD'S PREFERMENT 211
149. ROBIN HOOD'S BIRTH, BREEDING, VALOR AND MARRIAGE 214
150. ROBIN HOOD AND MAID MARIAN 218
(Additions and Corrections: III, 519.)
151. THE KING'S DISGUISE, AND FRIENDSHIP WITH ROBIN HOOD 220
152. ROBIN HOOD AND THE GOLDEN ARROW 223
(Additions and Corrections: V, 241.)
153. ROBIN HOOD AND THE VALIANT KNIGHT 225
154. A TRUE TALE OF ROBIN HOOD 227
155. SIR HUGH, OR, THE JEW'S DAUGHTER 233
(Additions and Corrections: III, 519; IV, 497; V, 241,
297.)
156. QUEEN ELEANOR'S CONFESSION 257
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 498; V, 241, 297.)
157. GUDE WALLACE 265
(Additions and Corrections: V, 242.)
158. HUGH SPENCER'S FEATS IN FRANCE 275
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 499; V, 243.)
159. DURHAM FIELD 282
(Additions and Corrections: V, 297.)
160. THE KNIGHT OF LIDDESDALE 288
161. THE BATTLE OF OTTERBURN 289
(Additions and Corrections: III, 520; IV, 499; V,
243, 297.)
162. THE HUNTING OF THE CHEVIOT 303
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 502; V, 244, 297.)
163. THE BATTLE OF HARLAW 316
(Additions and Corrections: V, 245.)
164. KING HENRY FIFTH'S CONQUEST OF FRANCE 320
(Additions and Corrections: V, 245.)
165. SIR JOHN BUTLER 327
166. THE ROSE OF ENGLAND 331
167. SIR ANDREW BARTON 334
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 502; V, 245.)
168. FLODDEN FIELD 351
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 507; V, 298.)
169. JOHNIE ARMSTRONG 362
(Additions and Corrections: III, 520; IV, 507; V,
298.)
170. THE DEATH OF QUEEN JANE 372
(Additions and Corrections: V, 245, 298.)
171. THOMAS CROMWELL 377
172. MUSSELBURGH FIELD 378
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 507.)
173. MARY HAMILTON 379
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 507; V, 246, 298.)
174. EARL BOTHWELL 399
(Additions and Corrections: V, 247.)
175. THE RISING IN THE NORTH 401
176. NORTHUMBERLAND BETRAYED BY DOUGLAS 408
(Additions and Corrections: V, 299.)
177. THE EARL OF WESTMORELAND 416
(Additions and Corrections: V, 299.)
178. CAPTAIN CAR, OR, EDOM O GORDON 423
(Additions and Corrections: III, 520; IV, 513; V,
247, 299.)
179. ROOKHOPE RYDE 439
180. KING JAMES AND BROWN 442
181. THE BONNY EARL OF MURRAY 447
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 515.)
182. THE LAIRD O LOGIE 449
(Additions and Corrections: III, 520; IV, 515; V,
299.)
183. WILLIE MACINTOSH 456
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 516.)
184. THE LADS OF WAMPHRAY 458
(Additions and Corrections: III, 520.)
185. DICK O THE COW 461
186. KINMONT WILLIE 469
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 516.)
187. JOCK O THE SIDE 475
188. ARCHIE O CAWFIELD 484
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 516.)
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 496
VOLUME IV
189. HOBIE NOBLE 1
190. JAMIE TELFER OF THE FAIR DODHEAD 4
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 518; V, 249, 300.)
191. HUGHIE GRAME 8
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 518; V, 300.)
192. THE LOCHMABEN HARPER 16
(Additions and Corrections: V, 300.)
193. THE DEATH OF PARCY REED 24
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 520.)
194. THE LAIRD OF WARISTON 28
195. LORD MAXWELL'S LAST GOODNIGHT 34
(Additions and Corrections: V, 251.)
196. THE FIRE OF FRENDRAUGHT 39
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 521; V, 251, 301.)
197. JAMES GRANT 49
(Additions and Corrections: V, 251.)
198. BONNY JOHN SETON 51
(Additions and Corrections: V, 251.)
199. THE BONNIE HOUSE O AIRLIE 54
(Additions and Corrections: V, 252.)
200. THE GYPSY LADDIE 61
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 522; V, 252, 301.)
201. BESSY BELL AND MARY GRAY 75
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 522; V, 253.)
202. THE BATTLE OF PHILIPHAUGH 77
203. THE BARON OF BRACKLEY 79
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 522; V, 253.)
204. JAMIE DOUGLAS 90
205. LOUDON HILL, OR, DRUMCLOG 105
206. BOTHWELL BRIDGE 108
207. LORD DELAMERE 110
208. LORD DERWENTWATER 115
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 522; V, 254.)
209. GEORDIE 123
210. BONNIE JAMES CAMPBELL 142
211. BEWICK AND GRAHAM 144
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 522.)
212. THE DUKE OF ATHOLE'S NURSE 150
213. SIR JAMES THE ROSE 155
214. THE BRAES O YARROW 160
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 522; V, 255.)
215. RARE WILLIE DROWNED IN YARROW, OR, THE WATER O GAMRIE 178
(Additions and Corrections: V, 256.)
216. THE MOTHER'S MALISON, OR, CLYDE'S WATER 185
(Additions and Corrections: V, 256, 301.)
217. THE BROOM OF COWDENKNOWS 191
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 523; V, 257.)
218. THE FALSE LOVER WON BACK 209
219. THE GARDENER 212
(Additions and Corrections: V, 258.)
220. THE BONNY LASS OF ANGLESEY 214
221. KATHARINE JAFFRAY 216
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 523; V, 260.)
222. BONNY BABY LIVINGSTON 231
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 523; V, 261.)
223. EPPIE MORRIE 239
(Additions and Corrections: V, 262.)
224. THE LADY OF ARNGOSK 241
225. ROB ROY 243
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 523; V, 262.)
226. LIZIE LINDSAY 255
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 524; V, 264.)
227. BONNY LIZIE BAILLIE 266
(Additions and Corrections: V, 265.)
228. GLASGOW PEGGIE 270
(Additions and Corrections: V, 266.)
229. EARL CRAWFORD 276
(Additions and Corrections: V, 301.)
230. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE LAIRD OF MELLERSTAIN 281
231. THE EARL OF ERROL 282
(Additions and Corrections: V, 267.)
232. RICHIE STORY 291
(Additions and Corrections: V, 270.)
233. ANDREW LAMMIE 300
234. CHARLIE MACPHERSON 308
(Additions and Corrections: V, 301.)
235. THE EARL OF ABOYNE 311
(Additions and Corrections: V, 270, 301.)
236. THE LAIRD O DRUM 322
(Additions and Corrections: V, 272.)
237. THE DUKE OF GORDON'S DAUGHTER 332
(Additions and Corrections: V, 273.)
238. GLENLOGIE, OR, JEAN O BETHELNIE 338
(Additions and Corrections: V, 273, 302.)
239. LORD SALTOUN AND AUCHANACHIE 347
(Additions and Corrections: V, 273.)
240. THE RANTIN LADDIE 351
(Additions and Corrections: V, 274.)
241. THE BARON O LEYS 355
(Additions and Corrections: V, 275.)
242. THE COBLE O CARGILL 358
243. JAMES HARRIS (THE DÆMON LOVER) 360
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 524.)
244. JAMES HATLEY 370
245. YOUNG ALLAN 375
(Additions and Corrections: V, 275.)
246. REDESDALE AND WISE WILLIAM 383
(Additions and Corrections: V, 276.)
247. LADY ELSPAT 387
248. THE GREY COCK, OR, SAW YOU MY FATHER? 389
(Additions and Corrections: V, 302.)
249. AULD MATRONS 391
250. HENRY MARTYN 393
(Additions and Corrections: V, 302.)
251. LANG JOHNNY MORE 396
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 524.)
252. THE KITCHIE-BOY 400
(Additions and Corrections: V, 277.)
253. THOMAS O YONDERDALE 409
254. LORD WILLIAM, OR, LORD LUNDY 411
255. WILLIE'S FATAL VISIT 415
256. ALISON AND WILLIE 416
257. BURD ISABEL AND EARL PATRICK 417
(Additions and Corrections: V, 278.)
258. BROUGHTY WA'S 423
259. LORD THOMAS STUART 425
(Additions and Corrections: V, 279.)
260. LORD THOMAS AND LADY MARGARET 426
261. LADY ISABEL 429
262. LORD LIVINGSTON 431
263. THE NEW-SLAIN KNIGHT 434
(Additions and Corrections: V, 279.)
264. THE WHITE FISHER 435
265. THE KNIGHT'S GHOST 437
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 439
VOLUME V
266. JOHN THOMSON AND THE TURK 1
(Additions and Corrections: V, 279.)
267. THE HEIR OF LINNE 11
268. THE TWA KNIGHTS 21
269. LADY DIAMOND 29
(Additions and Corrections: V, 303.)
270. THE EARL OF MAR'S DAUGHTER 38
271. THE LORD OF LORN AND THE FALSE STEWARD 42
(Additions and Corrections: V, 280.)
272. THE SUFFOLK MIRACLE 58
(Additions and Corrections: V, 303.)
273. KING EDWARD THE FOURTH AND A TANNER OF TAMWORTH 67
(Additions and Corrections: V, 303.)
274. OUR GOODMAN 88
(Additions and Corrections: V, 281, 303.)
275. GET UP AND BAR THE DOOR 96
(Additions and Corrections: V, 281, 304.)
276. THE FRIAR IN THE WELL 100
277. THE WIFE WRAPT IN WETHER'S SKIN 104
(Additions and Corrections: V, 304.)
278. THE FARMER'S CURST WIFE 107
(Additions and Corrections: V, 305.)
279. THE JOLLY BEGGAR 109
280. THE BEGGAR-LADDIE 116
(Additions and Corrections: V, 305.)
281. THE KEACH I THE CREEL 121
282. JOCK THE LEG AND THE MERRY MERCHANT 126
283. THE CRAFTY FARMER 128
284. JOHN DORY 131
285. THE GEORGE ALOE AND THE SWEEPSTAKE 133
286. THE SWEET TRINITY (THE GOLDEN VANITY) 135
(Additions and Corrections: V, 305.)
287. CAPTAIN WARD AND THE RAINBOW 143
(Additions and Corrections: V, 305.)
288. THE YOUNG EARL OF ESSEX'S VICTORY OVER THE EMPEROR OF
GERMANY 145
289. THE MERMAID 148
290. THE WYLIE WIFE OF THE HIE TOUN HIE 153
291. CHILD OWLET 156
(Additions and Corrections: V, 305.)
292. THE WEST-COUNTRY DAMOSEL'S COMPLAINT 157
293. JOHN OF HAZELGREEN 159
294. DUGALL QUIN 165
(Additions and Corrections: V, 305.)
295. THE BROWN GIRL 166
296. WALTER LESLY 168
297. EARL ROTHES 170
298. YOUNG PEGGY 171
299. TROOPER AND MAID 172
(Additions and Corrections: V, 306.)
300. BLANCHEFLOUR AND JELLYFLORICE 175
301. THE QUEEN OF SCOTLAND 176
302. YOUNG BEARWELL 178
303. THE HOLY NUNNERY 179
304. YOUNG RONALD 181
305. THE OUTLAW MURRAY 185
(Additions and Corrections: V, 307.)
FRAGMENTS 201
(Additions and Corrections: V, 307.)
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 205, 283
GLOSSARY 309
SOURCES OF THE TEXTS 397
INDEX OF PUBLISHED AIRS 405
BALLAD AIRS FROM MANUSCRIPT:
3. The Fause Knight upon the Road 411
9. The Fair Flower of Northumberland 411
10. The Twa Sisters 411
11. The Cruel Brother 412
12. Lord Randal 412
17. Hind Horn 413
20. The Cruel Mother 413
40. The Queen of Elfan's Nourice 413
42. Clerk Colvill 414
46. Captain Wedderburn's Courtship 414
47. Proud Lady Margaret 414
53. Young Beichan 415
58. Sir Patrick Spens 415
61. Sir Colin 415
63. Child Waters 415
68. Young Hunting 416
75. Lord Lovel 416
77. Sweet William's Ghost 416
84. Bonny Barbara Allan 416
89. Fause Foodrage 416
95. The Maid freed from the Gallows 417
97. Brown Robin 417
98. Brown Adam 417
99. Johnie Scot 418
100. Willie o Winsbury 418
106. The Famous Flower of Serving-Men 418
144. Johnie Cock 419
157. Gudo Wallace 419
161. The Battle of Otterburn 419
163. The Battle of Harlaw 419
164. King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France 420
169. Johnie Armstrong 420
173. Mary Hamilton 421
182. The Laird o Logie 421
222. Bonny Baby Livingston 421
226. Lizie Lindsay 421
228. Glasgow Peggie 422
235. The Earl of Aboyne 422
247. Lady Elspat 422
250. Andrew Bartin 423
256. Alison and Willie 423
258. Broughty Wa's 423
278. The Farmer's Curst Wife 423
281. The Keach i the Creel 424
286. The Sweet Trinity 424
299. Trooper and Maid 424
INDEX OF BALLAD TITLES 425
TITLES OF COLLECTIONS OF BALLADS, OR BOOKS CONTAINING BALLADS,
WHICH ARE VERY BRIEFLY CITED IN THIS WORK 455
INDEX OF MATTERS AND LITERATURE 469
BIBLIOGRAPHY 503
CORRECTIONS TO BE MADE IN THE PRINT 567
APPENDIX: PROFESSOR CHILD AND THE BALLAD 571
FRANCIS JAMES CHILD
Francis James Child was born in Boston on the first day of February,
1825. He was the third in a family of eight children. His father was a
sailmaker, "one of that class of intelligent and independent mechanics,"
writes Professor Norton, "which has had a large share in determining the
character of our democratic community, as of old the same class had in
Athens and in Florence." The boy attended the public schools, as a
matter of course; and, his parents having no thought of sending him to
college, he went, in due time, not to the Latin School, but to the
English High School of his native town. At that time the head master of
the Boston Latin School was Mr Epes Sargent Dixwell, who is still
living, at a ripe old age, one of the most respected citizens of
Cambridge. Mr Dixwell had a keen eye for scholarly possibilities in
boys, and, falling in with young Francis Child, was immediately struck
with his extraordinary mental ability. At his suggestion, the boy was
transferred to the Latin School, where he entered upon the regular
preparation for admission to Harvard College. His delight in his new
studies was unbounded, and the freshness of it never faded from his
memory. "He speedily caught up with the boys who had already made
considerable progress in Greek and Latin, and soon took the first place
here, as he had done in the schools which he had previously attended."
Mr Dixwell strongly advised his father to permit him to continue his
studies, and made arrangements by which his college expenses should be
provided for. The money Professor Child repaid, with interest, as soon
as his means allowed. His gratitude to Mr. Dixwell and the friendship
between them lasted through his life.
In 1842 Mr Child entered Harvard College. The intellectual condition of
the college at that time and the undergraduate career of Mr Child have
been admirably described by his classmate and lifelong friend, Professor
Norton, in a passage which must be quoted in full[1]:--
"Harvard was then still a comparatively small institution, with no
claims to the title of University; but she had her traditions of good
learning as an inspiration for the studious youth, and still better she
had teachers who were examples of devotion to intellectual pursuits, and
who cared for those ends the attainment of which makes life worth
living. Josiah Quincy was approaching the close of his term of service
as President of the College, and stood before the eyes of the students
as the type of a great public servant, embodying the spirit of
patriotism, of integrity, and of fidelity in the discharge of whatever
duty he might be called to perform. Among the Professors were Walker,
Felton, Peirce, Channing, Beck, and Longfellow, men of utmost variety of
temperament, but each an instructor who secured the respect no less than
the gratitude of his pupils.
"The class to which Child belonged numbered hardly over sixty. The
prescribed course of study which was then the rule brought all the
members of the class together in recitations and lectures, and every man
soon knew the relative standing of each of his fellows. Child at once
took the lead and kept it. His excellence was not confined to any one
special branch of study; he was equally superior in all. He was the best
in the classics, he was Peirce's favorite in mathematics, he wrote
better English than any of his classmates. His intellectual interests
were wider than theirs, he was a great reader, and his tastes in reading
were mature. He read for amusement as well as for learning, but he did
not waste his time or dissipate his mental energies over worthless or
pernicious books. He made good use of the social no less than of the
intellectual opportunities which college life affords, and became as
great a favorite with his classmates as he had been with his
schoolfellows.
"The close of his college course was marked by the exceptional
distinction of his being chosen by his classmates as their Orator, and
by his having the first part at Commencement as the highest scholar in
the class. His class oration was remarkable for its maturity of thought
and of style. Its manliness of spirit, its simple directness of
presentation of the true objects of life, and of the motives by which
the educated man, whatever might be his chosen career, should be
inspired, together with the serious and eloquent earnestness with which
it was delivered, gave to his discourse peculiar impressiveness and
effect."
Graduating with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1846, Mr Child
immediately entered the service of the college, in which he continued
till the day of his death. From 1846 to 1848 he was tutor in
mathematics. In 1848 he was transferred, at his own request, to a
tutorship in history and political economy, to which were annexed
certain duties of instruction in English. In 1849 he obtained leave of
absence for travel and study in Europe. He remained in Europe for about
two years, returning, late in 1851, to receive an appointment to the
Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory, then falling vacant by
the resignation of Professor Edward T. Channing.
The tutorships which Mr Child had held were not entirely in accordance
with his tastes, which had always led him in the direction of literary
and linguistic study. The faculty of the college was small, however, and
it was not always possible to assign an instructor to the department
that would have been most to his mind. But the governors of the
institution were glad to secure the services of so promising a scholar;
and Mr Child, whose preference for an academic career was decided, had
felt that it was wise to accept such positions as the college could
offer, leaving exacter adjustments to time and circumstances. Meantime
he had devoted his whole leisure to the pursuit of his favorite studies.
His first fruits were a volume entitled Four Old Plays[2] published in
1848, when he was but twenty-three years old. This was a remarkably
competent performance. The texts are edited with judgment and accuracy;
the introduction shows literary discrimination as well as sound
scholarship, and the glossary and brief notes are thoroughly good. There
are no signs of immaturity in the book, and it is still valued by
students of our early drama.
The leave of absence granted to Mr Child in 1849 came at a most
favorable moment. His health had suffered from close application to
work, and a change of climate had been advised by his physicians. His
intellectual and scholarly development, too, had reached that stage in
which foreign study and travel were certain to be most stimulating and
fruitful. He was amazingly apt, and two years of opportunity meant much
more to him than to most men. He returned to take up the duties of his
new office a trained and mature scholar, at home in the best methods and
traditions of German universities, yet with no sacrifice of his
individuality and intellectual independence.
While in Germany Mr Child studied at Berlin and Göttingen, giving his
time mostly to Germanic philology, then cultivated with extraordinary
vigor and success. The hour was singularly propitious. In the three or
four decades preceding Mr Child's residence in Europe, Germanic
philology (in the wider sense) had passed from the stage of "romantic"
dilettantism into the condition of a well-organized and strenuous
scientific discipline, but the freshness and vivacity of the first half
of the century had not vanished. Scholars, however severe, looked
through the form and strove to comprehend the spirit. The ideals of
erudition and of a large humanity were not even suspected of
incompatibility. The imagination was still invoked as the guide and
illuminator of learning. The bond between antiquity and mediævalism and
between the Middle Ages and our own century was never lost from sight.
It was certainly fortunate for American scholarship that at precisely
this juncture a young man of Mr Child's ardent love of learning, strong
individuality, and broad intellectual sympathies was brought into close
contact with all that was most quickening in German university life. He
attended lectures on classical antiquity and philosophy, as well as on
Germanic philology; but it was not so much by direct instruction that he
profited as by the inspiration which he derived from the spirit and the
ideals of foreign scholars, young and old. His own greatest contribution
to learning, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, may even, in a
very real sense, be regarded as the fruit of these years in Germany.
Throughout his life he kept a picture of William and James Grimm on the
mantel over his study fireplace.
Mr Child wrote no "dissertation," and returned to Cambridge without
having attempted to secure a doctor's degree. Never eager for such
distinctions, he had been unwilling to subject himself to the
restrictions on his plan of study which candidacy for the doctorate
would have imposed. Three years after, however, in 1854, he was
surprised and gratified to receive from the University of Göttingen the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy, accompanied by a special tribute of
respect from that institution. Subsequently he received the degree of
LL. D. from Harvard (in 1884) and that of L. H. D. from Columbia (in
1887); but the Göttingen Ph. D., coming as it did at the outset of his
career, was in a high degree auspicious.
The Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory, to which, as has
been already mentioned, Mr Child succeeded on his return to America
toward the end of 1851, was no sinecure. In addition to academic
instruction of the ordinary kind, the duties of the chair included the
superintendence and criticism of a great quantity of written work, in
the nature of essays and set compositions prepared by students of all
degrees of ability. For twenty-five years Mr Child performed these
duties with characteristic punctuality and devotion, though with
increasing distaste for the drudgery which they involved. Meantime a
great change had come over Harvard: it had developed from a provincial
college into a national seminary of learning, and the introduction of
the "elective system"--corresponding to the "Lernfreiheit" of
Germany--had enabled it to become a university in the proper sense of
the word. One result of the important reform just referred to was the
establishment of a Professorship of English, entirely distinct from the
old chair of Rhetoric. This took place on May 8, 1876, and on the 20th
of the next month Mr Child was transferred to the new professorship. His
duties as an instructor were now thoroughly congenial, and he continued
to perform them with unabated vigor to the end. In the onerous details
of administrative and advisory work, inseparable, according to our
exacting American system, from the position of a university professor,
he was equally faithful and untiring. For thirty years he acted as
secretary of the Library Council, and in all that time he was absent
from but three meetings. As chairman of the Department of English and of
the Division of Modern Languages, and as a member of many important
committees, he was ever prodigal of time and effort. How steadily he
attended to the regular duties of the class-room, his pupils, for fifty
years, are the best witnesses. They, too, will best understand the
satisfaction he felt that, in the fiftieth year of his teaching, he was
not absent from a single lecture. No man was ever less a formalist; yet
the most formal of natures could not, in the strictest observance of
punctilio, have surpassed the regularity with which he discharged, as it
were spontaneously, the multifarious duties of his position.
Throughout his service as professor of rhetoric, Mr Child, hampered
though he was by the requirements of his laborious office, had pursued
with unquenchable ardor the study of the English language and
literature, particularly in their older forms, and in these subjects he
had become an authority of the first rank long before the establishment
of the English chair enabled him to arrange his university teaching in
accordance with his tastes. Soon after he returned from Germany he
undertook the general editorial supervision of a series of the 'British
Poets,' published at Boston in 1853 and several following years, and
extending to some hundred and fifty volumes. Out of this grew, in one
way or another, his three most important contributions to learning: his
edition of Spenser, his Observations on the Language of Chaucer and
Gower, and his English and Scottish Popular Ballads.
Mr Child's Spenser appeared in 1855.[3] Originally intended, as he says
in the preface, as little more than a reprint of the edition published
in 1839 under the superintendence of Mr George Hillard, the book grew
upon his hands until it had become something quite different from its
predecessor. Securing access to old copies of most of Spenser's poems,
Mr Child subjected the text to a careful revision, which left little to
be done in this regard. His Life of Spenser was far better than any
previous biography, and his notes, though brief, were marked by a
philological exactness to which former editions could not pretend.
Altogether, though meant for the general reader and therefore sparingly
annotated, Mr Child's volumes remain, after forty years, the best
edition of Spenser in existence.
The plan of the 'British Poets' originally contemplated an edition of
Chaucer, which Mr Child was to prepare. Becoming convinced, however,
that the time was not ripe for such a work, he abandoned this project,
and to the end of his life he never found time to resume it. Thomas
Wright's print of the Canterbury Tales[4] from the Harleian MS. 7334
had, however, put into his hands a reasonably faithful reproduction of
an old text, and he turned his attention to a minute study of Chaucer's
language. The outcome was the publication, in the Memoirs of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 1863, of the great treatise to
which Mr Child gave the modest title of Observations on the Language of
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It is difficult, at the present day, to
imagine the state of Chaucer philology at the moment when this paper
appeared. Scarcely anything, we may say, was known of Chaucer's grammar
and metre in a sure and scientific way. Indeed, the difficulties to be
solved had not even been clearly formulated. Further, the accessible
mass of evidence on Anglo-Saxon and Middle English was, in comparison
with the stores now at the easy command of every tyro, almost
insignificant. Yet, in this brief treatise, Mr Child not only defined
the problems, but provided for most of them a solution which the
researches of younger scholars have only served to substantiate. He also
gave a perfect model of the method proper to such inquiries--a method
simple, laborious, and exact. The Observations were subsequently
rearranged and condensed, with Professor Child's permission, by Mr A. J.
Ellis for his work On Early English Pronunciation; but only those who
have studied them in their original form can appreciate their merit
fully. "It ought never to be forgotten," writes Professor Skeat, "that
the only full and almost complete solution of the question of the right
scansion of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is due to what Mr Ellis rightly
terms 'the wonderful industry, acuteness, and accuracy of Professor
Child.'" Had he produced nothing else, this work, with its pendant, the
Observations on Gower,[5] would have assured him a high place among
those very few scholars who have permanently settled important problems
of linguistic science.
Mr Child's crowning work, however, was the edition of the English and
Scottish Popular Ballads, which the reader now has before him. The
history of this is the history of more than half a lifetime.
The idea of the present work grew out of Mr Child's editorial labors on
the series of the 'British Poets,' already referred to. For this he
prepared a collection in eight small volumes (1857-58) called English
and Scottish Ballads.[6] This was marked by the beginnings of that
method of comparative study which is carried out to its ultimate issues
in the volumes of the present collection. The book circulated widely,
and was at once admitted to supersede all previous attempts in the same
field. To Mr Child, however, it was but the starting-point for further
researches. He soon formed the plan of a much more extensive collection
on an altogether different model. This was to include every obtainable
version of every extant English or Scottish ballad, with the fullest
possible discussion of related songs or stories in the "popular"
literature of all nations. To this enterprise he resolved, if need were,
to devote the rest of his life. His first care was to secure trustworthy
texts. In his earlier collection he had been forced to depend almost
entirely on printed books. No progress, he was convinced, could be made
till recourse could be had to manuscripts, and in particular to the
Percy MS. Accordingly he directed his most earnest efforts to securing
the publication of the entire contents of the famous folio. The Percy
MS. was at Ecton Hall, in the possession of the Bishop's descendants,
who would permit no one even to examine it. Two attempts were made by Dr
Furnivall, at Mr Child's instance, to induce the owners to allow the
manuscript to be printed,--one as early as 1860 or 1861, the other in
1864,--but without avail. A third attempt was more successful, and in
1867-68 the long-secluded folio was made the common property of scholars
in an edition prepared by Professor Hales and Dr Furnivall.[7]
The publication of the Percy MS. not only put a large amount of
trustworthy material at the disposal of Mr Child; it exposed the full
enormity of Bishop Percy's sins against popular tradition. Some shadow
of suspicion inevitably fell on all other ballad collections. It was
more than ever clear to Mr Child that he could not safely take anything
at second hand, and he determined not to print a line of his projected
work till he had exhausted every effort to get hold of whatever
manuscript material might be in existence. His efforts in this direction
continued through many years. A number of manuscripts were in private
hands; of some the whereabouts was not known; of others the existence
was not suspected. But Mr Child was untiring. He was cordially assisted
by various scholars, antiquaries, and private gentlemen, to whose
coöperation ample testimony is borne in the Advertisements prefixed to
the volumes in the present work. Some manuscripts were secured for the
Library of Harvard University--notably Bishop Percy's Papers, the
Kinloch MSS, and the Harris MS.,[8]--and of others careful copies were
made, which became the property of the same library. In all these
operations the indispensable good offices of Mr William Macmath, of
Edinburgh, deserve particular mention. For a long series of years his
services were always at Mr Child's disposal. His self-sacrifice and
generosity appear to have been equalled only by his perseverance and
wonderful accuracy. But for him the manuscript basis of The English and
Scottish Popular Ballads would have been far less strong than it is.
Gradually, then, the manuscript materials came in, until at last, in
1882, Mr Child felt justified in beginning to print. Other important
documents were, however, discovered or made accessible as time went on.
Especially noteworthy was the great find at Abbotsford (see the
Advertisement to Part VIII). In 1877 Dr David Laing procured, "not
without difficulty," leave to prepare for Mr Child a copy of the single
manuscript of ballads then known to remain in the library at Abbotsford.
This MS., entitled "Scottish Songs," was so inconsiderable, in
proportion to the accumulations which Sir Walter Scott had made in
preparing his Border Minstrelsy, that further search seemed to be
imperatively necessary. In 1890 permission to make such a search, and to
use the results, was given by the Honorable Mrs Maxwell-Scott. The
investigation, made by Mr Macmath, yielded a rich harvest of ballads,
which were utilized in Parts VII-IX. To dwell upon the details would be
endless. The reader may see a list of the manuscript sources at pp. 397
ff. of the fifth volume; and, if he will observe how scattered they
were, he will have no difficulty in believing that it required years,
labor, and much delicate negotiation to bring them all together. One
manuscript remained undiscoverable, William Tytler's Brown MS., but
there is no reason to believe that this contained anything of
consequence that is not otherwise known.[9]
Meanwhile, concurrently with the toil of amassing, collating, and
arranging texts, went on the far more arduous labor of comparative study
of the ballads of all nations; for, in accordance with Mr Child's plan
it was requisite to determine, in the fullest manner, the history and
foreign relations of every piece included in his collection. To this end
he devoted much time and unwearied diligence to forming, in the Library
of the University, a special collection of "Folk-lore," particularly of
ballads, romances, and _Märchen_. This priceless collection, the
formation of which must be looked on as one of Mr Child's most striking
services to the university, numbers some 7000 volumes. But these figures
by no means represent the richness of the Library in the departments
concerned, or the services of Mr Child in this particular. Mediæval
literature in all its phases was his province, and thousands of volumes
classified in other departments of the University Library bear testimony
to his vigilance in ordering books, and his astonishing bibliographical
knowledge. Very few books are cited in the present collection which are
not to be found on the shelves of this Library.
In addition, Mr Child made an effort to stimulate the collection of such
remains of the traditional ballad as still live on the lips of the
people in this country and in the British Islands. The harvest was, in
his opinion, rather scanty; yet, if all the versions thus recovered from
tradition were enumerated, the number would not be found inconsiderable.
Enough was done, at all events, to make it clear that little or nothing
of value remains to be recovered in this way.
To readers familiar with such studies, no comment is necessary, and to
those who are unfamiliar with them, no form of statement can convey even
a faint impression of the industry, the learning, the acumen, and the
literary skill which these processes required. In writing the history of
a single ballad, Mr Child was sometimes forced to examine hundreds of
books in perhaps a dozen different languages. But his industry was
unflagging, his sagacity was scarcely ever at fault, and his linguistic
and literary knowledge seemed to have no bounds. He spared no pains to
perfect his work in every detail, and his success was commensurate with
his efforts. In the Advertisement to the Ninth Part (1894), he was able
to report that the three hundred and five numbers of his collection
comprised the whole extant mass of this traditional material, with the
possible exception of a single ballad.[10]
In June, 1896, Mr Child concluded his fiftieth year of service as a
teacher in Harvard College. He was at this time hard at work on the
Tenth and final Part, which was to contain a glossary, various indexes,
a bibliography, and an elaborate introduction on the general subject.
For years he had allowed himself scarcely any respite from work, and, in
spite of the uncertain condition of his health,--or perhaps in
consequence of it,--he continued to work at high pressure throughout the
summer. At the end of August he discovered that he was seriously ill. He
died at Boston on the 11th day of September. He had finished his great
work except for the introduction and the general bibliography. The
bibliography was in preparation by another hand and has since been
completed. The introduction, however, no other scholar had the hardihood
to undertake. A few pages of manuscript,--the last thing written by his
pen,--almost illegible, were found among his papers to show that he had
actually begun the composition of this essay, and many sheets of
excerpts testified to the time he had spent in refreshing his memory as
to the opinions of his predecessors, but he had left no collectanea that
could be utilized in supplying the Introduction itself. He was
accustomed to carry much of his material in his memory till the moment
of composition arrived, and this habit accounts for the fact that there
are no jottings of opinions and no sketch of precisely what line of
argument he intended to take.
Mr Child's sudden death was felt as a bitter personal loss, not only by
an unusually large circle of attached friends in both hemispheres, but
by very many scholars who knew him through his works alone. He was one
of the few learned men to whom the old title of "Master" was justly due
and freely accorded. With astonishing erudition, which nothing seemed to
have escaped, he united an infectious enthusiasm and a power of lucid
and fruitful exposition that made him one of the greatest of teachers,
and a warmth and openness of heart that won the affection of all who
knew him. In most men, however complex their characters, one can
distinguish the qualities of the heart, in some degree, from the
qualities of the head. In Professor Child no such distinction was
possible, for all the elements of his many-sided nature were fused in
his marked and powerful individuality. In his case, the scholar and the
man cannot be separated. His life and his learning were one; his work
was the expression of himself.
As an investigator Professor Child was at once the inspiration and the
despair of his disciples. Nothing could surpass the scientific exactness
of his methods and the unwearied diligence with which he conducted his
researches. No possible source of information could elude him; no book
or manuscript was too voluminous or too unpromising for him to examine
on the chance of its containing some fact that might correct or
supplement his material, even in the minutest point. Yet these qualities
of enthusiastic accuracy and thoroughness, admirable as they undoubtedly
were, by no means dominated him. They were always at the command of the
higher qualities of his genius,--sagacity, acumen, and a kind of
sympathetic and imaginative power in which he stood almost alone among
recent scholars. No detail of language or tradition or archæology was to
him a mere lifeless fact; it was transmuted into something vital, and
became a part of that universal humanity which always moved him wherever
he found it, whether in the pages of a mediæval chronicle, or in the
stammering accents of a late and vulgarly distorted ballad, or in the
faces of the street boys who begged roses from his garden. No man ever
felt a keener interest in his kind, and no scholar ever brought this
interest into more vivifying contact with the technicalities of his
special studies. The exuberance of this large humanity pervades his
edition of the English and Scottish ballads. Even in his last years,
when the languor of uncertain health sometimes got the better, for a
season, of the spirit with which he commonly worked, some fresh bit of
genuine poetry in a ballad, some fine trait of pure nature in a stray
folk-tale, would, in an instant, bring back the full flush of that
enthusiasm which he must have felt when the possibilities of his
achievement first presented themselves to his mind in early manhood. For
such a nature there was no old age.
From this ready sympathy came that rare faculty--seldom possessed by
scholars--which made Professor Child peculiarly fit for his greatest
task. Few persons understand the difficulties of ballad investigation.
In no field of literature have the forger and the manipulator worked
with greater vigor and success. From Percy's day to our own it has been
thought an innocent device to publish a bit of one's own versifying, now
and then, as an "old ballad" or an "ancient song." Often, too, a late
stall-copy of a ballad, getting into oral circulation, has been
innocently furnished to collectors as traditional matter. Mere learning
will not guide an editor through these perplexities. What is needed is,
in addition, a complete understanding of the "popular" genius, a
sympathetic recognition of the traits that characterize oral literature
wherever and in whatever degree they exist. This faculty, which even the
folk has not retained, and which collectors living in ballad-singing and
tale-telling times have often failed to acquire, was vouchsafed by
nature herself to this sedentary scholar. In reality a kind of instinct,
it had been so cultivated by long and loving study of the traditional
literature of all nations that it had become wonderfully swift in its
operations and almost infallible. A forged or retouched piece could not
deceive him for a moment; he detected the slightest jar in the genuine
ballad tone. He speaks in one place of certain writers "who would have
been all the better historians for a little reading of romances." He was
himself the better interpreter of the poetry of art for this keen
sympathy with the poetry of nature.
Constant association with the spirit of the folk did its part in
maintaining, under the stress of unremitting study and research, that
freshness and buoyancy of mind which was the wonder of all who met
Professor Child for the first time, and the perpetual delight of his
friends and associates. It is impossible to describe the charm of his
familiar conversation. There was endless variety without effort. His
peculiar humor, taking shape in a thousand felicities of thought and
phrase that fell casually and as it were inevitably from his lips,
exhilarated without reaction or fatigue. His lightest words were full of
fruitful suggestion. Sudden strains of melancholy or high seriousness
were followed, in a moment, by flashes of gaiety almost boyish. And
pervading it all one felt the attraction of his personality and the
goodness of his heart.
Professor Child's humor was not only one of his most striking
characteristics as a man; it was of constant service to his scholarly
researches. Keenly alive to any incongruity in thought or fact, and the
least self-conscious of men, he scrutinized his own nascent theories
with the same humorous shrewdness with which he looked at the ideas of
others. It is impossible to think of him as the sponsor of some
hypotheses which men of equal eminence have advanced and defended with
passion; and, even if his goodness of nature had not prevented it, his
sense of the ridiculous would not have suffered him to engage in the
absurdities of philological polemics. In the interpretation of
literature, his humor stood him in good stead, keeping his native
sensibility under due control, so that it never degenerated into
sentimentalism. It made him a marvelous interpreter of Chaucer, whose
spirit he had caught to a degree attained by no other scholar or
critic.
To younger scholars Professor Child was an influence at once stimulating
and benignant. To confer with him was always to be stirred to greater
effort, but, at the same time, the serenity of his devotion to learning
chastened the petulance of immature ambition in others. The talk might
be quite concrete, even definitely practical,--it might deal with
indifferent matters; but, in some way, there was an irradiation of the
master's nature that dispelled all unworthy feelings. In the presence of
his noble modesty the bustle of self-assertion was quieted and the petty
spirit of pedantic wrangling could not assert itself. However severe his
criticism, there were no personalities in it. He could not be other than
outspoken,--concealment and shuffling were abhorrent to him,--yet such
was his kindliness that his frankest judgments never wounded; even his
reproofs left no sting. With his large charity was associated, as its
necessary complement in a strong character, a capacity for righteous
indignation. "He is almost the only man I know," said one in his
lifetime, "who _thinks no evil_." There could be no truer word. Yet when
he was confronted with injury or oppression, none could stand against
the anger of this just man. His unselfishness did not suffer him to see
offences against himself, but wrong done to another roused him in an
instant to protesting action.
Professor Child's publications, despite their magnitude and
importance, are no adequate measure either of his acquirements or of
his influence. He printed nothing about Shakspere, for example, yet he
was the peer of any Shaksperian, past or present, in knowledge and
interpretative power. As a Chaucer scholar he had no superior, in this
country or in Europe: his published work was confined, as we have
seen, to questions of language, but no one had a wider or closer
acquaintance with the whole subject. An edition of Chaucer from his
hand would have been priceless. His acquaintance with letters was not
confined to special authors or centuries. He was at home in modern
European literature and profoundly versed in that of the Middle Ages.
In his immediate territory,--English,--his knowledge, linguistic and
literary, covered all periods, and was alike exact and thorough. His
taste and judgment were exquisite, and he enlightened every subject
which he touched. As a writer, he was master of a singularly
felicitous style, full of individuality and charm. Had his time not
been occupied in other ways, he would have made the most delightful of
essayists.
Fortunately, Professor Child's courses of instruction in the
university--particularly those on Chaucer and Shakspere--gave him an
opportunity to impart to a constantly increasing circle of pupils the
choicest fruits of his life of thought and study. In his later years he
had the satisfaction to see grow up about him a school of young
specialists who can have no higher ambition than to be worthy of their
master. But his teaching was not limited to these,--it included all
sorts and conditions of college students; and none, not even the idle
and incompetent, could fail to catch something of his spirit. One thing
may be safely asserted: no university teacher was ever more beloved.
And with this may fitly close too slight a tribute to the memory of a
great scholar and a good man. Many things remain unsaid. His gracious
family life, his civic virtues, his patriotism, his bounty to the
poor,--all must be passed by with a bare mention, which yet will signify
much to those who knew him. In all ways he lived worthily, and he died
having attained worthy ends.
G. L. KITTREDGE.
[1] C. E. Norton, 'Francis James Child,' in the Proceedings of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, XXXII, 334, 335; reprinted, with
some additions, in the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, VI, 161-169 (Boston,
1897). I have used this biographical sketch freely in my brief account
of Professor Child's boyhood.
[2] Four Old Plays | Three Interludes: Thersytes Jack Jugler | and
Heywoods Pardoner and Frere: | and Jocasta a Tragedy | by Gascoigne and
| Kinwelmarsh | with an | Introduction and Notes | Cambridge | George
Nichols | MDCCCXLVIII. The editor's name does not appear in the
title-page, but the Preface is signed with the initials F. J. C. Jocasta
was printed from Steevens's copy of the first edition of Garcoigne's
Posies, which had come into Mr Child's possession.
[3] The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser. The text carefully revised,
and illustrated with notes, original and selected, by Francis J. Child.
Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1855. 5 vols.
[4] The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer. A new text, with
illustrative notes. Edited by Thomas Wright. London, printed for the
Percy Society, 1847-51. 3 vols.
[5] The paper entitled Observations on the Language of Chaucer was laid
before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on June 3, 1862, and
was published in the Memoirs of the Academy, Vol. VIII, pt. ii, 445-502
(Boston, 1863). The second paper, entitled Observations on the Language
of Gower's Confessio Amantis, was laid before the Academy on January 9,
1866, and appeared in Memoirs, IX, ii, 265-315 (Boston, 1873). A few
copies of each paper were struck off separately, but these are now very
hard to find. Mr Ellis's rearrangement and amalgamation of the two
papers, which is by no means a good substitute for the papers
themselves, may be found in Part I of his Early English Pronunciation,
London, 1869, pp. 343-97.
[6] English and Scottish Ballads. Selected and edited by Francis James
Child. Boston, 1857-58.
[7] How inseparable were the services of Dr Furnivall and those of
Professor Child in securing this devoutly wished consummation may be
seen by comparing Dr Furnivall's Forewords (I, ix, x), in which he gives
much of the credit to Mr Child, with Mr Child's Dedication (in vol. I of
the present collection), in which he gives the credit to Dr Furnivall.
[8] Since Mr Child's death the important "Buchan original MS" has been
secured for the Child Memorial Library of the University,--a collection
endowed by friends and pupils of the dead master.
[9] See V, 397 b.
[10] This is 'Young Betrice,' No 5 in William Tytler's lost Brown MS.
(V, 397), which "may possibly be a version of 'Hugh Spencer's Feats in
France'" (see II, 377; III, 275).
1
RIDDLES WISELY EXPOUNDED
#A. a.# 'A Noble Riddle Wisely Expounded; or, The Maid's
Answer to the Knight's Three Questions,' 4to, Rawlinson,
566, fol. 193, Bodleian Library; Wood, E. 25, fol. 15,
Bod. Lib. #b.# Pepys, III, 19, No 17, Magdalen College,
Cambridge. #c.# Douce, II, fol. 168 b, Bod. Lib. #d.# 'A
Riddle Wittily Expounded,' Pills to Purge Melancholy, IV,
129, ed. 1719. "II, 129, ed. 1712."
#B.# 'The Three Sisters.' Some Ancient Christmas Carols
... together with two Ancient Ballads, etc. By Davies
Gilbert, 2d ed., p. 65.
#C.# 'The Unco Knicht's Wowing,' Motherwell's MS., p. 647.
#D.# Motherwell's MS., p. 142.
The four copies of #A# differ but very slightly: #a#, #b#, #c# are
broadsides, and #d# is evidently of that derivation, #a# and #b# are of
the 17th century. There is another broadside in the Euing collection,
formerly Halliwell's, No 253. The version in The Borderer's Table Book,
VII, 83, was compounded by Dixon from others previously printed.
Riddles, as is well known, play an important part in popular story, and
that from very remote times. No one needs to be reminded of Samson,
Œdipus, Apollonius of Tyre. Riddle-tales, which, if not so old as the
oldest of these, may be carried in all likelihood some centuries beyond
our era, still live in Asiatic and European tradition, and have their
representatives in popular ballads. The largest class of these tales is
that in which one party has to guess another's riddles, or two rivals
compete in giving or guessing, under penalty in either instance of
forfeiting life or some other heavy wager; an example of which is the
English ballad, modern in form, of 'King John and the Abbot of
Canterbury.' In a second class, a suitor can win a lady's hand only by
guessing riddles, as in our 'Captain Wedderburn's Courtship' and 'Proud
Lady Margaret.' There is sometimes a penalty of loss of life for the
unsuccessful, but not in these ballads. Thirdly, there is the tale
(perhaps an offshoot of an early form of the first) of The Clever Lass,
who wins a husband, and sometimes a crown, by guessing riddles, solving
difficult but practicable problems, or matching and evading
impossibilities; and of this class versions #A# and #B# of the present
ballad and #A-H# of the following are specimens.
Ballads like our 1, #A#, #B#, 2, #A-H#, are very common in #German#. Of
the former variety are the following:
#A.# 'Räthsellied,' Büsching, Wöchentliche Nachrichten, I, 65, from the
neighborhood of Stuttgart. The same, Erlach, III, 37; Wunderhorn, IV,
139; Liederhort, p. 338, No 153; Erk u. Irmer, H. 5, p. 32, No 29;
Mittler, No 1307 (omits the last stanza); Zuccalmaglio, II, 574, No 317
[with change in st. 11]. A knight meets a maid on the road, dismounts,
and says, "I will ask you a riddle; if you guess it, you shall be my
wife." She answers, "Your riddle shall soon be guessed; I will do my
best to be your wife;" guesses eight pairs of riddles, is taken up
behind him, and they ride off. #B.# 'Räthsel um Räthsel,' Wunderhorn,
II, 407 [429, 418]==Erlach, I, 439. Zuccalmaglio, II, 572, No 316,
rearranges, but adds nothing. Mittler, No 1306, inserts three stanzas
(7, 9, 10). This version begins: "Maid, I will give you some riddles,
and if you guess them will marry you." There are seven pairs, and, these
guessed, the man says, "I can't give you riddles; let's marry;" to
which she gives no coy assent: but this conclusion is said not to be
genuine (Liederhort, p. 341, note). #C.# 'Räthsellied,' Erk, Neue
Sammlung, Heft 3, p. 64, No 57, and Liederhort, 340, No 153^a two
Brandenburg versions, nearly agreeing, one with six, the other with
five, pairs of riddles. A proper conclusion not having been obtained,
the former was completed by the two last stanzas of #B#, which are
suspicious. #C# begins like #B#. #D.# 'Räthselfragen,' Peter,
Volksthümliches aus Österreichisch-Schlesien, I, 272, No 83. A knight
rides by where two maids are sitting, one of whom salutes him, the other
not. He says to the former, "I will put you three questions, and if you
can answer them will marry you." He asks three, then six more, then
three, and then two, and, all being answered, bids her, since she is so
witty, build a house on a needle's point, and put in as many windows as
there are stars in the sky; which she parries with, "When all streams
flow together, and all trees shall fruit, and all thorns bear roses,
then come for your answer." #E.# 'Räthsellied,' Tschischka u. Schottky,
Oesterreichische Volkslieder, 2d ed., p. 28, begins like #B#, #C#, has
only three pairs of riddles, and ends with the same task of building a
house on a needle's point. #F.# 'Räthsellied,' Hocker, Volkslieder von
der Mosel, in Wolf's Zeits. für deutsche Myth., I, 251, from Trier,
begins with the usual promise, has five pairs of riddles, and no
conclusion. #G.# 'Räthsel,' Ditfurth, Fränkische V. L., II, 110, No 146,
has the same beginning, six pairs of riddles, and no conclusion.
Some of the riddles occur in nearly all the versions, some in only one
or two, and there is now and then a variation also in the answers. Those
which are most frequent are:
Which is the maid without a tress? #A-D#, #G#.
And which is the tower without a crest? #A-D#, #F#, #G#.
(Maid-child in the cradle; tower of Babel.)
Which is the water without any sand? #A#, #B#, #C#, #F#, #G#.
And which is the king without any land? #A#, #B#, #C#, #F#, #G#.
(Water in the eyes; king in cards.)
Where is no dust in all the road? #A-G.#
Where is no leaf in all the wood? #A-G.#
(The milky way, or a river; a fir-wood.)
Which is the fire that never burnt? #A#, #C-G#.
And which is the sword without a point? #C-G.#
(A painted fire; a broken sword.)
Which is the house without a mouse? #C-G.#
Which is the beggar without a louse? #C-G.#
(A snail's house; a painted beggar.)[11]
A ballad translated in Ralston's Songs of the Russian People, p. 356,
from Buslaef's Historical Sketches of National Literature and Art, I,
31, resembles very closely German #A#. A merchant's son drives by a
garden where a girl is gathering flowers. He salutes her; she returns
her thanks. Then the ballad proceeds:
'Shall I ask thee riddles, beauteous maiden?
Six wise riddles shall I ask thee?'
'Ask them, ask them, merchant's son,
Prithee ask the six wise riddles.'
'Well then, maiden, what is higher than the forest?
Also, what is brighter than the light?
Also, maiden, what is thicker than the forest?
Also, maiden, what is there that's rootless?
Also, maiden, what is never silent?
Also, what is there past finding out?'
'I will answer, merchant's son, will answer,
All the six wise riddles will I answer.
Higher than the forest is the moon;
Brighter than the light the ruddy sun;
Thicker than the forest are the stars;
Rootless is, O merchant's son, a stone;
Never silent, merchant's son, the sea;
And God's will is past all finding out.'
'Thou hast guessed, O maiden fair, guessed rightly,
All the six wise riddles hast thou answered;
Therefore now to me shalt thou be wedded,
Therefore, maiden, shalt thou be the merchant's wife.'[12]
Among the Gaels, both Scotch and Irish, a ballad of the same description
is extremely well known. Apparently only the questions are preserved in
verse, and the connection with the story made by a prose comment. Of
these questions there is an Irish form, dated 1738, which purports to be
copied from a manuscript of the twelfth century. Fionn would marry no
lady whom he could pose. Graidhne, "daughter of the king of the fifth of
Ullin," answered everything he asked, and became his wife. Altogether
there are thirty-two questions in the several versions. Among them are:
What is blacker than the raven? (There is death.) What is whiter than
the snow? (There is the truth.) 'Fionn's Questions,' Campbell's Popular
Tales of the West Highlands, III, 36; 'Fionn's Conversation with
Ailbhe,'Heroic Gaelic Ballads, by the same, pp. 150, 151.
The familiar ballad-knight of #A#, #B# is converted in #C# into an "unco
knicht," who is the devil, a departure from the proper story which is
found also in #2 J#. The conclusion of #C#,
As soon as she the fiend did name,
He flew awa in a blazing flame,
reminds us of the behavior of trolls and nixes under like circumstances,
but here the naming amounts to a detection of the Unco Knicht's
quiddity, acts as an exorcism, and simply obliges the fiend to go off in
his real character. #D# belongs with #C#: it was given by the reciter as
a colloquy between the devil and a maiden.
The earlier affinities of this ballad can be better shown in connection
with No 2.
Translated, after #B# and #A#, in Grundtvig's Engelske og skotske
Folkeviser, p. 181: Herder, Volkslieder, I, 95, after #A d#.
A
#a.# Broadside in the Rawlinson collection, 4to, 566, fol. 193, Wood, E.
25, fol. 15. #b.# Pepys, III, 19, No 17. #c.# Douce, II, fol. 168 b.
#d.# Pills to Purge Melancholy, IV, 130, ed. 1719.
1
There was a lady of the North Country,
Lay the bent to the bonny broom
And she had lovely daughters three.
Fa la la la, fa la la la ra re
2
There was a knight of noble worth
Which also lived in the North.
3
The knight, of courage stout and brave,
A wife he did desire to have.
4
He knocked at the ladie's gate
One evening when it was late.
5
The eldest sister let him in,
And pin'd the door with a silver pin.
6
The second sister she made his bed,
And laid soft pillows under his head.
7
The youngest daughter that same night,
She went to bed to this young knight.
8
And in the morning, when it was day,
These words unto him she did say:
9
'Now you have had your will,' quoth she,
'I pray, sir knight, will you marry me?'
10
The young brave knight to her replyed,
'Thy suit, fair maid, shall not be deny'd.
11
'If thou canst answer me questions three,
This very day will I marry thee.'
12
'Kind sir, in love, O then,' quoth she,
'Tell me what your [three] questions be.'
13
'O what is longer than the way,
Or what is deeper than the sea?
14
'Or what is louder than the horn,
Or what is sharper than a thorn?
15
'Or what is greener than the grass,
Or what is worse then a woman was?'
16
'O love is longer than the way,
And hell is deeper than the sea.
17
'And thunder is louder than the horn,
And hunger is sharper than a thorn.
18
'And poyson is greener than the grass,
And the Devil is worse than woman was.'
19
When she these questions answered had,
The knight became exceeding glad.
20
And having [truly] try'd her wit,
He much commended her for it.
21
And after, as it is verifi'd,
He made of her his lovely bride.
22
So now, fair maidens all, adieu,
This song I dedicate to you.
23
I wish that you may constant prove
Vnto the man that you do love.
B
Gilbert's Christmas Carols, 2d ed., p. 65, from the
editor's recollection. West of England.
1
There were three sisters fair and bright,
Jennifer gentle and rosemaree
And they three loved one valiant knight.
As the dew flies over the mulberry tree
2
The eldest sister let him in,
And barred the door with a silver pin.
3
The second sister made his bed,
And placed soft pillows under his head.
4
The youngest sister, fair and bright,
Was resolved for to wed with this valiant knight.
5
'And if you can answer questions three,
O then, fair maid, I will marry with thee.
6
'What is louder than an horn,
And what is sharper than a thorn?'
7
'Thunder is louder than an horn,
And hunger is sharper than a thorn.'
8
'What is broader than the way,
And what is deeper than the sea?'
9
'Love is broader than the way,
And hell is deeper than the sea.'
* * * * * * *
10
. . . . . . .
'And now, fair maid, I will marry with thee.'
C
Motherwell's MS., p. 647. From the recitation of Mrs
Storie.
1
There was a knicht riding frae the east,
Sing the Cather banks, the bonnie brume
Wha had been wooing at monie a place.
And ye may beguile a young thing sune
2
He came unto a widow's door
And speird whare her three dochters were.
3
The auldest ane's to a washing gane,
The second's to a baking gane.
4
The youngest ane's to a wedding gane,
And it will be nicht or she be hame.
5
He sat him doun upon a stane,
Till thir three lasses came tripping hame.
6
The auldest ane's to the bed making,
And the second ane's to the sheet spreading.
7
The youngest ane was bauld and bricht,
And she was to lye with this unco knicht.
8
'Gin ye will answer me questions ten,
The morn ye sall be made my ain.
9
'O what is heigher nor the tree?
And what is deeper nor the sea?
10
'Or what is heavier nor the lead?
And what is better nor the breid?
11
'O what is whiter nor the milk?
Or what is safter nor the silk?
12
'Or what is sharper nor a thorn?
Or what is louder nor a horn?
13
'Or what is greener nor the grass?
Or what is waur nor a woman was?'
14
'O heaven is higher nor the tree,
And hell is deeper nor the sea.
15
'O sin is heavier nor the lead,
The blessing's better nor the bread.
16
'The snaw is whiter nor the milk,
And the down is safter nor the silk.
17
'Hunger is sharper nor a thorn,
And shame is louder nor a horn.
18
'The pies are greener nor the grass,
And Clootie's waur nor a woman was.'
19
As sune as she the fiend did name,
He flew awa in a blazing flame.
D
Motherwell's MS., p. 142.
1
'O what is higher than the trees?
Gar lay the bent to the bonny broom
And what is deeper than the seas?
And you may beguile a fair maid soon
2
'O what is whiter than the milk?
Or what is softer than the silk?
3
'O what is sharper than the thorn?
O what is louder than the horn?
4
'O what is longer than the way?
And what is colder than the clay?
5
'O what is greener than the grass?
And what is worse than woman was?'
6
'O heaven's higher than the trees,
And hell is deeper than the seas.
7
'And snow is whiter than the milk,
And love is softer than the silk.
8
'O hunger's sharper than the thorn,
And thunder's louder than the horn.
9
'O wind is longer than the way,
And death is colder than the clay.
10
'O poison's greener than the grass,
And the Devil's worse than eer woman was.'
* * * * *
#A. a.#
_Title._ A Noble Riddle wisely Expounded: or, The Maids answer
to the Knights Three Questions.
She with her excellent wit and civil carriage,
Won a young Knight to joyn with him in marriage;
This gallant couple now is man and wife,
And she with him doth lead a pleasant Life.
Tune of Lay the bent to the bonny broom.
+---------------+ +--------------+
| | | |
| WOODCUT OF | | WOODCUT OF |
| THE KNIGHT. | | THE MAID. |
| | | |
+---------------+ +--------------+
#c.# Knights questions. Wed a knight ... with her in
marriage.
#a.# Printed for F. Coles, T. Vere, I. Wright, and I. Clarke.
#b.# Printed for W. Thackeray, E.M. and A.M.
#c.# Licens'd according to Order. London. Printed by Tho.
Norris, at the L[o]oking glass on London-bridge. And sold by
J. Walter, in High Holborn.
_In Rawlinson and Wood the first seven lines are in Roman and
Italic type; the remainder being in black letter and Roman.
The Pepys copy has one line of the ballad in black letter
and one line in Roman type. The Douce edition is in Roman
and Italic._
#A.#
1^1, #c#, i' th' North: #d#, in the.
3^1. #c#, This knight.
5^1. #a#, #b#, #c#, #d#, The youngest sister.
7^1. #b#, #d#, The youngest that same. #c#, that very same.
7^2. #a#, with this young knight.
9^2. #d#, sir knight, you marry me.
_After 10, there is a wood-cut of the knight and the maid in
#a#; in #b# two cuts of the knight._
11^2. #c#, I'll marry. #d#, I will.
12^1. #c# _omits_ in love.
12^2. #b#, #c#, #d#, three questions.
14^1. #d#, a horn.
_After 15_: #a#, Here follows the Damosel's answer to the
Knight's Three Questions: #c#, The Damsel's Answers To The
Knight's Questions: #d#, The Damsel's Answer to the Three
Questions.
17, 18. #b#, #c#, #d#, thunder's, hunger's, poyson's, devil's.
18^2. #d#, the woman.
19^1. #c#, those.
20. #a#, #b# _omit_ truly.
21^1. #b#, #c#, #d#, as 't is.
#B.#
_The burden is printed by Gilbert, in the text, "~Jennifer
gentle and Rosemaree~." He appears to take ~Jennifer~ and
~Rosemaree~ to be names of the sisters. As printed under the
music, the burden runs,_
Juniper, Gentle and Rosemary.
_No doubt, ~juniper and rosemary~, simply, are meant; ~Gentle~
might possibly be for ~gentian~. In #2 H# the burden is,_
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme:
_curiously varied in #I# thus:_
Every rose grows merry wi thyme:
_and in #G#,_
Sober and grave grows merry in time.
#C.#
18. "_~Vergris~ in another set._" M.
#D.#
_MS. before st. 1, "~The Devil speaks~;" before st. 6, "~The
maiden speaks~."_
FOOTNOTES:
[11] #D# 4, What is green as clover? What is white as milk? comes near
to English #A# 15, #C# 13, #D# 5, What is greener than grass? #C# 11,
#D# 2, What is whiter than milk? We have again, What is greener than
grass? in 'Capt. Wedderburn's Courtship,' #A# 12; What is whiter than
snow? What is greener than clover? in 'Räthselfragen,' Firmenich,
Germaniens Völkerstimmen, III, 634; in 'Kranzsingen,' Erk's Liederhort,
p. 342, 3; 'Traugemundslied,' 11; 'Ein Spiel von den Freiheit,'
Fastnachtspiele aus dem 15n Jahrhundert, II, 555; Altdeutsche Wälder,
III, 138. So, What is whiter than a swan? in many of the versions of
Svend Vonved, Grundtvig, III, 786; IV, 742-3-7-8; Afzelius, II, 139,
etc.; and Sin is blacker than a sloe, or coal (cf. C 15, Sin is heavier
nor the lead), Grundtvig, I, 240, 247; IV, 748, 9; Afzelius, II, 139.
The road without dust and the tree without leaves are in 'Ein Spiel von
den Freiheit,' p. 557; and in Meier, Deutsche Kinderreime, p. 84, no
doubt a fragment of a ballad, as also the verses in Firmenich. The
question in German, #A# 4, Welches ist das trefflichste Holz? (die Rebe)
is in the Anglo-Saxon prose Salomon and Saturn: Kemble, Sal. and Sat.
188, No 40; 204; see also 287, 10. Riddle verses with little or no story
(sometimes fragments of ballads like #D#) are frequent. The
Traugemundslied, Uhland, I, 3, and the Spiel von den Freiheit,
Fastnachtspiele, II, 553, have only as much story as will serve as an
excuse for long strings of riddles. Shorter pieces of the kind are
(Italian) Kadeu, Italiens Wunderhern, p. 14; (Servian) 'The Maid and the
Fish,' Vuk, I, 196, No 285, Talvj, II, 176, Goetze, Serbische V. L., p.
75, Bowring, Servian Popular Poetry, p. 184; (Polish) Wojcicki, I, 203;
(Wendish) Haupt and Schmaler, I, 177, No 150, II, 69, No 74; (Russian)
Wenzig, Bibliothek Slav. Poesie, p. 174; (Esthonian) Neus, Ehstnische V.
L., 390 ff, and Fosterländskt Album, I, 13, Prior, Ancient Danish
Ballads, II, 341.
[12] 'Capt. Wedderburn's Courtship,' 12: What's higher than the tree?
(heaven). Wojcicki, Pieśni, I, 203, l. 11, 206, l. 3; What grows
without a root? (a stone).
2
THE ELFIN KNIGHT
#A.# 'A proper new ballad entituled The Wind hath blown my
Plaid away, or, A Discourse betwixt a young [Wo]man and
the Elphin Knight;' a broadside in black letter in the
Pepysian library, bound up at the end of a copy of Blind
Harry's 'Wallace,' Edin. 1673.
#B.# 'A proper new ballad entitled The Wind hath blawn my
Plaid awa,' etc. Webster, A Collection of Curious Old
Ballads, p. 3.
#C.# 'The Elfin Knicht,' Kinloch's Anc. Scott. Ballads, p.
145.
#D.# 'The Fairy Knight,' Buchan, II, 296.
#E.# Motherwell's MS., p. 492.
#F.# 'Lord John,' Kinloch MSS, I, 75.
#G.# 'The Cambrick Shirt,' Gammer Gorton's Garland, p. 3,
ed. 1810.
#H.# 'The Deil's Courtship,' Motherwell's MS., p. 92.
#I.# 'The Deil's Courting,' Motherwell's MS., p. 103.
#J.# Communicated by Rev. Dr Huntington, Bishop of Western
New York, as sung at Hadley, Mass.
#K.# Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England, p. 109, No
171, 6th ed.
#L.# Notes and Queries, 1st S., VII, 8.
Pinkerton gave the first information concerning #A#, in Ancient Scotish
Poems ... from the MS. collections of Sir Richard Maitland, etc., II,
496, and he there printed the first and last stanzas of the broadside.
Motherwell printed the whole in the appendix to his Minstrelsy, No I.
What stands as the last stanza in the broadside is now prefixed to the
ballad, as having been the original burden. It is the only example, so
far as I remember, which our ballads afford of a burden of this kind,
one that is of greater extent than the stanza with which it was sung,
though this kind of burden seems to have been common enough with old
songs and carols.[13]
The "old copy in black letter" used for #B# was close to #A#, if not
identical, and has the burden-stem at the end like #A#. 'The Jockey's
Lamentation,' Pills to Purge Melancholy, v, 317, has the burden,
'Tis oer the hills and far away [_thrice_],
The wind hath blown my plaid away.
The 'Bridal Sark,' Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p.
108, and 'The Bridegroom Darg,' p. 113, are of modern manufacture and
impostures; at least, they seem to have imposed upon Cromek.
A like ballad is very common in German. A man would take, or keep, a
woman for his love or his wife [servant, in one case], if she would spin
brown silk from oaten straw. She will do this if he will make clothes
for her of the linden-leaf. Then she must bring him shears from the
middle of the Rhine. But first he must build her a bridge from a single
twig, etc., etc. To this effect, with some variations in the tasks set,
in #A#, 'Eitle Dinge,' Rhaw, Bicinia (1545), Uhland, I, 14, No 4 A,
Böhme, p. 376, No 293. #B.# 'Van ideln unmöglichen Dingen,' Neocorus
(† c. 1630), Chronik des Landes Ditmarschen, ed. Dahlmann, p.
180==Uhland, p. 15, No 4 B, Müllenhof, p. 473, Böhme, p. 376, No 294.
#C.# Wunderhorn, II, 410 [431]==Erlach, I, 441, slightly altered in
Kretzschmer [Zuccalmaglio], II, 620. #D.# 'Unmöglichkeiten,' Schmeller,
Die Mundarten Bayerns, p. 556. #E.# Schlesische Volkslieder, p. 115, No
93. #F.# 'Liebes-Neckerei,' Meier, Schwäbische V. L., p. 114, No 39.
#G.# 'Liebesspielereien,' Ditfurth, Fränkische V. L., II, 109, No 144.
#H.# 'Von eitel unmöglichen Dingen,' Erk's Liederhort, p. 337, No
152^b. #I.# 'Unmögliches Begehren,' V. L. aus Oesterreich, Deutsches
Museum, 1862, II, 806, No 16. #J.# 'Unmögliche Dinge,' Peter,
Volksthümliches aus Österreichisch-Schlesien, I, 270, No 82. In #K#,
'Wettgesang,' Meinert, p. 80, and #L#, Liederhort, p. 334, No 152, there
is a simple contest of wits between a youth and a maid, and in #M#, Erk,
Neue Sammlung, #H.# 2, No 11, p. 16, and #N#, 'Wunderbare Aufgaben,'
Pröhle, Weltliche u. geistliche Volkslieder, p. 36, No 22 B, the
wit-contest is added to the very insipid ballad of 'Gemalte Rosen.'
'Store Fordringar,' Kristensen, Jydske Folkeviser, I, 221, No 82, and
'Opsang,' Lindeman, Norske Fjeldmelodier, No 35 (Text Bilag, p. 6),
closely resemble German #M#, #N#. In the Stev, or alternate song, in
Landstad, p. 375, two singers vie one with another in propounding
impossible tasks.
A Wendish ballad, Haupt and Schmaler, I, 178, No 151, and a Slovak,
Čelakowsky, II, 68, No 12 (the latter translated by Wenzig, Slawische
Volkslieder, p. 86, Westslavischer Märchenschatz, p. 221, and Bibliothek
Slavischer Poesien, p. 126), have lost nearly all their story, and, like
German #K#, #L#, may be called mere wit-contests.
The Graidhne whom we have seen winning Fionn for husband by guessing his
riddles, p. 3, afterwards became enamored of Diarmaid, Fionn's nephew,
in consequence of her accidentally seeing a beauty spot on Diarmaid's
forehead. This had the power of infecting with love any woman whose eye
should light upon it: wherefore Diarmaid used to wear his cap well down.
Graidhne tried to make Diarmaid run away with her. But he said, "I will
not go with thee. I will not take thee in softness, and I will not take
thee in hardness; I will not take thee without, and I will not take thee
within; I will not take thee on horseback, and I will not take thee on
foot." Then he went and built himself a house where he thought he should
be out of her way. But Graidhne found him out. She took up a position
between the two sides of the door, on a buck goat, and called to him to
go with her. For, said she, "I am not without, I am not within; I am not
on foot, and I am not on a horse; and thou must go with me." After this
Diarmaid had no choice. 'Diarmaid and Grainne,' Tales of the West
Highlands, III, 39-49; 'How Fingal got Graine to be his wife, and she
went away with Diarmaid,' Heroic Gaelic Ballads, p. 153; 'The Death of
Diarmaid,' ib., p. 154. The last two were written down c. 1774.
In all stories of the kind, the person upon whom a task is imposed
stands acquitted, if another of no less difficulty is devised which must
be performed first. This preliminary may be something that is essential
for the execution of the other, as in the German ballads, or equally
well something that has no kind of relation to the original requisition,
as in the English ballads.
An early form of such a story is preserved in Gesta Romanorum, c. 64,
Oesterley, p. 374. It were much to be wished that search were made for a
better copy, for, as it stands, this tale is to be interpreted only by
the English ballad. The old English version, Madden, XLIII, p. 142, is
even worse mutilated than the Latin. A king, who was stronger, wiser,
and handsomer than any man, delayed, like the Marquis of Saluzzo, to
take a wife. His friends urged him to marry, and he replied to their
expostulations, "You know I am rich enough and powerful enough; find me
a maid who is good looking and sensible, and I will take her to wife,
though she be poor." A maid was found who was eminently good looking and
sensible, and of royal blood besides. The king wished to make trial of
her sagacity, and sent her a bit of linen three inches square, with a
promise to marry her if she would make him a shirt of this, of proper
length and width. The lady stipulated that the king should send her "a
vessel in which she could work," and she would make the shirt: "michi
vas concedat in quo operari potero, et camisiam satis longam ei
promitto." So the king sent "vas debitum et preciosum," the shirt was
made, and the king married her.[14] It may be doubted whether the
sagacious maid did not, in the unmutilated story, deal with the problem
as is done in a Transylvanian tale, Haltrich, Deutsche Volksmärchen,
u.s.w., No 45, p. 245, where the king requires the maid to make a shirt
and drawers of two threads. The maid, in this instance, sends the king a
couple of broomsticks, requiring that he should first make her a loom
and bobbin-wheel out of them.
The tale just cited, 'Der Burghüter und seine kluge Tochter,' is one of
several which have been obtained from tradition in this century, that
link the ballads of The Clever Lass with oriental stories of great age.
The material points are these. A king requires the people of a parish
to answer three questions, or he will be the destruction of them all:
What is the finest sound, the finest song, the finest stone? A poor
warder is instructed by his daughter to reply, the ring of bells, the
song of the angels, the philosopher's stone. "Right," says the king,
"but that never came out of your head. Confess who told you, or a
dungeon is your doom." The man owns that he has a clever daughter, who
had told him what to say. The king, to prove her sagacity further,
requires her to make a shirt and drawers of two threads, and she
responds in the manner just indicated. He next sends her by her father
an earthen pot with the bottom out, and tells her to sew in a bottom so
that no seam or stitch can be seen. She sends her father back with a
request that the king should first turn the pot inside out, for cobblers
always sew on the inside, not on the out. The king next demanded that
the girl should come to him, neither driving, nor walking, nor riding;
neither dressed nor naked; neither out of the road nor in the road; and
bring him something that was a gift and no gift. She put two wasps
between two plates, stripped, enveloped herself in a fishing net, put
her goat into the rut in the road, and, with one foot on the goat's
back, the other stepping along the rut, made her way to the king. There
she lifted up one of the plates, and the wasps flew away: so she had
brought the king a present and yet no present. The king thought he could
never find a shrewder woman, and married her.
Of the same tenor are a tale in Zingerle's Tyrolese Kinder u.
Hausmärchen, 'Was ist das Schönste, Stärkste und Reichste?' No 27, p.
162, and another in the Colshorns' Hanoverian Märchen u. Sagen, 'Die
kluge Dirne,' No 26, p. 79. Here a rich and a poor peasant [a farmer and
his bailiff] have a case in court, and wrangle till the magistrate, in
his weariness, says he will give them three questions, and whichever
answers right shall win. The questions in the former tale are: What is
the most beautiful, what the strongest, what the richest thing in the
world? In the other, What is fatter than fat? How heavy is the moon? How
far is it to heaven? The answers suggested by the poor peasant's
daughter are: Spring is the most beautiful of things, the ground the
strongest, autumn the richest. And the bailiff's daughter answers: The
ground is fatter than fat, for out of it comes all that's fat, and this
all goes back again; the moon has four quarters, and four quarters make
a pound; heaven is only one day's journey, for we read in the Bible,
"Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise." The judge sees that these
replies are beyond the wit of the respondents, and they own to having
been prompted by a daughter at home. The judge then says that if the
girl will come to him neither dressed nor naked, etc., he will marry
her; and so the shrewd wench becomes a magistrate's wife.
'Die kluge Bauerntochter,' in the Grimms' K. u. H. märchen, No 94, and
'Die kluge Hirtentochter,' in Pröhle's Märchen für die Jugend, No 49, p.
181, afford another variety of these tales. A peasant, against the
advice of his daughter, carries the king a golden mortar, as he had
found it, without any pestle. The king shuts him up in prison till he
shall produce the pestle [Grimms]. The man does nothing but cry, "Oh,
that I had listened to my daughter!" The king sends for him, and,
learning what the girl's counsel had been, says he will give her a
riddle, and if she can make it out will marry her. She must come to him
neither clothed nor naked, neither riding nor driving, etc. The girl
wraps herself in a fishing net [Grimms, in bark, Pröhle], satisfies the
other stipulations also, and becomes a queen.[15]
Another story of the kind, and very well preserved, is No 25 of Vuk's
Volksmärchen der Serben, 'Von dem Mädchen das an Weisheit den Kaiser
übertraf,' p. 157. A poor man had a wise daughter. An emperor gave him
thirty eggs, and said his daughter must hatch chickens from these, or it
would go hard with her. The girl perceived that the eggs had been
boiled. She boiled some beans, and told her father to be ploughing along
the road, and when the emperor came in sight, to sow them and cry, "God
grant my boiled beans may come up!" The emperor, hearing these
ejaculations, stopped, and said, "My poor fellow, how _can_ boiled beans
grow?" The father answered, according to instructions, "As well as
chickens can hatch from boiled eggs." Then the emperor gave the old man
a bundle of linen, and bade him make of it, on pain of death, sails and
everything else requisite for a ship. The girl gave her father a piece
of wood, and sent him back to the emperor with the message that she
would perform what he had ordered, if he would first make her a distaff,
spindle, and loom out of the wood. The emperor was astonished at the
girl's readiness, and gave the old man a glass, with which she was to
drain the sea. The girl dispatched her father to the emperor again with
a pound of tow, and asked him to stop the mouths of all the rivers that
flow into the sea; then she would drain it dry. Hereupon the emperor
ordered the girl herself before him, and put her the question, "What is
heard furthest?" "Please your Majesty," she answered, "thunder and
lies." The emperor then, clutching his beard, turned to his assembled
counsellors, and said, "Guess how much my beard is worth." One said so
much, another so much. But the girl said, "Nay, the emperor's beard is
worth three rains in summer." The emperor took her to wife.
With these traditional tales we may put the story of wise Petronelle and
Alphonso, king of Spain, told after a chronicle, with his usual
prolixity, by Gower, Confessio Amantis, Pauli, I, 145 ff. The king
valued himself highly for his wit, and was envious of a knight who
hitherto had answered all his questions. Determined to confound his
humbler rival, he devised three which he thought unanswerable, sent for
the knight, and gave him a fortnight to consider his replies, which
failing, he would lose his goods and head. The knight can make nothing
of these questions, which are, What is that which needs help least and
gets most? What is worth most and costs least? What costs most and is
worth least? The girl, who is but fourteen years old, observing her
father's heavy cheer, asks him the reason, and obtains his permission to
go to court with him and answer the questions. He was to say to the king
that he had deputed her to answer, to make trial of her wits. The answer
to the first question is the earth, and agrees in the details with the
solution of the query, What is fatter than fat? in the Tyrolese and the
Hanoverian tale. Humility is the answer to the second, and pride the
third answer. The king admires the young maid, and says he would marry
her if her father were noble; but she may ask a boon. She begs for her
father an earldom which had lately escheated; and, this granted, she
reminds the king of what he had said; her father is now noble. The king
marries her.
In all these seven tales a daughter gets her father out of trouble by
the exercise of a superior understanding, and marries an emperor, a
king, or at least far above her station. The Grimms' story has the
feature, not found in the others, that the father had been thrown into
prison. Still another variety of these stories, inferior, but preserving
essential traits, is given by Schleicher, Litauische Märchen, p. 3, 'Vom
schlauen Mädchen.'
A Turkish tale from South Siberia will take us a step further, 'Die
beiden Fürsten,' Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen
Stämme Süd-Sibiriens, I, 197. A prince had a feeble-minded son, for whom
he wished to get a wife. He found a girl gathering fire-wood with
others, and, on asking her questions, had reason to be pleased with her
superior discretion. He sent an ox to the girl's father, with a message
that on the third day he would pay him a visit, and if by that time he
had not made the ox drop a calf and give milk, he would lose his head.
The old man and his wife fell to weeping. The daughter bade them be of
good cheer, killed the ox, and gave it to her parents to eat. On the
third day she stationed herself on the road by which the prince would
come, and was gathering herbs. The prince asked what this was for. The
girl said, "Because my father is in the pangs of child-birth, and I am
going to spread these herbs under him." "Why," said the prince, "it is
not the way, that men should bear children." "But if a man can't bear
children," answered the girl, "how can an ox have a calf?" The prince
was pleased, but said nothing. He went away, and sent his messenger
again with three stones in a bag. He would come on the third day, and if
the stones were not then made into boots, the old man would lose his
head. On the third day the prince came, with all his grandees. The girl
was by the roadside, collecting sand in a bag. "What are you going to do
with that sand?" asked the prince. "Make thread," said she. "But who
ever made thread out of sand?" "And who ever made boots out of stones?"
she rejoined. The prince laughed in his sleeve, prepared a great
wedding, and married the girl to his son. Soon after, another prince
wrote him a letter, saying, "Do not let us be fighting and killing, but
let us guess riddles. If you guess all mine, I will be your subject; if
you fail, I will take all your having." They were a whole year at the
riddles. The other prince "knew three words more," and threw ours into a
deep dungeon. From the depths of this dungeon he contrived to send a
profoundly enigmatic dispatch to his daughter-in-law, who understood
everything, disguised herself as one of his friends, and proposed to the
victor to guess riddles again. The clever daughter-in-law "knew seven
words more" than he, took her father-in-law out of the dungeon, threw
his rival in, and had all the people and property of the vanquished
prince for her own.
This Siberian tale links securely those which precede it with a
remarkable group of stories, covering by representatives still extant,
or which may be shown to have existed, a large part of Asia and of
Europe. This group includes, besides a Wallachian and a Magyar tale from
recent popular tradition, one Sanskrit form; two Tibetan, derived from
Sanskrit; one Mongol, from Tibetan; three Arabic and one Persian, which
also had their source in Sanskrit; two Middle-Greek, derived from
Arabic, one of which is lost; and two old Russian, from lost
Middle-Greek versions.[16]
The gist of these narratives is that one king propounds tasks to
another; in the earlier ones, with the intent to discover whether his
brother monarch enjoys the aid of such counsellors as will make an
attack on him dangerous; in the later, with a demand that he shall
acquit himself satisfactorily, or suffer a forfeit: and the king is
delivered from a serious strait by the sagacity either of a minister
(whom he had ordered to be put to death, but who was still living in
prison, or at least seclusion) or of the daughter of his minister, who
came to her father's assistance. Which is the prior of these two last
inventions it would not be easy to say. These tasks are always such as
require ingenuity of one kind or another, whether in devising practical
experiments, in contriving subterfuges, in solving riddles, or even in
constructing compliments.[17]
One of the Tibetan tales, which, though dating from the beginning of
our era, will very easily be recognized in the Siberian tradition of
this century, is to this effect. King Rabssaldschal had a rich minister,
who desired a suitable wife for his youngest son. A Brahman, his trusty
friend, undertook to find one. In the course of his search, which
extended through many countries, the Brahman saw one day a company of
five hundred maidens, who were making garlands to offer to Buddha. One
of these attracted his notice by her behavior, and impressed him
favorably by replies to questions which he put.[18] The Brahman made
proposals to her father in behalf of the minister's son. These were
accepted, and the minister went with a great train to fetch home the
bride. On the way back his life was twice saved by taking her advice,
and when she was domiciliated, she so surpassed her sisters-in-law in
housekeeping talents and virtues that everything was put under her
direction. Discord arose between the king of the country she had left
and Rabssaldschal, under whom she was now living. The former wished to
make trial whether the latter had an able and keen-witted minister or
not, and sent him two mares, dam and filly, exactly alike in appearance,
with the demand that he should distinguish them. Neither king nor
counsellor could discern any difference; but when the minister's
daughter heard of their difficulty, she said, "Nothing is easier. Tie
the two together and put grass before them; the mother will push the
best before the foal." This was done; the king decided accordingly, and
the hostile ambassador owned that he was right. Soon after, the foreign
prince sent two snakes, of the same size and form, and demanded which
was male, which female. The king and his advisers were again in a
quandary. The minister resorted to his daughter-in-law. She said, "Lay
them both on cotton-wool: the female will lie quiet, the male not; for
it is of the feminine nature to love the soft and the comfortable, which
the masculine cannot tolerate." They followed these directions; the king
gave his verdict, the ambassador acquiesced, the minister received
splendid presents. For a final trial the unfriendly king sent a long
stick of wood, of equal thickness, with no knots or marks, and asked
which was the under and which the upper end. No one could say. The
minister referred the question to his daughter. She answered, "Put the
stick into water: the root end will sink a little, the upper end float."
The experiment was tried; the king said to the ambassador, "This is the
upper end, this the root end," to which he assented, and great presents
were again given to the minister. The adverse monarch was convinced that
his only safe course was peace and conciliation, and sent his ambassador
back once more with an offering of precious jewels and of amity for the
future. This termination was highly gratifying to Rabssaldschal, who
said to his minister, How could you see through all these things? The
minister said, It was not I, but my clever daughter-in-law. When the
king learned this, he raised the young woman to the rank of his younger
sister.
The wise daughter is not found in the Sanskrit tale,[19] which also
differs from the Buddhist versions in this: that in the Sanskrit the
minister had become an object of displeasure to the king, and in
consequence had long been lying in prison when the crisis occurred which
rendered him indispensable, a circumstance which is repeated in the tale
of The Wise Heykar (Arabian Nights, Breslau transl., XIII, 73 ff,
Cabinet des Fées, XXXIX, 266 ff) and in the Life of Æsop. But The Clever
Wench reappears in another tale in the same Sanskrit collection (with
that express title), and gives her aid to her father, a priest, who has
been threatened with banishment by his king if he does not clear up a
dark matter within five days. She may also be recognized in Moradbak, in
Von der Hagen's 1001 Tag, VIII, 199 ff, and even in the minister's wife
in the story of The Wise Heykar.
The tasks of discriminating dam and filly and the root end from the tip
end of a stick, which occur both in the Tibetan tales and the
Shukasaptati, are found again, with unimportant changes, in the
Wallachian popular story, and the Hungarian, which in general resemble
the Arabic. Some of those in the Arabian tale and in the Life of Æsop
are of the same nature as the wit-trials in the Servian and German
popular tales, the story in the Gesta Romanorum, and the German and
English ballads. The wise Heykar, e.g., is required to sew together a
burst mill-stone. He hands the king a pebble, requesting him first to
make an awl, a file, and scissors out of that. The king of Egypt tells
Æsop, the king of Babylon's champion sage, that when his mares hear the
stallions neigh in Babylon, they cast their foal. Æsop's slaves are told
to catch a cat, and are set to scourging it before the Egyptian public.
Great offense is given, on account of the sacred character of the
animal, and complaint is made to the king, who sends for Æsop in a rage.
Æsop says his king has suffered an injury from this cat, for the night
before the cat had killed a fine fighting-cock of his. "Fie, Æsop!" says
the king of Egypt; "how could the cat go from Egypt to Babylon in one
night?" "Why not," replies Æsop, "as well as mares in Egypt hear the
stallions neigh in Babylon and cast their foal?"
The tales in the Shukasaptati and in the Dsanglun represent the object
of the sending of the tasks to be to ascertain whether the king retains
the capable minister through whom he has acquired supremacy. According
to the Arabian tale, and those derived from it, tribute is to be paid by
the king whose riddles are guessed, or by him who fails to guess. This
form of story, though it is a secondary one, is yet by no means late, as
is shown by the anecdote in Plutarch, Septem Sapientum Convivium (6),
itself probably a fragment of such a story, in which the king of the
Æthiops gives a task to Amasis, king of Egypt, with a stake of many
towns and cities. This task is the favorite one of draining [drinking]
all the water in the sea, which we have had in the Servian tale (it also
is in the Life of Æsop), and Bias gives the customary advice for dealing
with it.[20]
From the number of these wise virgins should not be excluded the king's
daughter in the Gesta Romanorum who guesses rightly among the riddles of
the three caskets and marries the emperor's son, though Bassanio has
extinguished her just fame: Madden's Old English Versions, p. 238, No
66; Collier, Shakspere's Library, II, 102.
The first three or four stanzas of #A-E# form the beginning of 'Lady
Isabel and the Elf-Knight,' and are especially appropriate to that
ballad, but not to this. The two last stanzas of #A#, #B#, make no kind
of sense here, and these at least, probably the opening verses as well,
must belong to some other and lost ballad. An elf setting tasks, or even
giving riddles, is unknown, I believe, in Northern tradition, and in no
form of this story, except the English, is a preternatural personage of
any kind the hero. Still it is better to urge nothing more than that the
elf is an intruder in this particular ballad, for riddle-craft is
practised by a variety of preternatural beings: notoriously by Odin,
Thor, the giant Vafþrúðnir, and the dwarf Alwíss in the Edda, and again
by a German "berggeist" (Ey, Harzmärchenbuch, p. 64, 'Die verwünschte
Prinzessin'), a Greek dragon (Hahn, Griechisebe u. Albanesische
Märchen, II, 210), the Russian rusalka, the Servian vila,[21] the Indian
rakshas. For example: a rusalka (water-nymph) pursues a pretty girl, and
says, I will give you three riddles: if you guess them, I will let you
go home to your father; if you do not, I shall take you with me. What
grows without a root? What runs without any object? What blooms without
any flower? She answers, Stones grow without a root; water runs without
any object; the fern blooms without any flower. These answers seem
satisfactory, as riddles go, but the ballad concludes (with an injustice
due to corruption?), "The girl did not guess the riddles: the rusalka
tickled her to death." (Wojcicki, Pieśni, I, 205.) A rakshas (ogre)
says he will spare a man's life if he can answer four questions, and
shall devour him if he cannot. What is cruel? What is most to the
advantage of a householder? What is love? What best accomplishes
difficult things? These questions the man answers, and confirms his
answers by tales, and gains the rakshas' good will. (Jacob, Hindoo
Tales, or the Adventures of Ten Princes, a translation of the Sanskrit
Dasakumaracharitam, p. 260 ff.)
The auld man in #J# is simply the "unco knicht" of #1 C#, #D#, over
again. He has clearly displaced the elf-knight, for the elf's attributes
of hill-haunting and magical music remain, only they have been
transferred to the lady. That the devil should supplant the knight, unco
or familiar, is natural enough. He may come in as the substitute of the
elfin knight because the devil is the regular successor to any heathen
sprite, or as the embodiment of craft and duplicity, and to give us the
pleasure of seeing him outwitted. We find the devil giving riddles, as
they are called (tasks), in the Grimms' K. u. H. märchen, No 125 (see
also the note in vol. III); Pröhle's K. u. V. märchen, No 19;
Vernaleken, Oesterreichische K. u. H. märchen, No 37. He also appears as
a riddle-monger in one of the best stories in the Golden Legend. A
bishop, who was especially devoted to St Andrew, was tempted by Satan
under the semblance of a beautiful woman, and was all but lost, when a
loud knocking was heard at the door. A pilgrim demanded admittance. The
lady, being asked her pleasure about this, recommended that three
questions should be put to the stranger, to show whether he were fit to
appear in such presence. Two questions having been answered
unexceptionably, the fiend proposed a third, which was meant to be a
clincher: How far is it from earth to heaven? "Go back to him that sent
you," said the pilgrim (none other than St Andrew) to the messenger,
"and say that he himself knows best, for he measured the distance when
he fell." _Antiquus hostis de medio evanuit._ Much the same is related
in the legend of St Bartholomew, and, in a Slovenian ballad, of St
Ulrich, who interposes to save the Pope from espousing Satan in
disguise.[22]
#J#, #K#, #L#, have completely lost sight of the original story.
Translated, after #A#, #C#, and #D#, in Grundtvig's Engelske og skotske
Folkeviser, p. 251; R. Warrens, Schottische Lieder der Vorzeit, p. 8;
Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen Alt-Englands, No 54.
A
A broadside in black letter, "printed, I suppose," says
Pinkerton, "about 1670," bound up with five other pieces
at the end of a copy of Blind Harry's 'Wallace,' Edin.
1673, in the Pepysian Library.
My plaid awa, my plaid awa,
And ore the hill and far awa,
And far awa to Norrowa,
My plaid shall not be blown awa.
1
The elphin knight sits on yon hill,
Ba, ba, ba, lilli ba
He blaws his horn both lowd and shril.
The wind hath blown my plaid awa
2
He blowes it east, he blowes it west,
He blowes it where he lyketh best.
3
'I wish that horn were in my kist,
Yea, and the knight in my armes two.'
4
She had no sooner these words said,
When that the knight came to her bed.
5
'Thou art over young a maid,' quoth he,
'Married with me thou il wouldst be.'
6
'I have a sister younger than I,
And she was married yesterday.'
7
'Married with me if thou wouldst be,
A courtesie thou must do to me.
8
'For thou must shape a sark to me,
Without any cut or heme,' quoth he.
9
'Thou must shape it knife-and-sheerlesse,
And also sue it needle-threedlesse.'
10
'If that piece of courtesie I do to thee,
Another thou must do to me.
11
'I have an aiker of good ley-land,
Which lyeth low by yon sea-strand.
12
'For thou must eare it with thy horn,
So thou must sow it with thy corn.
13
'And bigg a cart of stone and lyme,
Robin Redbreast he must trail it hame.
14
'Thou must barn it in a mouse-holl,
And thrash it into thy shoes soll.
15
'And thou must winnow it in thy looff,
And also seck it in thy glove.
16
'For thou must bring it over the sea,
And thou must bring it dry home to me.
17
'When thou hast gotten thy turns well done,
Then come to me and get thy sark then.'
18
'I'l not quite my plaid for my life;
It haps my seven bairns and my wife.'
The wind shall not blow my plaid awa
19
'My maidenhead I'l then keep still,
Let the elphin knight do what he will.'
The wind's not blown my plaid awa
B
A Collection of Curious Old Ballads, etc., p. 3. Partly
from an old copy in black letter, and partly from the
recitation of an old lady.
My plaid awa, my plaid awa,
And owre the hills and far awa,
And far awa to Norrowa,
My plaid shall not be blawn awa.
1
The Elphin knight sits on yon hill,
Ba, ba, ba, lillie ba
He blaws his horn baith loud and shrill.
The wind hath blawn my plaid awa
2
He blaws it east, he blaws it west,
He blaws it where he liketh best.
3
'I wish that horn were in my kist,
Yea, and the knight in my arms niest.'
4
She had no sooner these words said,
Than the knight came to her bed.
5
'Thou art oer young a maid,' quoth he,
'Married with me that thou wouldst be.'
6
'I have a sister, younger than I,
And she was married yesterday.'
7
'Married with me if thou wouldst be,
A curtisie thou must do to me.
8
'It's ye maun mak a sark to me,
Without any cut or seam,' quoth he.
9
'And ye maun shape it, knife-, sheerless,
And also sew it needle-, threedless.'
10
'If that piece of courtisie I do to thee,
Another thou must do to me.
11
'I have an aiker of good ley land,
Which lyeth low by yon sea strand.
12
'It's ye maun till 't wi your touting horn,
And ye maun saw 't wi the pepper corn.
13
'And ye maun harrow 't wi a thorn,
And hae your wark done ere the morn.
14
'And ye maun shear it wi your knife,
And no lose a stack o 't for your life.
15
'And ye maun stack it in a mouse hole,
And ye maun thrash it in your shoe sole.
16
'And ye maun dight it in your loof,
And also sack it in your glove.
17
'And thou must bring it over the sea,
Fair and clean and dry to me.
18
'And when that ye have done your wark,
Come back to me, and ye'll get your sark.'
19
'I'll not quite my plaid for my life;
It haps my seven bairns and my wife.'
20
'My maidenhead I'll then keep still,
Let the elphin knight do what he will.'
C
Kinloch's A. S. Ballads, p. 145. From the recitation of M.
Kinnear, a native of Mearnsshire, 23 Aug., 1826.
1
There stands a knicht at the tap o yon hill,
Oure the hills and far awa
He has blawn his horn loud and shall.
The cauld wind's blawn my plaid awa
2
'If I had the horn that I hear blawn,
And the knicht that blaws that horn!'
3
She had na sooner thae words said,
Than the elfin knicht cam to her side.
4
'Are na ye oure young a may
Wi onie young man doun to lie?'
5
'I have a sister younger than I,
And she was married yesterday.'
6
'Married wi me ye sall neer be nane
Till ye mak to me a sark but a seam.
7
'And ye maun shape it knife-, sheer-less,
And ye maun sew it needle-, threed-less.
8
'And ye maun wash it in yon cistran,
Whare water never stood nor ran.
9
'And ye maun dry it on yon hawthorn,
Whare the sun neer shon sin man was born.'
10
'Gin that courtesie I do for thee,
Ye maun do this for me.
11
'Ye'll get an acre o gude red-land
Atween the saut sea and the sand.
12
'I want that land for to be corn,
And ye maun aer it wi your horn.
13
'And ye maun saw it without a seed,
And ye maun harrow it wi a threed.
14
'And ye maun shear it wi your knife,
And na tyne a pickle o't for your life.
15
'And ye maun moue it in yon mouse-hole
And ye maun thrash it in your shoe-sole.
16
'And ye maun fan it wi your luves,
And ye maun sack it in your gloves.
17
'And ye maun bring it oure the sea,
Fair and clean and dry to me.
18
'And whan that your wark is weill deen,
Yese get your sark without a seam.'
D
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 296.
1
The Elfin knight stands on yon hill,
Blaw, blaw, blaw winds, blaw
Blawing his horn loud and shrill.
And the wind has blawin my plaid awa
2
'If I had yon horn in my kist,
And the bonny laddie here that I luve best!
3
'I hae a sister eleven years auld,
And she to the young men's bed has made bauld.
4
'And I mysell am only nine,
And oh! sae fain, luve, as I woud be thine.'
5
'Ye maun make me a fine Holland sark,
Without ony stitching or needle wark.
6
'And ye maun wash it in yonder well,
Where the dew never wat, nor the rain ever fell.
7
'And ye maun dry it upon a thorn
That never budded sin Adam was born.'
8
'Now sin ye've askd some things o me,
It's right I ask as mony o thee.
9
'My father he askd me an acre o land,
Between the saut sea and the strand.
10
'And ye maun plow 't wi your blawing horn,
And ye maun saw 't wi pepper corn.
11
'And ye maun harrow 't wi a single tyne,
And ye maun shear 't wi a sheep's shank bane.
12
'And ye maun big it in the sea,
And bring the stathle dry to me.
13
'And ye maun barn 't in yon mouse hole,
And ye maun thrash 't in your shee sole.
14
'And ye maun sack it in your gluve,
And ye maun winno 't in your leuve.
15
'And ye maun dry 't without candle or coal,
And grind it without quirn or mill.
16
'Ye'll big a cart o stane and lime,
Gar Robin Redbreast trail it syne.
17
'When ye've dune, and finishd your wark,
Ye'll come to me, luve, and get your sark.'
E
Motherwell's MS., p. 492.
1
The Elfin Knight sits on yon hill,
Ba ba lilly ba
Blowing his horn loud and shill.
And the wind has blawn my plaid awa
2
'I love to hear that horn blaw;
I wish him [here] owns it and a'.'
3
That word it was no sooner spoken,
Than Elfin Knight in her arms was gotten.
4
'You must mak to me a sark,
Without threed, sheers or needle wark.'
F
Kinloch MSS, I, 75. From Mary Barr.
1
'Did ye ever travel twist Berwick and Lyne?
Sober and grave grows merry in time
There ye'll meet wi a handsome young dame,
Ance she was a true love o mine.
2
'Tell her to sew me a holland sark,
And sew it all without needle-wark:
And syne we'll be true lovers again.
3
'Tell her to wash it at yon spring-well,
Where neer wind blew, nor yet rain fell.
4
'Tell her to dry it on yon hawthorn,
That neer sprang up sin Adam was born.
5
'Tell her to iron it wi a hot iron,
And plait it a' in ae plait round.'
6
'Did ye ever travel twixt Berwick and Lyne?
There ye'll meet wi a handsome young man,
Ance he was a true lover o mine.
7
'Tell him to plough me an acre o land
Betwixt the sea-side hot and the sea-sand,
And syne we'll be true lovers again.
8
'Tell him to saw it wi ae peck o corn,
And harrow it a' wi ae harrow tine.
9
'Tell him to shear it wi ae hook-tooth,
And carry it hame just into his loof.
10
'Tell him to stack it in yon mouse-hole,
And thrash it a' just wi his shoe-sole.
11
'Tell him to dry it on yon ribless kiln,
And grind it a' in yon waterless miln.
12
Tell this young man, whan he's finished his wark,
He may come to me, and hese get his sark.'
G
Gammer Gurten's Garland, p. 3, ed. 1810.
1
'Can you make me a cambrick shirt,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Without any seam or needle work?
And you shall be a true lover of mine
2
'Can you wash it in yonder well,
Where never sprung water nor rain ever fell?
3
'Can you dry it on yonder thorn,
Which never bore blossom since Adam was born?'
4
'Now you have askd me questions three,
I hope you'll answer as many for me.
5
'Can you find me an acre of land
Between the salt water and the sea sand?
6
'Can you plow it with a ram's horn,
And sow it all over with one pepper corn?
7
'Can you reap it with a sickle of leather,
And bind it up with a peacock's feather?
8
'When you have done, and finishd your work,
Then come to me for your cambrick shirt.'
H
Motherwell's MS., p. 92.
1
'Come, pretty Nelly, and sit thee down by me,
Every rose grows merry wi thyme
And I will ask thee questions three,
And then thou wilt be a true lover of mine.
2
'Thou must buy me a cambrick smock
Without any stitch of needlework.
3
'Thou must wash it in yonder strand,
Where wood never grew and water neer ran.
4
'Thou must dry it on yonder thorn,
Where the sun never shined on since Adam was formed.'
5
'Thou hast asked me questions three;
Sit down till I ask as many of thee.
6
'Thou must buy me an acre of land
Betwixt the salt water, love, and the sea-sand.
7
'Thou must plow it wi a ram's horn,
And sow it all over wi one pile o corn.
8
'Thou must shear it wi a strap o leather,
And tie it all up in a peacock feather.
9
'Thou must stack it in the sea,
And bring the stale o 't hame dry to me.
10
'When my love's done, and finished his work,
Let him come to me for his cambric smock.'
I
Motherwell's MS., p. 103. From the recitation of John
McWhinnie, collier, Newtown Green, Ayr.
1
A lady wonned on yonder hill,
Hee ba and balou ba
And she had musick at her will.
And the wind has blown my plaid awa
2
Up and cam an auld, auld man,
Wi his blue bonnet in his han.
3
'I will ask ye questions three;
Resolve them, or ye'll gang wi me.
4
'Ye maun mak to me a sark,
It maun be free o woman's wark.
5
'Ye maun shape it knife-sheerless,
And ye maun sew it needle-threedless.
6
'Ye maun wash it in yonder well,
Whare rain nor dew has ever fell.
7
'Ye maun dry it on yonder thorn,
Where leaf neer grew since man was born.'
8
'I will ask ye questions three;
Resolve them, or ye'll neer get me.
9
'I hae a rig o bonnie land
Atween the saut sea and the sand.
10
'Ye maun plow it wi ae horse bane,
And harrow it wi ae harrow pin.
11
'Ye maun shear 't wi a whang o leather,
And ye maun bind 't bot strap or tether.
12
'Ye maun stack it in the sea,
And bring the stale hame dry to me.
13
'Ye maun mak a cart o stane,
And yoke the wren and bring it hame.
14
'Ye maun thresh't atween your lufes,
And ye maun sack't atween your thies.'
15
'My curse on those wha learnëd thee;
This night I weend ye'd gane wi me.'
J
Communicated by Rev. F. D. Huntington, Bishop of Western
New York, as sung to him by his father in 1828, at Hadley,
Mass.; derived from a rough, roystering "character" in the
town.
1
Now you are a-going to Cape Ann,
Follomingkathellomeday
Remember me to the self-same man.
Ummatiddle, ummatiddle, ummatallyho, tallyho, follomingkathellomeday
2
Tell him to buy me an acre of land
Between the salt-water and the sea-sand.
3
Tell him to plough it with a ram's horn,
Tell him to sow it with one peppercorn.
4
Tell him to reap it with a penknife,
And tell him to cart it with two mice.
5
Tell him to cart it to yonder new barn
That never was built since Adam was born.
6
Tell him to thrash it with a goose quill,
Tell him to fan it with an egg-shell.
7
Tell the fool, when he's done his work,
To come to me, and he shall have his shirt.
K
Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England, 6th ed., p. 109, No
171.
1
My father left me three acres of land,
Sing ivy, sing ivy
My father left me three acres of land.
Sing holly, go whistle and ivy
2
I ploughed it with a ram's horn,
And sowed it all over with one pepper corn.
3
I harrowed it with a bramble bush,
And reaped it with my little penknife.
4
I got the mice to carry it to the barn,
And thrashed it with a goose's quill.
5
I got the cat to carry it to the mill;
The miller he swore he would have her paw,
And the cat she swore she would scratch his face.
#L#
Notes and Queries, 1st S., VII, 8. Signed D.
1
My father gave me an acre of land,
Sing ivy, sing ivy
My father gave me an acre of land.
Sing green bush, holly and ivy
2
I ploughd it with a ram's horn.
3
I harrowd it with a bramble.
4
I sowd it with a pepper corn.
5
I reapd it with my penknife.
6
I carried it to the mill upon the cat's back.
* * * * * * *
7
I made a cake for all the king's men.
* * * * *
#A.#
_The verses here prefaced to the ballad are appended to
the last stanza in the broadside._ _For_ Norrowa, _v. 3,
Pinkerton has_ To-morrow. 9^1, needle and sheerlesse.
#B.#
'A Proper New Ballad entitled The Wind hath blawn my Plaid
awa, or a Discourse between a Young Woman and the Elphin
Knight. To be sung with its own proper tune.'
"This ballad is printed partly from an old copy in black
letter, and partly from the recitation of an old lady,
which appears to be the Scottish version, and is here
chiefly adhered to."
#D.#
3^2. hae made.
9^1. askd _should perhaps be_ left, _or_ gave, _as in_
#K^1#, #L^1#.
#E.#
_Burden_^2, _in MS._, 1, blown her; 2, 3, blawn her; 4,
blawn my.
2^1, blow;
2^2, and a.
#H.#
1^1. He speaks, _in the margin of MS_.
_Burden_^1, _time in margin_.
5^1. Maid speaks, _in margin_.
#I.#
_Not divided regularly into stanzas in the MS._
4^2. needlewark _in margin_.
10^1. shin? _in margin_.
#L.#
_After_ 6: "Then follows some more which I forget, but I
think it ends thus."
[13] All that was required of the burden, Mr Chappell kindly writes me,
was to support the voice by harmonious notes under the melody; it was
not sung _after_ each half of the stanza, or after the stanza, and it
was heard separately only when the voices singing the air stopped. Even
the Danish ballads exhibit but a few cases of these "burden-stems," as
Grundwig calls them: see Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, II, 221, B 1; 295, B
1; 393, A 1: III, 197, D; 470, A. Such burden-stems are, however, very
common in Icelandic ballads. They are, for the most part, of a different
metre from the ballad, and very often not of the same number of lines as
the ballad stanza. A _part_ of the burden stem would seem to be taken
for the refrain; as Íslenzk Fornkvæði, I, 30, of four verses, 1, 2, 4;
129, of two, the last half of the first and all the second; 194, of
four, the last; 225, of five, the last two; II, 52, of five, the second
and last two.
In later times the Danish stev-stamme was made to conform to the metre
of the ballad, and sung as the first stanza, the last line perhaps
forming the burden. Compare the stev-stamme, Grundwig, III, 470, with
the first stanza of the ballad at p. 475. If not so changed, says
Grundtvig, it dropped away. Lyngbye, at the end of his Færöiske Qvæder,
gives the music of a ballad which he had heard sung. The whole stem is
sung first, and then repeated as a burden at the end of every verse. The
modern way, judging by Berggreen, Folke-Sange og Melodier, 3d ed., I,
352, 358, is simply to sing the whole stem after each verse, and so says
Grundtvig, III, 200, D. The whole stem is appended to the last stanza
(where, as usual, the burden, which had been omitted after stanza 1, is
again expressed) in the Færöe ballad in Grundtvig, III, 199, exactly as
in our broadside, or in Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. iii. I
must avow myself to be very much in the dark as to the exact relation of
stem and burden.
[14] Grundtvig has noticed the resemblance of G.R. 64 and the
ballad.--Much of what follows is derived from the admirable Benfey's
papers, 'Die kluge Dirne, Die indischen Märchen von den klugen
Räthsellösern, und ihre Verbreitung über Asien und Europa,' Ausland,
1859, p. 457, 486, 511, 567, 589, in Nos 20, 21, 22, 24, 25.
[15] Ragnar Loðbrók (Saga, c. 4, Rafn, Fornaldar Sögur, I, 245), as
pointed out by the Grimms, notes to No 94, requires Kraka (Aslaug) to
come to him clothed and not clothed, fasting and not fasting, alone and
not without a companion. She puts on a fishing net, bites a leek, and
takes her dog with her. References for the very frequent occurrence of
this feature may be found in Oesterley's note to Gesta Romanorum, No
124, at p. 732.
[16] Benfey, Das Ausland, 1859, p. 459. The versions referred to are:
Shukasaptati (Seventy Tales of a Parrot), 47th and 48th night; the
Buddhist Kanjur, Vinaya, III, fol. 71-83, and Dsanglun, oder der Weise
u. der Thor, also from the Kanjur, translated by I.J. Schmidt, c. 23;
the Mongol translation of Dsanglun [see Popow, Mongolische
Chrestomathie, p. 19, Schiefner's preface to Radloff, I, xi, xii]; an
imperfect Singhalese version in Spence Hardy's Manual of Buddhism, p.
220, 'The History of Wisákhá;' 'Geschichte des weisen Heykar,' 1001
Nacht, Habicht, v. d. Hagen u. Schall, XIII, 71, ed. 1840; 'Histoire de
Sinkarib et de ses deux Visirs,' Cabinet des Fées, XXXIX, 266 (Persian);
two old Russian translations of Greek tales derived from Arabic, Pypin,
'in the Papers of the Second Division of the Imperial Acad. of Sciences,
St Petersburg, 1858, IV, 63-85;' Planudes, Life of Æsop; A. and A.
Schott, Walachische Mæhrchen, p. 125, No 9, 'Vom weissen und vom rothen
Kaiser;' Erdélyi, Népdalok és Mondák, III, 262, No 8, 'The Little Boy
with the Secret and his Little Sword.' To these is to be added,
'L'Histoire de Moradbak,' Caylus, Nouveaux Contes Orientaux, Œuvres
Badines, VII, 289 ff, Cabinet des Fées, XXV, 9-406 (from the Turkish?).
In the opinion of Benfey, it is in the highest degree likely, though not
demonstrable, that the Indian tale antedates our era by several
centuries. Ausland, p. 511; see also pp. 487, 459.
[17] Ingenuity is one of the six transcendental virtues of
Mahāyāna Buddhism. Schlagintweit, Buddhism in Tíbet, p. 36.
[18] The resemblance to the Siberian tale is here especially striking.
[19] The Shukasaptati, in the form in which we have them, are supposed
to date from about the 6th century, and are regarded as abridgments of
longer tales. The Vinaya probably took a permanent shape as early as the
beginning of the Christian era. As already remarked, there is scarcely a
doubt that the Indian story is some centuries older still.
[20] Amasis in return (8) puts some of the questions which we are apt to
think of as peculiarly mediæval: What is oldest? What is most beautiful,
biggest, wisest, strongest? etc. Two of these we have had in Zingerle's
story. They are answered in a commonplace way by the Æthiop, with more
refinement by Thales. Seven similar questions were propounded by David
to his sons, to determine who was worthiest to succeed him, and answered
by Solomon, according to an Arabian writer of the 14th century: Rosenöl,
I, 167. Amasis also sent a victim to Bias (2), and asked him to cut out
the best and worst of the flesh. Bias cut out the tongue. Here the two
anticipate the Anglo-Saxon Salomon and Saturn: "Tell me what is best and
worst among men." "I tell thee word is best and worst:" Kemble, p. 188,
No 37; Adrian and Ritheus, p. 204, No 43; and Bedæ Collectanea, p. 326.
This is made into a very long story in the Life of Æsop, 11. See other
examples in Knust, Mittheilungen aus dem Eskurial, p. 326 f, note b, and
Nachtrag, p. 647; Oesterley's Kirchhof, V, 94, note to 3, 129; and
Landsberger, Die Fabeln des Sophos, CX, ff. We may add that Plutarch's
question, Which was first, the bird or the egg? (Quæst. Conviv. l. 2, q.
3), comes up again in The Demaundes Joyous, No 41, Kemble's Salomon and
Saturn, p. 290.
[21] Afanasief, Poetic Views of the Slavonians about Nature, I, 25. The
poludnitsa seems to belong to the same class: Afanasief, III, 76;
Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 147.
[22] The legend of St Andrew in Legenda Aurea, Grässe, cap. II, 9, p. 19
ff; also in the Fornsvenskt Legendarium, I, 143 ff; Zambrini, Leggende
Inedite, II, 94 ff; Pitré, Canti pop. Siciliani, II, 232 ff: that of St
Bartholomew, Grässe, p. 545, cap. CXXIII, 5, and in a German Passional,
Mone's Anzeiger, 1839, VIII, col. 319 f: that of St Ulrich in Achazel
and Korytko, I, 76, 'Svéti Ureh,' translated by A. Grün, Volkslieder aus
Krain, p. 136 ff. The third question and answer are in all the same. St
Serf also has the credit of having baffled the devil by answering occult
questions in divinity: Wintown's Scottish Chronicle, I, 131, V, 1238 ff,
first pointed out by Motherwell, Minstrelsy, p. lxxiv, who besides cites
the legend of St Andrew.
3
THE FAUSE KNIGHT UPON THE ROAD
#A.# 'The Fause Knight upon the Road,' Motherwell's
Minstrelsy, Introduction, p. lxxiv.
#B.# 'The False Knight,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Appendix, Musick, p. xxiv.
This singular ballad is known only through Motherwell. The opening
stanza of a second version is given by the editor of the music, Mr.
Blaikie, in the Appendix to the Minstrelsy. The idea at the bottom of
the piece is that the devil will carry off the wee boy if he can nonplus
him. So, in certain humorous stories, a fool wins a princess by
dumfounding her: e.g., Halliwell's Popular Rhymes and Nursery-Tales, p.
32; Von der Hagen's Gesammtabenteuer, No 63, iii, 179; Asbjørnsen og
Moe, Norske Folkeeventyr, No 4. But here the boy always gets the last
word. (See further on, under 'Captain Wedderburn's Courtship.')
An extremely curious Swedish ballad of the same description, from the
Lappfiord, Finland, with the substitution of an old crone, possibly a
witch, and clearly no better than one of the wicked, for the false
knight, is given by Oskar Rancken in Några Prof af Folksång och Saga i
det svenska Österbotten, p. 25, No 10. It is a point in both that the
replicant is a wee boy (gossen, som liten var).
1
'Why are you driving over my field?' said the carlin:
'Because the way lies over it,' answered the boy, who was a little
fellow.
2
'I will cut [hew] your traces,' said etc.:
'Yes, you hew, and I'll build,' answered etc.
3
'I wish you were in the wild wood:'
'Yes, you in, and I outside.'
4
'I wish you were in the highest tree-top:'
'Yes, you up in the top, and I at the roots.'
5
'I wish you were in the wild sea:'
'Yes, you in the sea, and I in a boat.'
6
'I'll bore a hole in your boat:'
'Yes, you bore, and I'll plug.'
7
'I wish you were in hell:'
'Yes, you in, and I outside.'
8
'I wish you were in heaven:'
'Yes, I in, and you outside.'
Chambers, in his Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 66 of the new edition,
gives, without a word of explanation, a piece, 'Harpkin,' which seems to
have been of the same character, but now sounds only like a
"flyting."[23] The first stanza would lead us to expect that Harpkin is
to be a form of the Elfin Knight of the preceding ballad, but Fin is
seen to be the uncanny one of the two by the light of the other ballads.
Finn (Fin) is an ancestor of Woden, a dwarf in Völuspá 16 (19), and also
a trold (otherwise a giant), who is induced by a saint to build a
church: Thiele, Danske Folkesagn, I, 45, Grimm, Mythologie, p. 455. The
name is therefore diabolic by many antecedents.
HARPKIN.
1
Harpkin gaed up to the hill,
And blew his horn loud and shrill,
And by came Fin.
2
'What for stand you there?' quo Fin:
'Spying the weather,' quo Harpkin.
3
'What for had you your staff on your shouther?' quo Fin:
'To haud the cauld frae me,' quo Harpkin.
4
'Little cauld will that haud frae you,' quo Fin:
'As little will it win through me,' quo Harpkin.
5
'I came by your door,' quo Fin:
'It lay in your road,' quo Harpkin.
6
'Your dog barkit at me,' quo Fin:
'It's his use and custom,' quo Harpkin.
7
'I flang a stane at him,' quo Fin:
'I'd rather it had been a bane,' quo Harpkin.
8
'Your wife's lichter,' quo Fin:
'She'll clim the brae the brichter,' quo Harpkin.
9
'Of a braw lad bairn,' quo Fin:
'There'll be the mair men for the king's wars,' quo Harpkin.
10
'There's a strae at your beard,' quo Fin:
'I'd rather it had been a thrave,' quo Harpkin.
11
'The ox is eating at it,' quo Fin:
'If the ox were i the water,' quo Harpkin.
12
'And the water were frozen,' quo Fin:
'And the smith and his fore-hammer at it,' quo Harpkin.
13
'And the smith were dead,' quo Fin:
'And another in his stead,' quo Harpkin.
14
'Giff, gaff,' quo Fin:
'Your mou's fou o draff,' quo Harpkin.
The peit (peat) in st. 3, below, as I am informed by Dr Davidson, is the
wee boy's contribution to the school firing.
A
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Introduction, p. lxxiv. From
Galloway.
1
'O whare are ye gaun?'
Quo the fause knicht upon the road:
'I'm gaun to the scule,'
Quo the wee boy, and still he stude.
2
'What is that upon your back? ' quo etc.
'Atweel it is my bukes,' quo etc.
3
'What's that ye've got in your arm?'
'Atweel it is my peit.'
4
'Wha's aucht they sheep?'
'They are mine and my mither's.'
5
'How monie o them are mine?'
'A' they that hae blue tails.'
6
'I wiss ye were on yon tree:'
'And a gude ladder under me.'
7
'And the ladder for to break:'
'And you for to fa down.'
8
'I wiss ye were in yon sie:'
'And a gude bottom under me.'
9
'And the bottom for to break:'
'And ye to be drowned.'
B
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xxiv, No xxxii.
'O whare are ye gaun?' quo the false knight,
And false, false was his rede:
'I'm gaun to the scule,' says the pretty little boy,
And still, still he stude.
[23] At the last moment I come upon this: "The only safeguard against
the malice of witches is 'to flight wi dem,' that is, draw them into a
controversy and scold them roundly:" (Mrs Saxby, in an interesting
contribution of folk-lore from Unst, Shetland, in The Leisure Hour, for
March 27, 1880, p. 199.) This view, which has apparently affected
'Harpkin,' is clearly a modern misunderstanding. Let no one trust to
scolding for foiling a witch, unless he "knows more words."
4
LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT
#A. a.# 'The Gowans sae gay,' Buchan's Ballads of the
North of Scotland, I, 22. #b.# 'Aye as the Gowans grow
gay,' Motherwell's MS., p. 563.
#B.# 'The Water o Wearie's Well.' #a.# Buchan's MSS, II,
fol. 80. #b.# Buchan's B. N. S., II, 201. #c.#
Motherwell's MS., p. 561. #d.# 'Wearie's Wells,' Harris
MS., No 19.
#C. a.# 'May Colven,' Herd's MSS, I, 166. #b.# 'May
Colvin,' Herd's Scottish Songs, 1776, I, 93. #c.# 'May
Colvin, or, False Sir John,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p.
67.
#D. a.# 'May Collin,' Sharpe's Ballad Book, No 17, p. 45.
#b.# 'Fause Sir John and May Colvin,' Buchan, B. N. S.,
II, 45. #c.# 'May Collean,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Appendix, p. xxi.
#E.# 'The Outlandish Knight,' Dixon, Ancient Poems,
Ballads, etc., p. 74 == Bell, Ancient Poems, Ballads,
etc., p. 61.
#F.# 'The False Knight Outwitted,' Roxburgh Ballads,
British Museum, III, 449.
Of all ballads this has perhaps obtained the widest circulation. It is
nearly as well known to the southern as to the northern nations of
Europe. It has an extraordinary currency in Poland. The Germans, Low and
High, and the Scandinavians, preserve it, in a full and evidently
ancient form, even in the tradition of this generation. Among the Latin
nations it has, indeed, shrunk to very meagre proportions, and though
the best English forms are not without ancient and distinctive marks,
most of these have been eliminated, and the better ballads are very
brief.
#A# has but thirteen two-line stanzas. An elf-knight, by blowing his
horn, inspires Lady Isabel with love-longing. He appears on her first
breathing a wish for him, and induces her to ride with him to the
greenwood.[24] Arrived at the wood, he bids her alight, for she is come
to the place where she is to die. He had slain seven kings' daughters
there, and she should be the eighth. She persuades him to sit down, with
his head on her knee, lulls him asleep with a charm, binds him with his
own sword-belt, and stabs him with his own dagger, saying, If seven
kings' daughters you have slain, lie here a husband to them all.
#B#, in fourteen four-line stanzas, begins unintelligibly with a bird
coming out of a bush for water, and a king's daughter sighing, "Wae 's
this heart o mine." A personage not characterized, but evidently of the
same nature as the elf-knight in #A#, lulls everybody but this king's
daughter asleep with his harp,[25] then mounts her behind him, and rides
to a piece of water called Wearie's Well. He makes her wade in up to her
chin; then tells her that he has drowned seven kings' daughters here,
and she is to be the eighth. She asks him for one kiss before she dies,
and, as he bends over to give it, pitches him from his saddle into the
water, with the words, Since ye have drowned seven here, I'll make you
bridegroom to them all.[26]
#C# was first published by David Herd, in the second edition of his
Scottish Songs, 1776, and afterwards by Motherwell, "collated" with a
copy obtained from recitation. #D#,[27] #E#, #F# are all broadside or
stall copies, and in broadside style. #C#, #D#, #E#, #F# have nearly the
same story. False Sir John, a knight from the south country [west
country, north lands], entices May Colven, #C#, #D# [a king's daughter,
#C# 16, #E# 16; a knight's daughter, Polly, #F# 4, 9], to ride off with
him, employing, in #D#, a charm which he has stuck in her sleeve. At the
knight's suggestion, #E#, #F#, she takes a good sum of money with her,
#D#, #E#, #F#. They come to a lonely rocky place by the sea [river-side,
#F#], and the knight bids her alight: he has drowned seven ladies here
[eight #D#, six #E#, #F#], and she shall be the next. But first she is
to strip off her rich clothes, as being too good to rot in the sea. She
begs him to avert his eyes, for decency's sake, and, getting behind him,
throws him into the water. In #F# he is absurdly sent for a sickle, to
crop the nettles on the river brim, and is pushed in while thus
occupied. He cries for help, and makes fair promises, #C#, #E#, but the
maid rides away, with a bitter jest [on his steed, #D#, leading his
steed, #E#, #F#], and reaches her father's house before daybreak. The
groom inquires in #D# about the strange horse, and is told that it is a
found one. The parrot asks what she has been doing, and is silenced with
a bribe; and when the father demands why he was chatting so early, says
he was calling to his mistress to take away the cat. Here #C#, #E#, #F#
stop, but #D# goes on to relate that the maid at once tells her parents
what has happened, and that the father rides off at dawn, under her
conduct, to find Sir John. They carry off the corpse, which lay on the
sands below the rocks, and bury it, for fear of discovery.
There is in Hone's Table Book, III, 130, ed. 1841, a _rifacimento_ by
Dixon of the common English broadside in what passes for old-ballad
style. This has been repeated in Richardson's Borderer's Table Book, VI,
367; in Dixon's Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p.
101; and, with alterations, additions, and omissions, in Sheldon's
Minstrelsy of the English Border, p. 194.
Jamieson (1814) had never met with this ballad in Scotland, at least in
anything like a perfect state; but he says that a tale to the same
effect, intermixed with scraps of verse, was familiar to him when a boy,
and that he afterwards found it, "in much the same state, in the
Highlands, in Lochaber and Ardnamurchan." According to the tradition
reported by Jamieson, the murderer had seduced the younger sister of his
wife, and was seeking to prevent discovery, a difference in the story
which might lead us to doubt the accuracy of Jamieson's recollection.
(Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 348.)
Stories like that of this ballad will inevitably be attached, and
perhaps more or less adapted, to localities where they become known. May
Collean, says Chambers, Scottish Ballads, p. 232, note, "finds locality
in that wild portion of the coast of Carrick (Ayrshire) which intervenes
betwixt Girvan and Ballantrae. Carlton Castle, about two miles to the
south of Girvan (a tall old ruin, situated on the brink of a bank which
overhangs the sea, and which gives title to Sir John Cathcart, Bart, of
Carlton), is affirmed by the country people, who still remember the
story with great freshness, to have been the residence of 'the fause Sir
John;' while a tall rocky eminence called Gamesloup, overhanging the sea
about two miles still further south, and over which the road passes in a
style terrible to all travellers, is pointed out as the place where he
was in the habit of drowning his wives, and where he was finally drowned
himself. The people, who look upon the ballad as a regular and proper
record of an unquestionable fact, farther affirm that May Collean was a
daughter of the family of Kennedy of Colzean," etc. Binyan's (Bunion)
Bay, in #D#, is, according to Buchan, the old name of the mouth of the
river Ugie.
Far better preserved than the English, and marked with very ancient and
impressive traits, is the Dutch ballad 'Halewijn,' which, not many years
ago, was extensively sung in Brabant and Flanders, and is still popular
as a broadside, both oral tradition and printed copies exhibiting
manifold variations. A version of this ballad (#A#) was communicated by
Willems to Mone's Anzeiger in 1836, col. 448 ff, thirty-eight two-line
stanzas, and afterwards appeared in Willems's Oude vlaemsche Liederen
(1848), No 49, p. 116, with some changes in the text and some various
readings. Uhland, I, 153, 74 D, gave the Anzeiger text, with one
correction. So Hoffmann, Niederländische Volkslieder, 2d ed., No 9, p.
39, but substituting for stanzas 19, 20 four stanzas from the margin of
O.v.L., and making other slighter changes. Baecker, Chants historiques
de la Flandre, No 9, p. 61, repeats Willems's second text, with one
careless omission and one transposition. Coussemaker, Chants populaires
des Flamands de France, No 45, p. 142, professes to give the text of
Oude vlaemsche Liederen, and does so nearly. Snellaert, Oude en nieuwe
Liedjes, 3d ed., 1864, No 55, p. 58, inserts seven stanzas in the place
of 33, 34 of O.v.L., and two after 35, making forty-five two- (or
three-) line stanzas instead of thirty-eight. These additions are also
found in an excessively corrupt form of the ballad (#B#), Hoffmann, No
10, p. 43, in which the stanzas have been uniformly extended to three
verses, to suit the air, which required the repetition of the second
line of the original stanza.
Heer Halewijn (#A#), like the English elf-knight, sang such a song that
those who heard it longed to be with him. A king's daughter asked her
father if she might go to Halewijn. No, he said; those who go that way
never come back [sixteen have lost their lives, #B#]. So said mother and
sister, but her brother's answer was, I care not where you go, so long
as you keep your honor. She dressed herself splendidly, took the best
horse from her father's stable, and rode to the wood, where she found
Halewijn waiting for her.[28] They then rode on further, till they came
to a gallows, on which many women were hanging. Halewijn says, Since you
are the fairest maid, choose your death [#B# 20 offers the choice
between hanging and the sword]. She calmly chooses the sword. "Only take
off your coat first, for a maid's blood spirts a great way, and it would
be a pity to spatter you." His head was off before his coat, but the
tongue still spake. This dialogue ensues:
'Go yonder into the corn,
And blow upon my horn,
That all my friends you may warn.'
'Into the corn I will not go,
And on your horn I will not blow:
A murderer's bidding I will not do.'
'Go yonder under the gallows-tree,
And fetch a pot of salve for me,
And rub my red neck lustily.'
'Under the gallows I will not go,
Nor will I rub your red neck, no,
A murderer's bidding I will not do.'
She takes the head by the hair and washes it in a spring, and rides back
through the wood. Half-way through she meets Halewijn's mother, who asks
after her son; and she tells her that he is gone hunting, that he will
never be seen again, that he is dead, and she has his head in her lap.
When she came to her father's gate, she blew the horn like any man.
And when the father heard the strain,
He was glad she had come back again.
Thereupon they held a feast,
The head was on the table placed.
Snellaert's copy and the modern three-line ballad have a meeting with
father, brother, sister, and mother successively. The maid's answer to
each of the first three is that Halewijn is amusing himself with sixteen
maids, or to that effect, but to the mother that he is dead, and she has
his head in her lap. The mother angrily replies, in #B#, that if she had
given this information earlier she would not have got so far on her way
home. The maid retorts, Wicked woman, you are lucky not to have been
served as your son; then rides, "like Judith wise," straight to her
father's palace, where she blows the horn blithely, and is received with
honor and love by the whole court.[29]
Another Flemish version (#C#) has been lately published under the title,
'Roland,' by which only, we are informed, is this particular form known
in Bruges and many parts of Flanders:[30] Chants populaires recueillis
à Bruges par Adolphe Lootens et J. M. E. Feys, No 37, p. 60, 183 vv, in
sixty-three stanzas, of two, three, four, or five lines. This text dates
from the last century, and is given with the most exact fidelity to
tradition. It agrees with #A# as to some main points, but differs not a
little as to others. The story sets out thus:
It was a bold Roland,
He loved a lass from England;
He wist not how to get her,
With reading or with writing,
With brawling or with fighting.
Roland has lost Halewyn's art of singing. Louise asks her father if she
may go to Roland, to the fair, as all her friends do. Her father
refuses: Roland is "een stoute kalant," a bad fellow that betrays pretty
maids; he stands with a drawn sword in his hand, and all his soldiers in
armor. The daughter says she has seen Roland more than once, and that
the tale about the drawn sword and soldiers is not true. This scene is
exactly repeated with mother and brother. Louise then tries her
shrift-father. He is easier, and does not care where she goes, provided
she keeps her honor and does not shame her parents. She tells father,
mother, and brother that she has leave from her confessor, makes her
toilet as in #A#, takes the finest horse in the stable, and rides to the
wood. There she successively meets Roland's father, mother, and brother,
each of whom asks her where she is going, and whether she has any right
to the crown she wears. To all she replies, Whether I have or not, be
off; I know you not. She does not encounter Roland in the wood, they do
not ride together, and there is no gallows-field. She enters Roland's
house, where he is lying abed. He bids her gather three rose-wreaths "at
his hands" and three at his feet; but when she approaches the foot of
the bed he rises, and offers her the choice to lose her honor or kneel
before the sword. She chooses the sword, advises him to spare his coat,
and, while he is taking it off, strikes off his head, all as in #A#. The
head speaks: Go under the gallows (of which we have heard nothing
hitherto), fetch a pot of salve, rub it on my wounds, and they shall
straight be well. She declines to follow a murderer's rede, or to learn
magic. The head bids her go under the blue stone and fetch a pot of
maidens-grease, which also will heal the wounds. This again she refuses
to do, in the same terms; then seizes the head by the hair, washes it in
a spring, and rides off with it through the wood, duly meeting Roland's
father, mother, and brother once more, all of whom challenge her, and to
all of whom she answers,
Roland your son is long ago dead;
God has his soul and I his head;
For in my lap here I have his head,
And with the blood my apron is red.
When she came back to the city the drums and the trumpets struck up.[31]
She stuck the head out of the window, and cried, "Now I am Roland's
bride!" She drew it in, and cried, "Now I am a heroine!"
#Danish.# Eleven versions of this ballad are known in Danish, seven of
which are given in Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, No 183, 'Kvindemorderen,'
#A-G#. Four more, #H-L#, are furnished by Kristensen, Jydske Folkeviser,
I, Nos 46, 47, 91; II, No 85. #A#, in forty-one two-line stanzas
(previously printed in Grundtvig's Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p.
233), is from a 16th century MS.; #B#, thirty stanzas, #C#,
twenty-four, #D#, thirty-seven, from MSS of the 17th century; #E#,
fifty-seven, from a broadside of the end of the 18th; #F#, thirty, from
one of the beginning of the 19th; and #G-L#, thirty-five, twenty-three,
thirty-one, twenty-six, thirty-eight stanzas, from recent oral
tradition.
The four older versions, and also #E#, open with some lines that occur
at the beginning of other ballads.[32] In #A# and #E#, and, we may add,
#G#, the maid is allured by the promise of being taken to a paradise
exempt from death and sorrow; #C#, #D#, #F# promise a train of handmaids
and splendid presents. All the versions agree very well as to the kernel
of the story. A false knight prevails upon a lady to elope with him, and
they ride to a wood [they simply meet in a wood, #H#, #K#]. He sets to
work digging a grave, which she says is too long for his [her] dog and
too narrow for his [her] horse [all but #F#, #H#]. She is told that the
grave is for her. He has taken away the life [and honor, #B#, #C#, #I#]
of eight maids, and she shall be the ninth. The eight maids become nine
kings' daughters in #E#, ten in #F#, nineteen in #G#, and in #E# and #F#
the hard choice is offered of death by sword, tree, or stream. In #A#,
#E#, #I#, #L# the knight bids the lady get her gold together before she
sets out with him, and in #D#, #H#, #K#, #L# he points out a little
knoll under which he keeps the gold of his previous victims. The maid
now induces the knight to lie down with his head in her lap, professing
a fond desire to render him the most homely of services[33] [not in #C#,
#G#, #I#, #K#]. He makes an express condition in #E#, #F#, #G#, #H#, #L#
that she shall not betray him in his sleep, and she calls Heaven to
witness that she will not. In #G# she sings him to sleep. He slept a
sleep that was not sweet. She binds him hand and foot, then cries, Wake
up! I will not betray you in sleep.[34] Eight you have killed; yourself
shall be the ninth. Entreaties and fair promises and pretences that he
had been in jest, and desire for shrift, are in vain. Woman-fashion she
drew his sword, but man-fashion she cut him down. She went home a maid.
#E#, #F#, #G#, however, do not end so simply. On her way home through
the wood [#E#], she comes upon a maid who is working gold, and who says,
The last time I saw that horse my brother rode it. She answers, Your
brother is dead, and will do no more murdering for gold; then turns her
horse, and sets the sister's bower on fire. Next she encounters seven
robbers on the heath, who recognize the horse as their master's, and are
informed of his death and of the end of his crimes. They ask about the
fire. She says it is an old pig-sty. She rides on, and they call to her
that she is losing her horse's gold shoe. But nothing can stop her; she
bids them pick it up and drink it in wine; and so comes home to her
father's. #F# has nothing of the sister; in place of seven robbers there
are nine of the robber's brothers, and the maid sets their house on
fire. #G# indulges in absurd extravagances: the heroine meets the
robber's sister with twelve fierce dogs, and then his twelve swains, and
cuts down both dogs and swains.
The names in the Danish ballads are, #A#, Ulver and Vænelil; #B#, Olmor,
or Oldemor, and Vindelraad; #C#, Hollemen and Vendelraad; #D#, Romor,
Reimord, or Reimvord, and the maid unnamed; #F#, Herr Peder and Liden
Kirsten; #H-L#, Ribold, Rigbold [#I#, Rimmelil] and Guldborg.
Four #Swedish# versions are known, all from tradition of this century.
#A#, 'Den Falske Riddaren,' twenty-three two-line stanzas, Arwidsson, 44
B, I, 301. #B#, 'Röfvaren Brun,' fifteen stanzas, Afzelius, 83, III, 97.
#C#, twenty-seven stanzas, Arwidsson, 44 A, I, 298. #D#, 'Röfvaren
Rymer,' sixteen stanzas, Afzelius, 82, III, 94. #A#, #B#, #D# have
resemblances, at the beginning, to the Ribold ballads, like the Danish
#A#, #B#, #E#, #G#, while the beginning of #C# is like the Danish #C#,
#D#, #F#. #A# has the grave-digging; there have been eight maids before;
the knight lays his head in the lady's lap for the same reason as in
most of the Danish ballads, and under the same assurance that he shall
not be betrayed in sleep; he is bound, and conscientiously waked before
his head is struck off; and the lady rides home to her father's. There
have been eight previous victims in #C#, and they king's daughters; in
#B#, eleven (maids); #D# says not how many, but, according to an
explanation of the woman that sang it, there were seven princesses. #C#,
#D#, like Danish #E#, #F#, #G#, make the maid encounter some of the
robber's family on the way home. By a misconception, as we perceive by
the Dutch ballad, she is represented as blowing the robber's horn. Seven
sisters come at the familiar sound to bury the murdered girl and share
the booty, but find that they have their brother to bury.
The woman has no name in any of the Swedish ballads. #A# calls the
robber "an outlandish man" (en man ifrån fremmande land), #B#, simple
Brun, #C#, a knight, and #D#, Riddaren Rymer, or Herr Rymer.
Of #Norwegian# versions, but two have been printed: #A#, 'Svein
Norðmann,' twenty two-line stanzas, Landstad, 69, p. 567; #B#,
'Rullemann og Hildeborg,' thirty stanzas, Landstad, 70, p. 571, both
from recent recitation. Bugge has communicated eight others to
Grundtvig. Both #A# and #B# have the paradise at the beginning, which is
found in Danish #A#, #E#, #G#, and Swedish #D#. In both the lady gets
her gold together while the swain is saddling his horse. They come to a
grave already dug, which in #B# is said to be made so very wide because
Rulleman has already laid nine maidens in it. The stanza in #A# which
should give the number is lost, but the reciter or singer put it at
seven or nine. The maid gets the robber into her power by the usual
artifice, with a slight variation in #B#. According to #A#, she rides
straight home to her father. #B#, like Danish #F#, has an encounter with
her false lover's [five] brothers. They ask, Where is Rullemann, thy
truelove? She answers, He is lying down, in the green mead, and bloody
is his bridal bed.
Of the unprinted versions obtained by Professor Bugge, two indicate that
the murderer's sleep was induced by a spell, as in English #A#. #F# 9
has,
Long time stood Gullbjör; to herself she thought,
May none of my _runes_ avail me ought?
And #H# 18, as also a variant to #B# 20, says it was a rune-slumber that
came over him. Only #G#, #H#, #I#, #K# give the number of the murdered
women: in #G#, #H#, eight, in #I#, nine, in #K#, five.
The names are, in #A#, Svein Norðmann and Guðbjörg; #B#, Rulleman and
Hildeborg [or Signe]; #C#, #D#, #E#, #F#, Svein Nórmann and Gullbjör
[Gunnbjör]; #G#, Rullemann and Kjersti; #H#, Rullball and Signelill;
#I#, Alemarken and Valerós; #K#, Rulemann and a fair maid.
Such information as has transpired concerning #Icelandic# versions of
this ballad is furnished by Grundtvig, IV, 4. The Icelandic form, though
curtailed and much injured, has shown tenacity enough to preserve itself
in a series of closely agreeing copies from the 17th century down. The
eldest, from a manuscript of 1665, runs thus:
1
Ása went along the street, she heard a sweet sound.
2
Ása went into the house, she saw the villain bound.
3
'Little Ása, loose me! I will not beguile thee.'
4
'I dare not loose thee, I know not whether thou'lt beguile me.'
5
'God almighty take note who deceives the other!'
6
She loosed the bands from his hand, the fetter from his foot.
7
'Nine lands have I visited, ten women I've beguiled;
8
'Thou art now the eleventh, I'll not let thee slip.'
A copy, from the beginning of the 18th century, has, in stanza 2, "Ása
went into the _wood_," a recent copy, "over the fields;" and stanza 3,
in the former, with but slight differences in all the modern copies,
reads,
'Welcome art thou, Ása maid! thou wilt mean to loose me.'
Some recent copies (there is one in Berggreen, Danske Folkesange, 2d
ed., I, 162) allow the maid to escape, adding,
9
'Wait for me a little space, whilst I go into the green wood.'
10
He waited for her a long time, but she never came back to him.
11
Ása took her white steed, of all women she rode most.
12
Ása went into a holy cell, never did she harm to man.
This is certainly one of the most important of the #German# ballads, and
additions are constantly making to a large number of known versions.
Excepting two broadsides of about 1560, and two copies from recitation
printed in 1778, all these, twenty-six in number, have been obtained
from tradition since 1800.[35] They are as follows: #A a#, 'Gert
Olbert,' 'Die Mörners Sang,' in Low German, as written down by William
Grimm, in the early years of this century, 61 vv, Reifferscheid, p. 161,
II. #A b#, "from the Münster region," communicated to Uhland by the
Baroness Annette von Droste-Hüllshof, 46 vv, Uhland, I, 151, No 74 C;
repeated in Mittler, No 79. #A c#, a fragment from the same source as
the preceding, and written down at the beginning of this century, 35 vv,
Reifferscheid, p. 161, I. #B#, 'Es wollt sich ein Markgraf ausreiten,'
from Bökendorf, Westphalia, as taken down by W. Grimm, in 1813, 41 vv,
Reifferscheid, p. 116. #C a#, 'Die Gerettete,' "from the Lower Rhine,"
twenty-six two-line stanzas, Zuccalmaglio, No 28, p. 66; Mittler, No 85.
#C b#, eleven two-line stanzas, Montanus (==Zuccalmaglio) Die deutschen
Volksfeste, p. 45. #D#, 'Von einem wackern Mägdlein, Odilia geheissen,'
etc., from the Rhine, 34 vv [Longard], No 24, p. 48. #E#, 'Schondilie,'
Menzenberg and Breitbach, 59 vv, Simrock, No 7, p. 19; Mittler, No 86.
#F#, 'Jungfrau Linnich,' communicated by Zuccalmaglio as from the Rhine
region, Berg and Mark, fourteen two-line stanzas, Erlach, IV, 598, and
Kretzschmer (nearly), No 92, p. 164; Mittler, No 87. #G a#, 'Ulinger,'
120 vv, Nuremberg broadside "of about 1555" (Böhme) in Wunderhorn, ed.
1857, IV, 101, Böhme, No 13^a, p. 56. #G b c#, Basel broadsides, "of
about 1570" (Böhme), and of 1605, in Uhland, No 74 A, I, 141; Mittler,
No 77. #H#, 'Adelger,' 120 vv, an Augsburg broadside, "of about 1560"
(Böhme), Uhland, No 74 B, I, 146; Böhme, No 13^b, p. 58; Mittler, No
76. #I#, 'Der Brautmörder,' in the dialect of the Kuhländchen (Northeast
Moravia and Austrian Silesia), 87 vv, Meinert, p. 61; Mittler, No 80.
#J#, 'Annele,' Swabian, from Hirrlingen and Obernau, 80 vv, Meier,
Schwäbische V. L., No 168, p. 298. #K#, another Swabian version, from
Hirrlingen, Immenried, and many other localities, 80 vv, Scherer,
Jungbrunnen, No 5 B, p. 25. #L a#, from the Swabian-Würtemberg border,
81 VV, Birlinger, Schwäbisch-Augsburgisches Wörterbuch, p. 458. #L b#,
[Birlinger], Schwäbische V. L., p. 159, from Immenried, nearly word for
word the same. #M#, 'Der falsche Sänger,' 40 vv, Meier, No 167, p. 296.
#N#, 'Es reitets ein Ritter durch Haber und Klee,' 43 vv, a fifth
Swabian version, from Hirrlingen, Meier, p. 302. #O#, 'Alte Ballade die
in Entlebuch noch gesungen wird,' twenty-three double stanzas, in the
local dialect, Schweizerblätter von Henne und Reithard, 1833, II^R
Jahrgang, 210-12. #P#, 'Das Guggibader-Lied,' twenty-one treble stanzas
(23?), in the Aargau dialect, Rochholz, Schweizersagen aus dem Aargau,
#I# 24. #Q#, 'Es sitzt gut Ritter auf und ritt,' a copy taken down in
1815 by J. Grimm, from the recitation of a lady who had heard it as a
child in German Bohemia, 74 vv, Reifferscheid, p. 162. #R#, 'Bie wrüe
işt auv der ritterşmàn, 'in the dialect of Gottschee, Carniola,
86 vv, Schröer, Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Ak., phil-hist. Cl, LX, 462.
#S#, 'Das Lied von dem falschen Rittersmann,' 60 vv, from Styria,
Rosegger and Heuberger, Volkslieder aus Steiermark, No 19, p. 17. #T#,
'Ulrich und Ännchen,'[36] 49 vv, Herder's Volkslieder, 1778, I, 79;
Mittler, No 78. #U#, 'Schön Ulrich und Roth-Aennchen,' 46 vv, in
Taschenbuch für Dichter und Dichterfreunde, Abth. viii, 126, 1778, from
Upper Lusatia (slightly altered by the contributor, Meissner); Mittler,
No 84. A copy from Kapsdorf, in Hoffmann and Richter's Schlesische V.
L., No 13, p. 27, is the same, differing by only three words. #V#,
'Schön-Aennelein,' 54 vv, from the eastern part of Brandenburg, Erk u.
Irmer, 6th Heft, p. 64, No 56 (stanzas 4-8 from the preceding). #W#,
'Schön Ullerich und Hanselein,' twenty-nine two-line stanzas, from the
neighborhood of Breslau, in Gräter's Idunna und Hermode, No 35, Aug. 29,
1812, following p. 140. The same in Schlesische V. L., No 12, p. 23,
'Schön Ulrich u. Rautendelein,' with a stanza (12) inserted; and
Mittler, No 81. #X#, 'Der Albrecht u. der Hanselein,' 42 vv, from
Natangen, East Prussia, in Neue preussische Provinzial-Blätter, 2d
series, III, 158, No 8. #Y#, 'Ulrich u. Annle,' nineteen two-line
stanzas, a second Kuhländchen version, Meinert, p. 66; Mittler, No 83.
#Z a#, 'Von einem frechen Räuber, Herr Ulrich geheissen,' nineteen
two-line stanzas, from the Rhine [Longard], No 23, p. 46. #Z b#,
'Ulrich,' as sung on the Lower Rhine, the same ballad, with unimportant
verbal differences, and the insertion of one stanza (7, the editor's?),
Zuccalmaglio, No 15, p. 39; Mittler, No 82.
The German ballads, as Grundtvig has pointed out, divide into three
well-marked classes. The first class, embracing the versions #A-F# (6),
and coming nearest to English and Dutch tradition, has been found along
the lower half of the Rhine and in Westphalia, or in Northwest Germany;
the second, including #G-S# (13), is met with in Swabia, Switzerland,
Bohemia, Moravia, Styria, Carniola, or in South Germany; the third,
#T-Z# (7), in East Prussia, the eastern part of Brandenburg and of
Saxony, Silesia, and, again, Moravia, or, roughly speaking, in North and
East Germany; but, besides the Moravian, there is also of this third
class one version, in two copies, from the Rhine.
(I.) #A# runs thus. She that would ride out with Gert Olbert must dress
in silk and gold. When fair Helena had so attired herself, she called
from her window, Gert Olbert, come and fetch the bride. He took her by
her silken gown and swung her on behind him, and they rode three days
and nights. Helena then said, We must eat and drink; but Gert Olbert
said, We must go on further. They rode over the green heath, and Helena
once more tenderly asked for refreshment. Under yon fir [linden], said
Gert Olbert, and kept on till they came to a green spot, where nine
maids were hanging. Then it was, Wilt thou choose the fir-tree, the
running stream, or the naked sword? She chose the sword, but begged him
to take off his silken coat, "for a maid's blood spirts far, and I
should be sorry to spatter it." While he was engaged in drawing off his
coat, she cut off his head. But still the false tongue spoke. It bade
her blow in his horn; then she would have company enough. She was not so
simple as to do this. She rode three days and nights, and blew the horn
when she reached her father's castle. Then all the murderers came
running, like hounds after a hare. Frau Clara [Jutte] called out, Where
is my son? Under the fir-tree, sporting with nine maids; he meant me to
be the tenth, said Helena.
#B# is the same story told of a margrave and Fair Annie, but some
important early stanzas are lost, and the final ones have suffered
injury; for the ballad ends with this conceit, "She put the horn to her
mouth, and blew the margrave quite out of her heart." Here, by a
transference exceedingly common in tradition, it is the man, and not the
maid, that "would ride in velvet and silk and red gold."
#C a# has the names Odilia and Hilsinger, a trooper (reiter). Odilia was
early left an orphan, and as she grew up "she grew into the trooper's
bosom." He offered her seven pounds of gold to be his, and "she thought
seven pounds of gold a good thing." We now fall into the track of #A#.
Odilia dresses herself like a bride, and calls to the trooper to come
and get her. They ride first to a high hill, where she asks to eat and
drink, and then go on to a linden-tree, on which seven maids are
hanging. The choice of three deaths is offered, the sword chosen, he is
entreated to spare his coat, she seizes his sword and hews off his head.
The false tongue suggests blowing the horn. Odilia thinks "much biding
or blowing is not good." She rides away, and presently meets the
trooper's "little foot-page" (bot), who fancies she has Hilsinger's
horse and sword. "He sleeps," she says, "with seven maids, and thought I
was to be the eighth." This copy concludes with a manifestly spurious
stanza. #C b# agrees with #C a# for ten stanzas, as to the matter, and
so far seems to be #C a# improved by Zuccalmaglio, with such
substitutions as a princely castle for "seven pounds of gold." The last
stanza (11),
Und als die Sternlein am Himmel klar,
Ottilia die achte der Todten war,
was, no doubt, suggested by the last of #F#, another of Zuccalmaglio's
versions, and, if genuine, would belong to a ballad of the third class.
#D# has the name Odilia for the maid, but the knight, or trooper, has
become expressly a robber (ritter, reiter, räuber). They ride to a green
heath, where there is a cool spring. Odilia asks for and gets a draught
of water, and is told that at the linden-tree there will be eating and
drinking for them. And when they come to the linden, there hang six,
seven maids! All proceeds as before. The talking head is lost. Odilia
meets the robber's mother, and makes the usual reply.[37]
#E# resembles #C# closely. Odilia becomes Schondilg (Schön Odilie),
Räuber returns to Ritter, or Reiter, and the servant-maid bribe of seven
pounds of gold rises to ten tons.[38] Schondilg's toilet, preparatory to
going off (6-8), is described with a minuteness that we find only in the
Dutch ballad (12-16). After this, there is no important variation. She
meets the trooper's three brothers, and makes the same replies to them
as to the mother in #D#.
#F.# The personages here are Linnich (i.e., Nellie) and a knight from
England. The first twelve stanzas do not diverge from #C#, #D#, #E#. In
stanza 13 we find the knight directing the lady to strip off her silk
gown and gold necklace, as in the English #C#, #D#, #E#; but certainly
this inversion of the procedure which obtains in German #C#, #D#, #E# is
an accident arising from confused recollection. The 14th and last stanza
similarly misunderstands the maid's feigned anxiety about the knight's
fine coat, and brings the ballad to a false close, resembling the
termination of those of the third class, still more those of certain
mixed forms to be spoken of presently.
(II.) The second series, #G-S#, has three or four traits that are not
found in the foregoing ballads. #G#, which, as well as #H#, was in print
more than two hundred years before any other copy is known to have been
taken down, begins, like the Dutch Halewijn, with a knight (Ulinger)
singing so sweetly that a maid (Fridburg) is filled with desire to go
off with him. He promises to teach her his art. This magical song is
wanting only in #R#, of class II, and the promise to teach it only in
#Q#, #R#. She attires herself splendidly; he swings her on to his horse
behind him, and they ride to a wood. When they came to the wood there
was no one there but a white dove on a hazel-bush, that sang, Listen,
Fridburg: Ulinger has hanged eleven[39] maids; the twelfth is in his
clutches. Fridburg asked what the dove was saying. Ulinger replied, It
takes me for another; it lies in its red bill; and rode on till it
suited him to alight. He spread his cloak on the grass, and asked her to
sit down:
Er sprach sie solt ihm lausen,
Sein gelbes Haar zerzausen.[40]
Looking up into her eyes, he saw tears, and asked why she was weeping.
Was it for her sorry husband? Not for her sorry husband, she said. But
here some stanzas, which belong to another ballad,[41] have crept in,
and she is, with no reason, made to ride further on. She comes to a
lofty fir, and eleven maids hanging on it. She wrings her hands and
tears her hair, and implores Ulinger to let her be hanged in her clothes
as she is.
'Ask me not that, Fridburg,' he said;
'Ask me not that, thou good young maid;
Thy scarlet mantle and kirtle black
Will well become my young sister's back.'
Then she begs to be allowed three cries.
'So much I may allow thee well,
Thou art so deep within the dell;
So deep within the dell we lie,
No man can ever hear thy cry.'
She cries, "Help, Jesu!" "Help, Mary!" "Help, dear brother!"
'For if thou come not straight,
For my life 't will be too late!'
Her brother seems to hear his sister's voice "in every sense."
He let his falcon fly,
Rode off with hounds in full cry;
With all the haste he could
He sped to the dusky wood.
'What dost thou here, my Ulinger?
What dost thou here, my master dear?'
'Twisting a withe, and that is all,
To make a halter for my foal.'
'Twisting a withe, and that is all,
To make a halter for thy foal!
I swear by my troth thus shall it be,
Thyself shalt be the foal for me.'
'Then this I beg, my Fridburger,
Then this I beg, my master dear,
That thou wilt let me hang
In my clothes as now I stand.'
'Ask me not that, thou Ulinger,
Ask me not that, false perjurer;
Thy scarlet mantle and jerkin black
Will well become my scullion's back.'
His shield before his breast he slung,
Behind him his fair sister swung,
And so he hied away
Where his father's kingdom lay.
#H#, the nearly contemporaneous Augsburg broadside, differs from #G# in
only one important particular. The "reuter" is Adelger, the lady
unnamed. A stanza is lost between 6 and 7, which should contain the
warning of the dove, and so is Adelger's version of what the bird had
said. The important feature in #H#, not present in #G#, is that the halt
is made near a spring, about which blood is streaming, "der war mit blut
umbrunnenn." This adds a horror to this powerful scene which well suits
with it. When the maid begins to weep, Adelger asks whether her tears
are for her father's land, or because she dislikes him so much. It is
for neither reason, but because on yon fir she sees eleven maids
hanging. He confirms her fears:
'Ah, thou fair young lady fine,
O palsgravine, O empress mine,
Adelger 's killed his eleven before,
Thou 'lt be the twelfth, of that be sure.'[42]
The last two lines seem, by their form, to be the dove's warning that
has dropped out between stanzas 6 and 7. The maid's clothes in #H# are
destined to be the perquisite of Adelger's mother, and the brother says
that Adelger's are to go to his shield-bearer. The unhappy maid cries
but twice, to the Virgin and to her brother. When surprised by the
brother, Adelger feigns to be twisting a withe for his falcon.
#I# begins, like #G#, #H#, with the knight's seductive song. Instead of
the dove directly warning the maid, it upbraids the man: "Whither now,
thou Ollegehr?[43] Eight hast thou murdered already; and now for the
ninth!" The maid asks what the dove means, and is told to ride on, and
not mind the dove, who takes him for another man. There are eight maids
in the fir. The cries are to Jesus, Mary, and her brothers, one of whom
hastens to the rescue. He is struck with the beauty of his sister's
attire,--her velvet dress, her virginal crown, "which you shall wear
many a year yet." So saying, he draws his sword, and whips off his
"brother-in-law's" head, with this epicedium:
'Lie there, thou head, and bleed,
Thou never didst good deed.
'Lie there, thou head, and rot,
No man shall mourn thy lot.
'No one shall ever be sorry for thee
But the small birds on the greenwood tree.'[44]
In #J#, again, the knight comes riding through the reeds, and sings such
a song that Brown Annele, lying under the casement, exclaims, "Could I
but sing like him, I would give my troth and my honor!" There are, by
mistake, two[45] doves in stanza 4, that warn Annele not to be beguiled,
but this error is set right in the next stanza. When she asks what the
dove is cooing, the answer is, "It is cooing about its red foot; it went
barefoot all winter." We have here again, as in #H#, the spring in the
wood, "mit Blute umrunnen," and the lady asks again the meaning of the
bloody spring. The knight replies, in a stanza which seems both
corrupted and out of place, "This is where the eleven pure virgins
perished." Then follow the same incidents as in #G-I#. He says she must
hang with the eleven in the fir, and be queen over all. Her cries are
for her father, for Our Lady, and for her brother, who is a hunter in
the forest. The hunter makes all haste to his sister, twists a withe,
and hangs the knight without a word between them, then takes his sister
by the hand and conducts her home, with the advice never more to trust a
knight: for all which she returns her devout thanks.[46]
#K# and #L# are of the same length and the same tenor as #J#. There are
no names in #L#; in #K# both Annele and Ulrich, but the latter is very
likely to have been inserted by the editor. #K#, #L# have only one dove,
and in neither does the lady ask the meaning of the dove's song. The
knight simply says, "Be still; thou liest in thy throat!" Both have the
bloody spring, but out of place, for it is very improperly spoken of by
the knight as the spot he is making for:
'Wir wollen ein wenig weiter vorwärts faren,
Bis zu einem kühlen Waldbrunnen,
Der ist mit Blut überronnen.'[47]
L 26-28, 17-19.
The three cries are for father, mother, brother. In #K# the brother
fights with "Ulrich" two hours and a half before he can master him, then
despatches him with his two-edged sword, and hangs him in a withe. He
fires his rifle in #L#, to announce his coming, and hears his sister's
laugh; then stabs the knight through the heart. The moral of #J# is
repeated in both: Stay at home, and trust no knight.
#M# smacks decidedly of the bänkelsänger, and has an appropriate moral
at the tail: _animi index cauda!_ The characters are a cavalier and a
girl, both nameless, and a brother. The girl, hearing the knight sing
"ein Liedchen von dreierlei Stimmen," which should seem to signify a
three-part song, says, "Ah, could I sing like him, I would straightway
give him my honor." They ride to the wood, and come upon a hazel-bush
with _three_ doves, one of which informs the maid that she will be
betrayed, the second that she will die that day, and the third that she
will be buried in the wood. The second and third doves, as being false
prophets, and for other reasons, may safely be pronounced intruders. All
is now lost till we come to the cries, which are addressed to father,
mother, and brother. The brother stabs the traitor to the heart.[48]
#N# is as short as #M#, and, like it, has no names, but has all the
principal points: the fascinating song, the dove on the bush, eleven
maids in the fir, the three cries, and the rescue by the
huntsman-brother, who cocks his gun and shoots the knight. The reciter
of this ballad gave the editor to understand that if the robber had
succeeded in his twelfth murder, he would have attained such powers that
nobody after that could harm him.[49]
#O# is a fairly well-preserved ballad, resembling #G-J# as to the course
of the story. Anneli, lying under the casement, hears the knight singing
as he rides through the reeds. The elaborate toilet is omitted, as in
#I#, #J#. The knight makes haste to the dark wood. They come to a cold
spring, "mit Bluot war er überrunnen;" then to a hazel, behind which a
dove coos ominously. Anneli says, Listen. The dove coos you are a false
man, that will not spare my life. No, says the knight, that is not it;
the dove is cooing about its blue foot, for its fate is to freeze in
winter. The cloak is thrown on the grass, the eleven maids in the fir
are descried, and Anneli is told she must hang highest, and be empress
over all. He concedes her as many cries as she likes, for only the
wood-birds will hear. She calls on God, the Virgin, and her brother. The
brother thinks he hears his sister's voice, calls to his groom to
saddle, comes upon the knight while he is twisting a withe for his
horse, as he says, ties him to the end of the withe, and makes him pay
for all he has perpetrated in the wood. He then swings Anneli behind
him, and rides home with her.
#P#, the other Swiss ballad, has been retouched, and more than
retouched in places, by a modern pen. Still the substance of the story,
and, on the whole, the popular tone, is preserved. Fair Anneli, in the
miller's house, hears the knight singing as he rides through the rushes,
and runs down-stairs and calls to him: she would go off with him if she
could sing like that, and her clothes are fit for any young lady. The
knight promises that he will teach her his song if she will go with him,
and bids her put these fine clothes on. They ride to the wood. A dove
calls from the hazel, "He will betray thee." Anneli asks what the dove
is saying, and is answered much as in #J# and #O#, that it is talking
about its frost-bitten feet and claws. The knight tears through the
wood, to the great peril of Anneli's gown and limbs, and when he has
come to the right place, spreads his cloak on the grass, and makes the
usual request. She weeps when she sees eleven maids in the fir-tree, and
receives the customary consolation:
'Weep not too sore, my Anneli,
'Tis true thou art doomed the twelfth to be;
Up to the highest tip must thou go,
And a margravine be to all below;
Must be an empress over the rest,
And hang the highest of all as the best.'
The request to be allowed three cries is lost. The knight tells her to
cry as much as she pleases, he knows no one will come; the wild birds
will not hear, and the doves are hushed. She cries to father, mother,
and brother. The brother, who is sitting over his wine at the inn,
hears, saddles his best horse, rides furiously, and comes first to a
spring filled with locks of maid's hair and red with maid's blood; then
to a bush, where the knight (Rüdeli, Rudolph) is twisting his withe. He
bids his sister be silent, for the withe is not for her; the villain is
twisting it for his own neck, and shall be dragged at the tail of his
horse.
#Q# resembles the Swabian ballads, and presents only these variations
from the regular story. The dove adds to the warning, "Fair maid, be not
beguiled," what we find nowhere else, "Yonder I see a cool spring,
around which blood is running." The knight, to remove the maid's
anxiety, says, "Let it talk; it does not know me; I am no such
murderer." The end is excessively feeble. When the brother, a hunter as
before, reaches his sister, "a robber runs away," and then the brother
takes her by the hand, conducts her to her father's land, and enjoins
her to stay at home and spin silk. There are no names.
There is one feature entirely peculiar to #R#. The knight carries off
the maid, as before, but when they come to the hazel bush there are
eleven doves that sing this "new song:"
'Be not beguiled, maiden,
The knight is beguiling thee:
'We are eleven already,
Thou shalt be the twelfth.'
The eleven doves are of course the spirits of the eleven preceding
victims. The maid's inquiry as to what they mean is lost. The knight's
evasion is not ingenious, but more likely to allay suspicion than simply
saying, "I am no such murderer." He says, "Fear not: the doves are
singing a song that is common in these parts." When they come to the
spring "where blood and water are running," and the maid asks what
strange spring is this, the knight answers in the same way, and perhaps
could not do better: "Fear not: _there is_ in these parts a spring that
runs blood and water." This spring is misplaced, for it occurs before
they enter the wood. The last scene in the ballad is incomplete, and
goes no further than the brother's exclamation when he comes in upon the
knight: "Stop, young knight! Spare my sister's life." The parties in #R#
are nameless.
So again in #S#, which also has neither the knight's enchanting song nor
the bloody spring. There are two doves, as in #J#, stanza 4. The cries
are addressed to mother, father, brother, as in #N#, and, as in #N#,
again, the brother cocks his gun, and shoots the knight down;[50] then
calmly leads his sister home, with the warning against knights.
(III.) #T#, the first of the third series, has marked signs of
deterioration. Ulrich does not enchant Ännchen by his song, and promise
to teach it to her; he offers to teach her "bird-song." They _walk_ out
together, apparently, and come to a hazel, with no dove; neither is
there any spring. Annie sits down on the grass; Ulrich lays his head in
her lap; she weeps, and he asks why. It is for eleven maids in the
fir-tree, as so often before. Ulrich's style has become much tamer:
'Ah, Annie, Annie, dear to me,
How soon shalt thou the twelfth one be!'
She begs for three cries, and calls to her father, to God, to her
youngest brother. The last is sitting over the wine and hears. He
demands of Ulrich where she is, and is told, Upon yon linden, spinning
silk. Then ensues this dialogue: Why are your shoes blood-red? Why not?
I have shot a dove. That dove my mother bare under her breast. Annie is
laid in the grave, and angels sing over her; Ulrich is broken on the
wheel, and round him the ravens cry.
There is no remnant or reminiscence of the magical singing in #U#. Schön
Ulrich and Roth Ännchen go on a walk, and come first to a fir-tree, then
a green mead. The next scene is exactly as in #T#. Ulrich says the
eleven maids were his wives, and that he had thrust his sword through
their hearts. Annie asks for three _sighs_, and directs them to God, to
Jesus, and to her youngest brother. He is sitting over his wine, when
the sigh comes into the window, and Ulrich simultaneously in at the
door. The remainder is very much as in #T#.
#V# differs from #U# only in the names, which are Schön-Heinrich and
Schön-Ännelein, and in the "sighs" returning to cries, which invoke God,
father, and brother.
#W# begins with a rivalry between Ulrich and Hanselein[51] for the hand
of Rautendelein (Rautendchen). Ulrich is successful. She packs up her
jewels, and he takes her to a wood, where she sees eleven maids hanging.
He assures her she shall presently be the twelfth. It is then they sit
down, and she leans her head on his breast and weeps, "because," as she
says, "I must die." His remark upon this, if there was any, is lost.
Hoffmann inserts a stanza from another Silesian copy, in which Ulrich
says, Rather than spare thy life, I will run an iron stake through thee.
She asks for three cries, and he says, Four, if you want. She prefers
four, and calls to her father, mother, sister, brother. The brother, as
he sits over the wine, hears the cry, and almost instantly Ulrich comes
in at the door. He pretends to have killed a dove; the brother knows
what dove, and hews off Ulrich's head, with a speech like that in #I#.
Still, as Rautendchen is brought to the grave, with toll of bells, so
Ulrich is mounted on the wheel, where ravens shriek over him.
#X.# Albrecht and Hänselein woo Alalein. She is promised to Albrecht,
but Hänsel gets her. He takes her to a green mead, spreads his mantle on
the grass, and she sits down. His lying in her lap and her discovery of
the awful tree are lost. She weeps, and he tells her she shall be "his
eleventh." Her cries are condensed into one stanza:
'Gott Vater, Sohn, Herr Jesu Christ,
Mein jüngster Bruder, wo Du bist!'
Her brother rides in the direction of the voice, and meets Hänselein in
the wood, who says Alalein is sitting with princes and counts. The
conclusion is as in #T#, #U#, #V#.
#Y# has Ansar Uleraich wooing a king's daughter, Annle, to the eighth
year. He takes her to a fir-wood, then to a fir, a stump of a tree, a
spring; in each case bidding her sit down. At the spring he asks her if
she wishes to be drowned, and, upon her saying no, cuts off her head.
He has not walked half a mile before he meets her brother. The brother
inquires where Ulrich has left his sister, and the reply is, "By the
green Rhine." The conclusion is as in #W#. Ulrich loses his head, and
the brother pronounces the imprecation which is found there and in
I.[52]
#Z#, which takes us back from Eastern Germany to the Rhine, combines
features from all the three groups. Ulrich fascinates a king's daughter
by his song. She collects her gold and jewels, as in #W#, and goes to a
wood, where a dove warns her that she will be betrayed. Ulrich
appropriates her valuables, and they wander about till they come to the
Rhine. There he takes her into a wood, and gives her a choice between
hanging and drowning, and, she declining both, says she shall die by his
sword. But first she is allowed three cries,--to God, her parents, her
youngest brother. The youngest brother demands of Ulrich where he has
left his sister. "Look in my pocket, and you shall find fourteen
tongues, and the last cut [reddest] of all is your sister's." The words
were scarcely out of his mouth before Ulrich's sword had taken off his
head.
The three classes of the German ballad, it will be observed, have for
their principal distinction that in I the maid saves her own life by an
artifice, and takes the life of her treacherous suitor; in II, she is
rescued by her brother, who also kills the traitor; in III, she dies by
the villain's hand, and he by her brother's, or by a public execution.
There are certain subordinate traits which are constant, or nearly so,
in each class. In I, #A-F#, a choice of deaths is invariably offered;
the maid gets the advantage of the murderer by persuading him to take
off his coat [distorted in #F#, which has lost its conclusion]; and, on
her way home, she falls in with one or more of the robber's family,
mother, brothers, servant, who interrogate her [except #F#, which, as
just said, is a fragment]. Class II has several marks of its own. All
the thirteen ballads [#G-S#], except the last, represent the knight as
fascinating the maid by his singing; in all but #Q# she is warned of her
danger by a dove,[53] or more than one; in all but the much-abridged
#M#, #N#, the knight spreads his cloak on the grass, they sit down, and,
excepting #M#, #N#, #R#, the unromantic service is repeated which she
undertakes in Danish #A#, #B#, #D#, #E#, #F#, #H#, #L#, Swedish #A#,
Norwegian #A#, #B#. The bloody spring occurs in some form, though often
not quite intelligible, in #H#, #J#, #K#, #L#, #O#, #P#, #Q#, #R# (also
in #D#, #Y#). All but the much-abridged #M#, #N# have the question, What
are you weeping for? your father's land, humbled pride, lost honor?
etc.; but this question recurs in #T#, #U#, #V#, #W#. The cries for help
are a feature of both the second and the third class, and are wanting
only in #Y#. Class III differs from I, and resembles II, in having the
cries for help, and, in the less impaired forms, #T-W#, the knight
spreads his cloak, lies down with his head in the lady's lap, and asks
the cause of her tears. Beyond this, and the changed catastrophe, the
ballads of Class III are distinguished by what they have lost.
Forms in which the story of this is mixed with that of some other German
ballad remain to be noticed.
#A.# A ballad first published in Nicolai's Almanach, II, 100, No 21
(1778), and since reprinted, under the titles, 'Liebe ohne Stand,' 'Der
Ritter und die Königstochter,' etc., but never with absolute fidelity,
in Wunderhorn (1819), I, 37 (==Erlach, II, 120), Kretzschmer, No 72, I,
129; Mittler, No 89; Erk, Neue Sammlung, iii, 18, No 14; also, with a
few changes, by Zuccalmaglio, No. 95, p. 199, as 'aus Schwaben;' by Erk,
Liederhort, No 28, p. 90, as "corrected from oral tradition;" and as
"from oral tradition," in Erk's Wunderhorn (1857), I, 39. Independent
versions are given by Mittler, No 90, p. 83, from Oberhessen; Pröhle,
Weltliche u. geistliche Volkslieder, No 5, p. 10, from the Harz;
Reifferscheid, No 18, p. 36, from Bökendorf. Erk refers to still another
copy, five stanzas longer than Nicolai's, from Hesse-Darmstadt, Neue
Sammlung, iii, 19, note.
What other ballad is here combined with Ulinger, it is impossible to
make out. The substance of the narrative is that a knight rides singing
through the reeds, and is heard by a king's daughter, who forthwith
desires to go with him. They ride till the horse is hungry [tired]; he
spreads his cloak on the grass, and makes, _sans façon_, his usual
request. The king's daughter sheds many tears, and he asks why. "Had I
followed my father's counsel, I might have been empress." The knight
cuts off her head at the word, and says, Had you held your tongue, you
would have kept your head. He throws the body behind a tree, with Lie
there and rot; my young heart must mourn [no knight, a knight, shall
mourn over thee]. Another stanza or two, found in some versions, need
not be particularly noticed.
'Stolz Sieburg,' Simrock, No 8, p. 21, from the Rhine, Mittler, No 88,
is another and somewhat more rational form of the same story. To the
question whether she is weeping for Gut, Muth, Ehre, the king's daughter
answers:
'Ich wein um meine Ehre,
Ich wollt gern wieder umkehren.'
For this Stolz Sieburg strikes off her head, with a speech like that
which we have just had, and throws it into a spring; then resolves to
hang himself.[54]
A #Dutch# version of this ballad, Le Jeune, No 92, p. 292; Willems, No
72, p. 186; Hoffmann, No 29, p. 92, has less of the Halewyn in it, and
more motive than the German, though less romance. "If you might have
been an empress," says the knight, "I, a margrave's son, will marry you
to-morrow." "I would rather lose my head than be your wife," replies the
lady; upon which he cuts off her head and throws it into a fountain,
saying, Lie there, smiling mouth! Many a thousand pound have you cost
me, and many pence of red gold. Your head is clean cut off.
#B.# The Ulinger story is also found combined with that of the beautiful
ballad, 'Wassermanns Braut.'[55] (1.) In a Transylvanian ballad,
'Brautmörder,' Schuster, Siebenbürgisch-sächsische Volkslieder, p. 57,
No 54 #A#, 38 vv, with variations, and p. 59, #B#, a fragment of 10 vv;
(#A# in a translation, Böhme, No 14, p. 61.) A king from the Rhine sues
seven years for a king's daughter, and does not prevail till the eighth.
She begs her mother not to consent, for she has seen it in the sun that
she shall not long be her daughter, in the moon that she shall drown
before the year is out, in the bright stars that her blood shall be
dispersed far and wide. He takes her by the hand, and leads her through
a green wood, at the end of which a grave is already made. He pushes her
into the grave, and drives a stake through her heart. The princess'
brother asks what has become of his sister. "I left her on the Rhine,
drinking mead and wine." "Why are your skirts so bloody?" "I have shot a
turtle-dove." "That turtle-dove was, mayhap, my sister." They spit him
on a red-hot stake, and roast him like a fish. Lines 1-4 of this ballad
correspond to 1-4 of #Y# (which last agree with 1-4 of Meinert's
'Wassermanns Braut'); 17, 18, to #Y# 5, 6; 25-34 to 21-30; and we find
in verse 22 the stake through the heart which Hoffmann has interpolated
in #W#, stanza 12.
(2.) A Silesian copy of 'Wassermanns Braut,' co[llecte]d by [Ho]ffman
contributed to Deutsches Museum, 1852, II, 164, represents the bride,
after she has fallen into the water and has been recovered by the nix,
as asking for three cries, and goes on from this point like the Ulrich
ballad #W#, the conclusion being that the sister is drowned before the
brother comes to her aid.[56]
'Nun schürz dich, Gredlein,' "Forster's Frische Liedlein, No 66," Böhme,
No 53, Uhland, No 256 A, which is of the date 1549, and therefore older
than the Nuremberg and Augsburg broadsides, has derived stanzas 7-9 from
an Ulinger ballad, unless this passage is to be regarded as common
property. Some copies of the ballad commonly called 'Müllertücke' have
also adopted verses from Ulinger, especially that in Meier's Schwäbische
Volkslieder, No 233, p. 403.
A form of ballad resembling English #C-F#, but with some important
differences, is extraordinarily diffused in #Poland#. There is also a
single version of the general type of English #A#, or, better, of the
first class of the German ballads. This version, #A#, Pauli,
Pieśńi ludu Polskiego w Galicyi, p. 90, No 5, and Kolberg,
Pieśni ludu Polskiego, No 5, #bbb#, p. 70, runs thus. There was a man
who went about the world wiling away young girls from father and mother.
He had already done this with eight; he was now carrying off the ninth.
He took her to a frightful wood; then bade her look in the direction of
her house. She asked, "What is that white thing that I see on yon fir?"
"There are already eight of them," he said, "and you shall be the ninth;
never shall you go back to your father and mother. Take off that gown,
Maria." Maria was looking at his sword. "Don't touch, Maria, for you
will wound your pretty little hands." "Don't mind my hands, John," she
replied, "but rather see what a bold heart I have;" and instantly John's
head flew off. Then follows a single stanza, which seems to be addressed
to John's mother, after the manner of the German #A#, etc.: "See, dear
mother! I am thy daughter-in-law, who have just put that traitor out of
the world." There is a moral for conclusion, which is certainly a later
addition.
The other ballads may be arranged as follows, having regard chiefly to
the catastrophe. #B#, Kolberg, No 5, #oo#: #C#, #rr#: #D#, #ccc#: #E#,
#dd#: #F#, #uu#: #G#, #ww#: #H#, #t#: #I#, #u#: #J#, #gg#: #K#, #mm#:
#L#, Wacław z Oleska, p. 483, 2, Kolberg, #p#: #L*#, Kozłowski,
Lud, p. 33, No IV: #M#, Wojcicki, I, 234, Kolberg, #r#: #N#, Wojcicki,
I, 82, Kolberg, #s#: #O#, Kolberg, #d#: #P#, _ib._ #f#: #Q#, #pp#: #R#,
Wojcicki, I, 78, Kolberg, #e#: #S#, Kolberg, #l#: #T#, _ib._ #n#: #U#,
Pauli, Pjeśńi ludu Polskiego w Galicyi, p. 92, No 6, Kolberg, #q#:
#V#, Kolberg, #y#: #W#, Wojcicki, II, 298, "J. Lipiński, Pieśni
ludu Wielkopolskiego, p. 34," Kolberg, #ee#; #X#, Kolberg, #a#: #Y#,
_ib._ #z#: #Z#, #aa#: #AA#, #qq#: #BB#, #w#; #CC#, #ddd#: #DD#, #m#:
#EE#, #c#: #FF#, #o#: #GG#, łł: #HH#, #ss#: #II#, #ii#: #JJ#,
#ff#: #KK#, #tt#: #LL#, #i#: #MM#, #g*#. In #B-K# the woman comes off
alive from her adventure: in #O-CC#, she loses her life: in #L-N# there
is a jumble of both conclusions: #DD-MM# are incomplete.[57]
The story of the larger part of these ballads, conveyed as briefly as
possible, is this: John, who is watering horses, urges Catherine,[58]
who is drawing water, to elope with him. He bids her take silver and
gold enough, that the horse may have something to carry. Catherine says
her mother will not allow her to enter the new chamber. Tell her that
you have a headache, says John, and she will consent. Catherine feigns a
headache, is put into the new chamber, and absconds with John while her
mother is asleep.[59] At a certain stage, more commonly at successive
stages,--on the high road, #K#, #P#, #S#, #DD#, #II#, #LL#, in a dark
wood, #D#, #P#, #T#, #X#, #Z#, #DD#, #EE#, at a spring, #D#, #K#, #S#,
#T#, #V#, #W#, #X#, #Y#, #Z#, #EE#, #II#, #LL#, etc.,--he bids her take
off, or himself takes from her, her "rich attire," #D#, #P#, #T#, #V#,
#W#, #X#, #Y#, #Z#, #DD#, #EE#, her satin gown, #D#, #T#, #X#, #DD#,
#EE#, her French or Turkish costume, #K#, #P#, #II#, robes of silver,
#K#, shoes, #Z#, #CC#, #FF#, silk stockings, #T#, corals, #D#, #X#,
#CC#, #EE#, pearls, #T#, rings, #K#, #O-T#, #X#, #Z#, #CC-FF#, #II#,
#LL#. In many of the ballads he tells her to go back to her mother,
#B-G#, #K#, #L*#, #M#, #N#, #Q#, #S#, #U#, #X#, #Y#, #EE#, #HH-LL#,
sometimes after pillaging her, sometimes without mention of this.
Catherine generally replies that she did not come away to have to go
back, #B#, #C#, #D#, #G#, #L*#, #M#, #S#, #U#, #X#, #Y#, #EE#, #HH#,
#JJ#, #KK#, #LL#. John seizes her by the hands and sides and throws her
into a deep river [pool, water, sea]. Her apron [tress, #AA#, #II#, both
apron and tress, #O#, petticoat, #KK#] is caught on a stake or stump of
a tree, #B#, #C#, #G#, #H#, #I#, #O#, #P#, #R#, #T#, #U#, #V#, #W#, #Y#,
#BB#, #DD#, #EE#, #II#, #JJ#, #KK# [in a bush #D#]. John cuts it away
with axe or sword, #G#, #I#, #O#, #R#, #T#, #BB#, #II#, #JJ#. She cries
to him for help. He replies, "I did not throw you in to help you
out,"[60] #B#, #C#, #F#, #P#, #U#, #V#, #W#, #X#, #Z#, #EE#, #II#.
Catherine is drawn ashore in a fisherman's net [swims ashore #I#, #J#,
#GG#].
Catherine comes out from the water alive in #B-N#. The brother who plays
so important a part in the second class of German ballads, appears also
in a few of the Polish versions, #B#, #C#, #D#, and #L*#, #O#, #P#, #Q#,
#X#, but is a mere shadow. In #B# 21, 22, and #C# 16, 17, the brother,
who is "on the mountain," and may be supposed to hear the girl's cry,
slides down a silken cord, which proves too short, and the girl "adds
her tress"! He asks the fishermen to throw their nets for her. She is
rescued, goes to church, takes an humble place behind the door, and,
when her eyes fall on the young girls, melts into tears. Her apron
catches in a bush in #D#: she plucks a leaf, and sends it down the
stream to her mother's house. The mother says to the father, "Do you not
see how Catherine is perishing?" The leaf is next sent down stream to
her sister's house, who says to her brother, "Do you not see how
Catherine is perishing?" He rides up a high mountain, and slides down
his silken cord. Though one or two stanzas are lost, or not given, the
termination was probably the same as in #B#, #C#. In #L*# 15, #O# 12,
the brother, on a high mountain, hears the cry for help, and slides down
to his sister on a silken cord, but does nothing. #X# does not account
for the brother's appearance: he informs the fishermen of what has
happened, and they draw Catherine out, evidently dead. The brother hears
the cry from the top of a wall in #P# 21, 22; slides down his cord; the
sister adds her tress; he directs the fishermen to draw her out; she is
dead. Instead of the brother on the wall, we have a mason in #Q# 27
[perhaps "the brother on the wall" in #P# _is_ a mason]. It is simply
said that "he added" a silken cord: the fishermen drew out Catherine
dead. The conclusion is equally, or more, impotent in all the versions
in which the girl escapes from drowning. In #G#, #I#, #J#, she seats
herself on a stone, and apostrophizes her hair, saying [in #G#, #I#],
"Dry, my locks, dry, for you have had much pleasure in the river!" She
goes to church, takes an humble place, and weeps, in #E#, #F#, #G#, as
in #B#, #C#, #D#. John goes scot-free in all these.[61] Not so in the
more vigorous ballads of tragic termination. Fierce pursuit is made for
him. He is cut to pieces, or torn to pieces, #O#, #P#, #S#, #T#, #Y#;
broken on the wheel, #L#, #U#, #V#, #W#; cleft in two, #BB#; broken
small as barley-corns, or quartered, by horses, #L*#, #Z#; committed to
a dungeon, to await, as we may hope, one of these penalties, #Q#, #R#.
The bells toll for Catherine [the organs play for her], and she is laid
in the grave, #O-W#, #Y#, #Z#, #L#, #L*#.
There are, besides, in various ballads of this second class, special
resemblances to other European forms. The man (to whom rank of any sort
is assigned only in #N#[62]) comes from a distant country, or from over
the border, in #O#, #Q#, #R#, #T#, #DD#, #GG#, as in English #D#, #E#.
The maid is at a window in #M#, #W#, as in German #G#, #J#, #M#, #O#,
#P#, #Q#, etc. In #Q# 2, John, who has come from over the border,
persuades the maid to go with him by telling her that in his country
"the mountains are golden, the mountains are of gold, the ways of silk,"
reminding us of the wonderland in Danish #A#, #E#, etc. After the pair
have stolen away, they go one hundred and thirty miles, #O#, #DD#, #FF#;
thrice nine miles, #Q#; nine and a half miles, #T#; cross one field and
another, #M#, #R#; travel all night, #GG#; and neither says a word to
the other. We shall find this trait further on in French #B#, #D#,
Italian #B#, #C#, #D#, #F#, #G#. The choice of deaths which we find in
German #A-F# appears in #J#. Here, after passing through a silent wood,
they arrive at the border of the (red) _sea_. She sits down on a stone,
he on a rotten tree. He asks, By which death will you die: by my right
hand, or by drowning in this _river_? They come to a dark wood in #AA#;
he seats himself on a beech-trunk, she near a stream. He asks, Will you
throw yourself into the river, or go home to your mother? So #H#, and
#R# nearly.[63] She prefers death to returning. Previous victims are
mentioned in #T#, #DD#, #HH#. When she calls from the river for help, he
answers, #T# 22, You fancy you are the only one there; six have gone
before, and you are the seventh: #HH# 16, Swim the river; go down to the
bottom; six maids are there already, and you shall be the seventh [four,
fifth]: #DD# 13, Swim, swim away, to the other side; there you will see
my seventh wife.[64]
Other Slavic forms of this ballad resemble more or less the third German
class. A #Wendish# version from Upper Lusatia, Haupt and Schmaler, Part
I, No I, p. 27, makes Hilžička (Lizzie) go out before dawn to cut
grass. Hołdrašk suddenly appears, and says she must pay him some
forfeit for trespassing in his wood. She has nothing but her sickle, her
silver finger-ring, and, when these are rejected, her wreath, and that,
she says, he shall not have if she dies for it. Hołdrašk, who
avows that he has had a fancy for her seven years (cf. German #Y#, and
the Transylvanian mixed form #B#), gives her her choice, to be cut to
pieces by his sword, or trampled to death by his horse. Which way
pleases him, she says, only she begs for three cries. All three are for
her brothers. They ride round the wood twice, seeing nobody; the third
time Hołdrak comes up to them. Then follows the dialogue about the
bloody sword and the dove. When asked where he has left
Hiłžička, Hołdrašk is silent. The elder brother seizes
him, the younger dispatches him with his sword.
Very similar is a #Bohemian# ballad, translated in Waldau's Böhmische
Granaten, II, 25.[65] While Katie is cutting grass, early in the
morning, Indriasch presents himself, and demands some for his horse. She
says, You must dismount, if your horse is to have grass. "If I do, I
will take away your wreath." "Then God will not grant you his blessing."
He springs from his horse, and while he gives it grass with one hand
snatches at the wreath with the other. "Will you die, or surrender your
wreath?" Take my life, she says, but allow me three cries. Two cries
reached no human ear, but the third cry her mother heard, and called to
her sons to saddle, for Katie was calling in the wood, and was in
trouble. They rode over stock and stone, and came to a brook where
Indriasch was washing his hands. The same dialogue ensues as in the
Wendish ballad. The brothers hewed the murderer into fragments.
A #Servian# ballad has fainter but unmistakable traces of the same
tradition: Vuk, Srpske Narodne Pjesme, I, 282, No 385, ed. 1841;
translated by Goetze, Serbische V. L., p. 99, by Talvj, V. L. der
Serben, 2d ed., II, 172, by Kapper, Gesänge der Serben, II, 318. Mara is
warned by her mother not to dance with Thomas. She disobeys. Thomas,
while dancing, gives a sign to his servants to bring horses. The two
ride off, and when they come to the end of a field Thomas says, Seest
thou yon withered maple? There thou shalt hang, ravens eat out thine
eyes, eagles beat thee with their wings. Mara shrieks, Ah me! so be it
with every girl that does not take her mother's advice.[66]
#French.# This ballad is well known in France, and is generally found in
a form resembling the English; that is to say, the scene of the
attempted murder is the sea or a river (as in no other but the Polish),
and the lady delivers herself by an artifice. One French version nearly
approaches Polish #O-CC#.
#A.# 'Renauld et ses quatorze Femmes,' 44 vv, Paymaigre, Chants
populaires recueillis dans le pays messin, No 31, I, 140. Renauld
carried off the king's daughter. When they were gone half-way, she
called to him that she was dying of hunger (cf. German #A-F#). Eat your
hand, he answered, for you will never eat bread again. When they had
come to the middle of the wood, she called out that she was dying of
thirst. Drink your blood, he said, for you will never drink wine again.
When they came to the edge of the wood, he said, Do you see that river?
Fourteen dames have been drowned there, and you shall be the fifteenth.
When they came to the river-bank, he bade her put off her cloak, her
shift. It is not for knights, she said, to see ladies in such plight;
they should bandage their eyes with a handkerchief. This Renauld did,
and the fair one threw him into the river. He laid hold of a branch; she
cut it off with his sword (cf. the Polish ballad, where the catastrophe,
and consequently this act, is reversed). "What will they say if you go
back without your lover?" "I will tell them that I did for you what you
meant to do for me."[67] "Reach me your hand; I will marry you Sunday."
"Marry, marry a fish, Renauld,
The fourteen women down below."
#B.# 'De Dion et de la Fille du Roi,' from Auvergne, Ampère,
Instructions, etc., 40 vv, p. 40, stanzas 15-24, the first fourteen
constituting another ballad.[68] The pair went five or six leagues
without exchanging a word; only the fair one said, I am so hungry I
could eat my fist. Eat it, replied Dion, for you never again will eat
bread. Then they went five or six leagues in silence, save that she
said, I am so thirsty I could drink my blood. "Drink it, for you never
will drink wine. Over there is a pond in which fifteen ladies have had a
bath, have drowned themselves, and you will make sixteen." Arrived at
the pond, he orders her to take off her clothes. She tells him to put
his sword under his feet, his cloak before his face, and turn to the
pond; and, when he has done so, pushes him in. Here are my keys! he
cries. "I don't want them; I will find locksmiths." "What will your
friends say?" "I will tell them I did by you as you would have done by
me."
#C.# 'Veux-tu venir, bell' Jeanneton,' 32 vv, from Poitou and Aunís,
Bujeaud, II, 232. When they reach the water, the fair one asks for a
drink. The man says, incoherently enough, Before drinking of this white
wine I mean to drink your blood. The stanza that should tell how many
have been drowned before is lost. Jeanneton, having been ordered to
strip, pushes the "beau galant" into the sea, while, at her request, he
is pulling off her stockings. He catches at a branch; she cuts it off,
and will not hear to his entreaties.
#D.# 'En revenant de la jolie Rochelle,' twelve two-line stanzas,
Gagnon, Chansons populaires du Canada, p. 155. A cavalier meets three
fair maids, mounts the fairest behind him, and rides a hundred leagues
without speaking to her, at the end of which she asks to drink. He takes
her to a spring, but when there she does not care to drink. The rest of
the ballad is pointless, and shows that the original story has been
completely forgotten.
#E.# 'Belle, allons nous épromener,' from the Lyonnais, 28 vv,
Champfleury, Chansons des Provinces, p. 172, is like #C#, but still more
defective. The pair go to walk by "la mer courante." There is no order
for the lady to strip: on the contrary, she cries, Déshabillez-moi,
déchaussez-moi! and, while the man is drawing off her shoe, "la belle
avance un coup de pied, le beau galant tombe dans l'eau."
#F.# 'Allons, mie, nous promener,' 32 vv, Poésies populaires de la
France, MS., III, fol. 84, No 16, is like #C#. The lady asks the man to
pull off her shoes before he kills her. The man clutches a branch; the
woman cuts it away.
#G.# 'Le Traître Noyé,' Chants pop. du Velay et du Forez, Romania, X,
199, is like #E#, #F#.
#H.# 'La Fillette et le Chevalier,' Victor Smith, Chants pop. du Velay
et du Forez, Romania, X, 198, resembles the common Polish ballad. Pierre
rouses his love early in the morning, to take a ride with him. He mounts
her on his horse, and when they come to a lonesome wood bids her alight,
for it is the last of her days. He plunges his sword into her heart, and
throws her into a river. Her father and mother come searching for her,
and are informed of her fate by a shepherdess, who had witnessed the
murder. The youngest of her three brothers plunges into the water,
exclaiming, Who threw you in? An angel descends, and tells him it was
her lover. A less romantic version, described in a note, treats of a
valet who is tired of an amour with a servant-girl. He is judicially
condemned to be hanged _or_ burned.
'La Fille de Saint-Martin de l'Ile,' Bujeaud, II, 226, has the
conclusion of the third class of German ballads. A mother incites her
son to make away with his wife. He carries her off on his horse to a
wheat-field [wood], and kills her with sword and dagger. Returning, he
meets his wife's brother, who asks why his shoes are covered with blood.
He says he has been killing rabbits. The brother replies, I see by your
paleness that you have been killing my sister. So Gérard de Nerval, Les
Filles du Feu, Œuvres Com., V, 134, and La Bohème galante (1866), p.
79: 'Rosine,' Chants pop. du Velay, etc., Romania, X, 197.
The ballad is known over all #North Italy#, and always nearly in one
shape.
#A.# 'Monchisa,' sixty-four short verses, Bernoni, Canti popolari
veneziani, Puntata v, No 2. A count's son asks Monchesa, a knight's
daughter, in marriage in the evening, espouses her in the morning, and
immediately carries her off. When they are "half-way," she heaves a
sigh, which she says is for father and mother, whom she shall no more
see. The count points out his castle; he has taken thirty-six maids
there, robbed them of their honor, and cut off their heads. "So will I
do with you when we are there." The lady says no word till she is asked
why she is silent; then requests the count to lend her his sword; she
wishes to cut a branch to shade her horse. The moment she gets the sword
in her hand, she plunges it into his heart; then throws the body into a
ditch. On her way back, she meets her brother, whom she tells that she
is looking after the assassins who have killed her husband. He fears it
was she; this she denies, but afterwards says she must go to Rome to
confess a great sin. There she obtains prompt absolution.
#B.# 'La Figlia del Conte,' Adolf Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, No 73,
#a#, 34 vv, #b#, 48 vv. Here it is the daughter of a count that marries
Malpreso, the son of a knight. He takes her to France immediately. She
goes sixty miles (#b#) without speaking. She confesses to her brother
what she has done.
#C.# Righi, Canti popolari veronesi, 58 vv, No 94*, p. 30. The count's
son marries Mampresa, a knight's daughter. For thirty-six miles she does
not speak; after five more she sighs. She denies to her brother having
killed her husband, but still says she must go to the pope to confess an
old sin; then owns what she has done.
#D.# 'La Monferrina,' 48 vv, Nigra, Canzoni popolari del Piemonte, in
Rivista Contemporanea, XXIV, 76. The lady is a Monferrina, daughter of a
knight. After the marriage they travel fifty miles without speaking to
one another. Fifty-two Monferrine have lost their heads; the bridegroom
does not say why. She goes to the Pope to confess.
#E.# 'La Vendicatrice,' an incomplete copy from Alexandria, 18 vv only,
Marcoaldi, Canti popolari, No 12, p. 166, like #D#, as far as it goes.
Thirty-three have been beheaded before.
#F.# 'La Inglese,' 40 vv, Ferraro, Canti popolari di Ferrara, Cento e
Pontelagoscuro, No 2, p. 14. The count's son marries an English girl,
daughter of a knight. She never speaks for more than three hundred
miles; after two hundred more she sighs. She denies having killed her
husband; has not a heart of that kind.
#G.# 'La Liberatrice,' 24 vv, Ferraro, Canti popolari monferrini, No 3,
p. 4. Gianfleisa is the lady's name. When invited to go off, she says,
If you wish me to go, lend me a horse. Not a word is spoken for five
hundred miles. The man (Gilardu) points out his castle, and says that no
one he has taken there has ever come back. Gianfleisa goes home without
meeting anybody.
'Laura,' Ferraro, C. p. di Pontelagoscuro, Rivista di Filologia romanza,
II, 197, and C. p. di Ferrara, etc., p. 86, is a mixture of this ballad
with another. Cf. 'La Maledetta,' Ferraro, C. p. monferrini, No 27, p.
35.
Several other French and Italian ballads have common points with
Renauld, Monchisa, etc., and for this have sometimes been improperly
grouped with them: e.g., 'La Fille des Sables,' Bujeaud, II, 177 ff. A
girl sitting by the water-side hears a sailor sing, and asks him to
teach her the song. He says, Come aboard, and I will. He pushes off, and
by and by she begins to weep.[69] She says, My father is calling me to
supper. "You will sup with me." "My mother is calling me to bed." "You
will sleep with me." They go a hundred leagues, and not a word said, and
at last reach his father's castle. When she is undressing, her lace gets
into a knot. He suggests that his sword would cut it. She plunges the
sword into her heart. So 'Du Beau Marinier,' Beaurepaire, p. 57 f, and
Poésies populaires de la France, MS., III, fol. 59, No 4; 'L'Épée
Libératrice,' V. Smith, Chansons du Velay, etc., Romania, VII, 69,
nearly; also 'Il Corsaro,' Nigra, Rivista Coutemporanea, XXIV, p. 86 ff.
In 'La Monferrina Incontaminata,' Ferraro, C. p. m., No 2, p. 3, a
French knight invites a girl to go off with him, and mounts her behind
him. They ride five hundred miles without speaking, then reach an inn,
after which the story is the same. So Bernoni, Puntata IX, No 2. 'La
Fille du Patissier,' Paymaigre, No 30, p. 93, has the same conclusion.
All these, except 'La Fille des Sables,' make the girl ask for the sword
herself, and in all it is herself that she kills.
The #Spanish# preserves this ballad in a single form, the earliest
printed in any language, preceding, by a few years, even the German
broadsides #G#, #H#.
'Romance de Rico Franco,' 36 vv, "Cancionero de Romances, s. a., fol.
191: Canc. de Rom., ed. de 1550, fol. 202: ed. de 1555, fol. 296;" Wolf
and Hofmann, Primavera, No 119, II, 22: Duran, No 296, I, 160: Grimm, p.
252: Depping and Galiano, 1844, II, 167: Ochoa, p. 7. The king's
huntsmen got no game, and lost the falcons. They betook themselves to
the castle of Maynes, where was a beautiful damsel, sought by seven
counts and three kings. Rico Franco of Aragon carried her off by force.
Nothing is said of a rest in a wood, or elsewhere; but that something
has dropped out here is shown by the corresponding Portuguese ballad.
The lady wept. Rico Franco comforted her thus: If you are weeping for
father and mother, you shall never see them more; and if for your
brothers, I have killed them all three. I am not weeping for them, she
said, but because I know not what my fate is to be. Lend me your knife
to cut the fringes from my mantle, for they are no longer fit to wear.
This Rico Franco did, and the damsel thrust the knife into his breast.
Thus she avenged father, mother, and brothers.
A #Portuguese# ballad has recently been obtained from tradition in the
island of St. George, Azores, which resembles the Spanish closely, but
is even curter: #A#, 'Romance de Dom Franco,' 30 vv; #B#, 'Dona Inez,' a
fragment of 18 vv; Braga, Cantos populares do Archipelago açoriano, No
48, p. 316, No 49, p. 317: Hartung's Romanceiro, II, 61, 63. Dona Inez
was so precious in the eyes of her parents that they gave her neither to
duke nor marquis. A knight who was passing [the Duke of Turkey, #B#]
took a fancy to her, and stole her away. When they came to the middle of
the mountain ridge on which Dona Inez lived, the knight stopped to rest,
and she began to weep. From this point Portuguese #A#, and #B# so far as
it is preserved, agree very nearly with the Spanish.[70]
Certain Breton ballads have points of contact with the Halewyn-Ulinger
class, but, like the French and Italian ballads mentioned on the
preceding page, have more important divergences, and especially the
characteristic distinction that the woman kills herself to preserve her
honor. 1. 'Jeanne Le Roux,' Luzel, I, 324 ff, in two versions; Poésies
pop. de la France, MS., III, fol. 182. The sieur La Tremblaie attempts
the abduction of Jeanne from the church immediately after her marriage
ceremony. As he is about to compel her to get up on the crupper of his
horse, she asks for a knife to cut her bridal girdle, which had been
drawn too tight. He gives her the choice of three, and she stabs herself
in the heart. La Tremblaie _remarks_, I have carried off eighteen young
brides, and Jeanne is the nineteenth, words evidently taken from the
mouth of a Halewyn, and not belonging here. 2. Le Marquis de Coatredrez,
Luzel, I, 336 ff, meets a young girl on the road, going to the pardon of
Guéodet, and forces her on to his horse. On the way and at his house she
vainly implores help. He takes her to the garden to gather flowers. She
asks for his knife to shorten the stems, and kills herself. Early in the
morning the door of the château is broken in by Kerninon, foster-brother
of the victim, who forces Coatredrez to fight, and runs him through. 3.
'Rozmelchon,' Luzel, I, 308 ff, in three versions, and, 4, 'La Filleule
de du Guesclin,' Villemarqué, Barzaz-Breiz, 6th ed., 212 ff, are very
like 2. The wicked Rozmelchon is burned in his château in Luzel's first
copy; the other two do not bring him to punishment. Villemarqué's
villain is an Englishman, and has his head cloven by du Guesclin. 5.
'Marivonnic,' Luzel, I, 350 ff, a pretty young girl, is carried off by
an English vessel, the captain of which shows himself not a whit behind
the feudal seigneurs in ferocity. The young girl throws herself into the
water.
#Magyar.# Five versions from recent traditions, all of them interesting,
are given in Arany and Gyulai's collection of Hungarian popular poetry,
'Molnár Anna,' I, 137 ff, Nos 1-5.[71]--#A#, p. 141, No 3. A man,
nameless here, but called in the other versions Martin Ajgó, or Martin
Sajgó, invites Anna Miller to go off with him. She refuses; she has a
young child and a kind husband. "Come," he says; "I have six palaces,
and will put you in the seventh," and persists so long that he prevails
at last. They went a long way, till they came to the middle of a green
wood. He asked her to sit down in the shade of a branchy tree (so all);
he would lie in her lap, and she was to look into his head (a point
found in all the copies). But look not up into the tree, he said. He
went to sleep (so #B#, #D#); she looked up into the tree, and saw six
fair maids hanging there (so all but #E#). She thought to herself, He
will make me the seventh! (also #B#, #D#). A tear fell on the face of
the "brave sir," and waked him. You have looked up into the tree, he
said. "No, but three orphans passed, and I thought of my child." He bade
her go up into the tree. She was not used to go first, she said. He led
the way. She seized the opportunity, tore his sword from its sheath (so
=C#), and hewed off his head. She then wrapped herself in his cloak,
sprang upon his horse, and returned home, where (in all the copies, as
in this) she effected a reconcilement with her husband. #B#, p. 138, No
2, agrees closely with the foregoing. Martin Ajgó calls to Anna Miller
to come with him a long way into the wilderness (so #D#, #E#). He boasts
of no palaces in this version. He calls Anna a long time, tempts her a
long time, drags her on to his horse, and carries her off. The scene
under the tree is repeated. Anna pretends (so #D#, #E#) that the tear
which drops on Martin's face is dew from the tree, and he retorts, How
can it be dew from the tree, when the time is high noon? His sword falls
out of its sheath as he is mounting the tree, and he asks her to hand it
to him. She throws it up (so #E#), and it cuts his throat in two.
Rightly served, Martin Ajgó, she says: why did you lure me from home?
#C#, p. 144, No 4. Martin Sajgó tells Anna Miller that he has six stone
castles, and is building a seventh. It is not said that he goes to
sleep. As in #A#, Anna pulls his sword from the scabbard. #D#, p. 146,
No 5. Here reappears the very important feature of the wonderland:
"Come, let us go, Anna Miller, a long journey into the wilderness, to a
place that flows with milk and honey." Anna insists, as before, that
Martin shall go up the tree first. He puts down his sword; she seizes
it, and strikes off his head with one blow. #E#, p. 137, No 1, is
somewhat defective, but agrees essentially with the others. Martin Ajgó
calls Anna; she will not come; he carries her off. He lets his sword
fall as he is climbing, and asks Anna to hand it up to him. She throws
it up, as in #B#, and it cuts his back in two.
Neus, in his Ehstnische Volkslieder, maintains the affinity of
'Kallewisohnes Tod,' No 2, p. 5, with the Ulinger ballads, and even of
his Holepi with the Dutch Halewyn. The resemblance is of the most
distant, and what there is must be regarded as casual. The same of the
Finnish 'Kojoins Sohn,' Schröter, Finnische Runen, p. 114, 115; 'Kojosen
Poika,' Lönnrot, Kanteletar, p. 279.
In places where a ballad has once been known, the story will often be
remembered after the verses have been wholly or partly forgotten, and
the ballad will be resolved into a prose tale, retaining, perhaps, some
scraps of verse, and not infrequently taking up new matter, or blending
with other traditions. Naturally enough, a ballad and an equivalent tale
sometimes exist side by side. It has already been mentioned that
Jamieson, who had not found this ballad in Scotland, had often come upon
the story in the form of a tale interspersed with verse. Birlinger at
one time (1860) had not been able to obtain the ballad in the Swabian
Oberland (where it has since been found in several forms), but only a
story agreeing essentially with the second class of German ballads.
According to this tradition, a robber, who was at the same time a
portentous magician, enticed the twelve daughters of a miller, one after
another, into a wood, and hanged eleven of them on a tree, but was
arrested by a hunter, the brother of the twelve, before he could
dispatch the last, and was handed over to justice. The object of the
murders was to obtain blood for magical purposes. This story had, so to
speak, naturalized itself in the locality, and the place where the
robber's house had been and that where the tree had stood were pointed
out. The hunter-brother was by some conceived of as the Wild Huntsman,
and came to the rescue through the air with a fearful baying of dogs.
(Birlinger in Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, I, 368, No 592, and
Germania, 1st Ser., V, 372.)
The story of the German ballad #P# has attached itself to localities in
the neighborhood of Weissenbach, Aargau, and is told with modifications
that connect it with the history of the Guggi-, or Schongauer-, bad. A
rich man by lewd living had become a leper. The devil put it into his
head that he could be cured by bathing in the blood of twelve [seven]
pure maidens. He seized eleven at a swoop, while they were on their way
to church, and hanged them, and the next day enticed away a miller's
daughter, who was delivered from death as in the ballad. A medicinal
spring rose near the fatal tree. (Rochholz, I, 22.) No pure version of
this ballad has been obtained in the Harz region, though a mixed form
has already been spoken of; but 'Der Reiter in Seiden,' Pröhle, Märchen
für die Jugend, No 32, p. 136, which comes from the western Harz, or
from some place further north, on the line between Kyffhaüser and
Hamburg, is, roughly speaking, only 'Gert Olbert' turned into prose,
with a verse or two remaining. 'Der betrogene Betrüger,' from Mühlbach,
Müller's Siebenbürgische Sagen, No 418, p. 309, has for its hero a
handsome young man, addicted to women, who obtains from the devil the
power of making them follow his piping, on the terms that every twelfth
soul is to be the devil's share. He had taken eleven to a wood, and
hanged them on a tree after he had satisfied his desire. The brother of
a twelfth substituted himself for his sister, dressed in her clothes,
snatched the rope from the miscreant, and ran him up on the nearest
bough; upon which a voice was heard in the wind, that cried The twelfth
soul is mine. Grundtvig, in his Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 249,
gives his recollections of a story that he had heard in his youth which
has a catastrophe resembling that of English #C-F#. A charcoal burner
had a way of taking up women beside him on his wagon, and driving them
into a wood, where he forced them to take off their clothes, then killed
them, and sunk them with heavy stones in a deep moss. At last a girl
whom he had carried off in this way got the advantage of him by inducing
him to turn away while she was undressing, and then pushing him into the
moss. Something similar is found in the conclusion of a robber story in
Grundtvig's Danske Folkeminder, 1861, No 30, p. 108, and in a modern
Danish ballad cited in Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, IV, 24, note.**
Another Transylvanian tale, Schuster, p. 433, has a fountain, a thirsty
bride, and doves (two or three) that sing to her, traits which have
perhaps been derived from some Ulinger ballad; but the fountain is of an
entirely different character, and the doves serve a different purpose.
The tale is a variety of 'Fitchers Vogel,' Grimms, No 46, and belongs to
the class of stories to which 'Bluebeard,' from its extensive
popularity, has given name. The magician of 'Fitcher's Vogel' and of
'Bluebeard' becomes, or remains, a preternatural being (a hill-man)
further north, as in Grundtvig's Gamle danske Minder, 1857, No 312, p.
182. There is a manifest affinity between these three species of tales
and our ballad (also between the German and Danish tales and the
Scandinavian ballad of 'Rosmer'), but the precise nature of this
affinity it is impossible to expound. 'Bluebeard,' 'La Barbe Bleue,'
Perrault, Histoires ou Contes du temps passé, 1697, p. 57 (Lefèvre), has
a special resemblance to the German ballads of the second class in the
four calls to sister Anne, which represent the cries to father, mother,
and brother, and agrees with these ballads as to the means by which the
death of the malefactor is brought about.
Looking back now over the whole field covered by this ballad, we observe
that the framework of the story is essentially the same in English,
Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian; in the first class of the German
ballads; in Polish #A#; in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and
Magyar. The woman delivers herself from death by some artifice,[72] and
retaliates upon the man the destruction he had intended for her. The
second form of the German ballad attributes the deliverance of the woman
to her brother, and also the punishment of the murderer. The third form
of the German ballad makes the woman lose her life, and her murderer,
for the most part, to suffer the penalty of the law, though in some
cases the brother takes immediate vengeance. Polish #B-K# may be ranked
with the second German class, and #O-CC# still better with the third;
but the brother appears in only a few of these, and, when he appears,
counts for nothing. The Wendish and the Bohemian ballad have the
incident of fraternal vengeance, though otherwise less like the German.
The Servian ballad, a slight thing at best, is still less like, but
ranks with the third German class. The oldest Icelandic copy is
altogether anomalous, and also incomplete, but seems to imply the death
of the woman: later copies suffer the woman to escape, without vengeance
upon the murderer.
It is quite beyond question that the third class of German ballad is a
derivation from the second.[73] Of the versions #T-Z#, #Z# alone has
preserved clear traits of the marvellous. A king's daughter is enticed
from home by Ulrich's singing, and is warned of her impending fate by
the dove, as in Class II. The other ballads have the usual marks of
degeneracy, a dropping or obscuring of marvellous and romantic
incidents, and a declension in the rank and style of the characters.
#T#, to be sure, has a hazel, and #Y# a tree-stump and a spring, and in
#T# Ulrich offers to teach Ännchen bird-song, but these traits have lost
all significance. Knight and lady sink to ordinary man and maid; for
though in #Y# the woman is called a king's daughter, the opening stanzas
of #Y# are borrowed from a different ballad. Ulrich retains so much of
the knight that he rides to Ännchen's house, in the first stanza of #T#,
but he apparently goes on foot with her to the wood, and this is the
rule in all the other ballads of this class. As Ulrich has lost his
horse, so the brother, in #T#, #U#, #V#, #X#, has lost his sword, or the
use of it, and in all these (also, superfluously, in #W#) Ulrich, like a
common felon as he was, is broken on the wheel.
That the woman should save her life by her own craft and courage is
certainly a more primitive conception than that she should depend upon
her brother, and the priority of this arrangement of the plot is
supported, if not independently proved, by the concurrence, as to this
point, of so many copies among so many nations, as also by the
accordance of various popular tales. The second German form must
therefore, so far forth, be regarded as a modification of the first.
Among the several devices, again, which the woman employs in order to
get the murderer into her power, the original would seem to be her
inducing him to lay his head in her lap, which gives her the opportunity
(by the use of charms or runes, in English #A#, Danish #G#, Norwegian
#F#, #H#, and one form of #B#) to put him into a deep sleep. The success
of this trick no doubt implies considerable simplicity on the part of
the victim of it; not more, however, than is elsewhere witnessed in
preternatural beings, whose wits are frequently represented as no match
for human shrewdness. Some of the Scandinavian ballads are not liable to
the full force of this objection, whatever that may be, for they make
the knight express a suspicion of treachery, and the lady solemnly
asseverate that she will not kill [fool, beguile] him in his sleep. And
so, when he is fast bound, she cries out, Wake up, for I will not kill
thee _in thy sleep_! This last circumstance is wanting in hardly any of
the Scandinavian ballads, whereas the previous compact is found only in
Danish #E#, #F#, #G#, #H#, #L#, Swedish #A#, Norwegian #A#, and the
Icelandic ballad. Not occurring in any of the older Danish copies, it
may be that the compact is an after-thought, and was inserted to
qualify the improbability. But the lady's equivocation is quite of a
piece with Memering's oath in 'Ravengaard and Memering,' Grundtvig, No
13, and King Dietrich's in the Dietrichsaga, Unger, c. 222, p. 206.[74]
English #A# and all the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian ballads employ
the stratagem of lulling the man to sleep, but these are not the only
ballads in which the man lays his head in the woman's lap. This trait is
observed in nearly all German ballads of the second and third class, in
_all_ the well-preserved ones, and also in the Magyar ballad. With
regard to the German ballads, however, it is purposeless (for it does
not advance the action of the drama in the least), and must be regarded
as a relic of an earlier form.[75] English #B-F# and all the French
ballads dispose of the traitor by a watery death. The scene is shifted
from a wood to a sea-coast, pool, or river bank, perhaps to suit the
locality to which the ballad had wandered. In English #B#, where,
apparently under the influence of other ballads,[76] the lady is forced
to wade into water up to her chin, the knight is pushed off his horse
when bending over to give a last kiss for which he had been asked; in
English #C-F# and French #A#, #B#, the man is induced to turn his face
to save the woman's modesty; in French #C-E# he is made to pull off her
stockings or shoes, and then, while off his guard, pitched into a sea or
river. This expedient is sufficiently trivial; but still more so, and
grazing on the farcical, is that which is made use of in the Dutch
ballad and those of the German first class, the woman's persuading the
man to take off his fine coat lest it should be spattered with her
blood, and cutting off his head with his own sword while he is thus
occupied. The Spanish and Portuguese ballads make the lady borrow the
knight's knife to remove some of the trimming of her dress, and in the
Italian she borrows his sword to cut a bough to shade her horse; for in
Italian the halt in the wood is completely forgotten, and the last half
of the action takes place on horseback. All these contrivances plainly
have less claim to be regarded as primary than that of binding the
murderer after he has been put to sleep.
The knight in English #A# is called an Elf, and as such is furnished
with an enchanting horn, which is replaced by a harp of similar
properties in #B#, where, however, the male personage has neither name
nor any kind of designation. The elf-horn of English #A# is again
represented by the seductive song of the Dutch ballad and of German
#G-R# and #Z#. Though the lady is not lured away in the Scandinavian
ballads by irresistible music,[77] Danish #A#, #E#, Norwegian #A#, #B#,
and Swedish #D# present to her the prospect of being taken to an
elf-land, or elysium, and there are traces of this in Danish #G# and #D#
also, and in Polish #Q#. The tongue that talks after the head is off, in
the Dutch ballad and in German #A#, #B#, #C#, #E#, is another mark of an
unearthly being. Halewyn, Ulver, Gert Olbert, like the English knight,
are clearly supernatural, though of a nondescript type. The elf in
English #A# is not to be interpreted too strictly, for the specific elf
is not of a sanguinary turn, as these so conspicuously are. He is
comparatively innocuous, like the hill-man Young Akin, in another
English ballad, who likewise entices away a woman by magical music, but
only to make her his wife. But the elf-knight and the rest seem to
delight in bloodshed for its own sake; for, as Grundtvig has pointed
out, there is no other apparent motive for murder in English #A#, #B#,
the Norwegian ballads, Danish #A#, Swedish #A#, #B#, or German
#A-E#.[78] This is true again, for one reason or another, of others of
the German ballads, of the French, of most of the Italian, and of the
Hungarian ballads.
The nearest approach to the Elf-knight, Halewyn, etc., is perhaps
Quintalin, in the saga of Samson the Fair. He was son of the miller
Galin. Nobody knew who his mother was, but many were of the mind that
Galin might have had him of a "goddess," an elf or troll woman, who
lived under the mill force. He was a thief, and lay in the woods; was
versed in many knave's tricks, and had also acquired agreeable arts. He
was a great master of the harp, and would decoy women into the woods
with his playing, keep them as long as he liked, and send them home
pregnant to their fathers or husbands. A king's daughter, Valentina, is
drawn on by his music deep into the woods, but is rescued by a friendly
power. Some parts of her dress and ornaments, which she had laid off in
her rapid following up of the harping, are afterwards found, with a
great quantity of precious things, in the subaqueous cave of Quintalin's
mother, who is a complete counterpart to Grendel's, and was probably
borrowed from Beówulf.[79] This demi-elf Quintalin is a tame personage
by the side of Grendel or of Halewyn. Halewyn does not devour his
victims, like Grendel: Quintalin does not even murder his. He allures
women with his music to make them serve his lust. We may infer that he
would plunder them, for he is a notorious thief. Even two of the oldest
Danish ballads, #B#, #C#, and again Danish #I# and Swedish #C#, make the
treacherous knight as lecherous as bloody, and so with German #J#, #K#,
#L#, #O#, #P#, #Q#, #R#, #S#, and Italian #A#, #B#, #C#, #E#, #F#. This
trait is wanting in Danish #D#, where, though traces of the originally
demonic nature of the knight remain, the muckle gold of the maids
already appears as the motive for the murders. In the later Danish
#E-H#, #K#, #L#, and Swedish #C#, #D#, the original elf or demon has
sunk to a remorseless robber, generally with brothers, sisters, or
underlings for accomplices.[80] This is preëminently his character in
English #C-F#, in nearly all the forty Polish ballads, and in the two
principal ballads of the German second class, #G#, #H#, though English
#D#, German #H#, and Polish #Q# retain a trace of the supernatural: the
first in the charm by means of which the knight compels the maid to quit
her parents, the second in the bloody spring, and the last in the golden
mountains. There is nothing that unequivocally marks the robber in the
other German ballads of the second class and in those of the third. The
question 'Weinst du um deines Vaters Gut?' in #I-L#, #O-S#, #T-W#, is
hardly decisive, and only in #W# and #Z# is it expressly said that the
maid had taken valuable things with her (as in Swedish #D#, Norwegian
#A#, #B#, English #D-F#). #J-L#, #O-S#, give us to understand that the
lady had lost her honor,[81] but in all the rest, except the anomalous
#Z#, the motive for murder is insufficient.[82]
The woman in these ballads is for the most part nameless, or bears a
stock name to which no importance can be attached. Not so with the names
of the knight. Most of these are peculiar, and the Northern ones,
though superficially of some variety, have yet likeness enough to tempt
one to seek for a common original. Grundtvig, with considerable
diffidence, suggests Oldemor as a possible ground-form. He conceives
that the #R# of some of the Scandinavian names may be a relic of a
foregoing Herr. The initial #H# would easily come or go. Given such a
name as Hollemen (Danish #C#), we might expect it to give place to
Halewyn, which is both a family and a local name in Flanders, if the
ballad should pass into the Low Countries from Denmark, a derivation
that Grundtvig is far from asserting. So Ulinger, a local appellation,
might be substituted for the Ulver of Danish #A#. Grundtvig, it must be
borne in mind, declines to be responsible for the historical correctness
of this genealogy, and would be still less willing to undertake an
explanation of the name Oldemor.
In place of Oldemor, Professor Sophus Bugge, in a recent article, marked
by his characteristic sharp-sightedness and ingenuity, has proposed
Hollevern, Holevern, or Olevern as the base-form of all the Northern
names for the bloody knight, and he finds in this name a main support
for the entirely novel and somewhat startling hypothesis that the ballad
we are dealing with is a wild shoot from the story of Judith and
Holofernes.[83] His argument, given as briefly as possible, is as
follows.
That the Bible story was generally known in the Middle Ages no one would
question. It was treated in a literary way by an Anglo-Saxon poet, who
was acquainted with the scriptural narrative, and in a popular way by
poets who had no direct acquaintance with the original.[84] The source
of the story in the ballad must in any case be a tradition many times
removed from the biblical story; that much should be changed, much
dropped, and much added is only what would be expected.
Beginning the comparison with 'Judith' with this caution, it is first
submitted that Holofernes can be recognized in most of the Scandinavian
and German names of the knight. The v of the proposed base-form is
preserved in Ulver, Halewyn, and probably in the English Elf-knight. It
is easy to explain a v's passing over to g, as in Ulinger, Adelger, and
especially under the influence of the very common names in -ger. Again,
v might easily become b, as in Olbert, or m, as in Hollemen, Olmor; and
the initial R of Rulleman, Romor, etc., may have been carried over from
a prefixed Herr.[85]
The original name of the heroine has been lost, and yet it is to be
noticed that Gert Olbert's mother, in German #A#, is called Fru Jutte.
The heroine in this same ballad is named Helena (Linnich in #F#); in
others (German #C#, #D#, #E#), Odilia. These are names of saints, and
this circumstance may tend to show that the woman in the ballad was
originally conceived of as rather a saint than a secular character,
though in the course of time the story has so changed that the devout
widow who sought out her country's enemy in his own camp has been
transformed into a young maid who is enticed from home by a treacherous
suitor.
It is an original trait in the ballad that the murderer, as is expressly
said in many copies, is from a foreign land. According to an English
version (#E#), he comes from the north, as Holofernes does, "venit Assur
ex montibus ab aquilone" (Jud. xvi, 5).
The germ of this outlandish knight's bloodthirstiness is found in the
truculent part that Holofernes plays in the Bible, his threats and
devastations. That the false suitor appears without companions is in
keeping with the ballad style of representation; yet we might find
suggestions of the Assyrian's army in the swains, the brothers, the
stable-boy, whom the maid falls in with on her way home.
The splendid promises made in many of the ballads might have been
developed from the passage where Holofernes, whose bed is described as
wrought with purple, gold, and precious stones, says to Judith, Thou
shalt be great in the house of Nebuchadnezzar, and thy name shall be
named in all the earth (xi, 21).
In many forms of the ballad, especially the Dutch and the German, the
maid adorns herself splendidly, as Judith does: she even wears some sort
of crown in Dutch #A# 16, German #D# 8, as Judith does in x, 3, xvi, 10
(mitram).
In the English #D#, #E#, #F#, the oldest Danish, #A#, and the Polish
versions, the maid, like Judith, leaves her home in the night.
The Piedmontese casté, Italian #E# 1 [there is a castle in nearly all
the Italian ballads, and also in Dutch #B#], may remind us of
Holofernes' castra.
The knight's carrying off the maid, lifting her on to his horse in many
copies, may well come from a misunderstanding of elevaverunt in Judith
x, 20: Et cum in faciem ejus intendisset, adoravit eum, prosternens se
super terram. Et elevaverunt eam servi Holofernis, jubente domino
suo.[86]
In German #A# Gert Olbert and Helena are said to ride three days and
nights, and in Danish #D# the ride is for three days; and we may
remember that Judith killed Holofernes the fourth day after her arrival
in his camp.
The place in which the pair alight is, according to German #G# 20, a
deep dale, and this agrees with the site of Holofernes' camp in the
valley of Bethulia. There is a spring or stream in many of the ballads,
and also a spring in the camp, in which Judith bathes (xii, 7).
Most forms of the ballad make the knight, after the halt, inform the
maid that she is to die, as many maids have before her in the same
place; e.g., German #G# 7:
'Der Ulinger hat eylff Jungfrawen gehangen,
Die zwölfft hat er gefangen.'[87]
This corresponds with the passage in Judith's song (xvi, 6), $Dixit se$
... infantes meos $dare$ in prædam et $virgenes in captivitatem$: but it
is reasonable to suppose that the ballad follows some version of the
Bible words that varied much from the original.
The incident of the maid's lousing and tousing her betrayer's hair,
while he lies with his head in her lap, may have come from Judith
seizing Holofernes by the hair before she kills him, but the story of
Samson and Delilah may have had influence here.
According to many German versions, the murderer grants the maid three
cries before she dies. She invokes Jesus, Mary, and her brother. Or she
utters three sighs, the first to God the Father, the second to Jesus,
the third to her brother. These cries or sighs seem to take the place of
Judith's prayer, Confirma me, Domine Deus Israel (xiii, 7), and it may
also be well to remember that Holofernes granted Judith, on her request,
permission to go out in the night to pray.
The Dutch, Low-German, Scandinavian, and other versions agree in making
the woman kill the knight with his own sword, as in Judith. The Dutch
and Low-German [also Danish #F#, Swedish #A#] have preserved an original
trait in making the maid hew off the murderer's head. English and French
versions dispose of the knight differently: the maid pushes him into sea
or river. Perhaps, in some older form of the story, after the head was
cut off, the _trunk_ was pushed into the water: cf. Judith xiii, 10:
Abscidit caput ejus et ... evolvit corpus ejus truncum. The words
apprehendit comam capitis ejus (xiii, 9) have their parallel in Dutch
#A#, 33: "Zy nam het hoofd al by het haer." The Dutch ballad makes the
maid carry the head with her.
"Singing and ringing" she rode through the wood: Judith sings a song of
praise to the Lord after her return home.
In English #C-F#, May Colven comes home before dawn, as Judith does. The
Dutch #A# says, When to her father's gate she came, she blew the horn
like a man. Compare Judith xiii, 13: Et dixit Judith a longe custodibus
murorum, Aperite portas!
The Dutch text goes on to say that when the father heard the horn he was
delighted at his daughter's return: and Judith v, 14, Et factum est, cum
audissent viri vocem ejus, vocaverunt presbyteros civitatis.
The conclusion of Dutch #A# is that there was a banquet held, and the
head was set on the table. So Judith causes Holofernes' head to be hung
up on the city wall, and after the enemy have been driven off, the Jews
hold a feast.
The Icelandic version, though elsewhere much mutilated, has a concluding
stanza which certainly belongs to the ballad:
Ása went into a holy cell,
Never did she harm to man.
This agrees with the view taken of the heroine of the ballad as a saint,
and with the Bible account that Judith lived a chaste widow after her
husband's demise.
Danish #D# is unique in one point. The robber has shown the maid a
little knoll, in which the "much gold" of the women he has murdered
lies. When she has killed him, the maid says, "_I_ shall have the much
gold," and takes as much as she can carry off. Compare with this
Holofernes putting Judith into his treasury (xii, 1),[88] her carrying
off the conopœum (xiii, 10), and her receiving from the people all
Holofernes' gold, silver, clothes, jewels, and furniture, as her share
of the plunder of the Assyrian camp (xv, 14). It is, perhaps, a
perversion of this circumstance that the robber in German #G#, #H#, is
refused permission to keep his costly clothes.
English #D# seems also to have preserved a portion of the primitive
story, when it makes the maid tell her parents in the morning all that
has happened, whereupon they go with her to the sea-shore to find the
robber's body. The foundation for this is surely the Bible account that
Judith makes known her act to the elders of the city, and that the Jews
go out in the morning and fall on the enemy's camp, in which Holofernes'
body is lying. In Swedish #C# the robber's sisters mourn over his body,
and in Judith xiv, 18 the Assyrians break out into loud cries when they
learn of Holofernes' death.
In all this it is simply contended that the story of Judith is the
remote source of the ballad, and it is conceded that many of the
correspondences which have been cited may be accidental. Neither the
Latin text of Judith nor any other written treatment of the story of
Judith is supposed to have been known to the author of the ballad. The
knowledge of its biblical origin being lost, the story would develop
itself in its own way, according to the fashion of oral tradition. And
so the pious widow into whose hands God gave over his enemies is
converted into a fair maid who is enticed by a false knight into a wood,
and who kills him in defence of her own life.
A similar transformation can be shown elsewhere in popular poetry. The
little Katie of certain northern ballads (see Grundtvig, No 101) is a
maid among other maids who prefers death to dishonor; but was originally
Saint Catherine, daughter of the king of Egypt, who suffered martyrdom
for the faith under the Emperor Maxentius. All the versions of the
Halewyn ballad which we possess, even the purest, may be far removed
from the primitive, both as to story and as to metrical form. New
features would be taken up, and old ones would disappear. One copy has
preserved genuine particulars, which another has lost, but Dutch
tradition has kept the capital features best of all.[89]
Professor Bugge's argument has been given with an approach to fulness
out of a desire to do entire justice to the distinguished author's case,
though most of the correspondences adduced by him fail to produce any
effect upon my mind.
The case is materially strengthened by the Dutch text #C# ('Roland'),
which was not accessible at the time Bugge's paper was written. The name
Roland is not so close to Holofern as Halewyn, but is still within the
range of conceivable metamorphosis. The points of coincidence between
Dutch #C# and the story of Judith are these: The woman, first making an
elaborate toilet,[90] goes out to seek the man, who is spoken of as
surrounded with soldiers; she is challenged on the way; finds Roland
lying on his bed, which he proposes she shall share (or lose her
life);[91] she cuts off his head, which, after her return home, she
exposes from her window.[92]
If this was the original form of the Dutch ballad, and the Dutch ballad
is the source from which all the other ballads have come, by processes
of dropping, taking up, and transforming, then we may feel compelled to
admit that this ballad might be a wild shoot from the story of Judith.
Any one who bears in mind the strange changes which stories undergo will
hesitate to pronounce this impossible. What poor Ophelia says of us
human creatures is even truer of ballads: "We know what we are, but know
not what we may be."
But when we consider how much would have to be dropped, how much to be
taken up, and how much to be transformed, before the Hebrew "gest" could
be converted into the European ballad, we naturally look for a less
difficult hypothesis. It is a supposition attended with less difficulty
that an independent European tradition existed of a half-human,
half-demonic being, who possessed an irresistible power of decoying away
young maids, and was wont to kill them after he got them into his hands,
but who at last found one who was more than his match, and lost his own
life through her craft and courage. A modification of this story is
afforded by the large class of Bluebeard tales. The Quintalin story
seems to be another variety, with a substitution of lust for
bloodthirst. The Dutch ballad may have been _affected_ by some lost
ballad of Holofern, and may have taken up some of its features, at least
that of carrying home Halewyn's [Roland's] head, which is found in no
other version.[93]
#A a# is translated by Grundtvig in Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No
37, p. 230: #B b# in the same, No 36, p. 227: #C a#, #b#, #D a#, #b#,
blended, No 35, p. 221. #A#, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische V. L. der
Vorzeit, No 1, p. 1: Gerhard, p. 15. #C b#, by Rosa Warrens, No 34, p.
148: Wolf, Halle der Völker, I, 38, Hausschatz, 225. #C#, #D#, etc., as
in Allingham, p. 244, by Knortz, Lied. u. Rom. Alt-Englands, No 4, p.
14.
A
#a.# Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 22.
#b.# Motherwell's MS., p. 563.
1
Fair lady Isabel sits in her bower sewing,
Aye as the gowans grow gay
There she heard an elf-knight blawing his horn.
The first morning in May
2
'If I had yon horn that I hear blawing,
And yon elf-knight to sleep in my bosom.'
3
This maiden had scarcely these words spoken,
Till in at her window the elf-knight has luppen.
4
'It's a very strange matter, fair maiden,' said he,
'I canna blaw my horn but ye call on me.
5
'But will ye go to yon greenwood side?
If ye canna gang, I will cause you to ride.'
6
He leapt on a horse, and she on another,
And they rode on to the greenwood together.
7
'Light down, light down, lady Isabel,' said he,
'We are come to the place where ye are to die.'
8
'Hae mercy, hae mercy, kind sir, on me,
Till ance my dear father and mother I see.'
9
'Seven king's-daughters here hae I slain,
And ye shall be the eight o them.'
10
'O sit down a while, lay your head on my knee,
That we may hae some rest before that I die.'
11
She stroakd him sae fast, the nearer he did creep,
Wi a sma charm she lulld him fast asleep.
12
Wi his ain sword-belt sae fast as she ban him,
Wi his ain dag-durk sae sair as she dang him.
13
'If seven king's-daughters here ye hae slain,
Lye ye here, a husband to them a'.'
B
#a.# Buchan's MSS, II, fol. 80. #b.# Buchan's Ballads of
the North of Scotland, II, 201. c. Motherwell's MS., p.
561. #d.# Harris MS., No 19.
1
There came a bird out o a bush,
On water for to dine,
An sighing sair, says the king's daughter,
'O wae 's this heart o mine!'
2
He 's taen a harp into his hand,
He 's harped them all asleep,
Except it was the king's daughter,
Who one wink couldna get.
3
He 's luppen on his berry-brown steed,
Taen 'er on behind himsell,
Then baith rede down to that water
That they ca Wearie's Well.
4
'Wide in, wide in, my lady fair,
No harm shall thee befall;
Oft times I've watered my steed
Wi the waters o Wearie's Well.'
5
The first step that she stepped in,
She stepped to the knee;
And sighend says this lady fair,
'This water 's nae for me.'
6
'Wide in, wide in, my lady fair,
No harm shall thee befall;
Oft times I've watered my steed
Wi the water o Wearie's Well.'
7
The next step that she stepped in,
She stepped to the middle;
'O,' sighend says this lady fair,
I 've wat my gowden girdle.'
8
'Wide in, wide in, my lady fair,
No harm shall thee befall;
Oft times have I watered my steed
Wi the water o Wearie's Well.'
9
The next step that she stepped in,
She stepped to the chin;
'O,' sighend says this lady fair,
'They sud gar twa loves twin.'
10
'Seven king's-daughters I 've drownd there,
In the water o Wearie's Well,
And I'll make you the eight o them,
And ring the common bell.'
11
'Since I am standing here,' she says,
'This dowie death to die,
One kiss o your comely mouth
I'm sure wad comfort me.'
12
He louted him oer his saddle bow,
To kiss her cheek and chin;
She 's taen him in her arms twa,
An thrown him headlong in.
13
'Since seven king's daughters ye 've drowned there,
In the water o Wearie's Well,
I'll make you bridegroom to them a',
An ring the bell mysell.'
14
And aye she warsled, and aye she swam,
And she swam to dry lan;
She thanked God most cheerfully
The dangers she oercame.
C
#a.# Herd's MSS, I, 166. #b.# Herd's Ancient and Modern
Scottish Songs, 1776, I, 93. #c.# Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
p. 67, == #b# "collated with a copy obtained from
recitation."
1
False Sir John a wooing came
To a maid of beauty fair;
May Colven was this lady's name,
Her father's only heir.
2
He wood her butt, he wood her ben,
He wood her in the ha,
Until he got this lady's consent
To mount and ride awa.
3
He went down to her father's bower,
Where all the steeds did stand,
And he 's taken one of the best steeds
That was in her father's land.
4
He 's got on and she 's got on,
And fast as they could flee,
Until they came to a lonesome part,
A rock by the side of the sea.
5
'Loup off the steed,' says false Sir John,
'Your bridal bed you see;
For I have drowned seven young ladies,
The eight one you shall be.
6
'Cast off, cast off, my May Colven,
All and your silken gown,
For it 's oer good and oer costly
To rot in the salt sea foam.
7
'Cast off, cast off, my May Colven,
All and your embroiderd shoen,
For they 're oer good and oer costly
To rot in the salt sea foam.'
8
'O turn you about, O false Sir John,
And look to the leaf of the tree,
For it never became a gentleman
A naked woman to see.'
9
He turnd himself straight round about,
To look to the leaf of the tree;
So swift as May Colven was
To throw him in the sea.
10
'O help, O help, my May Colven,
O help, or else I'll drown;
I'll take you home to your father's bower,
And set you down safe and sound.'
11
'No help, no help, O false Sir John,
No help, nor pity thee;
Tho seven king's-daughters you have drownd,
But the eight shall not be me.'
12
So she went on her father's steed,
As swift as she could flee,
And she came home to her father's bower
Before it was break of day.
13
Up then and spoke the pretty parrot:
'May Colven, where have you been?
What has become of false Sir John,
That woo'd you so late the streen?
14
'He woo'd you butt, he woo'd you ben,
He woo'd you in the ha,
Until he got your own consent
For to mount and gang awa.'
15
'O hold your tongue, my pretty parrot,
Lay not the blame upon me;
Your cup shall be of the flowered gold,
Your cage of the root of the tree.'
16
Up then spake the king himself,
In the bed-chamber where he lay:
'What ails the pretty parrot,
That prattles so long or day?'
17
'There came a cat to my cage door,
It almost a worried me,
And I was calling on May Colven
To take the cat from me.'
D
#a.# Sharpe's Ballad Book (1823), No 17, p. 45. #b.#
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 45. #c.#
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. 21, No. XXIV, one
stanza.
1
O heard ye of a bloody knight,
Lived in the south country?
For he has betrayed eight ladies fair
And drowned them in the sea.
2
Then next he went to May Collin,
She was her father's heir,
The greatest beauty in the land,
I solemnly declare.
3
'I am a knight of wealth and might,
Of townlands twenty-three;
And you'll be lady of them all,
If you will go with me.'
4
'Excuse me, then, Sir John,' she says;
'To wed I am too young;
Without I have my parents' leave,
With you I darena gang.'
5
'Your parents' leave you soon shall have,
In that they will agree;
For I have made a solemn vow
This night you'll go with me.'
6
From below his arm he pulled a charm,
And stuck it in her sleeve,
And he has made her go with him,
Without her parents' leave.
7
Of gold and silver she has got
With her twelve hundred pound,
And the swiftest steed her father had
She has taen to ride upon.
8
So privily they went along,
They made no stop or stay,
Till they came to the fatal place
That they call Bunion Bay.
9
It being in a lonely place,
And no house there was nigh,
The fatal rocks were long and steep,
And none could hear her cry.
10
'Light down,' he said, 'fair May Collin,
Light down and speak with me,
For here I've drowned eight ladies fair,
And the ninth one you shall be.'
11
'Is this your bowers and lofty towers,
So beautiful and gay?
Or is it for my gold,' she said,
'You take my life away?'
12
'Strip off,' he says, 'thy jewels fine,
So costly and so brave,
For they are too costly and too fine
To throw in the sea wave.'
13
'Take all I have my life to save,
O good Sir John, I pray;
Let it neer be said you killed a maid
Upon her wedding day.'
14
'Strip off,' he says, 'thy Holland smock,
That's bordered with the lawn,
For it's too costly and too fine
To rot in the sea sand.'
15
'O turn about, Sir John,' she said,
'Your back about to me,
For it never was comely for a man
A naked woman to see.'
16
But as he turned him round about,
She threw him in the sea,
Saying, 'Lie you there, you false Sir John,
Where you thought to lay me.
17
'O lie you there, you traitor false,
Where you thought to lay me,
For though you stripped me to the skin,
Your clothes you've got with thee.'
18
Her jewels fine she did put on,
So costly, rich and brave,
And then with speed she mounts his steed,
So well she did behave.
19
That lady fair being void of fear,
Her steed being swift and free,
And she has reached her father's gate
Before the clock struck three.
20
Then first she called the stable groom,
He was her waiting man;
Soon as he heard his lady's voice
He stood with cap in hand.
21
'Where have you been, fair May Collin?
Who owns this dapple grey?'
'It is a found one,' she replied,
'That I got on the way.'
22
Then out bespoke the wily parrot
Unto fair May Collin:
'What have you done with false Sir John,
That went with you yestreen?'
23
'O hold your tongue, my pretty parrot,
And talk no more to me,
And where you had a meal a day
O now you shall have three.'
24
Then up bespoke her father dear,
From his chamber where he lay:
'What aileth thee, my pretty Poll,
That you chat so long or day?'
25
'The cat she came to my cage-door,
The thief I could not see,
And I called to fair May Collin,
To take the cat from me.'
26
Then first she told her father dear
The deed that she had done,
And next she told her mother dear
Concerning false Sir John.
27
'If this be true, fair May Collin,
That you have told to me,
Before I either eat or drink
This false Sir John I'll see.'
28
Away they went with one consent,
At dawning of the day,
Until they came to Carline Sands,
And there his body lay.
29
His body tall, by that great fall,
By the waves tossed to and fro,
The diamond ring that he had on
Was broke in pieces two.
30
And they have taken up his corpse
To yonder pleasant green,
And there they have buried false Sir John,
For fear he should be seen.
E
J. H. Dixon, Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the
Peasantry of England, p. 74.
1
An outlandish knight came from the north lands,
And he came a-wooing to me;
He told me he'd take me unto the north lands,
And there he would marry me.
2
'Come, fetch me some of your father's gold,
And some of your mother's fee,
And two of the best nags out of the stable,
Where they stand thirty and three.'
3
She fetched him some of her father's gold,
And some of her mother's fee,
And two of the best nags out of the stable,
Where they stood thirty and three.
4
She mounted her on her milk-white steed,
He on the dapple grey;
They rode till they came unto the sea-side,
Three hours before it was day.
5
'Light off, light off thy milk-white steed,
And deliver it unto me;
Six pretty maids have I drowned here,
And thou the seventh shalt be.
6
'Pull off, pull off thy silken gown,
And deliver it unto me;
Methinks it looks too rich and too gay
To rot in the salt sea.
7
'Pull off, pull off thy silken stays,
And deliver them unto me;
Methinks they are too fine and gay
To rot in the salt sea.
8
'Pull off, pull off thy Holland smock,
And deliver it unto me;
Methinks it looks too rich and gay
To rot in the salt sea.'
9
'If I must pull off my Holland smock,
Pray turn thy back unto me;
For it is not fitting that such a ruffian
A naked woman should see.'
10
He turned his back towards her
And viewed the leaves so green;
She catched him round the middle so small,
And tumbled him into the stream.
11
He dropped high and he dropped low,
Until he came to the side;
'Catch hold of my hand, my pretty maiden,
And I will make you my bride.'
12
'Lie there, lie there, you false-hearted man,
Lie there instead of me;
Six pretty maids have you drowned here,
And the seventh has drowned thee.'
13
She mounted on her milk-white steed,
And led the dapple grey;
She rode till she came to her own father's hall,
Three hours before it was day.
14
The parrot being in the window so high,
Hearing the lady, did say,
'I'm afraid that some ruffian has led you astray,
That you have tarried so long away.'
15
'Don't prittle nor prattle, my pretty parrot,
Nor tell no tales of me;
Thy cage shall be made of the glittering gold,
Although it is made of a tree.'
16
The king being in the chamber so high,
And hearing the parrot, did say,
'What ails you, what ails you, my pretty parrot,
That you prattle so long before day?'
17
'It's no laughing matter,' the parrot did say,
'That so loudly I call unto thee,
For the cats have got into the window so high,
And I'm afraid they will have me.'
18
'Well turned, well turned, my pretty parrot,
Well turned, well turned for me;
Thy cage shall be made of the glittering gold,
And the door of the best ivory.'
F
Roxburghe Ballads, III, 449.
1
'Go fetch me some of your father's gold,
And some of your mother's fee,
And I'll carry you into the north land,
And there I'll marry thee.'
2
She fetchd him some of her father's gold,
And some of her mother's fee;
She carried him into the stable,
Where horses stood thirty and three.
3
She leapd on a milk-white steed,
And he on a dapple-grey;
They rode til they came to a fair river's side,
Three hours before it was day.
4
'O light, O light, you lady gay,
O light with speed, I say,
For six knight's daughters have I drowned here,
And you the seventh must be.'
5
'Go fetch the sickle, to crop the nettle
That grows so near the brim,
For fear it should tangle my golden locks,
Or freckle my milk-white skin.'
6
He fetchd the sickle, to crop the nettle
That grows so near the brim,
And with all the strength that pretty Polly had
She pushd the false knight in.
7
'Swim on, swim on, thou false knight,
And there bewail thy doom,
For I don't think thy cloathing too good
To lie in a watry tomb.'
8
She leaped on her milk-white steed,
She led the dapple grey;
She rid till she came to her father's house,
Three hours before it was day.
9
'Who knocked so loudly at the ring?'
The parrot he did say;
'O where have you been, my pretty Polly,
All this long summer's day?'
10
'O hold your tongue, parrot,
Tell you no tales of me;
Your cage shall be made of beaten gold,
Which is now made of a tree.'
11
O then bespoke her father dear,
As he on his bed did lay:
'O what is the matter, my parrot,
That you speak before it is day?'
12
'The cat's at my cage, master,
And sorely frighted me,
And I calld down my Polly
To take the cat away.'
* * * * *
#A.#
_Burden. Song xix of Forbes's 'Cantus,' Aberdeen, 1682, 3d
ed., has, as pointed out by Motherwell, Minstrelsy, p. lx,
nearly the same burden: ~The gowans are gay, The first
morning of May~. And again, a song in the Tea Table
Miscellany, as remarked by Buchan, ~There gowans are gay,
The first morning of May~: p. 404 of the 12th ed., London,
1763._
#b.#
_No doubt furnished to Motherwell by Buchan, as a
considerable number of ballads in this part of his MS.
seem to have been._
3^2. Then in.
8^1. kind sir, said she.
10^2. That we may some rest before I die.
11^1. the near.
13^2. to them ilk ane.
_1 is given by Motherwell, Minstrelsy, p. lx, but
apparently to improve metre and secure rhyme, thus_:
Lady Isabel sits in her bouir sewing,
She heard an elf-knight his horn blowing.
#B b.#
_Buchan's printed copy differs from the manuscript very
slightly, except in spelling._
4^3, 6^3. Aft times hae I.
5^3. And sighing sair says.
7^3, 9^3. And sighing says.
14^2. Till she swam.
14^3. Then thanked.
14^4. she'd.
#c.#
_Like #A b#, derived by Motherwell from Buchan._
4^1, 6^1, 8^1. wade in, wade in.
14^3. And thanked.
_Dixon, Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads,
p. 63, printing #B# from the manuscript, makes one or two
trivial changes._
#d#
_is only this fragment_.
4^3
Mony a time I rade wi my brown foal
The water o Wearie's Wells.
'Leave aff, leave aff your gey mantle,
It's a' gowd but the hem;
Leave aff, leave [aff], it's far owre gude
To weet i the saut see faem.'
5
She wade in, an he rade in,
Till it took her to the knee;
Wi sighin said that lady gay
'Sic wadin's no for me.'
* * * * * * *
9
He rade in, and she wade in,
Till it took her to the chin;
Wi sighin said that ladie gay
'I'll wade nae farer in.'
10^3
'Sax king's dochters I hae drowned,
An the seventh you sall be.'
* * * * * * *
13
'Lie you there, you fause young man,
Where you thought to lay me.'
#C b.#
_The printed copy follows the manuscript with only very
trifling variations_: Colvin _for_ Colven;
13^1, up then spak;
16^4, ere day;
17^2, almost worried.
#c.#
2^{1, 2}. he's courted.
2^3. Till once he got.
_Between 2 and 3 is inserted:_
She's gane to her father's coffers,
Where all his money lay,
And she's taken the red, and she's left the white,
And so lightly as she tripped away.
3^1 She's gane down to her father's stable,
3^3 And she's taken the best, and she's left the warst.
4
He rode on, and she rode on,
They rode a long summer's day,
Until they came to a broad river,
An arm of a lonesome sea.
5^{3, 4}
'For it's seven king's daughters I have drowned here,
And the eighth I'll out make with thee.'
6^{1, 2}
'Cast off, cast off your silks so fine,
And lay them on a stone.'
7^{1, 2, 3}
'Cast off, cast off your holland smock,
And lay it on this stone,
For it's too fine.' ...
9^{3, 4}
She's twined her arms about his waist,
And thrown him into
10^{1, 2}
'O hold a grip of me, May Colvin,
For fear that I should'
^3 father's gates
^4 and safely I'll set you down.
11
'O lie you there, thou false Sir John,
O lie you there,' said she,
'For you lie not in a caulder bed
Than the ane you intended for me.'
12^3. father's gates.
12^4. At the breaking of the day.
13^4. yestreen.
_Between 13 and 14 is inserted:_
Up then spake the pretty parrot,
In the bonnie cage where it lay:
'O what hae ye done with the false Sir John,
That he behind you does stay?'
15^{3, 4}
'Your cage will be made of the beaten gold,
And the spakes of ivorie.'
17^{1, 2}
'It was a cat cam ...
I thought 't would have' ...
#D a.#
2^1. Colin.
#b#.
_Buchan's copy makes many slight changes which are not
noticed here._
1^2. west countrie.
_After 1 is inserted:_
All ladies of a gude account
As ever yet were known;
This traitor was a baron knight,
They calld him fause Sir John.
_After 2:_
'Thou art the darling of my heart,
I say, fair May Colvin,
So far excells thy beauties great
That ever I hae seen.'
3^2. Hae towers, towns twenty three.
7^2. five hunder.
7^3. The best an steed.
8^3. fatal end.
8^4. Binyan's Bay.
12^2. rich and rare.
12^4. sea ware.
_After 12:_
Then aff she's taen her jewels fine,
And thus she made her moan:
'Hae mercy on a virgin young,
I pray you, gude Sir John.'
'Cast aff, cast aff, fair May Colvin,
Your gown and petticoat,
For they're too costly and too fine
To rot by the sea rock.'
13^4. Before her.
14^4. to toss.
18^3. her steed.
23^3. What hast thou made o fause.
28^3. Charlestown sands. _Sharps thinks Carline Sands
means Carlinseugh Sands on the coast of Forfarshire._
_After 30:_
Ye ladies a', wherever you be,
That read this mournful song,
I pray you mind on May Colvin,
And think on fause Sir John.
Aff they've taen his jewels fine,
To keep in memory;
And sae I end my mournful sang
And fatal tragedy.
#c.#
_Motherwell's one stanza is:_
O heard ye eer o a bloody knight
That livd in the west countrie?
For he has stown seven ladies fair,
And drownd them a' in the sea.
#E.#
3^2. of the.
17^2. But so.
[24] 'The Elfin Knight' begins very much like #A#, but perhaps has
borrowed its opening stanzas from this ballad. See page 13.
[25] The second stanza, which describes the harping, occurs again in
'Glenkindie' (st. 6).
[26] Perhaps the change from wood, #A#, to water, #B-F#, was made under
the influence of some Merman ballad, or by admixture with such a ballad;
e.g., 'Nøkkens Svig,' Grundtvig, No 39. In this (#A#) the nix entices a
king's daughter away from a dance, sets her on his horse, and rides with
her over the heath to a wild water, into which she sinks. It is also
quite among possibilities that there was originally an English nix
ballad, in which the king's daughter saved herself by some artifice,
not, of course, such as is employed in #B-F#, but like that in #A#, or
otherwise. Maid Heiemo, in Landstad, No 39, kills a nix with "one of her
small knives." Had she put him to sleep with a charm, and killed him
with _his own_ knife, as Lady Isabel does, there would have been nothing
to shock credibility in the story.
Aytoun, Ballads of Scotland, I, 219, 2d ed., hastily pronounces Buchan's
ballad not authentic, "being made up of stanzas borrowed from versions
of 'Burd Helen' ['Child Waters']." There are, indeed, three successive
steps into the water in both ballads, but Aytoun should have bethought
himself how natural and how common it is for a passage to slip from one
ballad into another, when the circumstances of the story are the same;
and in some such cases no one can say where the verses that are common
originally belonged. Here, indeed, as Grundtvig remarks, IV, 7, note*,
it may well be that the verses in question belonged originally to 'Burd
Helen,' and were adopted (but in the processes of tradition) into 'The
Water of Wearie's Well;' for it must be admitted that the transaction in
the water is not a happy conception in the latter, since it shocks
probability that the woman should be able to swim ashore, and the man
not.
[27] "This ballad appears modern, from a great many expressions, but yet
I am certain that it is old: the present copy came from the housekeeper
at Methven." Note by Sharpe, in Laing's ed. of the Ballad Book, 1880, p.
130, xvii. Motherwell, in his Minstrelsy, p. lxx, n. 24, says that he
had seen a stall ballad as early as 1749, entitled 'The Western
Tragedy,' which perfectly agreed with Sharpe's copy. But in his
Note-Book, p. 5 (about 1826-7), Motherwell says, "The best copy of May
Colean with which I have met occurs in a stall copy printed about thirty
years ago [should we then read 1799 instead of 1749?], under the title
of 'The Western Tragedy.' I have subsequently seen a posterior reprint
of this stall copy under this title, 'The Historical Ballad of May
Collean.' In Mr. Sharpe's Ballad Book, the same copy, wanting only one
stanza, is given."
[28] According to the variation given by Willems, and adopted by
Hoffmann, Halewijn's _son_ came to meet her, tied her horse to a tree,
and bade her to sit down by him and loose her hair. For every hair she
undid she dropped a tear. But it will presently be seen not only that
the time has not come for them to sit down, but that Halewijn's bidding
her undo her hair (to no purpose) is a perversion of her offering to
"red" _his_, to get him into her power, an offer which she makes in the
German and Scandinavian ballads, where also there is good reason for her
tears, but none as yet here.
[29] J. W. Wolf, Deutsche Märchen u. Sagen, No 29, p. 143, gives the
story according to #B#, apparently from a ballad like Snellaert's. So
Luise v. Ploennies, Reiseerinnerungen aus Belgien, p. 38.
Halewyn makes his appearance again in the Flemish ballad, 'Halewyn en
het kleyne Kind,' Coussemaker, No 46, p. 149; Poésies populaires de la
France, vol. I. A boy of seven years has shot one of Halewyn's rabbits,
and is for this condemned to be hanged on the highest tree in the park.
The father makes great offers for his ransom, but in vain. On the first
step of the ladder the child looks back for his mother, on the second
for his father, on the third for his brother, on the fourth for his
sister, each of whom successively arrives and is told that delay would
have cost him his life. It will presently be seen that there is a
resemblance here to German ballads (#G-X#, #Z#).
[30] "La chanson de Halewyn, telle à peu près que la donnent Willems,
Snellaert et de Coussemaker, se vend encore sur le marché de Bruges.
Quoiqu'elle porte pour titre _Halewyn_, jamais notre pièce n'a été
connue ici sous ce nom. Le nom de Halewijn, Alewijn ou Alwin ... est
réservé au héros de la pièce suivante" [Mi Adel en Hir Alewijn]. Lootens
et Feys, p. 66. "Il est a regretter que Willems et de Coussemaker
n'aient pas jugé à propos de donner cette pièce telle que le peuple l'a
conservée; on serait sans aucun doute en possession de variantes
remarquables, et les lacunes qui existent dans notre version n'eussent
pas manqué d'être com blées. Il est bon d'insister sur la remarque faite
à la suite de la chanson, qu'à Bruges et dans beaucoup de localités de
la Flandre, elle n'est connue que sous le titre de _Roland_. Ajoutons
que notre texte appartient au dernier siècle." L. et F., 295.
[31] So in 'Liebe ohne Stand,' one of the mixed forms of the German
ballad, Wunderhorn, Erk I, 41, Crecelius, I, 36,
Und als es nun kam an den dritten Tag,
Da gingen die Pfeiffen und Trommeln an.
[32] E.g., the wonderland in #A# 2-6, and the strict watch kept over the
lady in 7-10 are repeated in 'Ribold og Guldborg,' Grundtvig, 82, #B#
2-7, 8-11, and in 'Den trofaste Jomfru,' ib. 249, #A# 3-6, 7-10. The
watching in #A#, #B#, #C# and the proffered gifts of #C#, #D#, #F# are
found in 'Nøkkens Svig,' Grundtvig, 39, #A#, #B#, 12-18. The disguise in
#A# 11-14, the rest in the wood with the knight's head in the lady's
lap, #A# 16, 27, #B# 11, 21, #D# 14, 24, #E# 11, 21, etc., recur in
Ribold, #B# 12-14, #L# 9, 10, #M# 19, 20, #N# 11, 13, #P# 12, 13. These
resemblances, naturally, are not limited to the Danish copies.
[33] So the princess in Asbjörnsen og Moe, N. Folkeeventyr, p. 153. Cf.
Campbell's Tales of the West Highlands, III, 209; IV, 282, 283.
[34] The binding and waking, with these words, are found also in a
made-up text of 'Frændehævn,' Grundtvig, No 4, #C# 51-53, but certainly
borrowed from some copy of 'Kvindemorderen.'
[35] All the German versions appear to have been _originally_ in the
two-line stanza.
[36] The copies with this title in Simrock, No 6, p. 15, and in
Scherer's Jungbrunnen, No 5 A, and his Deutsche V. L., 1851, p. 349, are
compounded from various texts.
[37] Both #D# and #E# have attached to them this final stanza:
'Odilia, why are thy shoes so red?'
'It is three doves that I shot dead.'
This is a well-known commonplace in tragic ballads; and Grundtvig
suggests that this stanza was the occasion of the story taking the turn
which we find in ballads of the third class.
[38] One scarcely knows whether this bribe is an imperfect reminiscence
of splendid promises which the knight makes, e.g., in the Danish
ballads, or a shifting from the maid to the knight of the gold which the
elsewhere opulent or well-to-do maid gets together while the knight is
preparing to set forth; or simply one of those extravagances which so
often make their appearance in later versions of ballads.
[39] The number eleven is remarkably constant in the German ballads,
being found in #G#, #H#, #J-L#, #N-W#; it is also the number in Swedish
#B#. Eight is the favorite number in the North, and occurs in Danish
#A-D#, #H-L#, Swedish #A#, #C#, Norwegian #G#, #H#; again in German #I#.
German #M#, #X#, Danish #F#, have ten; German #A#, #B#, Danish #E#,
Norwegian #I#, have nine; German #C#, #D#, seven; Danish #G# has
nineteen. French #A#, #B# have fourteen, fifteen, Italian ballads still
higher numbers: #A#, #B#, #C#, thirty-six, #D#, fifty-two, #E#,
thirty-three, #F#, three hundred and three.
[40] This stroke of realism fails only in #M#, #N#, #R#, of this second
class.
[41] Apparently to a Ribold ballad, of which no other trace has been
found in German. See further on in this volume.
[42]
13
'Ach du schöne junkfraw fein,
Du pfalzgrävin, du kaiserin!
Der Adelger hat sich vor ailf getödt,
Du wirst die zwölft, das sei dir gsait.
15
'So bitt mich nit, du junkfraw fein,
So bitt mich nit, du herzigs ein!'
The _liebkosung_ of this murder-reeking Adelger, o'ersized with
coagulate gore, is admirably horrible.
[43] Nimmersatt (All-begehrend) as interpreted by Meinert, not Adelger.
[44] Verses which recur, nearly, not only in #Y# 17-19, #W# 27, 28, but
elsewhere, as in a copy of 'Graf Friedrich,' Erk's Liederhort, p. 41, No
15, st. 19.
[45] There is no sense in _two_ doves. The single dove one may suppose
to be the spirit of the last victim. We shall find the _eleven_
appearing as doves in #Q#. There is no occasion to regard the dove here
as a Waldminne (Vilmar, Handbüchlein für Freunde des deutschen
Volkslieds, p. 57). Cf. the nightingale (and two nightingales) in the
Danish 'Redselille og Medelvold:' see 'Leesome Brand,' further on in
this volume.
[46] This ballad has become, in Tübingen, a children's game, called
'Bertha im Wald.' The three cries are preserved in verse, and very
nearly as in #J#, #M#. The game concludes by the robber smothering
Bertha. Meier, Deutsche Kinder-Reime, No 439.
[47] #K#, or the editor, seeks to avoid the difficulty by taking the
last line from the knight, and reading, "Mit Blut war er umronnen," an
emendation not according with the simplicity of ballads. Another Swabian
copy, Meier, p. 301, note, strophe 6, has:
'Wir müssen zu selbigem Bronnen
Wo Wasser und Blut heraus ronnen.'
[48] The last verses are these, and not very much worse than the rest:
Mein Bruder ist ein Jägersmann,
Der alle Thierlein schiessen kann;
Er hatt' ein zweischneidiges Schwerte,
Und stach es dem Falschen ins Herze.
Ihr Mädchen alle insgemein,
Lasst euch doch diess zur Warnung sein,
Und geht doch mit keinem so falschen
In einen so finsteren Walde.
My brother is a hunting man,
And all the small game shoot he can;
He had a sword with edges two,
And ran the heart of the false man through
Ye maidens now in general,
Let this be warning to you all;
With man so false you never should
Go to _so very_ dark a wood.
[49] So in Rochholz, Schweizer Sagen, No 14, I, 23, a man who had killed
eleven maids would, if he could have made up the number twelve, have
been able to pass through walls and mouseholes. Again, a certain robber
in Jutland, who had devoured eight children's hearts, would have
acquired the power of flying could he but have secured one more.
Grundtvig, D. g. F. IV, 16, note.
[50] What will those who are so troubled about cork-heeled shoon in 'Sir
Patrick Spens' say to the fire-arms in #L#, #N#, #S#?
[51] A variety of #W#, cited in Schlesische Volkslieder, p. 26, has,
'Ach Ulbrich, Ulbrich, Halsemann, Halsemann,
Lass du mich nur drei Gale schrei'n!'
Grundtvig, assuming that the name is Ulbrich Halsemann, would account
for the second and superfluous character here [found also in #W#] by a
divarication of Ulrich Halsemann into Ulrich _and_ Halsemann (Hanslein).
Ansar, "bisher unverständlicher Vorname des Ritters Uleraich" in #Y#
(Meinert), would equally well yield Hanslein. Might not Halsemann
possibly be an equivalent of Halsherr?
[52] And in 'Der Mutter Fluch,' Meinert, p. 246, a ballad with which #Y#
agrees in the first two and last four stanzas.
[53] There is a dove in #Z#, but #Z#, as has been said, presents traits
of all three classes.
[54]
'Da lyge, feyns Lybchen, unndt fawle,
Meyn jungk Herze muss trawren.'
Nicolai, vv 35, 36,
'Da liege, du Häuptchen, und faule,
Kein Reuter wird dir nachtrauern.'
Simrock, vv 35, 36,
are evidently derived from the apostrophe to the murderer's head in #I#,
#W#, #Y#.
Stolz Syburg is the hero of a very different ballad, from the Münster
region, Reifferscheid, No 16, p. 32 (also No 17, and Simrock, No 9, p.
23, 'Stolz Heinrich'). And from this the name, in consequence of a
remote resemblance in the story, may have been taken up by the Rhine
ballad, though it has contributed nothing more. Margaret, a king's
daughter, is wiled away by a splendid description of Stolz Syburg's
opulence. When they have gone a long way, he tells her that he has
nothing but a barren heath. She stabs herself at his feet.
[55] 'Wassermans Braut,' Meinert, p. 77; 'Die unglückliche Braut,'
Hoffmann u. Richter, Schlesische V. L., p. 6, No. 2; 'Königs
Töchterlein,' Erk u. Irmer, vi, 6, No 4; 'Der Wassermann,' Erk's
Liederhort, p. 50, No 17. ('Die Nixenbraut,' "Norddeutschland,"
Zuccalmaglio, p. 192, No 92, seems to be Meinert's copy written over.)
[56] The remarkable Norwegian ballad of the 'Wassermanns Brant' group,
The Nix and Heiemo, Landstad, No 39, p. 350, has not been unaffected by
the one we are now occupied with. There is even a verbal contact between
stanza 19,
'Heiemo tenkte með sjave seg:
Tru mine smá _knivar_ 'ki hjelper meg?'
and Norwegian #F#, stanza 9, cited by Grundtvig, IV, 4,
Lengji stó Gullbjör, hó tenkte mæ seg:
'Kann inkje mí' _rúninne_ hjelpe meg?'
[57] Kolberg's #b#, #h#, #k#, #v#, #x#, #bb#, #cc#, #hh#, #kk#, #ll#,
#nn#, #xx#, #yy#, #zz#, consist of only one or two initial stanzas,
containing no important variation. His #aaa#, a fragment of six stanzas,
Pauli, p. 147, No 6, Wojcicki, II, 169, though it begins like the rest,
sounds like a different ballad.
The ballad in Wojcicki, I, 38, is allied with the one we are engaged
with, and the two fragments on p. 36, p. 37 with both this and that.
[58] Anne in #R#, #LL#, and Kolberg's #h#: Mary in #I#, #U#, #II#:
Ursula, #N#: both Catherine and Alice, #AA#. John is found in all but
#N#, where there is a nameless seigneur.
[59] They are expressly said to go off in a carriage in #I#, #O#, #Q#,
#T#, #BB#, #DD#, #FF#. Still, in #I#, John says, "Let the black horse
have something to carry under us." In #O#, #T#, #FF#, the horses have a
presentiment of evil to their mistress, and refuse to stir.
[60] One version of 'The Two Sisters,' #Q#, has the same answer:
'I did not put you in with the design
Just for to pull you out again.'
st. 9.
This might be called a formula in Polish ballads: something of the kind
occurs three times in #X#, four times in #B#, five times in #P#; in
other ballads also. In #Q# 25, Catherine clutches the river bank, and
John pushes away her hands. Compare 'The Two Sisters,' #F# 9, further on
in this volume.
[61] #L#, #L*#, #M#, #N#, as already said, confuse the two catastrophes.
John says, in #N#, "Do you see that broad river? I will measure its
depth by throwing you in." We may assume that he was as good as his
word. But Ursula made her way home through woods and forests, weeping
her eyes out on the way. Kind souls dug a grave for her. The conclusion
of #M# is absurd, but need not be particularized. #G# has a passage of
the sternest theology. While Catherine is struggling in the water, her
father comes by. She cries to him to save her. He says, "My dear
Catherine, you have loved pleasure too much. Lord Jesus grant you
drown!" Her mother appears, and makes the same reply to her daughter's
appeal. There are stall-copy terminal morals to many of the ballads.
[62] #N# 1, "A lord came riding from his estate to a neighbor."
[63] The place is high above the water in #R# 10, 11, as in English #D#
9, 29, #C# 4.
[64] #BB# 6, "My mother said that I had seen you; she will _watch me
closely_," may be an accidental coincidence with Danish #A# 7-9, #B#
6-8, etc.
[65] The second, and more valuable, volume of Waldau's B. G. I have
found it impossible to obtain. Reifferscheid cites the ballad at p. 166.
[66] A few silly verses follow in the original, in which Thomas treats
what he had said as a jest. These are properly rejected by Talvj as a
spurious appendage.
[67]
'De achte de soll Helena sin,
De achte de most he sölwer sin.'
German #A b# 13.
[68] Another version of this double ballad, but much corrupted in the
second part, was known to Gérard de Nerval. See Les Filles du Feu,
Œuvres complètes, V, 132.
[69] So far there is agreement in 'La Fille du Prince,' Paymaigre, No
32, p. 106; Poésies pop. de la France, MS., III, fol. 133.
[70] The Asturian romance communicated in two copies by Amador de los
Rios to Jahrbuch für rom. u. eng. Literatur, III, 285, No 2, and the
Portuguese 'Romance de Romeirinha,' Braga, Romanceiro, No 9, p. 24, 'A
Romeira,' Almeida-Garrett, III, 11, are not parallels, though they have
been cited as such.
[71] Magyar Népköltési Gyüjtemény. Uj Folyam, szerkesztik és kiadják
Arany László és Gyulai Pál. Collection of Magyar Popular Poetry, New
Series, Pest, 1872, 2 vols. Aigner, has blended Nos 4 and 3 (#C#, #A#)
in 'Martin und Aennchen,' Ungarische Volksdichtungen, p. 170, and has
translated No 1 (#E#), at p. 120, 'Molnár Anna,' in each case obscuring
or omitting one or two traits which are important for a comparative
view.
[72] Very little remains of the artifice in Polish #A#. The idea seems
to be that the girl pretends to be curious about the sword in order to
get it into her hands. But the whole story is told in ten stanzas.
[73] I accept and repeat Grundtvig's views as to the relation of the
three forms of the story. And with regard to the history of the ballad
generally, this is but one of many cases in which much or most of the
work had been done to my hand in Danmarks gamle Folkeviser.
[74] Memering was required by his adversary to swear that he knew not of
the sword Adelring, and took his oath that he knew of nothing but the
hilt being above ground, which was accepted as satisfactory. Presently
he pulls Adelring out of the ground, into which he had thrust the blade,
and, being accused of perjury, triumphantly rejoins that he had sworn
that he knew of nothing but the hilt _being above ground_. Dietrich does
the same in his duel with Sigurd Swain.
[75] Magyar #A# is entirely peculiar. Apparently the man lays his head
in the woman's lap that he may know, by the falling of her tears, when
she has disobeyed his command not to look into the tree. This is like
'Bluebeard,' and rather subtle for a ballad.
[76] 'Child Waters,' 'The Fair Flower of Northumberland.'
[77] The murderer has a horn in Swedish #C#, #D#, as also in the Dutch
Halewyn and the German #A#, #B#, #C#, #E#, and the horn may be of
magical power, but it is not distinctly described as such.
[78] The scenery of the halting-place in the wood--the bloody streams in
Danish #A#, #B#, #D#, #H#, #L#, #K#, the blood-girt spring in German
#H#, #J#, #K#, #L#, #O#, #P#, #Q#--is also, to say the least, suggestive
of something horribly uncanny. These are undoubtedly ancient features,
though the spring, as the Danish editor observes, has no longer any
significancy in the German ballads, because in all of them the previous
victims are said to have been _hanged_.
[79] The saga in Björner's Nordiska Kämpadater, c. 5-7.
[80] Danish #E#, #I#, #L#, and even #A#, make the knight suggest to the
lady that she should get her gold together while he is saddling his
horse; but this is a commonplace found in other cases of elopement, and
_by itself_ warrants no conclusion as to the knight's rapacity. See
'Samson,' Grundtvig, No 6, #C# 5; 'Ribold og Guldborg,' No 82, #C# 13,
#E# 14, etc.; 'Redselille og Medelvold,' No 271, #A# 21, #B# 20; 272,
Bilag 3, st. 8; 270, 18, etc.
[81] So perhaps a Polish ballad in Wojcicki, I, 38, akin to the other
John and Katie ballads.
[82] It is well known that in the Middle Ages the blood of children or
of virgins was reputed a specific for leprosy (see, e.g., Cassel in the
Weimar Jahrbücher, I, 408.) Some have thought to find in this fact an
explanation of the murders in these ballads and in the Bluebeard
stories, and, according to Rochholz, this theory has been adopted into
popular tradition in the Aargau. So far as this cycle of ballads is
concerned, there is as much ground for holding that the blood was wanted
to cure leprosy as for believing that the gold was wanted for _aurum
potabile_.
[83] Det philologisk-historiske Samfunds Mindeskrift i Anledning af dets
femogtyveaarige Virksomhed, 1854-79, Bidrag til den nordiske
Balladedigtnings Historie, p. 75 ff.
[84] Bugge cites the Old German Judith, Müllenhoff u. Scherer,
Denkmäler, 2d ed., No 37, p. 105, to show how the Bible story became
modified under a popular treatment.
[85] Holefern might doubtless pass into Halewyn, but there is not the
slightest need of Holefern to _account_ for Halewyn. Halewyn, besides
being a well-known local and family appellation, is found in two other
Dutch ballads, one of which (Lootens and Feys, p. 66, No 38; Hoffmann,
p. 46, No 11) has no kind of connection with the present, and is no more
likely to have derived the name from this than this from that. It shall
not be denied that Adelger, Hilsinger, Rullemann, Reimvord might have
sprung from or have been suggested by Holofern, under the influence of
familiar terminations, but it may be remarked that Hildebrand,
Ravengaard, Valdemar, Rosmer, if they had occurred in any version, would
have occasioned no greater difficulty.
[86] The Old German poem makes Holofernes kindle with desire for Judith
the moment he sees her, and he bids his men bring her to his tent. They
lift her up and bring her in.
[87] It should be observed that these words are from the dove's warning.
[88] Simply because he had no other apartment at his disposition. Shall
we add, the Polish mother putting her daughter into the "new room," in
which she kept her valuables?
[89] Bugge holds that the ballad was derived by the Scandinavians from
the Germans, more precisely by the Danes from a Low German form. This,
he says, would follow from what he has maintained above, and he finds
support for his view in many particular traits of Norse copies. Thus,
one of the Norwegian names for the murderer is Alemarken. The first
three syllables are very near to the Danish Oldemor; but -ken seems to
be the German diminutive suffix, and can only be explained by the ballad
having come from Germany.
[90] This toilet derives importance solely from the agreement with
Judith x, 3: for the rest it is entirely in the ballad style. Compare
the toilets in 'Hafsfrun,' Afzelius, No 92, III, 148, Arwidsson, No 150,
II, 320, Wigström, Folkdiktning, No 2, p. 11, Landstad, No 55, p. 494:
'Guldsmedens Datter,' Grundtvig, No. 245, IV, 481 ff, Wigström, ib., No
18, p. 37, Landstad, No 43, p. 437: Torkilds Riim, Lyngbye, Færøiske
Qvæder, 534, 535, Afzelius, III, 202: 'Stolts Karin,' Arwidsson, No 63,
I, 388: 'Liti Kerstis hevn,' Landstad, No 67, p. 559 == 'Lord Thomas and
Fair Annet': in many of which there is a gold crown. There is a man's
toilet in Grundtvig, No 207, IV, 201.
[91] Bugge would naturally have seen the Assyrian scouts that Judith
falls in with (x, 11) in Roland's father, mother, and brother, all of
whom hail the maid as she is making for Roland's quarters (#C# 30-38);
still more "Holofernes jacebat in lecto" (xiii, 4), in "Roland die op
zijn bedde lag," #C# 39.
[92] Judith xiv, 1: "Suspendite caput hoc super muros nostros." The
cutting off and bringing home of the head, as need hardly be said, is
not of itself remarkable, being found everywhere from David to Beówulf,
and from Beówulf to 'Sir Andrew Barton.'
[93] Dutch #B#, which, as before said, has been completely rewritten,
makes the comparison with Holofernes:
34
'Ik heb van't leven hem beroofd,
in mynen schoot heb ik zyn hoofd,
hy is als Holofernes gelooft.'
37
Zy reed dan voort als Judith wys,
zoo regt nae haer vaders paleis,
daer zy wierd ingehaeld met eer en prys.
5
GIL BRENTON
#A. a.# 'Gil Brenton,' Jamieson Brown MS., fol. 34. #b.#
'Chil Brenton,' William Tytler Brown MS., No 3.
#B.# 'Cospatrick,' Scott's Minstrelsy, II, 117 (1802).
#C.# 'We were sisters, we were seven,' Cromek's Remains of
Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p. 207.
#D.# 'Lord Dingwall,' Buchan's Ballads of the North of
Scotland, I, 204.
#E.# Elizabeth Cochrane's song-book, No 112.
#F. a.# 'Lord Brangwill,' Motherwell's MSS, p. 219. #b.#
'Lord Bengwill,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p.
xvi.
#G.# 'Bothwell,' Herd's Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, p.
244.
#H.# Kinloch MSS, V, 335.
Eight copies of this ballad are extant, four of them hitherto
unpublished. #A a#, No 16 in the Jamieson-Brown MS., is one of twenty
ballads written down from the recitation of Mrs. Brown of Falkland, by
her nephew, Robert Scott, in 1783, or shortly before. From these twenty
thirteen were selected, and, having first been revised by Mrs. Brown,
were sent, with two others, to William Tytler in the year just
mentioned. William Tytler's MS. has disappeared, but a list of the
ballads which it contained, with the first stanza of each, is given by
Dr Anderson, in Nichols's Illustrations of the Literary History of the
Eighteenth Century, VII, 176. #B# is the 'Cospatrick' of the Border
Minstrelsy, described by Scott as taken down from the recitation of a
lady (known to be Miss Christian Rutherford, his mother's sister) "with
some stanzas transferred from Herd's copy, and some readings adopted
from a copy in Mrs Brown's manuscript under the title of Child Brenton,"
that is, from #A b#. #C# purports to be one of a considerable number of
pieces, "copied from the recital of a peasant-woman of Galloway, upwards
of ninety years of age." Though overlaid with verses of Cunningham's
making (of which forty or fifty may be excided in one mass) and though
retouched almost everywhere, both the groundwork of the story and some
genuine lines remain unimpaired. The omission of most of the passage
referred to, and the restoration of the stanza form, will give us,
perhaps, a thing of shreds and patches, but still a ballad as near to
genuine as some in Percy's Reliques or even Scott's Minstrelsy. #D# and
#F# are (the former presumably, the second certainly) from recitation of
the first quarter of this century. #E# is one of the few ballads in
Elizabeth Cochrane's song-book, and probably of the first half of the
last century. #G#, the earliest printed form of the ballad, appeared in
Herd's first collection, in the year 1769. #H# was taken down from
recitation by the late Dr Hill Burton in his youth.
#A#, #B#, and #C# agree in these points: A bride, not being a maid,
looks forward with alarm to her wedding night, and induces her
bower-woman to take her place for the nonce. The imposture is detected
by the bridegroom, through the agency of magical blankets, sheets, and
pillows, #A#; or of blankets, bed, sheet, and sword, #B#; or simply of
the Billie Blin, #C#. (The sword is probably an editorial insertion; and
Jamieson, Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 343, doubts, but
without sufficient reason, the Billie Blin.) The bridegroom has recourse
to his mother, who demands an explanation of the bride, and elicits a
confession that she had once upon a time encountered a young man in a
wood, who subjected her to violence. Before they parted, he gave her
certain tokens, which he enjoined her to be very careful of, a lock of
his hair, a string of beads, a gold ring, and a knife. #B# omits the
knife, and #C# the beads. The mother goes back to her son, and asks what
he had done with the tokens she had charged him never to part with. He
owns that he had presented them to a lady, one whom he would now give
all his possessions to have for his wife. The lady of the greenwood is
identified by the tokens.
#A#, #C#, and #D# make the mother set a golden chair for the bride, in
which none but a maid can sit, #D# [no leal maid will sit till bidden,
#C#]. In #D# the chair is declined; in #C#, taken without bidding; in
#A# the significance of the chair has been lost. #E#, #F#, #G# employ no
kind of test of maidenhood,--the bride frankly avows that she is with
child to another man; and #D#, as well as #E#, #F#, #G#, omits the
substitution of the chambermaid. The tokens in #D# are a chain, a ring,
and three locks of hair; in #E#, gloves and a ring; in #F#, #G#, green
gloves, a ring, and three locks [plaits] of hair. Only the ring remains
in #H#.
"This ballad," says Motherwell (1827), "is very popular, and is known to
reciters under a variety of names. I have heard it called Lord Bangwell,
Bengwill, Dingwall, Brengwill, etc., and The Seven Sisters, or the
Leaves of Lind." He adds: "There is an unedited ballad in Scotland,
which is a nearer approximation to the Danish song, inasmuch as the
substitution of the maiden sister for the real bride constitutes a
prominent feature of the tale."[94] (Minstrelsy, Introduction, lxix^21
and xc.)
Scott remarks that Cospatrick[95] "was the designation of the Earl of
Dunbar, in the days of Wallace and Bruce." Mr Macmath informs me that it
is in use at the present day in the families of the Earl of Home and of
Dunbar of Mochrum, Bart, who, among others, claim descent from the
ancient earls of Dunbar and March. The story of the ballad might, of
course, attach itself to any person prominent in the region where the
ballad was known.
#Swedish.# Three Swedish versions of this ballad were given by Afzelius:
#A#, 'Riddar Olle' in 50 two-line stanzas, II, 217; #B#, 19 two-line
stanzas, II, 59; #C#, 19 two-line stanzas, II, 56: No 33, I, 175-182 of
Bergström's edition. Besides these, there are two fragments in Cavallius
and Stephens's unprinted collection: #D#, 6 stanzas; #E#, 7 stanzas, the
latter printed in Grundtvig, V, 307.[96] All these were obtained from
recitation in the present century. #A# comes nearest to our #A#, #B#.
Like Scottish #B#, it seems to have been compounded from several copies.
Sir Olof betrothed Ingalilla, and carried her home for the spousal,
wearing a red gold crown and a wan cheek. Ingalilla gave birth to
twin-boys. Olof had a maid who resembled Ingalilla completely, and who,
upon Ingalilla's entreaty, consented to play the part of bride on the
morrow. Dressed in Ingalilla's clothes, blue kirtle, green jacket, etc.,
and wearing five gold rings and a gold crown, the maid rode to church,
with Ingalilla at her back, and her beauty was admired by all as she
came and went. But outside of the church were a good many musicians; and
one of these piped out, "God-a-mercy, Ingalilla, no maid art thou!"
Ingalilla threw into the piper's hand something which made him change
his tune. He was an old drunken fellow, and no one need mind what he
sang. After five days of drinking, they took the bride to her chamber,
not without force. Ingalilla bore the light before her, and helped put
her to bed; then lay down herself. Olof had over him a fur rug, which
could talk as well as he, and it called out,
'Hear me, Sir Olof, hear what I say;
Thou hast taken a strumpet, and missed a may.'
And Olof,
'Hear, little Inga, sweetheart,' he said;
'What didst thou get for thy maidenhead?'[97]
Inga explained. Her father was a strange sort of man, and built her
bower by the sea-strand, where all the king's courtiers took ship. Nine
had broken in, and one had robbed her of her honor. He had given her an
embroidered sark, a blue kirtle, green jacket, black mantle, gloves,
five gold rings, a red gold crown, a golden harp, and a silver-mounted
knife, which she now wishes in the youngster's body. The conclusion is
abruptly told in two stanzas. Olof bids Inga not to talk so, for he is
father of her children. He embraces her and gives her a queen's crown
and name. #B# has the same story, omitting the incident of the musician.
#C# has preserved this circumstance, but has lost both the substitution
of the waiting-woman for the bride and the magical coverlet. #D# has
also lost these important features of the original story; #E# has
retained them.
#Danish.# 'Brud ikke Mø,' Grundtvig, No 274, V, 304. There are two old
versions (more properly only one, so close is the agreement), and a
third from recent tradition. This last, Grundtvig's #C#, from Jutland,
1856, seems to be of Swedish origin, and, like Swedish #C#, #D#, wants
the talking coverlet, though it has kept the other material feature,
that of the substitution. #A# is found in two manuscripts, one of the
sixteenth and the other of the seventeenth century. #B# is the
well-known 'Ingefred og Gudrune,' or 'Herr Samsings Nattergale,' Syv,
IV, No 62, Danske Viser, No 194, translated in Jamieson's Illustrations,
p. 340, and by Prior, III, 347. A later form of #B#, from recent
recitation, 1868, is given in Kristensen's Jydske Folkeviser, I, No 53.
The story in #A# runs thus: Sølverlad and Vendelrod [Ingefred and
Gudrune] were sitting together, and Vendelrod wept sorely. Sølverlad
asked her sister the reason, and was told there was cause. Would she be
bride one night? Vendelrod would give her wedding clothes and all her
outfit. But Sølverlad asked for bridegroom too, and Vendelrod would not
give up her bridegroom, happen what might. She went to church and was
married to Samsing. On the way from church they met a spaeman [#B#,
shepherd], who warned Vendelrod that Samsing had some nightingales that
could tell him whether he had married a maid or no. The sisters turned
aside and changed clothes, but could not change cheeks! Sølverlad was
conducted to Samsing's house and placed on the bride bench. An unlucky
jester called out, "Methinks this is not Vendelrod!" but a gold ring
adroitly thrown into his bosom opened his eyes still wider, and made him
pretend he had meant nothing. The supposed bride is put to bed. Samsing
invokes his nightingales: "Have I a maid or no?" They reply, it is a
maid that lies in the bed, but Vendelrod stands on the floor. Samsing
asks Vendelrod why she avoided her bed, and she answers: her father
lived on the strand; her bower was broken into by a large company of
men, and one of them robbed her of her honor. In this case there are no
tokens for evidence. Samsing owns immediately that he and his men had
broken into the bower, and Vendelrod's agony is over.
Some of the usual tokens, gold harp, sark, shoes, and silver-mounted
knife, are found in the later #C#. Danish #D# is but a single initial
stanza.
Besides Sølverlad and Vendelrod, there is a considerable number of
Danish ballads characterized by the feature that a bride is not a maid,
and most or all of these have similarities to 'Gil Brenton.' 'Hr. Find
og Vendelrod,' Grundtvig, No 275, has even the talking blanket
(sometimes misunderstood to be a bed-_board_). In this piece there is no
substitution. Vendelrod gives birth to children, and the news makes Find
jump over the table. Still he puts the question mildly, who is the
father, and recognizes that he is the man, upon hearing the story of the
bower on the strand, and seeing half a gold ring which Vendelrod had
received "for her honor."
In 'Ingelilles Bryllup,' Grundtvig, No 276, Blidelild is induced to take
Ingelild's place by the promise that she shall marry Ingelild's brother.
Hr. Magnus asks her why she is so sad, and says he knows she is not a
maid. Blidelild says, "Since you know so much, I will tell you more,"
and relates Ingelild's adventure,--how she had gone out to the river,
and nine knights came riding by, etc. [so #A#; in #B# and #C# we have
the bower on the strand, as before]. Hr. Magnus avows that he was the
ninth, who stayed when eight rode away. Blidelild begs that he will
allow her to go and look for some lost rings, and uses the opportunity
to send back Ingelild in her stead.
Various other Scandinavian ballads have more or less of the story of
those which have been mentioned. In the Danish 'Brud i Vaande,'
Grundtvig, No 277, a bride is taken with untimely pains while being
"brought home." The question asked in several of the Scottish ballads,
whether the saddle is uncomfortable, occurs in #A#, #B#; the bower that
was forced by eight swains and a knight in #A#, #C#, #D#, #F#; the gifts
in #A#, #B#, #F#; and an express acknowledgment of the act of violence
by the bridegroom in #A#, #B#, #D#. We find all of these traits except
the first in the corresponding Swedish ballad 'Herr Äster och Fröken
Sissa,' Afzelius, No 38, new ed., No 32,^1; the saddle and broken
bower in Swedish #D#, Grundtvig, No 277, Bilag 1; only the saddle in
Swedish #F#, Grundtvig, No. 277, Bilag 3, and #C#, Arwidsson, No 132;
the saddle and gifts in Icelandic #A#, #B#, #C#, #D#, #E#, Grundtvig, No
277, Bilag 5, 6, 7, 8.
'Peder og Malfred,' Grundtvig, No 278, in four versions, the oldest from
a manuscript of 1630, represents Sir Peter as riding away from home
about a month after his marriage, and meeting a woman who informs him
that there is a birth in his house. He returns, and asks who is the
father. Sir Peter satisfies himself that he is the man by identifying
the gifts, in #A#, #B#, #C#, #D#; and in #A#, #B# we have also the bower
by the strand.
In 'Oluf og Ellinsborg,' Grundtvig, No 279, #A#, #B#, #C#, one of the
queen's ladies is habitually sad, and is pressed by her lover to account
for this. She endeavors to put him off with fictitious reasons, but
finally nerves herself to tell the truth: she was walking by herself in
her orchard, when five knights came riding by, and one was the cause of
her grief. Oluf owns it was all his doing. A Swedish ballad, remarkably
close to the Danish, from a manuscript of the date 1572 (the oldest
Danish version is also from a manuscript of the 16th century), is
'Riddar Lage och Stolts Elensborg,' Arwidsson, No 56.
'Iver Hr. Jonsøn,' Grundtvig, No 280, in five versions, the oldest of
the 16th century, exhibits a lady as fearing the arrival of her lover's
ship, and sending her mother to meet him, while she takes to her bed.
Immediately upon her betrothed's entering her chamber, she abruptly
discloses the cause of her trouble. Eight men had broken into her bower
on the strand, and the ninth deprived her of her honor. Iver Hr. Jonsøn,
with as little delay, confesses that he was the culprit, and makes
prompt arrangements for the wedding.
There is another series of ballads, represented by 'Leesome Brand' in
English, and by 'Redselille og Medelvold' in Danish, which describe a
young woman, who is on the point of becoming a mother, as compelled to
go off on horseback with her lover, and suffering from the ride. We find
the question, whether the saddle is too narrow or the way too long, in
the Danish 'Bolde Hr. Nilaus' Løn,' Grundtvig, 270, 'Redselille og
Medelvold,' Grundtvig, 271 #C#, #D#, #E#, #I#, #K#, #L#, #M#, #P#, #Q#,
#V#, #Y#, and the Norwegian versions, #A#, #D#, #E#, #F#, of 'Sønnens
Sorg,' Grundtvig, 272, Bilag 1, 4, 5, 6.[98] The gifts also occur in
Grundtvig's 271 #A#, #Z#, and Norwegian #D#, Bilag 9.
Perhaps no set of incidents is repeated so often in northern ballads as
the forcing of the bower on the strand, the giving of keepsakes, the
self-identification of the ravisher through these, and his full and
hearty reparation. All or some of these traits are found in many ballads
besides those belonging to the groups here spoken of: as 'Hildebrand og
Hilde,' #E#, #I#, Grundtvig, No 83, and Norwegian #A#, III, 857;
'Guldsmedens Datter,' Grundtvig, 245, and its Swedish counterpart at p.
481 of the preface to the same, and in Eva Wigström's Folkdiktning, p.
37, No 18; 'Liden Kirstins Dans,' Grundtvig, 263 (translated by Prior,
112), and Norwegian #B#, #C#, Bilag 2, 3; 'Jomfruens Harpeslæt,'
Grundtvig, 265 (translated by Jamieson, 'Illustrations,' p. 382, Prior,
123, Buchanan, p. 6), and Swedish #D#, Bilag 2, Swedish #A#, Afzelius,
81. So Landstad, 42, 45; Arwidsson, 141; Grundtvig, 37 #G#; 38 #A#, #D#;
Kristensen, I, No 95, II, No 28 #A#, #C#.
A very pretty Norwegian tale has for the talisman a stepping-stone at
the side of the bed: Asbjørnsen og Moe, No 29, 'Vesle Aase Gaasepige,'
Dasent, 2d ed., p. 478. An English prince had pictures taken of all the
handsomest princesses, to pick his bride by. When the chosen one
arrived, Aase the goose-girl informed her that the stone at the bedside
knew everything and told the prince; so if she felt uneasy on any
account, she must not step on it. The princess begged Aase to take her
place till the prince was fast asleep, and then they would change. When
Aase came and put her foot on the stone, the prince asked, "Who is it
that is stepping into my bed?" "A maid clean and pure," answered the
stone. By and by the princess came and took Aase's place. When they were
getting up in the morning, the prince asked again, "Who is it stepping
out of my bed?" "One that has had three children," said the stone. The
prince sent his first choice away, and tried a second. Aase faithfully
warned her, and she had cause for heeding the advice. When Aase stepped
in, the stone said it was a maid clean and pure; when the princess
stepped out, the stone said it was one that had had six children. The
prince was longer in hitting on a third choice. Aase took the bride's
place once more, but this time the prince put a ring on her finger,
which was so tight that she could not get it off, for he saw that all
was not right. In the morning, when he asked, "Who is stepping out of my
bed?" the stone answered, "One that has had nine children." Then the
prince asked the stone to clear up the mystery, and it revealed how the
princesses had put little Aase in their place. The prince went straight
to Aase to see if she had the ring. She had tied a rag over her finger,
pretending she had cut it; but the prince soon had the rag off,
recognized his ring, and Aase got the prince, for the good reason that
so it was to be.
The artifice of substituting waiting-woman for bride has been thought
to be derived from the romance of Tristan, in which Brangwain [Brengain,
Brangaene] sacrifices herself for Isold: Scott's 'Sir Tristrem,' ii, 54;
Gottfried V. Strassburg, xviii, ed. Bechstein. Grundtvig truly remarks
that a borrowing by the romance from the popular ballad is as probable a
supposition as the converse; and that, even should we grant the name of
the hero of the ballad to be a reminiscence of that of Isold's attendant
(e. g. Brangwill of Brangwain), nothing follows as to the priority of
the romance in respect to this passage. A similar artifice is employed
in the ballad of 'Torkild Trundeson,' Danske Viser, 200 (translated by
Prior, 100); Afzelius, II, 86, from the Danish; Arwidsson, 36. The
resemblance is close to 'Ingelilles Bryllup,' #C#, Grundtvig, 276. See
also, further on, 'The Twa Knights.'
The Billie Blin presents himself in at least four Scottish ballads: 'Gil
Brenton,' #C#; 'Willie's Lady;' one version of 'Young Beichan;' two of
'The Knight and Shepherd's Daughter;' and also in the English ballad of
'King Arthur and the King of Cornwall,' here under the slightly
disfigured name of Burlow Beanie.[99] In all he is a serviceable
household demon; of a decidedly benignant disposition in the first four,
and, though a loathly fiend with seven heads in the last, very obedient
and useful when once thoroughly subdued. He is clearly of the same
nature as the Dutch _belewitte_ and German _bilwiz_, characterized by
Grimm as a friendly domestic genius, _penas_, _guote holde_; and the
names are actually associated in a passage cited by Grimm from Voet: "De
illis quos nostrates appellant _beeldwit et blinde belien_, a quibus
nocturna visa videri atque ex iis arcana revelari putant."[100] Though
the etymology of these words is not unencumbered with difficulty, _bil_
seems to point to a just and kindly-tempered being. Bilvís, in the
seventh book of Saxo Grammaticus, is an aged counsellor whose bent is to
make peace, while his brother Bölvís, a blind man, is a strife-breeder
and mischief-maker.[101] The same opposition of Bil and Böl apparently
occurs in the Edda, Grímnismál, 47^4, where Bil-eygr and Böl-eygr
(Bal-eygr) are appellatives of Odin, which may signify mild-eyed and
evil-eyed. Bölvís is found again in the Hrômund's saga, under the
description of 'Blind the Bad,' and 'the Carl Blind whose name was
Bavís.' But much of this saga is taken from the story of Helgi
Hundingslayer; and Blind the Bad in the saga is only Sæmund's Blindr inn
bölvísi,--the blind man whose baleful wit sees through the disguise of
Helgi, and all but betrays the rash hero to his enemies; that is, Odin
in his malicious mood (Bölverkr), who will presently be seen in the
ballad of 'Earl Brand' masking as Old Carl Hood, "aye for ill and never
for good." Originally and properly, perhaps, only the bad member of this
mythical pair is blind; but it would not be at all strange that later
tradition, which confuses and degrades so much in the old mythology,
should transfer blindness to the good-natured one, and give rise to the
anomalous Billie Blind. See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, 1879, I, 391 ff;
Uhland, Zur Geschichte der Dichtung u. Sage, III, 132 ff, VII, 229;
Schmeller, Bayerisches Wörterbuch, II, 1037 ff, ed. 1877; Van den Bergh,
Woordenboek der nederlandsche Mythologie, 12.
It has been suggested to me that "the Haleigh throw" in #E# 6 is a
corruption of the High Leith Row, a street in Edinburgh. I have not as
yet been able to obtain information of such a street.
#D# is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No 40,
p. 262.
A
#a.# Jamieson-Brown MS., No 16, fol. 34. #b.# William
Tytler's Brown MS., No 3. From the recitation of Mrs Brown
of Falkland, 1783, Aberdeenshire.
1
Gil Brenton has sent oer the fame,
He's woo'd a wife an brought her hame.
2
Full sevenscore o ships came her wi,
The lady by the greenwood tree.
3
There was twal an twal wi beer an wine,
An twal an twal wi muskadine:
4
An twall an twall wi bouted flowr,
An twall an twall wi paramour:
5
An twall an twall wi baken bread,
An twall an twall wi the goud sae red.
6
Sweet Willy was a widow's son,
An at her stirrup-foot he did run.
7
An she was dressd i the finest pa,
But ay she loot the tears down fa.
8
An she was deckd wi the fairest flowrs,
But ay she loot the tears down pour.
9
'O is there water i your shee?
Or does the win blaw i your glee?
10
'Or are you mourning i your meed
That eer you left your mither gueede?
11
'Or are ye mourning i your tide
That ever ye was Gil Brenton's bride?'
12
'The[re] is nae water i my shee,
Nor does the win blaw i my glee:
13
'Nor am I mourning i my tide
That eer I was Gil Brenton's bride:
14
'But I am mourning i my meed
That ever I left my mither gueede.
15
'But, bonny boy, tell to me
What is the customs o your country.'
16
'The customs o't, my dame,' he says,
'Will ill a gentle lady please.
17
'Seven king's daughters has our king wedded,
An seven king's daughters has our king bedded.
18
'But he's cutted the paps frae their breast-bane,
An sent them mourning hame again.
19
'But whan you come to the palace yate,
His mither a golden chair will set.
20
'An be you maid or be you nane,
O sit you there till the day be dane.
21
'An gin you're sure that you are a maid,
Ye may gang safely to his bed.
22
'But gin o that you be na sure,
Then hire some woman o youre bowr.'
23
O whan she came to the palace yate,
His mither a golden chair did set.
24
An was she maid or was she nane,
She sat in it till the day was dane.
25
An she's calld on her bowr woman,
That waiting was her bowr within.
26
'Five hundred pound, maid, I'll gi to the,
An sleep this night wi the king for me.'
27
Whan bells was rung, an mass was sung,
An a' man unto bed was gone,
28
Gil Brenton an the bonny maid
Intill ae chamber they were laid.
29
'O speak to me, blankets, an speak to me, sheets,
An speak to me, cods, that under me sleeps;
30
'Is this a maid that I ha wedded?
Is this a maid that I ha bedded?'
31
'It's nae a maid that you ha wedded,
But it's a maid that you ha bedded.
32
'Your lady's in her bigly bowr,
An for you she drees mony sharp showr.'
33
O he has taen him thro the ha,
And on his mither he did ca.
34
'I am the most unhappy man
That ever was in christend lan.
35
'I woo'd a maiden meek an mild,
An I've marryed a woman great wi child.'
36
'O stay, my son, intill this ha,
An sport you wi your merry men a'.
37
'An I'll gang to yon painted bowr,
An see how't fares wi yon base whore.'
38
The auld queen she was stark an strang;
She gard the door flee aff the ban.
39
The auld queen she was stark an steer;
She gard the door lye i the fleer.
40
'O is your bairn to laird or loon?
Or is it to your father's groom?'
41
'My bairn's na to laird or loon,
Nor is it to my father's groom.
42
'But hear me, mither, on my knee,
An my hard wierd I'll tell to thee.
43
'O we were sisters, sisters seven,
We was the fairest under heaven.
44
'We had nae mair for our seven years wark
But to shape an suc the king's son a sark.
45
'O it fell on a Saturday's afternoon,
Whan a' our langsome wark was dane,
46
'We keist the cavils us amang,
To see which shoud to the greenwood gang.
47
'Ohone, alas! for I was youngest,
An ay my wierd it was the hardest.
48
'The cavil it did on me fa,
Which was the cause of a' my wae.
49
'For to the greenwood I must gae,
To pu the nut but an the slae;
50
'To pu the red rose an the thyme,
To strew my mother's bowr and mine.
51
'I had na pu'd a flowr but ane,
Till by there came a jelly hind greeme,
52
'Wi high-colld hose an laigh-colld shoone,
An he 'peard to be some kingis son.
53
'An be I maid or be I nane,
He kept me there till the day was dane.
54
'An be I maid or be I nae,
He kept me there till the close of day.
55
'He gae me a lock of yallow hair,
An bade me keep it for ever mair.
56
'He gae me a carket o gude black beads,
An bade me keep them against my needs.
57
'He gae to me a gay gold ring,
An bade me ke[e]p it aboon a' thing.
58
'He gae to me a little pen-kniffe,
An bade me keep it as my life.'
59
'What did you wi these tokens rare
That ye got frae that young man there?'
60
'O bring that coffer hear to me,
And a' the tokens ye sal see.'
61
An ay she ranked, an ay she flang,
Till a' the tokens came till her han.
62
'O stay here, daughter, your bowr within,
Till I gae parley wi my son.'
63
O she has taen her thro the ha,
An on her son began to ca.
64
'What did you wi that gay gold ring
I bade you keep aboon a' thing?
65
'What did you wi that little pen-kniffe
I bade you keep while you had life?
66
'What did you wi that yallow hair
I bade you keep for ever mair?
67
'What did you wi that good black beeds
I bade you keep against your needs?'
68
'I gae them to a lady gay
I met i the greenwood on a day.
69
'An I would gi a' my father's lan,
I had that lady my yates within.
70
'I would gi a' my ha's an towrs,
I had that bright burd i my bowrs.'
71
'O son, keep still your father's lan;
You hae that lady your yates within.
72
'An keep you still your ha's an towrs;
You hae that bright burd i your bowrs.'
73
Now or a month was come an gone,
This lady bare a bonny young son.
74
An it was well written on his breast-bane
'Gil Brenton is my father's name.'
B
Scott's Minstrelsy, II, 117, ed. 1802. Ed. 1830, III, 263.
Partly from the recitation of Miss Christian Rutherford.
1
Cospatrick has sent oer the faem,
Cospatrick brought his ladye hame.
2
And fourscore ships have come her wi,
The ladye by the grenewood tree.
3
There were twal and twal wi baken bread,
And twal and twal wi gowd sae reid:
4
And twal and twal wi bouted flour,
And twal and twal wi the paramour.
5
Sweet Willy was a widow's son,
And at her stirrup he did run.
6
And she was clad in the finest pall,
But aye she let the tears down fall.
7
'O is your saddle set awrye?
Or rides your steed for you owre high?
8
'Or are you mourning in your tide
That you suld be Cospatrick's bride?'
9
'I am not mourning at this tide
That I suld be Cospatrick's bride;
10
'But I am sorrowing in my mood
That I suld leave my mother good.
11
'But, gentle boy, come tell to me,
What is the custom of thy countrye?'
12
'The custom thereof, my dame,' he says,
'Will ill a gentle laydye please.
13
'Seven king's daughters has our lord wedded,
And seven king's daughters has our lord bedded;
14
'But he's cutted their breasts frae their breast bane,
And sent them mourning hame again.
15
'Yet, gin you're sure that you're a maid,
Ye may gae safely to his bed;
16
'But gif o that ye be na sure,
Then hire some damsell o your bour.'
17
The ladye's calld her bour-maiden,
That waiting was into her train;
18
'Five thousand merks I will gie thee,
To sleep this night with my lord for me.'
19
When bells were rung, and mass was sayne,
And a' men unto bed were gane,
20
Cospatrick and the bonny maid,
Into ae chamber they were laid.
21
'Now, speak to me, blankets, and speak to me, bed,
And speak, thou sheet, inchanted web;
22
'And speak up, my bonny brown sword, that winna lie,
Is this a true maiden that lies by me?'
23
'It is not a maid that you hae wedded,
But it is a maid that you hae bedded.
24
'It is a liel maiden that lies by thee,
But not the maiden that it should be.'
25
O wrathfully he left the bed,
And wrathfully his claiths on did.
26
And he has taen him thro the ha,
And on his mother he did ca.
27
'I am the most unhappy man
That ever was in christen land!
28
'I courted a maiden meik and mild,
And I hae gotten naething but a woman wi child.'
29
'O stay, my son, into this ha,
And sport ye wi your merrymen a';
30
'And I will to the secret bour,
To see how it fares wi your paramour.'
31
The carline she was stark and sture;
She aff the hinges dang the dure.
32
'O is your bairn to laird or loun?
Or is it to your father's groom?'
33
'O hear me, mother, on my knee,
Till my sad story I tell to thee.
34
'O we were sisters, sisters seven,
We were the fairest under heaven.
35
'It fell on a summer's afternoon,
When a' our toilsome task was done,
36
'We cast the kavils us amang,
To see which suld to the grene-wood gang.
37
'O hon, alas! for I was youngest,
And aye my wierd it was the hardest.
38
'The kavil it on me did fa,
Whilk was the cause of a' my woe.
39
'For to the grene-wood I maun gae,
To pu the red rose and the slae;
40
'To pu the red rose and the thyme,
To deck my mother's bour and mine.
41
'I hadna pu'd a flower but ane,
When by there came a gallant hende,
42
'Wi high-colld hose and laigh-colld shoon,
And he seemd to be sum king's son.
43
'And be I maid or be I nae,
He kept me there till the close o day.
44
'And be I maid or be I nane,
He kept me there till the day was done.
45
'He gae me a lock o his yellow hair,
And bade me keep it ever mair.
46
'He gae me a carknet o bonny beads,
And bade me keep it against my needs.
47
'He gae to me a gay gold ring,
And bade me keep it abune a' thing.'
48
'What did ye wi the tokens rare
That ye gat frae that gallant there?'
49
'O bring that coffer unto me,
And a' the tokens ye sall see.'
50
'Now stay, daughter, your bour within,
While I gae parley wi my son.'
51
O she has taen her thro the ha,
And on her son began to ca.
52
'What did you wi the bonny beads
I bade ye keep against your needs?
53
'What did you wi the gay gowd ring
I bade ye keep abune a' thing?'
54
'I gae them a' to a ladye gay
I met in grene-wood on a day.
55
'But I wad gie a' my halls and tours,
I had that ladye within my bours.
56
'But I wad gie my very life,
I had that ladye to my wife.'
57
'Now keep, my son, your ha's and tours;
Ye have that bright burd in your bours.
58
'And keep, my son, your very life;
Ye have that ladye to your wife.'
59
Now or a month was cum and gane,
The ladye bore a bonny son.
60
And 't was weel written on his breast-bane,
'Cospatrick is my father's name.'
61
'O rowe my ladye in satin and silk,
And wash my son in the morning milk.'
C
Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p. 207.
"From the recital of a peasant-woman of Galloway, upwards
of ninety years of age."
1
We were sisters, we were seven,
We were the fairest under heaven.
2
And it was a' our seven years wark
To sew our father's seven sarks.
3
And whan our seven years wark was done,
We laid it out upo the green.
4
We coost the lotties us amang,
Wha wad to the greenwood gang,
5
To pu the lily but and the rose,
To strew witha' our sisters' bowers.
6
... I was youngest,
... my weer was hardest.
7
And to the greenwood I bud gae,
. . . . . . .
8
There I met a handsome childe,
. . . . . . .
9
High-coled stockings and laigh-coled shoon,
He bore him like a king's son.
10
An was I weel, or was I wae,
He keepit me a' the simmer day.
11
An though I for my hame-gaun sich[t],
He keepit me a' the simmer night.
12
He gae to me a gay gold ring,
And bade me keep it aboon a' thing.
13
He gae to me a cuttie knife,
And bade me keep it as my life:
14
Three lauchters o his yellow hair,
For fear we wad neer meet mair.
* * * * * * *
15
Next there came shippes three,
To carry a' my bridal fee.
16
Gowd were the beaks, the sails were silk,
Wrought wi maids' hands like milk.
17
They came toom and light to me,
But heavie went they waie frae me.
18
They were fu o baken bread,
They were fu of wine sae red.
19
My dowry went a' by the sea,
But I gaed by the grenewode tree.
20
An I sighed and made great mane,
As thro the grenewode we rade our lane.
21
An I ay siched an wiped my ee,
That eer the grenewode I did see.
22
'Is there water in your glove,
Or win into your shoe?
O[r] am I oer low a foot-page
To rin by you, ladie?'
23
'O there's nae water in my glove,
Nor win into my shoe;
But I am maning for my mither
Wha's far awa frae me.'
* * * * * * *
24
'Gin ye be a maiden fair,
Meikle gude ye will get there.
25
'If ye be a maiden but,
Meikle sorrow will ye get.
26
'For seven king's daughters he hath wedded,
But never wi ane o them has bedded.
27
'He cuts the breasts frae their breast-bane,
An sends them back unto their dame.
28
'He sets their backs unto the saddle,
An sends them back unto their father.
29
'But be ye maiden or be ye nane,
To the gowden chair ye draw right soon.
30
'But be ye leman or be ye maiden,
Sit nae down till ye be bidden.'
31
Was she maiden or was she nane,
To the gowden chair she drew right soon.
32
Was she leman or was she maiden,
She sat down ere she was bidden.
33
Out then spake the lord's mother;
Says, 'This is not a maiden fair.
34
'In that chair nae leal maiden
Eer sits down till they be bidden.'
35
The Billie Blin then outspake he,
As he stood by the fair ladie.
36
'The bonnie may is tired wi riding,
Gaurd her sit down ere she was bidden.'
* * * * * * *
37
But on her waiting-maid she ca'd:
'Fair ladie, what 's your will wi me?'
'O ye maun gie yere maidenheid
This night to an unco lord for me.'
38
'I hae been east, I hae been west,
I hae been far beyond the sea,
But ay, by grenewode or by bower,
I hae keepit my virginitie.
39
'But will it for my ladie plead,
I'll gie 't this night to an unco lord.'
* * * * * * *
40
When bells were rung an vespers sung,
An men in sleep were locked soun,
41
Childe Branton and the waiting-maid
Into the bridal bed were laid.
42
'O lie thee down, my fair ladie,
Here are a' things meet for thee;
43
'Here's a bolster for yere head,
Here is sheets an comelie weids.'
* * * * * * *
44
'Now tell to me, ye Billie Blin,
If this fair dame be a leal maiden.'
45
'I wat she is as leal a wight
As the moon shines on in a simmer night.
46
'I wat she is as leal a may
As the sun shines on in a simmer day.
47
'But your bonnie bride's in her bower,
Dreeing the mither's trying hour.'
48
Then out o his bridal bed he sprang,
An into his mither's bower he ran.
49
'O mither kind, O mither dear,
This is nae a maiden fair.
50
'The maiden I took to my bride
Has a bairn atween her sides.
51
'The maiden I took to my bower
Is dreeing the mither's trying hour.'
52
Then to the chamber his mother flew,
And to the wa the door she threw.
53
She stapt at neither bolt nor ban,
Till to that ladie's bed she wan.
54
Says, 'Ladie fair, sae meek an mild,
Wha is the father o yere child?'
55
'O mither dear,' said that ladie,
'I canna tell gif I sud die.
56
'We were sisters, we were seven,
We were the fairest under heaven.
57
'And it was a' our seven years wark
To sew our father's seven sarks.
58
'And whan our seven years wark was done,
We laid it out upon the green.
59
'We coost the lotties us amang,
Wha wad to the greenwode gang;
60
'To pu the lily but an the rose,
To strew witha' our sisters' bowers.
61
..... 'I was youngest,
..... my weer was hardest.
62
'And to the greenwode I bu[d] gae.
. . . . . . .
63
'There I met a handsome childe,
. . . . . . .
64
'Wi laigh-coled stockings and high-coled shoon,
He seemed to be some king's son.
65
'And was I weel or was I wae,
He keepit me a' the simmer day.
66
'Though for my hame-gaun I oft sicht,
He keepit me a' the simmer night.
67
'He gae to me a gay gold ring,
An bade me keep it aboon a' thing;
68
'Three lauchters o his yellow hair,
For fear that we suld neer meet mair.
69
'O mither, if ye'll believe nae me,
Break up the coffer, an there ye'll see.'
70
An ay she coost, an ay she flang,
Till her ain gowd ring came in her hand.
71
And scarce aught i the coffer she left,
Till she gat the knife wi the siller heft,
72
Three lauchters o his yellow hair,
Knotted wi ribbons dink and rare.
73
She cried to her son, 'Where is the ring
Your father gave me at our wooing,
An I gae you at your hunting?
74
'What did ye wi the cuttie knife,
I bade ye keep it as yere life?'
75
'O haud yere tongue, my mither dear;
I gae them to a lady fair.
76
'I wad gie a' my lands and rents,
I had that ladie within my brents.
77
'I wad gie a' my lands an towers,
I had that ladie within my bowers.'
78
'Keep still yere lands, keep still yere rents;
Ye hae that ladie within yere brents.
79
'Keep still yere lands, keep still yere towers;
Ye hae that lady within your bowers.'
80
Then to his ladie fast ran he,
An low he kneeled on his knee.
81
'O tauk ye up my son,' said he,
'An, mither, tent my fair ladie.
82
'O wash him purely i the milk,
And lay him saftly in the silk.
83
'An ye maun bed her very soft,
For I maun kiss her wondrous oft.'
84
It was weel written on his breast-bane
Childe Branton was the father's name.
85
It was weel written on his right hand
He was the heir o his daddie's land.
D
Buchan's Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of
Scotland, I, 204.
1
We were sisters, sisters seven,
Bowing down, bowing down
The fairest women under heaven.
And aye the birks a-bowing
2
They kiest kevels them amang,
Wha woud to the grenewood gang.
3
The kevels they gied thro the ha,
And on the youngest it did fa.
4
Now she must to the grenewood gang,
To pu the nuts in grenewood hang.
5
She hadna tarried an hour but ane
Till she met wi a highlan groom.
6
He keeped her sae late and lang
Till the evening set and birds they sang.
7
He gae to her at their parting
A chain o gold and gay gold ring;
8
And three locks o his yellow hair;
Bade her keep them for evermair.
9
When six lang months were come and gane,
A courtier to this lady came.
10
Lord Dingwall courted this lady gay,
And so he set their wedding-day.
11
A little boy to the ha was sent,
To bring her horse was his intent.
12
As she was riding the way along,
She began to make a heavy moan.
13
'What ails you, lady,' the boy said,
'That ye seem sae dissatisfied?
14
'Are the bridle reins for you too strong?
Or the stirrups for you too long?'
15
'But, little boy, will ye tell me
The fashions that are in your countrie?'
16
'The fashions in our ha I'll tell,
And o them a' I'll warn you well.
17
'When ye come in upon the floor,
His mither will meet you wi a golden chair.
18
'But be ye maid or be ye nane,
Unto the high seat make ye boun.
19
'Lord Dingwall aft has been beguild
By girls whom young men hae defiled.
20
'He's cutted the paps frae their breast-bane,
And sent them back to their ain hame.'
21
When she came in upon the floor,
His mother met her wi a golden chair.
22
But to the high seat she made her boun:
She knew that maiden she was nane.
23
When night was come, they went to bed,
And ower her breast his arm he laid.
24
He quickly jumped upon the floor,
And said, 'I've got a vile rank whore.'
25
Unto his mother he made his moan,
Says, 'Mother dear, I am undone.
26
'Ye've aft tald, when I brought them hame,
Whether they were maid or nane.
27
'I thought I'd gotten a maiden bright;
I've gotten but a waefu wight.
28
'I thought I'd gotten a maiden clear,
But gotten but a vile rank whore.'
29
'When she came in upon the floor,
I met her wi a golden chair.
30
'But to the high seat she made her boun,
Because a maiden she was nane.'
31
'I wonder wha 's tauld that gay ladie
The fashion into our countrie.'
32
'It is your little boy I blame,
Whom ye did send to bring her hame.'
33
Then to the lady she did go,
And said, 'O Lady, let me know
34
'Who has defiled your fair bodie:
Ye're the first that has beguiled me.'
35
'O we were sisters, sisters seven,
The fairest women under heaven.
36
'And we kiest kevels us amang,
Wha woud to the grenewood gang;
37
'For to pu the finest flowers,
To put around our summer bowers.
38
'I was the youngest o them a';
The hardest fortune did me befa.
39
'Unto the grenewood I did gang,
And pu'd the nuts as they down hang.
40
'I hadna stayd an hour but ane
Till I met wi a highlan groom.
41
'He keeped me sae late and lang
Till the evening set and birds they sang.
42
'He gae to me at our parting
A chain of gold and gay gold ring;
43
'And three locks o his yellow hair;
Bade me keep them for evermair.
44
'Then for to show I make nae lie,
Look ye my trunk, and ye will see.'
45
Unto the trunk then she did go,
To see if that were true or no.
46
And aye she sought, and aye she flang,
Till these four things came to her hand.
47
Then she did to her ain son go,
And said, 'My son, ye'll let me know,
48
'Ye will tell to me this thing:
What did you wi my wedding-ring?'
49
'Mother dear, I'll tell nae lie:
I gave it to a gay ladie.
50
'I would gie a' my ha's and towers,
I had this bird within my bowers.'
51
'Keep well, keep well your lands and strands;
Ye hae that bird within your hands.
52
'Now, my son, to your bower ye'll go:
Comfort your ladie, she's full o woe.'
53
Now when nine months were come and gane,
The lady she brought hame a son.
54
It was written on his breast-bane
Lord Dingwall was his father's name.
55
He's taen his young son in his arms,
And aye he praisd his lovely charms.
56
And he has gien him kisses three,
And doubled them ower to his ladie.
E
Elizabeth Cochrane's Song-Book, p. 146, No 112.
1
Lord Benwall he's a hunting gone;
Hey down, etc.
He's taken with him all his merry men.
Hey, etc.
2
As he was walking late alone,
He spyed a lady both brisk and young.
3
He keeped her so long and long,
From the evening late till the morning came.
4
All that he gave her at their parting
Was a pair of gloves and a gay gold ring.
5
Lord Benwall he's a wooing gone,
And he's taken with him all his merry men.
6
As he was walking the Haleigh throw,
He spy'd seven ladyes all in a row.
7
He cast a lot among them all;
Upon the youngest the lot did fall.
8
He wedded her and brought her home,
And by the way she made great moan.
9
'What aileth my dearest and dayly flower?
What ails my dear, to make such moan?
10
'Does the steed carry you too high?
Or does thy pillow sit awry?
11
'Or does the wind blow in thy glove?
Or is thy heart after another love?'
12
'The steed does not carry me too high,
Nor does my pillow sit awry.
13
'Nor does the wind blow in my glove,
Nor is my heart after another love.'
14
When they were doun to supper set,
The weary pain took her by the back.
15
'What ails my dearest and dayly flower?
What ails my dearest, to make such moan?'
16
'I am with child, and it's not to thee,
And oh and alas, what shall I doe!'
17
'I thought I had got a maid so mild;
But I have got a woman big with child.
18
'I thought I had got a dayly flower;
I have gotten but a common whore.'
* * * * * * *
19
'Rise up, Lord Benwall, go to your hall,
And cherrish up your merry men all.'
* * * * * * *
20
'As I was walking once late alone,
I spy'd a lord, both brisk and young.
21
'He keeped me so long and long,
From the evening late till the morning came.
22
'All that he gave me at our parting
Was a pair of gloves and a gay gold ring.
23
'If you will not believe what I tell to thee,
There's the key of my coffer, you may go and see.'
24
His mother went, and threw and flang,
Till to her hand the ring it came.
25
'Lord Benwall, wilt thou tell to me
Where is the ring I gave to thee?'
26
'Now I would give all my lands and tower,
To have that lady in my bower.
27
'I would give all my lands and rents,
To have that lady in my tents.'
28
'You need not give all your lands and tower,
For you have that lady in your power.
29
'You need not give all your lands and rents,
For you have that lady in your tents.'
30
Now it was written on the child's breast-bone
Lord Benwall's sirname and his name.
31
It was written on the child's right hand
That he should be heir of Lord Benwall's land.
32
'Canst cloath my lady in the silk,
And feed my young son with the milk.'
F
#a.# Motherwell's MS., p 219. From the recitation of Mrs
Thomson, February, 1825. #b.# Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Appendix, p. xvi, the first stanza only.
1
There were three sisters in a bouir,
Eh down and Oh down
And the youngest o them was the fairest flour.
Eh down and O down
2
And we began our seven years wark,
To sew our brither John a sark.
3
When seven years was come and gane,
There was nae a sleeve in it but ane.
4
But we coost kevils us amang
Wha wud to the green-wood gang.
5
But tho we had coosten neer sae lang,
The lot it fell on me aye to gang.
6
I was the youngest, and I was the fairest,
And alace! my wierd it was aye the sairest.
7
. . . . . . .
Till I had to the woods to gae.
8
To pull the cherrie and the slae,
And to seek our ae brither, we had nae mae.
9
But as I was walking the leas o Lyne,
I met a youth gallant and fine;
10
Wi milk white stockings and coal black shoon;
He seemed to be some gay lord's son.
11
But he keepit me there sae lang, sae lang,
Till the maids in the morning were singing their sang.
12
Would I wee or would I way,
He keepit me the lang simmer day.
13
Would I way or would I wight,
He keepit me the simmer night.
14
But guess what was at our parting?
A pair o grass green gloves and a gay gold ring.
15
He gave me three plaits o his yellow hair,
In token that we might meet mair.
16
But when nine months were come and gane,
This gallant lord cam back again.
17
He's wed this lady, and taen her wi him;
But as they were riding the leas o Lyne,
18
This lady was not able to ride,
. . . . . . .
19
'O does thy saddle set thee aside?
Or does thy steed ony wrang way ride?
20
'Or thinkst thou me too low a groom?
. . . . . . .
21
'Or hast thou musing in thy mind
For the leaving of thy mother kind?'
22
'My saddle it sets not me aside,
Nor does my steed ony wrang way ride.
23
'Nor think I thee too low a groom
. . . . . . .
24
'But I hae musing in my mind
For the leaving of my mother kind.'
25
'I'll bring thee to a mother of mine,
As good a mother as eer was thine.'
26
'A better mother she may be,
But an unco woman she'll prove to me.'
27
But when lords and ladies at supper sat,
Her pains they struck her in the back.
28
When lords and ladies were laid in bed,
Her pains they struck her in the side.
29
'Rise up, rise up, now, Lord Brangwill,
For I'm wi child and you do not know't.'
30
He took up his foot and gave her sic a bang
Till owre the bed the red blood sprang.
31
He is up to his mother's ha,
Calling her as hard as he could ca.
32
'I went through moss and I went through mure,
Thinking to get some lily flouir.
33
. . . . . . .
'But to my house I have brocht a hure.
34
'I thocht to have got a lady baith meek and mild,
But I've got a woman that's big wi child.'
35
'O rest you here, Lord Brangwill,' she said,
'Till I relieve your lady that lyes so low.'
36
'O daughter dear, will you tell to me
Who is the father of your babie?'
37
'Yes, mother dear, I will tell thee
Who is the father of my babie.
38
'As I was walking the leas o Lyne,
I met a youth gallant and fine;
39
'With milk-white stockings and coal-black shoon;
He seemd to be sum gay lord's son.
40
'He keepit me sae lang, sae lang,
Till the maids in the morning were singing their sang.
41
'Would I wee or would I way,
He keepit me the lang simmer day.
42
'Would I way or would I wight,
He keepit me the simmer night.
43
'But guess ye what was at our parting?
A pair of grass green gloves and a gay gold ring.
44
'He gave me three plaits o his yellow hair,
In token that we might meet mair.'
45
'O dochter dear, will ye show me
These tokens that he gave to thee?'
46
'Altho my back should break in three,
Unto my coffer I must be.'
47
'Thy back it shall not break in three,
For I'll bring thy coffer to thy knee.'
48
Aye she coost, and aye she flang,
Till these three tokens came to her hand.
49
Then she is up to her son's ha,
Calling him hard as she could ca.
50
'O son, O son, will you tell me
. . . . . . .
51
'What ye did wi the grass green gloves and gay gold ring
That ye gat at your own birth-een?'
52
'I gave them to as pretty a may
As ever I saw in a simmer day.
53
'I wud rather than a' my lands sae broad
That I had her as sure as eer I had.
54
'I would rather than a' my lands sae free
I had her here this night wi me.'
55
'I wish you good o your lands sae broad,
For ye have her as sure as eer ye had.
56
'I wish ye good o your lands sae free,
For ye have her here this night wi thee.'
57
'Gar wash my auld son in the milk,
Gar deck my lady's bed wi silk.'
58
He gave his auld son kisses three,
But he doubled them a' to his gay ladye.
G
Herd's Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 244; ed.
1776, I, 83.
1
As Bothwell was walking in the lowlands alane,
Hey down and a down
He met six ladies sae gallant and fine.
Hey down and a down
2
He cast his lot amang them a',
And on the youngest his lot did fa.
3
He's brought her frae her mother's bower,
Unto his strongest castle and tower.
4
But ay she cried and made great moan,
And ay the tear came trickling down.
5
'Come up, come up,' said the foremost man,
'I think our bride comes slowly on.'
6
'O lady, sits your saddle awry,
Or is your steed for you owre high?'
7
'My saddle is not set awry,
Nor carries me my steed owre high;
8
'But I am weary of my life,
Since I maun be Lord Bothwell's wife.'
9
He's blawn his horn sae sharp and shrill,
Up start the deer on evry hill.
10
He's blawn his horn sae lang and loud,
Up start the deer in gude green-wood.
11
His lady mother lookit owre the castle wa,
And she saw them riding ane and a'.
12
She's calld upon her maids by seven,
To mak his bed baith saft and even.
13
She's calld upon her cooks by nine,
To make their dinner fair and fine.
14
When day was gane, and night was come,
'What ails my love on me to frown?
15
'Or does the wind blow in your glove?
Or runs your mind on another love?'
16
'Nor blows the wind within my glove,
Nor runs my mind on another love;
17
'But I nor maid nor maiden am,
For I'm wi bairn to another man.'
18
'I thought I'd a maiden sae meek and sae mild,
But I've nought but a woman wi child.'
19
His mother's taen her up to a tower,
And lockit her in her secret bower.
20
'Now, doughter mine, come tell to me,
Wha's bairn this is that you are wi.'
21
'O mother dear, I canna learn
Wha is the faither of my bairn.
22
'But as I walkd in the lowlands my lane,
I met a gentleman gallant and fine.
23
'He keepit me there sae late and sae lang,
Frae the evning late till the morning dawn.
24
'And a' that he gied me to my propine
Was a pair of green gloves and a gay gold ring;
25
'Three lauchters of his yellow hair,
In case that we shoud meet nae mair.'
26
His lady mother went down the stair:
. . . . . . .
27
'Now son, now son, come tell to me,
Where's the green gloves I gave to thee?'
28
'I gied to a lady sae fair and so fine
The green gloves and a gay gold ring.
29
'But I wad gie my castles and towers,
I had that lady within my bowers.
30
'But I wad gie my very life,
I had that lady to be my wife.'
31
'Now keep, now keep your castles and towers,
You have that lady within your bowers.
32
'Now keep, now keep your very life,
You have that lady to be your wife.'
33
'O row my lady in sattin and silk,
And wash my son in the morning milk.'
H
Kinloch MSS, V, 335, in the handwriting of Dr John Hill
Burton.
1
We were seven sisters in a bower,
Adown adown, and adown and adown
The flower of a' fair Scotland ower.
Adown adown, and adown and adown
2
We were sisters, sisters seven,
The fairest women under heaven.
3
There fell a dispute us amang,
Wha would to the greenwood gang.
4
They kiest the kevels them amang,
O wha would to the greenwood gang.
5
The kevels they gied thro the ha,
And on the youngest it did fa.
6
The kevel fell into her hand,
To greenwood she was forced to gang.
7
She hedna pued a flower but ane,
When by there came an earl's son.
8
'And was he well or was he wae,
He keepet me that summer's day.'
9
And was he weel or was he weight,
He keepet her that summer's night.
10
And he gave her a gay goud ring
His mother got at her wedding.
* * * * * * *
11
'Oh is yer stirrup set too high?
Or is your saddle set awry?
12
'Oh is yer stirrup set too side?
Or what's the reason ye canna ride?'
* * * * * * *
13
When all were at the table set,
Then not a bit could this lady eat.
14
When all made merry at the feast,
This lady wished she were at her rest.
* * * * * * *
* * * * *
#A. a.#
_In the MS. two lines are written continuously, and two of
these double lines numbered as one stanza._
19^1, 23^1, 69^2, 71^2, _perhaps ~gate~, ~gates~ in MS._
54^1, _MS._ be a nae.
56.^1 _~casket~ in MS.?_
#b. 1.#
Chil Brenton has sent oer the faem,
Chil Brenton's brought his lady hame.
#B.#
_Printed by Scott in four-line stanzas. 7, 55, 56, 58, 61,
seem to be the stanzas transferred from Herd, but only the
last without change._
#C.#
_The stanzas are not divided in Cromek. Between 14 and 15
the following nineteen couplets have been omitted._
First blew the sweet, the simmer wind,
Then autumn wi her breath sae kind,
Before that eer the guid knight came
The tokens of his luve to claim.
Then fell the brown an yellow leaf
Afore the knight o luve shawed prief;
Three morns the winter's rime did fa,
When loud at our yett my luve did ca.
'Ye hae daughters, ye hae seven,
Ye hae the fairest under heaven.
I am the lord o lands wide,
Ane o them maun be my bride.
I am lord of a baronie,
Ane o them maun lie wi me.
O cherry lips are sweet to pree,
A rosie cheek's meet for the ee;
Lang brown locks a heart can bind,
Bonny black een in luve are kind;
Sma white arms for clasping's meet,
Whan laid atween the bridal-sheets;
A kindlie heart is best of a',
An debonnairest in the ha.
Ane by ane thae things are sweet,
Ane by ane in luve they're meet;
But when they a' in ae maid bide,
She is fittest for a bride.
Sae be it weel or be it wae,
The youngest maun be my ladie;
Sae be it gude, sae be it meet,
She maun warm my bridal-sheet.
Little kend he, whan aff he rode,
I was his tokend luve in the wood;
Or when he gied me the wedding-token,
He was sealing the vows he thought were broken.
First came a page on a milk-white steed,
Wi golden trappings on his head:
A' gowden was the saddle lap,
And gowden was the page's cap.
_15-21 have been allowed to stand principally on account
of 18._
_There is small risk in pronouncing 24, 25, 42, 43, 80, 81
spurious, and Cunningham surpasses his usual mawkishness
in 83._
#E#
_is written in four-line stanzas_.
19. mother, _in the margin_.
20. lady, _in the margin_.
#F. a.#
7^2. _MS_. Till [Still?].
_7^2 and 8, 17 and 18^1, 20^1 and 21, 23^1 and 24, 32 and
33^2, 50^1 and 51, are respectively written as a stanza in
the MS._
12^1, 41^1. _Motherwell conjectures_
Would I wait, or would I away.
13^1, 42^1. _Motherwell conjectures_
Would I away, or would I wait.
14^2, 43^2. _MS. ~green sleeves~: but see 51^1, and also
#E# 22^1, #G# 24^2, 28^2._
29^2, _above you do not know't is written know ~not who
till~, apparently a conjecture of Motherwell's._
30^2, _sometimes recited_
Till owre the bed this lady he flang.
53^1. _MS._ abroad.
#b.1.#
Seven ladies livd in a bower,
Hey down and ho down
And aye the youngest was the flower.
Hey down and ho down
#G.#
_The stanzas are not divided in Herd._
#H.#
_4 is crossed through in the MS., but no reason given._
[94] In his note-book, p. 117, Motherwell writes, with less than his
usual discretion: "The ballad of Bothwell, Cospatric, or Gil Brenton,
appears to be copied from an account of the birth of Makbeth given by
Wintown." The substance of this account is, that Macbeth's mother had a
habit of repairing to the woods for wholesome air, and that, during one
of her rambles, she fell in with a fair man, really the Devil, who
passed the day with her, and got on her a son.
"And of that dede in taknyng
He gave his lemman thare a ryng,
And bad hyr that scho suld kepe that wele,
And hald for hys luve that jwele."
_Cronykil_, Book VI, ch. xviii, 57-90.
[95] Scott says: "Cospatrick, Comes Patricius;" but Cos- (Gos-)patrick
is apparently Servant of Patrick, like Gil-patrick (Kil-patrick). Mr
Macmath suggests to me that Gil Brenton may have originally been
Gil-brandon, which seems very likely. See Notes and Queries, 5th S., x,
443.
[96] A fragment in Rancken's 'Några Prof af Folksång,' p. 14 f, belongs
not to 'Riddar Olle,' as there said, but to 'Herr Äster och Fröken
Sissa,' though the burden is 'Riddar Olof.' Other verses, at p. 16,
might belong to either. 'Riddar Ola,' E. Wigström's Folkdiktning, p. 37,
No 18, belongs with the Danish 'Guldsmedens Datter,' Grundtvig No 245.
[97] The inquiry seems to refer to the morning gift. "Die Morgengabe ist
ein Geschenk des Mannes als Zeichen der Liebe (in signum amoris), für
die Uebergabe der vollen Schönheit (in honore pulchritudinis) und der
Jungfräulichkeit (pretium virginitatis)." Weinhold, Die deutschen Frauen
in dem Mittelalter, S. 270.
[98] And again, "Is it the saddle, your horse, or your true-love?"
almost exactly as in our #B#, #E#, #F#, Grundtvig, 40 #C#, #E#, #F#,
Afzelius, 91, Landstad, 45, 52. So the Scottish ballad, 'The Cruel
Brother,' #B# 15 f.
[99] The auld belly-blind man in 'Earl Richard,' 44^3, 45^1, Kinloch's
A. S. Ballads, p. 15, retains the bare name; and Belly Blind, or Billie
Blin, is the Scotch name for the game of Blindman's-buff.
[100] Gisbertus Voetius, De Miraculis, Disput., II, 1018. Cited also by
Schmeller, Bayerisches Wörterbuch, from J. Prætorius's Alectryomantia,
p. 3.
[101] Merlin, in Layamon, V. 17130 ff (as pointed out by Grundtvig, I,
274), says that his mind is balewise, "mi gæst is bæliwis," and that he
is not disposed to gladness, mirth, or good words.
6
WILLIE'S LADY
#a.# 'Willie's Lady,' Fraser-Tytler MS.
#b.# 'Sweet Willy,' Jamieson-Brown MS., No 15, fol. 33.
#a#, 'Willie's Lady,' was No 1 in the manuscript of fifteen ballads
furnished William Tytler by Mrs Brown in 1783, and having been written
down a little later than #b# may be regarded as a revised copy. This
manuscript, as remarked under No 5, is not now in the possession of the
Fraser-Tytler family, having often been most liberally lent, and,
probably, at last not returned. But a transcript had been made by the
grandfather of the present family of two of the pieces contained in it,
and 'Willie's Lady' is one of these two.
Lewis had access to William Tytler's copy, and, having regulated the
rhymes, filled out a gap, dropped the passage about the girdle, and made
other changes to his taste, printed the ballad in 1801 as No 56 of his
Tales of Wonder. The next year Scott gave the "ancient copy, never
before published," "in its native simplicity, as taken from Mrs Brown of
Falkland's MS.,"--William Tytler's,--in Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border, II, 27, but not with literal accuracy. Jamieson, in 1806, gave
'Sweet Willy,' almost exactly according to the text of his Brown
manuscript, in an appendix to the second volume of his collection, p.
367, and at p. 175 of the same volume, a reconstruction of the ballad
which might have been spared.
#b# lacks altogether the passage which makes proffer of the cup, #a#,
stanzas 5-11, and substitutes at that place the girdle of #a# 21-28. The
woodbine in #a# 36, 41, is also wanting, and the concluding stanza. A
deficiency both in matter and rhyme at #a# 32, is supplied by #b# 25,
26, but not happily:
'An do you to your mither then,
An bid her come to your boy's christnen;
'For dear's the boy he's been to you:
Then notice well what she shall do.'
Again, the transition in #a#, from st. 33 to st. 34, is abrupt even for
a ballad, and #b# introduces here four stanzas narrating the execution
of the Billy Blind's injunctions, and ending,
And notic'd well what she did say,
whereby we are prepared for the witch's exclamations.[102]
Danish versions of this ballad are numerous: #A-I#, 'Hustru og Mands
Moder' ['Fostermoder,' 'Stifmoder'], Grundtvig, No 84, II, 404 ff;
#J-T#, 'Hustru og Mands Moder,' Kristensen, II, 111 ff, No 35:
#U-X#,'Barselkvinden,' Kristensen, I, 201 ff, No 74; #Y#, 'Hustru og
Slegfred,' Grundtvig, No 85, II, 448 ff: in all twenty-five, but many of
Kristensen's copies are fragments. Grundtvig's 84 #A#, #B#, and 85 #a#
are from manuscripts of the sixteenth century. 84 #F-I# and several
repetitions of 85 are of the seventeenth. Grundtvig's 84 #C#, #D#, #E#,
and all Kristensen's versions, are from recent oral tradition. Some of
these, though taken down since 1870, are wonderfully well preserved.
The Danish ballads divide into two classes, principally distinguished by
their employing or not employing of the artifice of wax children. (There
is but one of these in #N#, #R#, Kristensen's #E#, #I#, II, 116, 122,
and in the oldest Swedish ballad, as in the Scottish: but children in
Scandinavian ballads are mostly born in pairs.) Of the former class, to
which our only known copy belongs, are #F-I#, #N-T#, #X# (Grundtvig, 84
#F-I#, Kristensen, II, No 35, #E-L#, I, No 74 #D#). #N# and #I# furnish,
perhaps, the most consistent story, which, in the former, runs thus: Sir
Peter married Ellen (elsewhere Mettelille, Kirstin, Tidelil, Ingerlil),
and gave her in charge to his mother, a formidable witch, and, as
appears from #F#, violently opposed to the match. The first night of her
marriage Ellen conceived twins. She wrapped up her head in her cloak and
paid a visit to her mother-in-law, to ask how long women go with child.
The answer was,
'Forty weeks went Mary with Christ,
And so each Danish woman must.
'Forty weeks I went with mine,
But eight years shalt thou go with thine.'
The forty weeks had passed, and Ellen began to long for relief. Sir
Peter besought aid of his sister Ingerlin. If I help your young bride,
she said, I must be traitor to my mother. Sir Peter insisted, and
Ingerlin moulded a fine child of wax,[103] wrapped it in linen, and
exhibited it to her mother, who, supposing that her arts had been
baffled, burst out into exclamations of astonishment. She had thought
she could twist a rope out of flying sand, lay sun and moon flat on the
earth with a single word, turn the whole world round about! She had
thought all the house was spell-bound, except the spot where the young
wife's chest stood, the chest of red rowan, which nothing can bewitch!
The chest was instantly taken away, and Ellen's bed moved to the place
it had occupied; and no sooner was this done than Ellen gave birth to
two children.
In the ballads of the other class, the young wife, grown desperate after
eight years of suffering, asks to be taken back to her maiden home. Her
husband's mother raises objections: the horses are in the meadow, the
coachman is in bed. Then, she says, I will go on my bare feet. The
moment her husband learns her wish, the carriage is at the door, but by
the arts of the mother it goes to pieces on the way, and the journey has
to be finished on horseback. The joy of her parents at seeing their
daughter approaching was quenched on a nearer view: she looked more dead
than quick. She called her family about her and distributed her effects.
A great wail went up in the house when two sons were cut from the
mother's side. (#C#, #J#, #K#, #L#, #W#: Grundtvig, 84 #C#; Kristensen,
II, No 35 #A#, #B#, #C#; I, No 74 #C#.)
The first son stood up and brushed his hair:
'Most surely am I in my ninth year.'
The second stood up both fair and red:
'Most sure we'll avenge our dear mother dead.'[104]
Several of the most important ballads of the first class have taken up a
part of the story of those of the second class, to the detriment of
consistency. #F#, #G#, #H#, #O#, #P# (Grundtvig, 84 #F#, #G#, #H#,
Kristensen, II, No 35 #F#, #G#), make the wife quit her husband's house
for her father's, not only without reason, but against reason. If the
woman is to die, it is natural enough that she should wish to die with
the friends of her early days, and away from her uncongenial
mother-in-law; but there is no kind of occasion for transferring the
scene of the trick with the wax children to her father's house; and, on
the other hand, it is altogether strange that her husband's mother and
the rowan-tree chest (which sometimes appears to be the property of the
mother, sometimes that of the wife) should go with her.
#Y#, 'Hustru og Slegfred,' Grundtvig, 85, agrees with the second class
up to the point when the wife is put to bed at her mother's house, but
with the important variation that the spell is the work of a former
mistress of the husband; instead of his mother, as in most of the
ballads, or of the wife's foster-mother, as in #C#, #D#, #J#, #K#, #M#
(Grundtvig, 84 #C#, #D#, Kristensen, II, No 35 #A#, #B#, #D#), or of the
wife's step-mother as in #A# only. The conclusion of 'Hustru og
Slegfred' is rather flat. The wife, as she lies in bed, bids all her
household hold up their hands and pray for her relief, which occurs on
the same day. The news is sent to her husband, who rejoins his wife, is
shown his children, praises God, and burns his mistress. Burning is also
the fate of the mother-in-law in #B#, #I#, #O#, #P#, whereas in #F# she
dies of chagrin, and in #G# bursts into a hundred flinders
(flentsteene).
This ballad, in the mixed form of #O#, #P# (Kristensen, II, 35 #F#,
#G#), has been resolved into a tale in Denmark, a few lines of verse
being retained. Recourse is had by the spell-bound wife to a cunning
woman in the village, who informs her that in her house there is a place
in which a rowan-tree chest has stood, and that she can get relief
there. The cunning woman subsequently pointing out the exact spot, two
boys are born, who are seven years old, and can both walk and talk. Word
is sent the witch that her son's wife has been delivered of two sons,
and that she herself shall be burned the day following. The witch says,
"I have been able to twine a string out of running water. If I have not
succeeded in bewitching the woman, she must have found the place where
the damned rowan chest stood." (Grundtvig, III, 858, No 84 #b#.)
Three Swedish versions of the ballad have been printed. #A#, #B#, from
tradition of this century, are given by Arwidsson, II, 252 ff, 'Liten
Kerstins Förtrollning,' No 134. These resemble the Danish ballads of the
second class closely. Liten Kerstin goes to her mother's house, gives
birth to two children, and dies. In #A# the children are a son and
daughter. The son stands up, combs his hair, and says, "I am forty weeks
on in my ninth year." He can run errands in the village, and the
daughter sew red silk. In #B# both children are boys. One combs his
hair, and says, "Our grandmother shall be put on two wheels." The other
draws his sword, and says, "Our mother is dead, our grandmother to
blame. I hope our mother is with God. Our grandmother shall be laid on
seven wheels." The other copy, #C#, mentioned by Grundtvig as being in
Cavallius and Stephens' manuscript collection, has been printed in the
Svenska Fornminnesföreningens Tidskrift, vol. ii, p. 72 ff, 1873-74. It
dates from the close of the sixteenth century, and resembles the mixed
ballads of the Danish first class, combining the flitting to the
father's house with the artifice of the wax children. The conclusion of
this ballad has suffered greatly. After the two sons are born, we are
told that Kirstin, before unmentioned, goes to the chest and makes a wax
child. If the chest were moved, Elin would be free of her child. And
then the boy stands up and brushes his hair, and says he has come to his
eighth year.
Three stanzas and some of the incidents of a #Norwegian# version of this
ballad have been communicated to Grundtvig, III, 858 f, No 84 c, by
Professor Sophus Bugge. The only place which was unaffected by a spell
was where Signelíti's bride-chest stood, and the chest being removed,
the birth took place. The witch was a step-mother, as in Danish #A#.
There are two familiar cases of malicious arrest of childbirth in
classic mythology,--those of Latona and Alcmene. The wrath of Juno was
the cause in both, and perhaps the myth of Alcmene is only a repetition
of an older story, with change of name. The pangs of Latona were
prolonged through nine days and nights, at the end of which time
Ilithyia came to her relief, induced by a bribe. (Hymn to the Delian
Apollo, 91 ff.) Homer, Il. xix, 119, says only that Hera stopped the
delivery of Alcmene and kept back Ilithyia. Antoninus Liberalis, in the
second century of our era, in one of his abstracts from the
Metamorphoses of Nicander, a poem of the second century B. C., or
earlier, has this account: that when Alcmene was going with Hercules,
the Fates and Ilithyia, to please Juno, kept her in her pains by sitting
down and folding their hands; and that Galinthias, a playmate and
companion of Alcmene, fearing that the suffering would drive her mad,
ran out and announced the birth of a boy, upon which the Fates were
seized with such consternation that they let go their hands, and
Hercules immediately came into the world. (Antoninus Lib., Metam. c.
xxix.) Ovid, Metamorphoses, ix, 281-315, is more circumstantial. After
seven days and nights of torture, Lucina came, but, being bribed by
Juno, instead of giving the aid for which she was invoked, sat down on
the altar before Alcmene's door, with the right knee crossed over the
left, and fingers interlocked, mumbling charms which checked the
processes of birth. Galanthis, a servant girl _media de plebe_, was
shrewd enough to suspect that Juno had some part in this mischief; and
besides, as she went in and out of the house, she always saw Lucina
sitting on the altar, with her hands clasped over her knees. At last, by
a happy thought, she called out, "Whoever you are, wish my mistress joy;
she is lighter, and has her wish." Lucina jumped up and unclasped her
hands, and the birth followed instantly. Pausanias, ix, 11, tells a
similar but briefer story, in which Historis, daughter of Tiresias,
takes the place of Galanthis. See, for the whole matter, 'Ilithyia oder
die Hexe,' in C. A. Böttiger's Kleine Schriften, I, 76 ff.
Apuleius, in his Metamorphoses, mentions a case of suspended childbirth,
which, curiously enough, had lasted eight years,[105] as in the Danish
and Swedish ballads. The witch is a mistress of her victim's husband, as
in Grundtvig, 85, and as in a story cited by Scott from Heywood's
'Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels,' p. 474. "There is a curious tale
about a Count of Westeravia [Vestravia, in diocesi Argentoratensi], whom
a deserted concubine bewitched upon his marriage, so as to preclude all
hopes of his becoming a father. The spell continued to operate for three
years, till one day, the count happening to meet with his former
mistress, she maliciously asked him about the increase of his family.
The count, conceiving some suspicion from her manner, craftily answered
that God had blessed him with three fine children; on which she
exclaimed, like Willie's mother in the ballad, 'May Heaven confound the
old hag by whose counsel I threw an enchanted pitcher into the draw-well
of your palace!' The spell being found and destroyed, the count became
the father of a numerous family."
A story like that of the ballad is told as a fact that took place in
Arran within this century. A young man forsook his sweetheart and
married another girl. When the wife's time came, she suffered
excessively. A pack-man who was passing suspected the cause, went
straight to the old love, and told her that a fine child was born; when
up she sprang, and pulled out a large nail from the beam of the roof,
calling out to her mother, "Muckle good your craft has done!" The wife
was forthwith delivered. (Napier, in The Folklore Record, II, 117.)
In the #Sicilian# tales, collected by Laura Gonzenbach, Nos 12 and 15,
we have the spell of folded hands placed between the knees to prevent
birth, and in No 54 hands raised to the head.[106] In all these examples
the spell is finally broken by telling the witch a piece of false news,
which causes her to forget herself and take away her hands.
(Sicilianische Märchen aus dem Volksmund gesammelt, Leipzig, 1870.)
We find in a #Roumanian# tale, contributed to Das Ausland for 1857, p.
1029, by F. Obert, and epitomized by Grundtvig, III, 859, No 84 d, a
wife condemned by her offended husband to go with child till he lays his
hand upon her. It is twenty years before she obtains grace, and the son
whom she then bears immediately slays his father. A #Wallachian# form of
this story (Walachische Märchen von Arthur u. Albert Schott, No 23)
omits the revenge by the new-born child, and ends happily.
With respect to the knots in st. 34, it is to be observed that the tying
of knots (as also the fastening of locks), either during the marriage
ceremony or at the approach of parturition was, and is still, believed
to be effectual for preventing conception or childbirth. The minister of
Logierait, Perthshire, testifies, about the year 1793, that immediately
before the celebration of a marriage it is the custom to loosen
carefully every knot about bride and bridegroom,--garters, shoe-strings,
etc. The knots are tied again before they leave the church. (Statistical
Account of Scotland, V, 83.) So among the Laps and Norwegians, when a
child is to be born, all the knots in the woman's clothes, or even all
the knots in the house, must be untied, because of their impeding
delivery. (Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, p. 322, who also cites the
Statistical Account of Scotland.)
* * * * *
Willie's Lady is translated by Schubart, p. 74, Talvj, p. 555, and by
Gerhard, p. 139. Grundtvig, 84 H (== Syv, 90, Danske Viser, 43), is
translated by Jamieson, Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 344,
and by Prior, No 89.
A
#a.# A copy, by Miss Mary Fraser Tytler, of a transcript
made by her grandfather from William Tytler's manuscript.
#b.# Jamieson-Brown MS., No 15, fol. 33.
1
Willie has taen him oer the fame,
He's woo'd a wife and brought her hame.
2
He's woo'd her for her yellow hair,
But his mother wrought her mickle care.
3
And mickle dolour gard her dree,
For lighter she can never be.
4
But in her bower she sits wi pain,
And Willie mourns oer her in vain.
5
And to his mother he has gone,
That vile rank witch of vilest kind.
6
He says: 'My ladie has a cup,
Wi gowd and silver set about.
7
'This goodlie gift shall be your ain,
And let her be lighter o her young bairn.'
8
'Of her young bairn she'll neer be lighter,
Nor in her bower to shine the brighter.
9
'But she shall die and turn to clay,
And you shall wed another may.'
10
'Another may I'll never wed,
Another may I'll neer bring home.'
11
But sighing says that weary wight,
'I wish my life were at an end.'
12
'Ye doe [ye] unto your mother again,
That vile rank witch of vilest kind.
13
'And say your ladie has a steed,
The like o'm's no in the lands of Leed.
14
'For he [i]s golden shod before,
And he [i]s golden shod behind.
15
'And at ilka tet of that horse's main,
There's a golden chess and a bell ringing.
16
'This goodlie gift shall be your ain,
And let me be lighter of my young bairn.'
17
'O her young bairn she'll neer be lighter,
Nor in her bower to shine the brighter.
18
'But she shall die and turn to clay,
And ye shall wed another may.'
19
'Another may I['ll] never wed,
Another may I['ll] neer bring hame.'
20
But sighing said that weary wight,
'I wish my life were at an end.'
21
'Ye doe [ye] unto your mother again,
That vile rank witch of vilest kind.
22
'And say your ladie has a girdle,
It's red gowd unto the middle.
23
'And ay at every silver hem,
Hangs fifty silver bells and ten.
24
'That goodlie gift has be her ain,
And let me be lighter of my young bairn.'
25
'O her young bairn she's neer be lighter,
Nor in her bower to shine the brighter.
26
'But she shall die and turn to clay,
And you shall wed another may.'
27
'Another may I'll never wed,
Another may I'll neer bring hame.'
28
But sighing says that weary wight,
'I wish my life were at an end.'
29
Then out and spake the Belly Blind;
He spake aye in good time.
30
'Ye doe ye to the market place,
And there ye buy a loaf o wax.
31
'Ye shape it bairn and bairnly like,
And in twa glassen een ye pit;
32
'And bid her come to your boy's christening;
Then notice weel what she shall do.
33
'And do you stand a little fore bye,
And listen weel what she shall say.'
34
'Oh wha has loosed the nine witch knots
That was amo that ladie's locks?
35
'And wha has taen out the kaims of care
That hangs amo that ladie's hair?
36
'And wha's taen down the bush o woodbine
That hang atween her bower and mine?
37
'And wha has killd the master kid
That ran beneath that ladie's bed?
38
'And wha has loosed her left-foot shee,
And lotten that ladie lighter be?'
39
O Willie has loosed the nine witch knots
That was amo that ladie's locks.
40
And Willie's taen out the kaims o care
That hang amo that ladie's hair.
41
And Willie's taen down the bush o woodbine
That hang atween her bower and thine.
42
And Willie has killed the master kid
That ran beneath that ladie's bed.
43
And Willie has loosed her left-foot shee,
And letten his ladie lighter be.
44
And now he's gotten a bonny young son,
And mickle grace be him upon.
* * * * *
#a.#
_The stanzas are not regularly divided in the MS., nor
were they so divided by Scott._
41^2. hung (?) beneath: _but see 36^2._
_Scott's principal variations are_:
12^1. Yet gae ye.
14^1. For he is silver shod.
15.
At every tuft of that horse main
There's a golden chess and a bell to ring.
21^1. Yet gae ye.
21^2. o rankest kind.
22^2. It's a' red gowd to.
24^1. This gudely gift sall be.
26^1. For she.
28^2. my days.
30^1. Yet gae ye.
30^2. there do buy.
31^1. Do shape.
31^2. you'll put.
32^1. And bid her your boy's christening to.
33^1. a little away.
33^2. To notice weel what she may saye.
35^2. That were amang.
38^2. And let.
39^1. Syne Willie.
40^2. That were into.
41^1, 42^1, 43^1. And he.
41^2. Hung atween her bour and the witch carline.
44^2. a bonny son.
#b.#
_Divided in Jamieson's MS. into stanzas of four verses,
two verses being written in one line: but Jamieson's_
8==#a# 14-16.
1^1. Sweet Willy's taen.
5-11, _wanting. Instead of the cup, the girdle occurs
here_:==#a# 21-28.
12^1. He did him till.
12^2. wilest kin.
13^1. An said, My lady.
14^{1, 2}. he is.
16^2. An lat her be lighter o her young bairn.
18^1. go to clay.
#a# 21^1==b 5^1. Now to his mither he has gane.
18^2. kin.
#a# 22^1==b 6^1. He say[s] my lady.
22^2. It's a' red.
#a# 23^1==b 7^1. at ilka.
23^2. Hings.
#a# 24^1==b 8^1. gift sall be your ain.
24^2. lat her ... o her.
#a# 29==b 22. Then out it spake the belly blin; She spake
ay in a good time.
#a# 32==b 25, 26.
An do you to your mither then, An bid her come to your boy's
christnen;
For dear's the boy he's been to you: Then notice well what
she shall do.
_Between #a# 33 and #a# 34 occurs in #b# (28-31)_:
He did him to the market place, An there he bought a loaf o wax.
He shap'd it bairn and bairnly like, An in't twa glazen een he pat.
He did him till his mither then, An bade him (_sic_) to his boy's
christnen.
An he did stan a little forebye, An notic'd well what she did say.
#a# 35^2==#b# 33^2. hang amo.
36. _wanting in #b#._
37^2. aneath.
39^2==#b# 36^2. hang amo his.
40^1. kemb o care.
40^2. his lady's.
41. _wanting in #b#._
42^2==#b# 38^2. ran aneath his.
44. _wanting in #b#._
#b# _22^2 makes the Billy Blind feminine. This is not so
in #a#, or in any other ballad, and may be only an error
of the transcriber, who has not always written carefully._
[102] The Jamieson-Brown copy contains seventy-eight verses; Scott's
and the Tytler copy, eighty-eight. Dr Anderson's, Nichols's
Illustrations, VII, 176, counts seventy-six instead of eighty-eight;
but, judging by the description which Anderson has given of the
Alexander-Fraser-Tytler-Brown MS., at p. 179, he is not exact.
Still, so large a discrepancy is hard to explain.
[103] The sister does this in #F-I# and #S#: in #O#, #P#, the husband
"has" it done.
[104] Grundtvig, 84 #D#, #E#; Kristensen, I, No 74 #A#, #B#, #C#; II, No
35 #A#, #B#, #C#.
[105] Eadem amatoris sui uxorem, quod in eam dicacule probrum dixerat,
jam in sarcina prægnationis, obsæpto utero et repigrato fetu, perpetua
prægnatione damuavit, et, ut cuncti numerant, jam octo annorum onere
misella illa velut elephantum paritura distenditur. I, 9.
[106] We may suppose with closed fingers, or clasping the head, though
this is not said. Antique vases depict one or two Ilithyias as standing
by with hands elevated and _open_, during the birth of Athene from the
head of Zeus. Welcker, Kleine Schriften, III, 191, note 12.
7
EARL BRAND
#A. a. b.# 'Earl Bran,' Mr Robert White's papers. #c.#
'The Brave Earl Brand and the King of England's Daughter,'
Bell, Ancient Poems, etc., p. 122. #d.# Fragmentary verses
remembered by Mr R. White's sister.
#B.# 'The Douglas Tragedy,' Scott's Minstrelsy, III, 246,
ed. 1803.
#C.# 'Lord Douglas,' Motherwell's MS., p. 502.
#D.# 'Lady Margaret,' Kinloch MSS, I, 327.
#E.# 'The Douglas Tragedy,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p.
180.
#F.# 'The Child of Ell,' Percy MS., p. 57; Hales and
Furnivall, I, 133.
'Earl Brand,' first given to the world by Mr Robert Bell in 1857, has
preserved most of the incidents of a very ancient story with a
faithfulness unequalled by any ballad that has been recovered from
English oral tradition. Before the publication of 'Earl Brand,' #A c#,
our known inheritance in this particular was limited to the beautiful
but very imperfect fragment called by Scott 'The Douglas Tragedy,' #B#;
half a dozen stanzas of another version of the same in Motherwell's
Minstrelsy, #E#; so much of Percy's 'Child of Elle' as was genuine,
which, upon the printing of his manuscript, turned out to be one fifth,
#F#; and two versions of Erlinton, #A#, #C#.[107] What now can be added
is but little: two transcripts of 'Earl Brand,' one of which, #A a#, has
suffered less from literary revision than the only copy hitherto
printed, #A c#; a third version of 'The Douglas Tragedy,' from
Motherwell's manuscript, #C#; a fourth from Kinloch's manuscripts, #D#;
and another of 'Erlinton,' #B#. Even 'Earl Brand' has lost a
circumstance that forms the turning-point in Scandinavian ballads, and
this capital defect attends all our other versions, though traces which
remain in 'Erlinton' make it nearly certain that our ballads originally
agreed in all important particulars with those which are to this day
recited in the north of Europe.
The corresponding #Scandinavian# ballad is 'Ribold and Guldborg,' and it
is a jewel that any clime might envy. Up to the time of Grundtvig's
edition, in Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, No 82, though four versions had
been printed, the only current copy for a hundred and fifty years had
been Syv's No 88, based on a broadside of the date 1648, but compounded
from several sources; and it was in this form that the ballad became
known to the English through Jamieson's translation. Grundtvig has now
published twenty-seven versions of 'Ribold og Guldborg' (II, 347 ff,
nineteen; 675 ff, four; III, 849 ff, four:[108] of all which only two
are fragments), and nine of 'Hildebrand og Hilde,' No 83, which, is the
same story set in a dramatic frame-work (II, 393 ff, seven; 680 f, one;
III, 857, one, a fragment). Three more Danish versions of 'Ribold og
Guldborg' are furnished by Kristensen, Gamle jydske Folkeviser, I, No
37, II, No 84 #A#, #B# (#C*#, #D*#, #E*#). To these we may add the last
half, sts 15-30, of 'Den farlige Jomfru,' Grundtvig, 184 #G#. Of
Grundtvig's texts, 82 #A# is of the sixteenth century; #B-H# are of the
seventeenth; the remainder and Kristensen's three from recent tradition.
Six versions of 'Hildebrand og Hilde,' #A-F#, are of the seventeenth
century; one is of the eighteenth, #G#; and the remaining two are from
oral tradition of our day.
The first six of Grundtvig's versions of 'Ribold and Guldborg,' #A-F#,
are all from manuscripts, and all of a pure traditional character,
untampered with by "collators." #G# and #H# are mixed texts: they have
#F# for their basis, but have admitted stanzas from other sources. Most
of the versions from recitation are wonderful examples and proofs of the
fidelity with which simple people "report and hold" old tales: for, as
the editor has shown, verses which never had been printed, but which are
found in old manuscripts, are now met with in recited copies; and these
recited copies, again, have verses that occur in no Danish print or
manuscript, but which nevertheless are found in Norwegian and Swedish
recitations, and, what is more striking, in Icelandic tradition of two
hundred years' standing.
The story in the older Danish ballads runs thus. Ribold, a king's son,
sought Guldborg's love in secret. He said he would carry her to a land
where death and sorrow came not; where all the birds were cuckoos, and
all the grass was leeks, and all the streams ran wine. Guldborg, not
indisposed, asked how she should evade the watch kept over her by all
her family and by her betrothed. Ribold disguised her in his cloak and
armor, #B#, #E#, #F#, and rode off, with Guldborg behind him. On the
heath they meet a rich earl [a crafty man, #C#; her betrothed, #D#], who
asks, Whither away, with your stolen maid? [little page, #B#, #F#.]
Ribold replies that it is his youngest sister, whom he has taken from a
cloister, #A#, #E# [sick sister, #C#; brother, #B#, #F#; page, #D#].
This shift avails nothing; no more does a bribe which he offers for
keeping his secret. Report is at once made to her father that Guldborg
has eloped with Ribold. Guldborg perceives that they are pursued, and is
alarmed. Ribold reassures her, and prepares to meet his foes. He bids
Guldborg hold his horse, #B#, #C#, #E#, and, whatever may happen, not to
call him by name: "Though thou see me bleed, name me not to death;
though thou see me fall, name me not at all!" Ribold cuts down six or
seven of her brothers and her father, besides others of her kin; the
youngest brother only is left, and Guldborg in an agony calls upon
Ribold to spare him, to carry tidings to her mother. No sooner was his
name pronounced than Ribold received a mortal wound. He sheathed his
sword, and said, Come, wilt thou ride with me? Wilt thou go home to thy
mother again, or wilt thou follow so sad a swain? And she answered, I
will not go home to my mother again; I will follow thee, my heart's
dearest man. They rode through the wood, and not a word came from the
mouth of either. Guldborg asked, Why art thou not as glad as before? And
Ribold answered, Thy brother's sword has been in my heart. They reached
his house. He called to one to take his horse, to another to bring a
priest, and said his brother should have Guldborg. But she would not
give her faith to two brothers. Ribold died that night, #C#. Three dead
came from Ribold's bower: Ribold and his lief, and his mother, who died
of grief! In #A# Guldborg slays herself, and dies in her lover's arms.
'Hildebrand and Hilde,' #A#, #B#, #C#, #D#, opens with the heroine in a
queen's service, sewing her seam wildly, putting silk for gold and gold
for silk. The queen calls her to account. Hilde begs her mistress to
listen to her tale of sorrow. She was a king's daughter. Twelve knights
had been appointed to be her guard, and one had beguiled her,
Hildebrand, son of the king of England. They went off together, and
were surprised by her brothers [father, #B#, #C#, #D#]. Hildebrand bade
her be of good cheer; but she must not call him by name if she saw him
bleed or fall, #A#, #B#, #D#. A heap of knights soon lay at his feet.
Hilde forgot herself, and called out, Hildebrand, spare my youngest
brother! Hildebrand that instant received a mortal wound, and fell. The
younger brother tied her to his horse, and dragged her home. They shut
her up at first in a strong tower, built for the purpose, #A#,# B#
[Swedish #A#, a dark house], and afterwards sold her into servitude for
a church bell. Her mother's heart broke at the bell's first stroke, and
Hilde, with the last word of her tale, fell dead in the queen's arms.
The most important deviation of the later versions from the old is
exhibited by #S# and #T#, and would probably be observed in #Q#, #R#, as
well, were these complete. #S#, #T# are either a mixture of 'Ribold and
Guldborg' with 'Hildebrand and Hilde,' or forms transitional between the
two. In these Ribold does not live to reach his home, and Guldborg,
unable to return to hers, offers herself to a queen, to spin silk and
weave gold [braid hair and work gold]. But she cannot sew for grief. The
queen smacks her on the cheek for neglecting her needle. Poor Guldborg
utters a protest, but gives no explanation, and the next morning is
found dead. Singularly enough, the name of the hero in #Q#, #R#, #S#,
#T#, is also an intermediate form. Ribold is the name in all the old
Danish copies except #C#, and that has Ride-bolt. Danish #I#, #K#, #X#,
#Z#, all the Icelandic copies, and Swedish #D#, have either Ribold or
some unimportant variation. #Q#, #R#, #S#, have Ride-brand [#T#,
Rederbrand]. All copies of Grundtvig 83, except Danish #G#, Swedish #C#,
which do not give the hero's name, have Hilde-brand; so also 82 #N#,
#O#, #P#, #V#, and Kristensen, I, No 37. The name of the woman is nearly
constant both in 82 and 83.
The paradise promised Guldborg in all the old versions of 82[109]
disappears from the recited copies, except #K#, #M#. It certainly did
not originally belong to 'Ribold and Guldborg,' or to another Danish
ballad in which it occurs ('Den trofaste Jomfru,' Grundtvig, 249 #A#),
but rather to ballads like 'Kvindemorderen,' Grundtvig, 183 #A#, or
'Líti Kersti,' Landstad, 44, where a supernatural being, a demon or a
hillman, seeks to entice away a mortal maid. See No 4, p. 27. In 82 #L#,
#N#, #U#, #V#, #Y#, #Æ#, #Ø#, and Kristensen's copies, the lovers are
not encountered by anybody who reports their flight. Most of the later
versions, #K#, #L#, #M#, #N#, #P#, #U#, #V#, #Y#, #Æ#, #Ø#, and
Kristensen's three, make them halt in a wood, where Ribold goes to sleep
in Guldborg's lap, and is roused by her when she perceives that they are
pursued. So Norwegian #B#, Swedish #A#, #B#, #C#, and 'Hildebrand and
Hilde' #B#. #M#, #Q#, #R#, #S#, #T#, #Z#, have not a specific
prohibition of _dead-naming_, but even these enjoin silence. 83 #C# is
the only ballad in which there is a fight and no prohibition of either
kind, but it is clear from the course of the story that the stanza
containing the usual injunction has simply dropped out. #P# is
distinguished from all other forms of the story by the heroine's killing
herself before her dying lover reaches his house.
The four first copies of 'Hildebrand and Hilde,' as has been seen, have
the story of Ribold and Guldborg with some slight differences and some
abridgment. There is no elopement in #B#: the lovers are surprised in
the princess' bower. When Hilde has finished her tale, in #A#, the queen
declares that Hildebrand was her son. In #B# she interrupts the
narrative by announcing her discovery that Hildebrand was her brother.
#C# and #D# have nothing of the sort. There is no fight in #E-H#. #E#
has taken up the commonplace of the bower on the strand which was forced
by nine men.[110] Hildebrand is again the son of the queen, and, coming
in just as Hilde has expired, exclaims that he will have no other love,
sets his sword against a stone, and runs upon it. #H# has the same
catastrophe. #F# represents the father as simply showing great
indignation and cruelty on finding out that one of the guardian knights
had beguiled his daughter, and presently selling her for a new church
bell. The knight turns out here again to be the queen's son; the queen
says he shall betroth Hille, and Hille faints for joy. #G# agrees with
#B# as to the surprise in the bower. The knight's head is hewn off on
the spot. The queen gives Hilde her youngest son for a husband, and
Hilde avows that she is consoled. #I# agrees with #E# so far as it goes,
but is a short fragment.
There are three #Icelandic# versions of this ballad, 'Ribbalds kvæði,'
Íslenzk Fornkvæði, No 16, all of the seventeenth century. They all come
reasonably close to the Danish as to the story, and particularly #A#.
Ribbald, with no prologue, invites Gullbrún "to ride." He sets her on a
white horse; of all women she rode best. They have gone but a little
way, when they see a pilgrim riding towards them, who hails Ribbald
with, Welcome, with thy stolen maid! Ribbald pretends that the maid is
his sister, but the pilgrim knows very well it is Gullbrún. She offers
her cloak to him not to tell her father, but the pilgrim goes straight
to the king, and says, Thy daughter is off! The king orders his harp to
be brought, for no purpose but to dash it on the floor once and twice,
and break out the strings. He then orders his horse. Gullbrún sees her
father come riding under a hill-side, then her eleven brothers, then
seven brothers-in-law. She begs Ribbald to spare her youngest brother's
life, that he may carry the news to her mother. He replies, I will tie
my horse by the reins; you take up your sewing! then three times forbids
her to name him during the fight. He slew her father first, next the
eleven brothers, then the other seven, all which filled her with
compunction, and she cried out, Ribbald, still thy brand! On the instant
Ribbald received many wounds. He wiped his bloody sword, saying, This is
what you deserve, Gullbrún, but love is your shield; then set her on her
horse, and rode to his brother's door. He called out, Here is a wife for
you! But Gullbrún said, Never will I be given to two brothers. Soon
after Ribbald gave up the ghost. There was more mourning than mirth;
three bodies went to the grave in one coffin, Ribbald, his lady, and his
mother, who died of grief.
#B# and #C# have lost something at the beginning, #C# starting at the
same point as our 'Douglas Tragedy.' The king pursues Ribbald by water.
Gullbrún (#B#) stands in a tower and sees him land. Ribbald gives
Gullbrún to his brother, as in #A#: she lives in sorrow, and dies a
maid.
#Norwegian.# ('Ribold and Guldborg.') #A#, 'Rikeball og stolt Guðbjörg,'
Landstad, 33; #B#, 'Veneros og stolt Ölleber,' Landstad, 34; #C#, #D#,
#E#, #F#, in part described and cited, with six other copies, Grundtvig,
III, p. 853 f. The last half of Landstad No 23, stanzas 17-34, and
stanzas 18-25 of Landstad 28 #B#, also belong here. #A# agrees with the
older Danish versions, even to the extent of the paradise. #B# has been
greatly injured. Upon the lady's warning Veneros of the approach of her
father, he puts her up in an oak-tree for safety. He warns her not to
call him by name, and she says she will rather die first; but her
firmness is not put to the test in this ballad, some verses having
dropped out just at this point. Veneros is advised to surrender, but
dispatches his assailants by eighteen thousands (like Lille brór, in
Landstad, 23), and by way of conclusion hews the false Pál greive, who
had reported his elopement to Ölleber's father, into as many pieces. He
then takes Ölleber on his horse, they ride away and are married. Such
peculiarities in the other copies as are important to us will be noticed
further on.
('Hildebrand and Hilde.') #A#, one of two Norwegian copies communicated
by Professor Bugge to Grundtvig, III, 857 f, agrees well with Danish
#E#, but has the happy conclusion of Danish #F#, #G#, #I#. The heroine
is sold for _nine_ bells. #B#, the other, omits the bower-breaking of
#A# and Danish #E#, and ends with marriage.
The #Swedish# forms of 'Ribold and Guldborg' are: #A#, 'Hillebrand,'
Afzelius, No 2; #B#, 'Herr Redebold,' and #C#, 'Kung Vallemo,'
Afzelius, No 80; new ed., No 2, 1, 2, 3; #D#, 'Ribbolt,' Arwidsson, No
78; #E#, 'Herr Redebold' #F#, 'Herting Liljebrand,' and #G#, 'Herr
Balder,' in Cavallius and Stephens' manuscript collection; #H#, 'Kung
Walmon,' E. Wigström's Folkdiktning, No 15, p. 33. #A#, #B#, #C#, #H#,
are not markedly different from the ordinary Danish ballad, and this is
true also, says Grundtvig, of the unprinted versions, #E#, #F#, #G#. #D#
and #G# are of the seventeenth century, the others from recent
tradition. Ribold is pictured in #D# as a bold prince, equally versed in
runes and arts as in manly exercises. He visits Giötha by night: they
slumber sweet, but wake in blood. She binds up his wounds with rich
kerchiefs. He rides home to his father's, and sits down on a bench. The
king bids his servants see what is the matter, and adds, Be he sick or
be he hurt, he got it at Giötha-Lilla's. They report the prince stabbed
with sharp pikes within, and bound with silk kerchiefs without. Ribold
bids them bury him in the mould, and not blame Giötha-Lilla; "for my
horse was fleet, and I was late, and he hurtled me 'gainst an
apple-tree" (so Hillebrand in #A#). #E# represents the heroine as
surviving her lover, and united to a young king, but always grieving for
Redebold.
'Hildebrand and Hilde' exists in Swedish in three versions: #A#, a
broadside of the last part of the seventeenth century, now printed in
the new edition of Afzelius, p. 142 ff of the notes (the last nine
stanzas before, in Danske Viser, III, 438 f); #B#, Afzelius, No 32, new
ed. No 26, #C#, Arwidsson, No 107, both taken down in this century. In
#A# and #B# Hillebrand, son of the king of England, carries off Hilla;
they halt in a grove; she wakes him from his sleep when she hears her
father and seven brothers coming; he enjoins her not to call him by
name, which still she does upon her father's being slain [or when only
her youngest brother is left], and Hillebrand thereupon receives mortal
wounds. He wipes his sword, saying, This is what you would deserve, were
you not Hilla. The youngest brother ties Hilla to his horse, drags her
home, and confines her in a dark house, which swarms with snakes and
dragons (#A# only). They sell her for a new church bell, and her
mother's heart breaks at the first sound. Hilla falls dead at the
queen's knee. #C# has lost the dead-naming, and ends with the queen's
promising to be Hilla's best friend.
A detailed comparison of the English ballads, and especially of 'Earl
Brand,' with the Scandinavian (such as Grundtvig has made, III, 855 f)
shows an unusual and very interesting agreement. The name Earl Brand, to
begin with, is in all probability a modification of the Hildebrand found
in Danish 82 #N#, #O#, #P#, #V#, #C*#, in all versions of Danish 83, and
in the corresponding Swedish #A#. Ell, too, in Percy's fragment, which
may have been Ellë earlier, points to Hilde, or something like it, and
Erl-inton might easily be corrupted from such a form as the Alibrand of
Norwegian #B# (Grundtvig, III, 858). Hildebrand is the son of the king
of England in Danish 83 #A-E#, and the lady in 'Earl Brand' is the same
king's daughter, an interchange such as is constantly occurring in
tradition. Stanza 2 can hardly be the rightful property of 'Earl Brand.'
Something very similar is met with in 'Leesome Brand,' and is not much
in place there. For 'old Carl Hood,' of whom more presently, Danish 82
#X# and Norwegian #A#, #C# have an old man, Danish #C# a crafty man, #T#
a false younker, and Norwegian #B# and three others "false Pál greive."
The lady's urging Earl Brand to slay the old carl, and the answer, that
it would be sair to kill a gray-haired man, sts 8, 9, are almost
literally repeated in Norwegian #A#, Landstad, No 33. The knight does
slay the old man in Danish #X# and Norwegian #C#, and slays the court
page in Danish #Z#, and false Pál greive in Norwegian #B#,--in this last
_after_ the battle. The question, "Where have ye stolen this lady away?"
in st. 11, occurs in Danish 82 #A#, #D#, #E#, #K#, #P#, #R#, #S#, #T#,
#Z#, in Norwegian #B# and Icelandic #B#, and something very similar in
many other copies. The reply, "She is my sick sister, whom I have
brought from Winchester" [nunnery], is found almost literally in Danish
#C#, #X#, #Z#: "It is my sick sister; I took her yesterday from the
cloister." [Danish #E#, it is my youngest sister from the cloister; she
is sick: Danish #A#, youngest sister from cloister: Danish #R# and
Norwegian #B#, sister from cloister: Danish #S#, #T#, sister's daughter
from cloister: Norwegian #F#, sister from Holstein: Danish #P#,
Icelandic #A#, Norwegian #A#, sister.] The old man, crafty man, rich
earl, in the Scandinavian ballads, commonly answers that he knows
Guldborg very well; but in Danish #D#, where Ribold says it is a court
page he has hired, we have something like sts 14, 15: "Why has he such
silk-braided hair?" On finding themselves discovered, the lovers, in the
Scandinavian ballad, attempt to purchase silence with a bribe: Danish
#A-I#, #M#, Icelandic and Norwegian #A#, #B#. This is not expressly done
in 'Earl Brand,' but the same seems to be meant in st. 10 by "I'll gie
him a pound." St. 17 is fairly paralleled by Danish #S#, 18, 19: "Where
is Guldborg, thy daughter? Walking in the garden, gathering roses;" and
st. 18, by Norwegian #B#, 15: "You may search without and search within,
and see whether Ölleber you can find." The announcement in st. 19 is
made in almost all the Scandinavian ballads, in words equivalent to
"Ribold is off with thy daughter," and then follows the arming for the
pursuit. The lady looks over her shoulder and sees her father coming, as
in st. 21, in Danish 82 #A#, #F#, #H#, #I#, #Q#, #R#, #T#, #X#, #Z#, and
Norwegian #A#.
The scene of the fight is better preserved in the Scottish ballads than
in 'Earl Brand,' though none of these have the cardinal incident of the
death-naming. All the Scottish versions, #B-F#, and also 'Erlinton,'
#A#, #B#, make the lady hold the knight's horse: so Danish 82 #B#, #C#,
#E#, #I#, #Æ#, #D*#, Icelandic #C#, Norwegian and Swedish #A#, and
Danish 83 #D#. Of the knight's injunction, "Name me not to death, though
thou see me bleed," which, as has been noted, is kept by nearly every
Danish ballad (and by the Icelandic, the Norwegian, and by Swedish
'Ribold and Guldborg,' #A#, #B#, #C#, #H#, Swedish 'Hildebrand and
Hilde,' #A#, #B#), there is left in English only this faint trace, in
'Erlinton,' #A#, #B#: "See ye dinna change your cheer until ye see my
body bleed." It is the wish to save the life of her youngest brother
that causes the lady to call her lover by name in the larger number of
Scandinavian ballads, and she adds, "that he may carry the tidings to my
mother," in Danish 82 #A#, #B#, #C#, #E#, #F#, #G#, #H#, #M#, #X#, 83
#B#, #C#, #D#. Grief for her father's death is the impulse in Danish 82
#I#, #N#, #O#, #Q#, #R#, #S#, #Y#, #Z#, #Æ#, #Ø#, #A*#, #C*#, #D*#,
#E*#, Swedish #A#, #B#, #C#, #H#. English #A# says nothing of father or
brother; but in #B#, #C#, #D#, #E#, it is the father's death that causes
the exclamation. All the assailants are slain in 'Erlinton' #A#, #B#,
except an aged knight [the auldest man], and he is spared to carry the
tidings home. 'Erlinton' #C#, however, agrees with the oldest Danish
copies in making the youngest brother the motive of the lady's
intervention. It is the fifteenth, and last, of the assailants that
gives Earl Brand his death-wound; in Danish #H#, the youngest brother,
whom he has been entreated to spare; and so, apparently, in Danish #C#
and Norwegian #A#.
The question, "Will you go with me or return to your mother?" which we
find in English #B#, #C#, #D#, is met with also in many Danish versions,
82 #B#, #H#, #K#, #L#, #M#, #N#, #P#, #U#, #Z#, #Æ#, #Ø#, #C*#, and
Swedish #A#, #B#, #C#. The dying man asks to have his bed made in
English #B#, #C#, as in Danish 82 #B#, #C#, #K#, #L#, #N#, #U#, #N#,
#Æ#, #Ø#, #C*#, #D*#, Norwegian #A#, Swedish #A#, #B#, #C#, #H#, and
desires that the lady may marry his brother in English #A#, as in nearly
all the Danish versions, Icelandic #A#, #B#, #C#, Norwegian #C#, #D#,
#E#, Swedish #C#. He declares her a maiden true in 'Earl Brand,' #A c#
33, and affirms the same with more particularity in Danish 82 #B#, #C#,
#E#, #F#, #G#, #M#, #Ø#, Icelandic #B#, #C#, Norwegian #A#, #C#, #E#,
Swedish #C#. The growth of the rose and brier [bush and brier] from the
lovers' grave in English #B#, #C#, is not met with in any version of
'Ribold and Guldborg' proper, but 'Den farlige Jomfru' #G#, Grundtvig,
184, the last half of which, as already remarked, is a fragment of a
Ribold ballad, has a linden in place of the rose and brier.
No complete ballad of the Ribold class is known to have survived in
#German#, but a few verses have been interpolated by tradition in the
earliest copy of the Ulinger ballad (vv. 47-56), which may almost with
certainty be assigned to one of the other description. They disturb the
narrative where they are, and a ready occasion for their slipping in was
afforded by the scene being exactly the same in both ballads: a knight
and a lady, with whom he had eloped, resting in a wood.[111] See No 4,
p. 32 of this volume.
We find in a pretty #Neapolitan-Albanian# ballad, which, with others, is
regarded by the editors as a fragment of a connected poem, several of
the features of these northern ones. A youth asks a damsel in marriage,
but is not favored by her mother, father, or brother. He wins over first
the mother and then the father by handsome presents, but his gifts,
though accepted, do not conciliate the brother. He carries off the lady
on horseback, and is attacked by the brother, four uncles, and seven
cousins. He is killed and falls from his horse; with him the lady falls
dead also, and both are covered up with stones. In the spring the youth
comes up a cypress, the damsel comes up a vine, and encloses the cypress
in her arms. (Rapsodie d'un poema albanese raccolte nelle colonie del
Napoletano, de Rada and de' Coronei, Florence, 1866, lib. ii., canto
viii.)
These ballads would seem to belong among the numerous ramifications of
the Hilde saga. Of these, the second lay of Helgi Hundingslayer, in
Sæmund's Edda, and 'Waltharius,' the beautiful poem of Ekkehard, are
most like the ballads.[112] Leaving 'Waltharius' till we come to
'Erlinton,' we may notice that Sigrún, in the Helgi lay, though promised
by her father to another man, Hödbrodd, son of Granmar, preferred Helgi.
She sought him out, and told him frankly her predicament: she feared,
she said, the wrath of her friends, for breaking her father's promise.
Helgi accepted her affection, and bade her not care for the displeasure
of her relatives. A great battle ensued between Helgi and the sons of
Granmar, who were aided by Sigrún's father and brothers. All her kinsmen
were slain except one brother, Dag. He bound himself to peace with
Helgi, but, notwithstanding, made sacrifices to Odin to obtain the loan
of his spear, and with it slew Helgi. We have, therefore, in so much of
the lay of Helgi Hundingslayer, the groundwork of the story of the
ballads: a woman, who, as in many of the Ribold ballads, has been
betrothed to a man she does not care for, gives herself to another;
there is a fight, in which a great number of her kinsmen fall; one
brother survives, who is the death of the man she loves. The lay of
Helgi Hiörvard's son, whose story has much in common with that of his
namesake, affords two resemblances of detail not found in the lay of the
Hundingslayer. Helgi Hiörvard's son, while his life-blood is ebbing,
expresses himself in almost the words of the dying Ribold: "The sword
has come very near my heart." He then, like Ribold and Earl Brand,
declares his wish that his wife should marry his brother, and she, like
Guldborg, declines a second union.[113]
There is also a passage in the earlier history of Helgi Hundingslayer
of which traces appear to be preserved in ballads, and before all in the
English ballad 'Earl Brand,' #A#. Hunding and Helgi's family were at
feud. Helgi introduced himself into Hunding's court as a spy, and when
he was retiring sent word to Hunding's son that he had been there
disguised as a son of Hagal, Helgi's foster-father. Hunding sent men to
take him, and Helgi, to escape them, was forced to assume woman's
clothes and grind at the mill. While Hunding's men are making search, a
mysterious blind man, surnamed the bale-wise, or evil-witted (Blindr inn
bölvísi), calls out, Sharp are the eyes of Hagal's maid; it is no
churl's blood that stands at the mill; the stones are riving, the
meal-trough is springing; a hard lot has befallen a war-king when a
chieftain must grind strange barley; fitter for that hand is the
sword-hilt than the mill-handle. Hagal pretends that the fierce-eyed
maid is a virago whom Helgi had taken captive, and in the end Helgi
escapes. This malicious personage reappears in the Hrômund saga as
"Blind the Bad" and "the Carl Blind, surnamed Bavís," and is found
elsewhere. His likeness to "old Carl Hood," who "comes for ill, but
never for good," and who gives information of Earl Brand's flight with
the king's daughter, does not require to be insisted on. Both are
identical, we can scarcely doubt, with the blind [one-eyed] old man of
many tales, who goes about in various disguises, sometimes as beggar,
with his hood or hat slouched over his face,--that is Odin, the Síðhöttr
or Deep-hood of Sæmund, who in the saga of Hálf and his champions is
called simple Hood, as here, and expressly said to be Odin.[114] Odin,
though not a thoroughly malignant divinity, had his dark side, and one
of his titles in Sæmund's Edda is Bölverkr, _maleficus_. He first caused
war by casting his spear among men, and Dag, after he has killed Helgi,
says Odin was the author of all the mischief, for he brought strife
among kinsmen.[115]
The disastrous effects of "naming" in a great emergency appear in other
northern traditions, though not so frequently as one would expect. A
diverting Swedish saga, which has been much quoted, relates how St. Olof
bargained with a troll for the building of a huge church, the pay to be
the sun and moon, or St. Olof himself. The holy man was equally amazed
and embarrassed at seeing the building run up by the troll with great
rapidity, but during a ramble among the hills had the good luck to
discover that the troll's name was Wind and Weather, after which all was
easy. For while the troll was on the roof of the church, Olof called out
to him,
'Wind and Weather, hi!
You've set the spire awry;'
and the troll, thus called by his name, lost his strength, fell off, and
was dashed into a hundred pieces, all flint stones. (Iduna, Part 3, p.
60 f, note. Other forms of the same story in Afzelius, Sago-Häfder, III,
100 f; Faye, Norske Folke-Sagn, p. 14, 2d ed.; Hofberg, Nerikes Gamla
Minnen, p. 234.)
It is a Norwegian belief that when a nix assumes the human shape in
order to carry some one off, it will be his death if the selected victim
recognizes him and names him, and in this way a woman escaped in a
ballad. She called out, So you are the Nix, that pestilent beast, and
the nix "disappeared in red blood." (Faye, as above, p. 49, note.) A
nix is baffled in the same way in a Færoe and an Icelandic ballad cited
by Grundtvig, II, 57.
The marvellous horse Blak agrees to carry Waldemar [Hildebrand] over a
great piece of water for the rescue of his daughter [sister],
stipulating, however, that his name shall not be uttered. The rider
forgets himself in a panic, calls to the horse by his name, and is
thrown off into the water. The horse, whose powers had been
supernatural, and who had been _running_ over the water as if it were
land, has now only ordinary strength, and is forced to swim. He brings
the lady back on the same terms, which she keeps, but when he reaches
the land he is bleeding at every hair, and falls dead. (Landstad, 58;
Grundtvig, 62; Afzelius, 59, preface; Kristensen, I, No 66.)
Klaufi, a berserker, while under the operation of his peculiar fury,
loses his strength, and can no longer wield the weapon he was fighting
with, upon Gríss's crying out, "Klaufi, Klaufi, be not so mad!"
(Svarfdæla Saga, p. 147, and again p. 156 f.) So the blood-thirst of the
avenger's sword in the magnificent Danish ballad 'Hævnersværdet' is
restrained by naming. (Grundtvig, No 25, st. 35.) Again, men engaged in
_hamfarir_, that is in roving about in the shape of beasts, their proper
bodies remaining lifeless the while, must not be called by name, for
this might compel them to return at once to their own shape, or possibly
prevent their ever doing so. (Kristni Saga, ed. 1773, p. 149. R.T. King,
in Notes and Queries, 2d Ser., II, 506.) Grundtvig remarks that this
belief is akin to what is related in Fáfnismál (prose interpolation
after st. 1), that Sigurd concealed his name by reason of a belief in
old times that a dying man's word had great power, if he cursed his foe
by name. (D.g.F., II, 340.)
The beautiful fancy of plants springing from the graves of star-crossed
lovers, and signifying by the intertwining of stems or leaves, or in
other analogous ways, that an earthly passion has not been extinguished
by death, presents itself, as is well known, very frequently in popular
poetry. Though the graves be made far apart, even on opposite sides of
the church, or one to the north and one to the south outside of the
church, or one without kirk wall and one in the choir, however
separated, the vines or trees seek one another out, and mingle their
branches or their foliage:
"Even from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires!"
The principal ballads which exhibit this conception in one or another
form are the following:
In English, 'The Douglas Tragedy,' 'Fair Margaret and Sweet William,'
'Lord Thomas and Fair Annet,' 'Fair Janet,' 'Prince Robert,' 'Lord
Lovel.' The plants in all these are either a brier and a rose, or a
brier and a birk.
#Swedish.# Arwidsson, No 73: the graves are made east and west of the
church, a linden grows from each, the trees meet over the church roof.
So E. Wigström, Folkdiktning, No 20, p. 42. Arwidsson 74 #A#: Rosea
Lilla and the duke are buried south and north in the church-yard. A rose
from her grave covers his with its leaves. The duke is then laid in her
grave, from which a linden springs. 74 #B#: the rose as before, and a
linden from the duke's grave. Arwidsson, 72, 68, Afzelius, No 19 (new
ed., 18), 23 (new ed., 21, 1, 2): a common grave, with a linden, two
trees, or lilies, and, in the last, roses also growing from the mouths
of both lovers. In one version the linden leaves bear the inscription,
My father shall answer to me at doomsday.
#Norwegian.# Landstad, 65: the lovers are laid north and south of the
church; lilies grow over the church roof.
#Danish.# Danske Viser, 124, 153, two roses. Kristensen, II, No 60, two
lilies, interlocking over church wall and ridge. 61 #B#, #C#
(==Afzelius, 19), separate graves; #B#, a lily from each grave; #C#, a
flower from each breast. Grundtvig, 184 #G#, 271 #N#, a linden; Danske
Folkeminder, 1861, p. 81, two lilies.
#German.# 'Der Ritter u. die Maid,' (1) Nicolai, I, No 2,==Kretzschmer,
I, 54; (2) Uhland, 97 #A#, Simrock, 12; (3) Erk's Liederhort, 26;
Hoffmann u. Richter, 4: the lovers are buried together, and there grow
from their grave (1) three pinks, (2) three lilies, (3) two lilies.
Wunderhorn, 1857, I, 53, Mittler, No 91: the maid is buried in the
churchyard, the knight under the gallows. A lily grows from his grave,
with an inscription, Beid wären beisammen im Himmel. Ditfurth, II, 7:
two lilies spring from her (or their) grave, bearing a similar
inscription. In Haupt and Schmaler, Volkslieder der Wenden, I, 136, from
the German, rue is _planted_ on the maid's grave, in accordance with the
last words of the knight, and the same inscription appears on one of the
leaves.
'Graf Friedrich,' Uhland, 122, Wunderhorn, II, 293, Mittler, 108, Erk's
Liederhort, 15 #a#: Graf Friedrich's bride is by accident mortally
wounded while he is bringing her home. Her father kills him, and he is
dragged at a horse's heels. Three lilies spring from his grave, with an
inscription, Er wär bei Gott geblieben. He is then buried with his
bride, the transfer being attended with other miraculous manifestations.
Other versions, Hoffmann u. Richter, 19, ==Mittler, 112, ==Liederhort,
15; Mittler, 113, 114; also Meinert, 23, ==Mittler, 109, etc.: the
lilies in most of these growing from the _bride's_ grave, with words
attesting the knight's innocence.
Lilies with inscriptions also in Wunderhorn, II, p. 251, ==Mittler, 128,
'Alle bei Gott die sich lieben;' Mittler, 130; Ditfurth, II, 4, 9;
Scherer, Jungbrunnen, 9 #A#, 25; Pogatschnigg und Hermann, 1458. Three
lilies from a maid's grave: 'Die schwazbraune Hexe' ('Es blies ein
Jäger'), Nicolai, I, 8; Wunderhorn, I, 36; Gräter's Bragur, I, 280;
Uhland, 103; Liederhort, 9; Simrock, 93; Fiedler, p. 158; Ditfurth, II,
33, 34; Reifferscheid, 15, etc. Three roses, Hoffmann u. Richter, 171,
p. 194; three pinks, _ib._, 172; rose, pink, lily, Alemannia, IV, 35.
Three lilies from a man's grave: 'Der Todwunde:' Schade, Bergreien, 10,
==Uhland, 93 #A#, ==Liederhort, 34 #g#, ==Mittler, 47, etc.
#Portuguese.# 'Conde Nillo,' 'Conde Niño,' Almeida-Garrett, III, No 18,
at p. 21; Braga, Rom. Geral., No 14, at p. 38,==Hartung, I, 17: the
infanta is buried at the foot of the high altar, Conde Nillo near the
church door; a cypress and an orange [pines]. Almeida-Garrett, III, No
20, at p. 38: a sombre clump of pines over the knight, reeds from the
princess's grave, which, though cut down, shoot again, and are heard
sighing in the night. Braga, Archip. Açor., 'Filba Maria,' 'Dom
Doardos,' 'A Ermida no Mar,' Nos 32, 33, 34, Hartung, I, 220-224;
Estacio da Veiga, 'Dom Diniz,' p. 64-67, ==Hartung, I, 217, 2: tree and
pines, olive and pines, clove-tree and pine, roses and canes: in all,
new miracles follow the cutting down. So also Almeida-Garrett, No 6, I,
167.
#Roumanian.# Alecsandri, 7, Stanley, p. 16, 'Ring and Handkerchief,'
translated by Stanley, p. 193, Murray, p. 56: a fir and a vine, which
meet over the church.
#French.# Beaurepaire, Poésie pop. en Normandie, p. 51: a thorn and an
olive are _planted_ over the graves; the thorn embraces the olive.
#Romaic.# Passow, Nos 414, 415, 456, 469; Zambelios, p. 754, No 41;
Tommaseo, Canti Popolari, III, 135; Chasiotis, p. 103, No 22: a cypress
from the man's grave, a reed from the maid's (or from a common tomb);
reversed in Passow, Nos 418, 470, and Schmidt, Griechische Märchen,
u.s.w., No 59, p. 203. Sakellarios, p. 25, No 9, cypress and apple-tree;
p. 38, No 13, cypress and lemon-tree. (F. Liebrecht, Zur Volkskunde, pp.
166, 168, 182, 183.)
#Servian.# Talvj, V.L. der Serben, II, p. 85: a fir and a rose; the rose
twines round the fir.
#Wend.# Haupt and Schmaler, V.L. der Wenden, II, No 48: a maid, who
kills herself on account of the death of her lover, orders two grape
vines _to be planted_ over their graves: the vines intertwine.
#Breton.# Luzel, I, p. 423: a fleur-de-lis springs from a common tomb,
and is always in flower, however often it is plucked.
#Italo-Albanian.# De Rada, Rapsodie d'un poema albanese, etc., p. 47:
the youth comes up (nacque) a cypress; the maid a white vine, which
clings around the tree. Camarda, Appendice al saggio di grammatologia
comparata, 'Angelina,' p. 112, the same; but inappropriately, as
Liebrecht has remarked, fidelity in love being wanting in this case.
#Magyar.# The lovers are buried before and behind the altar; white and
red lilies spring from the tombs; mother or father destroys or attempts
to destroy the plants: Aigner, Ungarische Volksdichtungen, 2d ed., at p.
92, p. 138, 131 f. Again, at p. 160, of the 'Two Princes' (Hero and
Leander): here a white and a red tulip are _planted_ over the graves, in
a garden, and it is expressly said that the souls of the enamored pair
passed into the tulips. In the first piece the miracle occurs twice. The
lovers had thrown themselves into a deep lake; plants rose above the
surface of the water and intertwined (p. 91); the bodies were brought up
by divers and buried in the church, where the marvel was repeated.
#Afghan.# Audam and Doorkhaunee, a poem "read, repeated, and sung,
through all parts of the country," Elphinstone's Account of the Kingdom
of Caubul, 1815, p. 185 f: two trees spring from their remains, and the
branches mingle over their tomb. First cited by Talvj, Versuch, p. 140.
#Kurd.# Mem and Zin, a poem of Ahméd X[/-a]ni, died 1652-3: two rose
bushes spring from their graves and interlock. Bulletin de la classe des
sciences historiques, etc., de l'acad. impér. des sciences de St. Pét.,
tome XV, No 11, p. 170.
The idea of the love-animated plants has been thought to be derived from
the romance of Tristan, where it also occurs; agreeably to a general
principle, somewhat hastily assumed, that when romances and popular
ballads have anything in common, priority belongs to the romances. The
question as to precedence in this instance is an open one, for the
fundamental conception is not less a favorite with ancient Greek than
with mediæval imagination.
Tristan and Isolde had unwittingly drunk of a magical potion which had
the power to induce an indestructible and ever-increasing love. Tristan
died of a wound received in one of his adventures, and Isolde of a
broken heart, because, though summoned to his aid, she arrived too late
for him to profit by her medical skill. They were buried in the same
church. According to the French prose romance, a green brier issued from
Tristan's tomb, mounted to the roof, and, descending to Isolde's tomb,
made its way within. King Marc caused the brier to be cut down three
several times, but the morning after it was as flourishing as
before.[116]
Eilhart von Oberge, vv. 9509-21 (ed. Lichtenstein, Quellen u.
Forschungen, xix, 429) and the German prose romance (Büsching u. von der
Hagen, Buch der Liebe, c. 60), Ulrich von Thürheim, vv. 3546-50, and
Heinrich von Freiberg, vv. 6819-41 (in von der Hagen's ed. of G.v.
Strassburg's Tristan) make King Marc _plant_, the first two a grape-vine
over Tristan and a rose over Isolde, the others, wrongly, the rose over
Tristan and the vine over Isolde. These plants, according to Heinrich,
struck their roots into the hearts of the lovers below, while their
branches embraced above. Icelandic ballads and an Icelandic saga
represent Tristan's wife as forbidding the lovers to be buried in the
same grave, and ordering them to be buried on opposite sides of the
church. Trees spring from their bodies and meet over the church roof,
(Íslenzk Fornkvæði, 23 #A#, #B#, #C#, #D#; Saga af Tristram ok Ísönd,
Brynjulfson, p. 199; Tristrams Saga ok Ísondar, Kölbing, p. 112). The
later Titurel imitates the conclusion of Tristan. (Der jüngere Titurel,
ed. Hahn, sts 5789, 5790.)
Among the miracles of the Virgin there are several which are closely
akin to the prodigies already noted. A lily is found growing from the
mouth of a clerk, who, though not leading an exemplary life, had every
day said his ave before the image of Mary: Unger, Mariu Saga, No 50;
Berceo, No 3; Miracles de N.D. de Chartres, p. lxiii, No 29, and p. 239;
Marien-legenden (Stuttgart, 1846), No xi and p. 269. A rose springs from
the grave and roots in the heart of a knight who had spared the honor
of a maid because her name was Mary: Unger, No clvi, Hagen's
Gesammtabenteuer, lxxiii. Roses inscribed Maria grow from the mouth,
eyes, and ears of a monk: Unger, cxxxvii; and a lily grows over a monk's
grave, springing from his mouth, every leaf of which bears Ave Maria in
golden letters: Unger, cxxxviii; Gesammtabenteuer, lxxxviii; Libro de
Exenplos, Romania, 1878, p. 509, 43, 44; etc., etc.
No one can fail to be reminded of the purple, lily-shaped flower,
inscribed with the mournful AI AI, that rose from the blood of
Hyacinthus, and of the other from the blood of Ajax, with the same
letters, "his name and eke his plaint," hæc nominis, illa querellæ.
(Ovid, Met. X, 210 ff; xiii, 394 ff.) The northern lindens have their
counterpart in the elms from the grave of Protesilaus, and in the trees
into which Philemon and Baucis were transformed. See, upon the whole
subject, the essay of Koberstein in the Weimar Jahrbuch, I, 73 ff, with
Köhler's supplement, p. 479 ff; Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, II, 689 f,
and III, 246.
"The ballad of the 'Douglas Tragedy,'" says Scott, "is one of the few to
which popular tradition has ascribed complete locality. The farm of
Blackhouse, in Selkirkshire, is said to have been the scene of this
melancholy event. There are the remains of a very ancient tower,
adjacent to the farm-house, in a wild and solitary glen, upon a torrent
named Douglas burn, which joins the Yarrow after passing a craggy rock
called the Douglas craig.... From this ancient tower Lady Margaret is
said to have been carried by her lover. Seven large stones, erected upon
the neighboring heights of Blackhouse, are shown, as marking the spot
where the seven brethren were slain; and the Douglas burn is averred to
have been the stream at which the lovers stopped to drink: so minute is
tradition in ascertaining the scene of a tragical tale, which,
considering the rude state of former times, had probably foundation in
some real event."
The localities of the Danish story were ascertained, to her entire
satisfaction, by Anne Krabbe in 1605-6, and are given again in Resen's
Atlas Danicus, 1677. See Grundtvig, II, 342 f.
#B#, Scott's 'Douglas Tragedy,' is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og
skotske Folkeviser, No 11; Afzelius, III, 86; Schubart, p. 159; Talvj,
p. 565; Wolff, Halle, I, 76; Hausschatz, p. 201; Rosa Warrens, No 23;
Gerhard, p. 28; Loève Veimars, p. 292.
'Ribold og Guldborg,' Danish #B#, is translated by Buchanan, p. 16
(loosely); #G# by Jamieson, Illustrations, p. 317, and Prior, II, 400;
#T# by Prior, II, 407; Swedish #A#, For. Quart. Rev., XXV, 41.
'Hildebrand og Hilde,' Danish #A#, #B#, #F#, #H#, by Prior, II, 411-20.
A
#a#, #b#, from the papers of the late Robert White, Esq.,
of Newcastle-on-Tyne: #c#, R. Bell, Ancient Poems,
Ballads, etc. (1857), p. 122: #d#, fragmentary lines as
remembered by Mrs Andrews, Mr White's sister, from her
mother's singing.
1
Oh did ye ever hear o brave Earl Bran?
Ay lally, o lilly lally
He courted the king's daughter of fair England.
All i the night sae early
2
She was scarcely fifteen years of age
Till sae boldly she came to his bedside.
3
'O Earl Bran, fain wad I see
A pack of hounds let loose on the lea.'
4
'O lady, I have no steeds but one,
And thou shalt ride, and I will run.'
5
'O Earl Bran, my father has two,
And thou shall have the best o them a.'
6
They have ridden oer moss and moor,
And they met neither rich nor poor.
7
Until they met with old Carl Hood;
He comes for ill, but never for good.
8
'Earl Bran, if ye love me,
Seize this old carl, and gar him die.'
9
'O lady fair, it wad be sair,
To slay an old man that has grey hair.
10
'O lady fair, I'll no do sae;
I'll gie him a pound, and let him gae.'
11
'O where hae ye ridden this lee lang day?
Or where hae ye stolen this lady away?'
12
'I have not ridden this lee lang day.
Nor yet have I stolen this lady away.
13
'She is my only, my sick sister,
Whom I have brought from Winchester.'
14
'If she be sick, and like to dead,
Why wears she the ribbon sae red?
15
'If she be sick, and like to die,
Then why wears she the gold on high?'
16
When he came to this lady's gate,
Sae rudely as he rapped at it.
17
'O where's the lady o this ha?'
'She's out with her maids to play at the ba.'
18
'Ha, ha, ha! ye are a' mistaen:
Gae count your maidens oer again.
19
'I saw her far beyond the moor,
Away to be the Earl o Bran's whore.'
20
The father armed fifteen of his best men,
To bring his daughter back again.
21
Oer her left shoulder the lady looked then:
'O Earl Bran, we both are tane.'
22
'If they come on me ane by ane,
Ye may stand by and see them slain.
23
'But if they come on me one and all,
Ye may stand by and see me fall.'
24
They have come on him ane by ane,
And he has killed them all but ane.
25
And that ane came behind his back,
And he's gien him a deadly whack.
26
But for a' sae wounded as Earl Bran was,
He has set his lady on her horse.
27
They rode till they came to the water o Doune,
And then he alighted to wash his wounds.
28
'O Earl Bran, I see your heart's blood!'
'T is but the gleat o my scarlet hood.'
29
They rode till they came to his mother's gate,
And sae rudely as he rapped at it.
30
'O my son's slain, my son's put down,
And a' for the sake of an English loun.'
31
'O say not sae, my dear mother,
But marry her to my youngest brother.
* * * * * * *
32
'This has not been the death o ane,
But it's been that of fair seventeen.'
* * * * * * *
B
Scott's Minstrelsy, III, 246, ed. 1803; III, 6, ed. 1833:
the copy principally used supplied by Mr Sharpe, the three
last stanzas from a penny pamphlet and from tradition.
1
'Rise up, rise up, now, Lord Douglas,' she says,
'And put on your armour so bright;
Let it never be said that a daughter of thine
Was married to a lord under night.
2
'Rise up, rise up, my seven bold sons,
And put on your armour so bright,
And take better care of your youngest sister,
For your eldest's awa the last night.'
3
He's mounted her on a milk-white steed,
And himself on a dapple grey,
With a bugelet horn hung down by his side,
And lightly they rode away.
4
Lord William lookit oer his left shoulder,
To see what he could see,
And there he spy'd her seven brethren bold,
Come riding over the lee.
5
'Light down, light down, Lady Margret,' he said,
'And hold my steed in your hand,
Until that against your seven brethren bold,
And your father, I mak a stand.'
6
She held his steed in her milk-white hand,
And never shed one tear,
Until that she saw her seven brethren fa,
And her father hard fighting, who lovd her so dear.
7
'O hold your hand, Lord William!' she said,
'For your strokes they are wondrous sair;
True lovers I can get many a ane,
But a father I can never get mair.'
8
O she's taen out her handkerchief,
It was o the holland sae fine,
And aye she dighted her father's bloody wounds,
That were redder than the wine.
9
'O chuse, O chuse, Lady Margret,' he said,
'O whether will ye gang or bide?'
'I'll gang, I'll gang, Lord William,' she said,
'For ye have left me no other guide.'
10
He's lifted her on a milk-white steed,
And himself on a dapple grey,
With a bugelet horn hung down by his side,
And slowly they baith rade away.
11
O they rade on, and on they rade,
And a' by the light of the moon,
Until they came to yon wan water,
And there they lighted down.
12
They lighted down to tak a drink
Of the spring that ran sae clear,
And down the stream ran his gude heart's blood,
And sair she gan to fear.
13
'Hold up, hold up, Lord William,' she says,
'For I fear that you are slain;'
''T is naething but the shadow of my scarlet cloak,
That shines in the water sae plain.'
14
O they rade on, and on they rade,
And a' by the light of the moon,
Until they cam to his mother's ha door,
And there they lighted down.
15
'Get up, get up, lady mother,' he says,
'Get up, and let me in!
Get up, get up, lady mother,' he says,
'For this night my fair lady I've win.
16
'O mak my bed, lady mother,' he says,
'O mak it braid and deep,
And lay Lady Margret close at my back,
And the sounder I will sleep.'
17
Lord William was dead lang ere midnight,
Lady Margret lang ere day,
And all true lovers that go thegither,
May they have mair luck than they!
18
Lord William was buried in St. Mary's kirk,
Lady Margret in Mary's quire;
Out o the lady's grave grew a bonny red rose,
And out o the knight's a briar.
19
And they twa met, and they twa plat,
And fain they wad be near;
And a' the warld might ken right weel
They were twa lovers dear.
20
But bye and rade the Black Douglas,
And wow but he was rough!
For he pulld up the bonny brier,
And flang't in St. Mary's Loch.
C
Motherwell's MS., p. 502. From the recitation of Mrs
Notman.
1
'Rise up, rise up, my seven brave sons,
And dress in your armour so bright;
Earl Douglas will hae Lady Margaret awa
Before that it be light.
2
'Arise, arise, my seven brave sons,
And dress in your armour so bright;
It shall never be said that a daughter of mine
Shall go with an earl or a knight.'
3
'O will ye stand, fair Margaret,' he says,
'And hold my milk-white steed,
Till I fight your father and seven brethren,
In yonder pleasant mead?'
4
She stood and held his milk-white steed,
She stood trembling with fear,
Until she saw her seven brethren fall,
And her father that loved her dear.
5
'Hold your hand, Earl Douglas,' she says,
'Your strokes are wonderous sair;
I may get sweethearts again enew,
But a father I'll ne'er get mair.'
6
She took out a handkerchief
Was made o' the cambrick fine,
And aye she wiped her father's bloody wounds,
And the blood sprung up like wine.
7
'Will ye go, fair Margaret?' he said,
'Will ye now go, or bide?'
'Yes, I'll go, sweet William,' she said,
'For ye've left me never a guide.
8
'If I were to go to my mother's house,
A welcome guest I would be;
But for the bloody deed that's done this day
I'll rather go with thee.'
9
He lifted her on a milk-white steed
And himself on a dapple gray;
They drew their hats out over their face,
And they both went weeping away.
10
They rode, they rode, and they better rode,
Till they came to yon water wan;
They lighted down to gie their horse a drink
Out of the running stream.
11
'I am afraid, Earl Douglas.' she said,
'I am afraid ye are slain;
I think I see your bonny heart's blood
Running down the water wan.'
12
'Oh no, oh no, fair Margaret,' he said,
'Oh no, I am not slain;
It is but the scad of my scarlet cloak
Runs down the water wan.'
13
He mounted her on a milk-white steed
And himself on a dapple gray,
And they have reached Earl Douglas' gates
Before the break of day.
14
'O rise, dear mother, and make my bed,
And make it braid and wide,
And lay me down to take my rest,
And at my back my bride.'
15
She has risen and made his bed,
She made it braid and wide;
She laid him down to take his rest,
And at his back his bride.
16
Lord William died ere it was day,
Lady Margaret on the morrow;
Lord William died through loss of blood and wounds,
Fair Margaret died with sorrow.
17
The one was buried in Mary's kirk,
The other in Mary's quire;
The one sprung up a bonnie bush,
And the other a bonny brier.
18
These twa grew, and these twa threw,
Till they came to the top,
And when they could na farther gae,
They coost the lovers' knot.
D
Kinloch MSS, I, 327.
1
'Sleepst thou or wakst thou, Lord Montgomerie,
Sleepst thou or wakst thou, I say?
Rise up, make a match for your eldest daughter,
For the youngest I carry away.'
2
'Rise up, rise up, my seven bold sons,
Dress yourselves in the armour sae fine;
For it ne'er shall be said that a churlish knight
Eer married a daughter of mine.'
* * * * * * *
3
'Loup aff, loup aff, Lady Margaret,' he said,
'And hold my steed in your hand,
And I will go fight your seven brethren,
And your father, where they stand.'
4
Sometimes she gaed, sometimes she stood,
But never dropt a tear,
Until she saw her brethren all slain
And her father who lovd her so dear.
5
'Hold thy hand, sweet William,' she says,
'Thy blows are wondrous sore;
Sweethearts I may have many a one,
But a father I'll never have more.'
6
O she's taken her napkin frae her pocket,
Was made o the holland fine,
And ay as she dichted her father's bloody wounds,
They sprang as red as the wine.
7
'Two chooses, two chooses, Lady Margret,' he says,
'Two chooses I'll make thee;
Whether to go back to your mother again,
Or go along with me.'
8
'For to go home to my mother again,
An unwelcome guest I'd be;
But since my fate has ordered it so,
I'll go along with thee.'
9
He has mounted her on a milk-white steed,
Himself on the dapple gray,
And blawn his horn baith loud and shill,
And it sounded far on their way.
10
They rode oer hill, they rode oer dale,
They rode oer mountains so high,
Until they came to that beautiful place
Where Sir William's mother did lie.
11
'Rise up, rise up, lady mother,' he said,
'Rise up, and make much o your own;
Rise up, rise up, lady mother,' he said,
'For his bride's just new come home.'
12
Sir William he died in the middle o the night,
Lady Margaret died on the morrow;
Sir William he died of pure pure love,
Lady Margaret of grief and sorrow.
E
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 180. From recitation.
1
He has lookit over his left shoulder,
And through his bonnie bridle rein,
And he spy'd her father and her seven bold brethren,
Come riding down the glen.
2
'O hold my horse, Lady Margret,' he said,
'O hold my horse by the bonnie bridle rein,
Till I fight your father and seven bold brethren,
As they come riding down the glen.'
3
Some time she rade, and some time she gaed,
Till she that place did near,
And there she spy'd her seven bold brethren slain,
And her father who loved her so dear.
4
'O hold your hand, sweet William,' she said,
'Your bull baits are wondrous sair;
Sweet-hearts I may get many a one,
But a father I will never get mair.'
5
She has taken a napkin from off her neck,
That was of the cambrick so fine,
And aye as she wiped her father's bloody wounds,
The blood ran red as the wine.
* * * * * * *
6
He set her upon the milk-white steed,
Himself upon the brown;
He took a horn out of his pocket,
And they both went weeping along.
F
Percy MS., p. 57; ed. Hales and Furnivall, I, 133.
1
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Sayes 'Christ thee saue, good Child of Ell!
Christ saue thee and thy steede!
2
'My father sayes he will [eat] noe meate,
Nor his drinke shall doe him noe good,
Till he haue slaine the Child of Ell,
And haue seene his harts blood.'
3
'I wold I were in my sadle sett,
And a mile out of the towne;
I did not care for yo_u_r father
And all his merry men!
4
'I wold I were in my sadle sett,
And a little space him froe;
I did not care for yo_u_r father
And all that long him to!'
5
He leaned ore his saddle bow
To kisse this lady good;
The teares _that_ went them _two_ betweene
Were blend water and blood.
6
He sett himselfe on one good steed,
This lady on a palfray,
And sett his litle horne to his mouth,
And roundlie he rode away.
7
He had not ridden past a mile,
A mile out of the towne,
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
8
Her father was readye with her _seuen_ brether,
He said, 'Sett thou my daughter downe!
For it ill beseemes thee, thou false churles sonne,
To carry her forth of this towne!'
9
'But lowd thou lyest, S_i_r Iohn the k_nigh_t,
Thou now doest lye of me;
A knight me gott, and a lady me bore;
Soe neuer did none by thee.
10
'But light now downe, my lady gay,
Light downe and hold my horsse,
Whilest I and yo_u_r father and yo_u_r brether
Doe play vs at this crosse.
11
'But light now downe, my owne trew loue,
And meeklye hold my steede,
Whilest yo_u_r father [and your _seuen_ brether] bold
* * * * * * *
* * * * *
#A. a, b.#
_Obtained from recitation "many years ago" wrote Mr White
in 1873, by James Telfer, of Laughtree Liddesdale, in some
part of the neighboring country: the copy has the date
1818. #c# is said by the editor to have been taken down
from the recitation of an old fiddler in Northumberland,
but when and by whom he does not tell us. The three are
clearly more or less "corrected" copies of the same
original, #c# having suffered most from arbitrary changes.
Alterations for rhyme's sake, or for propriety's, that are
written above the lines or in the margin of #a# 2, 5, 8,
19, are adopted in #c# without advertisement._
_Burden._ #b.# I the brave night sae early:
#c.# I the brave nights so early:
#d.# I (_or_ O) the life o the one, the randy.
1^1. #c.# Brand, _and always in_ #c#.
1^2. #a.# daughters.
#b.# He's courted.
2^1. #c.# years that tide; that tide _is written over_ of
age _in_ #a#.
2^2. #c.# When sae.
4^2. #c.# But thou.
5^2. #b.# best o these.
#c.# best of tho. of tho _is written over_ o them a
_in_ #a#.
6^2. #b, c.# have met.
7^1. #c.# Till at last they met.
7^2. #c.# He's aye for ill and never.
8^1. #b.# O Earl Bran.
#c.# Now Earl Brand. Now _in the margin of_ #a#.
8^2. #b, c.# Slay this.
9^2. #b.# man that wears.
#c.# carl that wears, carl ... wears _written over_ man
... has _in_ #a#.
10. #b.#
O lady fair, I'll no do that,
I'll pay him penny, let him be jobbing at.
#c.#
My own lady fair, I'll not do that,
I'll pay him his fee
11^2. #b.# where have stoln this fair.
#c.# And where have ye stown this fair.
13.
#b.#
She is my sick sister,
Which I newly brought from Winchester.
#c.#
For she is, I trow, my sick sister,
Whom I have been bringing fra Winchester.
14^1. #c.# nigh to dead.
14^2. #b, c.# What makes her wear.
15^1. #c.# If she's been.
15^2. #b, c.# What makes her wear the gold sae high.
16^1. #c.# When came the carl to the lady's yett.
16^2. #b.# rapped at.
#c.# He rudely, rudely rapped thereat.
17^2. #b.# maids playen.
#c.# a playing.
#d.# She's out with the fair maids playing at the ball.
18^1. #b.# mistkane (?):
18^2. #b, c.# Ye may count.
b^2. young Earl.
19. #c.#
I met her far beyond the lea
With the young Earl Brand, his leman to be:
_In ~a lea~ is written over ~moor~, and ~With the young~,
etc., stands as a "correction."_
20. #b.#
Her father, _etc._,
And they have riden after them.
#c.#
Her father of his best men armed fifteen,
And they're ridden after them bidene.
21^1. #b, c.# The lady looket [looked] over [owre] her
left shoulder then.
22^1. #b, c.# If they come on me one by one,
22^2. #b.# Ye may stand by and see them fall.
#c.# You may stand by till the fights be done.
#d.# Then I will slay them every one.
23^1. #b.# all in all.
#d.# all and all.
23^2. #d.# Then you will see me the sooner fall.
24^2. #b.# has slain.
24. #c.#
They came upon him one by one,
Till fourteen battles he has won.
And fourteen men he has them slain,
Each after each upon the plain.
25. #c.#
But the fifteenth man behind stole round,
And dealt him a deep and a deadly wound.
26. #c.#
Though he was wounded to the deid,
He set his lady on her steed.
27^1. #c.# river Donne:
27^2. #b.# And he lighted down.
#c.# And there they lighted to wash his wound.
28^2. #b.# It's but the glent.
#c.# It's nothing but the glent and my scarlet hood.
29^1. #c.# yett.
29^2. #b.# Sae ruddly as he rappet at.
#c.# So faint and feebly he rapped thereat.
30^1. #b.# O my son's slain and cut down.
#c.# O my son's slain, he is falling to swoon.
32. #b.#
... death of only one,
But it's been the death of fair seventeen.
_Instead of 32, #c# has_:
To a maiden true he'll give his hand,
To the king's daughter o fair England,
To a prize that was won by a slain brother's brand.
#B.#
3. _A stanza resembling this is found in Beaumont and
Fletcher's 'Knight of the Burning Pestle' (1611), Dyce,
II, 172, but may belong to some other ballad, as_ 'The
Knight and Shepherd's Daughter:'
He set her on a milk-white steed,
And himself upon a grey;
He never turned his face again,
But he bore her quite away.
8^4. ware.
18^1. Marie.
20^4. flang'd.
#C.#
12^3. _MS._ scâd.
#D.#
10. _The following stanza, superscribed "~Mrs Lindores,
Kelso~," was found among Mr Kinlock's papers, and was
inserted at I, 331, of the Kinlock MSS. It may be a first
recollection of #D# 10, but is more likely to be another
version_:
'We raid over hill and we raid over dale,
And we raid over mountains sae high,
Until we cam in sicht o yon bonnie castle bowr
Whare Sir William Arthur did lie.'
#E.#
5-6. _"Two stanzas are here omitted, in which Lord William
offers her the choice of returning to her mother, or of
accompanying him; and the ballad concludes with this [the
6th] stanza, which is twice repeated in singing."
Motherwell's preface._
#F.#
3^4. _MS._ merrymen.
6^2. of one palfray.
_7, 8 are written in one stanza. Half a page, or about
nine stanzas, is gone after st. 11._
[107] 'Erlinton,' though not existing in a two-line stanza, follows
immediately after 'Earl Brand.' The copy of 'The Douglas Tragedy' in
Smith's Scottish Minstrel, III, 86, is merely Scott's, with changes to
facilitate singing.
[108] #B*#, III, 853, a fragment of five stanzas, has been dropped by
Grundtvig from No 82, and assigned to No 249. See #D. g. F#. IV, 494.
[109] Though the paradise has not been transmitted in any known copy of
'Earl Brand,' it appears very distinctly in the opening stanza of
'Leesome Brand' #A#. This last has several stanzas towards the close
(33-35) which seem to belong to 'Earl Brand,' and perhaps derived these,
the "unco land," and even its name, by the familiar process of
intermixture of traditions.
[110] See No 5, pp. 64, 65, 66.
[111] Compare vv 49-56, "Wilt thou ride to them, or wilt thou fight with
them, or wilt thou stand by thy love, sword in hand?" "I will not ride
to them, I will not fight with them [i. e., begin the fight], but I will
stand by my love, sword in hand," with Norwegian #A#, 29, 30: "Shall we
ride to the wood, or shall we bide like men?" "We will not ride to the
wood, but we will bide like men." And also with Danish #Æ#, sts 14, 15.
[112] The chief branches, besides the Helgi lay and Walter, are the saga
in Snorri's Edda, Skáldskaparmal, § 50; that in Saxo Grammaticus,
Stephanius, ed. 1644, pp. 88-90; Sörla þáttr, in Fornaldar Sögur, I, 391
ff; the Shetland ballad printed in Low's Tour through the Islands of
Orkney and Shetland, 108 ff, and in Barry's History of the Orkney
Islands, 2d ed., 489 ff, and paraphrased in Hibbert's Description of the
Shetland Islands, 561 ff; the Thidrik saga, §§ 233-239, Unger; Gudrun,
v-viii. The names of father, daughter, and lover in these are: (1)
Hügni, ----, Högni, Högin-, Högni, ----, [Artus], Hagen; (2) [Sigrún],
Hilde-gunde, Hildr, Hilda, Hildr, Hildina, Hildr, Hilde; (3) Helgi,
[Walter], Hedin, Hithin-, Hedin, ----, [Herburt], Hetel. Hagan, in
'Waltharius,' may be said to take the place of the father, who is
wanting; and this is in a measure true also of Hedin, Helgi's
half-brother, in the lay of Helgi Hiörvard's son. See the excellent
discussion of the saga by Klee, Zur Hildesage, Leipzig, 1873.
The Swedish ballad, 'Herr Hjelmer,' #A#, Arwidsson, I, 155, No 21; #B#,
#C#, Afzelius, II, 178, 226, No 74 (Helmer); #D#, #E#. Wigström,
Folkdiktning, p. 25, No 10 (Hjelman), has several points of agreement
with Ribold and the Hilde saga. The hero kills six of seven brothers
[also the father, in #A#], spares the seventh on oath of fidelity, and
is treacherously slain by him. The youngest brother carries her lover's
head to his sister, is invited to drink by her (in three of the four
copies), and slain while so engaged; reminding us of Hildina in the
Shetland ballad. Danish 'Herr Hjælm,' Grundtvig, Danske Folkeminder,
1861, p. 81, agrees with the Swedish, except that there are only three
brothers.
[113] Helgakviða Hjörvarðssonar, ed. Grundtvig, 42-44, Ribold og
Guldborg, #A# 33, 34, #B# 46, #D# 46, 47, #E# 42, #Q# 24. The
observation is Professor Bugge's.
[114] Höttr, er Óðinn var reyndar, Hood, who was Odin really, Fornaldar
Sögur, II, p. 25. Klee observes, p. 10 f, that Högni [Hagen] is the evil
genius of the Hildesage. Sometimes he is the heroine's father; in
'Waltharius,' strangely enough, the hero's old friend (and even there a
one-eyed man.) Klee treats the introduction of a rival lover (as in the
Shetland ballad and Gudrun) as a departure from the older story. But we
have the rival in Helgi Hundingslayer. The proper marplot in this lay is
Blind the Ill-witted (Odin), whose part is sustained in 'Earl Brand' by
the malicious Hood, in several Norwegian ballads by a very enigmatical
"false Pál greive," in two other Norwegian ballads and one Danish by an
old man, and, what is most remarkable, in the Shetland ballad by the
rejected lover of Hildina (the Sir Nilaus of Danish #D#, Hertug Nilssón
of some Norwegian copies), who bears the name Hiluge, interpreted with
great probability by Conrad Hofmann (Munich Sitzungsberichte, 1867, II,
209, note), Illhugi, der Bössinnige, evil-minded (Icelandic íllhugaðr,
ílluðigr.)
[115] Inimicitias Othinus serit, Saxo, p. 142, ed. 1644. See Grimm,
Deutsche Mythologie, I, 120, note 2, III, 56, new ed., for Odin's bad
points, though some of Grimm's interpretations might now be objected to.
[116] Et de la tombe de monseigneur Tristan yssoit une ronce belle et
verte et bien feuilleue, qui alloit par dessus la chapelle, et
descendoit le bout de la ronce sur la tombe de la royne Yseult, et
entroit dedans. La virent les gens du pays et la comptèrent au roy Marc.
Le roy la fist couper par troys foys, et quant il l'avoit le jour fait
couper, le lendemain estoit aussi belle comme avoit aultre fois esté.
Fol. cxxiv as cited by Braga, Rom. Ger., p. 185.
8
ERLINTON
#A.# 'Erlinton,' Scott's Minstrelsy, III, 235, ed. 1803.
#B.# 'True Tammas,' Mr R. White's papers.
#C.# 'Robin Hood and the Tanner's Daughter,' Gutch's Robin
Hood, II, 345.
'Erlinton' (#A#) first appeared in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border, the text formed "from the collation of two copies obtained from
recitation." #B# is a manuscript copy, furnished by the late Mr Robert
White of Newcastle, and was probably taken down from recitation by Mr
James Telfer early in the century. #C#, in which Robin Hood has taken
the place of a hero who had at least _connections_ out of Great Britain,
was first printed in Gutch's Robin Hood, from a manuscript of Mr Payne
Collier, supposed to have been written about 1650.
This ballad has only with much hesitation been separated from the
foregoing. In this as in that, a man induces a maid to go off with him;
he is set upon by a party of fifteen in #A#, #B#, as in 7 #A#; and he
spares the life of one of his assailants [an old man, #A#, #B#, the
younger brother, #C#]. Some agreements as to details with Scandinavian
Ribold ballads have already been noticed, and it has been observed that
while there is no vestige of the dead-naming in 'Earl Brand,' there is
an obvious trace of it in 'Erlinton' #A#, #B#. 'Erlinton' #A#, #B# has
also one other correspondence not found in 'Earl Brand,'--the strict
watch kept over the lady (st. 2). Even the bigly bower, expressly built
to confine her in, is very likely a reminiscence or a displacement of
the tower in which Hilde is shut up, _after_ her elopement, in some of
the Scandinavian ballads (Danish 83 #A#, #B#; Swedish #A#, dark house).
But notwithstanding these resemblances to the Ribold story, there is a
difference in the larger part of the details, and all the 'Erlinton'
ballads have a fortunate conclusion, which also does not seem forced, as
it does in Arwidsson, 107, the only instance, perhaps, in which a
fortunate conclusion in a Ribold ballad is of the least account; for
Grundtvig's #F#, #G# are manifestly copies that have been tampered with,
and Landstad 34 is greatly confused at the close. It may be an absolute
accident, but 'Erlinton' #A#, #B# has at least one point of contact with
the story of Walter of Aquitania which is not found in 'Earl Brand.'
This story requires to be given in brief on account of its kinship to
both.
Walter, with his betrothed Hildegunde, fly from the court of Attila, at
which they have both lived as hostages since their childhood, taking
with them two boxes of jewels. Gunther, king of Worms, learns that a
knight and lady, with a richly-laden horse, have passed the Rhine, and
sets out in pursuit, with twelve of his best fighting men, resolved to
capture the treasure. The fugitives, after a very long ride, make a halt
in a forest, and Walter goes to sleep with his head on Hildegunde's
knees. The lady meanwhile keeps watch, and rouses her lover when she
perceives by the dust they raise that horsemen are approaching. Gunther
sends one of his knights with a message demanding the surrender of the
treasure. Walter scornfully refuses, but expresses a willingness to make
the king a present of a hundred bracelets, or rings, of red gold, in
token of his respect. The messenger is sent back with directions to take
the treasure by force, if it should be refused again. Walter, having
vainly offered a present of two hundred bracelets to avoid a conflict,
is attacked by the knight, whom he slays. Ten others go the way of this
first, and only the king and one of his troop, Hagen, a very
distinguished knight and an old comrade of Walter, remain. These now
attack Walter; the combat is long and fierce; all three are seriously
wounded, and finally so exhausted as to be forced to cease fighting.
Walter and Hagen enter into a friendly talk while refreshing themselves
with wine, and in the end Gunther[117] is put on a horse and conducted
home by Hagen, while Walter and Hildegunde continue their journey to
Aquitania. There they were married and ruled thirty happy years.
('Waltharius,' ed. R. Peiper, 1873.)
The particular resemblances of 'Erlinton' #A#, #B# to 'Walter' are that
the assailants are "bold knights," or "bravest outlaws," _not_ the
lady's kinsmen; that there are two parleys before the fight; and that
the hero survives the fight and goes off with his love. The utmost that
could be insisted on is that some features of the story of Walter have
been blended in the course of tradition with the kindred story of
Ribold. 'Erlinton' #C# is much less like 'Walter,' and more like
'Ribold.'
The 'Sultan's Fair Daughter,' translated by Aigner, Ungarische
Volksdichtungen, p. 93, 2d ed., has perhaps derived something from the
Walter story. Two Magyars escape from the Sultan's prison by the aid of
his daughter, under promise of taking her to Hungary. She often looks
backwards, fearing pursuit. At last a large band overtake them. One of
the Magyars guards the lady; the other assaults the Turks, of whom he
leaves only one alive, to carry back information. One of the two has a
love at home; the other takes the Sultan's daughter.
* * * * *
'Erlinton' is translated by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, No
24, and by Karl Knortz, Schottische Balladen, No 12.
A
Scott's Minstrelsy, III, 235, ed. 1803; ed. 1833, II, 353.
Made up from two copies obtained from recitation.
1
Erlinton had a fair daughter;
I wat he weird her in a great sin;
For he has built a bigly bower,
An a' to put that lady in.
2
An he has warnd her sisters six,
An sae has he her brethren se'en,
Outher to watch her a' the night,
Or else to seek her morn an een.
3
She hadna been i that bigly bower
Na not a night but barely ane,
Till there was Willie, her ain true love,
Chappd at the door, cryin 'Peace within!'
4
'O whae is this at my bower door,
That chaps sae late, nor kens the gin?'
'O it is Willie, your ain true love,
I pray you rise an let me in!'
5
'But in my bower there is a wake,
An at the wake there is a wane;
But I'll come to the green-wood the morn,
Whar blooms the brier, by mornin dawn.'
6
Then she's gane to her bed again,
Where she has layen till the cock crew thrice,
Then she said to her sisters a',
'Maidens, 't is time for us to rise.'
7
She pat on her back her silken gown,
An on her breast a siller pin,
An she's tane a sister in ilka hand,
An to the green-wood she is gane.
8
She hadna walkd in the green-wood
Na not a mile but barely ane,
Till there was Willie, her ain true love,
Whae frae her sisters has her taen.
9
He took her sisters by the hand,
He kissd them baith, an sent them hame,
An he's taen his true love him behind,
And through the green-wood they are gane.
10
They hadna ridden in the bonnie green-wood
Na not a mile but barely ane,
When there came fifteen o the boldest knights
That ever bare flesh, blood, or bane.
11
The foremost was an aged knight,
He wore the grey hair on his chin:
Says, 'Yield to me thy lady bright,
An thou shalt walk the woods within.'
12
'For me to yield my lady bright
To such an aged knight as thee,
People wad think I war gane mad,
Or a' the courage flown frae me.'
13
But up then spake the second knight,
I wat he spake right boustouslie:
'Yield me thy life, or thy lady bright,
Or here the tane of us shall die.'
14
'My lady is my warld's meed;
My life I winna yield to nane;
But if ye be men of your manhead,
Ye'll only fight me ane by ane.'
15
He lighted aff his milk-white steed,
An gae his lady him by the head,
Sayn, 'See ye dinna change your cheer,
Untill ye see my body bleed.'
16
He set his back unto an aik,
He set his feet against a stane,
An he has fought these fifteen men,
An killd them a' but barely ane.
17
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
For he has left that aged knight.
An a' to carry the tidings hame.
18
When he gaed to his lady fair,
I wat he kissd her tenderlie:
'Thou art mine ain love, I have thee bought;
Now we shall walk the green-wood free.'
B
MS. of Robert White, Esq., of Newcastle, from James
Telfer's collection.
1
There was a knight, an he had a daughter,
An he wad wed her, wi muckle sin;
Sae he has biggit a bonnie bower, love,
An a' to keep his fair daughter in.
2
But she hadna been in the bonnie bower, love,
And no twa hours but barely ane,
Till up started Tammas, her ain true lover,
And O sae fain as he wad been in.
3
'For a' sae weel as I like ye, Tammas,
An for a' sae weel as I like the gin,
I wadna for ten thousand pounds, love,
Na no this night wad I let thee in.
4
'But yonder is a bonnie greenwud,
An in the greenwud there is a wauk,
An I'll be there an sune the morn, love,
It's a' for my true love's sake.
5
'On my right hand I'll have a glove, love,
An on my left are I'll have nane;
I'll have wi' me my sisters six, love,
An we will wauk the wuds our lane.'
6
They hadna waukd in the bonnie greenwud,
Na no an hour but barely ane,
Till up start Tammas, her ain true lover,
He's taen her sisters her frae mang.
7
An he has kissed her sisters six, love,
An he has sent them hame again,
But he has keepit his ain true lover,
Saying, 'We will wauk the wuds our lane.'
8
They hadna waukd in the bonnie greenwud
Na no an hour but barely ane,
Till up start fifteen o the bravest outlaws
That ever bure either breath or bane.
9
An up bespake the foremost man, love,
An O but he spake angrily:
'Either your life--or your lady fair, sir,
This night shall wauk the wuds wi me.'
10
'My lady fair, O I like her weel, sir,
An O my life, but it lies me near!
But before I lose my lady fair, sir,
I'll rather lose my life sae dear.'
11
Then up bespak the second man, love,
An aye he spake mair angrily,
Saying, 'Baith your life, and your lady fair, sir,
This night shall wauk the wuds wi me.'
12
'My lady fair, O I like her weel, sir,
An O my life, but it lies me near!
But before I lose my lady fair, sir,
I'll rather lose my life sae dear.
13
'But if ye'll be men to your manhood,
As that I will be unto mine,
I'll fight ye every ane man by man,
Till the last drop's blude I hae be slain.
14
'O sit ye down, my dearest dearie,
Sit down and hold my noble steed,
And see that ye never change your cheer
Until ye see my body bleed.'
15
He's feughten a' the fifteen outlaws,
The fifteen outlaws every ane,
He's left naething but the auldest man
To go and carry the tidings hame.
16
An he has gane to his dearest dear,
An he has kissed her, cheek and chin,
Saying, 'Thou art mine ain, I have bought thee dear,
An we will wauk the wuds our lane.'
C
Gutch's Robin Hood, II, 345, from a MS. of Mr. Payne
Collier's, supposed to have been written about 1650.
1
As Robin Hood sat by a tree,
He espied a prettie may,
And when she chanced him to see,
She turnd her head away.
2
'O feare me not, thou prettie mayde,
And doe not flie from mee;
I am the kindest man,' he said,
'That ever eye did see.'
3
Then to her he did doffe his cap,
And to her lowted low;
'To meete with thee I hold it good hap,
If thou wilt not say noe.'
4
Then he put his hand around her waste,
Soe small, so tight, and trim,
And after sought her lip to taste,
And she to kissed him.
5
'Where dost thou dwell, my prettie maide?
I prithee tell to me;'
'I am a tanner's daughter,' she said,
'John Hobbes of Barneslee.'
6
'And whither goest thou, pretty maide?
Shall I be thy true love?'
If thou art not afeard,' she said,
'My true love thou shalt prove.'
7
'What should I feare?' then he replied;
'I am thy true love now;'
'I have two brethren, and their pride
Would scorn such one as thou.'
8
'That will we try,' quoth Robin Hood;
'I was not made their scorne;
Ile shed my blood to doe the[e] good,
As sure as they were borne.'
9
'My brothers are proude and fierce and strong;'
'I am,' said he, 'the same,
And if they offer thee to wrong,
Theyle finde Ile play their game.
10
'Through the free forrest I can run,
The king may not controll;
They are but barking tanners' sons,
To me they shall pay toll.
11
'And if not mine be sheepe and kine,
I have cattle on my land;
On venison eche day I may dine,
Whiles they have none in hand.'
12
These wordes had Robin Hood scarce spoke,
When they two men did see,
Come riding till their horses smoke:
'My brothers both,' cried shee.
13
Each had a good sword by his side,
And furiouslie they rode
To where they Robin Hood espied,
That with the maiden stood.
14
'Flee hence, flee hence, away with speede!'
Cried she to Robin Hood,
'For if thou stay, thoult surely bleede;
I could not see thy blood.'
15
'With us, false maiden, come away,
And leave that outlawe bolde;
Why fledst thou from thy home this day,
And left thy father olde?'
16
Robin stept backe but paces five,
Unto a sturdie tree;
'Ile fight whiles I am left alive;
Stay thou, sweete maide, with mee.'
17
He stood before, she stoode behinde,
The brothers two drewe nie;
'Our sister now to us resign,
Or thou full sure shalt die.'
18
Then cried the maide, 'My brethren deare,
With ye Ile freely wend,
But harm not this young forrester,
Noe ill doth he pretend.'
19
'Stande up, sweete maide, I plight my troth;
Fall thou not on thy knee;
Ile force thy cruell brothers both
To bend the knee to thee.
20
'Stand thou behinde this sturdie oke,
I soone will quell their pride;
Thoult see my sword with furie smoke,
And in their hearts' blood died.'
21
He set his backe against a tree,
His foote against a stone;
The first blow that he gave so free
Cleft one man to the bone.
22
The tanners bold they fought right well,
And it was one to two;
But Robin did them both refell,
All in the damsell's viewe.
23
The red blood ran from Robins brow,
All downe unto his knee;
'O holde your handes, my brethren now,
I will goe backe with yee.'
24
'Stand backe, stand backe, my pretty maide,
Stand backe and let me fight;
By sweete St. James be no[t] afraide
But I will it requite.'
25
Then Robin did his sword uplift,
And let it fall againe;
The oldest brothers head it cleft,
Right through unto his braine.
26
'O hold thy hand, bolde forrester,
Or ill may thee betide;
Slay not my youngest brother here,
He is my father's pride.'
27
'Away, for I would scorne to owe,
My life to the[e], false maide!'
The youngest cried, and aimd a blow
That lit on Robin's head.
28
Then Robin leand against the tree,
His life nie gone did seeme;
His eyes did swim, he could not see
The maiden start betweene.
29
It was not long ere Robin Hood
Could welde his sword so bright;
Upon his feete he firmly stood,
And did renew the fight.
30
Untill the tanner scarce could heave
His weapon in the aire;
But Robin would not him bereave
Of life, and left him there.
31
Then to the greenewood did he fly,
And with him went the maide;
For him she vowd that she would dye,
He'd live for her, he said.
* * * * *
#A.#
4^2. _Ed. 1833 has ~or kens~._
#B.#
1^2. _If #A# 1^2 be right, gross injustice is done the
father by changing ~I wat he weird her~ into ~he wad wed
her~. One of the two is a singular corruption._
_There is another copy of #B# among Mr White's papers,
with the title 'Sir Thamas,' which I have no doubt has
been "revised," whether by Telfer, or by Mr White himself,
it is impossible to say. The principal variations are here
given, that others may be satisfied._
1^2. wed her mang his ain kin.
1^4. this fair.
2^3. Till up cam Thamas her only true love.
3^2. O tirl nae langer at the pin.
3^3. I wadna for a hundred pounds, love.
3^4. can I.
4^3. fu soon.
4^4. And by oursels we twa can talk.
5^{1,2}.
I'll hae a glove on my right hand, love,
And on my left I shall hae nane.
6^{2-4}.
Beyond an hour, or scarcely twa,
When up rode Thamas, her only true love,
And he has tane her frae mang them a'.
7^1. He kissed her sisters, a' the six, love.
7^3. his winsome true love.
7^4. That they might walk.
8^1. didna walk.
8^{2-4}.
Beyond two hours, or barely three,
Till up cam seven[118] stalwart outlaws,
The bauldest fellows that ane could see.
9^8. We'll take your life, for this lady fair, sir.
10^1. My lady's fair, I like her weel, sir.
11^{2,3}.
And he spak still mair furiously;
'Flee, or we'll kill ye, because your lady.
12.
'My lady fair, I shall part na frae thee,
And for my life, I did never fear;
Sae before I lose my winsome lady,
My life I'll venture for ane sae dear.
13.
'But if ye're a' true to your manhood,
As I shall try to be true to mine,
I'll fight ye a', come man by man then,
Till the last drop o my bloud I tine.'
14^2. my bridled steed.
14^3. And mind ye never change your colour.
15.
He fought against the seven outlaws,
And he has beat them a' himsel;
But he left the auldest man amang them
That he might gae and the tidings tell.
16.
Then he has gane to his dearest dearie,
And he has kissed her oer and oer;
'Though thou art mine, I hae bought thee dearly,
Now we shall sunder never more.'
#C.#
1^1. _~Robinhood~, and so always._
31. _After this_: Finis, T. Fleming.
[117] Gunther, as well remarked by Klee, 'Zur Hildesage,' p. 19, cannot
have belonged originally to the Hildegunde saga. No sufficient motive is
furnished for introducing him. In the Polish version of the story there
is only one pursuer, Arinoldus, whom Walter slays. Rischka, Verhältniss
der polnischen Sage von Walgierz Wdaly zu den deutschen Sagen von W. v.
Aquitanien, p. 8 ff.
[118] "The original ballad had fifteen. Seven would do as well, and the
latter number would seem more nearly to resemble the truth."
9
THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND
#A. a.# Deloney's 'Jack of Newbury,' reprint of 1859, p.
61. #b.# 'The Ungrateful Knight and the Fair Flower of
Northumberland,' Ritson's Ancient Songs, 1790, p. 169.
#B. a.# Kinloch MSS, V, 49. #b.# 'The Provost's Dochter,'
Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 131.
#C.# 'The Betrayed Lady.' #a.# Buchan's MSS, II, 166. #b.#
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 208.
#D.# Motherwell's MS., p. 102.
#E.# 'The Flower of Northumberland,' Mr Robert White's
papers.
The earliest copy of this ballad is introduced as 'The Maidens'
Song,'[119] in Deloney's Pleasant History of John Winchcomb, in his
younger yeares called Jacke of Newberie, a book written as early as
1597. Mr Halliwell reprinted the "9th" edition, of the date 1633,[120]
in 1859, and the ballad is found at p. 61 of the reprint (#A#). The copy
in Ritson's Ancient Songs, 1790, p. 169, has a few variations, which are
probably to be explained by Ritson having used some other edition of
Deloney. Ritson's text is used in The Borderer's Table Book, VI, 25,
and was taken thence into Sheldon's Minstrelsy of the English Border,
with some arbitrary alterations. The ballad was formerly popular in
Scotland. Kinloch and Buchan printed #B# and #C# with some slight
changes; the texts are now given as they stand in the manuscripts. #E#,
a traditional version from the English border, has unfortunately been
improved by some literary pen.
An English lady is prevailed upon to release a Scot from prison, and to
fly with him, on the promise of being made his wife, and (#A#) lady of
castles and towers. She takes much gold with her (#A#), and a swift
steed (two, #A#). According to #A# they come to a rough river; the lady
is alarmed, but swims it, and is wet from top to toe. On coming within
sight of Edinburgh, the faithless knight bids her choose whether she
will be his paramour or go back: he has wife and children. She begs him
to draw his sword and end her shame: he takes her horse away, and leaves
her. Two English knights come by, who restore her to her father. The
dismissal takes place at the Scottish cross and moor in #B#; at a moor
and a moss, #C#; at Scotland bridge, #D#; at a fair Scottish cross, #E#.
She offers to be servant in his kitchen rather than go back, #B#, #C#,
#E#; begs him to throw her into the water, #D#; from his castle wall,
#E#. He fees an old man to take her home on an old horse, #B#, #E#.
We do not find the whole of this story repeated among other European
nations, but there are interesting agreements in parts with
Scandinavian, Polish, and German ballads.
There is some resemblance in the first half to a pretty ballad of the
northern nations which treats in a brief way the theme of our exquisite
romance of 'The Nutbrown Maid:' #Danish#, 'Den Trofaste Jomfru,'
Grundtvig, No 249, IV, 494, nine copies, #A-I#, the first three from
16th or 17th century manuscripts, the others from tradition of this
century, as are also the following: #K-M#, 'Den Fredløse,' Kristensen,
II, 191, No 57: Swedish, 'De sju Gullbergen,' #A#, Afzelius, No 79, III,
71, new ed., No 64, I, 322; #B#, #C#, Grundtvig, IV, 507 f: #Norwegian#
#A#, 'Herre Per og stolt Margit,' Landstad, No 74, p. 590; #B#, 'Herr'
Nikelus,' Landstad, No 75, p. 594.[121] All tell very much the same
tale. A knight carries off a maid on his horse, making her magnificent
promises, among which are eight gold castles, Dan. #C#, #D#, #E#, #H#,
#I#; one, #K#, #L#, #M#; eight, Norw. #A#; nine, Norw. #B#; seven, Swed.
#B#; seven gold mountains, Swed. #A#, perhaps, by mistake of ber_gen_
for bor_gar_[122] She gets her gold together while he is saddling his
horse, Dan. #A, C, D, F, H, M#; Swed. #A#; Norw. #A#, #B#. They come to
a sea-strand or other water, it is many miles to the nearest land, Dan.
#B#, #D#, Swed. #A#, #C#; the lady wishes she were at home, Dan. #E#,
#F#, Swed. #B#, #C#. He swims the horse across, Dan. #A#, #B#, #D#, #E#,
#F#, #H#, #K#, #L#, #M#; Swed. #A#, #B#, #C# [part of the way, having
started in a boat, Norw. #A#, #B#]. The maid wrings her clothes, Dan.
#A#, #D#, #K#, #L#; Swed. #A#; Norw. #A#, #B#. She asks, Where are the
gold castles which you promised? Dan. #C# 7, #D# 14, #K# 9, #L# 7, #M#
8; Norw. #A# 22, #B# 16.[123] He tells her that he has no gold castle
but this green turf, Dan. #C# 8; he needs none but the black ground and
thick wood, Dan. #K# 10: he is a penniless, banished man. She offers him
her gold to buy him a charter of peace. In all, except Dan. #A#, #B#,
#C#, and the incomplete Dan. #I#, Norw. #B#, he goes on to say that he
has plighted faith to another woman, and she meekly replies, Then I will
be your servant. He continues the trial no further, reveals himself as
of wealth and rank, says that she shall have ladies to wait on her, and
makes her his queen. The knight is king of England in Dan. #B#, #H#,
King Henry, simply, in Dan. #F#. The gold castles prove to be realities:
there is in Dan. #E# even one more than was promised.[124]
The #Polish# ballads of the class of 'Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight'
(see p. 39 f) have thus much in common with 'The Fair Flower of
Northumberland:' a maid is induced to go off with a man on horseback,
and takes gold with her; after going a certain distance, he bids her
return home; in #AA#, #H#, #R#, he gives her her choice whether to
return or to jump into the river; she prefers death (cf. #D# 3, 5, p.
116); in all they finally come to a river, or other water, into which he
throws her.[125]
There is a #German# ballad which has some slight connection with all the
foregoing, and a very slight story it is altogether: 'Stolz Heinrich,'
Simrock, No 9, p. 23, 'Stolz Syburg,' Reiffenberg, No 16, p. 32, No 17,
p. 34, from the Lower Rhine and Münster; made over, in Kretzschmer, I,
187, No 106. Heinrich, or Syburg, wooes a king's daughter in a distant
land. He asks her to go with him, and says he has seven mills in his
country. "Tell me what they grind," says Margaret, "and I will go with
you." The mills grind sugar and cinnamon, mace and cloves. They come to
a green heath. Margaret thinks she sees the mills gleaming: he tells her
that a green heath is all he has. "Then God have mercy that I have come
so far," she says; draws a sword; kneels before him, and stabs herself.
The ballad of 'Young Andrew,' further on, has points in common with 'The
Fair Flower of Northumberland.'
* * * * *
#C# is translated by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Lieder der Vorzeit, No
31, p. 137.
A
#a.# Deloney's Pleasant History of John Winchcomb, 9th
ed., London, 1633, reprinted by Halliwell, p. 61. #b.#
Ritson's Ancient Songs, 1790, p. 169.
1
It was a knight in Scotland borne
Follow, my love, come over the strand
Was taken prisoner, and left forlorne,
Even by the good Earle of Northumberland.
2
Then was he cast in prison strong,
Where he could not walke nor lie along,
Even by the goode Earle of Northumberland.
3
And as in sorrow thus he lay,
The Earle's sweete daughter walkt that way,
And she the faire flower of Northumberland.
4
And passing by, like an angell bright,
The prisoner had of her a sight,
And she the faire flower of Northumberland.
5
And loud to her this knight did crie,
The salt teares standing in his eye,
And she the faire flower of Northumberland.
6
'Faire lady,' he said, 'take pity on me,
And let me not in prison dye,
And you the faire flower of Northumberland.'
7
'Faire Sir, how should I take pity on thee,
Thou being a foe to our countrey,
And I the faire flower of Northumberland.'
8
'Faire lady, I am no foe,' he said,
'Through thy sweet love heere was I stayd,
For thee, the faire flower of Northumberland.'
9
'Why shouldst thou come heere for love of me,
Having wife and children in thy countrie?
And I the faire flower of Northumberland.'
10
'I sweare by the blessed Trinitie,
I have no wife nor children, I,
Nor dwelling at home in merrie Scotland.
11
'If curteously you will set me free,
I vow that I will marrie thee,
So soone as I come in faire Scotland.
12
'Thou shalt be a lady of castles and towers,
And sit like a queene in princely bowers,
When I am at home in faire Scotland.'
13
Then parted hence this lady gay,
And got her father's ring away,
To helpe this sad knight into faire Scotland.
14
Likewise much gold she got by sleight,
And all to helpe this forlorne knight
To wend from her father to faire Scotland.
15
Two gallant steedes, both good and able,
She likewise tooke out of the stable,
To ride with this knight into faire Scotland.
16
And to the jaylor she sent this ring,
The knight from prison forth to bring,
To wend with her into faire Scotland.
17
This token set the prisoner free,
Who straight went to this faire lady,
To wend with her into faire Scotland.
18
A gallant steede he did bestride,
And with the lady away did ride,
And she the faire flower of Northumberland.
19
They rode till they came to a water cleare:
'Good Sir, how should I follow you heere,
And I the faire flower of Northumberland?
20
'The water is rough and wonderfull deepe,
An[d] on my saddle I shall not keepe,
And I the faire flower of Northumberland.'
21
'Feare not the foord, faire lady,' quoth he,
'For long I cannot stay for thee,
And thou the faire flower of Northumberland.'
22
The lady prickt her wanton steed,
And over the river swom with speede,
And she the faire flower of Northumberland.
23
From top to toe all wet was shee:
'This have I done for love of thee,
And I the faire flower of Northumberland.'
24
Thus rode she all one winter's night,
Till Edenborow they saw in sight,
The chiefest towne in all Scotland.
25
'Now chuse,' quoth he, 'thou wanton flower,
Whe'r thou wilt be my paramour,
Or get thee home to Northumberland.
26
'For I have wife, and children five,
In Edenborow they be alive;
Then get thee home to faire England.
27
'This favour shalt thou have to boote,
Ile have thy horse, go thou on foote,
Go, get thee home to Northumberland.'
28
'O false and faithlesse knight,' quoth shee,
'And canst thou deale so bad with me,
And I the faire flower of Northumberland?
29
'Dishonour not a ladie's name,
But draw thy sword and end my shame,
And I the faire flower of Northumberland.'
30
He tooke her from her stately steed,
And left her there in extreme need,
And she the faire flower of Northumberland.
31
Then sate she downe full heavily;
At length two knights came riding by,
Two gallant knights of faire England.
32
She fell downe humbly on her knee,
Saying, 'Courteous knights, take pittie on me,
And I the faire flower of Northumberland.
33
'I have offended my father deere,
And by a false knight that brought me heere,
From the good Earle of Northumberland.'
34
They tooke her up behind them then,
And brought her to her father's againe,
And he the good Earle of Northumberland.
35
All you faire maidens be warned by me,
Scots were never true, nor never will be,
To lord, nor lady, nor faire England.
B
#a.# Kinloch MSS, V, 49, in the handwriting of J. Beattie.
#b.# Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 134, from the
recitation of Miss E. Beattie.
1
The provost's daughter went out a walking,
A may's love whiles is easy won
She heard a poor prisoner making his moan,
And she was the fair flower of Northumberland.
2
'If any lady would borrow me
Out into the prison strong,
I would make her a lady of high degree,
For I am a great lord in fair Scotland.'
3
She's done her to her father's bed-stock,
A may's love whiles is easy won
She's stolen the keys o many braw lock,
And she's loosd him out o the prison strong.
4
She's done her to her father's stable,
A may's love whiles is easy won
She's taen out a steed that was both swift and able,
To carry them both to fair Scotland.
5
O when they came to the Scottish cross,
A may's love whiles is easy won
'Ye brazen-faced whore, light off o my horse,
And go get you back to Northumberland!'
6
O when they came to the Scottish moor,
A may's love whiles is easy won
'Get off o my horse, you're a brazen-faced whore,
So go get you back to Northumberland!'
7
'O pity on me, O pity,' said she,
'O that my love was so easy won!
Have pity on me as I had upon thee,
When I loosd you out of the prison strong.'
8
'O how can I have pity on thee?
O why was your love so easy won!
When I have a wife and children three
More worthy than a' Northumberland.'
9
'Cook in your kitchen I will be,
O that my love was so easy won!
And serve your lady most reverently,
For I darena go back to Northumberland.'
10
'Cook in my kitchen you shall not be,
Why was your love so easy won!
For I will have no such servants as thee,
So get you back to Northumberland.'
11
But laith was he the lassie to tyne,
A may's love whiles is easy won
He's hired an old horse and feed an old man,
To carry her back to Northumberland.
12
O when she came her father before,
A may's love whiles is easy won
She fell down on her knees so low
For she was the fair flower of Northumberland.
13
'O daughter, O daughter, why was ye so bold,
Or why was your love so easy won,
To be a Scottish whore in your fifteen year old?
And you the fair flower of Northumberland!'
14
Her mother she gently on her did smile,
O that her love was so easy won!
'She is not the first that the Scotts have beguild,
But she's still the fair flower of Northumberland.
15
'She shanna want gold, she shanna want fee,
Altho that her love was so easy won,
She shanna want gold to gain a man wi,
And she's still the fair flower of Northumberland.'
C
#a.# Buchan's MSS, II, 166. #b.# Buchan's Ballads of the
North of Scotland, II, 208.
1
As I went by a jail-house door,
Maid's love whiles is easy won
I saw a prisoner standing there,
'I wish I were home in fair Scotland.
2
'Fair maid, will you pity me?
Ye'll steal the keys, let me gae free:
I'll make you my lady in fair Scotland.
3
'I'm sure you have no need of me,
For ye have a wife and bairns three,
That lives at home in fair Scotland.'
4
He swore by him that was crownd with thorn,
That he never had a wife since the day he was born,
But livd a free lord in fair Scotland.
5
She went unto her father's bed-head,
She's stown the key o mony a lock,
She's let him out o prison strong.
6
She's went to her father's stable,
She's stown a steed baith wight and able,
To carry them on to fair Scotland.
7
They rode till they came to a muir,
He bade her light aff, they'd call her a whore,
If she didna return to Northumberland.
8
They rode till they came to a moss,
He bade her light aff her father's best horse,
And return her again to Northumberland.
9
'I'm sure I have no need of thee,
When I have a wife and bairns three,
That lives at home in fair Scotland.'
10
'I'll be cook in your kitchen,
And serve your lady handsomelie,
For I darena gae back to Northumberland.'
11
'Ye cannot be cook in my kitchen,
My lady cannot fa sic servants as thee,
So ye'll return again to Northumberland.'
12
When she went thro her father's ha,
She looted her low amongst them a',
She was the fair flower o Northumberland.
13
Out spake her father, he spake bold,
'How could ye be a whore in fifteen years old,
And you the flower of Northumberland?'
14
Out spake her mother, she spake wi a smile,
'She's nae the first his coat did beguile,
Ye're welcome again to Northumberland.'
D
Motherwell's MS., p. 102.
1
She's gane down to her father's stable,
O my dear, and my love that she wan
She's taen out a black steed baith sturdy and able,
And she's away to fair Scotland.
2
When they came to Scotland bridge,
'Light off, you whore, from my black steed,
And go your ways back to Northumberland.'
3
'O take me by the body so meek,
And throw me in the water so deep,
For I daurna gae back to Northumberland.'
4
'I'll no take thee by the body so meek,
Nor throw thee in the water so deep;
Thou may go thy ways back to Northumberland.'
5
'Take me by the body so small,
And throw me in yon bonny mill-dam,
For I daurna gae back to Northumberland.'
E
"Written down from memory by Robert Hutton, Shepherd,
Peel, Liddesdale." Mr R. White's papers.
1
A bailiff's fair daughter, she lived by the Aln,
A young maid's love is easily won
She heard a poor prisoner making his moan,
And she was the flower of Northumberland.
2
'If ye could love me, as I do love thee,
A young maid's love is hard to win
I'll make you a lady of high degree,
When once we go down to fair Scotland.'
3
To think of the prisoner her heart was sore,
A young maid's love is easily won
Her love it was much, but her pity was more,
And she, etc.
4
She stole from her father's pillow the key,
And out of the dungeon she soon set him free,
And she, etc.
5
She led him into her father's stable,
And they've taken a steed both gallant and able,
To carry them down to fair Scotland.
6
When they first took the way, it was darling and dear;
As forward they fared, all changed was his cheer,
And she, etc.
7
They rode till they came to a fair Scottish corse;
Says he, 'Now, pray madam, dismount from my horse,
And go get you back to Northumberland.
8
'It befits not to ride with a leman light,
When awaits my returning my own lady bright,
My own wedded wife in fair Scotland.'
9
The words that he said on her fond heart smote,
She knew not in sooth if she lived or not,
And she, etc.
10
She looked to his face, and it kythed so unkind
That her fast coming tears soon rendered her blind,
And she, etc.
11
'Have pity on me as I had it on thee,
O why was my love so easily won!
A slave in your kitchen I'm willing to be,
But I may not go back to Northumberland.
12
'Or carry me up by the middle sae sma,
O why was my love so easily won!
And fling me headlong from your high castle wa,
For I dare not go back to Northumberland.'
13
Her wailing, her woe, for nothing they went,
A young maid's love is easily won
His bosom was stone and he would not relent,
And she, etc.
14
He turned him around and he thought of a plan,
He bought an old horse and he hired an old man,
To carry her back to Northumberland.
15
A heavy heart makes a weary way,
She reached her home in the evening gray,
And she, etc.
16
And all as she stood at her father's tower-gate,
More loud beat her heart than her knock thereat,
And she, etc.
17
Down came her step-dame, so rugged and doure,
O why was your love so easily won!
'In Scotland go back to your false paramour,
For you shall not stay here in Northumberland.'
18
Down came her father, he saw her and smiled,
A young maid's love is easily won
'You are not the first that false Scots have beguiled,
And ye're aye welcome back to Northumberland.
19
'You shall not want houses, you shall not want land,
You shall not want gold for to gain a husband,
And ye're aye welcome back to Northumberland.'
* * * * *
#A. a.#
2. _Halliwell's Deloney, in the first line of the burden,
has ~leape over~, but not elsewhere._
9^2. in the.
25^2. Where.
#b.#
3^2. walks.
3^4. she is.
5^1. aloud.
13^3. _omits_ sad.
15^3. the knight.
16^2. forth did.
24^3. The fairest.
27^1 thou shalt.
32^2. knight.
35^2. never were.
#B. b.#
2^2. this prison.
4^3. _omits_ that was.
6^3. ye brazen-fac'd.
11^3. He hired.
12^3. fell at his feet.
13^1. _omits_ so.
14^1. mother on her sae gentlie smild, _etc._
#C. a.#
8^2. Her bade.
8^3. return him.
#b.#
5^1. into.
13^2. at fifteen.
#D.#
2. _Thus in Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xv_:
When they came to Scotland brig,
O my dear, my love that she wan!
'Light off, ye hure, from my black steed,
And his ye awa to Northumberland.'
#E.#
"The Flower of Northumberland. Written down from memory by
Robert Hutton, Shepperd, Peel, Liddesdale, and sent by
James Telfor to his friend Robert White, Newcastle on
Tyne. 20 copies printed." _Mr White's note._
[119] "Two of them singing the dittie," says Deloney, "and all the rest
bearing the burden."
[120] The earliest edition now known to exist is of 1619.
[121] Some of these ballads begin with stanzas which are found also in
Kvindemorderen and Ribold ballads (our No 4, No 7), where also a young
woman is carried off furtively by a man. This is only what is to be
expected.
[122] By mistake, most probably. But in one of the Polish ballads, cited
a little further on, #Q# (Kolberg, P. 1. Polskiego, 5 pp), the maid is
told, "In my country the mountains are golden, the mountains are of
gold."
[123] So 'Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight,' #D# 11:
'Is this your bowers and lofty towers?'
[124] There is a similarity, which is perhaps not accidental, between
these Scandinavian ballads and 'Child Waters.' Child Waters makes Ellen
swim a piece of water, shows her his hall--"of red gold shines the
tower"--where the fairest lady is his paramour, subjects her to menial
services, and finally, her patience withstanding all trials, marries
her.
[125] They pass the water in #Q# only, and that in a boat. She is thrown
in from a bridge in #V#, #W#, the bridge of Cracow in #C#: cf. Scotland
bridge, #D# 2 of this ballad. By a curious accident, it is at a wayside
crucifix that the man begins his change of demeanor in Polish #CC# 2
(Kolberg, #ddd#), as in #B# 5, #E# 7, of this ballad, it is at a
Scottish cross.
10
THE TWA SISTERS
#A. a.# 'The Miller and the King's Daughter,' broadside of
1656, Notes and Queries, 1st S., V, 591. #b.# Wit
Restor'd, 1658, "p. 51," in the reprint of 1817, p. 153.
#c.# 'The Miller and the King's Daughters,' Wit and
Drollery, ed. 1682, p. 87. #d.# 'The Miller and the King's
Daughter,' Jamieson's Popular Ballads, I, 315.
#B. a.# 'The Twa Sisters,' Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. 39.
#b.# 'The Cruel Sister,' Wm. Tytler's Brown MS., No 15.
#c.# 'The Cruel Sister,' Abbotsford MS., "Scottish Songs,"
fol. 21. #d.# 'The Twa Sisters,' Jamieson's Popular
Ballads, I, 48.
#C.# 'The Cruel Sister,' Scott's Minstrelsy, II, 143
(1802).
#D.# 'The Bonnie Milldams of Binnorie,' Kinloch MSS, II,
49.
#E.# 'The Twa Sisters,' Sharpe's Ballad Book, No X, p. 30.
#F.# 'The Bonny Bows o London,' Motherwell's MS., p. 383.
#G.# Motherwell's MS., p. 104.
#H.# Motherwell's MS., p. 147.
#I.# 'Bonnie Milldams o Binnorie,' Kinloch MSS, V, 425.
#J.# 'The Miller's Melody,' Notes and Queries, 4th S., V,
23.
#K.# 'Binnorie,' Kinloch's papers.
#L. a.# 'The Miller's Melody,' Notes and Queries, 1st S.,
V, 316. #b.# 'The Drowned Lady,' The Scouring of the White
Horse, p. 161.
#M.# 'Binorie, O an Binorie,' Murison MS., p. 79.
#N.# 'Binnorie,' [Pinkerton's] Scottish Tragic Ballads, p.
72.
#O.# 'The Bonny Bows o London.' #a.# Buchan's Ballads of
the North of Scotland, II, 128. #b.# Christie's
Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 42.
#P. a.# 'The Twa Sisters,' Motherwell's MS., p. 245. #b.#
'The Swan swims bonnie O,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Appendix, p. xx.
#Q.# 'The Twa Sisters,' communicated by J. F. Campbell,
Esq.
#R. a.# 'The Three Sisters,' Notes and Q., 1st S., VI,
102. #b.# 'Bodown,' communicated by J. F. Campbell, Esq.
#c.# 'The Barkshire Tragedy,' The Scouring of the White
Horse, p. 158.
#S.# Kinloch MSS, VI, 89.
#T.# 'Sister, dear Sister,' Allingham's Ballad Book, p.
xxxiii.
#U.# From Long Island, N.Y., communicated by Mr W. W.
Newell.
This is one of the very few old ballads which are not extinct as
tradition in the British Isles. Even drawing-room versions are spoken of
as current, "generally traced to some old nurse, who sang them to the
young ladies."[126] It has been found in England, Scotland, Wales, and
Ireland, and was very early in print. Dr Rimbault possessed and
published a broadside of the date 1656[127] (#A a#), and the same copy
is included in the miscellany called Wit Restor'd, 1658. Both of these
name "Mr Smith" as the author; that is, Dr James Smith, a well-known
writer of humorous verses, to whom the larger part of the pieces in Wit
Restor'd has been attributed. If the ballad were ever in Smith's hands,
he might possibly have inserted the three burlesque stanzas, 11-13; but
similar verses are found in another copy (#L a#), and might easily be
extemporized by any singer of sufficiently bad taste. Wit and Drollery,
the edition of 1682, has an almost identical copy of the ballad, and
this is repeated in Dryden's Miscellany, edition of 1716, Part III, p.
316. In 1781 Pinkerton inserted in his Tragic Ballads one with the title
'Binnorie,' purporting to be from Scottish tradition. Of twenty-eight
couplets, barely seven are genuine. Scott printed in 1802 a copy (#C#)
compounded from one "in Mrs Brown's MS." (#B b#) and a fragment of
fourteen stanzas which had been transcribed from recitation by Miss
Charlotte Brooke, adopting a burden found in neither.[128] Jamieson
followed, four years after, with a tolerably faithful, though not, as he
says, _verbatim_, publication of his copy of Mrs Brown's ballad,
somewhat marred, too, by acknowledged interpolations. This text of Mrs
Brown's is now correctly given, with the whole or fragments of eleven
others, hitherto unpublished.
The ballad is as popular with the Scandinavians as with their Saxon
cousins. Grundtvig, 'Den talende Strengeleg,' No 95, gives nine #Danish#
versions and one stanza of a tenth; seven, #A-E#, in II, 507 ff, the
remainder, #H-K#, in III, 875 ff. One more, #L#, is added by Kristensen,
No 96, I, 253. Of these, only #E# had been previously printed. All are
from tradition of this century.
There are two #Icelandic# versions, #A# from the 17th, #B# from the
19th, century, printed in Íslenzk Fornkvæði, No 13, 'Hörpu kvæði.'
Of twelve #Norwegian# versions, #A#, by Moe, "is printed in Norske
Universitets og Skole-Annaler for 1850, p. 287," and in Moe's Samlede
Skrifter, II, 118, 'Dæ bur ein Mann hær utmæ Aa;' #B#, by Lindeman,
Annaler, as before, "p. 496," and in his Norske Fjeldmelodier, vol. I,
Tekst-Bilag, p. 4, No 14, 'Dei tvæ Systa;' #C#, by Landstad, 'Dei tvo
systar,' No 53, p. 480; #D-L# are described by Professor Bugge in
Grundtvig, III, 877 f; #M# "is printed in Illustreret Nyhedsblads
Nytaarsgave for 1860, p. 77, Christiania."
Four #Färöe# versions are known: #A#, 'Hörpuríma,' "in Svabo's MS., No
16, I, 291," incorrectly printed by Afzelius, I, 86, and accurately,
from a copy furnished by Grundtvig, in Bergström's edition of Afzelius,
II, 69; #B#, a compound of two versions taken down by Pastor Lyngbye and
by Pastor Schröter, in Nyeste Skilderie af Kjøbenhavn, 1821, col. 997
ff; #C#, a transcript from recitation by Hammershaimb (Grundtvig); #D#,
"in Fugloyjarbók, No 31."
#Swedish# versions are: #A#, 'Den underbara Harpan,' Afzelius, No 17, I,
81, new ed., No 16, 1, I, 72: #B#, 'De två Systrarne,' Afzelius, No 69,
III, 16, new ed., No 16, 2, I, 74: #C#, #D#, #E#, unprinted copies in
Cavallius and Stephens's collection: #F#, 'De två Systrarne,' Arwidsson,
No 99, II, 139: #G#, 'Systermordet,' E. Wigström, Skånska Visor, p. 4,
and the same, Folkdiktning, etc., No 7, p. 19: #H#, Rancken, Några Prof
af Folksång, No 3, p. 10. Afzelius, moreover, gives variations from four
other copies which he had collected, III, 20 ff, new ed., II, 74 ff; and
Rancken from three others. Both of the editors of the new Afzelius have
recently obtained excellent copies from singers. The ballad has also
been found in Finnish, Bergström's Afzelius, II, 79.
There is a remarkable agreement between the Norse and English ballads
till we approach the conclusion of the story, with a natural diversity
as to some of the minuter details.
The sisters are king's daughters in English #A#, #B#, #C#, #H#, #O# (?),
#P#, #Q#, #R a#, and in Swedish #B# and two others of Afzelius's
versions. They are an earl's daughters in Swedish #F#, and sink to
farmer's daughters in English #R b#, #c#,[129] Swedish #A#, #G#,
Norwegian #C#.
It is a thing made much of in most of the Norse ballads that the younger
sister is fair and the older dark; the younger is bright as the sun, as
white as ermine or as milk, the elder black as soot, black as the earth,
Icelandic #A#, Swedish #A#, #B#, #G#, Danish #A#, #D#, etc.; and this
difference is often made the ground for very unhandsome taunts, which
qualify our compassion for the younger; such as Wash all day, and you
will be no whiter than God made you, Wash as white as you please, you
will never get a lover, Färöe #A#, #B#, Norwegian #A#, #C#, etc. This
contrast may possibly be implied in "the youngest was the fairest
flower," English #F#, #G#, #Q# ["sweetest," #D#], but is expressed only
in #M#, "Ye was fair and I was din" (dun), and in #P a#, "The old was
black and the young are fair."
The scene of action is a seashore in Icelandic and Färöe #A#, #B#,
Norwegian #A#, Swedish #A#, #B#, #G#, #H#, and in all the Danish
complete copies: a seashore, or a place where ships come in, in English
#A#, #B a#, #D-I#, #Q#, #R a#, #T#, but in all save the last of these
(the last is only one stanza) we have the absurdity of a body drowned in
navigable water being discovered floating down a mill-stream.[130] #B c#
has "the deep mill-dam;" #C# "the river-strand," perhaps one of Scott's
changes; #M#, "the dams;" #L#, #O#, #P#, #R b c#, a river, Tweed
mill-dam, or the water of Tweed. Norwegian #B# has a river.
The pretence for the older sister's taking the younger down to the water
is in English #A-E#, #G#, #H#, #I#, #O#, #Q#, to see their father's
ships come in; in Icelandic #B# to wash their silks;[131] in most of the
Norse ballads to wash themselves, so that, as the elder says, "we may be
alike white," Danish #C-H#, Norwegian #A#, #C#, Swedish #F#, #G#, Färöe
#A#, #B#. Malice prepense is attributed to the elder in Swedish #B#,
#F#, Norwegian C, Danish #E#, #F#, #G#: but in Färöe #A#, #B#, Norwegian
#A#, #B#, and perhaps some other cases, a previous evil intent is not
certain, and the provocations of the younger sister may excuse the elder
so far.
The younger is pushed from a stone upon which she sits, stands, or
steps, in English #B#, #C#, #E-H#, #M#, #O#, #Q#, Icelandic #A#, #B#,
Färöe #A#, #B#, Norwegian #A#, #B#, #C#, Danish #A-E#, #H#, #L#, Swedish
#G#, #H#, and Rancken's other copies.
The drowning scene is the same in all the ballads, except as to one
point. The younger sister, to save her life, offers or consents to
renounce her lover in the larger number, as English #B-E#, #G#, #H#,
#I#, #M#, #P#, #Q#, Danish #A-D#, #F#, #G#, #I#, Swedish #A-D#, #G#,
#H#; and in Icelandic #B# and "all the Färöe" ballads she finally
yields, after first saying that her lover must dispose of himself. But
Swedish #F#, with more spirit, makes the girl, after promising
everything else, reply:
'Help then who can, help God above!
But ne'er shalt thou get my dear true-love.'
In this refusal concur Icelandic #A#, Danish #E#, #H#, #L#, and all the
Norwegian versions except #L#.
Swedish #A#, #G#, and Rancken's versions (or two of them) make the
younger sister, when she sees that she must drown, send greetings to her
father, mother, true-love [also brother, sister, Rancken], and add in
each case that she is drinking, or dancing, her bridal in the flood,
that her bridal-bed is made on the white-sand, etc.
The body of the drowned girl is discovered, in nearly all the English
ballads, by some member of the miller's household, and is taken out of
the water by the miller. In #L b#, which, however, is imperfect at the
beginning, a harper finds the body. In the Icelandic ballads it is found
on the seashore by the lover; in all the Norwegian but #M# by two
fishermen, as also in Swedish #D# [fishermen in Swedish #B#]; in all the
Färöe versions and Norwegian #M# by two "pilgrims;"[132] in Danish
#A-F#, #L#, and Swedish #C# by two musicians, Danish #H#, Swedish #A#,
#G#, one. Danish #G#, which is corrupted at the close, has three
musicians, but these simply witness and report the drowning.
According to all complete and uncorrupted forms of the ballad, either
some part of the body of the drowned girl is taken to furnish a musical
instrument, a harp or a viol,[133] or the instrument is wholly made from
the body. This is done in the Norse ballads by those who first find the
body, save in Swedish #B#, where fishermen draw the body ashore, and a
passing "speleman" makes the instrument. In English it is done by the
miller, #A#; by a harper, #B#, #C#, #G#, #L b# (the _king's_ harper in
#B#); by a fiddler, #D#, #E#, #I#, #L a# (?), #O#, #P# (the _king's_
fiddler, #O# (?), #P#); by both a fiddler and the king's harper, #H#; in
#F# by the father's herdsman, who happens to be a fiddler.
Perhaps the original conception was the simple and beautiful one which
we find in English #B# and both the Icelandic ballads, that the king's
harper, or the girl's lover, takes three locks of her yellow hair to
string his harp with. So we find three tets of hair in #D#, #E#, #I#,
and three links in #F#, #P#, used, or directed to be used, to string the
fiddle or the fiddle-bow, and the same, apparently, with Danish #A#.
Infelicitous additions were, perhaps, successively made; as a harp-frame
from the breast-bone in English #C#, and fiddle-pins formed of the
finger-joints, English #F#, #O#, Danish #B#, #C#, #E#, #F#, #L#. Then we
have all three: the frame of the instrument formed from the breast (or
trunk), the screws from the finger-joints, the strings from the hair,
Swedish #A#, #B#, #G#, Norwegian #A#, #C#, #M#. And so one thing and
another is added, or substituted, as fiddle-bows of the arms or legs,
Swedish #C#, #D#, Danish #H#, English #L a#; a harp-frame from the arms,
Norwegian #B#, Färöe #A#; a fiddle-frame from the skull, Swedish #C#, or
from the back-bone, English #L b#; a _plectrum_ from the arm, Färöe #B#;
strings from the veins, English #A#; a bridge from the nose, English
#A#, #L a#; "hørpønota" from the teeth, Norwegian #B#; till we end with
the buffoonery of English #A# and #L a#.
Swedish #H# has nothing about the finding of the body. Music is wanted
for the bridal, and a man from another village, who undertakes to
furnish it, looks three days for a proper tree to make a harp of. The
singer of this version supplied the information, lost from the ballad,
that the drowned sister had floated ashore and grown up into a linden,
and that this was the very tree which was chosen for the harp. (See,
further on, a Lithuanian, a Slovak, and an Esthonian ballad.)
All the Norse ballads make the harp or fiddle to be taken to a wedding,
which chances to be that of the elder sister with the drowned girl's
betrothed.[134] Unfortunately, many of the English versions are so
injured towards the close that the full story cannot be made out. There
is no wedding-feast preserved in any of them. The instrument, in #A#,
#B#, #C#, #H#, is taken into the king's presence. The viol in #A# and
the harp in #H# are expressly said to speak. The harp is laid upon a
stone in #C#, #J#, and plays "its lone;" the fiddle plays of itself in
#L b#.[135] #B# makes the harper play, and #D#, #F#, #K#, #O#, which say
the fiddle played, probably mean that there was a fiddler, and so
perhaps with all the Norse versions; but this is not very material,
since in either case the instrument speaks "with most miraculous organ."
There are three strings made from the girl's hair in Icelandic #A#, #B#,
English #B# [veins, English #A#], and the three tets or links in English
#D#, #E#, #F#, #I#, #P# were no doubt taken to make three strings
originally. Corresponding to this are three enunciations of the
instrument in English #A#, #B#, #C#, Icelandic #A#, Färöe #A#,[136] #B#,
Swedish #A#, #B#, #C#, #E#, #G#, #H#, Danish #A#, #D#, #F#, #I#. These
are reduced to two in Icelandic #B#, Danish #B#, #C#, #H#, #L#, Swedish
#D#, and even to one in English #D#, #F#, #I#, #K#, #O#, but some of
these have suffered injury towards the conclusion. The number is
increased to four in Norwegian #B#, to five in Norwegian #A#, #D#, and
even to six in Norwegian #C#, #K#, #M#. The increase is, of course, a
later exaggeration, and very detrimental to the effect. In those English
copies in which the instrument speaks but once,[137] #D#, #F#, #K#, #O#,
and we may add #P#, it expresses a desire for vengeance: Hang my sister,
#D#, #F#, #K#; Ye'll drown my sister, as she's dune me, #O#; Tell him to
burn my sister, #P#. This is found in no Norse ballad, neither is it
found in the earliest English versions. These, and the better forms of
the Norse, reveal the awful secret, directly or indirectly, and, in the
latter case, sometimes note the effect on the bride. Thus, in Icelandic
#B#, the first string sounds, The bride is our sister; the second, The
bride is our murderer. In Danish #B# the first fiddle plays, The bride
is my sister; the second, The bridegroom is my true-love; in #C#, #H#,
the first strain is, The bride has drowned her sister, the second, Thy
sister is driven [blown] to land. Färöe #A#, #B#, have: (1) The bride
was my sister; (2) The bride was my murderer; (3) The bridegroom was my
true-love. The bride then says that the harp disturbs her much, and that
she lists to hear it no more. Most impressive of all, with its terse,
short lines, is Icelandic #A#:
The first string made response:
'The bride was my sister once.'
The bride on the bench, she spake:
'The harp much trouble doth make.'
The second string answered the other:
'She is parting me and my lover.'
Answered the bride, red as gore:
'The harp is vexing us sore.'
The canny third string replied:
'I owe my death to the bride.'
He made all the harp-strings clang;
The bride's heart burst with the pang.
This is the wicked sister's end in both of the Icelandic ballads and in
Färöe #A#, #B#. In Swedish #A#, #G#, at the first stroke on the harp she
laughs; at the second she grows pale [has to be undressed]; upon the
third she lay dead in her bed [falls dead on the floor]. She is burned
in Danish #A#, #B#, #C#, #F#, #G#, Swedish #B#, Norwegian #A#, #B#, #C#,
#I#, #M#. In Norwegian #K#, #L#, the younger sister (who is restored to
life) begs that the elder may not be burned, but sent out of the country
(cf. English #R b c#); nevertheless, she is buried alive in #L#, which
is her fate also in #E#, and in other unprinted versions. A prose
comment upon Danish #I# has her stabbed by the bridegroom.
Norwegian #B# 21 makes the bride, in her confusion at the revelations of
the harp, ask the bridegroom to drive the fiddler out of the house. So
far from complying, the bridegroom orders him mead and wine, and the
bride to the pile. In Norwegian #C# the bride treads on the harper's
foot, then orders the playing to stop; but the bridegroom springs from
the table, and cries, Let the harp have its song out, pays no regard to
the lady's alleging that she has so bad a head that she cannot bear it,
and finally sends her to the pile. So, nearly, Norwegian #A#. In Danish
#A#, #C#, #D#, #H#, #L#, vainly in the first two, the bride tries to
hush the fiddler with a bribe. He endeavors to take back what he has
said in #D#, #L#, declaring himself a drunken fool (the passage is
borrowed from another ballad): still in #L#, though successful for the
nonce, she comes to the stake and wheel some months after. In #H# the
fiddler dashes the instrument against a stone, seemingly to earn his
bribe, but this trait belongs to versions which take the turn of the
Norwegian. In #C# 15 the bride springs from the table, and says, Give
the fiddlers a trifle, and let them go. This explains the last stanza of
English #A# (cf., Norwegian #B# 21):
Now pay the miller for his payne,
And let him bee gone in the divel's name.
Swedish #F# has an entirely perverted and feeble conclusion. "A good
man" takes the younger sister from the water, carries her to his house,
revives her, and nurses her till the morrow, and then restores her to
her father, who asks why she is so pale, and why she had not come back
with her sister. She explains that she had been pushed into the water,
"and we may thank this good man that I came home at all." The father
tells the elder that she is a disgrace to her country, and condemns her
to the "blue tower." But her sister intercedes, and a cheerful and
handsome wedding follows.
Swedish #C# and nearly all the Norwegian ballads[138] restore the
drowned girl to life, but not by those processes of the Humane Society
which are successfully adopted by the "arlig man" in Swedish #F#. The
harp is dashed against a stone, or upon the floor, and the girl stands
forth "as good as ever." As Landstad conceives the matter (484, note 7),
the elder sister is a witch, and is in the end burned _as such_. The
white body of the younger is made to take on the appearance of a crooked
log, which the fishermen (who, by the way, are angels in #C#, #E#)
innocently shape into a harp, and the music, vibrating from her hair
"through all her limbs, marrow and bone," acts as a disenchantment.
However this may be, the restoration of the younger sister, like all
good endings foisted on tragedies, emasculates the story.
English #F# 9 has the peculiarity, not noticed elsewhere, that the
drowning girl catches at a broom-root, and the elder sister forces her
to let go her hold.[139] In Swedish #G# she is simply said to swim to an
alder-root. In English #G# 8 the elder drives the younger from the land
with a switch, in #I# 8 pushes her off with a silver wand.
English #O# introduces the _ghost_ of the drowned sister as instructing
her father's fiddler to make a string of her hair and a peg of her
little finger bone, which done, the first spring the fiddle plays, it
says,
'Ye'll drown my sister as she's dune me.'
#P#, which is disordered at the end, seems to have agreed with #O#. In
#Q# the ghost sends, by the medium of the miller and his daughter,
respects to father, mother, and true-love, adding a lock of yellow hair
for the last. The ghost is found in #N#, Pinkerton's copy, as well, but
there appears to the lover at dead of night, two days after the
drowning. It informs him of the murder, and he makes search for the
body. This is a wide departure from the original story, and plainly a
modern perversion. Another variation, entirely wanting in ancient
authority, appears in #R#, #S#. The girl is not dead when she has
floated down to the mill-dam, and, being drawn out of the water by the
miller, offers him a handsome reward to take her back to her father
[#S#, to throw her in again!]. The miller takes the reward, and pushes
the girl in again, for which he is hanged.[140]
#Q# has a burden partly Gaelic,
... ohone and aree (alack and O Lord),
On the banks of the Banna (White River), ohone and aree,
which may raise a question whether the Scotch burden Binnorie
(pronounced Bínnorie, as well as Binnórie) is corrupted from it, or the
corruption is on the other side. Mr Campbell notices as quaint the reply
in stanza 9:
'I did not put you in with the design
Just for to pull you out again.'
We have had a similar reply, made under like circumstances, in Polish
versions of No 4: see p. 40, note.
All the Norse versions of this ballad are in two-line stanzas, and all
the English, except #L b# and in part #L a#.
Some of the traits of the English and Norse story are presented by an
Esthonian ballad, 'The Harp,' Neus, Ehstnische Volkslieder, No 13, p.
56. Another version is given in Rosenplänter's Beiträge zur genauern
Kenntniss der ehstnischen Sprache, Heft 4, 142, and a third, says Neus,
in Ch. H. J. Schlegel's Reisen in mehrere russische Gouvernements, V,
140. A young woman, who tells her own story, is murdered by her
sisters-in-law and buried in a moor. She comes up as a birch, from
which, with the jaw-bone of a salmon, the teeth of a pike, and her own
hair (the account is somewhat confused) a harp is made. The harp is
taken to the hall by the murdered girl's brother, and responds to his
playing with tones of sorrow like those of the bride who leaves father
and mother for the house of a husband.[141]
A Slovak ballad often translated (Talvj, Historical View, etc., p. 392;
Wenzig's Slawische Volkslieder, p. 110, Westslawischer Märchenschatz,
273, and Bibliothek Slavischer Poesien, p. 134; Lewestam, Polnische
Volksagen und Märchen, p. 151) comes nearer in some respects. A daughter
is cursed by her mother for not succeeding in drawing water in frosty
weather. Her bucket turns to stone, but she to a maple. Two fiddlers
come by, and, seeing a remarkably fine tree, propose to make of it
fiddles and fiddle-sticks. When they cut into the tree, blood spirts
out. The tree bids them go on, and when they have done, play before the
mother's door, and sing, Here is your daughter, that you cursed to
stone. At the first notes the mother runs to the window, and begs them
to desist, for she has suffered much since she lost her daughter.
The soul of a dead girl speaks through a tree, again, in a Lithuanian
ballad, Nesselmann, Littauische Volkslieder, No 378, p. 320. The girl is
drowned while attempting to cross a stream, carried down to the sea, and
finally thrown ashore, where she grows up a linden. Her brother makes a
pipe from a branch, and the pipe gives out sweet, sad tones. The mother
says, That tone comes not from the linden; it is thy sister's soul, that
hovers over the water. A like idea is met with in another Lithuanian
ballad, Rhesa, Dainos, ed. Kurschat, No 85, p. 231. A sister plucks a
bud from a rose-bush growing over the grave of her brother, who had died
from disappointed love. How fragrant! she exclaims. But her mother
answers, with tears, It is not the rosebud, but the soul of the youth
that died of grief.
Though the range of the ballad proper is somewhat limited, popular tales
equivalent as to the characteristic circumstances are very widely
diffused.
A Polish popular tale, which is, indeed, half song, Wojcicki, Klechdy,
ed. 1851, II, 15 (Lewestam, p. 105), Kolberg, Pieśni ludu Polskiego,
p. 292, No 40 #a#, #b#, #c#, approaches very close to the English-Norse
ballad. There were three sisters, all pretty, but the youngest far
surpassing the others. A young man from the far-off Ukraine fell in with
them while they were making garlands. The youngest pleased him best, and
he chose her for his wife. This excited the jealousy of the eldest, and
a few days after, when they were gathering berries in a wood, she killed
the youngest, notwithstanding the resistance of the second sister,
buried her, and gave out that she had been torn to pieces by wolves.
When the youth came to ask after his love, the murderess told him this
tale, and so won him by her devoted consolations that he offered her his
hand. A willow grew out of the grave of the youngest, and a herdsman
made a pipe from one of its boughs. Blow as he would, he could get no
sound from the pipe but this:
'Blow on, herdsman, blow! God shall bless thee so.
The eldest was my slayer, the second tried to stay her.'
The herdsman took the pipe to the house of the murdered girl. The
mother, the father, and the second sister successively tried it, and the
pipe always sang a like song, Blow, mother, blow, etc. The father then
put the pipe into the eldest sister's hands. She had hardly touched it,
when blood spattered her cheeks, and the pipe sang:
'Blow on, sister, blow: God shall wreak me now.
Thou, sister, 't was didst slay me, the younger tried to stay thee,'
etc.
The murderess was torn by wild horses.
Professor Bugge reports a Norwegian tale, Grundtvig, III, 878, which
resembles the ballad at the beginning. There were in a family two
daughters and a son. One sister was wasteful, the other saving. The
second complained of the first to her parents, and was killed and buried
by the other. Foliage covered the grave, so that it could not be seen,
but on the trees under which the body lay, there grew "strings." These
the brother cut off and adapted to his fiddle, and when he played, the
fiddle said, My sister is killed. The father, having heard the fiddle's
revelation, brought his daughter to confess her act.
There is a series of tales which represent a king, or other personage,
as being afflicted with a severe malady, and as promising that whichever
of his children, commonly three sons, should bring him something
necessary for his cure or comfort should be his heir: (1) 'La Flor del
Lililá,' Fernan Caballero, Lágrimas, cap. 4; (2) 'La caña del riu de
arenas,' Milá, Observaciones sobre la poesia popular, p. 178, No 3; (3)
'Es kommt doch einmal an den Tag,' Müllenhof, Sagen, u. s. w., p. 495,
No 49; (4) 'Vom singenden Dudelsack,' Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen,
I, 329, No 51. Or the inheritance is promised to whichever of the
children finds something lost, or rich and rare, a griffin's feather, a
golden branch, a flower: (5) 'Die Greifenfeder,' Schneller, Märchen und
Sagen aus Wälschtirol, p. 143, No 51; (6) 'La Flanuto,' Bladé, Contes et
proverbes populaires recueillis en Armagnac, p. 3, No 1; (7)
Wackernagel, in Haupt's Zeitschrift, III, 35, No 3, == 'Das
Todtebeindli,' Colshorn, C. u. Th., Märchen u. Sagen, p. 193, No 71, ==
Sutermeister, Kinder-u.-Hausmärchen aus der Schweiz, p. 119, No 39. Or a
king promises his daughter to the man who shall capture a dangerous wild
beast, and the exploit is undertaken by three brothers [or two]: (8)
'Der singende Knochen,' Grimms, K. u. H. märchen, I, 149, No 28 (1857);
(9) 'Die drei Brüder,' Curtze, Volksüberlieferungen aus dem Fürstenthum
Waldeck, p. 53, No 11; (10) 'Der Rohrstengel,' Haltrich, Deutsche
Volksmärchen aus dem Sachsenlande, u. s. w., p. 225, No 42. With these
we may group, though divergent in some respects, (11) 'Der goldene
Apfel,' Toeppen, Aberglauben aus Masuren, p. 139.[142] In all these
tales the youngest child is successful, and is killed, out of envy, by
the eldest or by the two elder. [There are only two children in (6),
(7), (8); in (4) the second is innocent, as in the Polish tale.] Reeds
grow over the spot where the body is buried (1), (2), (10), (11), or an
elder bush (3), out of which a herdsman makes a pipe or flute; or a
white bone is found by a herdsman, and he makes a pipe or horn of it
(5-9); or a bag-pipe is made of the bones and skin of the murdered youth
(4). The instrument, whenever it is played, attests the murder.
Among the tales of the South African Bechuana, there is one of a younger
brother, who has been killed by an older, immediately appearing as a
bird, and announcing what has occurred. The bird is twice killed, and
the last time burnt and its ashes scattered to the winds, but still
reappears, and proclaims that his body lies by a spring in the desert.
Grimms, K. u. H. m. III, 361. Liebrecht has noted that the fundamental
idea is found in a Chinese drama, 'The Talking Dish,' said to be based
on a popular tale. An innkeeper and his wife kill one of their guests
for his money, and burn the body. The innkeeper collects the ashes and
pounds the bones, and makes a sort of mortar and a dish. This dish
speaks very distinctly, and denounces the murderers. Journal Asiatique,
1851, 4th Series, vol. 18, p. 523.
* * * * *
Danish #A#, #E# are translated by Prior, I, 381, 384. English #B#, with
use of #C#, is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser,
p. 104, No 15; #C#, by Afzelius, III, 22. #C#, by Talvj, Versuch, u. s.
w., p. 532; by Schubart, p. 133; by Gerhard, p. 143; by Doenniges, p.
81; Arndt, p. 238. #C#, with use of Aytoun's compounded version, by R.
Warrens, Schottische V. L. der Vorzeit, p. 65; Allingham's version by
Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen Alt-Englands, p. 180.
A
#A. a.# Broadside "printed for Francis Grove, 1656,"
reprinted in Notes and Queries, 1st S., V, 591. #b.# Wit
Restor'd, 1658, "p. 51," p. 153 of the reprint of 1817.
#c.# Wit and Drollery, ed. 1682, p. 87,== Dryden's
Miscellany, Part 3, p. 316, ed. 1716. #d.# Jamieson's
Popular Ballads, I, 315.
1
There were two sisters, they went playing,
With a hie downe downe a downe-a
To see their father's ships come sayling in.
With a hy downe downe a downe-a
2
And when they came unto the sea-brym,
The elder did push the younger in.
3
'O sister, O sister, take me by the gowne,
And drawe me up upon the dry ground.'
4
'O sister, O sister, that may not bee,
Till salt and oatmeale grow both of a tree.'
5
Somtymes she sanke, somtymes she swam,
Until she came unto the mill-dam.
6
The miller runne hastily downe the cliffe,
And up he betook her withouten her life.
7
What did he doe with her brest-bone?
He made him a violl to play thereupon.
8
What did he doe with her fingers so small?
He made him peggs to his violl withall.
9
What did he doe with her nose-ridge?
Unto his violl he made him a bridge.
10
What did he doe with her veynes so blew?
He made him strings to his violl thereto.
11
What did he doe with her eyes so bright?
Upon his violl he played at first sight.
12
What did he doe with her tongue so rough?
Unto the violl it spake enough.
13
What did he doe with her two shinnes?
Unto the violl they danc'd Moll Syms.
14
Then bespake the treble string,
'O yonder is my father the king.'
15
Then bespake the second string,
'O yonder sitts my mother the queen.'
16
And then bespake the strings all three,
'O yonder is my sister that drowned mee.'
17
'Now pay the miller for his payne,
And let him bee gone in the divel's name.'
B
#a.# Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. 39. #b.# Wm. Tytler's Brown
MS., No 15. #c.# Abbotsford MS., "Scottish Songs," fol.
21. #d.# Jamieson's Popular Ballads, I, 48.
1
There was twa sisters in a bowr,
Edinburgh, Edinburgh
There was twa sisters in a bowr,
Stirling for ay
There was twa sisters in a bowr,
There came a knight to be their wooer.
Bonny Saint Johnston stands upon Tay
2
He courted the eldest wi glove an ring,
But he lovd the youngest above a' thing.
3
He courted the eldest wi brotch an knife,
But lovd the youngest as his life.
4
The eldest she was vexed sair,
An much envi'd her sister fair.
5
Into her bowr she could not rest,
Wi grief an spite she almos brast.
6
Upon a morning fair an clear,
She cried upon her sister dear:
7
'O sister, come to yon sea stran,
An see our father's ships come to lan.'
8
She's taen her by the milk-white han,
An led her down to yon sea stran.
9
The younges[t] stood upon a stane,
The eldest came an threw her in.
10
She tooke her by the middle sma,
An dashd her bonny back to the jaw.
11
'O sister, sister, tak my han,
An Ise mack you heir to a' my lan.
12
'O sister, sister, tak my middle,
An yes get my goud and my gouden girdle.
13
'O sister, sister, save my life,
An I swear Ise never be nae man's wife.'
14
'Foul fa the han that I should tacke,
It twin'd me an my wardles make.
15
'Your cherry cheeks an yallow hair
Gars me gae maiden for evermair.'
16
Sometimes she sank, an sometimes she swam,
Till she came down yon bonny mill-dam.
17
O out it came the miller's son,
An saw the fair maid swimmin in.
18
'O father, father, draw your dam,
Here's either a mermaid or a swan.'
19
The miller quickly drew the dam,
An there he found a drownd woman.
20
You coudna see her yallow hair
For gold and pearle that were so rare.
21
You coudna see her middle sma
For gouden girdle that was sae braw.
22
You coudna see her fingers white,
For gouden rings that was sae gryte.
23
An by there came a harper fine,
That harped to the king at dine.
24
When he did look that lady upon,
He sighd and made a heavy moan.
25
He's taen three locks o her yallow hair,
An wi them strung his harp sae fair.
26
The first tune he did play and sing,
Was, 'Farewell to my father the king.'
27
The nextin tune that he playd syne,
Was, 'Farewell to my mother the queen.'
28
The lasten tune that he playd then,
Was, 'Wae to my sister, fair Ellen.'
C
Scott's Minstrelsy, 1802, II; 143. Compounded from #B b#
and a fragment of fourteen stanzas transcribed from the
recitation of an old woman by Miss Charlotte Brooke.
1
There were two sisters sat in a bour;
Binnorie, O Binnorie
There came a knight to be their wooer.
By the bonny mill-dams of Binnorie
2
He courted the eldest with glove and ring,
But he loed the youngest aboon a' thing.
3
He courted the eldest with broach and knife,
But he loed the youngest aboon his life.
4
The eldest she was vexed sair,
And sore envied her sister fair.
5
The eldest said to the youngest ane,
'Will ye go and see our father's ships come in?'
6
She's taen her by the lilly hand,
And led her down to the river strand.
7
The youngest stude upon a stane,
The eldest came and pushed her in.
8
She took her by the middle sma,
And dashed her bonnie back to the jaw.
9
'O sister, sister, reach your hand,
And ye shall be heir of half my land.'
10
'O sister, I'll not reach my hand,
And I'll be heir of all your land.
11
'Shame fa the hand that I should take,
It's twin'd me and my world's make.'
12
'O sister, reach me but your glove,
And sweet William shall be your love.'
13
'Sink on, nor hope for hand or glove,
And sweet William shall better be my love.
14
'Your cherry cheeks and your yellow hair
Garrd me gang maiden evermair.'
15
Sometimes she sunk, and sometimes she swam,
Until she came to the miller's dam.
16
'O father, father, draw your dam,
There's either a mermaid or a milk-white swan.'
17
The miller hasted and drew his dam,
And there he found a drowned woman.
18
You could not see her yellow hair,
For gowd and pearls that were sae rare.
19
You could na see her middle sma,
Her gowden girdle was sae bra.
20
A famous harper passing by,
The sweet pale face he chanced to spy.
21
And when he looked that ladye on,
He sighed and made a heavy moan.
22
He made a harp of her breast-bone,
Whose sounds would melt a heart of stone.
23
The strings he framed of her yellow hair,
Whose notes made sad the listening ear.
24
He brought it to her father's hall,
And there was the court assembled all.
25
He laid this harp upon a stone,
And straight it began to play alone.
26
'O yonder sits my father, the king,
And yonder sits my mother, the queen.
27
'And yonder stands my brother Hugh,
And by him my William, sweet and true.'
28
But the last tune that the harp playd then,
Was 'Woe to my sister, false Helen!'
D
Kinloch's MSS, II, 49. From the recitation of Mrs
Johnston, a North-country lady.
1
There lived three sisters in a bouer,
Edinbruch, Edinbruch
There lived three sisters in a bouer,
Stirling for aye
There lived three sisters in a bouer,
The youngest was the sweetest flowr.
Bonnie St Johnston stands upon Tay
2
There cam a knicht to see them a',
And on the youngest his love did fa.
3
He brought the eldest ring and glove,
But the youngest was his ain true-love.
4
He brought the second sheath and knife,
But the youngest was to be his wife.
5
The eldest sister said to the youngest ane,
'Will ye go and see our father's ships come in?'
6
And as they walked by the linn,
The eldest dang the youngest in.
7
'O sister, sister, tak my hand,
And ye'll be heir to a' my land.'
8
'Foul fa the hand that I wad take,
To twin me o my warld's make.'
9
'O sister, sister, tak my glove,
And yese get Willie, my true-love.'
10
'Sister, sister, I'll na tak your glove,
For I'll get Willie, your true-love.'
11
Aye she swittert, and aye she swam,
Till she cam to yon bonnie mill-dam.
12
The miller's dochter cam out wi speed,
It was for water, to bake her bread.
13
'O father, father, gae slack your dam;
There's in't a lady or a milk-white swan.'
* * * * * * *
14
They could na see her coal-black eyes
For her yellow locks hang oure her brees.
15
They could na see her weel-made middle
For her braid gowden girdle.
* * * * * * *
16
And by there cam an auld blind fiddler,
And took three tets o her bonnie yellow hair.
* * * * * * *
17
The first spring that the bonnie fiddle playd,
'Hang my cruel sister, Alison,' it said.
E
Sharpe's Ballad Book, No 10, p. 30.
1
There livd twa sisters in a bower,
Hey Edinbruch, how Edinbruch!
There lived twa sisters in a bower,
Stirling for aye!
The youngest o them O she was a flower!
Bonny Sanct Johnstoune that stands upon Tay!
2
There cam a squire frae the west,
He loed them baith, but the youngest best.
3
He gied the eldest a gay gold ring,
But he loed the youngest aboon a' thing.
4
'O sister, sister, will ye go to the sea?
Our father's ships sail bonnilie.'
5
The youngest sat down upon a stane;
The eldest shot the youngest in.
6
'O sister, sister, lend me your hand,
And you shall hae my gouden fan.
7
'O sister, sister, save my life,
And ye shall be the squire's wife.'
8
First she sank, and then she swam,
Untill she cam to Tweed mill-dam.
9
The millar's daughter was baking bread,
She went for water, as she had need.
10
'O father, father, in our mill-dam
There's either a lady, or a milk-white swan.'
11
They could nae see her fingers small,
Wi diamond rings they were coverd all.
12
They could nae see her yellow hair,
Sae mony knots and platts were there.
13
They could nae see her lilly feet,
Her gowden fringes war sae deep.
14
Bye there cam a fiddler fair,
And he's taen three taits o her yellow hair.
F
Motherwell's MS., p. 383. From the recitation of Agnes
Lyle, Kilbarchan, 27th July, 1825.
1
There was two ladies livd in a bower,
Hey with a gay and a grinding O
The youngest o them was the fairest flower
About a' the bonny bows o London.
2
There was two ladies livd in a bower,
An wooer unto the youngest did go.
3
The oldest one to the youngest did say,
'Will ye take a walk with me today,
And we'll view the bonny bows o London.
4
'Thou'll set thy foot whare I set mine,
Thou'll set thy foot upon this stane.'
5
'I'll set my foot where thou sets thine:'
The old sister dang the youngest in,
At, etc.
6
'O sister dear, come tak my hand,
Take my life safe to dry land,'
At, etc.
7
'It's neer by my hand thy hand sall come in,
It's neer by my hand thy hand sall come in,
At, etc.
8
'It's thy cherry cheeks and thy white briest bane
Gars me set a maid owre lang at hame.'
9
She clasped her hand[s] about a brume rute,
But her cruel sister she lowsed them out.
10
Sometimes she sank, and sometimes she swam,
Till she cam to the miller's dam.
11
The miller's bairns has muckle need,
They were bearing in water to bake some breid.
12
Says, 'Father, dear father, in our mill-dam,
It's either a fair maid or a milk-white swan.'
13
The miller he's spared nae his hose nor his shoon
Till he brocht this lady till dry land.
14
I wad he saw na a bit o her feet,
Her silver slippers were made so neat.
15
I wad he saw na a bit o her skin,
For ribbons there was mony a ane.
16
He laid her on a brume buss to dry,
To see wha was the first wad pass her by.
17
Her ain father's herd was the first man
That by this lady gay did gang.
18
He's taen three links of her yellow hair,
And made it a string to his fiddle there.
19
He's cut her fingers long and small
To be fiddle-pins that neer might fail.
20
The very first spring that the fiddle did play,
'Hang my auld sister,' I wad it did say.
21
'For she drowned me in yonder sea,
God neer let her rest till she shall die,'
At the bonny bows o London.
G
Motherwell's MS., p. 104. From Mrs King, Kilbarchan.
1
There were three sisters lived in a bouir,
Hech, hey, my Nannie O
And the youngest was the fairest flouir.
And the swan swims bonnie O
2
'O sister, sister, gang down to yon sand,
And see your father's ships coming to dry land.'
3
O they have gane down to yonder sand,
To see their father's ships coming to dry land.
4
'Gae set your fit on yonder stane,
Till I tye up your silken goun.'
5
She set her fit on yonder stane,
And the auldest drave the youngest in.
6
'O sister, sister, tak me by the hand,
And ye'll get a' my father's land.
7
'O sister, sister, tak me by the gluve,
An ye'll get Willy, my true luve.'
8
She had a switch into her hand,
And ay she drave her frae the land.
9
O whiles she sunk, and whiles she swam,
Until she swam to the miller's dam.
10
The miller's daughter gade doun to Tweed,
To carry water to bake her bread.
11
'O father, O father, what's yon in the dam?
It's either a maid or a milk-white swan.'
12
They have tane her out till yonder thorn,
And she has lain till Monday morn.
13
She hadna, hadna twa days lain,
Till by there came a harper fine.
14
He made a harp o her breast-bane,
That he might play forever thereon.
H
Motherwell's MS., p. 147. From I. Goldie, March, 1825.
1
There were three sisters lived in a hall,
Hey with the gay and the grandeur O
And there came a lord to court them all.
At the bonnie bows o London town
2
He courted the eldest with a penknife,
And he vowed that he would take her life.
3
He courted the youngest with a glove,
And he said that he'd be her true love.
4
'O sister, O sister, will you go and take a walk,
And see our father's ships how they float?
5
'O lean your foot upon the stone,
And wash your hand in that sea-foam.'
6
She leaned her foot upon the stone,
But her eldest sister has tumbled her down.
7
'O sister, sister, give me your hand,
And I'll make you lady of all my land.'
8
'O I'll not lend to you my hand,
But I'll be lady of your land.'
9
'O sister, sister, give me your glove,
And I'll make you lady of my true love.'
10
'It's I'll not lend to you my glove,
But I'll be lady of your true love.'
11
Sometimes she sank, and sometimes she swam,
Until she came to a miller's dam.
12
The miller's daughter was coming out wi speed,
For water for to bake some bread.
13
'O father, father, stop the dam,
For it's either a lady or a milk-white swan.'
14
He dragged her out unto the shore,
And stripped her of all she wore.
15
By cam a fiddler, and he was fair,
And he buskit his bow in her bonnie yellow hair.
16
By cam her father's harper, and he was fine,
And he made a harp o her bonny breast-bone.
17
When they came to her father's court,
The harp [and fiddle these words] spoke:
18
'O God bless my father the king,
And I wish the same to my mother the queen.
19
'My sister Jane she tumbled me in,
. . . . . . .
* * * * * * *
I
Kinloch MSS, V, 425. From the recitation of M. Kinnear,
23d August, 1826.
1
There war twa sisters lived in a bouer,
Binnorie and Binnorie
There cam a squire to court them baith.
At the bonnie mill-streams o Binnorie
2
He courted the eldest with jewels and rings,
But he lovd the youngest the best of all things.
3
He courted the eldest with a penknife,
He lovd the youngest as dear as his life.
4
It fell ance upon a day
That these twa sisters hae gane astray.
5
It was for to meet their father's ships that had come in.
. . . . . . .
6
As they walked up the linn,
The eldest dang the youngest in.
7
'O sister, sister, tak my hand,
And ye'll hae Lud John and aw his land.'
8
With a silver wand she pushd her in,
. . . . . . .
9
'O sister, sister, tak my glove,
And ye sall hae my ain true love.'
10
The miller's dochter cam out wi speed.
It was for a water to bake her bread.
11
'O father, father, gae slack your dam;
There's either a white fish or a swan.'
* * * * * * *
12
Bye cam a blind fiddler that way,
And he took three tets o her bonnie yellow hair.
13
And the first spring that he playd,
It said, 'It was my sister threw me in.'
J
Notes and Queries, 4th S., V, 23, from the north of
Ireland.
1
There were two ladies playing ball,
Hey, ho, my Nannie O
A great lord came to court them all.
The swan she does swim bonnie O
2
He gave to the first a golden ring,
He gave to the second a far better thing.
* * * * * * *
3
He made a harp of her breast-bone
. . . . . . .
4
He set it down upon a stone,
And it began to play its lone.
K
Mr G.R. Kinloch's papers, Kinloch MSS, II, 59. From Mrs
Lindores.
1
'O sister, sister, gie me your hand,
Binnorie and Binnorie
And I'll give the half of my fallow-land,
By the bonnie mill-dams of Binnorie.'
* * * * * * *
2
The first time the bonnie fiddle played,
'Hang my sister, Alison,' it said,
'At the bonnie mill-dams of Binnorie.'
L
#a.# From oral tradition, Notes and Queries, 1st S., V,
316. #b.# The Scouring of the White Horse, p. 161. From
North Wales.
1
O was it eke a pheasant cock,
Or eke a pheasant hen,
Or was it the bodye of a fair ladye,
Come swimming down the stream?
2
O it was not a pheasant cock,
Nor eke a pheasant hen,
But it was the bodye of a fair ladye
Came swimming down the stream.
* * * * * * *
3
And what did he do with her fair bodye?
Fal the lal the lal laral lody
He made it a case for his melodye.
Fal, etc.
4
And what did he do with her legs so strong?
He made them a stand for his violon.
5
And what did he do with her hair so fine?
He made of it strings for his violine.
6
And what did he do with her arms so long?
He made them bows for his violon.
7
And what did he do with her nose so thin?
He made it a bridge for his violin.
8
And what did he do with her eyes so bright?
He made them spectacles to put to his sight.
9
And what did he do with her petty toes?
He made them a nosegay to put to his nose.
M
Taken down from recitation at Old Deir, 1876, by Mrs A.F.
Murison. MS., p. 79.
1
There lived twa sisters in yonder ha,
Binórie O an Binórie
They hadna but ae lad atween them twa,
He's the bonnie miller lad o Binórie.
2
It fell oot upon a day,
The auldest ane to the youngest did say,
At the bonnie mill-dams o Binórie,
3
'O sister, O sister, will ye go to the dams,
To hear the blackbird thrashin oer his songs?
At the,' etc.
4
'O sister, O sister, will ye go to the dams,
To see oor father's fish-boats come safe to dry lan?
An the bonnie miller lad o Binorie.'
5
They hadna been an oor at the dams,
Till they heard the blackbird thrashin oer his tune,
At the, etc.
6
They hadna been an oor at the dams
Till they saw their father's fish-boats come safe to dry lan,
Bat they sawna the bonnie miller laddie.
7
They stood baith up upon a stane,
An the eldest ane dang the youngest in,
I the, etc.
8
She swam up, an she swam doon,
An she swam back to her sister again,
I the, etc.
9
'O sister, O sister, len me your han,
An yes be heir to my true love,
He's the bonnie miller lad o Binorie.'
10
'It was not for that love at I dang you in,
But ye was fair and I was din,
And yes droon i the dams o Binorie.'
11
The miller's daughter she cam oot,
For water to wash her father's hans,
Frae the, etc.
12
'O father, O father, ye will fish your dams,
An ye'll get a white fish or a swan,
I the,' etc.
13
They fished up and they fished doon,
But they got nothing but a droonet woman,
I the, etc.
14
Some o them kent by her skin sae fair,
But weel kent he by her bonnie yallow hair
She's the bonnie miller's lass o Binorie.
15
Some o them kent by her goons o silk,
But weel kent he by her middle sae jimp,
She's the bonnie miller's lass o Binorie.
16
Mony ane was at her oot-takin,
But mony ane mair at her green grave makin,
At the bonny mill-dams o Binorie.
N
[Pinkerton's] Scottish Tragic Ballads, p. 72.
1
There were twa sisters livd in a bouir,
Binnorie, O Binnorie
Their father was a baron of pouir.
By the bonnie mildams of Binnorie
2
The youngest was meek, and fair as the may
Whan she springs in the east wi the gowden day.
3
The eldest austerne as the winter cauld,
Ferce was her saul, and her seiming was bauld.
4
A gallant squire cam sweet Isabel to wooe;
Her sister had naething to luve I trow.
5
But filld was she wi dolour and ire,
To see that to her the comlie squire
6
Preferd the debonair Isabel:
Their hevin of luve of spyte was her hell.
7
Till ae ein she to her sister can say,
'Sweit sister, cum let us wauk and play.'
8
They wauked up, and they wauked down,
Sweit sang the birdis in the vallie loun.
9
Whan they cam to the roaring lin,
She drave unweiting Isabel in.
10
'O sister, sister, tak my hand,
And ye sall hae my silver fan.
11
'O sister, sister, tak my middle,
And ye sall hae my gowden girdle.'
12
Sumtimes she sank, sumtimes she swam,
Till she cam to the miller's dam.
13
The miller's dochtor was out that ein,
And saw her rowing down the streim.
14
'O father deir, in your mil-dam
There is either a lady or a milk-white swan!'
15
Twa days were gane, whan to her deir
Her wraith at deid of nicht cold appeir.
16
'My luve, my deir, how can ye sleip,
Whan your Isabel lyes in the deip!
17
'My deir, how can ye sleip bot pain
Whan she by her cruel sister is slain!'
18
Up raise he sune, in frichtfu mude:
'Busk ye, my meiny, and seik the flude.'
19
They socht her up and they socht her doun,
And spyd at last her glisterin gown.
20
They raisd her wi richt meikle care;
Pale was her cheik and grein was her hair.
O
#a.# Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 128.
#b.# Traditional Ballad Airs, edited by W. Christie, I,
42.
1
There were twa sisters in a bower,
Hey wi the gay and the grinding
And ae king's son has courted them baith.
At the bonny bonny bows o London
2
He courted the youngest wi broach and ring,
He courted the eldest wi some other thing.
3
It fell ance upon a day
The eldest to the youngest did say,
4
'Will ye gae to yon Tweed mill-dam,
And see our father's ships come to land?'
5
They baith stood up upon a stane,
The eldest dang the youngest in.
6
She swimmed up, sae did she down,
Till she came to the Tweed mill-dam.
7
The miller's servant he came out,
And saw the lady floating about.
8
'O master, master, set your mill,
There is a fish, or a milk-white swan.'
9
They could not ken her yellow hair,
[For] the scales o gowd that were laid there.
10
They could not ken her fingers sae white,
The rings o gowd they were sae bright.
11
They could not ken her middle sae jimp,
The stays o gowd were so well laced.
12
They could not ken her foot sae fair,
The shoes o gowd they were so rare.
13
Her father's fiddler he came by,
Upstarted her ghaist before his eye.
14
'Ye'll take a lock o my yellow hair,
Ye'll make a string to your fiddle there.
15
'Ye'll take a lith o my little finger bane,
And ye'll make a pin to your fiddle then.'
16
He's taen a lock o her yellow hair,
And made a string to his fiddle there.
17
He's taen a lith o her little finger bane,
And he's made a pin to his fiddle then.
18
The firstand spring the fiddle did play,
Said, 'Ye'll drown my sister, as she's dune me.'
P
#a.# Motherwell's MS., p. 245. #b.# Motherwell's
Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xx, xx.
1
There were twa ladies in a bower,
Hey my bonnie Nannie O
The old was black and the young ane fair.
And the swan swims bonnie O
2
Once it happened on a day
The auld ane to the young did say,
3
The auld ane to the young did say,
'Will you gae to the green and play?'
4
'O sister, sister, I daurna gang,
For fear I file my silver shoon.'
5
It was not to the green they gaed,
But it was to the water of Tweed.
6
She bowed her back and she's taen her on,
And she's tumbled her in Tweed mill-dam.
7
'O sister, O sister, O tak my hand,
And I'll mak you heir of a' my land.'
8
'O sister, O sister, I'll no take your hand,
And I'll be heir of a' your land.'
9
'O sister, O sister, O tak my thumb,
And I'll give you my true-love John.'
10
'O sister, O sister, I'll no tak your thumb,
And I will get your true-love John.'
11
Aye she swattered and aye she swam,
Until she came to the mouth of the dam.
12
The miller's daughter went out to Tweed,
To get some water to bake her bread.
13
In again she quickly ran:
'Here's a lady or a swan in our mill-dam.'
14
Out went the miller and his man
And took the lady out of the dam.
15
They laid her on the brae to dry;
Her father's fiddler then rode by.
16
When he this lady did come near,
Her ghost to him then did appear.
17
'When you go to my father the king,
You'll tell him to burn my sister Jean.
18
'When you go to my father's gate,
You'll play a spring for fair Ellen's sake.
19
'You'll tak three links of my yellow hair,
And play a spring for evermair.'
Q
Copied Oct. 26, 1861, by J.F. Campbell, Esq., from a
collection made by Lady Caroline Murray; traced by her to
an old nurse, and beyond the beginning of this century.
1
There dwelt twa sisters in a bower,
Oh and ohone, and ohone and aree!
And the youngest she was the fairest flower.
On the banks of the Banna, ohone and aree!
2
There cam a knight to court the twa,
But on the youngest his love did fa.
3
He courted the eldest with ring and wi glove,
But he gave the youngest all his love.
4
He courted the eldest with brooch and wi knife,
But he loved the youngest as his life.
5
'O sister, O sister, will ye come to the stream,
To see our father's ships come in?'
6
The youngest stood upon a stane,
Her sister came and pusht her in.
7
'O sister, O sister, come reach me your hand,
And ye shall hae all our father's land.
8
'O sister, O sister, come reach me your glove,
And you shall hae William to be your true love.'
9
'I did not put you in with the design
Just for to pull you out again.'
10
Some time she sank, some time she swam,
Until she came to a miller's dam.
11
The miller's daughter dwelt on the Tweed,
She went for water to bake her bread.
12
'O faither, faither, come drag me your dam,
For there's aither a lady in't, or a milk-white swan.'
13
The miller went, and he dragd his dam,
And he brought her fair body to lan.
14
They couldna see her waist sae sma
For the goud and silk about it a'.
15
They couldna see her yallow hair
For the pearls and jewels that were there.
16
Then up and spak her ghaist sae green,
'Do ye no ken the king's dochter Jean?
17
'Tak my respects to my father the king,
And likewise to my mother the queen.
18
'Tak my respects to my true love William,
Tell him I deid for the love of him.
19
'Carry him a lock of my yallow hair,
To bind his heart for evermair.'
R
#a.# Notes and Queries, 1st S., VI, 102, from Lancashire.
#b.# Written down for J.F. Campbell, Esq., Nov. 7, 1861,
at Wishaw House, Lancashire, by Lady Louisa Primrose, #c.#
'The Scouring of the White Horse,' p. 158, from Berkshire,
as heard by Mr Hughes from his father.
1
There was a king of the north countree,
Bow down, bow down, bow down
There was a king of the north countree,
And he had daughters one, two, three.
I'll be true to my love, and my love'll be true to me
2
To the eldest he gave a beaver hat,
And the youngest she thought much of that.
3
To the youngest he gave a gay gold chain,
And the eldest she thought much of the same.
4
These sisters were walking on the bryn,
And the elder pushed the younger in.
5
'Oh sister, oh sister, oh lend me your hand,
And I will give you both houses and land.'
6
'I'll neither give you my hand nor glove,
Unless you give me your true love.'
7
Away she sank, away she swam,
Until she came to a miller's dam.
8
The miller and daughter stood at the door,
And watched her floating down the shore.
9
'Oh father, oh father, I see a white swan,
Or else it is a fair woman.'
10
The miller he took up his long crook,
And the maiden up from the stream he took.
11
'I'll give to thee this gay gold chain,
If you'll take me back to my father again.'
12
The miller he took the gay gold chain,
And he pushed her into the water again.
13
The miller was hanged on his high gate
For drowning our poor sister Kate.
14
The cat's behind the buttery shelf,
If you want any more, you may sing it yourself.
S
Kinloch MSS, VI, 89, in Kinloch's hand.
* * * * * * *
1
'O father, father, swims a swan,'
This story I'll vent to thee
'O father, father, swims a swan,
Unless it be some dead woman.'
I'll prove true to my true love,
If my love prove true to me
2
The miller he held out his long fish hook,
And hooked this fair maid from the brook.
3
She offered the miller a gold ring stane
To throw her into the river again.
4
Down she sunk, and away she swam,
Until she came to her father's brook.
5
The miller was hung at his mill-gate,
For drowning of my sister Kate.
T
Allingham's Ballad Book, p. xxxiii. From Ireland.
'Sister, dear sister, where shall we go play?'
Cold blows the wind, and the wind blows low
'We shall go to the salt sea's brim.'
And the wind blows cheerily around us, high ho
U
Communicated by Mr W.W. Newell, as repeated by an ignorant
woman in her dotage, who learned it at Huntington, Long
Island, N.Y.
1
There was a man lived in the mist,
Bow down, bow down
He loved his youngest daughter best.
The bow is bent to me,
So you be true to your own true love,
And I'll be true to thee.
2
These two sisters went out to swim;
The oldest pushed the youngest in.
3
First she sank and then she swam,
First she sank and then she swam.
4
The miller, with his rake and hook,
He caught her by the petticoat.
* * * * * * *
* * * * *
#A. b.#
1^1, went a-playing.
_Burden^2._ a downe-o.
#c.#
1^1. went a-playing.
_Burden^{1,2}._ With a hey down, down, a down, down-a.
4^2. Till oat-meal and salt grow both on a tree.
6^1. ran hastily down the clift.
6^2. And up he took her without any life.
13^2. Moll Symns.
14^1, 15^1. Then he bespake.
17^2. And let him go i the devil's name.
#d.#
1^1, went a-playing.
1^2, ships sailing in.
2^1. into.
3^2. me up on.
6^2. withouten life.
#B. a.#
26, 27, 28. _An_ it _has been written in as a conjectural
emendation by Jamieson, ~he did it play, {it/he} playd~;
and ~it~ is adopted by Jamieson in his printed copy: see
below, #d# 26, 27, 28._
#b.#
_The first stanza only, agreeing with #a# 1, is given by
Anderson, Nichols's Illustrations, VII, 178._
#c.#
_Evidently a copy of Mrs Brown's version, and in Scott's
MS. it has the air, as all the Tytler-Brown ballads had.
Still it has but twenty-three stanzas, whereas Dr Anderson
gives fifty-eight lines as the extent of the Tytler-Brown
copy of 'The Cruel Sister' (Nichols, Illus. Lit. Hist.,
VII, 178). This, counting the first stanza, with the
burden, as four lines, according to the arrangement in
Scott's MS., would tally exactly with the Jamieson-Brown
MS., #B a#._
_It would seem that #B c# had been altered by somebody in
order to remove the absurd combination of sea and
mill-dam; the invitation to go see the ships come to land,
#B a# 7, is omitted, and "~the deep mill-dam~"
substituted, in 8, for "~yon sea-stran~." Stanza 17 of
#c#, "~They raisd her~," etc., cited below, occurs in
Pinkerton, #N# 20, and is more likely to be his than
anybody's._
2^1. brooch and ring.
2^2. abune a' thing.
3^1. wooed ... with glove and knife.
3^2. looed the second.
5^2. she well nigh brist.
7. _wanting._
8^2. led her to the deep mill-dam.
9^2. Her cruel sister pushd her in.
11^2. And Ise mak ye.
12. _wanting._
14^1. Shame fa the hand that I shall tak.
15^1. gowden hair.
15^2. gar ... maiden ever mair.
16. _wanting._
17^1. Then out and cam.
17^2. swimming down.
18^1. O father, haste and draw.
19^1. his dam.
19^2. And then. (?)
_Instead of 20-22_:
They raisd her wi meikle dule and care,
Pale was her cheek and green was her hair.
24^1. that corpse upon.
25^2. he's strung.
26^1, 27^1, 28^1, _for ~tune~, ~line~, if the copy be
right._
27^1. The next.
28^1. The last.
28^2. fause Ellen.
"Note by Ritson. 'The fragment of a very different copy of
this ballad has been communicated to J.R. by a friend at
Dublin.'" [_J.C. Walker, no doubt._]
#d.#
_Jamieson, Popular Ballads and Songs, I, 48, says that he
gives his text verbatim as it was taken from the
recitation of the lady in Fifeshire (Mrs Brown), to whom
both he and Scott were so much indebted. That this is not
to be understood with absolute strictness will appear from
the variations which are subjoined. Jamieson adds that he
had received another copy from Mrs Arrott of Aberbrothick,
"~but as it furnished no readings by which the text could
have been materially improved~," it was not used. Both
Jamieson and Scott substitute the "~Binnorie~" burden,
"~the most common and popular~," says Scott, for the one
given by Mrs Brown, with which Mrs Arrott's agreed. It may
be added that Jamieson's interpolations are stanzas 20,
21, 27, etc., and not, as he says (I, 49), 19, 20, 27,
etc. These interpolations also occur as such in the
manuscript._
1^1. sisters livd.
2^2. aboon.
3^2. he loved.
4^2. and sair envied.
5^1. Intill her bower she coudna.
5^2. maistly brast.
11^2. mak ye.
14^2. me o.
16^1. _omits ~an~._
16^2. came to the mouth o yon mill-dam.
18^2. There's.
20^2. that was.
22^2. that were.
26^1. it did.
27^1. it playd seen.
28^1. thirden tune that it.
_A copy in Motherwell's MS., p. 239, is derived from
Jamieson's printed edition. It omits the interpolated
stanzas, and makes a few very slight changes._
#C.#
_Scott's account of his edition is as follows (II, 143,
later ed., III, 287)_:
"It is compiled from a copy in Mrs Brown's MS., intermixed
with a beautiful fragment, of fourteen verses, transmitted
to the editor by J.C. Walker, Esq., the ingenious
historian of the Irish bards. Mr Walker, at the same time,
favored the editor with the following note: 'I am indebted
to my departed friend, Miss Brooke, for the foregoing
pathetic fragment. Her account of it was as follows: This
song was transcribed, several years ago, from the memory
of an old woman, who had no recollection of the concluding
verses; probably the beginning may also be lost, as it
seems to commence abruptly.' The first verse and burden of
the fragment run thus:
"'O sister, sister, reach thy hand!
Hey ho, my Nanny, O
And you shall be heir of all my land.
While the swan swims bonny, O'"
_Out of this stanza, or the corresponding one in Mrs
Brown's copy, Scott seems to have made his 9, 10._
#E.#
"My mother used to sing this song." Sharpe's Ballad Book,
ed. of 1880, note, p. 129.
#F.#
2^2. An wooer.
#G.#
2^1. _~strand~, with ~sand~ written above: ~sand~ in 3^1._
#I.#
1^2. _var. in MS._ There was a knicht and he loved them
bath.
7. _The following stanza was subsequently written on an
opposite blank page,--perhaps derived from #D# 8_:
Foul fa the hand that I wad take,
To twin me and my warld's make.
10^2. _~a~ was, perhaps, meant to be expunged, but is only
a little blotted._
11^2. _var._ a lady or a milk-white swan.
12, 13 _were written in later than the rest; at the same
time, apparently, as the stanza above (7)._
#K.#
_Found among Mr Kinloch's papers by Mr Macmath, and
inserted by him as a note on p. 59, vol. II, of Kinloch's
MSS. The order of the stanzas is there, wrongly,
inverted._
1^2. _var._ I wad give you.
#L. a.#
_These fragments were communicated to Notes and Queries,
April 3, 1852, by "~G. A. C.~," who had heard '~The
Miller's Melody~' sung by an old lady in his childhood,
and who represents himself as probably the last survivor
of those who had enjoyed the privilege of listening to her
ballads. We may, therefore, assign this version to the
latter part of the 18th century. The two four-line stanzas
were sung to "~a slow, quaint strain~." Two others which
followed were not remembered, "~but their purport was that
the body 'stopped hard by a miller's mill,' and that this
'miller chanced to come by,' and took it out of the water
'to make a melodye.'~" G.A.C. goes on to say_: "My
venerable friend's tune here became a more lively one, and
the time quicker; but I can only recollect a few of the
couplets, and these not correctly nor in order of
sequence, in which the transformation of the lady into a
viol is described."
#b.#
_Some stanzas of this four-line version, with a ludicrous
modern supplement, are given in '~The Scouring of the
White Horse~,' p. 161, as from the Welsh marshes. Five out
of the first six verses are there said to be very old
indeed, "~the rest all patchwork by different hands~." Mr
Hughes has kindly informed me that he derived the ballad
from his father, who had originally learned it at Ruthyn
when a boy. What is material here follows_:
1
O it was not a pheasant cock,
Nor yet a pheasant hen,
But O it was a lady fair
Came swimming down the stream.
2
An ancient harper passing by
Found this poor lady's body,
To which his pains he did apply
To make a sweet melódy.
3
To cat-gut dried he her inside,
He drew out her back-bone,
And made thereof a fiddle sweet
All for to play upon.
4
And all her hair, so long and fair,
That down her back did flow,
O he did lay it up with care,
To string his fiddle bow.
5
And what did he with her fingers,
Which were so straight and small?
O he did cut them into pegs,
To screw up his fiddoll.
6
Then forth went he, as it might be,
Upon a summer's day,
And met a goodly company,
Who asked him in to play.
| 7
| Then from her bones he drew such tones
| As made their bones to ache,
| They sounded so like human groans
| Their hearts began to quake.
| 8
| They ordered him in ale to swim,--
| For sorrow's mighty dry,--
| And he to share their wassail fare
| Essayd right willingly.
9
He laid his fiddle on a shelf
In that old manor-hall,
It played and sung all by itself,
And thus sung this fiddoll:
| 10
| 'There sits the squire, my worthy sire,
| A-drinking hisself drunk,' etc., etc.
#N.#
_Pinkerton tells us, in the Preface to his ~Ancient
Scottish Poems~, p. cxxxi, that "~Binnorie is one half
from tradition, one half by the editor~." One fourth and
three fourths would have been a more exact apportionment.
The remainder of his text, which is wholly of his
invention, is as follows_:
'Gae saddle to me my swiftest steid;
Her fere, by my fae, for her dethe sall bleid.'
A page cam rinning out owr the lie:
'O heavie tydings I bring,' quoth he.
'My luvely lady is far awa gane;
We weit the fairy hae her tane.
Her sister gaed wood wi dule and rage;
Nocht cold we do her mind to suage.
"O Isabel, my sister," she wold cry,
"For thee will I weip, for thee will I die."
Till late yestrene, in an elric hour,
She lap frae aft the hichest touir.'
'Now sleip she in peace,' quoth the gallant squire;
'Her dethe was the maist that I cold require.
But I'll main for the, my Isabel deir,
Full mony a dreiry day, hot weir.'
20. _This stanza occurs also in #B c# (17), and was
perhaps borrowed from Pinkerton by the reviser of that
copy._
#O. a#.
_Buchan's note, II, 320_: "I have seen four or five
different versions of this ballad, but none in this dress,
nor with the same chorus.... The old woman from whose
recitation I took it down says she had heard another way
of it, quite local, whose burden runs thus:
'Ever into Buchanshire, vari vari O.'"
1^2. hae courted.
#b.#
_Mr Christie has "~epitomized~" Buchan's copy (omitting
stanzas 9-12), with these few slight alterations from the
singing of a Banffshire woman, who died in 1860, at the
age of nearly eighty_:
_Burden_: It's hey, etc.
2^2. And he courted the eldest wi mony other thing.
3^1. But it fell.
5^2. And the eldest.
#P. b.#
_This stanza only_:
There livd twa sisters in a bower,
Hey my bonnie Annie O
There cam a lover them to woo.
And the swan swims bonnie O,
And the swan swims bonnie O
#Q.#
_The burden is given thus in ~Pop. Tales of the West
Highlands~, IV, 125_:
Oh ochone, ochone a rie,
On the banks of the Banna, ochone a rie.
#R. a.#
_The title '~The Three Sisters,~' and perhaps the first
stanza, belongs rather to ~No 1 #A#, #B#, p. 3f.~_
#b.#
1.
A farmer there lived in the north countree,
Bo down
And he had daughters one, two, three.
And I'll be true unto my love, if he'll be true unto me
(_The burden is given as ~Bo down, bo down~, etc., in
~Popular Tales of the West Highlands~, IV, 125._)
_Between 1 and 2 #b# has_:
The eldest she had a lover come,
And he fell in love with the younger one.
He bought the younger a ...
The elder she thought ...
3. _wanting._
4^1. The sisters they walkt by the river brim.
6^2. my true love.
8.
The miller's daughter was at the door,
As sweet as any gillyflower.
9.
O father, O father, there swims a swain,
And he looks like a gentleman.
10.
The miller he fetcht his line and hook,
And he fisht the fair maiden out of the brook.
11^1. O miller, I'll give you guineas ten,
12.
The miller he took her guineas ten,
And then he popt her in again.
13^1. ... behind his back gate,
13^2. the farmer's daughter Kate.
_Instead of 14_:
The sister she sailed over the sea,
And died an old maid of a hundred and three.
The lover became a beggar man,
And he drank out of a rusty tin can.
#b# _8, 11, 12, 14, 15 are cited in ~Popular Tales of the
West Highlands~, IV, 127._
#c.#
1.
A varmer he lived in the west countree,
Hey-down, bow-down
A varmer he lived in the west countree,
And he had daughters one, two, and dree.
And I'll be true to my love,
If my love'll be true to me.
2, 3. _wanting._
4^1. As thay wur walking by the river's brim.
5^1. pray gee me thy hand.
7^1. So down she sank and away she swam.
8.
The miller's daughter stood by the door,
As fair as any gilly-flower.
9.
here swims a swan,
Very much like a drownded gentlewoman.
10.
The miller he fot his pole and hook,
And he fished the fair maid out of the brook.
11^1. O miller, I'll gee thee guineas ten.
12^2. pushed the fair maid in again.
_Between 12 and 13 #c# has_,
But the crowner he cum and the justice too,
With a hue and a cry and a hullaballoo.
They hanged the miller beside his own gate
For drowning the varmer's daughter, Kate.
_Instead of 14_:
The sister she fled beyond the seas,
And died an old maid among black savagees.
So I've ended my tale of the west countree,
And they calls it the Barkshire Tragedee.
#S.#
1^2. _MS._ Or less (?).
#T.#
"Sung to a peculiar and beautiful air." _Allingham, p.
xxxiii._
[126] Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands, IV, 126, 1862.
[127] Jamieson, in his Popular Ballads, II, 315, prints the ballad, with
five inconsiderable variations from the broadside, as from Musarum
Deliciæ, 2d edition, 1656. The careful reprint of this book, and of the
same edition, in "Facetiæ," etc., 1817, does not contain this piece, and
the first edition, of 1655, differed in no respect as to contents,
according to the editor of "Facetiæ." Still it is hardly credible that
Jamieson has blundered, and we may suppose that copies, ostensibly of
the same edition, varied as to contents, a thing common enough with old
books.
[128] Cunningham has re-written Scott's version, Songs of Scotland, II,
109, 'The Two Fair Sisters.' He says, "I was once deeply touched with
the singing of this romantic and mournful song.... I have ventured to
print it in the manner I heard it sung." There is, to be sure, no reason
why he should not have heard his own song sung, _once_, and still less
why he should not have been deeply touched with his own pathos.
Cunningham adds one genuine stanza, resembling the first of #G#, #J#,
#P#:
Two fair sisters lived in a bower,
Hey ho my nonnie O
There came a knight to be their wooer.
While the swan swims bonnie O
[129] English #M# is confused on this point. The sisters live in a hall.
The burden in st. 1 makes them love a miller-lad; but in 14, 15, calls
the drowned girl "the bonnie miller's-lass o Binorie."
[130] The sisters, #D#, #I#, walk by, up, a linn; #G#, go to a sand
[strand]; #Q#, go to the stream; #R a#, walk on the bryn.
[131] Swedish #H# begins, "Dear sister, come follow me to the
clapping-stone:" "Nay, I have no foul clothes." So #F# 6, 7, #G# 4, 5,
Färöe #A# 6, nearly; and then follows the suggestion that they should
wash themselves. Another of Rancken's copies begins, "Two sisters went
to the bucking-stone, to buck their clothes snow-white," #H#; and so
Rancken's #S# nearly.
[132] There are, besides the two fishermen, in Norwegian #A#, two
"twaddere," i.e., landloupers, possibly (Bugge) a corruption of the word
rendered pilgrims, Färöe vallarar, Swedish vallare. The vallarar in
these ballads are perhaps more respectable than those whose acquaintance
we shall make through the Norse versions of 'Babylon,' and may be
allowed to be harmless vagrants, but scarcely better, seeing that they
are ranked with "staff-carls" in Norges Gamle Love, cited by Cleasby and
Vigfusson at 'vallari.'
[133] A harp in the Icelandic and Norwegian ballads, Färöe #A#, #B#,
#C#, Swedish #A#, #B#, #D#, #G#, #H#; a harp in English #B#, #C#, #G#,
#J#. A harp is not named in any of the Danish versions, but a fiddle is
mentioned in #C#, #E#, #H#, is plainly meant in #A#, and may always be
intended; or perhaps _two_ fiddles in all but #H# (which has only one
fiddler), and the corrupted #G#. #D# begins with two fiddlers, but
concludes with only one. We have a fiddle in Swedish #C#, and in English
#A#, #D#, #E#, #F#, #I#, #J#, #K#, #L#, #O#, #P#; both harp and fiddle
in #H#.
[134] Some of the unprinted Norwegian ballads are not completely
described, but a departure from the rule of the major part would
probably have been alluded to.
[135] The stanza, 9, in which this is said is no doubt as to its form
entirely modern, but not so the idea. #I# has "the first spring that he
playd, _it_ said," etc.
[136] The fourth string is _said_ to speak in Färöe #A# 30, but no
utterance is recorded, and this is likely to be a mistake. In many of
the versions, and in this, after the strings have spoken individually,
they unite in a powerful but inarticulate concord.
[137] #I# has lost the terminal stanzas.
[138] Not #M#, and apparently not #D#, which ends:
When he kissed the harp upon the mouth, his heart broke.
[139] So the traitor John pushes away Catherine's hands in 'Lady Isabel
and the Elf Knight,' Polish #Q# 25 (see p. 40). In the French versions
#A#, #C#, #E# of the same, the knight catches at a branch to save
himself, and the lady cuts it off with his sword.
[140] The miller begins to lose character in #H#:
14
He dragged her out unto the shore,
And stripped her of all she wore.
[141] Neus also refers to an Esthonian saga of Rögutaja's wife, and to
'Die Pfeiferin,' a tale, in Das Inland, 1846, No 48, Beilage, col. 1246
ff, 1851, No 14, col. 230 ff; and to a Slovenian ballad in Tielemann,
Livona, ein historisch-poetisches Taschenbuch, 1812, p. 187.
[142] All these are cited in Köhler's note, Gonzenbach, II, 235.
11
THE CRUEL BROTHER
#A.# '[The] Cruel Brother, or the Bride's Testament.' #a.#
Alex. Fraser Tytler's Brown MS. #b.# Jamieson's Popular
Ballads, I, 66.
#B.# The Kinloch MSS, I, 21.
#C.# 'Ther waur three ladies,' Harris MS., p. 11 b.
#D. a.# Notes and Queries, 1st S., VI, 53. #b.# 2d S., V,
171.
#E.# Notes and Queries, 4th S., V, 105.
#F.# 'The Three Knights,' Gilbert's Ancient Christmas
Carols, 2d ed., p. 68.
#G.# 'Fine Flowers of the Valley.' #a.# Herd's MSS, I, 41.
#b.# Herd's Scottish Songs, 1776, I, 88.
#H.# Fragment appended to #G#.
#I.# The Kinloch MSS, I, 27.
#J.# As current in County Meath, Ireland, about 1860.
#K.# Notes and Queries, 4th S., IV, 517.
#A a# was obtained directly from Mrs Brown of Falkland, in 1800, by
Alexander Fraser Tytler. Jamieson says that he gives #b# verbatim from
the recitation of Mrs Arrott; but it would seem that this must have been
a slip of memory, for the two agree except in half a dozen words. #B#,
#C#, #I#, #J# are now for the first time printed. #G# only was taken
down earlier than the present century.
Aytoun remarks (1858): "This is, perhaps, the most popular of all the
Scottish ballads, being commonly recited and sung even at the present
day." The copy which he gives, I, 232, was "taken down from recitation,"
but is nevertheless a compound of #G# and #A b#, with a few unimportant
variations, proceeding, no doubt, from imperfect recollection.[143] The
copy in Dixon's Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs, p. 56, repeated in
Bell's volume of the same title, p. 50, is Gilbert's #F#. Dixon informs
us that the ballad was (in 1846) still popular amongst the peasantry in
the west of England. Cunningham gives us a piece called 'The Three
Ladies of Leithan Ha,' Songs of Scotland, II, 87, which he would fain
have us believe that he did not know he had written himself. "The common
copies of this tragic lyric," he truly says, "differ very much from
this; not so much in the story itself as in the way it is told."
All versions but #K#, which has pretty nearly lost all point, agree
after the opening stanzas. #A-E# have three ladies and only one knight;
#F# has three knights and one lady; #G#, #I#, #J#, #K# have three ladies
and three knights [lords in #G#, "bonny boys" in #I#, the first line
being caught from 'Sir Hugh.'] Three knights are to no purpose; only one
knight has anything to do. The reason for three ladies is, of course,
that the youngest may be preferred to the others,--an intention somewhat
obscured in #B#. The ladies are in colors in #B#, #C#, #I#, #J#, and
this seems to be the better interpretation in the case of #G#, though a
strict construction of the language would rather point to the other. The
colors are transferred to the knights in #F# because there is only one
lady. In #K# this is a part of the general depravation of the ballad.
'Rizzardo bello,' Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, No 83, seems to be the
same story, with a change of relations such as we often find in ballad
poetry. Rizzardo is conducting his bride home, and on the way embraces
and kisses her. Her brother witnesses "questo onore," and thrusts his
sword into the happy bridegroom's heart. Rizzardo tells his bride to
come on slowly; he will go before to make preparation. He begs his
mother to open the doors, for his bride is without, and he is wounded to
death. They try to make the bride eat. She says she can neither eat nor
drink: she must put her husband to bed. He gives her a ring, saying,
Your brother has been the death of me; then another ring, in sign that
she is to be wife of two brothers. She answers him as Guldborg answers
Ribold, that she would die rather: "Rather die between two knives than
be wife of two brothers." This ballad was obtained from a peasant woman
of Castagnero. Another version, which unfortunately is not printed, was
sung by a woman at Ostiglia on the Po.
Dr Prior remarks that the offence given by not asking a brother's assent
to his sister's marriage was in ballad-times regarded as unpardonable.
Other cases which show the importance of this preliminary, and the
sometimes fatal consequences of omitting it, are: 'Hr. Peder og
Mettelille,' Grundtvig, No 78, II, 325, sts 4, 6; 'Jomfruen i Skoven,'
Danske Viser, III, 99, st. 15; 'Jomfru Ellensborg og Hr. Olof,' ib.,
III, 316, st. 16; 'Iver Lang og hans Søster,' ib., IV, 87, st. 116;
'Herr Helmer Blaa,' ib., IV, 251, st. 8; 'Jomfru Giselmaar,' ib., IV,
309, st. 13. See Prior's Ancient Danish Ballads, III, 112, 232 f, 416.
There is a very common German ballad, 'Graf Friedrich,' in which a bride
receives a mortal wound during the bringing-home, but accidentally, and
from the bridegroom's hand. The marriage train is going up a hill; the
way is narrow; they are crowded; Graf Friedrich's sword shoots from its
sheath and wounds the bride. The bridegroom is exceedingly distressed;
he tries to stop the bleeding with his shirt; she begs that they may
ride slowly. When they reach the house there is a splendid feast, and
everything is set before the bride; but she can neither eat nor drink,
and only wishes to lie down. She dies in the night. Her father comes in
the morning, and, learning what has happened, runs Graf Friedrich
through, then drags his body at a horse's heels, and buries it in a bog.
Three lilies sprang from the spot, with an inscription announcing that
Graf Friedrich was in heaven, and a voice came from the sky commanding
that the body should be disinterred. The bridegroom was then buried with
his bride, and this act of reparation was attended with other miraculous
manifestations. As the ballads stand now, the kinship of 'Graf
Friedrich' with 'The Cruel Brother' is not close and cannot be insisted
on; still an early connection is not improbable.
The versions of 'Graf Friedrich' are somewhat numerous, and there is a
general agreement as to all essentials. They are: #A#, a Nuremberg
broadside "of about 1535," which has not been made accessible by a
reprint. #B#, a Swiss broadside of 1647, without place, "printed in
Seckendorf's Musenalmanach für 1808, p. 19;" Uhland, No 122, p. 277;
Mittler, No 108; Wunderhorn, II, 293 (1857); Erk's Liederhort, No
15^a, p. 42; Böhme, No 79, p. 166: also, in Wunderhorn, 1808, II, 289,
with omission of five stanzas and with many changes; Simrock, No 11,
p. 28, omitting four stanzas and with changes; as written down by
Goethe for Herder, Düntzer u. Herder, Briefe Goethes, u.s.w., Aus
Herder's Nachlass, I, 167, with the omission of eight stanzas and with
some variations. #C#, Wunderhorn (1857), II, 299, from the
Schwarzwald,==Erlach, IV, 291, Mittler, No 113. #D#, Taschenbuch für
Dichter, u.s.w., Theil VIII, 122, from Upper Lusatia,==Erlach, III,
448, Talvj, Charakteristik, p. 421. #E#, from the Kuhländchen,
Meinert, p. 23,==Mittler, No 109. #F#, Hoffmann u. Richter,
Schlesische V. L., No 19, p. 35,==Mittler, No 112, Erk's Liederhort,
No 15, p. 40. #G#, Zingerle, in Wolf's Zeitschrift für deutsche
Mythologie, I, 341, from Meran. #H#, from Uckermark, Brandenburg,
Mittler, No 114. #I#, Hesse, from oral tradition, Mittler, No 111.
#J#, Erk u. Irmer, II, 54, No 54, from the neighborhood of
Halle,==Mittler, No 110. #K#, from Estedt, district of Magdeburg,
Parisius, p. 31, No 9.
A Danish ballad, 'Den saarede Jomfru,' Grundtvig, No 244, IV, 474, has
this slight resemblance with 'Graf Friedrich:' While a knight is dancing
with a princess, his sword glides from the scabbard and cuts her hand.
To save her partner from blame, she represents to her father that she
had cut herself with her brother's sword. This considerateness so
touches the knight (who is, of course, her equal in rank) that he offers
her his hand. The Danish story is found also in Norwegian and in Färöe
ballads.
The peculiar testament made by the bride in 'The Cruel Brother,' by
which she bequeaths good things to her friends, but ill things to the
author of her death, is highly characteristic of ballad poetry. It will
be found again in 'Lord Ronald,' 'Edward,' and their analogues. Still
other ballads with this kind of testament are: 'Frillens Hævn,'
Grundtvig, No 208 #C#, 16-18, IV, 207; a young man, stabbed by his
leman, whom he was about to give up in order to marry, leaves his lands
to his father, his bride-bed to his sister, his gilded couch to his
mother, and his knife to his leman, wishing it in her body. 'Møen paa
Baalet,' Grundtvig, No 109 #A#, 1821, II, 587; Ole, falsely accused by
her brother, and condemned to be burned, gives her mother her silken
sark, her sister her shoes, her father her horse, and her brother her
knife, with the same wish. 'Kong Valdemar og hans Søster,' Grundtvig, No
126, III, 97, has a testament in #A-E# and #I#; in #I#, 14-19 (III,
912), Liden Kirsten bequeaths her knife, with the same imprecation, to
the queen, who, in the other copies, is her unrelenting foe: so Lillelin
to Herr Adelbrand, Danske Viser, III, 386, No 162, 16-18, Kristensen, I,
262, No 100, #A# 20-23, having been dragged at a horse's heels in
resentment of a taunt. 'Hustru og Mands Moder,' Grundtvig, No. 84, II,
404, has a testament in #A#, #B#, #D#, #H#, and in the last three a
bequest of shoes or sark to a cruel mother-in-law or foster-mother, with
the wish that she may have no peace or much pain in the wearing.
'Catarina de Lió,' Briz y Candi, Cansons de la Terra, I, 209, has been
beaten by her mother-in-law while in a delicate state. When she is at
the point of death, the mother-in-law asks what doctor she will have and
what will she will make. "My will," says Catherine, "will not please you
much. Send back my velvet dress to my father's; my gala dress give my
sister; give my working dress to the maid, my jewels to the Virgin."
"And what will you leave to me?" "What I leave you will not please you
much: my husband to be hanged, my mother-in-law to be quartered, and my
sister-in-law to be burned." 'Le Testament de Marion,' another version
of this story from the south of France, Uchaud, Gard, Poésies pop. de la
France, MS., IV, fol. 283, bequeaths "my laces to my sister Marioun, my
prettiest gowns to my sister Jeanneton; to my rascal of a husband three
fine cords, and, if that is not enough (to hang him), the hem of his
shirt." The Portuguese ballad of 'Dona Helena' rather implies than
expresses the imprecation: Braga, C.P. do Archipelago Açoriano, p. 225,
No 15, p. 227, No 16; Almeida-Garrett, III, 56; Hartung, I, 233-43, No
18. Helena leaves her husband's house when near childbirth, out of fear
of his mother. Her husband, who does not know her reason, goes after
her, and compels her to return on horseback, though she has just borne a
son. The consequences are what might be expected, and Helena desires to
make her shrift and her will. She leaves one thing to her oldest sister,
another to her youngest. "And your boy?" "To your bitch of a mother,
cause of my woes." "Rather to yours," says the husband, "for I shall
have to kill mine" (so Braga; Garrett differs somewhat). 'Die Frau zur
Weissenburg' (#A#), Uhland, p. 287, No 123 #B#, Scherer's Jungbrunnen,
p. 94, No 29; 'Das Lied von der Löwenburg' (#B#), Simrock, p. 65, No 27;
'Hans Steutlinger' (#C#), Wunderhorn, II, 168 (1857), all one story,
have a bitterly sarcastic testament. A lady instigates her paramour to
kill her husband. The betrayed man is asked to whom he will leave his
children [commit, #A#, bequeath, #B#, #C#]. "To God Almighty, for he
knows who they are." "Your property?" "To the poor, for the rich have
enough." "Your wife?" "To young Count Frederic, whom she always liked
more than me (#A#)." "Your castle?" "To the flames."
In some cases there is no trace of animosity towards the person who has
caused the testator's death; as in 'El testamento de Amelia' (who has
been poisoned by her mother), Milá, Observaciones, p. 103, No 5, Briz y
Saltó, Cansons de la Terra, II, 197 (two copies); 'Herren Båld,'
Afzelius, I, 76, No 16 (new ed. I, 59, No 15); a Swedish form of
'Frillens Hævn,' Grundtvig, IV, 203; 'Renée le Glaz' and 'Ervoanik Le
Lintier,' Luzel, C.P. de la Basse Bretagne, I, 405, 539, 553. There are
also simple testaments where there is no occasion for an ill
remembrance, as in 'Ribold og Guldborg,' Grundtvig, No 82, #I#, #K#,
#L#, #U#, #X#, #Æ#, Kristensen, II, No 84 B; 'Pontplancoat;' Luzel, I,
383, 391. And, again, there are parodies of these wills. Thus the fox
makes his will: Grundtvig, Gamle danske Minder, 1854, 'Mikkels
Arvegods,' p. 24, and p. 25 a copy from a manuscript three hundred years
old; Kristensen, Jyske Folkeviser, II, 324, No 90; 'Reven og Bjönnen,'
'Reven og Nils fiskar,' Landstad, Nos 85, 86, p. 637, 639: and the
robin, 'Robin's Tesment,' Buchan, I, 273, Herd's MSS, I, 154, and
Scottish Songs (1776), II, 166, Chambers' Popular Rhymes, p. 38, "new
edition."
* * * * *
Translated in Grundtvig's Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No 33, p. 212,
#F#, with use of #A# and #G b#; Aytoun's copy, with omissions, by Rosa
Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder der Vorzeit, No 17, p. 80; after
Allingham and others, by Knortz, Lieder und Romanzen Alt-Englands, No 5,
p. 16.
A
#a.# Alex. Fraser Tytler's Brown MS. #b.# Jamieson's
Popular Ballads, I, 66, purporting to be from the
recitation of Mrs Arrot of Aberbrothick.
1
There was three ladies playd at the ba,
With a hey ho and a lillie gay
There came a knight and played oer them a'.
As the primrose spreads so sweetly
2
The eldest was baith tall and fair,
But the youngest was beyond compare.
3
The midmost had a graceful mien,
But the youngest lookd like beautie's queen.
4
The knight bowd low to a' the three,
But to the youngest he bent his knee.
5
The ladie turned her head aside,
The knight he woo'd her to be his bride.
6
The ladie blushd a rosy red,
And sayd, 'Sir knight, I'm too young to wed.'
7
'O ladie fair, give me your hand,
And I'll make you ladie of a' my land.'
8
'Sir knight, ere ye my favor win,
You maun get consent frae a' my kin.'
9
He's got consent frae her parents dear,
And likewise frae her sisters fair.
10
He's got consent frae her kin each one,
But forgot to spiek to her brother John.
11
Now, when the wedding day was come,
The knight would take his bonny bride home.
12
And many a lord and many a knight
Came to behold that ladie bright.
13
And there was nae man that did her see,
But wishd himself bridegroom to be.
14
Her father dear led her down the stair,
And her sisters twain they kissd her there.
15
Her mother dear led her thro the closs,
And her brother John set her on her horse.
16
She leand her oer the saddle-bow,
To give him a kiss ere she did go.
17
He has taen a knife, baith lang and sharp,
And stabbd that bonny bride to the heart.
18
She hadno ridden half thro the town,
Until her heart's blude staind her gown.
19
'Ride softly on,' says the best young man,
'For I think our bonny bride looks pale and wan.'
20
'O lead me gently up yon hill,
And I'll there sit down, and make my will.'
21
'O what will you leave to your father dear?'
'The silver-shod steed that brought me here.'
22
'What will you leave to your mother dear?'
'My velvet pall and my silken gear.'
23
'What will you leave to your sister Anne?'
'My silken scarf and my gowden fan.'
24
'What will you leave to your sister Grace?'
'My bloody cloaths to wash and dress.'
25
'What will you leave to your brother John?'
'The gallows-tree to hang him on.'
26
'What will you leave to your brother John's wife?'
'The wilderness to end her life.'
27
This ladie fair in her grave was laid,
And many a mass was oer her said.
28
But it would have made your heart right sair,
To see the bridegroom rive his haire.
B
Kinloch's MSS, I, 21, from Mary Barr, May, 1827,
Clydesdale.
1
A gentleman cam oure the sea,
Fine flowers in the valley
And he has courted ladies three.
With the light green and the yellow
2
One o them was clad in red:
He asked if she wad be his bride.
3
One o them was clad in green:
He asked if she wad be his queen.
4
The last o them was clad in white:
He asked if she wad be his heart's delight.
5
'Ye may ga ask my father, the king:
Sae maun ye ask my mither, the queen.
6
'Sae maun ye ask my sister Anne:
And dinna forget my brither John.'
7
He has asked her father, the king:
And sae did he her mither, the queen.
8
And he has asked her sister Anne:
But he has forgot her brother John.
9
Her father led her through the ha,
Her mither danced afore them a'.
10
Her sister Anne led her through the closs,
Her brither John set her on her horse.
11
It's then he drew a little penknife,
And he reft the fair maid o her life.
12
'Ride up, ride up,' said the foremost man;
'I think our bride comes hooly on.'
13
'Ride up, ride up,' said the second man;
'I think our bride looks pale and wan.'
14
Up than cam the gay bridegroom,
And straucht unto the bride he cam.
15
'Does your side-saddle sit awry?
Or does your steed ...
16
'Or does the rain run in your glove?
Or wad ye chuse anither love?'
17
'The rain runs not in my glove,
Nor will I e'er chuse anither love.
18
'But O an I war at Saint Evron's well,
There I wad licht, and drink my fill!
19
'Oh an I war at Saint Evron's closs,
There I wad licht, and bait my horse!'
20
Whan she cam to Saint Evron's well,
She dought na licht to drink her fill.
21
Whan she cam to Saint Evron's closs,
The bonny bride fell aff her horse.
22
'What will ye leave to your father, the king?'
'The milk-white steed that I ride on.'
23
'What will ye leave to your mother, the queen?'
'The bluidy robes that I have on.'
24
'What will ye leave to your sister Anne?'
'My gude lord, to be wedded on.'
25
'What will ye leave to your brither John?'
'The gallows pin to hang him on.'
26
'What will ye leave to your brither's wife?'
'Grief and sorrow a' the days o her life.'
27
'What will ye leave to your brither's bairns?'
'The meal-pock to hang oure the arms.'
28
Now does she neither sigh nor groan:
She lies aneath yon marble stone.
C
Harris MS., p. 11 b, No 7.
1
There waur three ladies in a ha,
Hech hey an the lily gey
By cam a knicht, an he wooed them a'.
An the rose is aye the redder aye
2
The first ane she was cled in green;
'Will you fancy me, an be my queen?'
3
'You may seek me frae my father dear,
An frae my mither, wha did me bear.
4
'You may seek me frae my sister Anne,
But no, no, no frae my brither John.'
5
The niest ane she was cled in yellow;
'Will you fancy me, an be my marrow?'
6
'Ye may seek me frae my father dear,
An frae my mither, wha did me bear.
7
'Ye may seek me frae my sister Anne,
But no, no, no frae my brither John.'
8
The niest ane she was cled in red:
'Will ye fancy me, an be my bride?'
9
'Ye may seek me frae my father dear,
An frae my mither wha did me bear.
10
'Ye may seek me frae my sister Anne,
An dinna forget my brither John.'
11
He socht her frae her father, the king,
An he socht her frae her mither, the queen.
12
He socht her frae her sister Anne,
But he forgot her brither John.
13
Her mither she put on her goun,
An her sister Anne preened the ribbons doun.
14
Her father led her doon the close,
An her brither John set her on her horse.
* * * * * * *
15
Up an spak our foremost man:
'I think our bonnie bride's pale an wan.'
* * * * * * *
16
'What will ye leave to your father dear?'
'My ... an my ... chair.'
17
'What will ye leave to your mither dear?'
'My silken screen I was wont to wear.'
18
'What will ye leave to your sister Anne?'
'My silken snood an my golden fan.'
19
'What will you leave to your brither John?'
'The gallows tree to hang him on.'
D
Notes and Queries, 1st S., VI, 53, 2d S., V, 171. As sung
by a lady who was a native of County Kerry, Ireland.
1
There were three ladies playing at ball,
Farin-dan-dan and farin-dan-dee
There came a white knight, and he wooed them all.
With adieu, sweet honey, wherever you be
2
He courted the eldest with golden rings,
And the others with many fine things.
And adieu, etc.
E
Notes and Queries, 4th S., V, 105. From Forfarshire, W.F.
There were three sisters playin at the ba,
Wi a hech hey an a lillie gay
There cam a knicht an lookt ower the wa'.
An the primrose springs sae sweetly.
Sing Annet, an Marret, an fair Maisrie,
An the dew hangs i the wood, gay ladie.
F
Gilbert's Ancient Christmas Carols, 2d ed., p. 68, as
remembered by the editor. West of England.
1
There did three knights come from the west,
With the high and the lily oh
And these three knights courted one lady.
As the rose was so sweetly blown
2
The first knight came was all in white,
And asked of her, if she'd be his delight.
3
The next knight came was all in green,
And asked of her, if she'd be his queen.
4
The third knight came was all in red,
And asked of her, if she would wed.
5
'Then have you asked of my father dear,
Likewise of her who did me bear?
6
'And have you asked of my brother John?
And also of my sister Anne?'
7
'Yes, I have asked of your father dear,
Likewise of her who did you bear.
8
'And I have asked of your sister Anne,
But I've not asked of your brother John.'
9
Far on the road as they rode along,
There did they meet with her brother John.
10
She stooped low to kiss him sweet,
He to her heart did a dagger meet.
11
'Ride on, ride on,' cried the serving man,
'Methinks your bride she looks wondrous wan.'
12
'I wish I were on yonder stile,
For there I would sit and bleed awhile.
13
'I wish I were on yonder hill,
There I'd alight and make my will.'
14
'What would you give to your father dear?'
'The gallant steed which doth me bear.'
15
'What would you give to your mother dear?'
'My wedding shift which I do wear.
16
'But she must wash it very clean,
For my heart's blood sticks in evry seam.'
17
'What would you give to your sister Anne?'
'My gay gold ring and my feathered fan.'
18
'What would you give to your brother John?'
'A rope and gallows to hang him on.'
19
'What would you give to your brother John's wife?'
'A widow's weeds, and a quiet life.'
G
#a.# Herd's MSS, I, 41. #b.# Herd's Scottish Songs, 1776,
I, 88.
1
There was three ladys in a ha,
Fine flowers i the valley
There came three lords amang them a',
Wi the red, green, and the yellow
2
The first of them was clad in red:
'O lady fair, will you be my bride?'
3
The second of them was clad in green:
'O lady fair, will you be my queen?'
4
The third of them was clad in yellow:
'O lady fair, will you be my marrow?'
5
'You must ask my father dear,
Likewise the mother that did me bear.'
6
'You must ask my sister Ann,
And not forget my brother John,'
7
'I have askt thy father dear,
Likewise thy mother that did thee bear.
8
'I have askt thy sister Ann,
But I forgot thy brother John.'
9
Her father led her through the ha,
Her mother dancd before them a'.
10
Her sister Ann led her through the closs,
Her brother John put her on her horse.
11
'You are high and I am low;
Let me have a kiss before you go.'
12
She was louting down to kiss him sweet,
Wi his penknife he wounded her deep.
* * * * * * *
13
'O lead me over into yon stile,
That I may stop and breath a while.
14
'O lead me over to yon stair,
For there I'll ly and bleed ne mair.'
15
'O what will you leave your father dear?'
'That milk-white steed that brought me here.'
16
'O what will you leave your mother dear?'
'The silken gown that I did wear.'
17
'What will you leave your sister Ann?'
'My silken snood and golden fan.'
18
'What will you leave your brother John?'
'The highest gallows to hang him on.'
19
'What will you leave your brother John's wife?'
'Grief and sorrow to end her life.'
20
'What will ye leave your brother John's bairns?'
'The world wide for them to range.'
H
Herd's MSS, I, 44, II, 75; Scottish Songs, 1776, I, 90;
appended to #G#.
She louted down to gie a kiss,
With a hey and a lilly gay
He stuck his penknife in her hass.
And the rose it smells so sweetly
'Ride up, ride up,' cry'd the foremost man;
'I think our bride looks pale and wan.'
I
Kinloch's MSS, I, 27. From Mrs Bouchart, an old lady
native of Forfarshire.
1
There war three bonnie boys playing at the ba,
Hech hey and a lily gay
There cam three ladies to view them a'.
And the rose it smells sae sweetlie
2
The first ane was clad in red:
'O,' says he, 'ye maun be my bride.'
3
The next o them was clad in green:
'O,' says he, 'ye maun be my queen.'
4
The tither o them was clad in yellow:
'O,' says he, 'ye maun be my marrow.'
5
'Ye maun gang to my father's bouer,
To see gin your bride he'll let me be.'
6
Her father led her doun the stair,
Her mither at her back did bear.
7
Her sister Jess led her out the closs,
Her brother John set her on the horse.
8
She loutit doun to gie him a kiss;
He struck his penknife thro her breist.
9
'Ride on, ride on,' says the foremaist man;
'I think our bride looks pale and wan.'
10
'Ride on, ride on,' says the merry bridegroom;
'I think my bride's blude is rinnin doun.'
11
'O gin I war at yon bonnie hill,
I wad lie doun and bleed my fill!
12
'O gin I war at yon bonnie kirk-yard,
I wad mak my testament there!'
13
'What will ye leave to your father dear?'
'The milk-white steed that brocht me here.'
14
'What will ye leave to your mother dear?'
'The bluidy robes that I do wear.'
15
'What will ye leave to your sister Ann?'
'My silken snood and gowden fan.'
16
'What will ye leave to your sister Jess?'
'The bonnie lad that I loe best.'
17
'What will ye leave to your brother John?'
'The gallows pin to hang him on.'
18
'What will ye leave to your brother John's wife?'
'Sorrow and trouble a' her life.'
19
'What will ye leave to your brother's bairns?'
'The warld's wide, and let them beg.'
J
From Miss Margaret Reburn, as current in County Meath,
Ireland, about 1860.
1
There were three sisters playing ball,
With the high and the lily O
And there came three knights to court them all.
With the rosey sweet, heigh ho
2
The eldest of them was drest in green:
'I wish I had you to be my queen.'
3
The second of them was drest in red:
'I wish I had you to grace my bed.'
4
The youngest of them was drest in white:
'I wish I had you to be my wife.'
5
'Did ye ask my father brave?
Or did ye ask my mother fair?
6
'Or did ye ask my brother John?
For without his will I dare not move on.'
7
'I did ask your parents dear,
But I did not see your brother John.'
* * * * * * *
8
'Ride on, ride on,' said the first man,
'For I fear the bride comes slowly on.'
9
'Ride on, ride on,' said the next man,
'For lo! the bride she comes bleeding on.'
* * * * * * *
10
'What will you leave your mother dear?'
'My heart's best love for ever and aye.'
11
'What will ye leave your sister Anne?'
'This wedding garment that I have on.'
12
'What will ye leave your brother John's wife?'
'Grief and sorrow all the days of her life.'
13
'What will ye leave your brother John?'
'The highest gallows to hang him on.'
14
'What will ye leave your brother John's son?'
'The grace of God to make him a man.'
K
Notes and Queries, 4th S., IV, 517, as "sung in Cheshire
amongst the people" in the last century. T. W.
1
There were three ladies playing at ball,
Gilliver, Gentle, and Rosemary
There came three knights and looked over the wall.
Sing O the red rose and the white lilly
2
The first young knight, he was clothed in red,
And he said, 'Gentle lady, with me will you wed?'
3
The second young knight, he was clothed in blue,
And he said, 'To my love I shall ever be true.'
4
The third young knight, he was clothed in green,
And he said, 'Fairest maiden, will you be my queen?'
5
The lady thus spoke to the knight in red,
'With you, sir knight, I never can wed.'
6
The lady then spoke to the knight in blue,
And she said, 'Little faith I can have in you.'
7
The lady then spoke to the knight in green,
And she said, ''T is at court you must seek for a queen.'
8
The three young knights then rode away,
And the ladies they laughed, and went back to their play.
Singing, etc.
* * * * *
#A. b.#
6^2. oer young.
10^2. spear at.
17^2. the bonny.
19^1. said.
23^1. And what will ye.
25^1. This fair lady.
25^2. And a mass.
_Variations of Aytoun's copy, sts. 9-13, 16, 17, 20-24:
11^1 omits ~And~; 12^1, 13^1 omit ~dear~; 13^2 omits
~And~; 16^1, ~through half~ for ~half thro~; 17^2 omits
~For, bonny~; 21^2, ~pearlin~ for ~silken~; 22^1 omits
~And~; 22^2, ~My silken gown that stands its lane~; 23^2,
~shirt~ for ~cloaths~; 24^1, ~And what~; 24^2, ~The gates
o hell to let him in~._
#B.#
"I have seen a fragment of another copy in which [the
burden is]
The red rose and the lily
And the roses spring fu sweetly." _Kinloch_, p. 19.
#F.#
9^1. For on the road.
#G. a.#
1. _Burden^2. ~The red, green~, etc.: afterwards, ~Wi the
red~, etc._
2^2. _MS. also_, He askt of me if I'd be his bride.
3^2. _MS. also_, He askt of me if I'd be his queen.
4^2. _MS. also_, He askt me if I'd be his marrow.
15^2. _MS. also_, The gold and silver that I have here.
16^2. _MS. also_, The silken garment.
17^2. _MS. also_, My satine hat.
20^2, _MS. also_, The world wide, let them go beg.
#b.#
7^2. the mother.
#b.#
14^1. into yon stair.
_Variations of Aytoun's copy, sts. 1-8, 14, 15, 18, 19
from Herd, 1776_: 1^1, three sisters; 2^2, 3^2, 4^2 _omit_
fair; 5^1, O ye maun; 6^1, And ye; 7^1, O I have; 8^1, And
I have ask'd your sister; 8^2, your brother; 14^2, Give me
a kiss; 15^2, When wi his knife.
#H.#
"I have heard this song, to a very good tune not in any
collection, with the above variations--the chorus, of the
whole as in the above two verses." _Herd's note in his
MSS._
[143] Aytoun, 1-8==Herd, 1776, 1-8: 9-13==Jamieson, 11-15: 14, 15==Herd,
11, 12: 16, 17==Jamieson, 18, 19: 18, 19==Herd, 13, 14: 20-24==Jamieson,
21-25.
12
LORD RANDAL
#A.# From a manuscript copy, probably of the beginning of
this century.
#B.# 'Lord Donald,' Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p.
110.
#C.# Motherwell's MS., p. 69.
#D.# Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1803, III, 292.
#E.# Halliwell's Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales, p. 261.
#F.# 'Lord Ronald, my Son,' Johnson's Museum, No 327, p.
337.
#G.# Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 319.
#H.# From recitation, 1881.
#I.# 'Tiranti, my Son.' #a.# Communicated by a lady of
Boston, #b.# By an aunt of the same. #c.# By a lady of New
Bedford. #d.# By a lady of Cambridge. #e#, #f#, #g#. By
ladies of Boston.
#J.# 'The Bonnie Wee Croodlin Dow,' Motherwell's MS., p.
238.
#K. a.# 'The Croodlin Doo,' Chambers, Scottish Ballads, p.
324. #b.# 'The Wee Croodlen Doo,' Chambers, Popular
Rhymes, 1842, p. 53. #c.# Johnson's Museum, by Stenhouse
and Laing, IV, 364*.
#L.# 'Willie Doo,' Buchan's MSS, II, 322, and Ballads, II,
179.
#M.# 'The Croodin Doo,' Chambers, Popular Rhymes, 1870, p.
51.
#N.# Kinloch MSS, V, 347.
#O.# 'The Croodlin Doo.' From a manuscript belonging to
the Fraser-Tytler family.
The title 'Lord Randal' is selected for this ballad because that name
occurs in one of the better versions, and because it has become familiar
through Scott's Minstrelsy. Scott says that the hero was more generally
termed Lord Ronald: but in the versions that have come down to us this
is not so. None of these can be traced back further than a century. #F#
and #D# were the earliest published. Jamieson remarks with respect to
#G# (1814): "An English gentleman, who had never paid any attention to
ballads, nor ever read a collection of such things, told me that when a
child he learnt from a playmate of his own age, the daughter of a
clergyman in Suffolk, the following imperfect ditty." #I#, a version
current in eastern Massachusetts, may be carried as far back as any.
#a#, #b# derive from Elizabeth Foster, whose parents, both natives of
eastern Massachusetts, settled, after their marriage, in Maine, where
she was born in 1789. Elizabeth Foster's mother is remembered to have
sung the ballad, and I am informed that the daughter must have learned
it not long after 1789, since she was removed in her childhood from
Maine to Massachusetts, and continued there till her death. 'Tiranti'
['Taranti'] may not improbably be a corruption of Lord Randal.
The copy in Smith's Scottish Minstrel, III, 58, is Scott's altered. The
first four stanzas are from the Border Minstrelsy, except the last line
of the fourth, which is from Johnson's Museum. The last two stanzas are
a poor modern invention.
Three stanzas which are found in #A#. Cunningham's Scottish Songs, I,
286 f, may be given for what they are worth. 'The house of Marr,' in the
first, is not to be accepted on the simple ground of its appearance in
his pages. The second is inserted in his beautified edition of Scott's
ballad, and has its burden accordingly; but there is, besides this, no
internal evidence against the second, and none against the third.
'O where have you been, Lord Ronald, my son?
O where have you been, my handsome young man?'
'At the house of Marr, mother, so make my bed soon,
For I'm wearied with hunting, and fain would lie down.'
'O where did she find them, Lord Randal, my son?
O where did she catch them, my handsome young man?'
'Neath the bush of brown bracken, so make my bed soon,
For I'm wae and I'm weary, and fain would lie down.'
'O what got your bloodhounds, Lord Ronald, my son?
O what got your bloodhounds, my handsome young man?'
'They lapt the broo, mother, so make my bed soon,
I am wearied with hunting, and fain would lie down.'
A pot-pourri or quodlibet, reprinted in Wolff's Egeria, p. 53, from a
Veronese broadside of the date 1629, shows that this ballad was popular
in #Italy# more than 250 years ago; for the last but one of the
fragments which make up the medley happens to be the first three lines
of 'L'Avvelenato,' very nearly as they are sung at the present day, and
these are introduced by a summary of the story:
"Io vo' finire con questa _d'un amante
Tradito dall' amata._
Oh che l'è sì garbata
A cantarla in ischiera:
_'Dov' andastu iersera,
Figliuol mio ricco, savio e gentile?
Dov' andastu iersera'?_"[144]
The ballad was first recovered in 1865, by Dr G. B. Bolza, who took it
down from the singing of very young girls at Loveno. Since then good
copies have been found at Venice. #A#, 'L'Avvelenato,' Bolza, Canzoni
popolari comasche, No 49, Sitzungsberichte of the Vienna Academy
(philos. histor. class), LIII, 668, is of seventeen stanzas, of seven
short lines, all of which repeat but two: the 8th and 10th stanzas are
imperfect.[145] A mother inquires of her son where he has been. He has
been at his mistress's, where he has eaten part of an eel; the rest was
given to a dog, that died in the street. The mother declares that he has
been poisoned. He bids her send for the doctor to see him, for the
curate to shrive him, for the notary to make his will. He leaves his
mother his palace, his brothers his carriage and horses, his sisters a
dowry, his servants a free passage to mass ("la strada d'andà a messa" #
nothing), a hundred and fifty masses for his soul; for his mistress the
gallows to hang her. #B#, #C#, 'L'Avvelenato,' Bernoni, Nuovi Canti
popolari veneziani, 1874, No 1, p. 5, p. 3, have twelve and eighteen
four-line stanzas, the questions and answers in successive stanzas, and
the last three lines of the first pair repeated respectively
throughout.[146] #B#, which is given as a variant of #C#, agrees with
#A# as to the agent in the young man's death. It is his mistress in #B#,
but in #C# it is his mother. In both, as in #A#, he has eaten of an eel.
The head he gave to the dogs, the tail to the cats (#C#). He leaves to
his stewards (castaldi) his carriages and horses (#C#); to his herdsmen
his cows and fields; to the maids his chamber furnishings; to his sister
the bare privilege of going to mass (#C#, as in #A#); to his mother
[wife, #C#] the keys of his treasure. "La forca per picarla" is in #B#
as in #A# the bequest to his false love, instead of whom we have his
mother in #C#.
The corresponding #German# ballad has been known to the English for two
generations through Jamieson's translation. The several versions, all
from oral tradition of this century, show the same resemblances and
differences as the English.
#A#, #B#, 'Schlangenköchin,' eight stanzas of six lines, four of which
are burden, #A#, Liederhort, p. 6, No 2^a, from the neighborhood of
Wilsnack, Brandenburg, #B#, Peter, I, 187, No 6, from Weidenau, Austrian
Silesia, run thus: Henry tells his mother that he has been at his
sweetheart's (but not a-hunting); has had a speckled fish to eat, part
of which was given to the dog [cat, #B#], which burst. Henry wishes his
father and mother all blessings, and hell-pains to his love, #A# 6-8.
His mother, #B# 8, asks where she shall make his bed: he replies, In the
church-yard. #C#, 'Grossmutter Schlangenköchin,' first published in
1802, in Maria's (Clemens Brentano's) romance Godwi, II, 113, afterward
in the Wunderhorn, I, 19 (ed. 1819, I, 20, ed. 1857), has fourteen
two-line stanzas, or seven of four lines, one half burden. The copy in
Zuccalmaglio, p. 217, No 104, "from Hesse and North Germany," is the
same thing with another line of burden intercalated and two or three
slight changes. Maria has been at her grandmother's, who gave her a fish
to eat which she had caught in her kitchen garden; the dog ate the
leavings, and his belly burst. The conclusion agrees with #B#, neither
having the testament. #D#, 'Stiefmutter,' seven stanzas of four short
lines, two being burden, Uhland, No 120, p. 272; excepting one slight
variation, the same as Liederhort, p. 5, No 2, from the vicinity of
Bückeburg, Lippe-Schaumburg. A child has been at her mother's sister's
house, where she has had a well-peppered broth and a glass of red wine.
The dogs [and cats] had some broth too, and died on the spot. The child
wishes its father a seat in heaven, for its mother one in hell. #E#,
'Kind, wo bist du denn henne west?' Reiffenberg, p. 8, No 4, from
Bökendorf, Westphalia, four stanzas of six lines, combining question and
answer, two of the six burden. A child has been at its step-aunt's, and
has had a bit of a fish caught in the nettles along the wall. The child
gives all its goods to its brother, its clothes to its sister, but three
devils to its [step-]mother. #F#, 'Das vergiftete kind,' seven four-line
stanzas, two burden, Schuster, Siebenbürgisch-sächsische V. L., p. 62,
No 58, from Mühlbach. A child tells its father that its heart is
bursting; it has eaten of a fish, given it by its mother, which the
father declares to be an adder. The child wishes its father a seat in
heaven, its mother one in hell.
#A#, #B# are nearer to 'Lord Randal,' and have even the name Henry which
we find in English #C#. #C-F# are like #J-O#, 'The Croodlin Doo.'
#Dutch.# 'Isabelle,' Snellaert, p. 73, No 67, seven four-line stanzas,
the first and fourth lines repeated in each. Isabel has been sewing at
her aunt's, and has eaten of a fish with yellow stripes that had been
caught with tongs in the cellar. The broth, poured into the street,
caused the dogs to burst. She wishes her aunt a red-hot furnace, herself
a spade to bury her, her brother a wife like his mother.
#Swedish.# #A#, 'Den lillas Testamente,' ten five-line stanzas, three
lines burden, Afzelius, III, 13, No 68; ed. Bergström, I, 291, No 55. A
girl, interrogated by her step-mother, says she has been at her aunt's,
and has eaten two wee striped fishes. The bones she gave the dog; the
stanza which should describe the effect is wanting. She wishes heaven
for her father and mother, a ship for her brother, a jewel-box and
chests for her sister, and hell for her step-mother and her nurse. #B#,
Arwidsson, II, 90, No 88, nine five-line stanzas, two lines burden. In
the first stanza, evidently corrupt, the girl says she has been at her
brother's. She has had eels cooked with pepper, and the bones, given to
the dogs, made them burst. She gives her father good corn in his barns,
her brother and sister a ship, etc., hell to her step-mother and nurse.
#Danish.# Communicated by Prof. Grundtvig, as obtained for the first
time from tradition in 1877; five stanzas of five lines, three lines
repeating. Elselille, in answer to her mother, says she has been in the
meadow, where she got twelve small snakes. She wishes heavenly joy to
her father, a grave to her brother, hell torment to her sister.
#Magyar.# 'Der vergiftete Knabe,' Aigner, Ungarische Volksdichtungen,
2^e Auflage, p. 127, in nine six-line stanzas, four being a burden.
Johnnie, in answer to his mother, says he has been at his
sister-in-law's, and has eaten a speckled toad, served on her handsomest
plate, of which he is dying. He bequeaths to his father his best
carriage, to his brothers his finest horses, to his sister his house
furniture, to his sister-in-law everlasting damnation, to his mother
pain and sorrow.
#Wendish.# 'Der vergiftete Knabe,' Haupt u. Schmaler, I, 110, No 77,
twelve four-line stanzas, combining question and answer, the first and
last line repeating. Henry has been at the neighbor's, has eaten part of
a fish caught in the stable with a dung-fork; his dog ate the rest, and
burst. There is no testament. His mother asks him where she shall make
his bed; he replies, In the churchyard; turn my head westward, and cover
me with green turf.
The numerous forms of this story show a general agreement, with but
little difference except as to the persons who are the object and the
agent of the crime. These are, according to the Italian
tradition,--which is 250 years old, while no other goes back more than a
hundred years, and far the larger part have been obtained in recent
years,--a young man and his true-love; and in this account unite two of
the three modern Italian versions, English #A-G#, German #A#, #B#. Scott
suggests that the handsome young sportsman (whom we find in English #A#,
#C#, #D#, #E#, #F#, #H#) may have been exchanged for a little child
poisoned by a step-mother, to excite greater interest in the nursery.
This seems very reasonable. What girl with a lover, singing the ballad,
would not be tempted to put off the treacherous act on so popular,
though most unjustly popular, an object of aversion? A mother, again,
would scarcely allow "mother" to stand, as is the case in Italian #C#
and German #F#, and a singer who considered that all blood relations
should be treated as sacred would ascribe the wickedness to somebody
beyond that pale, say a neighbor, as the Wendish ballad does, and
Zuccalmaglio's reading of German #C#. The step-mother is expressly named
only in English #J#, #K c#, #L#, #M#, #N#, #O#, and in four of these,
#J#, #K c#, #M#, #O#, the child has a mammie,[147] which certainly
proves an _alibi_ for the step-mother, and confirms what Scott says.
There is a step-aunt in German #E# and Swedish #A#, and the aunt in
German #D# and the Dutch ballad, and the grandmother in English #I#, #K
a#, #b#, German #C#, are perhaps meant (as the brother in Swedish #B#
certainly is) to be step-relations and accommodating instruments.
The poisoning is shifted to a wife in English #H#, to an uncle in
English #I d#, and to a sister-in-law in the Magyar version.
There is all but universal consent that the poisoning was done by
serving up snakes for fish. The Magyar says a toad, English #M# a
four-footed fish,[148] German #D# a well-peppered broth and a glass of
red wine. English #L# adds a drink of hemlock stocks to the speckled
trout; #F#, #H# have simply poison. The fish are distinctively eels in
the Italian versions, and in English #A#, #D#, #E#, #G#, #I#, Swedish
#B#. English #A#, #J#, #K#, #M#, #N#, #O#, German #A-D#, the Italian,
Swedish, Dutch, Wendish versions, and by implication English #C#, #D#,
#E# also, concur in saying that a part of the fish was given to a dog
[dogs, cat, cats], and that death was the consequence. Bursting or
swelling is characteristic of this kind of poisoning: German #A#, #B#,
#C#, #F#, English #D#, #E#, and the Dutch and Wendish versions.
The dying youth or child in many cases makes a nuncupative will, or
declares his last wishes, upon a suggestion proceeding from the person
who is by him, commonly from the mother: English #A#, #B#, #C#, #H#,
#I#: German #A#, #D#, #E#, #F#: the Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish,
Magyar versions. The bequest to the poisoner is the gallows in English
#B#, #C#, #H#, #I#, Italian #A#, #B#, #C#; hell, English #A#, German
#A#, #D#, #F#, Swedish #A#, #B#, Danish; and an equivalent in German
#E#, the Dutch and the Magyar copy. 'The Cruel Brother,' No 11, and
'Edward,' No 13, have a will of this same fashion.
In all the English versions the burden has the entreaty "Make my bed,"
and this is addressed to the mother in all but #L#, #N#. In #H#, an
Irish copy, and #I#, an American one, the mother asks where the bed
shall be made; and the answer is, In the churchyard. This feature is
found again in German #B#, #C# and in the Wendish version.
The resemblance in the form of the stanza in all the versions deserves a
word of remark. For the most part, the narrative proceeds in sections of
two short lines, or rather half lines, which are a question and an
answer, the rest of the stanza being regularly repeated. English #L#,
#N#, as written (#L# not always), separate the question and answer; this
is done, too, in Italian #B#, #C#. German #E#, on the contrary, has two
questions and the answers in each stanza, and is altogether peculiar.
Swedish #B# varies the burden in part, imagining father, brother,
sister, etc., to ask what the little girl will give to each, and
adapting the reply accordingly, "Faderen min," "Broderen min."
A Bohemian and a Catalan ballad which have two of the three principal
traits of the foregoing, the poisoning and the testament, do not
exhibit, perhaps have lost, the third, the employment of snakes.
The story of the first is that a mother who dislikes the wife her son
has chosen attempts to poison her at the wedding feast. She sets a glass
of honey before the son, a glass of poison before the bride. They
exchange cups. The poison is swift. The young man leaves four horses to
his brother, eight cows to his sister, his fine house to his wife. "And
what to me, my son?" asks the mother. A broad mill-stone and the deep
Moldau is the bequest to her. Waldau, Böhmische Granaten, II, 109, cited
by Reifferscheid, p. 137 f.
The Catalan ballad seems to have been softened at the end. Here again a
mother hates her daughter-in-law. She comes to the sick woman, "com qui
no 'n sabès res," and asks What is the matter? The daughter says, You
have poisoned me. The mother exhorts her to confess and receive the
sacrament, and then make her will. She gives her castles in France to
the poor and the pilgrims [and the friars], and to her brother Don
Carlos [who, in one version is her husband]. Two of the versions
remember the Virgin. "And to me?" "To you, my husband [my cloak,
rosary], that when you go to mass you may remember me." In one version
the mother asks the dying woman where she will be buried. She says At
Saint Mary's. Milà, Observaciones, p. 103 f, No 5, two versions: Briz y
Saltó, II, 197 f, two also, the first nearly the same as Milà's first.
Poisoning by giving a snake as food, or by infusing the venom in drink,
is an incident in several other popular ballads.
Donna Lombarda attempts, at the instigation of a lover, to rid herself
of her husband by pounding a serpent, or its head, in a mortar, and
mixing the juice with his wine [in one version simply killing the snake
and putting it in a cask]: Nigra, Canzoni del Piemonti, in Rivista
Contemporanea, XII, 32 ff, four versions; Marcoaldi, p. 177, No 20;
Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, p. 46, No 72; Righi, Canti popolari
veronesi, p. 37, No 100*; Ferraro, C. p. monferrini, p. 1, No 1;
Bernoni, C. p. veneziani, Puntata V, No 1. In three of Nigra's versions
and in Ferraro's the drink is offered when the husband returns from
hunting. The husband, rendered suspicious by the look of the wine, or
warned of his danger, forces his wife to drink first. So in a northern
ballad, a mother who attempts to destroy her sons [step-sons] with a
brewage of this description is obliged to drink first, and bursts with
the poison: 'Eiturbyrlunar kvæði,' Íslenzk Fornkv., II, 79, No 43 A;
'Fru Gundela,' Arwidsson, II, 92, No 89; 'Signelill aa hennes synir,'
Bugge, p. 95, No XX, the last half.
In one of the commonest Slavic ballads, a girl, who finds her brother an
obstacle to her desires, poisons him, at the instigation and under the
instruction of the man she fancies, or of her own motion, by giving him
a snake to eat, or the virus in drink. The object of her passion, on
being informed of what she has done, casts her off, for fear of her
doing the like to him. Bohemian: 'Sestra travička,' Erben, P. n. w
Čechách, 1842, I, 9, No 2, Prostonárodni české P., 1864, p. 477,
No 13; Swoboda, Sbírka č. n. P., p. 19; German translations by
Swoboda, by Wenzig, W. s. Märchenschatz, p. 263, I. v. Düringsfeld,
Böhmische Rosen, p. 176, etc. Moravian: Sušil, p. 167, No 168.
Slovak, Čelakowsky, Slowanské n. P., III, 76. Polish: Kolberg, P. L.
p., I, 115, No 8, some twenty versions; Wojcicki, P. L.
białochrobatow, etc., I, 71, 73, 232, 289; Pauli, P. L. polskiego, p.
81, 82: Konopka, P. L. krakowskiego, p. 125. Servian: Vuk, I, 215, No
302, translated by Talvj, II, 192, and by Kapper, Gesänge der Serben,
II, 177. Russian: Čelakowsky, as above, III, 108. Etc. The attempt is
made, but unsuccessfully, in Sacharof, P. russkago N., IV, 7.
A version given by De Rada, Rapsodie d'un poema albanese, p. 78, canto
x, resembles the Slavic, with a touch of the Italian. A man incites a
girl to poison her brother by pounding the poison out of a serpent's
head and tail and mixing it with wine.
In a widely spread Romaic ballad, a mother poisons the bride whom her
son has just brought home,--an orphan girl in some versions, but in one
a king's daughter wedding a king's son. The cooks who are preparing the
feast are made to cook for the bride the heads of three snakes [nine
snakes' heads, a three-headed snake, winged snakes and two-headed
adders]. In two Epirote versions the poisoned girl bursts with the
effects. "Τα κακα πεθερικα," Passow, p. 335, No 456,
nearly==Zambelios, p. 753, No 41; Passow, p. 337, No 457; Tommaseo,
Canti popolari, III, 135; Jeannaraki, p. 127, No 130[149]; Chasiotis
(Epirote), p. 51, No 40, "Ἡ βουργαροπουλα και ἡ κακη πεθερα·"
p. 103, No 22, "Ὁ Διονυς και ἡ κακη πεθερα." (Liebrecht,
Volkskunde, p. 214.)
An Italian mother-in-law undertakes to poison her son's wife with a
snake-potion. The wife, on her husband's return from the chase,
innocently proposes to share the drink with him. Her husband no sooner
has tasted than he falls dead. (Kaden, Italien's Wunderhorn, p. 85).
Scott cites in his preface to 'Lord Randal' a passage from a MS.
chronicle of England, in which the death of King John is described as
being brought about by administering to him the venom of a toad (cf. the
Magyar ballad). The symptoms--swelling and rupture--are found in the
Scandinavian and Epirote ballads referred to above, besides those
previously noticed (p. 155). King John had asked a monk at the abbey of
Swinshed how much a loaf on the table was worth. The monk answered a
half-penny. The king said that if he could bring it about, such a loaf
should be worth twenty pence ere half a year. The monk thought he would
rather die than that this should come to pass. "And anon the monk went
unto his abbot and was shrived of him, and told the abbot all that the
king said, and prayed his abbot to assoil him, for he would give the
king such a wassail that all England should be glad and joyful thereof.
Then went the monk into a garden, and found a toad therein, and took her
up, and put her in a cup, and filled it with good ale, and pricked her
in every place, in the cup, till the venom came out in every place, and
brought it before the king, and kneeled, and said: 'Sir, wassail: for
never in your life drank ye of such a cup.' 'Begin, monk,' said the
king: and the monk drank a great draught, and took the king the cup, and
the king also drank a great draught, and set down the cup. The monk anon
went to the firmary, and there died anon, on whose soul God have mercy,
amen. And five monks sing for his soul especially, and shall while the
abbey standeth. The king was anon full evil at ease, and commanded to
remove the table, and asked after the monk; and men told him that he was
dead, for his womb was broke in sunder. When the king heard this tiding,
he commanded for to truss: but all it was for nought, for his belly
began to swell from the drink that he drank, that he died within two
days, the morrow after Saint Luke's day." Minstrelsy, III, 287 f. The
same story in Eulogium Historiarum, ed. Haydon, III, 109 f.
* * * * *
#B# and #K c# are translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske
Folkeviser, p. 284, 286. #D#, by W. Grimm, 3 Altschottische Lieder, p.
3; by Schubart, p. 177; Arndt, p. 229; Doenniges, p. 79; Gerhardt, p.
83; Knortz, L. u. R. Alt-Englands, p. 174. #K a# by Fiedler, Geschichte
der volksthümlichen schottischen Liederdichtung, II, 268. German #C# is
translated by Jamieson, Illustrations, p. 320: Swedish #A# by W. and M.
Howitt, Literature and Romance of Northern Europe, I, 265.
A
From a small manuscript volume lent me by Mr William
Macmath, of Edinburgh, containing four pieces written in
or about 1710, and this ballad in a later hand. Charles
Mackie, August, 1808, is scratched upon the binding.
1
'O where ha you been, Lord Randal, my son?
And where ha you been, my handsome young man?'
'I ha been at the greenwood; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie down.'
2
'An wha met ye there, Lord Randal, my son?
An wha met you there, my handsome young man?'
'O I met wi my true-love; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi huntin, an fain wad lie down.'
3
'And what did she give you, Lord Randal, my son?
And what did she give you, my handsome young man?'
'Eels fried in a pan; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi huntin, and fain wad lie down.'
4
'And wha gat your leavins, Lord Randal, my son?
And wha gat your leavins, my handsom young man?'
'My hawks and my hounds; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi hunting, and fain wad lie down.'
5
'And what becam of them, Lord Randal, my son?
And what becam of them, my handsome young man?'
'They stretched their legs out an died; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm wearied wi huntin, and fain wad lie down.'
6
'O I fear you are poisoned, Lord Randal, my son!
I fear you are poisoned, my handsome young man!'
'O yes, I am poisoned; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.'
7
'What d' ye leave to your mother, Lord Randal, my son?
What d' ye leave to your mother, my handsome young man?'
'Four and twenty milk kye; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.'
8
'What d' ye leave to your sister, Lord Randal, my son?
What d' ye leave to your sister, my handsome young man?'
'My gold and my silver; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, an I fain wad lie down.'
9
'What d' ye leave to your brother, Lord Randal, my son?
What d' ye leave to your brother, my handsome young man?'
'My houses and my lands; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.'
10
'What d' ye leave to your true-love, Lord Randal, my son?
What d' ye leave to your true-love, my handsome young man?'
'I leave her hell and fire; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie down.'
B
Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 110. From Mrs
Comie, Aberdeen.
1
'O whare hae ye been a' day, Lord Donald, my son?
O whare hae ye been a' day, my jollie young man?'
'I've been awa courtin; mither, mak my bed sune,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie doun.'
2
'What wad ye hae for your supper, Lord Donald, my son?
What wad ye hae for your supper, my jollie young man?'
'I've gotten my supper; mither, mak my bed sune,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie doun.'
3
'What did ye get for your supper, Lord Donald, my son?
What did ye get for your supper, my jollie young man?'
'A dish of sma fishes; mither mak my bed sune,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie doun.'
4
'Whare gat ye the fishes, Lord Donald, my son?
Whare gat ye the fishes, my jollie young man?'
'In my father's black ditches; mither, mak my bed sune,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie doun.'
5
'What like were your fishes, Lord Donald, my son?
What like were your fishes, my jollie young man?'
'Black backs and spreckld bellies; mither, mak my bed sune,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie doun.'
6
'O I fear ye are poisond, Lord Donald, my son!
O I fear ye are poisond, my jollie young man!'
'O yes! I am poisond; mither mak my bed sune,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie doun.'
7
'What will ye leave to your father, Lord Donald my son?
What will ye leave to your father, my jollie young man?'
'Baith my houses and land; mither, mak my bed sune,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie doun.'
8
'What will ye leave to your brither, Lord Donald, my son?
What will ye leave to your brither, my jollie young man?'
'My horse and the saddle; mither, mak my bed sune,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie doun.'
9
'What will ye leave to your sister, Lord Donald, my son?
What will ye leave to your sister, my jollie young man?'
'Baith my gold box and rings; mither, mak my bed sune,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wad lie doun.'
10
'What will ye leave to your true-love, Lord Donald, my son?
What will ye leave to your true-love, my jollie young man?'
'The tow and the halter, for to hang on yon tree,
And lat her hang there for the poysoning o me.'
C
Motherwell's MS., p. 69. From the recitation of Margaret
Bain, in the parish of Blackford, Perthshire.
1
'What's become of your hounds, King Henrie, my son?
What's become of your hounds, my pretty little one?'
'They all died on the way; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick to the heart, and I fain wald lie down.'
2
'What gat ye to your supper, King Henry, my son?
What gat ye to your supper, my pretty little one?'
'I gat fish boiled in broo; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick to the heart, and I fain wald lie down.'
3
'What like were the fish, King Henry, my son?
What like were the fish, my pretty little one?'
'They were spreckled on the back and white on the belly; mother, make
my bed soon,
For I'm sick to the heart, and I fain wald lie down.'
4
'What leave ye to your father, King Henry, my son?
What leave ye to your father, my pretty little one?'
'The keys of Old Ireland, and all that's therein; mother, make my bed
soon,
For I'm sick to the heart, and I fain wald lie down.'
5
'What leave ye to your brother, King Henry, my son?
What leave ye to your brother, my pretty little one?'
'The keys of my coffers and all that's therein; mother, mak my bed
soon,
For I'm sick to the heart, and I fain wald lie down.'
6
'What leave ye to your sister, King Henry, my son?
What leave ye to your sister, my pretty little one?'
'The world's wide, she may go beg; mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm sick to the heart, and I fain wald lie down.'
7
'What leave ye to your trew-love, King Henry, my son?
What leave ye to your trew-love, my pretty little one?'
'The highest hill to hang her on, for she's poisoned me and my hounds
all; mother, make my bed soon,
Oh I'm sick to the heart, and I fain wald lie down.'
D
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1803, III, 292.
1
'O where hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son?
O where hae ye been, my handsome young man?'
'I hae been to the wild wood; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi hunting, and fain wald lie down.'
2
'Where gat ye your dinner, Lord Randal, my son?
Where gat ye your dinner, my handsome young man?'
'I din'd wi my true-love; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi hunting, and fain wald lie down.'
3
'What gat ye to your dinner, Lord Randal, my son?
What gat ye to your dinner, my handsome young man?'
'I gat eels boild in broo; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi hunting, and fain wald lie down.'
4
'What became of your bloodhounds, Lord Randal, my son?
What became of your bloodhounds, my handsome young man?'
'O they swelld and they died; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi hunting, and fain wald lie down.'
5
'O I fear ye are poisond, Lord Randal, my son!
O I fear ye are poisond, my handsome young man!'
'O yes! I am poisond; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, and I fain wald lie down.'
E
Halliwell's Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales, p. 261. "A
version still popular in Scotland," 1849.
1
'Ah where have you been, Lairde Rowlande, my son?
Ah where have you been, Lairde Rowlande, my son?'
'I've been in the wild woods; mither, mak my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi hunting, and faine would lie down.'
2
'Oh you've been at your true love's, Lairde Rowlande, my son!
Oh you've been at your true-love's, Lairde Rowlande, my son!'
'I've been at my true-love's; mither, mak my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi hunting, and faine would lie down.'
3
'What got you to dinner, Lairde Rowlande, my son?
What got you to dinner, Lairde Rowlande, my son?'
'I got eels boild in brue; mither, mak my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi hunting, and faine would lie down.'
4
'What's become of your warden, Lairde Rowlande, my son?
What's become of your warden, Lairde Rowlande, my son?'
'He died in the muirlands; mither, mak my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi hunting, and faine would lie down.'
5
'What's become of your stag-hounds, Lairde Rowlande, my son?
What's become of your stag-hounds, Lairde Rowlande, my son?'
'They swelled and they died; mither, mak my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi hunting, and faine would lie down.'
F
Johnson's Museum, No 327, p. 337. Communicated by Burns.
1
'O where hae ye been, Lord Ronald, my son?
O where hae ye been, Lord Ronald, my son?'
'I hae been wi my sweetheart; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm weary wi the hunting, and fain wad lie down.'
2
'What got ye frae your sweetheart, Lord Ronald, my son?
What got ye frae your sweetheart, Lord Ronald, my son?'
'I hae got deadly poison; mother, make my bed soon,
For life is a burden that soon I'll lay down.'
* * * * * * *
G
Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 319. Originally
from a clergyman's daughter, in Suffolk.
1
'Where have you been today, Billy, my son?
Where have you been today, my only man?'
'I've been a wooing; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick at heart, and fain would lay down.'
2
'What have you ate today, Billy, my son?
What have you ate today, my only man?'
'I've ate eel-pie; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick at heart, and shall die before noon.'
H
Taken down by me, February, 1881, from the recitation of
Ellen Healy, as repeated to her by a young girl at
"Lackabairn," Kerry, Ireland, about 1868.
1
'Where was you all day, my own pretty boy?
Where was you all day, my comfort and joy?'
'I was fishing and fowling; mother, make my bed soon,
There 's a pain in my heart, and I mean to lie down.'
2
'What did you have for your breakfast, my own pretty boy?
What did you have for your breakfast, my comfort and joy?'
'A cup of strong poison; mother, make my bed soon,
There 's a pain in my heart, and I mean to lie down.'
3
'I fear you are poisoned, my own pretty boy,
I fear you are poisoned, my comfort and joy!'
'O yes, I am poisoned; mother, make my bed soon,
There 's a pain in my heart, and I mean to lie down.'
4
'What will you leave to your father, my own pretty boy?
What will you leave to your father, my comfort and joy?'
'I'll leave him my house and my property; mother, make my bed soon,
There 's a pain in my heart, and I mean to lie down.'
5
'What will you leave to your mother, my own pretty boy?
What will you leave to your mother, my comfort and joy?'
'I'll leave her my coach and four horses; mother, make my bed soon,
There 's a pain in my heart, and I mean to lie down.'
6
'What will you leave to your brother, my own pretty boy?
What will you leave to your brother, my comfort and joy?'
'I'll leave him my bow and my fiddle; mother, make my bed soon,
There 's a pain in my heart, and I mean to lie down.'
7
'What will you leave to your sister, my own pretty boy?
What will you leave to your sister, my comfort and joy?'
'I'll leave her my gold and my silver; mother, make my bed soon,
There 's a pain in my heart, and I mean to lie down.'
8
'What will you leave to your servant, my own pretty boy?
What will you leave to your servant, my comfort and joy?'
'I'll leave him the key of my small silver box; mother, make my bed
soon,
There 's a pain in my heart, and I mean to lie down.'
9
'What will you leave to your children, my own pretty boy?
What will you leave to your children, my comfort and joy?'
'The world is wide all round for to beg; mother, make my bed soon,
There 's a pain in my heart, and I mean to lie down.'
10
'What will you leave to your wife, my own pretty boy?
What will you leave to your wife, my comfort and joy?'
'I'll leave her the gallows, and plenty to hang her; mother, make my
bed soon,
There 's a pain in my heart, and I mean to lie down.'
11
'Where shall I make it, my own pretty boy?
Where shall I make it, my comfort and joy?'
'Above in the churchyard, and dig it down deep,
Put a stone to my head and a flag to my feet,
And leave me down easy until I'll take a long sleep.'
I
#a.# Communicated by Mrs L. F. Wesselhoeft, of Boston, as
sung to her when a child by her grandmother, Elizabeth
Foster, born in Maine, who appears to have learned the
ballad of her mother about 1800. #b.# By a daughter of
Elizabeth Foster, as learned about 1820. #c.# By Miss
Ellen Marston, of New Bedford, as learned from her mother,
born 1778. #d.# By Mrs Cushing, of Cambridge, Mass., as
learned in 1838 from a schoolmate, who is thought to have
derived it from an old nurse. #e.# By Mrs Augustus Lowell,
of Boston. #f.# By Mrs Edward Atkinson, of Boston, learned
of Mrs A. Lowell, in girlhood. #g.# By Mrs A. Lowell, as
derived from a friend.
1
'O where have you been, Tiranti, my son?
O where have you been, my sweet little one?'
'I have been to my grandmother's; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick to my heart, and I'm faint to lie down.'
2
'What did you have for your supper, Tiranti, my son?
What did you have for your supper, my sweet little one?'
'I had eels fried in butter; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick to my heart, and I'm faint to lie down.'
3
'Where did the eels come from, Tiranti, my son?
Where did the eels come from, my sweet little one?'
'From the corner of the haystack; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick to my heart, and I'm faint to lie down.'
4
'What color were the eels, Tiranti, my son?
What color were the eels, my sweet little one?'
'They were streakëd and stripëd; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick to my heart, and I'm faint to lie down.'
5
'What'll you give to your father, Tiranti, my son?
What'll you give to your father, my sweet little one?'
'All my gold and my silver; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick to my heart, and I'm faint to lie down.'
6
'What'll you give to your mother, Tiranti, my son?
What'll you give to your mother, my sweet little one?'
'A coach and six horses; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick to my heart, and I'm faint to lie down.'
7
'What'll you give to your grandmother, Tiranti, my son?
What'll you give to your grandmother, my sweet little one?'
'A halter to hang her; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick to my heart, and I'm faint to lie down.'
8
'Where'll you have your bed made, Tiranti, my son?
Where'll you have your bed made, my sweet little one?'
'In the corner of the churchyard; mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick to my heart, and I'm faint to lie down.'
J
Motherwell's MS., p. 238. From the recitation of Miss
Maxwell, of Brediland.
1
'O whare hae ye been a' day, my bonnie wee croodlin dow?
O whare hae ye been a' day, my bonnie wee croodlin dow?'
'I 've been at my step-mother's; oh mak my bed, mammie, now!
I 've been at my step-mother's; oh mak my bed, mammie, now!'
2
'O what did ye get at your step-mother's, my bonnie wee croodlin dow?'
[_Twice._]
'I gat a wee wee fishie; oh mak my bed, mammie, now!' [_Twice._]
3
'O whare gat she the wee fishie, my bonnie wee croodlin dow?'
'In a dub before the door; oh mak my bed, mammie, now!'
4
'What did ye wi the wee fishie, my bonnie wee croodlin dow?'
'I boild it in a wee pannie; oh mak my bed, mammy, now!'
5
'Wha gied ye the banes o the fishie till, my bonnie wee croodlin dow?'
'I gied them till a wee doggie; oh mak my bed, mammie, now!'
6
'O whare is the little wee doggie, my bonnie wee croodlin dow?
O whare is the little wee doggie, my bonnie wee croodlin doo?'
'It shot out its fit and died, and sae maun I do too;
Oh mak my bed, mammy, now, now, oh mak my bed, mammy, now!'
K
#a.# Chambers' Scottish Ballads, p. 324. #b.# Chambers'
Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1842, p. 53. #c.# The
Stenhouse-Laing ed. of Johnson's Museum, IV, 364*,
communicated by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe.
1
'O whaur hae ye been a' the day, my little wee croodlin doo?'
'O I 've been at my grandmother's; mak my bed, mammie, now!'
2
'O what gat ye at your grandmother's, my little wee croodlin doo?'
'I got a bonnie wee fishie; mak my bed, mammie, now!'
3
'O whaur did she catch the fishie, my bonnie wee croodlin doo?'
'She catchd it in the gutter hole: mak my bed, mammie, now!'
4
'And what did she do wi the fish, my little wee croodlin doo?'
'She boiled it in a brass pan; O mak my bed, mammie, now!'
5
'And what did ye do wi the banes o't, my bonnie wee croodlin doo?'
'I gied them to my little dog; mak my bed, mammie, now!'
6
'And what did your little doggie do, my bonnie wee croodlin doo?'
'He stretched out his head, his feet, and deed; and so will I, mammie,
now!'
L
Buchan's MSS, II, 322; Ballads of the North of Scotland,
II, 179.
1
'Whar hae ye been a' the day, Willie doo, Willie doo?
Whar hae ye been a' the day, Willie, my doo?'
2
'I've been to see my step-mother; make my bed, lay me down;
Make my bed, lay me down, die shall I now!'
3
'What got ye frae your step-mother, Willie doo, Willie doo?
What got ye frae your step-mother, Willie, my doo?'
4
'She gae me a speckled trout; make my bed, lay me down;
She gae me a speckled trout, die shall I now!'
5
'Whar got she the speckled trout, Willie doo, Willie doo?'
'She got it amang the heather hills; die shall I now.'
6
'What did she boil it in, Willie doo, Willie doo?'
'She boild it in the billy-pot; die shall I now!'
7
'What gaed she you for to drink, Willie doo, Willie doo?
What gaed she you for to drink, Willie, my doo?'
8
'She gaed me hemlock stocks; make my bed, lay me down;
Made in the brewing pot; die shall I now!'
9
They made his bed, laid him down, poor Willie doo, Willie doo;
He turnd his face to the wa; he 's dead now!
M
Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1870, p. 51. "Mrs Lockhart's
copy."
1
'Where hae ye been a' the day, my bonny wee croodin doo?'
'O I hae been at my stepmother's house; make my bed, mammie, now, now,
now,
Make my bed, mammie, now!'
2
'Where did ye get your dinner?' my, etc.
'I got it at my stepmother's;' make, etc.
3
'What did she gie ye to your dinner?'
'She gae me a little four-footed fish.'
4
'Where got she the four-footed fish?'
'She got it down in yon well strand;' O make, etc.
5
'What did she do with the banes o't?'
'She gae them to the little dog.'
6
'O what became o the little dog?'
'O it shot out its feet and died;' O make, etc.
N
Kinloch's MSS, V, 347. In Dr John Hill Burton's hand.
1
'Fare hae ye been a' day, a' day, a' day,
Fare hae ye been a' day, my little wee croudlin doo?'
2
'I 've been at my step-mammie's, my step-mammie's, my step-mammie's,
I 've been at my step-mammie's; come mack my beddy now!'
3
'What got ye at yer step-mammie's,
My little wee croudlin doo?'
4
'She gied me a spreckled fishie;
Come mack my beddy now!'
5
'What did ye wi the baenies oet,
My little wee croudlin doo?'
6
'I gaed them till her little dogie;
Come mack my beddy now!'
7
'What did her little dogie syne,
My little wee croudlin doo?'
8
'He laid down his heed and feet;
And sae shall I dee now!'
O
From a manuscript collection, copied out in 1840 or 1850,
by a granddaughter of Alexander Fraser-Tytler, p. 67.
1
'O where hae ye been a' the day, my wee wee croodlin doo doo?
O where hae ye been a' the day, my bonnie wee croodlin doo?'
'O I hae been to my step-mammie's; mak my bed, mammy, noo, noo,
Mak my bed, mammy, noo!'
2
'O what did yere step-mammie gie to you?' etc.
'She gied to me a wee wee fish,' etc.
3
'[O] what did she boil the wee fishie in?'
'O she boiled it in a wee wee pan; it turned baith black an blue, blue,
It turned baith black an blue.'
4
'An what did she gie the banes o't to?'
'O she gied them to a wee wee dog;' mak, etc.
5
'An what did the wee wee doggie do then?'
'O it put out its tongue and its feet, an it deed; an sae maun I do
noo, noo,
An sae maun I do noo!'
* * * * *
#C.#
4^2. your father, King Henry, my son.
#I. a.#
1^4. _~faint to~, an obvious corruption of ~fain to~, is
found also in #b#, #c#; #d# has fain wad; #e#, ~faint~ or
~fain~; #f#, ~fain~; #g#, ~I faint to~. N. B. 8 stands 5
in the MS. copy, but is the last stanza in all others
which have it._
#b.#
2^1. for your dinner.
_After 2 follows_:
Who cooked you the eels, Tiranti, my son? etc.
O 't was my grandmother; mother, make my bed soon, etc.
#b# 5==#a# 3:
^1. Where did she get the, eels? etc.
^3. By the side of the haystack, etc.
#b# 6==#a# 7 : 7==#a# 8 : 8==#a# 5.
8^4. and die to lie down.
#a# is wanting in_ #b#.
#c.#
1^4. at my heart (_and always_).
2^1. O what did she give you? _etc._
2^3. Striped eels fried, etc.
3==#a# 4.
3^1. O how did they look? etc.
3^3. Ringed, streaked, and speckled, etc.
4==#a# 3.
4^1. O where did they come from?
5^1. O what will you give your father, my son?
5^2. O what will you give him?
5^3. A coach and six horses.
6^1. O what will you give your mother, my son? _as in 5._
6^3. All my gold and my silver.
7^1. O what will you give your granny? _as in 5._
8^1. O where'll, etc.
#c# _adds, as 9_:
So this is the end of Tiranti my son,
So this is the end of my sweet little one:
His grandmother poisoned him with an old dead snake,
And he left her a halter to hang by the neck.
#d.#
1^1, _etc._ Tyrante.
1^3. O I've been to my uncle's, _etc._
1^4. and fain wad lie doun.
2^3. eels and fresh butter.
3==#a# 4.
3^3. black stripëd with yellow.
4==#a# 7.
4^1. What'll ye will to your mither?
4^3. My gold and my silver.
5==#a# 6.
5^1 What'll ye will to your father?
5^3. My coach and my horses.
6==#a# 8.
6^1. What'll you will to your uncle?
_3, 5 of #a# are wanting._
#e.#
1^4. For I'm sick at heart, and faint [fain] to lie down.
3==#a# 7.
3^1. What will you leave your mother?
3^3. A box full of jewels.
4^1. What will you leave your sister?
4^3. A box of fine clothing.
5==#a# 8.
5^3. A rope to hang her with.
6==#a# 5.
6^1 Where shall I make it?
_3, 4 of #a# are wanting._
#f.#
_This copy was derived from the singing of the lady who
communicated #e#, and they naturally agree closely._
1^4, fain to lie down. #f# 3==e 4 : #f# 4==e 3.
#g.#
1^4. For I'm sick at the heart, and I faint to lie down.
2^1. What did you get at your grandmother's?
2^3. I got eels stewed in butter.
3==#a# 8.
3^1. What will you leave ...
4^1. What will you leave to your brother?
4^3. A full suit of mourning.
5==#a# 7.
5^1. leave to your mother.
5^3. A carriage and fine horses.
6==#a# 5.
_3, 4 of #a# are wanting._
#K.#
#a#, #b#, #c# are printed, in the publications in which
they occur, in four-line stanzas._
#b.#
_Omits 4._
6^1. the little doggie.
6^2. as I do, mammie, noo.
#c.#
1^1, my bonnie wee crooden doo: _and always_.
1^2. at my step-mither's.
2.
And what did scho gie you to eat ...
Scho gied to me a wee fishie....
3^1. An what did she catch the fishie in ...
_4 is wanting_.
#L.#
_Written in the MS., and printed by Buchan, in stanzas of
4 lines._
#M.#
_Printed by Chambers in stanzas of 4 lines, the last
repeated._
#N.#
_The second line of each stanza is written as two in the
MS._
#O.#
_The stanza, being written with short lines in the
manuscript, is of seven lines, including the repetitions._
[144] Opera nuova, nella quale si contiene una incatenatura di più
villanelle ed altre cose ridiculose.... Data in luce per me Camillo,
detto il Bianchino, cieco Florentino. Fliegendes Blatt von Verona, 1629.
Egeria, p. 53; p. 260, note 31.--With the above (Egeria, p. 59) compare
especially the beginning of Italian #B#, further on.
[145] It begins:
"Dôve sî stâ jersira,
_Figliuol mio caro, fiorito e gentil?
Dôve sî stâ jersira_?"
"Sôn stâ dalla mia dama;
_Signóra Mama, mio core sta mal!
Son stâ dalla mia dama;
Ohimè! ch'io moro, ohimè_!"
[146] E.g. (#B#):
1
"E dove xestu stà gieri sera,
Figlio mio rico, sapio e gentil?
E dove xestu stà gieri sera,
Gentil mio cavalier?"
2
"E mi so' stato da la mia bela;
Signora madre, el mio cuor stà mal!
E mi so' stato da la mia bela;
Oh Dio, che moro, ohimè!"
3
"E cossa t'àla dato da çena,
Figlio mio?" etc.
4
"E la m'à dato 'n'anguila rostita;
Signora madre," etc.
[147] Grundtvig notices this absurdity, Eng. og skotske F. v, p. 286,
note **.
[148] "The nurse or nursery maid who sung these verses (to a very
plaintive air) always informed the juvenile audience that the
step-mother was a rank witch, and that the fish was an ask (newt), which
was in Scotland formerly deemed a most poisonous reptile." C. K. Sharpe,
in the Musical Museum, Laing-Stenhouse, IV, 364*.
[149] A golden bird, sitting on the bride's hand, sings, "You had better
not go there; you will have a bad mother-in-law and a bad
father-in-law." There are ill omens also in Passow, No 437.
13
EDWARD
#A. a.# Motherwell's MS., p. 139. #b.# Motherwell's
Minstrelsy, p. 339. From recitation.
#B.# Percy's Reliques, 1765, I, 53. Communicated by Sir
David Dalrymple.
#C.# MS. of A. Laing, one stanza.
#A b#, "given from the recitation of an old woman," is evidently #A a#
slightly regulated by Motherwell. #B#, we are informed in the 4th
edition of the Reliques, p. 61, was sent Percy by Sir David Dalrymple,
Lord Hailes. Motherwell thought there was reason to believe "that his
lordship made a few slight verbal improvements on the copy he
transmitted, and altered the hero's name to Edward,--a name which, by
the bye, never occurs in a Scottish ballad, except where allusion is
made to an English king."[150] Dalrymple, at least, would not be likely
to change a Scotch for an English name. The Bishop might doubtless
prefer Edward to Wat, or Jock, or even Davie. But as there is no
evidence that any change of name was made, the point need not be
discussed. As for other changes, the word "brand," in the first stanza,
is possibly more literary than popular; further than this the language
is entirely fit. The affectedly antique spelling[151] in Percy's copy
has given rise to vague suspicions concerning the authenticity of the
ballad, or of the language: but as spelling will not make an old ballad,
so it will not unmake one. We have, but do not need, the later
traditional copy to prove the other genuine. 'Edward' is not only
unimpeachable, but has ever been regarded as one of the noblest and most
sterling specimens of the popular ballad.
Motherwell seems to incline to regard 'Edward' rather as a detached
portion of a ballad than as complete in itself. "The verses of which it
consists," he says, "generally conclude the ballad of 'The Twa
Brothers,' and also some versions of 'Lizie Wan:'" Minstrelsy, LXVII,
12. The Finnish parallel which Motherwell refers to, might have
convinced him that the ballad is complete as it is; and he knew as well
as anybody that one ballad is often appended to another by reciters, to
lengthen the story or improve the conclusion.[152] More or less of
'Edward' will be found in four versions of 'The Twa Brothers' and two of
'Lizie Wan,' further on in this volume.
This ballad has been familiarly known to have an exact counterpart in
#Swedish#. There are four versions, differing only as to length: 'Sven i
Rosengård,' #A#, Afzelius, No 67, III, 4, eleven two-line stanzas, with
three more lines of burden; #B#, III, 3, six stanzas (Bergström's ed.,
No 54, 1, 2); #C#, Arwidsson, No 87 #A#, II, 83, eighteen stanzas; #D#,
No 87 B, II, 86, sixteen stanzas. The same in #Danish#: #A#, Grundtvig,
Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 175, nine stanzas; #B#, Boisen, Nye
og gamle Viser, 10th ed., No 95, p. 185, 'Brodermordet.' And in
#Finnish#, probably derived from the Swedish, but with traits of its
own: #A#, Schröter's Finnische Runen, p. 124, 'Werinen Pojka,' The
Bloodstained Son, fifteen two-line stanzas, with two lines of refrain;
#B#, 'Velisurmaaja,' Brother-Murderer, Kanteletar, p. x, twenty stanzas.
All these are a dialogue between mother and son, with a question and
answer in each stanza. The mother asks, Where have you been? The son
replies that he has been in the stable [Danish, grove, fields; Finnish
#A#, on the sea-strand]. "How is it that your foot is bloody?"[153]
[clothes, shirt; Finnish, "How came your jerkin muddy?" etc.] A horse
has kicked or trod on him. "How came your sword so bloody?" He then
confesses that he has killed his brother. [Swedish #D# and the Danish
copies have no question about the foot, etc.] Then follows a series of
questions as to what the son will do with himself, and what shall become
of his wife, children, etc., which are answered much as in the English
ballad. Finally, in all, the mother asks when he will come back, and he
replies (with some variations), When crows are white. And that will be?
When swans are black. And that? When stones float. And that? When
feathers sink, etc. This last feature, stupidly exaggerated in some
copies, and even approaching burlesque, is one of the commonplaces of
ballad poetry, and may or may not have been, from the beginning, a part
of the ballads in which it occurs. Such a conclusion could not be made
to adhere to 'Edward,' the last stanza of which is peculiar in
implicating the mother in the guilt of the murder. Several versions of
'The Twa Brothers' preserve this trait, and 'Lizie Wan' also.
The stanza of this ballad was originally, in all probability, one of two
lines--a question and an answer--with refrains, as we find it in #A# 10,
11, 12, and the corresponding Swedish and Finnish ballad; and in 'Lord
Randal,' #J#, #K#, etc., and also the corresponding Swedish and German
ballad. #A# 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9 are now essentially stanzas of one line,
with refrains; that is, the story advances in these at that rate. #A# 4,
7 (==#C#) are entirely irregular, substituting narrative or descriptive
circumstances for the last line of the refrain, and so far forth
departing from primitive simplicity.[154] The stanza in #B# embraces
always a question and a reply, but for what is refrain in other forms of
the ballad we have epical matter in many cases. #A# 1, 2,
substantially,==#B# 1; #A# 3, 4==#B# 2; #A# 5, 6==#B# 3; #A# 8, 9==#B#
4; #A# 11==6; #A# 12==7.
Testaments such as this ballad ends with have been spoken of under No
11.
* * * * *
#A# is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No 26,
p. 172; by Rosa Warrens, Schottische V. L., No 21, p. 96; by Wolff,
Halle des Völker, I, 22, and Hausschatz, p. 223. #B#, in Afzelius, III,
10; "often in Danish," Grundtvig; by Herder, Volkslieder, II, 207; by
Döring, p. 217; Gerhard, p. 88; Knortz, Schottische Balladen, No 27.
Swedish #A#, by W. and M. Howitt, Literature and Romance of Northern
Europe, I, 263.[155]
A
#a.# Motherwell's MS., p. 139. From Mrs King, Kilbarchan.
#b.# Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 339.
1
'What bluid's that on thy coat lap,
Son Davie, son Davie?
What bluid's that on thy coat lap?
And the truth come tell to me.'
2
'It is the bluid of my great hawk,
Mother lady, mother lady:
It is the bluid of my great hawk,
And the truth I have told to thee.'
3
'Hawk's bluid was neer sae red,
Son Davie, son Davie:
Hawk's bluid was neer sae red,
And the truth come tell to me.'
4
'It is the bluid of my greyhound,
Mother lady, mother lady:
It is the bluid of my greyhound,
And it wadna rin for me.'
5
'Hound's bluid was neer sae red,
Son Davie, son Davie:
Hound's bluid was neer sae red,
And the truth come tell to me.'
6
'It is the bluid o my brither John,
Mother lady, mother lady:
It is the bluid o my brither John,
And the truth I have told to thee.'
7
'What about did the plea begin,
Son Davie, son Davie?'
'It began about the cutting of a willow wand
That would never been a tree.'
8
'What death dost thou desire to die,
Son Davie, son Davie?
What death dost thou desire to die?
And the truth come tell to me.'
9
'I'll set my foot in a bottomless ship,
Mother lady, mother lady:
I'll set my foot in a bottomless ship,
And ye'll never see mair o me.'
10
'What wilt thou leave to thy poor wife,
Son Davie, son Davie?'
'Grief and sorrow all her life,
And she'll never see mair o me.'
11
'What wilt thou leave to thy old son,
Son Davie, son Davie?'
'I'll leave him the weary world to wander up and down,
And he'll never get mair o me.'
12
'What wilt thou leave to thy mother dear,
Son Davie, son Davie?'
'A fire o coals to burn her, wi hearty cheer,
And she'll never get mair o me.'
B
Percy's Reliques, 1765, I, 53. Communicated by Sir David
Dalrymple.
1
'Why dois your brand sae drap wi bluid,
Edward, Edward,
Why dois your brand sae drap wi bluid,
And why sae sad gang yee O?'
'O I hae killed my hauke sae guid,
Mither, mither,
O I hae killed my hauke sae guid,
And I had nae mair bot hee O.'
2
'Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid,
Edward, Edward,
Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid,
My deir son I tell thee O.'
'O I hae killed my reid-roan steid,
Mither, mither,
O I hae killed my reid-roan steid,
That erst was sae fair and frie O.'
3
'Your steid was auld, and ye hae gat mair,
Edward, Edward,
Your steid was auld, and ye hae gat mair,
Sum other dule ye drie O.'
'O I hae killed my fadir deir,
Mither, mither,
O I hae killed my fadir deir,
Alas, and wae is mee O!'
4
'And whatten penance wul ye drie, for that,
Edward, Edward?
And whatten penance will ye drie for that?
My deir son, now tell me O.'
'Ile set my feit in yonder boat,
Mither, mither,
Ile set my feit in yonder boat,
And Ile fare ovir the sea O.'
5
'And what wul ye doe wi your towirs and your ha,
Edward, Edward?
And what wul ye doe wi your towirs and your ha,
That were sae fair to see O?'
'Ile let thame stand tul they doun fa,
Mither, mither,
Ile let thame stand tul they doun fa,
For here nevir mair maun I bee O.'
6
'And what wul ye leive to your bairns and your wife,
Edward, Edward?
And what wul ye leive to your bairns and your wife,
Whan ye gang ovir the sea O?'
'The warldis room, late them beg thrae life,
Mither, mither,
The warldis room, late them beg thrae life,
For thame nevir mair wul I see O.'
7
'And what wul ye leive to your ain mither deir,
Edward, Edward?
And what wul ye leive to your ain mither deir?
My deir son, now tell me O.'
'The curse of hell frae me sall ye beir,
Mither, mither,
The curse of hell frae me sall ye beir,
Sic counseils ye gave to me O.'
C
MS. of Alexander Laing, 1829, p. 25.
'O what did the fray begin about?
My son, come tell to me:'
'It began about the breaking o the bonny hazel wand,
And a penny wad hae bought the tree.'
* * * * *
#A. b.#
1^4. tell to me O. _And so every fourth line._
7^4. That would never hae been a tree O.
10^4. And she'll never get mair frae me O.
11^3. The weary warld to wander up and down.
#B.#
_Initial ~qu~ for ~w~ and ~z~ for ~y~ have been changed
throughout to ~w~ and ~y~._
6^7. let.
[150] An eager "Englishman" might turn Motherwell's objection to the
name into an argument for 'Edward' being an "English" ballad.
[151] That is to say, initial _quh_ and _z_ for modern _wh_ and _y_, for
nothing else would have excited attention. Perhaps a transcriber thought
he ought to give the language a look at least as old as Gavin Douglas,
who spells _quhy_, _dois_, _ȝour_. The _quh_ would serve a purpose,
if understood as indicating that the aspirate was not to be dropped, as
it often is in English _why_. The _z_ is the successor of ȝ, and was
meant to be pronounced _y_, as _z_ is, or was, pronounced in
_gaberlunzie_ and other Scottish words. See Dr J. A. H. Murray's Dialect
of the Southern Counties of Scotland, pp. 118, 129. Since _quh_ and _z_
serve rather as rocks of offence than landmarks, I have thought it best
to use _wh_ and _y_.
[152] Motherwell also speaks of a ballad of the same nature as quoted in
Werner's 'Twenty-Fourth of February.' The stanza cited (in Act I, Scene
1) seems to be Herder's translation of 'Edward' given from memory.
[153] We have a similar passage in most of the copies of the third class
of the German ballads corresponding to No 4. A brother asks the man who
has killed his sister why his shoes [sword, hands] are bloody. See p.
36, p. 38. So in 'Herr Axel,' Arwidsson, No 46, I, 308.
[154] These have perhaps been adapted to the stanza of 'The Twa
Brothers,' with some versions of which, as already remarked, the present
ballad is blended.
[155] With regard to translations, I may say now, what I might well have
said earlier, that I do not aim at making a complete list, but give such
as have fallen under my notice.
14
BABYLON; OR, THE BONNIE BANKS O FORDIE
#A. a, b.# 'Babylon; or, The Bonnie Banks o Fordie,'
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 88. #c.# The same, Appendix,
p. xxii, No XXVI.
#B. a.# Herd's MSS, I, 38, II, 76. #b.# 'The Banishd Man,'
The Scots Magazine, October, 1803, p. 699, evidently
derived from Herd.
#C.# Motherwell's MS., p. 172.
#D.# Motherwell's MS., p. 174.
#E.# 'Duke of Perth's Three Daughters,' Kinloch's Ancient
Scottish Ballads, p. 212.
#B a# is from tradition of the latter half of the eighteenth century;
the other copies from the earlier part of this.
Three sisters go out (together, #A#, #B#, #C#, successively, #D#, #E#)
to gather flowers (#A#, #B#, #E#). A banished man (outlyer bold, #D#,
Loudon lord, #E#) starts up from a hiding-place, and offers them one
after the other the choice of being his wife or dying by his hand.
(#A.#)
'It's whether will ye be a rank robber's wife,
Or will ye die by my wee penknife?'
(#D.#)
'Wiltow twinn with thy maidenhead, or thy sweet life?'
The first and the second express a simple preference for death, and are
killed and laid by, "to bear the red rose company" (#A#). The youngest,
in #A#, says she has a brother in the wood, who will kill him if he
kills her. The outlaw asks the brother's name, finds that he himself is
the man, and takes his own life with the same weapon that had shed the
blood of his sisters. #B#, #C#, #D# have three brothers, the youngest of
whom is the banished lord (#C#), the outlyer bold (#D#). The story is
defective in #B#, #C#. In #D# the outlaw, on finding what he has done,
takes a long race, and falls on his knife. The conclusion of #E# is not
so finely tragic. A brother John comes riding by just as the robber is
about to kill the third sister, apprehends him by the agency of his
three pages, and reserves him to be hanged on a tree,
Or thrown into the poisond lake,
To feed the toads and rattle-snake.
According to the account given by Herd, and repeated by Jamieson, the
story of the lost conclusion of #B# made the banished man discover that
he had killed his two brothers as well as his two sisters.
This ballad, with additional circumstances, is familiar to all branches
of the Scandinavian race.
#Danish.# There are many versions from oral tradition, as yet unprinted,
besides these two: #A#, 'Hr. Truels's Døttre,' Danske Viser, III, 392,
No 164, there reprinted from Sandvig, Beskrivelse over Øen Møen, 1776:
#B#, 'Herr Thors Børn,' from recent tradition of North Sleswig,
Berggreen, Danske Folke-Sange, 3d ed., p. 88, No 42.
#A.# Herr Truels' three daughters oversleep their matins one morning,
and are roused by their mother. If we have overslept our matins, they
say, we will make up at high mass. They set out for church, and in a
wood fall in with three robbers, who say:
'Whether will ye be three robbers' wives,
Or will ye rather lose your lives?'
Much rather death, say they. The two elder sisters submitted to their
fate without a word; the third made a hard resistance. With her last
breath she adjured the robbers to seek a lodging at Herr Truels' that
night. This they did. They drank so long that they drank Herr Truels to
bed. Then they asked his wife to promise herself to all three. First,
she said, she must look into their bags. In their bags she saw her
daughters' trinkets. She excused herself for a moment, barred the door
strongly, roused her husband, and made it known to him that these guests
had killed his three daughters. Herr Truels called on all his men to
arm. He asked the robbers who was their father. They said that they had
been stolen by robbers, on their way to school, one day; had had a hard
life for fourteen years; and the first crime they had committed was
killing three maids yesterday. Herr Truels revealed to them that they
had murdered their sisters, and offered them new clothes, in which they
might go away. "Nay," they said, "not so; life for life is meet." They
were taken out of the town, and their heads struck off. #B# differs from
#A# in only a few points. The robbers ask lodging at Herr Thor's, as
being pilgrims. When he discovers their true character, he threatens
them with the wheel. They say, Shall we come to the wheel? Our father
drinks Yule with the king. They tell him their story, and their father
offers them saddle and horse to make their best way off. They reply, "We
will give blood for blood," spread their cloaks on the floor, and let
their blood run.
#Swedish.# 'Pehr Tyrsons Döttrar i Wänge.' #A#, Arwidsson, II, 413, No
166. #B#, Afzelius, III, 193, No 98: ed. Bergström, I, 380, No 84, 1.
#C#, Afzelius, III, 197: ed. Bergström, I, 382, No 84, 2, as old as the
last half of the seventeenth century. #D#, Afzelius, III, 202: ed.
Bergström, I, 384, No 84, 3. #E#, "C. J. Wessén, De paroecia Kärna (an
academical dissertation), Upsala, 1836," Arwidsson, as above, who
mentions another unprinted copy in the Royal Library.
#A.# Herr Töres' daughters overslept matins, dressed themselves
handsomely, and set off for mass. All on the heath they were met by
three wood-robbers, who demanded, Will ye be our wives, or lose your
lives? The first answered: God save us from trying either! the second,
Rather let us range the world! the third, Better death with honor! But
First were they the three wood-robbers' wives,
And after that they lost their young lives.
The robbers strip them; then go and ask to be taken in by Herr Töres. He
serves them with mead and wine, but presently begins to wish his
daughters were at home. His wife sees him to bed; then returns to her
guests, who offer her a silken sark to pass the night with them. "Give
me a sight of the silken sark," she cries, with prophetic soul: "God
have mercy on my daughters!" She rouses her husband, and tells him that
the robbers have slain his bairns. He puts on his armor and kills two of
them: the third begs to be spared till he can say who were his kin; his
father's name is Töres! Father and mother resolve to build a church for
penance, and it shall be called Kerna. #B#, #C#, #D#. The girls meet
three "vallare," strolling men, and none of them good (#C#). The robbers
cut off the girls' heads on the trunk of a birch (cf. English #C# 5:
"It's lean your head upon my staff," and with his pen-knife he has
cutted it aff): three springs burst forth immediately. They go to the
house, and ask the mother if she will buy silken sarks that nine maids
have stitched (#B#). She says:
'Open your sacks, and let me see:
Mayhap I shall know them all three.'
The father, in #B#, when he discovers that he has slain his own sons,
goes to the smith, and has an iron band fastened round his middle. The
parents vow to build a church as an expiation, and it shall be called
Kerna (#B#, #C#).
#Färöe.# 'Torkilds Riim, eller St. Catharinæ Vise, 'Lyngbye, Færøiske
Qvæder, p. 534/p. 535. In this form of the story, as in the Icelandic
versions which follow, the robbers are not the brothers of the maids.
Torkild's two daughters sleep till the sun shines on their beds. Their
father wakens them, and tells Katrine she is waited for at church.
Katrine dresses herself splendidly, but does not disdain to saddle her
own horse.
And since no knave was ready to help,
Katrine bridled the horse herself.
And since no knave was standing about,
Herself put the bit in her horse's mouth.
First she came upon three strollers (vadlarar[156]), then two, then one,
and the last asked her whether she would pass the night with him (vera
qvöldar vujv) or die. He cut off her head, and wherever her blood ran a
light kindled; where her head fell a spring welled forth: where her body
lay a church was [afterwards] built. The rover came to Torkild's house,
and the father asked if he had seen Katrine. He said she had been at
Mary kirk the day before, and asked for a lodging, feigning to be sick.
This was readily granted. He went to bed, and Aasa, the other sister,
waited upon him. He offered her a silken sark to sleep with him. Aasa
asked to see the sark first, and found on it her sister's mark. The
fellow went on to offer her a blue cloak and gold crown successively,
and on both of these she saw her sister's mark. Aasa bade him
good-night, went to her father, and told him that the man they had
housed had killed his daughter. Torkild ordered his swains to light a
pile in the wood: early the next morning they burned the murderer on it.
#Icelandic.# Five Icelandic versions, and the first stanza of two more,
are given in Íslenzk Fornkvæði, I, 108 ff, No 15, 'Vallara kvæði.'
The story is nearly the same as in the Färöe ballad. Two of Thorkell's
daughters sleep till after the sun is up (#B#, #C#). They wash and
dress; they set out for church (#C#). On the heath they encounter a
strolling man, #A#; a tall, large man, #C#, #E#; a horseman or knight,
#D#. He greets them: "Why will ye not speak? Are ye come of elves, or of
kings themselves?" #A# [Are ye come of earls, or of beggar-churls? #B#].
They answer, We are not come of elves, nor of kings themselves; we are
Thorkell's daughters, and serve Mary kirk. He asks, Will ye choose to
lose your life, or shall I rather take you to wife? The choice, they
say, is hard: they would rather die. He kills them and buries them. At
night he goes to Thorkell's house, where Asa is alone. He knocks to be
let in; Asa refuses; he draws the latch with his deft fingers (#A#, #C#,
#D#). He offers Asa a silken sark to sleep with him [and a blue cloak to
say nothing, #A#]. She asked to see the sark, and knew her sisters'
work, begged him to wait a moment, went to her father, and told him that
the murderer of his daughters was there. Thorkell dashed his harp to the
floor [and kicked over the table, #D#, #E#]. The murderer in the morning
was hanged like a dog, #A#, #B#. [Thorkell tore at his hair and cut him
down with an elder-stock, #C#; they fought three days, and on the fourth
the villain was hanged in a strap, #E#, the knight was hanging like a
dog, #D#]. A miraculous light burned over the place where the maids had
been buried, #A# 16, #C# 27, #D# 24, #E# 12. When their bodies were
taken into the church, the bells rang of themselves, #D#.
#Norwegian# versions of this ballad have been obtained from tradition,
but none as yet have been published.
"The mains and burn of Fordie, the banks of which are very beautiful,"
says Aytoun (I, 159), "lie about six miles to the east of Dunkeld."
Tradition has connected the story with half a dozen localities in
Sweden, and, as Professor Grundtvig informs me, with at least eight
places in the different provinces of Denmark. The Kerna church of the
Swedish ballads, not far from Linköping (Afzelius), has been popularly
supposed to derive its name from a Catharina, Karin, or Karna, killed by
her own brother, a wood-robber, near its site. See Afzelius, ed.
Bergström, II, 329 ff: Danske Viser, III, 444 f.
* * * * *
#A# is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No 34,
p. 216, and, with some slight use of Aytoun, I, 160, by Rosa Warrens,
Schottische Volkslieder der Vorzeit, No 18, p. 85. Danish #A#, by Prior,
III, 252.
A
#a.# Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 88. #b.# The same. #c.#
The same, Appendix, p. xxii, No XXVI, apparently from
South Perthshire.
1
There were three ladies lived in a bower,
Eh vow bonnie
And they went out to pull a flower.
On the bonnie banks o Fordie
2
They hadna pu'ed a flower but ane,
When up started to them a banisht man.
3
He's taen the first sister by her hand,
And he's turned her round and made her stand.
4
'It's whether will ye be a rank robber's wife,
Or will ye die by my wee pen-knife?'
5
'It's I'll not be a rank robber's wife,
But I'll rather die by your wee pen-knife.'
6
He's killed this may, and he's laid her by,
For to bear the red rose company.
7
He's taken the second ane by the hand,
And he's turned her round and made her stand.
8
'It's whether will ye be a rank robber's wife,
Or will ye die by my wee pen-knife?'
9
'I'll not be a rank robber's wife,
But I'll rather die by your wee pen-knife.'
10
He's killed this may, and he's laid her by,
For to bear the red rose company.
11
He's taken the youngest ane by the hand,
And he's turned her round and made her stand.
12
Says, 'Will ye be a rank robber's wife,
Or will ye die by my wee pen-knife?'
13
'I'll not be a rank robber's wife,
Nor will I die by your wee pen-knife.
14
'For I hae a brother in this wood.
And gin ye kill me, it's he'll kill thee.'
15
'What's thy brother's name? come tell to me.'
'My brother's name is Baby Lon.'
16
'O sister, sister, what have I done!
O have I done this ill to thee!
17
'O since I've done this evil deed,
Good sall never be seen o me.'
18
He's taken out his wee pen-knife,
And he's twyned himsel o his ain sweet life.
B
#a.# Herd's MSS, I, 38, II, 76. #b.# The Scots Magazine,
Oct., 1803, p. 699, communicated by Jamieson, and
evidently from Herd's copy.
1
There wond three ladies in a bower,
Annet and Margret and Marjorie
And they have gane out to pu a flower.
And the dew it lyes on the wood, gay ladie
2
They had nae pu'd a flower but ane,
When up has started a banished man.
3
He has taen the eldest by the hand,
He has turned her about and bade her stand.
4
'Now whether will ye be a banisht man's wife,
Or will ye be sticked wi my pen-knife?'
5
'I will na be ca'd a banished man's wife,
I'll rather be sticked wi your pen-knife.'
6
And he has taen out his little pen-knife,
And frae this lady he has taen the life.
7
He has taen the second by the hand,
He has turned her about and he bad her stand.
8
'Now whether will ye be a banisht man's wife,
Or will ye be sticked wi my pen-knife?'
9
'I will na be ca'd a banished man's wife;
I'll rather be sticked wi your pen-knife.'
10
And he has taen out his little pen-knife,
And frae this lady he has taen the life.
11
He has taen the youngest by the hand,
He has turned her about and he bad her stand.
12
'Now whether will ye be a banished man's wife,
Or will ye be sticked wi my pen-knife?'
13
'I winnae be called a banished man's wife,
Nor yet will I be sticked wi your pen-knife.
14
'But gin my three brethren had been here,
Ye had nae slain my sisters dear.'
* * * * * * *
C
Motherwell's MS., p. 172. From J. Goldie, March, 1825.
1
There were three sisters on a road,
Gilly flower gentle rosemary
And there they met a banished lord.
And the dew it hings over the mulberry tree
2
The eldest sister was on the road,
And there she met with the banished lord.
3
'O will ye consent to lose your life,
Or will ye be a banished lord's wife?'
4
'I'll rather consent to lose my life
Before I'll be a banished lord's wife.'
5
'It's lean your head upon my staff,'
And with his pen-knife he has cutted it aff.
6
He flang her in amang the broom,
Saying, 'Lye ye there till another ane come.'
7
The second sister was on the road,
And there she met with the banished lord.
8
'O will ye consent to lose your life,
Or will ye be a banished lord's wife?'
9
'I'll rather consent to lose my life
Before I'll be a banished lord's wife.'
10
'It's lean your head upon my staff,'
And with his pen-knife he has cutted it aff.
11
He flang her in amang the broom,
Saying, 'Lie ye there till another ane come.'
12
The youngest sister was on the road,
And there she met with the banished lord.
13
'O will ye consent to lose your life,
Or will ye be a banished lord's wife?'
14
'O if my three brothers were here,
Ye durstna put me in such a fear.'
15
'What are your three brothers, altho they were here,
That I durstna put you in such a fear?'
16
'My eldest brother's a belted knight,
The second, he's a ...
17
'My youngest brother's a banished lord,
And oftentimes he walks on this road.'
* * * * * * *
D
Motherwell's MS., p. 174. From the recitation of Agnes
Lyle, Kilbarchan, July 27, 1825.
1
There were three sisters, they lived in a bower,
Sing Anna, sing Margaret, sing Marjorie
The youngest o them was the fairest flower.
And the dew goes thro the wood, gay ladie
2
The oldest of them she's to the wood gane,
To seek a braw leaf and to bring it hame.
3
There she met with an outlyer bold,
Lies many long nights in the woods so cold.
4
'Istow a maid, or istow a wife?
Wiltow twinn with thy maidenhead, or thy sweet life?'
5
'O kind sir, if I hae 't at my will,
I'll twinn with my life, keep my maidenhead still.'
6
He's taen out his we pen-knife,
He's twinned this young lady of her sweet life
7
He wiped his knife along the dew;
But the more he wiped, the redder it grew.
8
The second of them she's to the wood gane,
To seek her old sister, and to bring her hame.
9
There she met with an outlyer bold,
Lies many long nights in the woods so cold.
10
'Istow a maid, or istow a wife?
Wiltow twinn with thy maidenhead, or thy sweet life?'
11
'O kind sir, if I hae 't at my will,
I'll twinn with my life, keep my maidenhead still.'
12
He's taen out his we pen-knife,
He's twinned this young lady of her sweet life.
13
He wiped his knife along the dew;
But the more he wiped, the redder it grew.
14
The youngest of them she's to the wood gane,
To seek her two sisters, and to bring them hame.
15
There she met with an outlyer bold,
Lies many long nights in the woods so cold.
16
'Istow a maid, or istow a wife?
Wiltow twinn with thy maidenhead, or thy sweet life?'
17
'If my three brethren they were here,
Such questions as these thou durst nae speer.'
18
'Pray, what may thy three brethren be,
That I durst na mak so bold with thee? '
19
'The eldest o them is a minister bred,
He teaches the people from evil to good.
20
'The second o them is a ploughman good,
He ploughs the land for his livelihood.
21
'The youngest of them is an outlyer bold,
Lies many a long night in the woods so cold.'
22
He stuck his knife then into the ground,
He took a long race, let himself fall on.
E
Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 212. From
Mearnsshire.
1
The Duke o Perth had three daughters,
Elizabeth, Margaret, and fair Marie;
And Elizabeth's to the greenwud gane,
To pu the rose and the fair lilie.
2
But she hadna pu'd a rose, a rose,
A double rose, but barely three,
Whan up and started a Loudon lord,
Wi Loudon hose, and Loudon sheen.
3
'Will ye be called a robber's wife?
Or will ye be stickit wi my bloody knife?
For pu'in the rose and the fair lilie,
For pu'in them sae fair and free.'
4
'Before I'll be called a robber's wife,
I'll rather be stickit wi your bloody knife,
For pu'in,' etc.
5
Then out he's tane his little pen-knife,
And he's parted her and her sweet life,
And thrown her oer a bank o brume,
There never more for to be found.
6
The Duke o Perth had three daughters,
Elizabeth, Margaret, and fair Marie;
And Margaret's to the greenwud gane,
To pu the rose and the fair lilie.
7
She hadna pu'd a rose, a rose,
A double rose, but barely three,
When up and started a Loudon lord,
Wi Loudon hose, and Loudon sheen.
8
'Will ye be called a robber's wife?
Or will ye be stickit wi my bloody knife?
For pu'in,' etc.
9
'Before I'll be called a robber's wife,
I'll rather be stickit wi your bloody knife,
For pu'in,' etc.
10
Then out he's tane his little pen-knife,
And he's parted her and her sweet life,
For pu'in, etc.
11
The Duke o Perth had three daughters,
Elizabeth, Margaret, and fair Marie;
And Mary's to the greenwud gane,
To pu the rose and the fair lilie.
12
She hadna pu'd a rose, a rose,
A double rose, but barely three,
When up and started a Loudon lord,
Wi Loudon hose, and Loudon sheen.
13
'O will ye be called a robber's wife?
Or will ye be stickit wi my bloody knife?
For pu'in,' etc.
14
'Before I'll be called a robber's wife,
I'll rather be stickit wi your bloody knife,
For pu'in,' etc.
15
But just as he took out his knife,
To tak frae her her ain sweet life,
Her brother John cam ryding bye,
And this bloody robber he did espy.
16
But when he saw his sister fair,
He kennd her by her yellow hair;
He calld upon his pages three,
To find this robber speedilie.
17
'My sisters twa that are dead and gane,
For whom we made a heavy maene,
It's you that's twinnd them o their life,
And wi your cruel bloody knife.
18
'Then for their life ye sair shall dree;
Ye sail be hangit on a tree,
Or thrown into the poisond lake,
To feed the toads and rattle-snake.'
* * * * *
#A. a.#
"Given from two copies obtained from recitation, which
differ but little from each other. Indeed, the only
variation is in the verse where the outlawed brother
unweetingly slays his sister." [19.] _Motherwell._
#b.#
19.
He's taken out his wee penknife,
Hey how bonnie
And he's twined her o her ain sweet life.
On the, etc.
#c.#
_The first stanza, only_:
There were three sisters livd in a bower,
Fair Annet and Margaret and Marjorie
And they went out to pu a flower.
And the dew draps off the hyndberry tree
#B. a.#
"To a wild melancholy old tune not in any collection."
"N.B. There are a great many other verses which I could
not recover. Upon describing her brothers, the banished
man finds that he has killed his two brothers and two
sisters,--upon which he kills himself." _Herd._
2^2. _MS._ Quhen.
4^1, 4^2, 5^2, 12^1, 12^2, 13^2, 14^2. ye, your, yet,
_MS._ ze, zour, zet. _8, 9, 10 are not written out._
#b.#
"Of this I have got only 14 stanzas, but there are many
more. It is a horrid story. The banished man discovers
that he has killed two of his brothers and his three (?)
sisters, upon which he kills himself." _Jamieson_.
_The first two stanzas only are cited by Jamieson_.
1^1. three sisters.
2^2. up there started.
#C.#
_7-11 and 12^2 are not written out in the MS._ "Repeat as
to the second sister, mutatis mutandis." _Motherwell._
#D#.
_9-13 are not written out in the MS._ "Same as 1st
sister." _Motherwell._
14^2. bring her.
_15,16 are not written out._ "Same as 1st and 2d sisters,
but this additional, viz^t." _M._
22^2. longe, _or_ large?
[156] Lyngbye insists on translating _vadlarar_ pilgrims, though his
people understood the word to mean robbers. He refers to the Icelandic
vallari, which, originally a pilgrim, came to mean a tramp. No one can
fail to recognize the character who has become the terror of our rural
districts, and to whom, in our preposterous regard for the rights of
"man," we sacrifice the peace, and often the lives, of women.
15
LEESOME BRAND
#A.# 'Leesome Brand.' #a.# Buchan's Ballads of the North
of Scotland, I, 38. #b.# Motherwell's MS., p. 626.
#B.# 'The Broom blooms bonnie,' etc., Motherwell's MS., p.
365.
This is one of the cases in which a remarkably fine ballad has been
worse preserved in Scotland than anywhere else. Without light from
abroad we cannot fully understand even so much as we have saved, and
_with_ this light comes a keen regret for what we have lost.
#A#, from Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, is found also in
Motherwell's MS., but without doubt was derived from Buchan. Though
injured by the commixture of foreign elements, #A# has still much of the
original story. #B# has, on the contrary, so little that distinctively
and exclusively belongs to this story that it might almost as well have
been put with the following ballad, 'Sheath and Knife,' as here. A third
ballad, 'The Birth of Robin Hood,' preserves as much of the story as
#A#, but in an utterly incongruous and very modern setting, being, like
'Erlinton,' #C#, forced into an absurd Robin Hood framework.
The mixture of four-line with two-line stanzas in #A# of course comes
from different ballads having been blended, but for all that, these
ballads might have had the same theme. Stanzas 33-35, however, are such
as we meet with in ballads of the 'Earl Brand' class, but not in those
of the class to which 'Leesome Brand' belongs. In the English ballads,
and nearly all the Danish, of the former class, there is at least a
conversation between son and mother [father], whereas in the other the
catastrophe excludes such a possibility. Again, the "unco land" in the
first stanza, "where winds never blew nor cocks ever crew," is at least
a reminiscence of the paradise depicted in the beginning of many of the
versions of 'Ribold and Guldborg,' and stanza 4 of 'Leesome Brand'
closely resembles stanza 2 of 'Earl Brand,' #A#.[157] Still, the first
and fourth stanzas suit one ballad as well as the other, which is not
true of 33-35.
The name Leesome Brand may possibly be a corruption of Hildebrand, as
Earl Brand almost certainly is; but a more likely origin is the
Gysellannd of one of the kindred Danish ballads.
The white hind, stanzas 28, 30, is met with in no other ballad of this
class, and, besides this, the last four stanzas are in no kind of
keeping with what goes before, for the "young son" is spoken of as
having been first brought home at some previous period. Grundtvig has
suggested that the hind and the blood came from a lost Scottish ballad
resembling 'The Maid Transformed into a Hind,' D.g.F, No 58. In this
ballad a girl begs her brother, who is going hunting, to spare the
little hind that "plays before his foot." The brother nevertheless
shoots the hind, though not mortally, and sets to work to flay it, in
which process he discovers his sister under the hind's hide. His sister
tells him that she had been successively changed into a pair of
scissors, a sword, a hare, a hind, by her step-mother, and that she was
not to be free of the spell until she had drunk of her brother's blood.
Her brother at once cuts his fingers, gives her some of his blood, and
the girl is permanently restored to her natural shape, and afterwards is
happily married. Stanzas similar to 36-41 of #A# and 12-16 of #B# will
be found in the ballad which follows this, to which they are especially
well suited by their riddling character; and I believe that they belong
there, and not here. It is worthy of remark, too, that there is a _hind_
in another ballad, closely related to No 16 ('The Bonny Hind'), and that
the hind in 'Leesome Brand' may, in some way not now explicable, have
come from this. The confounding of 'Leesome Brand' with a ballad of the
'Bonny Hind' class would be paralleled in Danish, for in 'Redselille og
Medelvold' #T# (and perhaps #I#, see Grundtvig's note, V, 237), the
knight is the lady's brother.
The "auld son" in #B#, like the first bringing home of the _young_ son
in #A# 45, 47, shows how completely the proper story has been lost sight
of. There should be no son of any description at the point at which this
stanza comes in, and _auld_ son should everywhere be _young_ son. The
best we can do, to make sense of stanza 3, is to put it after 8, with
the understanding that woman and child are carried off for burial;
though really there is no need to move them on that account. The
shooting of the child is unintelligible in the mutilated state of the
ballad. It is apparently meant to be an accident. Nothing of the kind
occurs in other ballads of the class, and the divergence is probably a
simple corruption.
The ballad which 'Leesome Brand' represents is preserved among the
Scandinavian races under four forms.
#Danish.# I. 'Bolde Hr. Nilaus' Lön,' a single copy from a manuscript
of the beginning of the 17th century: Grundtvig, V, 231, No 270. II.
'Redselille og Medelvold,' in an all but unexampled number of versions,
of which some sixty are collated, and some twenty-five printed, by
Grundtvig, most of them recently obtained from tradition, and the oldest
a broadside of about the year 1770: Grundtvig, V, 234, No 271. III.
'Sönnens Sorg,' Grundtvig, V, 289, No 272, two versions only: #A# from
the middle of the 16th century; #B# three hundred years later,
previously printed in Berggreen's Danske Folkesange, I, No 83 (3d ed.).
IV. 'Stalbroders Kvide,' Grundtvig, V, 301, No 273, two versions: #A#
from the beginning of the 17th century, #B# from about 1570.
#Swedish.# II. #A#, broadside of 1776, reprinted in Grundtvig, No 271,
V, 281, Bilag 1, and in Jamieson's Illustrations, p. 373 ff, with a
translation. #B#, 'Herr Redevall,' Afzelius, II, 189, No 58, new ed. No
51. #C#, 'Krist' Lilla och Herr Tideman,' Arwidsson, I, 352, No 54 A.
#D#, #E#, #F#, #G#, from Cavallius and Stephens' manuscript collection,
first printed by Grundtvig, No 271, V, 282 ff, Bilag 2-5. #H#, 'Rosa
lilla,' Eva Wigström, Folkvisor från Skåne, in Ur de nordiska Folkens
Lif, af Artur Hazelius, p. 133, No 8. III. A single version, of date
about 1650, 'Moder och Son,' Arwidsson, II, 15, No 70.
#Norwegian.# II. Six versions and a fragment, from recent tradition:
#A-E#, #G#, first printed by Grundtvig, No 271, V, 284 ff, Bilag 6-11;
#F#, 'Grivilja,' in Lindeman's Norske Fjeldmelodier, No 121. III. Six
versions from recent tradition, #A-F#, first printed by Grundtvig, No
272, V, 297 ff, Bilag I-6.
#Icelandic.# III. 'Sonar harmur,' Íslenzk Fornkvæði, I, 140 ff, No 17,
three versions, #A#, #B#, #C#, the last, which is the oldest, being from
late in the 17th century; also the first stanza of a fourth, #D#.
All the Scandinavian versions are in two-line stanzas save Danish 272
#B#, and #A# in part, and Icelandic 17 #C#, which are in four; the last,
however, in stanzas of two couplets.
It will be most convenient to give first a summary of the story of
'Redselille og Medelvold,' and to notice the chief divergences of the
other ballads afterwards. A mother and her daughter are engaged in
weaving gold tissue. The mother sees milk running from the girl's
breasts, and asks an explanation. After a slight attempt at evasion, the
daughter confesses that she has been beguiled by a knight. The mother
threatens both with punishment: he shall be hanged [burned, broken on
the wheel, sent out of the country, i.e., sold into servitude], and she
sent away [broiled on a gridiron, burned, drowned]. Some copies begin
further back, with a stanza or two in which we are told that the knight
has served in the king's court, and gained the favor of the king's
daughter. Alarmed by her mother's threats, the maid goes to her lover's
house at night, and after some difficulty in effecting an entrance (a
commonplace, like the ill-boding milk above) informs him of the fate
that awaits them. The knight is sufficiently prompt now, and bids her
get her gold together while he saddles his horse. They ride away, with
[or without] precautions against discovery, and come to a wood. Four
Norwegian versions, #A#, #B#, #C#, #G#, and also two Icelandic versions,
#A#, #B#, of 'Sønnens Sorg,' interpose a piece of water, and a
difficulty in crossing, owing to the ferryman's refusing help or the
want of oars; but this passage is clearly an infiltration from a
different story. Arriving at the wood, the maid desires to rest a while.
The customary interrogation does not fail,--whether the way is too long
or the saddle too small. The knight lifts her off the horse, spreads his
cloak for her on the grass, and she gives way to her anguish in such
exclamations as "My mother had nine women: would that I had the worst of
them!" "My mother would never have been so angry with me but she would
have helped me in this strait!" Most of the Danish versions make the
knight offer to bandage his eyes and render such service as a man may;
but she replies that she would rather die than that man should know of
woman's pangs. So Swedish #H#, nearly. Partly to secure privacy, and
partly from thirst, she expresses a wish for water, and her lover goes
in search of some. (This in nearly all the Danish ballads, and many of
the others. But in four of the Norwegian versions of 'Sønnens Sorg' the
lover is told to go and amuse himself, much as in our ballads.) When he
comes to the spring or the brook, there sits a nightingale and sings.
_Two_ nightingales, a small bird, a voice from heaven, a small dwarf, an
old man, replace the nightingale in certain copies, and in others there
is nothing at all; but the great majority has a single nightingale, and,
as Grundtvig points out, the single bird is right, for the bird is
really a vehicle for the soul of the dead Redselille. The nightingale
sings, "Redselille lies dead in the wood, with two sons [son and
daughter] in her bosom." All that the nightingale has said is found to
be true. According to Danish #O# and Swedish #C#, the knight finds the
lady and a child, according to Swedish #B# and Norwegian #A#, #B#, #C#,
the lady and two sons, dead. In Danish #B#, #L# (as also the Icelandic
'Sonar Harmur,' #A#, #B#, and Danish 'Stalbroders Kvide,' #A#) the
knight digs a grave, and lays mother and children in it; he lays himself
with them in #A# and #M#. It is not said whether the children are dead
or living, and the point would hardly be raised but for what follows. In
Danish #D#, #P# and Swedish #F#, it is expressly mentioned that the
children are _alive_, and in #Q#, #R#, #S#, #T#, #U#, six copies of #V#,
and #Y#, and also in 'Bolde Hr. Nilaus' Løn,' and in 'Sønnens Sorg,'
Danish #A#, Norwegian #A#, #C#, #D#, #E#, the children are heard, or
seem to be heard, shrieking from under the ground. Nearly all the
versions make the knight run himself through with his sword, either
immediately after the others are laid in the grave, or after he has
ridden far and wide, because he cannot endure the cries of the children
from under the earth. This would seem to be the original conclusion of
the story; the horrible circumstance of the children being buried alive
is much more likely to be slurred over or omitted at a later day than to
be added.
We may pass over in silence the less important variations in the very
numerous versions of 'Redselille and Medelvold,' nor need we be detained
long by the other three Scandinavian forms of the ballad. 'Sønnens Sorg'
stands in the same relation to 'Redselille and Medelvold' as 'Hildebrand
and Hilde,' does to 'Ribold and Guldborg' (see p. 89 of this volume);
that is, the story is told in the first person instead of the third. A
father asks his son why he is so sad, Norwegian #A#, #B#, #C#, #D#,
Icelandic #A#, #B#, #C#, #D#. Five years has he sat at his father's
board, and never uttered a merry word. The son relates the tragedy of
his life. He had lived in his early youth at the house of a nobleman,
who had three daughters. He was on very familiar terms with all of them,
and the youngest loved him. When the time came for him to leave the
family, she proposed that he should take her with him, Danish #B#,
Icelandic #A#, #B#, #C# [_he_ makes the proposal in Norwegian #C#]. From
this point the narrative is much the same as in 'Redselille and
Medelvold,' and at the conclusion he falls dead in his father's arms [at
the table], Norwegian #A#, #B#, #D#, Icelandic #A#. The mother takes the
place of the father in Danish #B# and Swedish, and perhaps it is the
mother who tells the story in English #A#, but the bad condition of the
text scarcely enables us to say. Danish #B# and the Swedish copy have
lost the middle and end of the proper story: there is no wood, no
childbirth, no burial. The superfluous boat of some Norwegian versions
of 'Redselille' reappears in these, and also in Icelandic #A#, #B#; it
is overturned in a storm, and the lady is drowned.
'Stalbroders Kvide' differs from 'Sønnens Sorg' only in this: that the
story is related to a comrade instead of father or mother.
'Bolde Hr. Nilaus' Løn,' which exists but in a single copy, has a
peculiar beginning. Sir Nilaus has served eight years in the king's
court without recompense. He has, however, gained the favor of the
king's daughter, who tells him that she is suffering much on his
account. If this be so, says Nilaus, I will quit the land with speed. He
is told to wait till she has spoken to her mother. She goes to her
mother and says: Sir Nilaus has served eight years, and had no reward;
he desires the best that it is in your power to give. The queen
exclaims, He shall never have my only daughter's hand! The young lady
immediately bids Nilaus saddle his horse while she collects her gold,
and from this point we have the story of Redselille.
#Dutch.# Willems, Oude vlaemsche Liederen, p. 482, No 231, 'De Ruiter en
Mooi Elsje;' Hoffmann v. Fallersleben, Niederländische Volkslieder, 2d
ed., p. 170, No 75: broadside of the date 1780.
A mother inquires into her daughter's condition, and learns that she is
going with child by a trooper (he is called both 'ruiter' and
'landsknecht'). The conversation is overheard by the other party, who
asks the girl whether she will ride with him or bide with her mother.
She chooses to go with him, and as they ride is overtaken with pains.
She asks whether there is not a house where she can rest. The soldier
builds her a hut of thistles, thorns, and high stakes, and hangs his
cloak over the aperture. She asks him to go away, and to come back when
he hears a cry: but the maid was dead ere she cried. The trooper laid
his head on a stone, and his heart brake with grief.
#German.# #A#, Simrock, No 40, p. 92, 'Von Farbe so bleich,' from Bonn
and Rheindorf, repeated in Mittler, No 194. The mother, on learning her
daughter's plight, imprecates a curse on her. The maid betakes herself
to her lover, a trooper, who rides off with her. They come to a cool
spring, and she begs for a fresh drink, but, feeling very ill, asks if
there is no hamlet near, from which she could have woman's help. The aid
of the trooper is rejected in the usual phrase, and he is asked to go
aside, and answer when called. If there should be no call, she will be
dead. There was no call, and she was found to be dead, with two sons in
her bosom. The trooper wrapped the children in her apron, and dug her
grave with his sword. #B#, Reifferscheid, Westfälische Volkslieder, p.
106, 'Ach Wunder über Wunder,' from Bökendorf: much the same as to the
story. #C#, Mittler, No 195, p. 175, 'Von Farbe so bleich,' a fragment
of a copy from Hesse; Zuccalmaglio, p. 187, No 90, 'Die Waisen,' an
entire copy, ostensibly from the Lower Rhine, but clearly owing its last
fourteen stanzas to the editor. The trooper, in this supplement, leaves
the boys with his mother, and goes over seas. The boys grow up, and set
out to find their father. In the course of their quest, they pass a
night in a hut in a wood, and are overheard saying a prayer for their
father and dead mother, by a person who announces herself as their
maternal grandmother! After this it is not surprising that the father
himself should turn up early the next morning. The same editor, under
the name of Montanus, gives in Die deutschen Volksfeste, p. 45 f, a part
of this ballad again, with variations which show his hand beyond a
doubt. We are here informed that the ballad has above a hundred stanzas,
and that the conclusion is that the grandmother repents her curse, makes
her peace with the boys, and builds a convent.
#French.# Bujeaud, Chants et Chansons populaires des provinces de
l'Ouest, #A#, I, 198, #B#, I, 200, 'J'entends le rossignolet.' #A#. This
ballad has suffered injury at the beginning and the end, but still
preserves very well the chief points of the story. A lover has promised
his mistress that after returning from a long absence he would take her
to see his country. While traversing a wood she is seized with her
pains. The aid of her companion is declined: "Cela n'est point votre
métier." She begs for water. The lover goes for some, and meets a lark,
who tells him that he will find his love dead, with a child in her arms.
Two stanzas follow which are to no purpose. #B#. The other copy of this
ballad has a perverted instead of a meaningless conclusion, but this
keeps some traits that are wanting in #A#. It is a two-line ballad, with
the nightingale in the refrain: "J'entends le rossignolet." A fair maid,
walking with her lover, falls ill, and lies down under a thorn. The
lover asks if he shall go for her mother. "She would not come: she has a
cruel heart." Shall I go for mine? "Go, like the swallow!" He comes back
and finds his love dead, and says he will die with his mistress. The
absurd conclusion follows that she was feigning death to test his love.
The names in the Scandinavian ballads, it is remarked by Grundtvig, V,
242, 291, are not Norse, but probably of German derivation, and, if
such, would indicate a like origin for the story. The man's name, for
instance, in the Danish 'Sønnens Sorg,' #A#, Gysellannd, seems to point
to Gisalbrand or Gisalbald, German names of the 8th or 9th century.
There is some doubt whether this Gysellannd is not due to a corruption
arising in the course of tradition (see Grundtvig, V, 302); but if the
name may stand, it will account for our Leesome Brand almost as
satisfactorily as Hildebrand does for Earl Brand in No 7.
The passage in which the lady refuses male assistance during her
travail--found as well in almost all the Danish versions of 'Redselille
and Medelvold,' in the German and French, and imperfectly in Swedish
#D#--occurs in several other English ballads, viz., 'The Birth of Robin
Hood,' 'Rose the Red and White Lily,' 'Sweet Willie,' of Finlay's
Scottish Ballads, II, 61, 'Burd Helen,' of Buchan, II, 30, 'Bonnie
Annie,' No 23. Nearly the whole of the scene in the wood is in
'Wolfdietrich.' Wolfdietrich finds a dead man and a woman naked to the
girdle, who is clasping the stem of a tree. The man, who was her
husband, was taking her to her mother's house, where her first child was
to be born, when he was attacked by the dragon Schadesam. She was now in
the third day of her travail. Wolfdietrich, having first wrapped her in
his cloak, offers his help, requesting her to tear a strip from her
shift and bind it round his eyes. She rejects his assistance in this
form, but sends him for water, which he brings in his helmet, but only
to find the woman dead, with a lifeless child at her breast. He wraps
mother and child in his mantle, carries them to a chapel, and lays them
on the altar; then digs a grave with his sword, goes for the body of the
man, and buries all three in the grave he has made. Grimm, Altdänische
Heldenlieder, p. 508; Holtzmann, Der grosse Wolfdietrich, st. 1587-1611;
Amelung u. Jänicke,[158] Ortnit u. die Wolfdietriche, II, 146, #D#, st.
51-75; with differences, I, 289, B, st. 842-848; mother and child
surviving, I, 146, #A#, st. 562-578; Weber's abstract of the Heldenbuch,
in Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 119, 120.
'Herr Medelvold,' a mixed text of Danish II, Danske Viser, No 156, is
translated by Jamieson, Illustrations, p. 377; by Borrow, Romantic
Ballads, p. 28 (very ill); and by Prior, No 101. Swedish, II, #A#. is
translated by Jamieson, _ib._, p. 373.
A
#a.# Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 38. #b.# Motherwell's
MS., p. 626.
1
My boy was scarcely ten years auld,
Whan he went to an unco land,
Where wind never blew, nor cocks ever crew,
Ohon for my son, Leesome Brand!
2
Awa to that king's court he went,
It was to serve for meat an fee;
Gude red gowd it was his hire,
And lang in that king's court stayd he.
3
He hadna been in that unco land
But only twallmonths twa or three,
Till by the glancing o his ee,
He gaind the love o a gay ladye.
4
This ladye was scarce eleven years auld,
When on her love she was right bauld;
She was scarce up to my right knee,
When oft in bed wi men I'm tauld.
5
But when nine months were come and gane,
This ladye's face turnd pale and wane.
6
To Leesome Brand she then did say,
'In this place I can nae mair stay.
7
'Ye do you to my father's stable,
Where steeds do stand baith wight and able.
8
'Strike ane o them upo the back,
The swiftest will gie his head a wap.
9
'Ye take him out upo the green,
And get him saddled and bridled seen.
10
'Get ane for you, anither for me,
And lat us ride out ower the lee.
11
'Ye do you to my mother's coffer,
And out of it ye'll take my tocher.
12
'Therein are sixty thousand pounds,
Which all to me by right belongs.'
13
He's done him to her father's stable,
Where steeds stood baith wicht and able.
14
Then he strake ane upon the back,
The swiftest gae his head a wap.
15
He's taen him out upo the green,
And got him saddled and bridled seen.
16
Ane for him, and another for her,
To carry them baith wi might and virr.
17
He's done him to her mother's coffer,
And there he 's taen his lover's tocher;
18
Wherein were sixty thousand pound,
Which all to her by right belongd.
19
When they had ridden about six mile,
His true love then began to fail.
20
'O wae's me,' said that gay ladye,
'I fear my back will gang in three!
21
'O gin I had but a gude midwife,
Here this day to save my life,
22
'And ease me o my misery,
O dear, how happy I woud be!'
23
'My love, we're far frae ony town,
There is nae midwife to be foun.
24
'But if ye'll be content wi me,
I'll do for you what man can dee.'
25
'For no, for no, this maunna be,'
Wi a sigh, replied this gay ladye.
26
'When I endure my grief and pain,
My companie ye maun refrain.
27
'Ye'll take your arrow and your bow,
And ye will hunt the deer and roe.
28
'Be sure ye touch not the white hynde,
For she is o the woman kind.'
29
He took sic pleasure in deer and roe,
Till he forgot his gay ladye.
30
Till by it came that milk-white hynde,
And then he mind on his ladye syne.
31
He hasted him to yon greenwood tree,
For to relieve his gay ladye;
32
But found his ladye lying dead,
Likeways her young son at her head.
33
His mother lay ower her castle wa,
And she beheld baith dale and down;
And she beheld young Leesome Brand,
As he came riding to the town.
34
'Get minstrels for to play,' she said,
'And dancers to dance in my room;
For here comes my son, Leesome Brand,
And he comes merrilie to the town.'
35
'Seek nae minstrels to play, mother,
Nor dancers to dance in your room;
But tho your son comes, Leesome Brand,
Yet he comes sorry to the town.
36
'O I hae lost my gowden knife;
I rather had lost my ain sweet life!
37
'And I hae lost a better thing,
The gilded sheath that it was in.'
38
'Are there nae gowdsmiths here in Fife,
Can make to you anither knife?
39
'Are there nae sheath-makers in the land,
Can make a sheath to Leesome Brand?'
40
'There are nae gowdsmiths here in Fife,
Can make me sic a gowden knife;
41
'Nor nae sheath-makers in the land,
Can make to me a sheath again.
42
'There ne'er was man in Scotland born,
Ordaind to be so much forlorn.
43
'I 've lost my ladye I lovd sae dear,
Likeways the son she did me bear.'
44
'Put in your hand at my bed head,
There ye'll find a gude grey horn;
In it three draps o' Saint Paul's ain blude,
That hae been there sin he was born.
45
'Drap twa o them o your ladye,
And ane upo your little young son;
Then as lively they will be
As the first night ye brought them hame.'
46
He put his hand at her bed head,
And there he found a gude grey horn,
Wi three draps o' Saint Paul's ain blude,
That had been there sin he was born.
47
Then he drappd twa on his ladye,
And ane o them on his young son,
And now they do as lively be,
As the first day he brought them hame.
B
Motherwell's MS., p. 365. From the recitation of Agnes
Lyle, Kilbarchan.
1
'There is a feast in your father's house,
The broom blooms bonnie and so is it fair
It becomes you and me to be very douce.
And we'll never gang up to the broom nae mair
2
'You will go to yon hill so hie;
Take your bow and your arrow wi thee.'
3
He's tane his lady on his back,
And his auld son in his coat lap.
4
'When ye hear me give a cry,
Ye'll shoot your bow and let me lye.
5
'When ye see me lying still,
Throw away your bow and come running me till.'
6
When he heard her gie the cry,
He shot his bow and he let her lye.
7
When he saw she was lying still,
He threw away his bow and came running her till.
8
It was nae wonder his heart was sad
When he shot his auld son at her head.
9
He houkit a grave, long, large and wide,
He buried his auld son doun by her side.
10
It was nae wonder his heart was sair
When he shooled the mools on her yellow hair.
11
'Oh,' said his father, 'son, but thou'rt sad!
At our braw meeting you micht be glad.'
12
'Oh,' said he, 'Father, I've lost my knife
I loved as dear almost as my own life.
13
'But I have lost a far better thing,
I lost the sheath that the knife was in.'
14
'Hold thy tongue, and mak nae din;
I'll buy thee a sheath and a knife therein.'
15
'A' the ships eer sailed the sea
Neer'll bring such a sheath and a knife to me.
16
'A' the smiths that lives on land
Will neer bring such a sheath and knife to my hand.'
* * * * *
#A. b.#
1^2. he came to.
1^3. For wind ... and cock never.
4^4. bed wi him.
5^2. His lady's.
22^2. would I be.
29^1. deer and doe.
30^2. And then on his lady he did mind.
31^1. to greenwood tree.
33^1. the castle wa.
34^1. Go, minstrels.
43^1. lady I 've loved.
44^8. draps Saint Paul's.
44^4. That has.
45^2. little wee son.
#B.#
2^1. Will you.
[157] And also stanza 3 of Buchan's 'Fairy Knight,' 'The Elfin Knight,'
#D#, p. 17 of this volume, which runs:
I hae a sister eleven years auld,
And she to the young men's bed has made bauld.
[158] Who suggests, II, xlv, somewhat oddly, that the passage may have
been taken from Revelation, xii, 2 f, 13 f.
16
SHEATH AND KNIFE
#A. a.# Motherwell's MS., p. 286. #b.# 'The broom blooms
bonnie and says it is fair,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p.
189.
#B.# Sharpe's Ballad Book, ed. by D. Laing, p. 159.
#C.# 'The broom blooms bonie,' Johnson's Museum, No 461.
#D.# Notes and Queries, First Series, V, 345, one stanza.
The three stanzas of this ballad which are found in the Musical Museum
(#C#) were furnished, it is said, by Burns. It was first printed in full
(#A b#) in Motherwell's Minstrelsy. Motherwell retouched a verse here
and there slightly, to regulate the metre. #A a# is here given as it
stands in his manuscript. #B# consists of some scattered verses as
remembered by Sir W. Scott.
The directions in 3, 4 receive light from a passage in 'Robin Hood's
Death and Burial:'
'But give me my bent bow in my hand,
And a broad arrow I'll let flee,
And where this arrow is taken up
There shall my grave diggd be.
'Lay me a green sod under my head,' etc.
Other ballads with a like theme are 'The Bonny Hind,' further on in this
volume, and the two which follow it.
* * * * *
Translated in Grundtvig's E. og s. Folkeviser, No 49, p. 308; Wolff's
Halle der Völker, I, 64.
A
#a.# Motherwell's MS., p. 286. From the recitation of Mrs
King, Kilbarchan Parish, February 9, 1825. #b.# 'The broom
blooms bonnie and says it is fair,' Motberwell's
Minstrelsy, p. 189.
1
It is talked the warld all over,
The brume blooms bonnie and says it is fair
That the king's dochter gaes wi child to her brither.
And we'll never gang doun to the brume onie mair
2
He's taen his sister doun to her father's deer park,
Wi his yew-tree bow and arrows fast slung to his back.
3
'Now when that ye hear me gie a loud cry,
Shoot frae thy bow an arrow and there let me lye.
4
'And when that ye see I am lying dead,
Then ye'll put me in a grave, wi a turf at my head.'
5
Now when he heard her gie a loud cry,
His silver arrow frae his bow he suddenly let fly.
Now they'll never, etc.
6
He has made a grave that was lang and was deep,
And he has buried his sister, wi her babe at her feet.
And they'll never, etc.
7
And when he came to his father's court hall,
There was music and minstrels and dancing and all.
But they'll never, etc.
8
'O Willie, O Willie, what makes thee in pain?'
'I have lost a sheath and knife that I'll never see again.'
For we'll never, etc.
9
'There is ships o your father's sailing on the sea
That will bring as good a sheath and a knife unto thee.'
10
'There is ships o my father's sailing on the sea,
But sic a sheath and a knife they can never bring to me.'
Now we'll never, etc.
B
Sharpe's Ballad Book, ed. by D. Laing, p. 159: Sir Walter
Scott, from his recollection of a nursery-maid's singing.
1
Ae lady has whispered the other,
The broom grows bonnie, the broom grows fair
Lady Margaret's wi bairn to Sir Richard, her brother.
And we daur na gae doun to the broom nae mair
* * * * * * *
2
'And when ye hear me loud, loud cry,
O bend your bow, let your arrow fly.
And I daur na, etc.
3
'But when ye see me lying still,
O then you may come and greet your fill.'
* * * * * * *
4
'It's I hae broken my little pen-knife
That I loed dearer than my life.'
And I daur na, etc.
* * * * * * *
5
'It's no for the knife that my tears doun run,
But it's a' for the case that my knife was kept in.'
C
Johnson's Museum, No 461.
1
It's whispered in parlour, it's whispered in ha,
The broom blooms bonie, the broom blooms fair
Lady Marget's wi child amang our ladies a'.
And she dare na gae down to the broom nae mair
2
One lady whisperd unto another
Lady Marget's wi child to Sir Richard, her brother.
* * * * * * *
3
'O when that you hear my loud loud cry,
Then bend your bow and let your arrows fly.
For I dare na,' etc.
D
Notes and Queries, 1st Series, V, 345, communicated by E.
F. Rimbault.
1
Ae king's dochter said to anither,
Broom blooms bonnie an grows sae fair
We'll gae ride like sister and brither.
But we'll never gae down to the broom nae mair
* * * * *
#A. b.#
_Motherwell's printed copy has these variations:_
1^1. It is talked, it is talked; _a variation found in the
MS._
3^1. O when ... loud, loud cry.
3^2. an arrow frae thy bow.
4^1. cauld and dead.
5^1. loud, loud cry.
6^1. has houkit.
6^2. babie.
7^1. came hame.
7^2. dancing mang them a': _this variation also in the
MS._
9^1, 10^1. There are.
#B.#
"I have heard the 'Broom blooms bonnie' sung by our poor
old nursery-maid as often as I have teeth in my head, but
after cudgelling my memory I can make no more than the
following stanzas." _Scott, Sharpe's Ballad Book, 1880, p.
159._
_Scott makes Effie Deans, in The Heart of Mid-Lothian,
vol. I, ch. 10, sing this stanza, probably of his own
making:_
The elfin knight sat on the brae,
The broom grows bonny, the broom grows fair
And by there came lilting a lady so gay.
And we daurna gang down to the broom nae mair
17
HIND HORN
#A.# 'Hindhorn,' Motherwell's MS., p. 106.
#B.# 'Young Hyndhorn,' Motherwell's MS., p. 418.
#C. a.# 'Young Hyn Horn,' Motherwell's Note-Book, p. 42.
#b.# Motherwell's MS., p. 413.
#D.# 'Young Hynhorn,' Cromek's Select Scotish Songs, II,
204.
#E.# 'Hynd Horn,' Motherwell's MS., p. 91.
#F.# Lowran Castle, or the Wild Boar of Curridoo: with
other Tales. By R. Trotter, Dumfries, 1822.
#G.# 'Hynde Horn,' Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p.
135.
#H.# 'Hynd Horn,' Buchan's Ballads of the North of
Scotland, II, 268.
A defective copy of this ballad was printed in Cromek's Select Scottish
Songs, Ancient and Modern, 1810 (#D#). A fragment, comprising the first
half of the story, was inserted in "Lowran Castle, or the Wild Boar of
Curridoo: with other Tales," etc., by Robert Trotter, Dumfries,
1822[159] (#F#). A complete copy was first given in Kinloch's Ancient
Scottish Ballads, 1827 (#G#); another, described by the editor as made
up from Cromek's fragment and two copies from recitation, in
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 36,[160] later in the same year; and a
third, closely resembling Kinloch's, in Buchan's Ballads of the North of
Scotland, in 1828 (#H#). Three versions complete, or nearly so, and a
fragment of a fourth are now printed for the first time, all from
Motherwell's manuscripts (#A#, #B#, #C#, #E#).
The stanza about the auger bore [wimble bore], #B# 1, #F# 3, #H# 4, is
manifestly out of place. It is found in 'The Whummil Bore' (see further
on), and may have slipped into 'Hind Horn' by reason of its following,
in its proper place, a stanza beginning, "Seven lang years I hae served
the king:" cf. #F# 2, #H# 3.
#G# 17, 18, 21, 22, which are not intelligible in their present
connection, are perhaps, as well as #G# 16, #H# 18-20, borrowed from
some Robin Hood ballad, in which a change is made with a beggar.
The noteworthy points in the story of Hind Horn are these. Hind Horn has
served the king seven years (#D#, #F#), and has fallen in love with his
daughter. She gives Hind Horn a jewelled ring: as long as the stone
keeps its color, he may know that she is faithful; but if it changes
hue, he may ken she loves another man. The king is angry (#D#), and Hind
Horn goes to sea [is sent, #D#]. He has been gone seven years, #E#, #F#
[seven years and a day, #B#], when, looking on his ring, he sees that
the stone is pale and wan, #A-H#. He makes for the land at once, and,
meeting an old beggar, asks him for news. No news but the king's
daughter's wedding: it has lasted nine days [two and forty, #A#], and
she will not go into the bride-bed till she hears of Hind Horn, #E#.
Hind Horn changed cloaks and other gear with the beggar, and when he
came to the king's gate asked for a drink in Horn's name,[161] #A#, #B#,
#D#. The bride herself came down, and gave him a drink out of her own
hand, #A#, #B#, #C#, #G#, #H#. He drank out the drink and dropped in the
ring.
'O gat ye 't by sea, or gat ye 't by lan,
Or gat ye 't aff a dead man's han?'
So she asked; and he answered:
'I gat na 't by sea, I gat na 't by lan,
But I gat it out of your own han.' #D# 14.
'I got na 't by sea, I got na 't by land,
Nor got I it aff a drownd man's hand;
'But I got it at my wooing,
And I'll gie it at your wedding.' #G# 29, 30.
The bride, who had said,
'I'll go through nine fires so hot,
But I'll give him a drink for Young Hynhorn's sake,' #B# 16,
is no less ready now:
'I'll tak the red gowd frae my head,
And follow you and beg my bread.
'I'll tak the red gowd frae my hair,
And follow you for evermair.' #H# 31, 32.
But Hind Horn let his cloutie cloak fall, #G#, #H#, and told her,
'Ye need na leave your bridal gown,
For I'll make ye ladie o many a town.'
The story of Horn, of which this ballad gives little more than the
catastrophe, is related at full in
I. 'King Horn,' a _gest_ in about 1550 short verses, preserved in three
manuscripts: the oldest regarded as of the second half of the 13th
century, or older; the others put at 1300 and a little later. All three
have been printed: (1.) By Michel, Horn et Rimenhild, p. 259 ff,
Bannatyne Club, 1845; J. R. Lumby, Early English Text Society, 1866; and
in editions founded on Lumby's text, by Mätzner, Altenglische
Sprachproben, p. 270 ff, and later by Wissmann, Quellen u. Forschungen,
No 45. (2.) By Horstmann, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen,
1872, L, 39 ff. (3.) By Ritson, A.E. Metrical Romanceës, II, 91 ff.
II. 'Horn et Rymenhild,' a romance in about 5250 heroic verses,
preserved likewise in three manuscripts; the best in the Public Library
of the University of Cambridge, and of the 14th century.
III. 'Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild,' from a manuscript of the 14th
century, in not quite 100 twelve-line stanzas: Ritson, Metrical
Romanceës, III, 282 ff; Michel, p. 341 ff.
Horn, in the old English _gest_, is son of Murry [Allof], king of
Suddenne. He is a youth of extraordinary beauty, and has twelve
comrades, of whom Athulf and Fikenild are his favorites. One day, as
Murry was out riding, he came upon fifteen ships of Saracens, just
arrived. The pagans slew the king, and insured themselves, as they
thought, against Horn's future revenge by putting him and his twelve
aboard a vessel without sail or rudder; but "the children" drove to
shore, unhurt, on the coast of Westerness. The king, Ailmar, gave them a
kind reception, and committed them to Athelbrus, his steward, to be
properly brought up. Rymenhild, the king's daughter, fell in love with
Horn, and having, with some difficulty, prevailed upon Athelbrus to
bring him to her bower, offered herself to him as his wife. It were no
fair wedding, Horn told her, between a thrall and a king,--a speech
which hurt Rymenhild greatly; and Horn was so moved by her grief that he
promised to do all she required, if she would induce the king to knight
him. This was done the next day, and Horn at once knighted all his
comrades. Rymenhild again sent for Horn, and urged him now to make her
his wife. But Horn said he must first prove his knighthood: if he came
back alive, he would then marry her. Upon this Rymenhild gave him a
ring, set with stones of such virtue that he could never be slain if he
looked on it and thought of his leman. The young knight had the good
fortune to fall in immediately with a ship full of heathen hounds, and
by the aid of his ring killed a hundred of the best of them. The next
day he paid Rymenhild a visit, and found her drowned in grief on account
of a bad dream. She had cast her net in the sea, and a great fish had
broken it: she weened she should lose the fish that she would choose.
Horn strove to comfort her, but could not conceal his apprehension that
trouble was brewing. The fish proved to be Fikenild, Horn's much
cherished friend. He told Ailmar of the intimacy with Rymenhild, and
asserted that Horn meant to kill the king as well as marry the princess.
Ailmar was very angry (v. 724, Wissmann), and much grieved, too. He
found the youth in his daughter's bower, and ordered him to quit the
land anon. Horn saddled his horse and armed himself, then went back to
Rymenhild, and told her that he was going to a strange land for seven
years: if, after that, he neither came nor sent word, she might take a
husband. He sailed a good way eastward (v. 799) to Ireland, and,
landing, met two princes, who invited him to take service with their
father. The king, Thurston, welcomed him, and had soon occasion to
employ him; for at Christmas came into court a giant, with a message
from pagans newly arrived. They proposed that one of them should fight
three Christians:
'If your three slay our one.
Let all this land be your own;
If our one oercomes your three,
All this land then ours shall be.'
Horn scorned to fight on such terms; he alone would undertake three of
the hounds; and so he did. In the course of a hard fight it came out
that these were the very heathen that had slain King Murry. Horn looked
on his ring and thought on Rymenhild, then fell on his foes. Not a man
of them escaped; but King Thurston lost many men in the fight, among
them his two sons. Having now no heir, he offered Horn his daughter
Reynild and the succession. Horn replied that he had not earned such a
reward yet. He would serve the king further; and when he asked for his
daughter, he hoped the king would not refuse her.
Seven years Horn stayed with King Thurston, and to Rymenhild neither
sent nor went. A sorry time it was for her, and worst at the end, for
King Modi of Reynis asked her in marriage, and her father consented. The
wedding was to be in a few days. Rymenhild despatched messengers to
every land, but Horn heard nothing, till one day, when he was going out
to shoot, he encountered one of these, and learned how things stood. He
sent word to his love not to be troubled; he would be there betimes.
But, alas, the messenger was drowned on his way back, and Rymenhild,
peering out of her door for a ray of hope, saw his body washed up by the
waves. Horn now made a clean breast to Thurston, and asked for help.
This was generously accorded, and Horn set sail for Westerness. He
arrived not too early on the day of the wedding,--"ne might he come no
later!"--left his men in a wood, and set off for Ailmar's court alone.
He met a palmer, and asked his news. The palmer had come from a bridal;
a wedding of maid Rymenhild, who wept and would not be married, because
she had a husband, though he was out of the land. Horn changed clothes
with the palmer, put on the sclavin, took scrip and staff, blackened his
skin and twisted his lip, and presented himself at the king's gate. The
porter would not let him in; Horn kicked open the wicket, threw the
porter over the bridge, made his way into the hall, and sat down in the
beggars' row. Rymenhild was weeping as if she were out of her wits, but
after meat she rose to give all the knights and squires drink from a
horn which she bare: such was the custom. Horn called to her:
'Skink us with the first,
The beggars ben athirst.'
She laid down her horn and filled him a gallon bowl; but Horn would not
drink of that. He said, mysteriously, "Thou thinkest I am a beggar, but
I am a fisher, come far from the East, to fish at thy feast. My net lies
near at hand, and hath full seven year. I am come to see if it has taken
any fish.
'I am come to fish;
Drink to me from thy dish,
Drink to Horn from horn!'"
Rymenhild looked at him, a chill creeping over her heart. What he meant
by his fishing she did not see. She filled her horn and drank to him,
handed it to the pilgrim, and said, "Drink thy fill, and tell me if ever
thou saw Horn." Horn drank, and threw the ring into the vessel. When the
princess went to bower, she found the ring she had given Horn. She
feared he was dead, and sent for the palmer. The palmer said Horn had
died on the voyage to Westerness, and had begged him to go with the ring
to Rymenhild. Rymenhild could bear no more. She threw herself on her
bed, where she had hid a knife, to kill both King Modi and herself if
Horn should not come; she set the knife to her heart, and there Horn
stopped her. He wiped off the black, and cried, "I am Horn!" Great was
their bliss, but it was not a time to indulge themselves fully.
Horn sprang out of hall,
And let his sclavin fall, (1246)
and went to summon his knights. Rymenhild sent after him the faithful
Athulf, who all the while had been watching for Horn in the tower. They
slew all that were in the castle, except King Ailmar and Horn's old
comrades. Horn spared even Fikenild, taking an oath of fidelity from him
and the rest. Then he made himself known to Ailmar, denied what he had
been charged with, and would not marry Rymenhild even now, not till he
had won back Suddenne. This he went immediately about; but while he was
engaged in clearing the land of Saracens and rebuilding churches, the
false Fikenild bribed young and old to side with him, built a strong
castle, "married" Rymenhild, carried her into his fortress, and began a
feast. Horn, warned in a dream, again set sail for Westerness, and came
in by Fikenild's new castle. Athulf's cousin was on the shore, to tell
him what had happened; how Fikenild had wedded Rymenhild that very day;
he had beguiled Horn twice. Force would not avail now. Horn disguised
himself and some of his knights as harpers and fiddlers, and their music
gained them admittance. Horn began a lay which threw Rymenhild into a
swoon. This smote him to the heart; he looked on his ring and thought of
her. Fikenhild and his men were soon disposed of. Horn was in a
condition to reward all his faithful adherents. He married Athulf to
Thurston's daughter, and made Rymenhild queen of Suddenne.
The French romance contains very nearly the same story, extended, by
expansions of various sorts, to about six times the length of King Horn.
It would be out of place to notice other variations than those which
relate to the story preserved in the ballads. Rimild offers Horn a ring
when she first avows her love. He will not take it then, but accepts a
second tender, after his first fight. When he is accused to the king, he
offers to clear himself by combat with heavy odds, but will not submit,
king's son as he is, to purgation by oath. The king says, then he may
quit the land and go--to Norway, if he will. Horn begs Rimild to
maintain her love for him seven years. If he does not come then, he will
send her word to act thereafter at her pleasure. Rimild exchanges the
ring she had previously given him for one set with a sapphire, wearing
which faithfully he need not fear death by water nor fire, battle nor
tourney (vv 2051-8). He looks at this ring when he fights with the pagan
that had killed his father, and it fires his heart to extraordinary
exploits (3166 ff). Having learned through a friend, who had long been
seeking him, that Rimild's father is about to marry her to a young king
(Modun), Horn returns to Brittany with a large force. He leaves his men
in a woody place, and goes out alone on horseback for news; meets a
palmer, who tells him that the marriage is to take place that very day;
gives the palmer his fine clothes in exchange for sclavin, staff and
scrip, forces his way into the city, and is admitted to the banquet hall
with the beggars. After the guests had eaten (4152 ff), Rimild filled a
splendid cup with piment, presented it first _a sun dru_, and then, with
her maids, served the whole company. As she was making her fifth round,
Horn pulled her by the sleeve, and reproached her with attending only to
the rich. "Your credit would be greater should you serve _us_." She set
a handsome cup before him, but he would not drink. "Corn apelent Horn li
Engleis," he said. "If, for the love of him who bore that name, you
would give me the same horn that you offered your _ami_, I would share
it with you." All but fainting, Rimild gave him the horn. He threw in
his ring, even that which she had given him at parting, drank out half,
and begged her to drink by the love of him whom he had named. In
drinking, she sipped the ring into her mouth, and she saw at once what
it was (4234). "I have found a ring," said she. "If it is yours, take
it. Blest be he to whom I gave it: if you know aught of him, conceal it
not. If you are Horn, it were a great sin not to reveal yourself." Horn
owned that the ring was his, but denied knowledge of the man she spake
of. For himself, he had been reared in that land, and by service had
come into possession of a hawk, which, before taming it, he had put in a
cage: that was nigh seven years since: he had come now to see what it
amounted to. If it should prove to be as good as when he left it, he
would carry it away with him; but if its feathers were ruffled and
broken, he would have nothing to do with it. At this, Rimild broke into
a laugh, and cried, "Horn, 't is you, and your hawk has been safely
kept!"[162] She would go with him or kill herself. Horn saw that she had
spoken truth, but, to try her yet further, said he was indeed Horn, whom
she had loved, but he had come back with nothing: why should she follow
a poor wretch who could not give her a gown to her back? "Little do you
know me," was her reply. "I can bear what you bear, and there is no king
in the East for whom I would quit you."
'Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild,' with many diversities of its own as to
details, is more like the French than the English romance as to the
story, and, on the other hand, has one or two resemblances to the
ballads which they both lack. Rimnild's father, maddened by the traitor
Wikel's false information, beats her till she bleeds, and threatens to
slay Horn. Rimnild, expecting her lover to be at least exiled, assures
Horn that she will marry no other man for seven years. The king, who had
shut himself up till his first wrath was past, tells Horn, when he next
comes into his presence, that if he is found in the land on the morrow,
he shall be drawn with horses and hanged. Rimnild, at parting, gives him
a ring, with these words:
'Loke thou forsake it for no thing,
It schal ben our tokening;
The ston it is wele trewe.
When the ston wexeth wan,
Than chaungeth the thouȝt of thi leman,
Take than a newe;
When the ston wexeth rede,
Than have Y lorn mi maidenhed,
Oȝaines the untrewe.'
(Michel, st. 48.)
Horn, for his part, bids her every day look into a spring in her arbor:
should she see his shadow, then he is about to marry another; till then
his thought will not have changed (sts 48, 49). Though loved, as before,
by another princess, Horn kept his faith; but when seven years were
gone, on looking at the stone he saw that its hue was changed (st. 71).
He immediately gathered a force, and set sail for Rimnild. On landing he
saw a beggar, who turned out to be one of his old friends, and had been
looking for him a long time. That day Moging the king was to marry
Rimnild. They changed weeds (76); Horn forced his way into the castle.
While Rimnild was serving the guests, Horn, who had tried to pass for a
fool, called to her to attend to God's men. She fetched him drink, and
he said, "For Horn's love, if ever he was dear to thee, go not ere this
be drunk." He threw the ring into the cup: she brought him another drink
(something is wrong here, for nothing is said of her seeing and
recognizing the ring), and asked if Horn were there. She fainted when
she learned that he was, but on recovering sent Hatherof (==Athulf) to
bid the king make merry, and then to gather periwinkle and ivy, "grasses
that ben of main" (to stain her face with, no doubt), and then to tell
Horn to wait for her under a woodside.
'When al this folk is gon to play,
He and Y schal steal oway,
Bituene the day and the niȝt.' (87)
Hatherof did his message. Of true love Horn was sure. He said he would
come into the field with a hundred knights. A tournament follows, as in
the French romance; the royal bridegroom is unhorsed, but spared;
treachery is punished and forced to confession.
Now is Rimnild tuiis wedde,
Horn brouȝt hir to his bedde. (94)
That the lay or gest of King Horn is a far more primitive poem than the
French romance, and could not possibly be derived from it, will probably
be plain to any one who will make even a hasty comparison of the two;
and that the contrary opinion should have been held by such men as
Warton and Tyrwhitt must have been the result of a general theory, not
of a particular examination.[163] There is, on the other hand, no
sufficient reason for supposing that the English lay is the source of
the other two poems. Nor do the special approximations of the ballads to
the romance of Horn Child oblige us to conclude that these, or any of
them, are derived from that poem. The particular resemblances are the
discoloration of the ring, the elopement with the bride, in #C#, #G#,
#H# (which is only prepared for, but not carried out, in Horn Child),
and the agreement between the couplet just cited from Horn Child,
Now is Rimnild tuiis wedde,
Horn brouȝt hir to his bedde,
and the last stanza of #A#, #B#, #C#:
The bridegroom he had wedded the bride,
But Young Hind Horn he took her to bed. (#A#)
The bridegroom thought he had the bonnie bride wed,
But Young Hyn Horn took the bride to bed. (#B#)
Her ain bridegroom had her first wed,
But Young Hyn Horn had her first to bed. (#C#)
The likeness evinces a closer affinity of the oral traditions with the
later English romance than with the earlier English or the French, but
no filiation. And were filiation to be accepted, there would remain the
question of priority. It is often assumed, without a misgiving, that
oral tradition must needs be younger than anything that was committed to
writing some centuries ago; but this requires in each case to be made
out; there is certainly no antecedent probability of that kind.[164]
Two Scandinavian ballads, as Dr Prior has remarked, seem to have been at
least suggested by the romances of Horn.
(1.) 'Unge Hr. Tor og Jomfru Tore,' Grundtvig, No 72, II, 263,
translated by Prior, III, 151. Of this there are two traditional
versions: #A# from a manuscript of the sixteenth century, #B# from one
of the seventeenth. They agree in story. In #A#, Tor asks Sølffuermord
how long she will wait for him. Nine years, she answers, if she can do
so without angering her friends. He will be satisfied with eight. Eight
have passed: a family council is held, and it is decided that she shall
not have Young Tor, but a certain rich count. Her father "gives her
away" that same day. The lady goes up to a balcony and looks seaward.
Everybody seems to be coming home but her lover. She begs her brother to
ride down to the shore for her. Tor is just coming in, hails the
horseman, and eagerly asks how are the maids in the isle. The brother
tells him that _his_ maid has waited eight years, and is even now
drinking her bridal, but with tears. Tor takes his harp and chess-board,
and plays outside the bridal hall till the bride hears and knows him. He
then enters the hall, and asks if there is anybody that can win a game
of chess. The father replies, Nobody but Sølffuermord, and she sits a
bride at the board. The mother indulgently suggests that the midsummer
day is long, and the bride might well try a game. The bride seeks an
express sanction of her father, who lessons her the livelong day, being
suspicious of Tor, but towards evening consents to her playing a little
while,--not long. Tor wins the first game, and must needs unpack his
heart in a gibing parable, ending
'Full hard is gold to win,
And so is a trothless quean.'
She wins the next game, takes up the parable, and says
'Many were glad their faith to hold,
Were their lot to be controlled.'
They are soon at one, and resolve to fly. They slip away, go aboard
Tor's ship, and put off. The bride's parents get information, and the
mother, who is a professor of the black art, raises a storm which she
means shall sink them both. No one can steer the ship but the bride. She
stands at the helm, with her gold crown on, while her lover is lying
seasick on the deck, and she brings the craft safe into Norway, where a
second wedding is celebrated.
(2.) The other ballad is 'Herr Lovmand og Herr Thor,' Syv, iv, No 68,
Danske Viser, IV, 180, No 199, translated by Prior, II, 442. Lovmand,
having betrothed Ingelil, asks how long she will be his maid. "Eight
years, if I may," she says. This term has elapsed; her brothers consult,
and give her to rich Herr Thor. They drink the bridal for five days; for
nine days; she will not go to bed. On the evening of the tenth, they
begin to use force. She begs that she may first go to the look-out
up-stairs. From there she sees ships, great and small, and the sails
which her own hands have made for her lover. Her brother goes down to
the sea, as in the other ballad, and has a similar interview. Lovmand
has the excuse of having been sick seven years. He borrows the brother's
horse, flies faster than a bird, and the torch is burning at the door of
the bride's house when he arrives. Thor is reasonable enough to give up
the bride, and to accept Lovmand's sister.
The ballad is extremely common in Sweden, and at least six versions have
been published. #A#, 'Herr Lagman och Herr Thor,' from a manuscript of
the end of the sixteenth century, Arwidsson, I, 165, No 24; #B#, from a
manuscript, _ib._, p. 168; #C#, from oral tradition, p. 171; #D#,
'Lageman och hans Brud,' Eva Wigström, Folkdiktning samlad och
upptecknad i Skåne, p. 29, No 12; #E#, 'Stolt Ingrid,' Folkvisor fråu
Skåne, upptecknade af E. Wigström, in Hazelius, Ur de nordiska Folkens
Lif, p. 121, No 3; #F#, 'Deielill och Lageman,' Fagerlund, Anteckningar
om Korpo och Houtskärs Socknar, p. 192, No 3. In #A#, #D# the bride goes
off in her lover's ship; in #C# he carries her off on his horse, when
the dancing is at its best, and subsequently, upon the king's
requisition, settles matters with his rival by killing him in single
fight. The stolid bridegroom, in the others, consents to a peaceable
arrangement.
Certain points in the story of Horn--the long absence, the sudden
return, the appearance under disguise at the wedding feast, and the
dropping of the ring into a cup of wine obtained from the bride--repeat
themselves in a great number of romantic tales. More commonly it is a
husband who leaves his wife for seven years, is miraculously informed on
the last day that she is to be remarried on the morrow, and is restored
to his home in the nick of time, also by superhuman means. Horn is
warned to go back, in the ballads and in Horn Child, by the
discoloration of his ring, but gets home as he can; this part of the
story is slurred over in a way that indicates a purpose to avoid a
supernatural expedient.
Very prominent among the stories referred to is that of Henry of
Brunswick [Henry the Lion, Reinfrid of Brunswick], and this may well be
put first, because it is preserved in Scandinavian popular ballads.[165]
(1.) The latest of these, a Swedish ballad, from a collection made at
the end of the last century, 'Hertig Henrik,' Arwidsson, No 168, II,
422, represents Duke Henry as telling his wife that he is minded to go
off for seven years (he says not whither, but it is of course to the
East); should he stay eight or nine, she may marry the man she fancies.
He cuts a ring in two; gives her one half and keeps the other. He is
made captive, and serves a heathen lord and lady seven years, drawing
half the plough, "like another horse." His liberation is not accounted
for, but he was probably set free by his mistress, as in the ballad
which follows. He gets possession of an excellent sword, and uses it on
an elephant who is fighting with a lion. The grateful lion transports
the duke to his own country while he is asleep. A herdsman, of whom he
asks food, recommends him to go to the Brunswick mansion, where there is
a wedding, and Duke Henry's former spouse is the bride. When Henry comes
to the house, his daughter is standing without; he asks food for a poor
pilgrim. She replies that she has never heard of a pilgrim taking a lion
about with him. But they give him drink, and the bride, _pro more_,
drinks out of the same bowl, and finds the half ring in the bottom. The
bride feels in her pocket and finds her half,[166] and the two, when
thrown upon a table, run together and make one ring.
(2.) The Danish ballad[167] (Grundtvig, No 114, #B#, from a 17th century
manuscript), relates that Duke Henry, in consequence of a dream, took
leave of his wife, enjoining her to wait to the eighth year, and, if
then he did not return, marry whom she liked. In the course of his
fights with the heathen, Henry was made captive, and had to draw the
harrow and plough, like a beast. One day (during his lord's absence, as
we learn from #A#) the heathen lady whom he served set him free. He had
many adventures, and in one of them killed a panther who was pressing a
lion hard, for which service the lion followed him like a dog. The duke
then happened upon a hermit, who told him that his wife was to be
married the next day, but he was to go to sleep, and not be concerned.
He laid his head on a stone in the heathen land, and woke in a trice to
hear German speech from a herdsman's mouth. The herdsman confirmed what
the hermit had said: the duchess was to be married on the morrow. The
duke went to the kitchen as a pilgrim, and sent word to the lady that he
wished to drink to her. The duchess, surprised at this freedom, summoned
him into her presence. The verses are lost in which the cup should be
given the pilgrim and returned to the lady. When she drank off the wine
that was left, a half ring lay in the glass.
Danish #A#, though of the 16th century, does not mention the ring.
(3.) A Flemish broadside, which may originally have been of the 15th
century, relates the adventures of the Duke of Brunswick in sixty-five
stanzas of four long lines: reprinted in von der Hagen's Germania, VIII,
359, and Hoffmann's Niederländische Volkslieder, No 2, p. 6;
Coussemaker, No 47, p. 152; abridged and made over, in Willems, O. v.
L., p. 251, No 107. The duke, going to war, tells his wife to marry
again if he stays away seven years. She gives him half of her ring.
Seven years pass, and the duke, being then in desperate plight in a
wilderness, is taken off by a ship; by providential direction, no doubt,
though at first it does not so appear. For the fiend is aboard, who
tells him that his wife is to be married to-morrow, and offers, for his
soul, to carry him to his palace in his sleep before day. The duke,
relying on heaven and his lion, professes to accept the terms: he is to
be taken to his palace _in his sleep_. The lion rouses his master at the
right time, and the fiend is baffled. The duke goes to the marriage
feast, and sends a message to the bride that he desires a drink from her
in memory of her lord. They take him for a beggar, but the lady orders
him wine in a gold cup. The cup goes back to her with the duke's half
ring in it. She cries, "It is my husband!" joins her half to the one in
the cup, and the two adhere firmly.
(4.) A German poem of the 15th century, by Michel Wyssenhere, in
ninety-eight stanzas of seven lines, first printed by Massmann,
Denkmæler deutscher Sprache und Literatur, p. 122, and afterwards by
Erlach, II, 290, and elsewhere. The Lord of Brunswick receives an
impression in a dream that he ought to go to the Holy Sepulchre. He cuts
a ring in two, and gives his wife one half for a souvenir, but fixes no
time for his absence, and so naturally says nothing about her taking
another husband. He has the adventures which are usual in other versions
of the story, and at last finds himself among the Wild Hunt (das wöden
her), and obliges one of the company, by conjurations, to tell him how
it is with his wife and children. The spirit informs him that his wife
is about to marry another man. He then constrains the spirit to
transport him and his lion to his castle. This is done on the same terms
as in the Flemish poem, and the lion wakes his master. His wife offers
him drink; he lets his half ring drop in the glass, and, upon the glass
being returned to the lady, she takes out the token, finds it like her
half, and cries out that she has recovered her dear husband and lord.
(5.) Henry the Lion, a chap-book printed in the 16th century, in one
hundred and four stanzas of eight short verses; reprinted in Büsching's
Volkssagen, Märchen und Legenden, p. 213 ff, and (modernized) by
Simrock in the first volume of Die deutschen Volksbücher. The hero goes
out simply in quest of adventures, and, having lost his ship and all his
companions, is floating on a raft with his lion, when the devil comes to
him and tells him that his wife is to remarry. A compact is made, and
the devil balked, as before. Though we were not so informed at the
beginning, it now turns out that the duke had given a half ring to the
duchess seven years before, and had bidden her take a second husband if
he did not come back in that time. The duke sends a servant to beg a
drink of wine of his wife, and returns the cup, as in (3), (4).
(6.) A ballad in nine seven-line stanzas, supposed to be by a
Meistersinger, preserved in broadsides of about 1550 and 1603, Böhme, No
5, p. 30, Erk's Wunderhorn, IV, 111. (7.) Hans Sachs's 'Historia,' 1562,
in two hundred and four verses, Works, ed. 1578, Buch iv, Theil ii,
Blatt lvii^b-lviii^b.[168] (8.) A Meistersingerlied of the end of the
16th century, in three twenty-line stanzas, printed in Idunna u. Hermode
for March 27, 1813 (appended to p. 64), and after this, with changes, in
Kretzschmer, II, 17, No 5.--These three agree with the foregoing as to
the ring.
(9.) Reinfrid von Braunschweig, c. 1300, ed. Bartsch, 1871. Reinfrid is
promised by the Virgin, who appears to him thrice in vision, that he
shall have issue if he will go over sea to fight the heathen. He breaks
a ring which his wife had given him, and gives her one half, vv.
14,906-11. If he dies, she is to marry, for public reasons, vv.
14,398-407; but she is not to believe a report of his death unless she
receives his half of the ring back, vv. 14,782-816, 15,040-049. The
latter part of the romance not being extant, we do not know the
conclusion, but a variation as to the use made of the ring is
probable.[169]
The story of Reinfrit is also preserved in a Bohemian prose chap-book
printed before 1565. This prose is clearly a poem broken up, and it is
believed that the original should be placed in the first half of the
14th century, or possibly at the end of the 13th. The hero returns, in
pilgrim's garb, after seven years' absence, to find his wife about to be
handed over by her father to another prince. He lets his ring fall into
a cup, and goes away; his wife recognizes the ring, and is reunited to
him. The story has passed from the Bohemian into Russian and Magyar.
Feifalik, Sitzungsberichte der phil.-hist. Classe der Wiener Akademie,
XXIX, 83 ff, the ring at p. 92; XXXII, 322 ff.
Similar use is made of the ring in other German romances. (1.) 'Der edle
Moringer' (MS. of 14th century) asks his wife to wait seven years for
him, while he visits the land of St Thomas. He is warned by an angel, at
the expiration of that period, that he will lose her if he does not go
back, bewails himself to his patron, and is conveyed home in a sleep. He
begs an alms at his castle-gate in the name of God, St Thomas, and the
noble Moringer; is admitted to his wife's presence; sings a lay
describing his own case, which moves the lady much; throws into a beaker
of wine, which she sets before him, the ring by which she was married to
him, sends the cup back to her, and is recognized. Böhme, No 6, p. 32;
Uhland, No 298, p. 773. (2.) In the older Hildebrandslied, which is of
the 14th century, or earlier, the hero, returning after an absence of
thirty-two years, drops his ring into a cup of wine presented to him by
his wife. Böhme, No 1, p. 1; Uhland, No 132, p. 330. (3.) Wolfdietrich
drops Ortnit's ring into a cup of wine sent him by Liebgart, who has
been adjudged to the Graf von Biterne in consideration of his having, as
he pretended, slain the dragon. The cup is returned to the empress, the
ring identified, the pretension refuted, and Liebgart given to Ortnit's
avenger. Wolfdietrich B, ed. Jänicke, I, 280 ff, stanzas 767-785. (4.)
King Rother (whose history has passages of the strongest resemblance to
Horn's), coming to retrieve his wife, who has been kidnapped and carried
back to her father, lands below Constantinople, at a woody and hilly
place, and assumes a pilgrim's disguise. On his way to the city he meets
a man who tells him that Ymelot of Babylon has invaded Greece, and taken
Constantin, his wife's father, prisoner; and that Constantin, to save
his life, has consented to give his daughter to the heathen king's son.
Rother steals into the hall, and even under the table at which the royal
party are sitting, and contrives to slip his ring into the hand of his
distressed young queen, who, thus assured of his presence, immediately
recovers her spirits. Massmann, Deutsche Gedichte des zwœlften
Jahrhunderts, Theil ii, p. 213, vv. 3687-3878.
One of the best and oldest stories of the kind we are engaged with is
transmitted by Cæsarius of Heisterbach in his Dialogus Miraculorum, of
the first quarter of the 13th century. Gerard, a soldier living in
Holenbach ("his grandchildren are still alive, and there is hardly a man
in the town who does not know about this"), being, like Moringer,
devoted to St Thomas of India, was impelled to visit his shrine. He
broke a ring and gave one half to his wife, saying, Expect me back in
five years, and marry whom you wish if I do not come then. The journey,
which would be long enough any way, was providentially protracted. He
reached the shrine at last, and said his prayers, and then remembered
that that was the last day of his fifth year. Alas, my wife will marry
again, he thought; and quite right he was, for the wedding was even then
preparing. A devil, acting under the orders of St Thomas, set Gerard
down at his own door. He found his wife supping with her second partner,
and dropped his half ring into her cup. She took it out, fitted it to
the half which had been given her, rushed into his arms, and bade
good-by to the new bridegroom. Ed. Strange, II, 131.
A tradition closely resembling this has been found in Switzerland,
Gerard and St Thomas being exchanged for Wernhart von Strättlingen and
St Michael. Menzel's Odin, p. 96.
Another of the most remarkable tales of this class is exquisitely told
by Boccaccio in the Decamerone, G. x, N. ix. Messer Torello, going to
the crusade, begs his wife to wait a year, a month, and a day before she
marries again. The lady assures him that she will never be another man's
wife; but he replies that a woman young, beautiful, and of high family,
as she is, will not be allowed to have her way. With her parting embrace
she gives him a ring from her finger, saying, If I die before I see you
again, remember me when you look on this. The Christians were wasted by
an excessive mortality, and those who escaped the ravages of disease
fell into the hands of Saladin, and were imprisoned by him in various
cities, Torello in Alexandria. Here he was recognized by Saladin, whom
he had entertained with the most delicate and splendid hospitality a few
months before, when the soldan was travelling through Italy in disguise.
Saladin's return for this courtesy was so magnificent as almost to put
Lombardy out of Torello's head,[170] and besides he trusted that his
wife had been informed of his safety by a letter which he had sent. This
was not so, however, and the death of another Torello was reported in
Italy as his, in consequence of which his supposed widow was solicited
in marriage, and was obliged to consent to take another husband after
the time should have expired which she had promised to wait. A week
before the last day, Torello learned that the ship which carried his
letter had been wrecked, and the thought that his wife would now marry
again drove him almost mad. Saladin extracted from him the cause of his
distress, and promised that he should yet be at home before the time was
out, which Torello, who had heard that such things had often been done,
was ready to believe. And in fact, by means of one of his necromancers,
Saladin caused Torello to be transported to Pavia in one night--the
night before the new nuptials. Torello appeared at the banquet the next
day in the guise of a Saracen, under the escort of an uncle of his, a
churchman, and at the right moment sent word to the lady that it was a
custom in his country for a bride to send her cup filled with wine to
any stranger who might be present, and for him to drink half and cover
the cup, and for her to drink the rest. To this the lady graciously
assented. Torello drank out most of the wine, dropped in the ring which
his wife had given him when they parted, and covered the cup. The lady,
upon lifting the cover, saw the ring, knew her husband, and, upsetting
the table in her ecstasy, threw herself into Torello's arms.
Tales of this description still maintain themselves in popular
tradition. 'Der Ring ehelicher Treue,' Gottschalk, Deutsche
Volksmärchen, II, 135, relates how Kuno von Falkenstein, going on a
crusade, breaks his ring and gives one half to his wife, begging her to
wait seven years before she marries again. He has the adventures of
Henry of Brunswick, with differences, and, like Moringer, sings a lay
describing his own case. The new bridegroom hands him a cup; he drops in
his half ring, and passes the cup to the bride. The two halves join of
themselves.[171] Other examples, not without variations and
deficiencies, in details, are afforded by 'Der getheilte Trauring,'
Schmitz, Sagen u. Legenden des Eifler Volkes, p. 82; 'Bodman,' Uhland,
in Pfeiffer's Germania, IV, 73-76; 'Graf Hubert von Kalw,' Meier,
Deutsche Sagen, u.s.w., aus Schwaben, p. 332, No 369, Grimms, Deutsche
Sagen, No 524; 'Der Bärenhäuter,' Grimms, K.u.H. märchen, No 101;
'Berthold von Neuhaus,' in Kern's Schlesische Sagen-Chronik, p. 93.
A story of the same kind is interwoven with an exceedingly impressive
adventure related of Richard Sans-Peur in Les Chroniques de Normandie,
Rouen, 1487, chap. lvii, cited in Michel, Chronique des Ducs de
Normandie par Benoit, II, 336 ff. A second is told of Guillaume Martel,
seigneur de Bacqueville; still others of a seigneur Gilbert de Lomblon,
a comrade of St. Louis in his first crusade. Amélie de Bosquet, La
Normandie romanesque et merveilleuse, pp. 465-68, 470.
A Picard ballad, existing in two versions, partly cited by Rathery in
the Moniteur Universel for August 26, 1853, tells of a Sire de Créqui,
who, going beyond seas with, his sovereign, breaks his ring and gives
half to his young wife; is gone ten years, and made captive by the
Turks, who condemn him to death on account of his adhesion to Christ;
and is transported to his château on the eve of the day of his doom.
This very day his wife is to take another husband, sorely against her
will. Créqui appears in the rags of a beggar, and legitimates himself by
producing his half of the ring (which, in a way not explained by
Rathery, has been brought back by a swan).
'Le Retour du Mari,' Puymaigre, Chants populaires messins, p. 20, has
also some traits of ballads of this class. A bridegroom has to go on a
campaign the very day of his nuptials. The campaign lasts seven years,
and the day of his return his wife is about to remarry. He is invited to
the wedding supper, and towards the close of it proposes to play cards
to see who shall have the bride. The guests are surprised. The soldier
says he will have the bride without winning her at cards or dice, and,
turning to the lady, asks, Where are the rings I gave you at your
wedding seven years ago? She will go for them; and here the story breaks
off.[172]
The same hard fortune is that of Costantino, a young Albanian, who is
called to the service of his king three days after his marriage. He
gives back her ring to his wife, and tells her he must go to the wars
for nine years. Should he not return in nine years and nine days, he
bids her marry. The young wife says nothing, waits her nine years and
nine days, and then, since she is much sought for, her father wishes her
to marry. She says nothing, again, and they prepare for the bridal.
Costantino, sleeping in the king's palace, has a bad dream, which makes
him heave a sigh that comes to his sovereign's ear. The king summons all
his soldiers, and inquires who heaved that sigh. Costantino confesses it
was he, and says it was because his wife was marrying. The king orders
him to take the swiftest horse and make for his home. Costantino meets
his father, and learns that his dream is true, presses on to the church,
arrives at the door at the same time as the bridal procession, and
offers himself for a bride's-man. When they come to the exchange of
rings, Costantino contrives that his ring shall remain on the bride's
finger. She knows the ring; her tears burst forth. Costantino declares
himself as having been already crowned with the lady.[173] Camarda,
Appendice al Saggio di Grammatologia, etc., 90-97, a Calabrian-Albanese
copy. There is a Sicilian, but incomplete, in Vigo, Canti popolari
siciliani, p. 342 ff, ed. 1857, p. 695 ff, ed. 1870-74.
With this belongs a ballad, very common in Greece, which, however, has
for the most part lost even more of what was in all probability the
original catastrophe. 'Αναγνωρισμος,' Chasiotis, Popular Songs of
Epirus, p. 88, No 27, comes nearer the common story than other
versions.[174] A man who had been twelve years a slave after being a
bridegroom of three days, dreams that his wife is marrying, runs to the
cellar, and begins to sing dirges. The king hears, and is moved. "If it
is one of the servants, increase his pay; if a slave, set him free." The
slave tells his story (in three lines); the king bids him take a swift
gray. The slave asks the horses, which is a swift gray. Only one
answers, an old steed with forty wounds. "I am a swift gray; tie two or
three handkerchiefs around your head, and tie yourself to my back!"[175]
He comes upon his father pruning the vineyard. "Whose sheep are those
feeding in the meadows?" "My lost son's." He comes to his mother. "What
bride are they marrying?" "My lost son's." "Shall I get to them in
church while they are crowning?" "If you have a fast horse, you will
find them crowning; if you have a bad horse, you will find them at
table." He finds them at church, and calls out, A bad way ye have: why
do ye not bring out the bride, so that strangers may give her the cup? A
good way we have, they answer, we who bring out the bride, and strangers
give her the cup. Then he takes out his ring, while he is about to
present the cup to the bride. The bride can read; she stands and reads
(his name), and bids the company begone, for her mate has come, the
first crowned.
In other cases we find the hero in prison. He was put in for thirty
days; the keys are lost, and he stays thirty years. Legrand, p. 326, No
145; Νεοελληνικα Αναλεκτα, I, 85, No 19. More frequently he is a
galley slave: Zambelios, p. 678, No 103==Passow, No 448; Tommaseo, III,
152==Passow, No 449; Sakellarios, Κυπριακα, III, 37, No 13:
Νεοελληνικα Αναλεκτα, I, 86, No 20; Jeannaraki, Ασματα κρητικα,
p. 203, No 265. His bad dream [a letter from home] makes him heave a
sigh which shakes the prison, or stops [splits] the galley.[176] In
Tommaseo, III, 152, on reaching the church, he cries, "Stand aside,
gentlemen, stand aside, my masters; let the bride pour for me." She
pours him one cup and two, and exclaims (the ring which was dropped into
the cup having dropped out of the story), My John has come back! Then
they both "go out like candles." In Sakellarios they embrace and fall
dead, and when laid in the grave come up as a cypress and a citron tree.
In the Cretan ballad John does not dismount, but takes the bride on to
the horse and is off with her; so in the beautiful ballad in Fauriel,
II, 140, No 11, 'Ἡ Ἁρπαγη,' "peut-être la plus distinguée de ce
recueil," which belongs with this group, but seems to be later at the
beginning and the end. Even here the bride takes a cup to pour a draught
for the horseman.
In Russia the ring story is told of Dobrynya and Nastasya. Dobrynya,
sent out shortly after his marriage to collect tribute for Vladimir,
requests Nastasya to wait for him twelve years: then she may wed again,
so it be not with Alesha. Twelve years pass. Alesha avows that he has
seen Dobrynya's corpse lying on the steppe, and sues for her hand.
Vladimir supports the suit, and Nastasya is constrained to accept this
prohibited husband. Dobrynya's horse [two doves, a pilgrim] reveals to
his master what is going on, and carries him home with marvellous speed.
Dobrynya gains admittance to the wedding-feast in the guise of a
merry-maker, and so pleases Vladimir with his singing that he is allowed
to sit where he likes. He places himself opposite Nastasya, drops his
ring in a cup, and asks her to drink to him. She finds the ring in the
bottom, falls at his feet and implores pardon.[177] Wollner, Volksepik
der Grossrussen, p. 122 f; Rambaud, La Russie Épique, p. 86 f.
We have the ring employed somewhat after the fashion of these western
tales in Somadeva's story of Vidúshaka. The Vidyúdhárí Bhadrá, having to
part for a while with Vidúshaka, for whom she had conceived a passion,
gives him her ring. Subsequently, Vidúshaka obliges a rakshas whom he
has subdued to convey him to the foot of a mountain on which Bhadrá had
taken refuge. Many beautiful girls come to fetch water in golden
pitchers from a lake, and, on inquiring, Vidúshaka finds that the water
is for Bhadrá. One of the girls asks him to lift her pitcher on to her
shoulder, and while doing this he drops into the pitcher Bhadrá's ring.
When the water is poured on Bhadrá's hands, the ring falls out. Bhadrá
asks her maids if they have seen a stranger. They say they have seen a
mortal, and that he had helped one of them with her pitcher. They are
ordered to go for the youth at once, for he is Bhadrá's consort.[178]
According to the letter of the ballads, should the ring given Horn by
his lady turn wan or blue, this would signify that she loved another
man: but though accuracy would be very desirable in such a case, these
words are rather loose, since she never faltered in her love, and
submitted to marry another, so far as she submitted, only under
constraint. 'Horn Child,' sts 48, 71, agrees with the ballads as to this
point. We meet a ring of similar virtue in 'Bonny Bee-Hom,' Jamieson's
Popular Ballads, I, 187, and Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland,
I, 169.
'But gin this ring should fade or fail,
Or the stone should change its hue,
Be sure your love is dead and gone,
Or she has proved untrue.'
Jamieson, p. 191.
In the Roumanian ballad, 'Ring and Handkerchief,' a prince going to war
gives his wife a ring: if it should rust, he is dead. She gives him a
gold-embroidered handkerchief: if the gold melts, she is dead.
Alecsandri, Poesiĭ pop. ale Românilor, p. 20, No 7; Stanley, Rouman
Anthology, p. 16, p. 193. In Gonzenbach's Sicilianische Märchen, I, 39,
No 7, a prince, on parting with his sister, gives her a ring, saying, So
long as the stone is clear, I am well: if it is dimmed, that is a sign
that I am dead. So No 5, at p. 23. A young man, in a Silesian story,
receives a ring from his sweetheart, with the assurance that he can
count upon her faith as long as the ring holds; and after twenty years'
detention in the mines of Siberia, is warned of trouble by the ring's
breaking: Goedsche, Schlesischer Sagen- Historien- u. Legendenschatz, I,
37, No 16. So in some copies of 'Lamkin,' the lord has a foreboding that
some ill has happened to his lady from the rings on his fingers bursting
in twain: Motherwell, p. 291, st. 23; Finlay, II, 47, st. 30.[179]
* * * * *
Hind Horn is translated by Grundtvig, Eng. og sk. Folkeviser, p. 274, No
42, mainly after the copy in Motherwell's Minstrelsy; by Rosa Warrens,
Schottische V. l. der Vorzeit, p. 161, No 37, after Buchan (#H#); by
Knortz, L. u. R. Alt-Englands, p. 184, No 52, after Allingham.
A
Motherwell's MS., p. 106. From Mrs King, Kilbarchan.
1
In Scotland there was a babie born,
Lill lal, etc.
And his name it was called young Hind Horn.
With a fal lal, etc.
2
He sent a letter to our king
That he was in love with his daughter Jean.
3
He's gien to her a silver wand,
With seven living lavrocks sitting thereon.
4
She's gien to him a diamond ring,
With seven bright diamonds set therein.
5
'When this ring grows pale and wan,
You may know by it my love is gane.'
6
One day as he looked his ring upon,
He saw the diamonds pale and wan.
7
He left the sea and came to land,
And the first that he met was an old beggar man.
8
'What news, what news?' said young Hind Horn;
'No news, no news,' said the old beggar man.
9
'No news,' said the beggar, 'no news at a',
But there is a wedding in the king's ha.
10
'But there is a wedding in the king's ha,
That has halden these forty days and twa.'
11
'Will ye lend me your begging coat?
And I'll lend you my scarlet cloak.
12
'Will you lend me your beggar's rung?
And I'll gie you my steed to ride upon.
13
'Will you lend me your wig o hair,
To cover mine, because it is fair?'
14
The auld beggar man was bound for the mill,
But young Hind Horn for the king's hall.
15
The auld beggar man was bound for to ride,
But young Hind Horn was bound for the bride.
16
When he came to the king's gate,
He sought a drink for Hind Horn's sake.
17
The bride came down with a glass of wine,
When he drank out the glass, and dropt in the ring.
18
'O got ye this by sea or land?
Or got ye it off a dead man's hand?'
19
'I got not it by sea, I got it by land,
And I got it, madam, out of your own hand.'
20
'O I'll cast off my gowns of brown,
And beg wi you frae town to town.
21
'O I'll cast off my gowns of red,
And I'll beg wi you to win my bread.'
22
'Ye needna cast off your gowns of brown,
For I'll make you lady o many a town.
23
'Ye needna cast off your gowns of red,
It's only a sham, the begging o my bread.'
24
The bridegroom he had wedded the bride,
But young Hind Horn he took her to bed.
B
Motherwell's MS., p. 418. From the singing of a
servant-girl at Halkhead.
1
I never saw my love before,
With a hey lillelu and a ho lo lan
Till I saw her thro an oger bore.
With a hey down and a hey diddle downie
2
She gave to me a gay gold ring,
With three shining diamonds set therein.
3
And I gave to her a silver wand,
With three singing lavrocks set thereon.
4
'What if these diamonds lose their hue,
Just when your love begins for to rew?'
5
He's left the land, and he's gone to sea,
And he's stayd there seven years and a day.
6
But when he looked this ring upon,
The shining diamonds were both pale and wan.
7
He's left the seas and he's come to the land,
And there he met with an auld beggar man.
8
'What news, what news, thou auld beggar man
For it is seven years sin I've seen lan.'
9
'No news,' said the old beggar man, 'at all,
But there is a wedding in the king's hall.'
10
'Wilt thou give to me thy begging coat?
And I'll give to thee my scarlet cloak.
11
'Wilt thou give to me thy begging staff?
And I'll give to thee my good gray steed.'
12
The old beggar man was bound for to ride,
But Young Hynd Horn was bound for the bride.
13
When he came to the king's gate,
He asked a drink for Young Hynd Horn's sake.
14
The news unto the bonnie bride came
That at the yett there stands an auld man.
15
'There stands an auld man at the king's gate;
He asketh a drink for young Hyn Horn's sake.'
16
'I'll go thro nine fires so hot,
But I'll give him a drink for Young Hyn Horn's sake.'
17
She gave him a drink out of her own hand;
He drank out the drink and he dropt in the ring.
18
'Got thou't by sea, or got thou't by land?
Or got thou't out of any dead man's hand?'
19
'I got it not by sea, but I got it by land,
For I got it out of thine own hand.'
20
'I'll cast off my gowns of brown,
And I'll follow thee from town to town.
21
'I'll cast off my gowns of red,
And along with thee I'll beg my bread.'
22
'Thou need not cast off thy gowns of brown,
For I can make thee lady of many a town.
23
'Thou need not cast off thy gowns of red,
For I can maintain thee with both wine and bread.'
24
The bridegroom thought he had the bonnie bride wed,
But Young Hyn Horn took the bride to bed.
C
#a.# Motherwell's Note-Book, p. 42: from Agnes Lyle. #b.#
Motherwell's MS., p. 413: from the singing of Agnes Lyle,
Kilbarchan, August 24, 1825.
1
Young Hyn Horn's to the king's court gone,
Hoch hey and an ney O
He's fallen in love with his little daughter Jean.
Let my love alone, I pray you
2
He's bocht to her a little gown,
With seven broad flowers spread it along.
3
She's given to him a gay gold ring.
The posie upon it was richt plain.
4
'When you see it losing its comely hue,
So will I my love to you.'
5
Then within a little wee,
Hyn Horn left land and went to sea.
6
When he lookt his ring upon,
He saw it growing pale and wan.
7
Then within a little [wee] again,
Hyn Horn left sea and came to the land.
8
As he was riding along the way,
There he met with a jovial beggar.
9
'What news, what news, old man?' he did say:
'This is the king's young dochter's wedding day.'
10
'If this be true you tell to me,
You must niffer clothes with me.
11
'You'll gie me your cloutit coat,
I'll gie you my fine velvet coat.
12
'You'll gie me your cloutit pock,
I'll gie you my purse; it'll be no joke.'
13
'Perhaps there['s] nothing in it, not one bawbee;'
'Yes, there's gold and silver both,' said he.
14
'You'll gie me your bags of bread,
And I'll gie you my milk-white steed.'
15
When they had niffered all, he said,
'You maun learn me how I'll beg.'
16
'When you come before the gate,
You'll ask for a drink for the highman's sake.'
17
When that he came before the gate,
He calld for a drink for the highman's sake.
18
The bride cam tripping down the stair,
To see whaten a bold beggar was there.
19
She gave him a drink with her own hand;
He loot the ring drop in the can.
20
'Got ye this by sea or land?
Or took ye't aff a dead man's hand?'
21
'I got na it by sea nor land,
But I got it aff your own hand.'
22
The bridegroom cam tripping down the stair,
But there was neither bride nor beggar there.
23
Her ain bridegroom had her first wed,
But Young Hyn Horn had her first to bed.
D
Cromek's Select Scotish Songs, II, 204.
1
Near Edinburgh was a young son born,
Hey lilelu an a how low lan
An his name it was called young Hyn Horn.
An it's hey down down deedle airo
2
Seven long years he served the king,
An it's a' for the sake of his daughter Jean.
3
The king an angry man was he;
He send young Hyn Horn to the sea.
* * * * * * *
4
An on his finger she put a ring.
. . . . . . .
* * * * * * *
5
'When your ring turns pale and wan,
Then I'm in love wi another man.'
* * * * * * *
6
Upon a day he lookd at his ring,
It was as pale as anything.
7
He's left the sea, an he's come to the lan,
An there he met an auld beggar man.
8
'What news, what news, my auld beggar man?
What news, what news, by sea or by lan?'
9
'Nae news, nae news,' the auld beggar said,
'But the king's dochter Jean is going to be wed.'
10
'Cast off, cast off thy auld beggar-weed,
An I'll gie thee my gude gray steed.'
* * * * * * *
11
When he cam to our guid king's yet,
He sought a glass o wine for young Hyn Horn's sake.
12
He drank out the wine, an he put in the ring,
An he bade them carry't to the king's dochter Jean.
* * * * * * *
13
'O gat ye't by sea, or gat ye't by lan?
Or gat ye't aff a dead man's han?'
14
'I gat na't by sea, I gat na't by lan,
But I gat it out of your own han.'
* * * * * * *
15
'Go take away my bridal gown,
For I'll follow him frae town to town.'
16
'Ye need na leave your bridal gown,
For I'll make ye ladie o' mony a town.'
E
Motherwell's MS., p. 91. From the recitation of Mrs
Wilson.
* * * * * * *
1
Hynd Horn he has lookt on his ring,
Hey ninny ninny, how ninny nanny
And it was baith black and blue,
And she is either dead or she's married.
And the barck and the broom blooms bonnie
2
Hynd Horn he has shuped to land,
And the first he met was an auld beggar man.
3
'What news, what news, my silly auld man?
For it is seven years syne I have seen land.
4
'What news, what news, my auld beggar man?
What news, what news, by sea or by land?'
5
'There is a king's dochter in the east,
And she has been marryed these nine nights past.
6
'Intil the bride's bed she winna gang
Till she hears tell of her Hynd Horn.'
7
'Cast aff, cast aff thy auld beggar weed,
And I will gie thee my gude gray steed.'
F
Lowran Castle, or the Wild Boar of Curridoo: with other
Tales. By Robert Trotter, Dumfries, 1822, p. 6. From the
recitation of a young friend.
1
In Newport town this knight was born,
Hey lily loo, hey loo lan
And they've called him Young Hynd Horn.
Fal lal la, fal the dal the dady
2
Seven long years he served the king,
For the love of his daughter Jean.
3
He courted her through a wimble bore,
The way never woman was courted before.
4
He gave her through a silver wand,
With three singing laverocks there upon.
5
She gave him back a gay gold ring,
With three bright diamonds glittering.
6
'When this ring grows pale and blue,
Fair Jeanie's love is lost to you.'
7
Young Hynd Horn is gone to sea,
And there seven long years staid he.
8
When he lookd his ring upon,
It grew pale and it grew wan.
9
Young Hynd Horn is come to land,
When he met an old beggar man.
10
'What news, what news doth thee betide?'
'No news, but Princess Jeanie's a bride.'
11
'Will ye give me your old brown cap?
And I'll give you my gold-laced hat.
12
'Will ye give me your begging weed?
And I'll give you my good grey steed.'
13
The beggar has got on to ride,
But Young Hynd Horn's bound for the bride.
* * * * * * *
G
Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 135. "From the
recitation of my niece, M. Kinnear, 23 Aug^t, 1826:" the
north of Scotland.
1
'Hynde Horn's bound love, and Hynde Horn's free,
Whare was ye born, or in what countrie?'
2
'In gude greenwud whare I was born,
And all my friends left me forlorn.
3
'I gave my love a silver wand;
That was to rule oure all Scotland.
4
'My love gave me a gay gowd ring;
That was to rule abune a' thing.'
5
'As lang as that ring keeps new in hue,
Ye may ken that your love loves you.
6
'But whan that ring turns pale and wan,
Ye may ken that your love loves anither man.'
7
He hoisted up his sails, and away sailed he,
Till that he cam to a foreign countrie.
8
He looked at his ring; it was turnd pale and wan;
He said, 'I wish I war at hame again.'
9
He hoisted up his sails, and hame sailed he,
Until that he came to his ain countrie.
10
The first ane that he met wi
Was wi a puir auld beggar man.
11
'What news, what news, my silly old man?
What news hae ye got to tell to me?'
12
'Na news, na news,' the puir man did say,
'But this is our queen's wedding day.'
13
'Ye'll lend me your begging weed,
And I'll gie you my riding steed.'
14
'My begging weed is na for thee,
Your riding steed is na for me.'
15
But he has changed wi the beggar man,
. . . . . . .
16
'Which is the gate that ye used to gae?
And what are the words ye beg wi?'
17
'Whan ye come to yon high hill,
Ye'll draw your bent bow nigh until.
18
'Whan ye come to yonder town,
Ye'll let your bent bow low fall down.
19
'Ye'll seek meat for St Peter, ask for St Paul,
And seek for the sake of Hynde Horn all.
20
'But tak ye frae nane of them a',
Till ye get frae the bonnie bride hersel O.'
21
Whan he cam to yon high hill,
He drew his bent bow nigh until.
22
And whan he cam to yonder town,
He lute his bent bow low fall down.
23
He saught meat for St Peter, he askd for St Paul,
And he sought for the sake of Hynde Horn all.
24
But he would tak frae nane o them a',
Till he got frae the bonnie bride hersel O.
25
The bride cam tripping doun the stair,
Wi the scales o red gowd on her hair.
26
Wi a glass of red wine in her hand,
To gie to the puir auld beggar man.
27
It's out he drank the glass o wine,
And into the glass he dropt the ring.
28
'Got ye't by sea, or got ye't by land,
Or got ye't aff a drownd man's hand?'
29
'I got na't by sea, I got na't by land,
Nor got I it aff a drownd man's hand.
30
'But I got it at my wooing,
And I'll gie it at your wedding.'
31
'I'll tak the scales o gowd frae my head,
I'll follow you, and beg my bread.
32
'I'll tak the scales of gowd frae my hair,
I'll follow you for evermair.'
33
She has tane the scales o gowd frae her head,
She has followed him to beg her bread.
34
She has tane the scales o gowd frae her hair,
And she has followed him for evermair.
35
But atween the kitchen and the ha,
There he lute his cloutie cloak fa.
36
And the red gowd shined oure him a',
And the bride frae the bridegroom was stown awa.
H
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 268.
1
'Hynd Horn fair, and Hynd Horn free,
O where were you born, in what countrie?'
2
'In gude greenwood, there I was born,
And all my forbears me beforn.
3
'O seven years I served the king,
And as for wages, I never gat nane;
4
'But ae sight o his ae daughter,
And that was thro an augre bore.
5
'My love gae me a siller wand,
'Twas to rule ower a' Scotland.
6
'And she gae me a gay gowd ring,
The virtue o't was above a' thing.'
7
'As lang's this ring it keeps the hue,
Ye'll know I am a lover true:
8
'But when the ring turns pale and wan,
Ye'll know I love another man.'
9
He hoist up sails, and awa saild he,
And saild into a far countrie.
10
And when he lookd upon his ring,
He knew she loved another man.
11
He hoist up sails and home came he,
Home unto his ain countrie.
12
The first he met on his own land,
It chancd to be a beggar man.
13
'What news, what news, my gude auld man?
What news, what news, hae ye to me?'
14
'Nae news, nae news,' said the auld man,
'The morn's our queen's wedding day.'
15
'Will ye lend me your begging weed?
And I'll lend you my riding steed.'
16
'My begging weed will ill suit thee,
And your riding steed will ill suit me.'
17
But part be right, and part be wrang,
Frae the beggar man the cloak he wan.
18
'Auld man, come tell to me your leed;
What news ye gie when ye beg your bread.'
19
'As ye walk up unto the hill,
Your pike staff ye lend ye till.
20
'But whan ye come near by the yett,
Straight to them ye will upstep.
21
'Take nane frae Peter, nor frae Paul,
None frae high or low o them all.
22
'And frae them all ye will take nane,
Until it comes frae the bride's ain hand.'
23
He took nane frae Peter nor frae Paul,
Nane frae the high nor low o them all.
24
And frae them all he would take nane,
Until it came frae the bride's ain hand.
25
The bride came tripping down the stair,
The combs o red gowd in her hair.
26
A cup o red wine in her hand,
And that she gae to the beggar man.
27
Out o the cup he drank the wine,
And into the cup he dropt the ring.
28
'O got ye't by sea, or got ye't by land,
Or got ye't on a drownd man's hand?'
29
'I got it not by sea, nor got it by land,
Nor got I it on a drownd man's hand.
30
'But I got it at my wooing gay,
And I'll gie't you on your wedding day.'
31
'I'll take the red gowd frae my head,
And follow you, and beg my bread.
32
'I'll take the red gowd frae my hair,
And follow you for evermair.'
33
Atween the kitchen and the ha,
He loot his cloutie cloak down fa.
34
And wi red gowd shone ower them a',
And frae the bridegroom the bride he sta.
* * * * *
#A.#
1^2, 8^1, 14^2, 15^2, 16^2, 24^2. Hindhorn.
#B.#
_The burden is given in Motherwell, Appendix, p. xviii,
thus:_
With a hey lilloo and a how lo lan
And the birk and the brume blooms bonnie.
12^2, 13^2. Hyndhorn.
15^2, 16^2, 24^2. Hynhorn.
#C. a.#
5^2. to see.
5^2, 7^2. Hynhorn.
23^2. H. horn.
11^1. clouted.
11^1, 14^1. give.
14^2. white milk. #b.# milk-white.
16^2. hymen's. #b.# highman's.
22^1. can.
#b.#
5^2, 7^2, 23^2. Hynhorn.
7^1. little wee.
13^1. there's.
#D.#
1^2, 3^2, 11^2. Hynhorn.
#E.#
_The second line of the burden stands after st. 2 in MS._
2^1. _The MS reading may be ~sheeped~._
2^1, 6^2. Hyndhorn.
#G.#
_After ~my niece, M. Kinnear, etc.~, stands in pencil
~Christy Smith~._
15. _On the opposite page, over against this stanza, is
written_:
But part by richt, or part be wrang,
The auldman's duddie cloak he's on.
_#G# and #H# are printed by Kinloch and by Buchan in
four-line stanzas._
_The stanzas printed by Motherwell, which have not been
found in his manuscripts, are_:
10
Seven lang years he has been on the sea,
And Hynd Horn has looked how his ring may be.
21
The auld beggar man cast off his coat,
And he's taen up the scarlet cloak.
22
The auld beggar man threw down his staff,
And he has mounted the good gray steed.
29
She went to the gate where the auld man did stand,
And she gave him a drink out of her own hand.
[159] This I should have missed but for the kindness of Mr W. Macmath.
[160] Motherwell's printed copy, Minstrelsy, p. 36, is thus made up:
stanzas 1, 2, 3, 8, 15, from Cromek (#D#); 4-7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 19,
20, 24-28, 30-37, from #B#; 12, 17, 18 from #E#. 23 # #A# 14. 10, 21,
22, 29, have not been found in his manuscripts. The first line of the
burden is from #B#, the second from #E#. Motherwell alters his texts
slightly, now and then.
[161] #C# 16, 17 are corrupted, and also #F# 19, 23, #G# 21; all three
in a way which allows of easy emendation. Hymon [high, man] in #C#
should of course be Hyn Horn. The injunction in #G#, #H# should be to
ask nothing for Peter or Paul's sake, but all for Horn's.
[162] When Horn was near the city, he stopped to see how things would
go. King Modun passed, with Wikel, in gay discourse of the charms of
Rimild. Horn called out to them insultingly, and Modun asked who he was.
Horn said he had formerly served a man of consequence as his fisherman:
he had thrown a net almost seven years ago, and had now come to give it
a look. If it had taken any fish, he would love it no more; if it should
still be as he left it, he would carry it away. Modun thinks him a fool.
(3984-4057, and nearly the same in 'Horn Childe and Maiden Rimild,'
77-79). This is part of a story in the Gesta Romanorum, of a soldier who
loved the emperor's daughter, and went to the holy land for seven years,
after a mutual exchange of fidelity for that time. A king comes to woo
the princess, but is put off for seven years, upon her alleging that she
has made a vow of virginity for so long. At the expiration of this term,
the king and the soldier meet as they are on the way to the princess.
The king, from certain passages between them, thinks the soldier a fool.
The soldier takes leave of the king under pretence of looking after a
net which he had laid in a certain place seven years before, rides on
ahead, and slips away with the princess. Gest. Rom., Oesterley, p. 597,
No 193; Grässe, II, 159; Madden, p. 32; Swan, I, p. lxv. A similar story
in Campbell's Tales of the West Highlands, I, 281, 'Baillie Lunnain.'
(Simrock, Deutsche Märchen, No 47, is apparently a translation from the
Gesta.) The riddle of the hawk, slightly varied, is met with in the
romance of Blonde of Oxford and Jehan of Dammartin, v. 2811 ff, 3143 ff,
3288 ff (ed. Le Roux de Lincy, pp. 98, 109, 114), and, still further
modified, in Le Romant de Jehan de Paris, ed. Montaiglon, pp. 55, 63,
111. (Le Roux de Lincy, Köhler, Mussafia, G. Paris). 'Horn et
Rimenhild,' it will be observed, has both riddles, and that of the net
is introduced under circumstances entirely like those in the Gesta
Romanorum. The French romance is certainly independent of the English in
this passage.
[163] See the excellent studies of King Horn by Wissmann, in Quellen und
Forschungen, No 16, and Anglia, IV, 342 ff.
[164] #A#, #B#, and #E#, which had not been printed at the time of his
writing, will convince Professor Stimming, whose valuable review in
Englische Studien, I, 351 ff, supplements, and in the matter of
_derivation_, I think, rectifies, Wissmann's Untersuchungen, that the
king's daughter in the ballads was faithful to Horn, and that they were
marrying her against her will, as in the romances. This contingency
seems not to have been foreseen when the ring was given: but it must be
admitted that it was better for the ring to change, to the temporary
clouding of the lady's character, than to have Horn stay away and the
forced marriage go on.
[165] See the ample introduction to 'Henrik af Brunsvig,' in Grundtvig,
No 114, II, 608 ff.
[166] It appears that these half rings are often dug up. "Neuere
Ausgrabungen haben vielfach auf solche Ringstücke geführt, die, als
Zeichen unverbrüchlicher Treue, einst mit dem Geliebten gebrochen, ja
wie der Augenschein beweist, entzwei geschnitten, und so ins Grab
mitgenommen wurden, zum Zeichen dass die Liebe über den Tod hinaus
daure." Rochholz, Schweizersagen aus dem Aargau, II, 116.
[167] Translated, with introduction of verses from #A#, by Prior,
Ancient Danish Ballads, II, 71.
[168] I have not seen this, and depend upon others here.
[169] Gödeke, 'Reinfrît von Braunschweig,' p. 89, conjectures that the
half ring was, or would have been, employed in the sequel by some
impostor (the story may never have been finished) as evidence of
Brunswick's death. A ring is so used in a Silesian tradition, of the
general character of that of Henry the Lion, with the difference that
the knight is awakened by a cock's crowing: 'Die Hahnkrähe bei Breslau,'
in Kern's Schlesische Sagen-Chronik, p. 151. There is a variation of
this last, without the deception by means of the ring, in Goedsche's
Schlesischer Sagenschatz, p. 37, No 16.
[170] There are marked correspondences between Boccaccio's story and the
veritable history of Henry the Lion as given by Bartsch, Herzog Ernst,
cxxvi f: e. g., the presents of clothes by the empress (transferred to
Torello's wife), and the handsome behavior of two soldens, here
attributed to Saladin.
[171] Without the conclusion, also in Binder's Schwäbische Volkssagen,
II, 173. These Volksmärchen, by the way, are "erzählt" by Gottschalk. It
is not made quite so clear as could be wished, whether they are merely
re-told.
[172] Germaine's husband, after an absence of seven years, overcomes his
wife's doubts of his identity by exhibiting half of her ring, which
_happened_ to break the day of their wedding, or the day after:
Puymaigre, p. 11, Champfleury, Chansons des Provinces, p. 77. The
conclusion to Sir Tristrem, which Scott supplied, "abridged from the
French metrical romance, in the style of Tomas of Erceldoune," makes
Ganhardin lay a ring in a cup which Brengwain hands Ysonde, who
recognizes the ring as Tristrem's token. The cup was one of the presents
made to King Mark by Tristrem's envoy, and is transferred to Ysonde by
Scott. The passage has been cited as ancient and genuine.
[173] In the Greek rite, rings are used in the betrothal, which as a
rule immediately precedes the marriage. The rings are exchanged by the
priest and sponsors (Camarda says three times). Crowns, of vine twigs,
etc., are the emblems in the nuptial ceremony, and these are also
changed from one head to the other.
[174] I was guided to nearly all these Greek ballads by Professor
Liebrecht's notes, Zur Volkskunde, p. 207.
[175] This high-mettled horse is a capital figure in most of the
versions. In one of them the caution is given, "Do not feel safe in
spurring him: he will scatter thy brains ten ells below the ground." The
gray (otherwise the black) is of the same breed as the Russian
Dobrynya's, a little way on; or the foal that took Charles the Great,
under similar circumstances, from Passau to Aachen between morn and eve,
('Karl der Grosse,' from Enenkels Weltbuch, c. 1250, in von der Hagen's
Gesammtabenteuer, II, 619 ff); or the black in the poem and tale of
Thedel von Walmoden.
[176] In Jeannaraki the bey says, "My slave, give us a song, and I will
free you." John sings of his love, whom he was to lose that day. So
Zambelios, as above, Tommaseo, p. 152, and Νεο. Αναλ. No. 20.
Compare Brunswick, in Wyssenhere, and Moringer.
[177] Otherwise: Nastasya waits _six_ years, as desired; is told that
Dobrynya is dead and is urged to marry Alesha; will not hear of marriage
for six years more; Vladimir then interposes. Dobrynya is furious, as
these absentees are sometimes pleased to be. He complains that women
have long hair and short wits, and so does Brunswick in Wyssenhere's
poem, st. 89. Numerous as are the instances of these long absences, the
woman is rarely, if ever, represented as in the least to blame. The
behavior of the man, on the other hand, is in some cases trying. Thus,
the Conde Dirlos tells his young wife to wait for him seven years, and
if he does not come in eight to marry the ninth. He accomplishes the
object of his expedition in three years, but stays fifteen, never
writes,--he had taken an unnecessary oath not to do that before he
started,--and forbids anybody else to write, on pain of death. Such is
his humor; but he is very much provoked at being reported dead. Wolf and
Hofmann, Primavera y Flor de Romances, II, 129, No 164.
[178] Kathá Sarit Ságara (of the early part of the 12th century),
Tawney's translation, I, 136 ff. The story is cited by Rajna, in
Romania, VI, 359. Herr v. Bodman leaves his marriage ring in a
wash-bowl! Meier, Deutsche V. m. aus Schwaben, 214 f.
[179] The ring given Horn by Rymenbild, in 'King Horn,' 579 ff
(Wissmann), and in the French romance, 2056 ff, protects him against
material harm or mishap, or assures him superiority in fight, as long as
he is faithful. So in Buchan's version of 'Bonny Bee-Ho'm,' st. 8:
'As lang's this ring's your body on,
Your blood shall neer be drawn.'
"The king's daughter of Linne" gives her champion two rings, one of
which renders him invulnerable, and the other will staunch the blood of
any of his men who may be wounded: Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Introduction, p. lvii. Eglamore's ring, Percy MS., II, 363, st. 51, will
preserve his life on water or land. A ring given Wolfdietrich by the
empress, #D# VIII, st. 42, ed. Jänicke, doubles his strength and makes
him fire-proof in his fight with the dragon. The ring lent Ywaine by his
lady will keep him from prison, sickness, loss of blood, or being made
captive in battle, and give him superiority to all antagonists, so long
as he is true in love: Ritson, Met. Rom. I, 65, vv 1533 ff. But an
Indian ring which Reinfrît receives from his wife before he departs for
the crusade, 15,066 ff, has no equal, after all; for, besides doing as
much as the best of these, it imparts perpetual good spirits. It is
interesting to know that this matchless jewel had once been the property
of a Scottish king, and was given by him to his daughter when she was
sent to Norway to be married: under convoy of Sir Patrick Spens?
18
SIR LIONEL.
#A.# 'Sir Lionell,' Percy MS., p. 32, Hales and Furnivall,
I, 75.
#B.# 'Isaac-a-Bell and Hugh the Græme,' Christie,
Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 110.
#C. a.# 'The Jovial Hunter of Bromsgrove,' Allies, The
British, Roman and Saxon Antiquities and Folk-Lore of
Worcestershire, 2d ed., p. 116. #b.# Bell's Ancient Poems,
Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England, p. 124.
#D.# Allies, as above, p. 118.
#E. a.# 'The Old Man and his Three Sons,' Bell, as above,
p. 250. #b.# Mr Robert White's papers.
#F.# Allies, as above, p. 120.
#B# can be traced in Banffshire, according to Christie, for more than a
hundred years, through the old woman that sang it, and her forbears. #C
a#, #D# were originally published by Allies in the year 1845, in a
pamphlet bearing the title The Jovial Hunter of Bromsgrove, Horne the
Hunter, and Robin Hood. No intimation as to the source of his copy, #C
b#, is given by Bell, i. e., Dixon. Apparently all the variations from
Allies, #C a#, are of the nature of editorial improvements. #E a# is
said (1857) to be current in the north of England as a nursery song.
One half of #A#, the oldest and fullest copy of this ballad (the second
and fourth quarters), is wanting in the Percy MS. What we can gather of
the story is this. A knight finds a lady sitting in a tree, #A#, #C#,
#D# [under a tree, #E#], who tells him that a wild boar has slain Sir
Broning, #A# [killed her lord and thirty of his men, #C#; worried her
lord and wounded thirty, #E#]. The knight kills the boar, #B-D#, and
seems to have received bad wounds in the process, #A#, #B#; the boar
belonged to a giant, #B#; or a wild woman, #C#, #D#. The knight is
required to forfeit his hawks and leash, and the little finger of his
right hand, #A# [his horse, his hound, and his lady, #C#]. He refuses to
submit to such disgrace, though in no condition to resist, #A#; the
giant allows him time to heal his wounds, forty days, #A#; thirty-three,
#B#; and he is to leave his lady as security for his return, #A#. At the
end of this time the knight comes back sound and well, #A#, #B#, and
kills the giant as he had killed the boar, #B#. #C# and #D# say nothing
of the knight having been wounded. The wild woman, to revenge her
"pretty spotted pig," flies fiercely at him, and he cleaves her in two.
The last quarter of the Percy copy would, no doubt, reveal what became
of the lady who was sitting in the tree, as to which the traditional
copies give no light.
Our ballad has much in common with the romance of 'Sir Eglamour of
Artois,' Percy MS., Hales and Furnivall, II, 338; Thornton Romances,
Camden Society, ed. Halliwell, p. 121; Ellis, Metrical Romances, from an
early printed copy, Bohn's ed., p. 527. Eglamour, simple knight, loving
Christabel, an earl's daughter, is required by the father, who does not
wish him well, to do three deeds of arms, the second being to kill a
boar in the kingdom of Sattin or Sydon, which had been known to slay
forty armed knights in one day (Percy, st. 37). This Eglamour does,
after a very severe fight. The boar belonged to a giant, who had kept
him fifteen years to slay Christian men (Thornton, st. 42, Percy, 40).
This giant had demanded the king of Sydon's daughter's hand, and comes
to carry her off, by force, if necessary, the day following the
boar-fight. Eglamour, who had been found by the king in the forest, in a
state of exhaustion, after a contest which had lasted to the third or
fourth day, and had been taken home by him and kindly cared for, is now
ready for action again. He goes to the castle walls with a squire, who
carries the boar's head on a spear. The giant, seeing the head,
exclaims,
'Alas, art thou dead!
My trust was all in thee!
Now by the law that I lieve in,
My little speckled hoglin,
Dear bought shall thy death be.'
Percy, st. 44.
Eglamour kills the giant, and returns to Artois with both heads. The
earl has another adventure ready for him, and hopes the third chance may
quit all. Eglamour asks for twelve weeks to rest his weary body.
#B# comes nearest the romance, and possibly even the wood of Tore is a
reminiscence of Artois. The colloquy with the giant in #B# is also,
perhaps, suggested by one which had previously taken place between
Eglamour and another giant, brother of this, after the knight had killed
one of his harts (Percy, st. 25). #C# 11, #D# 9 strikingly resemble the
passage of the romance cited above (Percy, 44, Thornton, 47).
The ballad has also taken up something from the romance of 'Eger and
Grime,' Percy MS., Hales and Furnivall, I, 341; Laing, Early Metrical
Tales, p. 1; 'Sir Eger, Sir Grahame, and Sir Gray-Steel,' Ellis's
Specimens, p. 546. Sir Egrabell (Rackabello, Isaac-a-Bell), Lionel's
father, recalls Sir Eger, and Hugh the Græme in #B# is of course the
Grahame or Grime of the romance, the Hugh being derived from a later
ballad. Gray-Steel, a man of proof, although not quite a giant, cuts off
the little finger of Eger's right hand, as the giant proposes to do to
Lionel in #A# 21.
The friar in #E# 1^3, 4^1, may be a corruption of Ryalas, or some like
name, as the first line of the burden of #E#, 'Wind well, _Lion_, good
hunter,' seems to be a perversion of 'Wind well _thy horn_, good
hunter,' in #C#, #D#.[180] This part of the burden, especially as it
occurs in #A#, is found, nearly, in a fragment of a song of the time of
Henry VIII, given by Mr Chappell in his Popular Music of the Olden Time,
I, 58, as copied from "MSS Reg., Append. 58."
'Blow thy horne, hunter,
Cum, blow thy horne on hye!
In yonder wode there lyeth a doo,
In fayth she woll not dye.
Cum, blow thy horne, hunter,
Cum, blow thy horne, joly hunter!'
A terrible swine is a somewhat favorite figure in romantic tales. A
worthy peer of the boar of Sydon is killed by King Arthur in 'The
Avowynge of King Arthur,' etc., Robson, Three Early English Metrical
Romances (see st. xii). But both of these, and even the Erymanthian,
must lower their bristles before the boar in 'Kilhwch and Olwen,'
Mabinogion, Part iv, pp. 309-16. Compared with any of these, the "felon
sow" presented by Ralph Rokeby to the friars of Richmond (Evans, Old
Ballads, II, 270, ed. 1810, Scott, Appendix to Rokeby, note M) is a tame
villatic pig: the old mettle is bred out.
Professor Grundtvig has communicated to me a curious Danish ballad of
this class, 'Limgrises Vise,' from a manuscript of the latter part of
the 16th century. A very intractable damsel, after rejecting a multitude
of aspirants, at last marries, with the boast that her progeny shall be
fairer than Christ in heaven. She has a litter of nine pups, a pig, and
a boy. The pig grows to be a monster, and a scourge to the whole region.
He drank up the water from dike and from dam,
And ate up, besides, both goose, gris and lamb.
The beast is at last disposed of by baiting him with the nine
congenerate dogs, who jump down his throat, rend liver and lights, and
find their death there, too. This ballad smacks of the broadside, and is
assigned to the 16th century. A fragment of a Swedish swine-ballad, in
the popular tone, is given by Dybeck, Runa, 1845, p. 23; another, very
similar, in Axelson's Vesterdalarne, p. 179, 'Koloregris,' and Professor
Sophus Bugge has recovered some Norwegian verses. The Danish story of
the monstrous birth of the pig has become localized: the Liimfiord is
related to have been made by the grubbing of the Limgris: Thiele,
Danmarks Folkesagn, II. 19, two forms.
There can hardly be anything but the name in common between the Lionel
of this ballad and Lancelot's cousin-german.
A
Percy MS., p. 32, Hales and Furnivall, I, 75.
1
Sir Egrabell had sonnes three,
Blow thy horne, good hunter
Sir Lyonell was one of these.
As I am a gentle hunter
2
S_ir_ Lyonell wold on hunting ryde,
Vntill the forrest him beside.
3
And as he rode thorrow the wood,
Where trees and harts and all were good,
4
And as he rode over the plaine,
There he saw a knight lay slaine.
5
And as he rode still on the plaine,
He saw a lady sitt in a graine.
6
'Say thou, lady, and tell thou me,
What blood shedd heere has bee.'
7
'Of this blood shedd we may all rew,
Both wife and childe and man alsoe.
8
'For it is not past 3 days right
Since S_ir_ Broninge was mad a k_nigh_t.
9
'Nor it is not more than 3 dayes agoe
Since the wild bore did him sloe.'
10
'Say thou, lady, and tell thou mee,
How long thou wilt sitt in _tha_t tree.'
11
She said, 'I will sitt in this tree
Till my friends doe feitch me.'
12
'Tell me, lady, and doe not misse,
Where that y_ou_r friends dwellings is.'
13
'Downe,' shee said, 'in yonder towne,
There dwells my freinds of great renowne.'
14
Says, 'Lady, Ile ryde into yonder towne
And see wether y_ou_r friends beene bowne.
15
'I my self wilbe the formost man
That shall come, lady, to feitch you home.'
16
But as he rode then by the way,
He thought it shame to goe away;
17
And vmbethought him of a wile,
How he might that wilde bore beguile.
18
'S_i_r Egrabell,' he said, 'my father was;
He neuer left lady in such a case;
19
'Noe more will I' ...
. . . . . . .
20
'And a[fter] that thou shalt doe mee
Thy hawkes and thy lease alsoe.
21
'Soe shalt thou doe at my com_m_and
The litle fingar on thy right hand.'
22
'Ere I wold leaue all this with thee,
Vpoon this ground I rather dyee.'
23
The gyant gaue S_i_r Lyon_el_l such a blow,
The fyer out of his eyen did throw.
24
He said then, 'if I were saffe and sound,
As with-in this hower I was in this ground,
25
'It shold be in the next towne told
How deare thy buffett it was sold;
26
'And it shold haue beene in the next towne _sai_d
How well thy buffett it were paid.'
27
'Take 40 daies into spite,
To heale thy wounds that beene soe wide.
28
'When 40 dayes beene at an end,
Heere meete thou me both safe and sound.
29
'And till thou come to me againe,
With me thoust leaue thy lady alone.
30
When 40 dayes was at an end,
Sir Lyon_el_l of his wounds was healed sound.
31
He tooke with him a litle page,
He gaue to him good yeomans wage.
32
And as he rode by one hawthorne,
Even there did hang his hunting horne.
33
He sett his bugle to his mouth,
And blew his bugle still full south.
34
He blew his bugle lowde and shrill;
The lady heard, and came him till.
35
Sayes, 'the gyant lyes vnder yond low,
And well he heares yo_u_r bugle blow.
36
'And bidds me of good cheere be,
This night heele supp with you and me.'
37
Hee sett that lady vppon a steede,
And a litle boy before her yeede.
38
And said, 'lady, if you see that I must dye,
As euer you loued me, from me flye.
39
'But, lady, if you see _tha_t I must liue,'
. . . . . . .
B
Christie, Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 110. From the
singing of an old woman in Buckie, Enzie, Banffshire.
1
A knicht had two sons o sma fame,
Hey nien nanny
Isaac-a-Bell and Hugh the Graeme.
And the norlan flowers spring bonny
2
And to the youngest he did say,
'What occupation will you hae?
When the, etc.
3
'Will you gae fee to pick a mill?
Or will you keep hogs on yon hill?'
While the, etc.
4
'I winna fee to pick a mill,
Nor will I keep hogs on yon hill.
While the, etc.
5
'But it is said, as I do hear,
That war will last for seven year,
And the, etc.
6
'With a giant and a boar
That range into the wood o Tore.
And the, etc.
7
'You'll horse and armour to me provide,
That through Tore wood I may safely ride.'
When the, etc.
8
The knicht did horse and armour provide,
That through Tore wood Graeme micht safely ride.
When the, etc.
9
Then he rode through the wood o Tore,
And up it started the grisly boar.
When the, etc.
10
The firsten bout that he did ride,
The boar he wounded in the left side.
When the, etc.
11
The nexten bout at the boar he gaed,
He from the boar took aff his head.
And the, etc.
12
As he rode back through the wood o Tore,
Up started the giant him before.
And the, etc.
13
'O cam you through the wood o Tore,
Or did you see my good wild boar?'
And the, etc.
14
'I cam now through the wood o Tore,
But woe be to your grisly boar.
And the, etc.
15
'The firsten bout that I did ride,
I wounded your wild boar in the side.
And the, etc.
16
'The nexten bout at him I gaed,
From your wild boar I took aff his head.'
And the, etc.
17
'Gin you have cut aff the head o my boar,
It's your head shall be taen therfore.
And the, etc.
18
'I'll gie you thirty days and three,
To heal your wounds, then come to me.'
While the, etc.
19
'It's after thirty days and three,
When my wounds heal, I'll come to thee.'
When the, etc.
20
So Graeme is back to the wood o Tore,
And he's killd the giant, as he killd the boar.
And the, etc.
C
#a.# Allies, The British, Roman, and Saxon Antiquities and
Folk-Lore of Worcestershire, 2d ed., p. 116. From the
recitation of Benjamin Brown, of Upper Wick, about 1845.
#b.# Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of
England, edited by Robert Bell, p. 124.
1
Sir Robert Bolton had three sons,
Wind well thy horn, good hunter
And one of them was called Sir Ryalas.
For he was a jovial hunter
2
He rang'd all round down by the woodside,
Till up in the top of a tree a gay lady he spy'd.
For he was, etc.
3
'O what dost thou mean, fair lady?' said he;
'O the wild boar has killed my lord and his men thirty.'
As thou beest, etc.
4
'O what shall I do this wild boar to see?'
'O thee blow a blast, and he'll come unto thee.'
As thou beest, etc.
5
[Then he put his horn unto his mouth],
Then he blowd a blast full north, east, west and south.
As he was, etc.
6
And the wild boar heard him full into his den;
Then he made the best of his speed unto him.
To Sir Ryalas, etc.
7
Then the wild boar, being so stout and so strong,
He thrashd down the trees as he came along.
To Sir Ryalas, etc.
8
'O what dost thou want of me?' the wild boar said he;
'O I think in my heart I can do enough for thee.'
For I am, etc.
9
Then they fought four hours in a long summer's day,
Till the wild boar fain would have gotten away.
From Sir Ryalas, etc.
10
Then Sir Ryalas drawd his broad sword with might,
And he fairly cut his head off quite.
For he was, etc.
11
Then out of the wood the wild woman flew:
'Oh thou hast killed my pretty spotted pig!
As thou beest, etc.
12
'There are three things I do demand of thee,
It's thy horn, and thy hound, and thy gay lady.'
As thou beest, etc.
13
'If these three things thou dost demand of me,
It's just as my sword and thy neck can agree.'
For I am, etc.
14
Then into his locks the wild woman flew,
Till she thought in her heart she had torn him through.
As he was, etc.
15
Then Sir Ryalas drawd his broad sword again,
And he fairly split her head in twain.
For he was, etc.
16
In Bromsgrove church they both do lie;
There the wild boar's head is picturd by
Sir Ryalas, etc.
D
Allies, Antiquities and Folk-Lore of Worcestershire, p.
118. From the recitation of ---- Oseman, Hartlebury.
1
As I went up one brook, one brook,
Well wind the horn, good hunter
I saw a fair maiden sit on a tree top.
As thou art the jovial hunter
2
I said, 'Fair maiden, what brings you here?'
'It is the wild boar that has drove me here.'
As thou art, etc.
3
'I wish I could that wild boar see;'
Well wind the horn, good hunter,
And the wild boar soon will come to thee.'
As thou art, etc.
4
Then he put his horn unto his mouth,
And he blowd both east, west, north and south.
As he was, etc.
5
The wild boar hearing it into his den,
[Then he made the best of his speed unto
him].
6
He whetted his tusks for to make them strong,
And he cut down the oak and the ash as he came along.
For to meet with, etc.
7
They fought five hours one long summer's day,
Till the wild boar he yelld, and he'd fain run away.
And away from, etc.
8
O then he cut his head clean off,
. . . . . . .
9
Then there came an old lady running out of the wood,
Saying, 'You have killed my pretty, my pretty spotted pig.'
As thou art, etc.
10
Then at him this old lady she did go,
And he clove her from the top of her head to her toe.
As he was, etc.
11
In Bromsgrove churchyard this old lady lies,
And the face of the boar's head there is drawn by,
That was killed by, etc.
E
#a.# Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of
England, edited by Robert Bell, p. 250. #b.# Mr Robert
White's papers.
1
There was an old man and sons he had three;
Wind well, Lion, good hunter
A friar he being one of the three,
With pleasure he ranged the north country.
For he was a jovial hunter
2
As he went to the woods some pastime to see,
He spied a fair lady under a tree,
Sighing and moaning mournfully.
He was, etc.
3
'What are you doing, my fair lady?'
'I'm frightened the wild boar he will kill me;
He has worried my lord and wounded thirty.'
As thou art, etc.
4
Then the friar he put his horn to his mouth,
And he blew a blast, east, west, north and south,
And the wild boar from his den he came forth.
Unto the, etc.
* * * * * * *
F
Allies, Antiquities of Worcestershire, p. 120.
1
Sir Rackabello had three sons,
Wind well your horn, brave hunter
Sir Ryalash was one of these.
And he was a jovial hunter
* * * * *
#A.#
3^1. _MS._ And as thé.
6^2. _MS._ had bee.
11^1. _MS._ I wilt.
12^1. _MS._ miste.
16^2. _MS._ awaw.
17^1. _MS._ vnbethought ... while.
19. _Between 19 and 20 half a page of the MS. is wanting._
20^1. a[fter]: _MS. blotted._
36^1. _MS._ bidds eue.
39. _Half a page of the MS. is wanting._
#B.#
_The stanzas are doubled in Christie, to suit the air._
#C#.
#a.# 3^1, 4^2, 7^2. #D.# 2^1, 3^2, 6. _John Cole, who had
heard an old man sing the ballad fifty years before
(Allies, p. 115), could recollect only so much:_
'Oh! lady, Oh! lady, what bringst thou here?'
Wind went his horn, as a hunter
'Thee blow another blast, and he'll soon come to thee.'
As thou art a jovial hunter
He whetted his tusks as he came along,
Wind went his horn, as a hunter
#a# 5, 6 _stand thus in Allies_:
V
Then he blowd a blast full north, east, west and south,
For he was, etc.
And the wild boar heard him full into his den,
As he was, etc.
VI
Then he made the best of his speed unto him.
_(Two lines wrongly supplied from another source.)_
To Sir Ryalas, etc.
_5 has been completed from the corresponding stanza in
#D#, and the two verses of 6, separated above, are put
together._
#b.#
1^1. Old Sir Robert.
1^2. was Sir Ryalas.
2^2. Till in a tree-top.
3^1. dost thee.
3^2. The wild boar's killed my lord and has thirty men
gored.
_Burden_^2. And thou beest.
4^1. for to see.
5^1. _As in Allies (see above), except ~full~ in his den._
5^2. then heard him full in his den.
6^1. _As in Allies (see above), but 6^2 supplied by Bell._
7^2. Thrashed down the trees as he ramped him along.
8^1. 'Oh, what dost thee want of me, wild boar.'
_Burden_^2. the jovial.
9^1. summer.
9^2. have got him.
10^2. cut the boar's head off quite.
11^2. Oh, my pretty spotted pig thou hast slew.
_Burden_^2. for thou beest.
12^1. I demand them of thee.
13^1. dost ask.
14^1. long locks.
14^2. to tear him through.
_Burden_^2. Though he was.
15^2. into twain.
16^1. the knight he doth lie.
16^2. And the wild boar's head is pictured thereby.
#D#.
5, 6. _In Allies thus:_
V
The wild boar hearing it into his den,
Well wind, etc.
He whetted his tusks, for to make them strong,
And he cut down the oak and the ash as he came along.
For to meet with, etc.
_Stanza 5 has been completed from stanza vi of Allies'
other ballad, and 6 duly separated from the first line of
5._
8^2, 9. _In Allies' copy thus_:
VII
Oh! then he cut his head clean off!
Well wind, etc.
Then there came an old lady running out of the wood
Saying, 'You have killed my pretty, my pretty spotted pig.'
As thou art, etc.
_What stanza 8 should be is easily seen from #C# 10._
#C# 16, #D# 11. _As imperfectly remembered by Allies (p.
114):_
In Bromsgrove church his corpse doth lie,
Why winded his horn the hunter?
Because there was a wild boar nigh,
And as he was a jovial hunter.
#E.#
#b.# "Fragment found on the fly-leaf of an old book." _Mr
R. White's papers._
1^2, one of these three.
1^3. wide countrie.
_Burden_^2. He was.
2^1. was in woods.
2^3. With a bloody river running near she.
3^1. He said, 'Fair lady what are you doing there?'
3^3. killed my lord.
4. _wanting._
[180] The friar might also be borrowed from 'The Felon Sow and the
Friars of Richmond,' but this piece does not appear to have been
extensively known.
19
KING ORFEO
The Leisure Hour, February 14, 1880, No 1468: Folk-Lore
from Unst, Shetland, by Mrs Saxby, p. 109.
Mr Edmondston, from whose memory this ballad was derived, notes that
though stanzas are probably lost after the first which would give some
account of the king in the east wooing the lady in the west, no such
verses were sung to him. He had forgotten some stanzas after the fourth,
of which the substance was that the lady was carried off by fairies;
that the king went in quest of her, and one day saw a company passing
along a hill-side, among whom he recognized his lost wife. The troop
went to what seemed a great "ha-house," or castle, on the hillside.
Stanzas after the eighth were also forgotten, the purport being that a
messenger from behind the grey stane appeared and invited the king in.
We have here in traditional song the story of the justly admired
mediæval romance of Orpheus, in which fairy-land supplants Tartarus,
faithful love is rewarded, and Eurydice (Heurodis, Erodys, Eroudys) is
retrieved. This tale has come down to us in three versions: #A#, in the
Auchinleck MS., dating from the beginning of the fourteenth century,
Advocates Library, Edinburgh, printed in Laing's Select Remains of the
Ancient Popular Poetry of Scotland, 'Orfeo and Heurodis,' No 3; #B#,
Ashmole MS., 61, Bodleian Library, of the first half of the fifteenth
century, printed in Halliwell's Illustrations of Fairy Mythology, 'Kyng
Orfew,' p. 37; #C#, Harleian MS., 3810, British Museum, printed by
Ritson, Metrical Romancëes, II, 248, 'Sir Orpheo.' At the end of the
Auchinleck copy we are told that harpers in Britain heard this marvel,
and made a lay thereof, which they called, after the king, 'Lay Orfeo.'
The other two copies also, but in verses which are a repetition of the
introduction to 'Lay le Freine,' call this a Breton lay.
The story is this (#A#). Orfeo was a king [and so good a harper never
none was, #B#]. One day in May his queen went out to a garden with two
maidens, and fell asleep under an "ympe" tree. When she waked she
shrieked, tore her clothes, and acted very wildly. Her maidens ran to
the palace and called for help, for the queen would go mad. Knights and
ladies went to the queen, took her away, and put her to bed; but still
the excitement continued. The king, in great affliction, besought her to
tell him what was the matter, and what he could do. Alas! she said, I
have loved thee as my life, and thou me, but now we must part. As she
slept knights had come to her and had bidden her come speak with their
king. Upon her refusal, the king himself came, with a company of knights
and damsels, all on snow-white steeds, and made her ride on a palfrey by
his side, and, after he had shown her his palace, brought her back and
said: Look thou be under this ympe tree tomorrow, to go with us; and if
thou makest us any let, we will take thee by force, wherever thou be.
The next day Orfeo took the queen to the tree under guard of a thousand
knights, all resolved to die before they would give her up: but she was
spirited away right from the midst of them, no one knew whither.
The king all but died of grief, but it was no boot. He gave his kingdom
in charge to his high steward, told his barons to choose a new king when
they should learn that he was dead, put on a sclavin and nothing else,
took his harp, and went barefoot out at the gate. Ten years he lived in
the woods and on the heath; his body wasted away, his beard grew to his
girdle. His only solace was in his harp, and, when the weather was
bright, he would play, and all the beasts and birds would flock to him.
Often at hot noon-day he would see the king of fairy hunting with his
rout, or an armed host would go by him with banners displayed, or
knights and ladies would come dancing; but whither they went he could
not tell. One day he descried sixty ladies who were hawking. He went
towards them and saw that one of them was Heurodis. He looked at her
wistfully, and she at him; neither spoke a word, but tears fell from her
eyes, and the ladies hurried her away. He followed, and spared neither
stub nor stem. They went in at a rock, and he after. They alighted at a
superb castle; he knocked at the gate, told the porter he was a
minstrel, and was let in. There he saw Heurodis, sleeping under an ympe
tree.
Orfeo went into the hall, and saw a king and queen, sitting in a
tabernacle. He kneeled down before the king. What man art thou? said the
king. I never sent for thee, and never found I man so bold as to come
here unbidden. Lord, quoth Orfeo, I am but a poor minstrel, and it is a
way of ours to seek many a lord's house, though we be not welcome.
Without more words he took his harp and began to play. All the palace
came to listen, and lay down at his feet. The king sat still and was
glad to hear, and, when the harping was done, said, Minstrel, ask of me
whatever it be; I will pay thee largely. "Sir," said Orfeo, "I beseech
thee give me the lady that sleepeth under the ympe tree." "Nay," quoth
the king, "ye were a sorry couple; for thou art lean and rough and
black, and she is lovely and has no lack. A lothly thing were it to see
her in thy company." "Gentle king," replied the harper, it were a fouler
thing to hear a lie from thy mouth." "Take her, then, and be blithe of
her," said the king.
Orfeo now turned homewards, but first presented himself to the steward
alone, and in beggar's clothes, as a harper from heathendom, to see if
he were a true man. The loyal steward was ready to welcome every good
harper for love of his lord. King Orfeo made himself known; the steward
threw over the table, and fell down at his feet, and so did all the
lords. They brought the queen to the town. Orfeo and Heurodis were
crowned anew, and lived long afterward.
The Scandinavian burden was, perhaps, no more intelligible to the singer
than "Hey non nonny" is to us. The first line seems to be Unst for
Danish
Skoven årle grön (Early green's the wood).
The sense of the other line is not so obvious. Professor Grundtvig has
suggested to me,
Hvor hjorten han går årlig (Where the hart goes yearly).
A
The Leisure Hour, February 14, 1880, No 1468, p. 109.
Obtained from the singing of Andrew Coutts, an old man in
Unst, Shetland, by Mr Biot Edmondston.
1
Der lived a king inta da aste,
Scowan ürla grün
Der lived a lady in da wast.
Whar giorten han grün oarlac
2
Dis king he has a huntin gaen,
He's left his Lady Isabel alane.
3
'Oh I wis ye'd never gaen away,
For at your hame is döl an wae.
4
'For da king o Ferrie we his daert,
Has pierced your lady to da hert.'
* * * * * * *
5
And aifter dem da king has gaen,
But whan he cam it was a grey stane.
6
Dan he took oot his pipes ta play,
Bit sair his hert wi döl an wae.
7
And first he played da notes o noy,
An dan he played da notes o joy.
8
An dan he played da göd gabber reel,
Dat meicht ha made a sick hert hale.
* * * * * * *
9
'Noo come ye in inta wir ha,
An come ye in among wis a'.'
10
Now he's gaen in inta der ha,
An he's gaen in among dem a'.
11
Dan he took out his pipes to play,
Bit sair his hert wi döl an wae.
12
An first he played da notes o noy,
An dan he played da notes o joy.
13
An dan he played da göd gabber reel,
Dat meicht ha made a sick hert hale.
14
'Noo tell to us what ye will hae:
What sall we gie you for your play?
15
'What I will hae I will you tell,
An dat's me Lady Isabel.'
16
'Yees tak your lady, an yees gaeng hame,
An yees be king ower a' your ain.'
17
He's taen his lady, an he's gaen hame,
An noo he's king ower a' his ain.
20
THE CRUEL MOTHER.
#A.# Herd's MSS, I, 132, II, 191. Herd's Ancient and
Modern Scottish Songs, 1776, II, 237.
#B. a.# 'Fine Flowers in the Valley,' Johnson's Museum, p.
331. #b.# Scott's Minstrelsy, III, 259 (1803).
#C#. 'The Cruel Mother,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 161.
#D. a.# Kinloch MSS, V, 103. #b.# 'The Cruel Mother,'
Kinloch, Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 46.
#E.# 'The Cruel Mother.' #a.# Motherwell's MS., p. 390.
#b.# Motherwell's Note-Book, p. 33.
#F.# 'The Cruel Mother.' #a.# Buchan's MSS, II, 98. #b.#
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 222.
#G.# Notes and Queries, 1st S., VIII, 358.
#H.# 'The Cruel Mother,' Motherwell's MS., p. 402.
#I.# 'The Minister's Daughter of New York.' #a.# Buchan's
MSS, II, 111. #b.# Buchan's Ballads of the North of
Scotland, II, 217. #c.# 'Hey wi the rose and the lindie
O,' Christie, Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 106.
#J. a.# 'The Rose o Malindie O,' Harris MS., f. 10. #b.#
Fragment communicated by Dr T. Davidson.
#K.# Motherwell's MS., p. 186.
#L.# 'Fine Flowers in the Valley,' Smith's Scottish
Minstrel, IV, 33.
#M.# From Miss M. Reburn, as learned in County Meath,
Ireland, one stanza.
Two fragments of this ballad, #A#, #B#, were printed in the last quarter
of the eighteenth century; #C-L# were committed to writing after 1800;
and, of these, #E#, #H#, #J#, #K# are now printed for the first time.
#A-H# differ only slightly, but several of these versions are very
imperfect. A young woman, who passes for a leal maiden, gives birth to
two babes [#A#, #B#, one, #H#, three], puts them to death with a
penknife, #B-F#, and buries them, or, #H#, ties them hand and feet and
buries them alive. She afterwards sees two pretty boys, and exclaims
that if they were hers she would treat them most tenderly. They make
answer that when they were hers they were very differently treated,
rehearse what she had done, and inform or threaten her that hell shall
be her portion, #C#, #D#, #E#, #F#, #H#. In #I# the children are buried
alive, as in #H#, in #J a# strangled, in #J b# and #L# killed with the
penknife, but the story is the same down to the termination, where,
instead of simple hell-fire, there are various seven-year penances,
properly belonging to the ballad of 'The Maid and the Palmer,' which
follows this.
All the English ballads are in two-line stanzas.[181]
Until 1870 no corresponding ballad had been found in Denmark, though
none was more likely to occur in #Danish#. That year Kristensen, in the
course of his very remarkable ballad-quest in Jutland, recovered two
versions which approach surprisingly near to Scottish tradition, and
especially to #E#: Jydske Folkeviser, I, 329, No 121 #A#, #B#,
'Barnemordersken.' Two other Danish versions have been obtained since
then, but have not been published. #A# and #B# are much the same, and a
close translation of #A# will not take much more space than would be
required for a sufficient abstract.
Little Kirsten took with her the bower-women five,
And with them she went to the wood belive.
She spread her cloak down on the earth,
And on it to two little twins gave birth.
She laid them under a turf so green,
Nor suffered for them a sorrow unseen.
She laid them under so broad a stone,
Suffered sorrow nor harm for what she had done.
Eight years it was, and the children twain
Would fain go home to their mother again.
They went and before Our Lord they stood:
'Might we go home to our mother, we would.'
'Ye may go to your mother, if ye will,
But ye may not contrive any ill.'
They knocked at the door, they made no din:
'Rise up, our mother, and let us in.'
By life and by death hath she cursed and sworn,
That never a child in the world had she borne.
'Stop, stop, dear mother, and swear not so fast,
We shall recount to you what has passed.
'You took with you the bower-women five,
And with them went to the wood belive.
'You spread your cloak down on the earth,
And on it to two little twins gave birth.
'You laid us under a turf so green,
Nor suffered for us a sorrow unseen.
'You laid us under so broad a stone,
Suffered sorrow nor harm for what you had done.'
'Nay my dear bairns, but stay with me;
And four barrels of gold shall be your fee.'
'You may give us four, or five, if you choose,
But not for all that, heaven will we lose.
'You may give us eight, you may give us nine,
But not for all these, heaven will we tine.
'Our seat is made ready in heavenly light,
But for you a seat in hell is dight.'
A ballad is spread all over #Germany# which is probably a variation of
'The Cruel Mother,' though the resemblance is rather in the general
character than in the details. #A#, 'Höllisches Recht,' Wunderhorn, II,
202, ed. of 1808, II, 205, ed. 1857. Mittler, No 489, p. 383, seems to
be this regulated and filled out. #B#, Erlach, 'Die Rabenmutter,' IV,
148; repeated, with the addition of one stanza, by Zuccalmaglio, p. 203,
No 97. #C#, 'Die Kindsmörderinn,' Meinert, p. 164, from the Kuhländchen;
turned into current German, Erk's Liederhort, p. 144, No 41^c. #D#,
Simrock, p. 87, No 37^a, from the Aargau. #E#, 'Das falsche Mutterherz,'
Erk u. Irmer, Heft 5, No 7, and 'Die Kindesmörderin,' Erk's Liederhort,
p. 140, No 41, Brandenburg. #F#, Liederhort, p. 142, No 41^a, Silesia.
#G#, Liederhort, p. 143, 41^b, from the Rhein, very near to #B#. #H#,
Hoffmann u. Richter, No 31, p. 54, and #I#, No 32, p. 57, Silesia. #J#,
Ditfurth, Fränkische V. 1., II, 12, No 13. #K#, 'Die Rabenmutter,'
Peter, Volksthümliches aus Österreichisch-Schlesien, I, 210, No 21. #L#,
'Der Teufel u. die Müllerstochter,' Pröhle, Weltliche u. geistliche V.
1., p. 15, No 9, Hanoverian Harz. Repetitions and compounded copies are
not noticed.
The story is nearly this in all. A herdsman, passing through a wood,
hears the cry of a child, but cannot make out whence the sound comes.
The child announces that it is hidden in a hollow tree, and asks to be
taken to the house where its mother is to be married that day. There
arrived, the child proclaims before all the company that the bride is
its mother. The bride, or some one of the party, calls attention to the
fact that she is still wearing her maiden-wreath. Nevertheless, says the
child, she has had three children: one she drowned, one she buried in a
dung-heap [the sand], and one she hid in a hollow tree. The bride wishes
that the devil may come for her if this is true, and, upon the word,
Satan appears and takes her off; in #B#, #G#, #J#, with words like
these:
'Komm her, komm her, meine schönste Braut,
Dein Sessel ist dir in der Hölle gebaut.' #J# 9.
A #Wendish# version, 'Der Höllentanz,' in Haupt and Schmaler, I, 290, No
292, differs from the German ballads only in this, that the bride has
already borne nine children, and is going with the tenth.
A combination of #B#, #C#, #D#, #F# is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske
og skotske Folkeviser, No 43, p. 279, and #I#, from the eighth stanza
on, p. 282. #C# is translated by Wolff, Halle der Völker, I, 11, and
Hauschatz, p. 223; Allingham's version (nearly #B a#) by Knortz, L. u.
R. Alt-Englands, p. 178, No 48.
A
Herd's MSS, I, 132, II, 191: Ancient and Modern Scottish
Songs, 1776, II, 237.
* * * * * * *
1
And there she's leand her back to a thorn,
Oh and alelladay, oh and alelladay
And there she has her baby born.
Ten thousand times good night and be wi thee
2
She has houked a grave ayont the sun,
And there she has buried the sweet babe in.
3
And she's gane back to her father's ha,
She's counted the leelest maid o them a'.
* * * * * * *
4
'O look not sae sweet, my bonie babe,
Gin ye smyle sae, ye'll smyle me dead.'
* * * * * * *
B
#a.# Johnson's Museum, p. 331. #b.# Scott's Minstrelsy,
1803, III, 259, preface.
1
She sat down below a thorn,
Fine flowers in the valley
And there she has her sweet babe born.
And the green leaves they grow rarely
2
'Smile na sae sweet, my bonie babe,
And ye smile sae sweet, ye'll smile me dead.'
3
She's taen out her little pen-knife,
And twinnd the sweet babe o its life.
4
She's howket a grave by the light o the moon,
And there she's buried her sweet babe in.
5
As she was going to the church,
She saw a sweet babe in the porch.
6
'O sweet babe, and thou were mine,
I wad cleed thee in the silk so fine.'
7
'O mother dear, when I was thine,
You did na prove to me sae kind.'
* * * * * * *
C
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 161.
1
She leaned her back unto a thorn,
Three, three, and three by three
And there she has her two babes born.
Three, three, and thirty-three
2
She took frae 'bout her ribbon-belt,
And there she bound them hand and foot.
3
She has taen out her wee pen-knife,
And there she ended baith their life.
4
She has howked a hole baith deep and wide,
She has put them in baith side by side.
5
She has covered them oer wi a marble stane,
Thinking she would gang maiden hame.
6
As she was walking by her father's castle wa,
She saw twa pretty babes playing at the ba.
7
'O bonnie babes, gin ye were mine,
I would dress you up in satin fine.
8
'O I would dress you in the silk,
And wash you ay in morning milk.'
9
'O cruel mother, we were thine,
And thou made us to wear the twine.
10
'O cursed mother, heaven's high,
And that's where thou will neer win nigh.
11
'O cursed mother, hell is deep,
And there thou'll enter step by step.'
D
#a.# Kinloch's MSS, V, 103, in the handwriting of James
Beattie. #b.# Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 46:
from the recitation of Miss C. Beattie.
1
There lives a lady in London,
All alone and alone ee
She's gane wi bairn to the clerk's son.
Down by the green wood sae bonnie
2
She's taen her mantle her about,
She's gane aff to the gude green wood.
3
She's set her back untill an oak,
First it bowed and then it broke.
4
She's set her back untill a tree,
Bonny were the twa boys she did bear.
5
But she took out a little pen-knife,
And she parted them and their sweet life.
6
She's aff untill her father's ha;
She was the lealest maiden that was amang them a'.
7
As she lookit oure the castle wa,
She spied twa bonnie boys playing at the ba.
8
'O if these two babes were mine,
They should wear the silk and the sabelline!'
9
'O mother dear, when we were thine,
We neither wore the silks nor the sabelline.
10
'But out ye took a little pen-knife,
And ye parted us and our sweet life.
11
'But now we're in the heavens hie,
And ye've the pains o hell to drie.'
E
#a.# Motherwell's MS., p. 390. #b.# Motherwell's
Note-Book, p. 33. From the recitation of Agnes Lyle,
Kilbarchan, August 24, 1825.
1
There was a lady, she lived in Lurk,
Sing hey alone and alonie O
She fell in love with her father's clerk.
Down by yon greenwood sidie O
2
She loved him seven years and a day,
Till her big belly did her betray.
3
She leaned her back unto a tree,
And there began her sad misery.
4
She set her foot unto a thorn,
And there she got her two babes born.
5
She took out her wee pen-knife,
She twind them both of their sweet life.
6
She took the sattins was on her head,
She rolled them in both when they were dead.
7
She howkit a grave forenent the sun,
And there she buried her twa babes in.
8
As she was walking thro her father's ha,
She spied twa boys playing at the ba.
9
'O pretty boys, if ye were mine,
I would dress ye both in the silks so fine.'
10
'O mother dear, when we were thine,
Thou neer dressed us in silks so fine.
11
'For thou was a lady, thou livd in Lurk,
And thou fell in love with thy father's clerk.
12
'Thou loved him seven years and a day,
Till thy big belly did thee betray.
13
'Thou leaned thy back unto a tree,
And there began thy sad misery.
14
'Thou set thy foot unto a thorn,
And there thou got thy two babes born.
15
'Thou took out thy wee pen-knife,
And twind us both of our sweet life.
16
'Thou took the sattins was on thy head,
Thou rolled us both in when we were dead.
17
'Thou howkit a grave forenent the sun,
And there thou buried thy twa babes in.
18
'But now we're both in [the] heavens hie,
There is pardon for us, but none for thee.'
19
'My pretty boys, beg pardon for me!'
'There is pardon for us, but none for thee.'
F
#a.# Buchan's MSS, II, 98. #b.# Buchan's Ballads of the
North of Scotland, II, 222.
1
It fell ance upon a day,
Edinburgh, Edinburgh
It fell ance upon a day,
Stirling for aye
It fell ance upon a day
The clerk and lady went to play.
So proper Saint Johnston stands fair upon Tay
2
'If my baby be a son,
I'll make him a lord of high renown.'
3
She's leand her back to the wa,
Prayd that her pains might fa.
4
She's leand her back to the thorn,
There was her baby born.
5
'O bonny baby, if ye suck sair,
You'll never suck by my side mair.'
6
She's riven the muslin frae her head,
Tied the baby hand and feet.
7
Out she took her little pen-knife,
Twind the young thing o its sweet life.
8
She's howked a hole anent the meen,
There laid her sweet baby in.
9
She had her to her father's ha,
She was the meekest maid amang them a'.
10
It fell ance upon a day,
She saw twa babies at their play.
11
'O bonny babies, gin ye were mine,
I'd cleathe you in the silks sae fine.'
12
'O wild mother, when we were thine,
You cleathd us not in silks so fine.
13
'But now we're in the heavens high,
And you've the pains o hell to try.'
14
She threw hersell oer the castle-wa,
There I wat she got a fa.
G
Notes and Queries, 1st S., VIII, 358. From Warwickshire,
communicated by C. Clifton Barry.
1
There was a lady lived on [a] lea,
All alone, alone O
Down by the greenwood side went she.
Down the greenwood side O
2
She set her foot all on a thorn,
There she had two babies born.
3
O she had nothing to lap them in,
But a white appurn, and that was thin.
H
Motherwell's MS., p. 402. From Agnes Laird, Kilbarchan,
August 24, 1825.
1
There was a lady brisk and smart,
All in a lone and a lonie O
And she goes with child to her father's clark.
Down by the greenwood sidie O
2
Big, big oh she went away,
And then she set her foot to a tree.
3
Big she set her foot to a stone,
Till her three bonnie babes were borne.
4
She took the ribbons off her head,
She tied the little babes hand and feet.
5
She howkit a hole before the sun,
She's laid these three bonnie babes in.
6
She covered them over with marble stone,
For dukes and lords to walk upon.
7
She lookit over her father's castle wa,
She saw three bonnie boys playing at the ba.
8
The first o them was clad in red,
To shew the innocence of their blood.
9
The neist o them was clad in green,
To shew that death they had been in.
10
The next was naked to the skin,
To shew they were murderd when they were born.
11
'O bonnie babes, an ye were mine,
I wad dress you in the satins so fine.'
12
'O mother dear, when we were thine,
Thou did not use us half so kind.'
13
'O bonnie babes, an ye be mine,
Whare hae ye been a' this time?'
14
'We were at our father's house,
Preparing a place for thee and us.'
15
'Whaten a place hae ye prepar'd for me?'
'Heaven's for us, but hell's for thee.
16
'O mother dear, but heaven's high;
That is the place thou'll ne'er come nigh.
17
'O mother dear, but hell is deep;
'T will cause thee bitterlie to weep.'
I
#a.# Buchan's MS., II, 111. #b.# Buchan's Ballads of the
North of Scotland, II, 217. #c.# Christie, Traditional
Ballad Airs, I, 106.
1
The minister's daughter of New York,
Hey wi the rose and the lindie, O
Has faen in love wi her father's clerk.
Alone by the green burn sidie, O
2
She courted him six years and a day,
At length her belly did her betray.
3
She did her down to the greenwood gang,
To spend awa a while o her time.
4
She lent her back unto a thorn,
And she's got her twa bonny boys born.
5
She 's taen the ribbons frae her hair,
Bound their bodyes fast and sair.
6
She 's put them aneath a marble stane,
Thinking a maiden to gae hame.
7
Looking oer her castle wa,
She spied her bonny boys at the ba.
8
'O bonny babies, if ye were mine,
I woud feed you with the white bread and wine.
9
'I woud feed you wi the ferra cow's milk,
And dress you in the finest silk.'
10
'O cruel mother, when we were thine,
We saw none of your bread and wine.
11
'We saw none of your ferra cow's milk,
Nor wore we of your finest silk.'
12
'O bonny babies, can ye tell me,
What sort of death for you I must die?'
13
'Yes, cruel mother, we'll tell to thee,
What sort of death for us you must die.
14
'Seven years a fowl in the woods,
Seven years a fish in the floods.
15
'Seven years to be a church bell,
Seven years a porter in hell.'
16
'Welcome, welcome, fowl in the wood[s],
Welcome, welcome, fish in the flood[s].
17
'Welcome, welcome, to be a church bell,
But heavens keep me out of hell.'
J
#a.# Harris MS., fol. 10, "Mrs Harris and others." #b.#
Fragment communicated by Dr T. Davidson.
1
She leant her back against a thorn,
Hey for the Rose o' Malindie O
And there she has twa bonnie babes born.
Adoon by the green wood sidie O
2
She's taen the ribbon frae her head,
An hankit their necks till they waur dead.
3
She luikit outowre her castle wa,
An saw twa nakit boys, playin at the ba.
4
'O bonnie boys, waur ye but mine,
I wald feed ye wi flour-bread an wine.'
5
'O fause mother, whan we waur thine,
Ye didna feed us wi flour-bread an wine.'
6
'O bonnie boys, gif ye waur mine,
I wald clied ye wi silk sae fine.'
7
'O fause mother, whan we waur thine,
You didna clied us in silk sae fine.
8
'Ye tuik the ribbon aff your head,
An' hankit our necks till we waur dead.
* * * * * * *
9
'Ye sall be seven years bird on the tree,
Ye sall be seven years fish i the sea.
10
'Ye sall be seven years eel i the pule,
An ye sail be seven years doon into hell.'
11
'Welcome, welcome, bird on the tree,
Welcome, welcome, fish i the sea.
12
'Welcome, welcome, eel i the pule,
But oh for gudesake, keep me frae hell!'
K
Motherwell's MS., p. 186.
1
Lady Margaret looked oer the castle wa,
Hey and a lo and a lilly O
And she saw twa bonnie babes playing at the ba.
Down by the green wood sidy O
2
'O pretty babes, an ye were mine,
I would dress you in the silks so fine.'
3
'O false mother, when we were thine,
Ye did not dress us in silks so fine.'
4
'O bonnie babes, an ye were mine,
I would feed you on the bread and wine.'
5
'O false mother, when we were thine,
Ye did not feed us on the bread and the wine.'
* * * * * * *
6
'Seven years a fish in the sea,
And seven years a bird in the tree.
7
'Seven years to ring a bell,
And seven years porter in hell.'
L
Smith's Scottish Minstrel, IV, 33, 2d ed.
1
A lady lookd out at a castle wa,
Fine flowers in the valley
She saw twa bonnie babes playing at the ba.
And the green leaves they grow rarely
2
'O my bonnie babes, an ye were mine,
I would cleed ye i the scarlet sae fine.
3
'I 'd lay ye saft in beds o down,
And watch ye morning, night and noon.'
4
'O mither dear, when we were thine,
Ye didna cleed us i the scarlet sae fine.
5
'But ye took out yere little pen-knife,
And parted us frae our sweet life.
6
'Ye howkit a hole aneath the moon,
And there ye laid our bodies down.
7
'Ye happit the hole wi mossy stanes,
And there ye left our wee bit banes.
8
'But ye ken weel, O mither dear,
Ye never cam that gate for fear.'
* * * * * * *
9
'Seven lang years ye'll ring the bell,
And see sic sights as ye darna tell.'
M
Communicated by Miss Margaret Reburn, as learned in County
Meath, Ireland, about 1860.
'O mother dear, when we were thine,
All a lee and aloney O
You neither dressed us in coarse or fine.'
Down by the greenwood sidy O
* * * * *
#A.#
_Superscribed_, "Fragment to its own tune. Melancholy."
_Against the first line of the burden is written in the
margin, "~perhaps alas-a-day~," and this change is adopted
in Herd's printed copy. Scott suggested ~well-a-day~._
4^2. _MSS and ed. 1776 have ~ze ... ze'll~._
#B. b.#
"A fragment [_of 5 stanzas_] containing the following
verses, which I have often heard sung in my childhood."
_Scott, III. 259. No burden is given._
1^1. She set her back against.
1^2. young son born.
2^1. O smile nae sae.
3, 4, _wanting_.
5^1. An when that lady went.
5^2. She spied a naked boy.
6^1. O bonnie boy, an ye.
6^2. I'd cleed ye in the silks.
7^2. To me ye were na half.
_Cunningham, Songs of Scotland, I, 340, says:_ "I remember
a verse, and but a verse, of an old ballad which records a
horrible instance of barbarity," _and quotes the first two
stanzas of Scott's fragment literally; from which we may
infer that it was Scott's fragment that he partly
remembered. But he goes on:_ "At this moment a hunter
came--one whose suit the lady had long rejected with
scorn--the brother of her lover:
He took the babe on his spear point,
And threw it upon a thorn:
'Let the wind blow east, the wind blow west,
The cradle will rock alone.'"
_Cunningham's recollection was evidently much confused.
This last stanza, which is not in the metre of the others,
is perhaps from some copy of '~Edom o Gordon~.'_
#D. a.#
6^2. I was.
#b.#
_Kinloch makes slight changes in his printed copy, as
usual._
4^1. until a brier.
5^1. out she 's tane.
6^2. She seemd the lealest maiden amang.
8^1. O an thae.
#E.#
1^1, 11^1. Lurk _may be a corruption of ~York~, which
is written in pencil (by way of suggestion?) in the MSS._
#a.#
16^1. on your.
#b.#
4^1, 14^1. upon a thorn.
5^2. twind _wanting_.
6^1. sattins _wanting_.
_13, 14, 15, 16, 17 are not written out in the note-book_.
18^1. the heavens.
19^2. but there is none.
#F. a.#
_9 stands last but one in the MS._
14^2. Here.
#b.#
4^2. has her.
7^2. sweet _is omitted_.
_Printed as from the MS. in Dixon's Scottish Traditional
Versions, etc., p. 46. Dixon has changed ~baby~ to
~babies~ in 4, 5, 6, 8, and indulges in other variations._
#H.#
_The ballad had been heard with two different burdens;
besides the one given in the text, this:_
Three and three, and three by three
Ah me, some forty three
7 'Lady Mary Ann,' _Johnson's Museum, No 377, begins_:
O Lady Mary Ann looks oer the castle wa,
She saw three bonie boys playing at the ba.
#I. a, b.#
14^1, 16^1. _~fool~, i.e. ~fowl~ spelt phonetically._
#a.#
3^1. greenwoods
#b.#
2^2. it did.
8^2. with white.
11^2. wear'd.
13^2. maun die.
#c.#
"Epitomized" _from Buchan, II, 217_, "and somewhat changed
for this work, some of the changes being made according to
the way the Editor has heard it sung." _Note by Christie,
p. 106._
_Burden_, It 's hey with the rose, etc.
7^1. As a lady was looking.
7^2. She spied twa.
11^2. Nor wore we a.
12^2. What sort of pain for you I must drie.
13^2. What sort of pain for us you must drie.
14^2. And seven.
_Printed as from the MS. in Dixon's Scottish Traditional
Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 50, '~The Minister's
Dochter o Newarke~,' with a few arbitrary changes._
#J. a.#
9^1. You.
#b.# _has stanzas corresponding to a 1, 3, 4, 6, and, in
place of 2_,
She 's taen oot a little pen-knife,
And she 's robbit them o their sweet life.
_Burden_^1. Hey i the rose o Mylindsay O.
1^1, until a thorn.
1^2. An syne her twa bonnie boys was born.
3^1. As she leukit oer her father's.
3^2. bonnie boys.
4^1. an ye were mine.
4^2. bread.
6^2. claithe ye in.
#L.#
_8 looks like an interpolation, and very probably the
ballad was docked at the beginning in order to suit the
parlor better._
[181] All the genuine ones. 'Lady Anne,' in Scott's Minstrelsy, III,
259, 1803, is on the face of it a modern composition, with extensive
variations, on the theme of the popular ballad. It is here given in an
Appendix, with a companion piece from Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and
Galloway Song.
APPENDIX
LADY ANNE
"This ballad was communicated to me by Mr Kirkpatrick Sharpe of Hoddom,
who mentions having copied it from an old magazine. Although it has
probably received some modern corrections, the general turn seems to be
ancient, and corresponds with that of a fragment [#B b#], which I have
often heard sung in my childhood." Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border,
III, 259, ed. 1803.
Buchan, Gleanings, p. 90, has an additional stanza between 8 and 9 of
Scott's, whether from the old magazine or not, it would not be worth the
while to ascertain.
Cunningham, Songs of Scotland, I, 339, has rewritten even 'Lady Anne.'
Translated by Schubart, p. 170, and by Gerhard, p. 92.
1
Fair Lady Anne sate in her bower,
Down by the greenwood side,
And the flowers did spring, and the birds did sing,
'Twas the pleasant May-day tide.
2
But fair Lady Anne on Sir William calld,
With the tear grit in her ee,
'O though them be fause, may Heaven thee guard,
In the wars ayont the sea!'
3
Out of the wood came three bonnie boys,
Upon the simmer's morn,
And they did sing and play at the ba',
As naked as they were born.
4
'O seven lang years wad I sit here,
Amang the frost and snaw,
A' to hae but ane o these bonnie boys,
A playing at the ba.'
5
Then up and spake the eldest boy,
'Now listen, thou fair ladie,
And ponder well the rede that I tell,
Then make ye a choice of the three.
6
''Tis I am Peter, and this is Paul,
And that ane, sae fair to see,
But a twelve-month sinsyne to paradise came,
To join with our companie.'
7
'O I will hae the snaw-white boy,
The bonniest of the three:'
'And if I were thine, and in thy propine,
O what wad ye do to me?'
8
''Tis I wad clead thee in silk and gowd,
And nourice thee on my knee:'
'O mither, mither, when I was thine,
Sic kindness I couldna see.
9
'Beneath the turf, where now I stand,
The fause nurse buried me;
The cruel pen-knife sticks still in my heart,
And I come not back to thee.'
* * * * *
"There are many variations of this affecting tale. One of them appears
in the Musical Museum, and is there called 'Fine Flowers of the Valley,'
of which the present is either the original or a parallel song. I am
inclined to think it is the original." Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and
Galloway Song, p. 267.
This is translated by Talvj, Versuch, p. 571.
1
There sat 'mang the flowers a fair ladie,
Sing ohon, ohon, and ohon O
And there she has born a sweet babie.
Adown by the greenwode side O
2
An strait she rowed its swaddling band,
An O! nae mother grips took her hand.
3
O twice it lifted its bonnie wee ee:
'Thae looks gae through the saul o me!'
4
She buried the bonnie babe neath the brier,
And washed her hands wi mony a tear.
5
And as she kneelt to her God in prayer,
The sweet wee babe was smiling there.
6
'O ay, my God, as I look to thee,
My babe 's atween my God and me.
7
'Ay, ay, it lifts its bonnie wee ee:
'"Sic kindness get as ye shawed me."'
8
'An O its smiles wad win me in,
But I'm borne down by deadly sin.
21
THE MAID AND THE PALMER
#A.# Percy MS., p. 461. 'Lillumwham,' Hales and Furnivall,
IV, 96.
#B.# Sharpe's Ballad Book, ed. Laing, p. 157.
The only English copy of this ballad that approaches completeness is
furnished by the Percy manuscript, #A#. Sir Walter Scott remembered, and
communicated to Kirkpatrick Sharpe, three stanzas, and half of the
burden, of another version, #B#.
There are three versions in #Danish#, no one of them very well
preserved. #A#,'Maria Magdalena,' is a broadside of about 1700, existing
in two identical editions: Grundtvig, No 98, II, 530; #B#, _ib._, was
written down in the Färöe isles in 1848, by Hammershaimb; #C# was
obtained from recitation by Kristensen in Jutland in 1869, Jydske
Folkeviser, I, 197, No 72, 'Synderinden.'
A #Färöe# version, from the end of the last century or the beginning of
this, is given in Grundtvig's notes, p. 533 ff.
Versions recently obtained from recitation in #Norway# are: 'Maria,'
Bugge's Gamle Norske Folkeviser, No 18; #A#, p. 88; #B#, p. 90, a
fragment, which has since been completed, but only two more stanzas
printed, Grundtvig, III, 889; #C#, Bugge, p. 91. #D#, #E# are reported,
but only a stanza or two printed, Grundtvig, III, 889f; #F#, printed 890
f, and #G#, as obtained by Lindeman, 891: all these, #D-G#, communicated
by Bugge. #C#, and one or two others, are rather Danish than Norwegian.
This is, according to Afzelius, one of the commonest of #Swedish#
ballads. These versions are known: #A#, "a broadside of 1798 and 1802,"
Grundtvig, II, 531, Bergström's Afzelius, I, 335; #B#, 'Magdalena,'
Atterbom's Poetisk Kalender for 1816, p. 20; #C#, Afzelius, II, 229;
#D#, Arwidsson, I, 377, No 60; #E#, Dybeck's Svenska Visor, Häfte 2, No
6, only two stanzas; #F#, #G#, "in Wiede's collection, in the Swedish
Historical and Antiquarian Academy;" #H#, "in Cavallius and Stephens'
collection, where also #A#, #F#, #G# are found;" #I#, Maximilian
Axelson's Vesterdalarne, p. 171; #J#, 'Jungfru Adelin,' E. Wigström's
Folkdiktning, No 38, p. 76; #K#, 'Jungfru Maja,' Album utgifvet af
Nyländingar, VI, 227. #A-F# are printed in Grundtvig's notes, II, 533
ff, and also some verses of #G#, #H#.
The ballad is known to have existed in #Icelandic# from a minute of Arne
Magnusson, who cites the line, "Swear not, swear not, wretched woman,"
but it has not been recovered (Grundtvig, III, 891, note d).
#Finnish#, 'Mataleenan vesimatka,' Kanteletar, ed. 1864, p. 240.
The story of the woman of Samaria, John, iv, is in all these blended
with mediæval traditions concerning Mary Magdalen, who is assumed to be
the same with the woman "which was a sinner," in Luke, vii, 37, and also
with Mary, sister of Lazarus. This is the view of the larger part of the
Latin ecclesiastical writers, while most of the Greeks distinguish the
three (Butler, 'Lives of the Saints,' VII, 290, note). It was reserved
for ballads, as Grundtvig remarks, to confound the Magdalen with the
Samaritan woman.
The traditional Mary Magdalen was a beautiful woman of royal descent,
who derived her surname from Magdalum, her portion of the great family
estate. For some of her earlier years entirely given over to carnal
delights, "unde jam, proprio nomine perdito, peccatrix consueverat
appellari," she was, by the preaching of Jesus, converted to a
passionate repentance and devotedness. In the course of the persecution
of the church at Jerusalem, when Stephen was slain and the Christians
widely dispersed, Mary, with Lazarus, her brother, Martha, and many
more, were set afloat on the Mediterranean in a rudderless ship, with
the expectation that they would find a watery grave. But the malice of
the unbelieving was overruled, and the vessel came safe into port at
Marseilles. Having labored some time for the christianizing of the
people, and founded churches and bishoprics, Mary retired to a solitude
where there was neither water, tree, nor plant, and passed the last
thirty years of her life in heavenly contemplation. The cave in which
she secluded herself is still shown at La Sainte Baume. The absence of
material comforts was, in her case, not so great a deprivation, since
every day at the canonical hours she was carried by angels to the skies,
and heard, with ears of the flesh, the performances of the heavenly
choirs, whereby she was so thoroughly refected that when the angels
restored her to her cave she was in need of no bodily aliment. (Golden
Legend, Græsse, c. 96.) It is the practical Martha that performs real
austerities, and those which are ascribed to her correspond too closely
with the penance in the Scandinavian ballads not to be the original of
it: "Nam in primis _septem_ annis, glandibus et radicibus herbisque
crudis et _pomis_[182] silvestribus corpusculum sustentans potius quam
reficiens, victitavit.... Extensis solo ramis arboreis aut viteis,
lapide pro cervicali capiti superposito subjecto, ... incumbebat."
(Vincent of Beauvais, Spec. Hist., ix, 100.)
The best-preserved Scandinavian ballads concur nearly in this account. A
woman at a well, or a stream, is approached by Jesus, who asks for
drink. She says she has no vessel to serve him with. He replies that if
she were pure, he would drink from her hands. She protests innocence
with oaths, but is silenced by his telling her that she has had three
children, one with her father, one with her brother, one with her parish
priest: Danish #A#, #B#, #C#; Färöe; Swedish #C#, #D#, #F#, #I#, #J#,
#K#; Norwegian #A#, #C#, #F#, #G#. She falls at his feet, and begs him
to shrive her. Jesus appoints her a seven years' penance in the wood.
Her food shall be the buds or the leaves of the tree [grass, worts,
berries, bark], her drink the dew [brook, juice of plants], her bed the
hard ground [linden-roots, thorns and prickles, rocks, straw and
sticks]; all the while she shall be harassed by bears and lions
[wolves], or snakes and drakes (this last in Swedish #B#, #C#, #D#, #I#,
#K#, Norwegian #A#). The time expired, Jesus returns and asks how she
has liked her penance. She answers, as if she had eaten daintily, drunk
wine, slept on silk or swan's-down, and had angelic company [had been
listening to music].[183] Jesus then tells her that a place is ready for
her in heaven.
The penance lasts eight years in Swedish #C#, #F#, #J#, Norwegian #A#;
nine in the Färöe ballad; fifteen in Danish #B#; and six weeks in Danish
#C#. It is to range the field in Danish #A#, Swedish #F#; to walk the
snows barefoot in the Färöe ballad and Norwegian #B#; in Norwegian #D#
to stand nine years in a rough stream and eight years naked in the
church-paths.
The names Maria, or Magdalena, Jesus, or Christ, are found in most of
the Scandinavian ballads. Swedish #E# has 'Lena (Lilla Lena); Swedish
#H# He-lena; #J#, Adelin; #K#, Maja. Norwegian #A# gives no name to the
woman, and Danish #A# a name only in the burden; Norwegian #B# has,
corruptly, Margjit. In Danish #C#, Norwegian #B#, #G#, Jesus is called
an _old_ man, correspondingly with the "old palmer" of English #A#, but
the old man is afterwards called Jesus in Norwegian #G# (#B# is not
printed in full), and in the burden of Danish #C#. The Son is exchanged
for the Father in Swedish #D#.
Stanzas 4, 5 of Swedish #A#, #G#, approach singularly near to English
#A# 6, 7:
Swedish #A#:
4
'Would thy leman now but come,
Thou wouldst give him to drink out of thy hand.'
5
By all the worlds Magdalen swore,
That leman she never had.
Swedish #G#:
4
'Yes, but if I thy leman were,
I should get drink from thy snow-white hand.'
5
Maria swore by the Holy Ghost,
She neer had to do with any man.
The woman is said to have taken the lives of her three children in
Danish #A#, #B#, #C#, and of two in Swedish #C#, #D#, #F#, #I#, #J#, #K#
(#B# also, where there are but two in all), a trait probably borrowed
from 'The Cruel Mother.'
The seven years' penance of the Scandinavian ballads is multiplied three
times in English #A#, and four times in #B# and in those versions of
'The Cruel Mother' which have been affected by the present ballad (20,
#I#, #J#, #K#; #L# is defective). What is more important, the penance in
the English ballads is completely different in kind, consisting not in
exaggerated austerities, but partly, at least, in transmigration or
metensomatosis: seven years to be a fish, 20, #I#, #J#, #K#; seven years
a bird, 20, #I#, #J#, #K#; seven years a stone, 21, #A#, #B#; seven
years an eel, 20, #J#; seven years a bell, or bell-clapper, 20, #I#, 21,
#A# (to ring a bell, 20, #K#, #L#). Seven years in hell seems to have
been part of the penance or penalty in every case: seven years a porter
in hell, 21, #B#, 20, #I#, #K#; seven years down in hell, 20, #J#; seven
years to "ring the bell and see sic sights as ye darna tell, 20, #L#;"
"other seven to lead an ape in hell," #A#, a burlesque variation of the
portership.
The Finnish Mataleena, going to the well for water, sees the reflection
of her face, and bewails her lost charms. Jesus begs a drink: she says
she has no can, no glass. He bids her confess. "Where are your three
boys? One you threw into the fire, one into the water, and one you
buried in the wilderness." She fills a pail with her tears, washes his
feet, and wipes them with her hair: then asks for penance. "Put me, Lord
Jesus, where you will. Make me a ladder-bridge over the sea, a brand in
the fire, a coal in the furnace."
There are several Slavic ballads which blend the story of the Samaritan
woman and that of 'The Cruel Mother,' without admixture of the Magdalen.
#Wendish# #A,# 'Aria' (M-aria?), Haupt and Schmaler, I, 287, No 290, has
a maid Who goes for water on Sunday morning, and is joined by an old man
who asks for a drink. She says the water is not clean; it is dusty and
covered with leaves. He says, The water is clean, but you are unclean.
She demands proof, and he bids her go to church in her maiden wreath.
This she does. The grass withers before her, a track of blood follows
her, and in the churchyard there come to her nine headless boys, who
say, Nine sons hast thou killed, chopt off their heads, and meanest to
do the same for a tenth. She entreats their forgiveness, enters the
church, sprinkles herself with holy water, kneels at the altar and
crosses herself, then suddenly sinks into the ground, so that nothing is
to be seen but her yellow hair. #B#, 'Die Kindesmörderin,' _ib._, II,
149, No 197, begins like #A#. As the maid proceeds to the church, nine
graves open before her, and nine souls follow her into the church. The
oldest of her children springs upon her and breaks her neck, saying,
"Mother, here is thy reward. Nine of us didst thou kill."
There are two #Moravian# ballads of the same tenor: #A#, Deutsches
Museum, 1855, I, 282, translated by M. Klapp: #B#, communicated to the
Zeitschrift des böhmischen Museums, 1842, p. 401, by A.W. Šembera, as
sung by the "mährisch sprechenden Slawen" in Prussian Silesia; the first
seven stanzas translated in Haupt u. Schmaler, II, 314, note to No 197.
The Lord God goes out one Sunday morning, and meets a maid, whom he asks
for water. She says the water is not clean. He replies that it is
cleaner than she; for (#A#) she has seduced fifteen men and had
children with all of them, has filled hell with the men and the sea with
the children. He sends her to church; but, as she enters the
church-yard, the bells begin to ring (of themselves), and when she
enters the church, all the images turn their backs. As she falls on her
knees, she is changed into a pillar of salt.
The popular ballads of some of the southern nations give us the legend
of the Magdalen without mixture.
#French.# #A#, Poésies populaires de la France, I (not paged), from
Sermoyer, Ain, thirty lines, made stanzas by repetition. Mary goes from
door to door seeking Jesus. He asks what she wants: she answers, To be
shriven. Her sins have been such, she says, that the earth ought not to
bear her up, the trees that see her can but tremble. For penance she is
to stay seven years in the woods of Baume, eat the roots of the trees,
drink the dew, and sleep under a juniper. Jesus comes to inquire about
her when this space has expired. She says she is well, but her hands,
once white as flower-de-luce, are now black as leather. For this Jesus
requires her to stay seven years longer, and then, being thoroughly
cured of her old vanities, she is told,
'Marie Magdeleine, allez au paradis;
La porte en est ouverte depuis hier à midi.'
#B# is nearly the same legend in Provençal: Damase Arbaud, I, 64. The
penance is seven years in a cave, at the end of which Jesus passes, and
asks Mary what she has had to eat and drink. "Wild roots, and not always
them; muddy water, and not always that." The conclusion is peculiar.
Mary expresses a wish to wash her hands. Jesus pricks the rock, and
water gushes out. She bewails the lost beauty of her hands, and is
remanded to the cavern for another seven years. Upon her exclaiming at
the hardship, Jesus tells her that Martha shall come to console her, the
wood-dove fetch her food, the birds drink. But Mary is not reconciled:
'Lord God, my good father,
Make me not go back again!
With the tears from my eyes
I will wash my hands clean.
'With the tears from my eyes
I will wash your feet,
And then I will dry them
With the hair of my head.'
#C#, Poésies populaires de la Gascogne, Bladé, 1881, p. 339; 'La pauvre
Madeleine,' seventeen stanzas of four short lines, resembles #B# till
the close. When Jesus comes back after the second penance, and Mary
says, as she had before, that she has lived like the beasts, only she
has lacked water, Jesus again causes water to spring from the rock. But
Mary says, I want no water. I should have to go back to the cave for
another seven years. She is conducted straightway to paradise.
#D#, Bladé, as before, p. 183, 'Marie-Madeleine,' six stanzas of five
short lines. Mary is sent to the mountains for seven years' penance; at
the end of that time washes her hands in a brook, and is guilty of
admiring them; is sent back to the mountains for seven years, and is
then taken to heaven.
A #Catalan# ballad combines the legend of the Magdalen's penance with
that of her conversion: Milá, Observaciones, p. 128, No 27, 'Santa
Magdalena,' and Briz y Saltó, Cansons de la Terra, II, 99. Martha,
returning from church, asks Magdalen, who is combing her hair with a
gold comb, if she has been at mass. Magdalen says no, nor had she
thought of going. Martha advises her to go, for she certainly will fall
in love with the preacher, a young man; pity that he ever was a friar.
Magdalen attires herself with the utmost splendor, and, to hear the
sermon better, takes a place immediately under the pulpit. The first
word of the sermon touched her; at the middle she fainted. She stripped
off all her ornaments, and laid them at the preacher's feet. At the door
of the church she inquired of a penitent where Jesus was to be found.
She sought him out at the house of Simon, washed his feet with her
tears, and wiped them with her hair, picked up from the floor the bones
which he had thrown away. Jesus at last noticed her, and asked what she
wished. She wished to confess. He imposed the penance of seven years on
a mountain, "eating herbs and fennels, eating bitter herbs." Magdalen
turned homewards after the seven years, and found on the way a spring,
where she washed her hands, with a sigh over their disfigurement. She
heard a voice that said, Magdalen, thou hast sinned. She asked for new
penance, and was sent back to the mountain for seven years more. At the
end of this second term she died, and was borne to the skies with every
honor from the Virgin, saints, and angels.
* * * * *
Danish #A# is translated by Prior, II, 25, No 44: Swedish #C# by William
and Mary Howitt, Literature and Romance of Northern Europe, I, 282.
A
Percy MS., p. 461. Furnivall, IV, 96.
1
The maid shee went to the well to washe,
Lillumwham, lillumwham!
The mayd shee went to the well to washe,
Whatt then? what then?
The maid shee went to the well to washe,
Dew ffell of her lilly white fleshe.
Grandam boy, grandam boy, heye!
Leg a derry, leg a merry, mett, mer, whoope, whir!
Driuance, larumben, grandam boy, heye!
2
While shee washte and while shee ronge,
While shee hangd o the hazle wand.
3
There came an old palmer by the way,
Sais, 'God speed thee well, thou faire maid!'
4
'Hast either cupp or can,
To giue an old palmer drinke therin?'
5
Sayes, 'I have neither cupp nor cann,
To giue an old palmer drinke therin.'
6
'But an thy lem_m_an came from Roome,
Cupps and canns thou wold ffind soone.'
7
Shee sware by God & good St. John,
Lemman had shee neuer none.
8
Saies, 'Peace, ffaire mayd, you are fforsworne!
Nine children you haue borne.
9
'Three were buryed vnder thy bed's head,
Other three vnder thy brewing leade.
10
'Other three on yon play greene;
Count, maid, and there be 9.'
11
'But I hope you are the good old man
That all the world beleeues vpon.
12
'Old palmer, I pray thee,
Pennaunce _tha_t thou wilt giue to me.'
13
'Penance I can giue thee none,
But 7 yeere to be a stepping-stone.
14
'Other seaven a clapper in a bell,
Other 7 to lead an ape in hell.
15
'When thou hast thy penance done,
Then thoust come a mayden home.'
B
A Ballad Book, by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, edited by
David Laing, p. 157 f, VII; from Sir W. Scott's
recollection.
1
'Seven years ye shall be a stone,
. . . . . . .
For many a poor palmer to rest him upon.
And you the fair maiden of Gowden-gane
2
'Seven years ye'll be porter of hell,
And then I'll take you to mysell.'
* * * * * * *
3
'Weel may I be a' the other three,
But porter of hell I never will be.'
And I, etc.
* * * * *
#A.#
2^1. White shee washee & white.
2^2. White.
9^1. They were.
10^1. on won.
10^2. maids
#B.#
_Note by Scott_: "There is or was a curious song with this
burthen to the verse,
'And I the fair maiden of Gowden-gane.'
Said maiden is, I think, courted by the devil in human
shape, but I only recollect imperfectly the concluding
stanzas [1, 2]:
'Seven years ye shall be a stone,'
(here a chorus line which I have forgot), etc. The lady
answers, in allusion to a former word which I have
forgotten,
"Weel may I be [etc., st. 3]."
[182] The Magdalen's food is to be dry apple in Danish #B# 9.
[183] Swedish #F#:
14
'And tell me how has it been with thy meat?'
'O I have eaten of almonds sweet.'
15
'And tell me how it has been with thy drink?'
'I have drunk both mead and wine, I think.'
16
'And tell me how was that bed of thine?'
'Oh I have rested on ermeline.'
Norwegian #G#:
13
'I have fed as well on herbage wild
As others have fed on roast and broiled.
14
'I have rested as well on the hard, hard stone
As others have rested on beds of down.
15
'I have drunk as well from the rippling rill
As others that drank both wine and ale.'
22
ST STEPHEN AND HEROD
Sloane MS., 2593, fol. 22 b; British Museum.
The manuscript which preserves this delightful little legend has been
judged by the handwriting to be of the age of Henry VI. It was printed
entire by Mr T. Wright, in 1856, for the Warton Club, under the title,
Songs and Carols, from a manuscript in the British Museum of the
fifteenth century, the ballad at p. 63. Ritson gave the piece as 'A
Carol for St Stephen's Day,' in Ancient Songs, 1790, p. 83, and it has
often been repeated; e. g., in Sandys' Christmas Carols, p. 4,
Sylvester's, p. 1.
The story, with the Wise Men replacing Stephen, is also found in the
carol, still current, of 'The Carnal and the Crane,' Sandys, p. 152, in
conjunction with other legends and in this order: the Nativity, the Wise
Men's passage with Herod, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Flight into
Egypt, Herod and the Sower.
The legend of Stephen and Herod occurs, and is even still living, in
Scandinavian tradition, combined, as in English, with others relating to
the infancy of Jesus.
#Danish.# 'Jesusbarnet, Stefan og Herodes:' #A#, Grundtvig, No 96, II,
525. First printed in Erik Pontoppidan's little book on the reliques of
Paganism and Papistry among the Danish People, 1736, p. 70, as taken
down from the singing of an old beggar-woman before the author's
door.[184] Syv alludes to the ballad in 1695, and cites one stanza. The
first five of eleven stanzas are devoted to the beauty of the Virgin,
the Annunciation, and the birth of the Saviour. The song then goes on
thus:
6
Saint Stephen leads the foals to water,
All by the star so gleaming:
'Of a truth the prophet now is born
That all the world shall ransom.'
7
King Herod answered thus to him:
'I'll not believe this story,
Till the roasted cock that is on the board
Claps his wings and crows before me.'
8
The cock he clapped his wings and crew,
'Our Lord, this is his birthday!'
Herod fell off from his kingly seat,
For grief he fell a swooning.
9
King Herod bade saddle his courser gray,
He listed to ride to Bethlem;
Fain would he slay the little child
That to cope with him pretended.
10
Mary took the child in her arms,
And Joseph the ass took also,
So they traversed the Jewish land,
To Egypt, as God them guided.
11
The little children whose blood was shed,
They were full fourteen thousand,
But Jesus was thirty miles away
Before the sun was setting.
#B.# A broadside of fourteen four-line stanzas, in two copies, #a# of
the middle, #b# from the latter part, of the last century. #b# was
printed "in the Dansk Kirketidende for 1862, No 43," by Professor George
Stephens: #a# is given by Grundtvig, III, 881. The first three stanzas
correspond to #A# 1-5, the next three to #A# 6-8: the visit of the Wise
Men to Herod is then intercalated, 7-10, and the story concludes as in
#A# 9-11.
#C.# 'Sankt Steffan,' Kristensen, II, 123, No 36, from recitation about
1870, eight four-line stanzas, 1-3 agreeing with #A# 3-6, 4-6 with #A#
6-9, 7, 8 with #A# 9, 11. The verbal resemblance with the copy sung by
the old beggar-woman more than a hundred and thirty years before is
often close.
A #Färöe# version, 'Rudisar vísa,' was communicated to the Dansk
Kirketidende for 1852, p. 293, by Hammershaimb, twenty-six two-line
stanzas (Grundtvig, II, 519). Stephen is in Herod's service. He goes out
and sees the star in the east, whereby he knows that the Saviour of the
world, "the great king," is born. He comes in and makes this
announcement. Herod orders his eyes to be put out: so, he says, it will
appear whether this "king" will help him. They put out Stephen's eyes,
but now he sees as well by night as before by day. At this moment a
cock, roast and carved, is put on the board before Herod, who cries out:
'If this cock would stand up and crow,
Then in Stephen's tale should I trow.'
Herod he stood, and Herod did wait,
The cock came together that lay in the plate.
The cock flew up on the red gold chair,
He clapped his wings, and he crew so fair.
Herod orders his horse and rides to Bethlehem, to find the new-born
king. As he comes in, Mary greets him, and tells him there is still mead
and wine. He answers that she need not be so mild with him: he will have
her son and nail him on the cross. "Then you must go to heaven for him,"
says Mary. Herod makes an attempt on Jesus, but is seized by twelve
angels and thrown into the Jordan, where the Evil One takes charge of
him.
#Swedish.# A single stanza, corresponding to Danish #A# 6, #B# 4, #C# 4,
is preserved in a carol, 'Staffans Visa,' which was wont to be sung all
over Sweden on St Stephen's day, in the Christmas sport, not yet given
up, called Staffansskede; which consisted in young fellows riding about
from house to house early in the morning of the second day of Yule, and
levying refreshments.[185] One of the party carried at the end of a pole
a lighted lantern, made of hoops and oiled paper, which was sometimes in
the shape of a six-cornered star. Much of the chant was improvised, and
both the good wishes and the suggestions as to the expected treat would
naturally be suited to particular cases; but the first stanza, with but
slight variations, was (Afzelius, III, 208, 210):
Stephen was a stable-groom,
We thank you now so kindly!
He watered the five foals all and some,
Ere the morning star was shining.
No daylight's to be seen,
The stars in the sky
Are gleaming.
or,
Stephen was a stable-groom,
Bear thee well my foal!
He watered the five foals all and some,
God help us and Saint Stephen!
The sun is not a-shining,
But the stars in the sky
Are gleaming.
There is also a Swedish ballad which has the substance of the story of
Danish #A# 6-8, but without any allusion to Stephen. It occurs as a
broadside, in two copies, dated 1848, 1851, and was communicated by
Professor Stephens to the Dansk Kirketidende, 1861, Nos 3, 4, and is
reprinted by Grundtvig, III, 882 f, and in Bergström's Afzelius, II, 360
f. There are eleven four-line stanzas, of which the last six relate how
Mary was saved from Herod by the miracle of the Sower (see 'The Carnal
and the Crane,' stanzas 18-28). The first five cover the matter of our
ballad. The first runs:
In Bethlem of Judah a star there rose,
At the time of the birth of Christ Jesus:
'Now a child is born into the world
That shall suffer for us death and torment.'
Herod then calls his court and council, and says to them, as he says to
Stephen in the Danish ballad, "I cannot believe your story unless the
cock on this table claps his wings and crows." This comes to pass, and
Herod exclaims that he can never thrive till he has made that child feel
the effects of his wrath. He then steeps his hands in the blood of the
Innocents, and falls off his throne in a marvellous swoon. Mary is
warned to fly to Egypt. It is altogether likely that the person who
speaks in the first stanza was originally the same as the one who says
nearly the same thing in the three Danish ballads, that is, Stephen, and
altogether unlikely that Herod's words, which are addressed to Stephen
in the Danish ballads, were addressed to his court and council rather
than to Stephen here.
#Norwegian.# Two stanzas, much corrupted, of what may have been a ballad
like the foregoing, have been recovered by Professor Bugge, and are
given by Grundtvig, III, 883.
St Stephen's appearance as a stable-groom, expressly in the Swedish
carol and by implication in the Danish ballads, is to be explained by
his being the patron of horses among the northern nations.[186] On his
day, December 26, which is even called in Germany the great Horse Day,
it was the custom for horses to be let blood to keep them well during
the year following, or raced to protect them from witches. In Sweden
they were watered "ad alienos fontes" (which, perhaps, is what Stephen
is engaged in in the carol), and treated to the ale which had been left
in the cups on St Stephen's eve; etc., etc.[187] This way of observing
St Stephen's day is presumed to be confined to the north of Europe, or
at least to be derived from that quarter. Other saints are patrons of
horses in the south, as St Eloi, St Antony, and we must seek the
explanation of St Stephen's having that office in Scandinavia, Germany,
and England in the earlier history of these regions. It was suggested as
long ago as the middle of the sixteenth century by the Archbishop Olaus
Magnus, that the horseracing, which was universal in Sweden on December
26, was a remnant of heathen customs. The horse was sacred to Frey, and
Yule was Frey's festival. There can hardly be a doubt that the customs
connected with St Stephen's day are a continuation, under Christian
auspices, of old rites and habits which, as in so many other cases, the
church found it easier to consecrate than to abolish.[188]
The miracle of the cock is met with in other ballads, which, for the
most part, relate the wide-spread legend of the Pilgrims of St James.
#French.# In three versions, Chants de Pauvres en Forez et en Velay,
collected by M. Victor Smith, Romania, II, 473 ff. Three pilgrims,
father, mother, and son, on their way to St James, stop at an inn, at St
Dominic. A maid-servant, enamored of the youth (qui ressemble une image,
que semblavo-z-un ange) is repelled by him, and in revenge puts a silver
cup [cups] belonging to the house into his knapsack. The party is
pursued and brought back, and the young pilgrim is hanged. He exhorts
his father to accomplish his vow, and to come that way when he returns.
When the father returns, after three [six] months, the boy is found to
be alive; his feet have been supported, and he has been nourished, by
God and the saints. The father tells the judge that his son is alive;
the judge replies, I will believe that when this roast fowl crows. The
bird crows: #A#, le poulet se mit a chanter sur la table; #B#, le poulet
vole au ciel, trois fois n'a battu l'aile; #C#, trois fois il a chanté,
trois fois l'a battu l'aile. The boy is taken down and the maid hanged.
#Spanish.# #A#, Milá, Observaciones sobre la Poesia Popular, p. 106, No
7, 'El Romero;' #B#, Briz, Cansons de la Terra, I, 71, 'S. Jaume de
Galicia,' two copies essentially agreeing. The course of the story is
nearly as in the French. The son does not ask his father to come back.
It is a touch of nature that the mother cannot be prevented from going
back by all that her husband can say. The boy is more than well. St
James has been sustaining his feet, the Virgin his head. He directs his
mother to go to the alcalde (Milá), who will be dining on a cock and a
hen, and to request him politely to release her son, who is still alive.
The alcalde replies: "Off with you! Your son is as much alive as this
cock and hen." The cock began to crow, the hen laid an egg in the dish!
#Dutch.# 'Een liedeken van sint Jacob,' Antwerpener Liederbuch, 1544, No
20, Hoffmann, p. 26; Uhland, p. 803, No 303; Willems, p. 318, No 133.
The pilgrims here are only father and son. The host's daughter avows her
love to her father, and desires to detain the young pilgrim. The older
pilgrim, hearing of this, says, My son with me and I with him. We will
seek St James, as pilgrims good and true. The girl puts the cup in the
father's sack. The son offers himself in his father's place, and is
hanged. The father finds that St James and the Virgin have not been
unmindful of the pious, and tells the host that his son is alive. The
host, in a rage, exclaims, "That's as true as that these roast fowls
shall fly out at the door!"
But ere the host could utter the words,
One by one from the spit brake the birds,
And into the street went flitting;
They flew on the roof of St Dominic's house,
Where all the brothers were sitting.
The brothers resolve unanimously to go to the judicial authority in
procession; the innocent youth is taken down, the host hanged, and his
daughter buried alive.
#Wendish.# Haupt und Schmaler, I, 285, No 289, 'Der gehenkte
Schenkwirth.' There are two pilgrims, father and son. The host himself
puts his gold key into the boy's basket. The boy is hanged: the father
bids him hang a year and a day, till he returns. The Virgin has put a
stool under the boy's feet, and the angels have fed him. The father
announces to the host that his son is living. The host will not believe
this till three dry staves which he has in the house shall put out green
shoots. This comes to pass. The host will not believe till three fowls
that are roasting shall recover their feathers and fly out of the
window. This also comes to pass. The host is hanged.
A #Breton# ballad, 'Marguerite Laurent,' Luzel, I, #A#, p. 211, #B#, p.
215, inverts a principal circumstance in the story of the pilgrims: a
maid is hanged on a false accusation of having stolen a piece of plate.
This may be an independent tradition or a corrupt form of the other.
Marguerite has, by the grace of St Anne and of the Virgin, suffered no
harm. A young clerk, her lover, having ascertained this, reports the
case to the seneschal, who will not believe till the roasted capon on
the dish crows. The capon crows. Marguerite goes on her bare knees to St
Anne and to Notre-Dame du Folgoat, and dies in the church of the latter
(first version).
'Notre-Dame du Folgoat,' Villemarqué, Barzaz Breiz, p. 272, No 38, 6th
ed., is of a different tenor. Marie Fanchonik, wrongly condemned to be
executed for child murder, though hanged, does not die. The executioner
reports to the seneschal. "Burn her," says the seneschal. "Though in
fire up to her breast," says the executioner, "she is laughing
heartily." "Sooner shall this capon crow than I will believe you." The
capon crows: a roast capon on the dish, all eaten but the feet.
Religious writers of the 13th century have their version of the story of
the pilgrims, but without the prodigy of the cock. Vincent of Beauvais,
Speculum Historiale, 1. 26, c. 33, who bases his narrative on a
collection of the miracles of St James incorrectly attributed to Pope
Callixtus II,[189] has but two pilgrims, Germans, father and son. On
their way to Compostella they pass a night in an inn at Toulouse. The
host, having an eye to the forfeiture of their effects, makes them drunk
and hides a silver cup in their wallet. Son wishes to die for father,
and father for son. The son is hanged, and St James interposes to
preserve his life.[190] With Vincent agree the author of the Golden
Legend, following Callixtus, Graesse, 2d ed., p. 426, c. 99 (94), §
5,[191] and Cæsarius Heisterbacensis, Dialogus Miraculorum, c. 58, II,
130, ed. Strange, who, however, does not profess to remember every
particular, and omits to specify Toulouse as the place. Nicolas
Bertrand, who published in 1515 a history of Toulouse, places the
miracle there.[192] He has three pilgrims, like the French and Spanish
ballads, and the roast fowl flying from the spit to convince a doubting
official, like the Dutch and Wendish ballads.
But, much earlier than the last date, this miracle of St James had
become connected with the town of San Domingo de la Calzada, one of the
stations on the way to Compostella,[193] some hours east of Burgos.
Roig, the Valencian poet, on arriving there in the course of his
pilgrimage, tells the tale briefly, with two roasted fowls, cock and
hen: Lo Libre de les Dones e de Conçells, 1460, as printed by Briz from
the edition of 1735, p. 42, Book 2, vv. 135-183. Lucio Marineo, whose
work, De las cosas memorables de España, appeared in 1530, had been at
San Domingo, and is able to make some addition to the miracle of the
cock. Up to the revivification, his account agrees very well with the
Spanish ballad. A roast cock and hen are lying before the mayor, and
when he expresses his incredulity, they jump from the dish on to the
table, in feathers whiter than snow. After the pilgrims had set out a
second time on their way to Compostella, to return thanks to St James,
the mayor returned to his house with the priests and all the people, and
took the cock and hen to the church, where they lived seven years, and
then died, leaving behind them a pair of the same snowy whiteness, who
in turn, after seven years, left their successors, and so on to
Marineo's day; and though of the infinite number of pilgrims who
resorted to the tomb each took away a feather, the plumage was always
full, and Marineo speaks as an eye-witness. (Edition of 1539, fol.
xliii.) Dr Andrew Borde gives nearly the same account as Marineo, in the
First Book of the Introduction of Knowledge, 1544, p. 202 ff, ed.
Furnivall.[194]
Early in the sixteenth century the subject was treated in at least two
miracle-plays, for which it is very well adapted: Un miracolo di tre
Pellegrini, printed at Florence early in the sixteenth century,
D'Ancona, Sacre Rappresentazioni, III, 465; Ludus Sancti Jacobi,
fragment de mystère provençale, Camille Arnaud, 1858.[195]
Nicolas Bertrand, before referred to, speaks of the miracle as depicted
in churches and chapels of St James. It was, for example, painted by
Pietro Antonio of Foligno, in the fifteenth century, in SS. Antonio e
Jacopo at Assisi, and by Pisanello in the old church of the Tempio at
Florence, and, in the next century, by Palmezzano in S. Biagio di S.
Girolamo at Forlì, and by Lo Spagna in a small chapel or tribune
dedicated to St James, about four miles from Spoleto, on the way to
Foligno. The same legend is painted on one of the lower windows of St
Ouen, and again on a window of St Vincent, at Rouen. Many more cases
might, no doubt, be easily collected.[196]
It is not at all surprising that a miracle performed at San Domingo de
la Calzada should, in the course of time, be at that place attributed to
the patron of the locality; and we actually find Luis de la Vega, in a
life of this San Domingo published at Burgos in 1606, repeating
Marineo's story, very nearly, with a substitution of Dominic for
James.[197] More than this, this author claims for this saint, who,
saving reverence, is decidedly _minorum gentium_, the merit and glory of
delivering a captive from the Moors, wherein he, or tradition, makes
free again with St James's rightful honors. The Moor, when told that the
captive will some day be missing, rejoins, If you keep him as close as
when I last saw him, he will as soon escape as this roast cock will fly
and crow. It is obvious that this anecdote is a simple jumble of two
miracles of St James, the freeing of the captives, recounted in Acta
Sanctorum, VI Julii, p. 47, § 190f, and the saving the life of the young
pilgrim.[198]
The restoration of a roasted fowl to life is also narrated in Acta
Sanctorum, I Septembris, p. 529, § 289, as occurring early in the
eleventh century (the date assigned to the story of the pilgrims), at
the table of St Stephen, the first king of Hungary. St Gunther was
sitting with the king while he was dining. The king pressed Gunther to
partake of a roast peacock, but Gunther, as he was bound by his rule to
do, declined. The king then ordered him to eat. Gunther bent his head
and implored the divine mercy; the bird flew up from the dish; the king
no longer persisted. The author of the article, without questioning the
reality of the miracle, well remarks that there seems to be something
wrong in the story, since it is impossible that the holy king should
have commanded the saint to break his vow.
But the prime circumstances in the legend, the resuscitation of the
cock, does not belong in the eleventh century, where Vincent and others
have put it, but in the first, where it is put by the English and
Scandinavian ballads. A French romance somewhat older than Vincent,
Ogier le Danois, agrees with the later English ballad in making the
occasion to be the visit of the Wise Men to Herod. Herod will not
believe what they say,
'Se cis capon que ci m'est en présant
N'en est plumeus com il estoit devant,
Et se redrece à la perche en cantant.'
vv 11621-23.
And what he exacts is performed for his conviction.[199] Nevertheless,
as we shall now see, the true epoch of the event is not the Nativity,
but the Passion.
The ultimate source of the miracle of the reanimated cock is an
interpolation in two late Greek manuscripts of the so-called Gospel of
Nicodemus: Thilo, Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, p. cxxix f;
Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha, p. 269, note 3. After Judas had tried
to induce the Jews to take back the thirty pieces, he went to his house
to hang himself, and found his wife sitting there, and a cock roasting
on a spit before the coals. He said to his wife, Get me a rope, for I
mean to hang myself, as I deserve. His wife said to him, Why do you say
such things? And Judas said to her, Know in truth that I have betrayed
my master Jesus to evil-doers, who will put him to death. But he will
rise on the third day, and woe to us. His wife said, Do not talk so nor
believe it; for this cock that is roasting before the coals will as soon
crow as Jesus rise again as you say. And even while she was speaking the
words, the cock flapped his wings and crew thrice. Then Judas was still
more persuaded, and straightway made a noose of the rope and hanged
himself.[200]
The Cursor Mundi gives its own turn to this relation, with the intent to
blacken Judas a little more.[201] When Judas had betrayed Jesus, he went
to his mother with his pence, boasting of the act. "Hast thou sold thy
master?" said she. "Shame shall be thy lot, for they will put him to
death; but he shall rise again." "Rise, mother?" said Judas, "sooner
shall this cock rise up that was scalded yesternight."
Hardly had he said the word,
The cock leapt up and flew,
Feathered fairer than before,
And by God's grace he crew;
The traitor false began to fear,
His peril well he knew.
This cock it was the self-same cock
Which Peter made to rue,
When he had thrice denied his lord
And proved to him untrue.
A still different version existed among the Copts, who had their copies
of the apocryphal writings, and among them the gospel of Nicodemus.
The Copts say, according to Thévenot, "that on the day of the Supper a
roasted cock was served to our Lord, and that when Judas went out to
sell Jesus to the Jews, the Saviour commanded the cock to get up and
follow him; which the cock did, and brought back his report to our Lord
that Judas had sold him, for which service this cock shall be admitted
to paradise."[202]
The herald of the morn is described in other carols as making known the
birth of the Saviour to the animal creation, or the more familiar
members of it.
"There is a sheet of carols headed thus: 'CHRISTUS NATUS EST, Christ is
born,' with a wood-cut ten inches high by eight and one half inches
wide, representing the stable at Bethlehem; Christ in the crib, watched
by the Virgin and Joseph; shepherds kneeling; angels attending; a man
playing on the bagpipes; a woman with a basket of fruit on her head; a
sheep bleating and an ox lowing on the ground; a raven croaking and a
crow cawing on the hay-rack; a cock crowing above them; and angels
singing in the sky. The animals have labels from their mouths, bearing
Latin inscriptions. Down the side of the wood-cut is the following
account and explanation: 'A religious man, inventing the conceits of
both birds and beasts, drawn in the picture of our Saviour's birth, doth
thus express them. The cock croweth _Christus natus est_, Christ is
born. The raven asked _Quando_, When? The crow replied, _Hac nocte_,
This night. The ox cryeth out, _Ubi, ubi?_ Where, where? The sheep
bleated out, _Bethlehem_, Bethlehem. A voice from heaven sounded,
_Gloria in excelsis_, Glory be on high!'" London, 1701. Hone's Every-Day
Book, I, col. 1600 f.
So in Vieux Noëls français, in Les Noëls Bressans, etc., par Philibert
Le Duc, p. 145.
Joie des Bestes
à la nouvelle de la naissance du Sauveur.
Comme les Bestes autrefois
Parloient mieux latin que françois,
Le Coq, de loin voyant le faict,
S'écria: _Christus natus est_;
Le Bœuf, d'un air tout ébaubi,
Demande: _Ubi, ubi, ubi_?
La Chèvre, se torchant le groin,
Respond que c'est à _Bethleem_;
Maistre Baudet, _curiosus_
De l'aller voir, dit: _Eamus_;
Et, droit sur ses pattes, le Veau
Beugle deux fois: _Volo, volo_.[203]
And again, in Italian, Bolza, Canzoni popolari comasche, p. 654, No 30:
Il Gallo. È nato Gesù!
Il Bue. In dôva?
La Pecora. Betlèm! Betlèm!
L'Asino. Andèm! Andèm! Andèm!
A little Greek ballad, 'The Taking of Constantinople,' only seven lines
long, relates a miracle entirely like that of the cock, which was
operated for the conviction of incredulity. A nun, frying fish, hears a
voice from above, saying, Cease your frying, the city will fall into the
hands of the Turks. "When the fish fly out of the pan alive," she says,
"then shall the Turks take the city." The fish fly out of the pan alive,
and the Turkish admiraud comes riding into the city. Zambelios, p. 600,
No 2; Passow, p. 147, No 197. (Liebrecht, Volkskunde, p. 179.)
With Herod's questions and Stephen's answers in stanzas 5-8, we may
compare a passage in some of the Greek ballads cited under No 17, p.
199.
Σκλαβε, πανας· σκλαβε, διψας· μη το ψωμι σου λειπει·
Σκλαβε, πανας· σκλαβε, διψας· σκλαβε, κρασιν σου λειπει·
Lakkyt þe eyþer mete or drynk?
Μητε πεινω, μητε διψω, μητε ψωμι [κρασιν] μου λειπει.
Lakit me neyþer mete ne drynk.
Jeannaraki, p. 203, No 265:
Sakellarios, p. 37, No 13.
Σκλαβε, πεινας· σκλαβε, διψας· σκλαβε, ῥογα σου λειπει·
Σκλαβε, πεινας· σκλαβε, διψας· σκλαβε μου ῥουχα θελεις·
Lakkyt þe eyþer gold or fe,
Or ony ryche wede?
Ουτε πεινω, ουτε διψω, ουτε ῥογα μου λειπει.
Μητε πεινω, μητε διψω, μητε και ῥουχα θελω.
Lakyt me neyþer gold ne fe,
Ne non ryche wede.
Tommaseo, III, 154; Passow, p. 330, No 449:
Tommaseo, III, 152; Zambelios, p. 678, No 103; Passow, No 448.
A Danish translation of the English ballad is printed in Dansk
Kirketidende for 1852, p. 254 (Grundtvig). Danish #A# is translated by
Dr Prior, I, 398.
* * * * *
Sloane MS., 2593, fol. 22 b, British Museum.
1
Sey_n_t Steuene was a clerk i_n_ ky_n_g Herowd_e_s halle,
_And_ seruyd hi_m_ of bred _and_ cloþ, as euery ky_n_g befalle.
2
Steuy_n_ out of kechon_e_ ca_m_, w_y_t_h_ boris hed o_n_ honde;
He saw a sterr_e_ was fayr _and_ bryȝt ou_er_ Bedle_m_ sto_n_de.
3
He kyst adoun þe boris hed _and_ went in to þe halle:
'I forsak þe, ky_n_g Herowd_e_s, _and_ þi werk_e_s alle.
4
'I forsak þe, ky_n_g Herowd_es_, _and_ þi werk_e_s alle;
Þ_er_ is a chyld in Bedle_m_ born is bet_er_ þa_n_ we alle.'
5
'Q_uat_ eylyt þe, Steuene? q_uat_ is þe befalle?
Lakkyt þe eyþ_er_ mete or drynk in kyng Herowd_es_ h_alle_?'
6
'Lakit me neyþ_er_ mete ne drynk i_n_ ky_n_g Herowd_es_ halle;
Þ_er_ is a chyld in Bedle_m_ born is bet_er_ þa_n_ we alle.'
7
Q_uat_ eylyt þe, Steuyn? art þu wod, or þu gy_n_nyst to brede?
Lakkyt þe eyþ_er_ gold or fe, or ony ryche wede?'
8
'Lakyt me neyþ_er_ gold ne fe, ne no_n_ ryche wede;
Þ_er_ is a chyld in Bedle_m_ born xal helpy_n_ vs at _our_ nede.'
9
'Þ_a_t is al so soþ, Steuy_n_, al so soþ, iwys,
As þis capou_n_ crowe xal þ_a_t lyp her_e_ in my_n_ dysh.'
10
Þ_a_t word was not so sone seyd, þ_a_t word i_n_ þ_a_t halle,
Þe capou_n_ crew C_ristus_ nat_us_ est! among þe lord_es_ alle.
11
Rysyt vp, my_n_ turme_n_towr_es_, be to _and_ al be on,
_And_ led_y_t Steuy_n_ out of þis town, _and_ sto_n_yt hy_m_ w_y_t_h_
ston!'
12
Toky_n_ he Steuene, _and_ stonyd hy_m_ in the way,
_And_ þ_e_rfor_e_ is his euy_n_ on Cryst_es_ owy_n_ day.
* * * * *
1^2, 5^1. be falle.
3^1. a dou_n_.
3^2, 4^1. for sak.
5^2. _There is room only for the ~h~ at the end of the
line._
9^1. also ... also ... I wys.
9^2. dych.
10^2. a mong.
[184] Everriculum fermenti veteris, seu residuæ in Danico orbe cum
paganismi tum papismi reliquiæ in apricum prolatæ. "Rogata anus num vera
esse crederet quæ canebat, respondit: Me illa in dubium vocaturam
averruncet Deus!" Grundtvig, II, 518.
[185] "Staffans-skede, lusus, vel, ut rectius dicam, licentia puerorum
agrestium, qui in Festo S. Stephani, equis vecti per villas discurrunt,
et cerevisiam in lagenis, ad hoc ipsum præparatis, mendicando ostiatim
colligunt:" a dissertation, Upsala, 1734, cited by Bergström in his
edition of Afzelius, II, 358, note 28. Skede is gallop, or run,
Icelandic skeið (Bergström), Norwegian skeid, skjei. Many copies of the
Staffansvisa have been collected: see Bergström's Afzelius, II, 356: and
for a description of the custom as practised among Swedes in Finland,
with links and lanterns, but no foals, Fagerlund, Anteckningar om Korpo
och Houtskärs Socknar, p. 39 ff. Something very similar was known in
Holstein: see Schütze, Holsteinsches Idioticon, III, 200, as quoted by
Grundtvig, II, 521, note **. From Chambers' Book of Days, II, 763 f, it
appears that a custom, called a Stephening, was still existing at the
beginning of this century, of the inhabitants of the parish of Drayton
Beauchamp, Bucks, paying a visit to the rector on December 26, and
lightening his stores of all the bread, cheese and ale they wanted.
Chambers, again, in his Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 168 f, gives a
song closely resembling the Staffansvisa, which was sung before every
house on New Year's eve, in Deerness, Orkney, with the same object of
stimulating hospitality. Similar practices are known in the Scottish
Highlands: see Campbell, Tales of the West Highlands, III, 19, and
Chambers, at p. 167 of the Popular Rhymes.
[186] Stephen in all the ballads can be none other than the first
martyr, though Ihre, and other Swedes since his day, choose, for their
part, to understand a "Stephanum primum Helsingorum apostolum," who
certainly did not see the star in the east. The peasantry in
Helsingland, we are told, make their saints' day December 26, too, and
their St Stephen is a great patron of horses. The misappropriation of
the glories of the protomartyr is somewhat transparent.
[187] Grundtvig, whom I chiefly follow here, II, 521-24. In a note on
page 521, supplemented at III, 883 e, Grundtvig has collected much
interesting evidence of December 26 being the great Horse Day. J. W.
Wolf, cited by Grundtvig, II, 524, had said previously: "Nichts im leben
des ersten christlichen blutzeugen erinnert auch nur fern an pferde;
trotzdem machte das volk ihn zum patron der pferde, und setzte ihn also
an die stelle des Fro, dem im Norden, und nicht weniger bei uns, die
pferde heilig waren." Beiträge zur deutschen Mythologie, I, 124.
[188] Jean Baptiste Thiers, Traité des Superstitions, etc., 2d ed.,
Paris, 1697, as cited by Liebrecht, Gervasius von Tilbury, Otia
Imperialia, p. 233, No 169, condemns the belief, "qu'il vaut bien mieux
...saigner des chevaux le jour de la fête de S. Estienne qu'à tout autre
jour." This may be one of the practices which Thiers had learned of from
his reading (see Liebrecht's preface, p. xvii f), but might also have
migrated from the east or north into France. Superstitions, like new
fashions, are always sure of a hospitable reception, even though they
impose a servitude.
[189] From a copy of this collection the story is given in Acta
Sanctorum, VI Julii, p. 50, § 202 ff.
[190] Vincent, as pointed out by Professor George Stephens, knew of the
miracle of the cock, and tells it at l. 25, c. 64, on the authority of
Pietro Damiani. Two Bolognese dining together, one of them carved a cock
and dressed it with pepper and sauce. "Gossip," says the other, "you
have 'fixed' that cock so that Peter himself could not put him on his
legs again." "Peter? No, not Christ himself." At this the cock jumped
up, in all his feathers, clapped his wings, crow, and threw the sauce
all over the blasphemous pair, whereby they were smitten with leprosy.
[191] So, naturally, the Fornsvenskt Legendarium, I, 170, and the
Catalan Recull de Eximplis e Miracles, etc., Barcelona, 1880, I, 298.
[192] Opus de Tholosanorum gestis, fol. 49 verso, according to Acta S.,
p. 46, of the volume last cited. Toulouse rivalled with Compostella in
the possession of relics of St James, and was amply entitled to the
honor of the miracle. Dr Andrew Borde, in his First Book of the
Introduction of Knowledge, says that an ancient doctor of divinity at
Compostella told him, "We have not one hair nor bone of St. James; for
St James the More and St James the Less, St Bartholomew and St Philip,
St Simon and Jude, St Bernard and St George, with divers other saints,
Carolus Magnus brought them to Toulouse." Ed. Furnivall, p. 204 f. I do
not know where the splenetic old divine got his information, but
certainly from no source so trustworthy as the chronicle of Turpin.
Besides other places in France, the body, or at least the head, of St
James was claimed by churches in Italy, Germany, and the Low Countries.
But the author of an old Itinerary of the Pilgrims to Compostella
asserts that James the Greater is one of four saints who never changed
his burial-place. See Victor Le Clerc in Hist. Litt. de la France, xxi,
283.
[193] See 'La grande Chanson des Pélerins de Saint-Jacques,' in Socard,
Noëls et Cantiques, etc., p. 76, last stanza, p. 80, third stanza, p.
89, fifth stanza; the last==Romancero de Champagne, I, 165, stanza 5.
[194] Southey follows Marineo in his Christmas Tale of "The Pilgrim to
Compostella."
[195] "Auch eine deutsche Jesuitenkomödie, Peregrinus Compostellanus,
Innsbruck, 1624, behandelt diesen Stoff. F. Liebrecht, in Serapeum,
1864, S. 235."
[196] Vasari, V, 184, Milan, 1809; Crowe and Cavalcaselle, III, 124, II,
566 ff, ed. 1866; Mrs Jameson's Sacred and Legendary Art, I, 241, ed.
1857. Professor N. Høyen indicated to Grundtvig the picture of Pietro
Antonio, and d'Ancona refers to Pisanello's.
[197] He denies the perpetual multiplication of the feathers, and adds
that the very gallows on which the pilgrim was hanged is erected in the
upper part of the church, where everybody can see it. It is diverting to
find Grossenhain, in Saxony, claiming the miracle on the ground of a big
cock in an altar picture in a chapel of St James: Grässe, Sagenschatz
des Königreichs Sachsen, 2d ed., I, 80, No 82, from Chladenius,
Materialien zu Grossenhayner Stadtchronik, I, 2, Pirna, 1788; in verse
by Ziehnert, Volkssagen, p. 99, No 14, ed. 1851.
[198] For Luis de la Vega, see Acta Sanctorum, III Maii, p. 171 f, §§ 6,
7, 8, VI Julii, p. 46, § 187. The Spanish and the Dutch ballad give due
glory to St James and the Virgin; French #C# to God and St James. The
Wendish ballad can hardly be expected to celebrate St James, and refers
the justification and saving of the boy to the Virgin and the saints.
French #A# has St Michas; #B#, God and the Virgin.
Luis de la Vega, with what seems an excess of caution, says, p. 172, as
above, § 8: appositique erant ad comedendum gallus et gallina, _assati
nescio an elixi_. Of boiled fowl we have not heard so far. But we find
in a song in Fletcher's play of 'The Spanish Curate,' this stanza:
The stewd cock shall crow, cock-a-loodle-loo,
A loud cock-a-loodle shall he crow;
The duck and the drake shall swim in a lake
Of onions and claret below.
Act III, Sc. 2; Dyce, viii, 436.
In Father Merolla's Voyage to Congo, 1682, a reference to which I owe to
Liebrecht, there is a story of a stewed cock, which, on the whole,
justifies Luis de la Vega's scruple. This must have been introduced into
Africa by some missioner, and, when so introduced, the miracle must have
had an object, which it had lost before the tale came to Father Merolla.
One of two parties at feud having marched upon the chief city of his
antagonist, and found all the inhabitants fled, the soldiers fell to
rifling the houses and killing all the living creatures they met, to
satisfy their hunger. "Amongst the rest they found a cock of a larger
size than ordinary, with a great ring of iron about one of his legs,
which occasioned one of the wisest among them to cry out, Surely this
cock must be bewitched, and it is not at all proper for us to meddle
with. To which the rest answered, Be it what it will, we are resolved to
eat it. For this end they immediately killed and tore it to pieces after
the manner of the negroes, and afterwards put it into a pot to boil.
When it was enough, they took it out into a platter, and two, according
to the custom, having said grace, five of them sat down to it with great
greediness. But before they had touched a bit, to their great wonder and
amazement, the boiled pieces of the cock, though sodden, and near
dissolved, began to move about and unite into the form they were in
before, and, being so united, the restored cock immediately raised
himself up, and jumped out of the platter upon the ground, where he
walked about as well as when he was first taken. Afterwards he leaped
upon an adjoining wall, where he became new feathered all of a sudden,
and then took his flight to a tree hard by, where fixing himself, he,
after three claps of his wings, made a most hideous noise, and then
disappeared. Every one may easily imagine what a terrible fright the
spectators were in at this sight, who, leaping with a thousand Ave
Marias in their mouths from the place where this had happened, were
contented to observe most of the particulars at a distance." It appears
that the brother of one of the two contending parties was said to have
had a very large cock, from whose crowing he took auguries, but whether
this was the same as the one restored to life is not known. Churchill's
Collection of Voyages and Travels, 1704, I, 682, Pinkerton's Collection,
XVI, 229.
[199] La Chevalerie Ogier de Danemarche, par Raimbert de Paris, Poëme du
xii siècle, etc., II, 485, vv 11606-627.
[200] The gospel of Nicodemus was introduced into the French and the
Italian romance of Perceforest, but unfortunately this "narratio ab
inepto Græculo pessime interpolata" (Thilo) seems to be lacking.
[201] Cursor Mundi, a Northumbrian poem of the 14th century, in four
versions, ed. by R. Morris, p. 912 f, vv 15961-998. This passage was
kindly pointed out to me by Professor George Stephens.
[202] Rélation d'un Voyage fait au Levant par Monsieur De Thévenot,
Paris, 1665, I, 502. Cited by Thilo, p. xxxvii, and by Victor Smith,
Romania, II, 474, who adds: "Parmi les manuscrits rapportés d'Éthiopie
par M. d'Abbadie, il se trouve un volume dont le titre a pour
équivalent, Actes de la passion. Un chapitre de ce volume, intitulé Le
livre du coq, développe la légende indiquée par Thévenot. Catalogue
raisonné des manuscrits éthiopiens, appartenant à M. A. T. d'Abbadie, in
4^o, imp. impériale, Paris, 1859."
[203] "Ce couplet se débite en imitant successivement le chant du coq,
le mugissement du bœuf, le cri de la chèvre, le braiment de l'âne, et
le beuglement du veau." Bolza makes a similar explanation with regard to
the Italian colloquy.
23
JUDAS
MS. B. 14, 39, of the thirteenth century, library of
Trinity College, Cambridge, as printed in Wright &
Halliwell's Reliquiæ Antiquæ, I, 144.
This legend, which has not been heretofore recognized as a ballad, is,
so far as is known, unique in several particulars. The common tradition
gives Judas an extraordinary domestic history,[204] but does not endow
him with a sister as perfidious as himself. Neither is his selling his
Master for thirty pieces accounted for elsewhere as it is here, if it
may be strictly said to be accounted for here.
A popular explanation, founded upon John xii, 3-6, and current for six
centuries and more, is that Judas, bearing the bag, was accustomed to
take tithes of all moneys that came into his hands, and that he
considered he had lost thirty pence on the precious ointment which had
not been sold for three hundred pence, and took this way of indemnifying
himself.
A Wendish ballad, Haupt und Schmaler, I, 276, No 284, has the following
story. Jesus besought hospitality for himself and his disciples of a
poor widow. She could give a lodging, but had no bread. Jesus said he
would care for that, and asked which of his disciples would go and buy
bread for thirty pieces of silver. Judas offered himself eagerly, and
went to the Jews' street to do his errand. Jews were gaming, under a
tub, and they challenged Judas to play. The first time he won the stake,
and the second. The third time he lost everything. "Why so sad, Judas?"
they say: "go sell your Master for thirty pieces." We are to suppose
Judas to have rejoined his company. Jesus then asks who has sold him.
John says, Is it I? and Peter, and then Judas, to whom Jesus replies,
Thou knowest best. Judas, in remorse, runs to hang himself. The Lord
bids him turn, for his sin is forgiven. But Judas keeps on till he comes
to a fir: "Soft wood, thou fir, thou wilt not bear me." Further on, till
he comes to an aspen. "Hard wood, thou aspen, thou wilt bear me." So he
hanged himself on the aspen; and still the aspen shakes and trembles for
fear of the judgment day.
According to the ballads, then, Judas lost the thirty pieces at play, or
was robbed of them, with collusion of his sister. But his passionate
behavior in the English ballad, st. 9, goes beyond all apparent
occasion. Surely it was not for his tithe of the thirty pieces.
And why does he insist to Pilate on the very thirty pieces he had lost,
rejecting every other form of payment? The ballad-singer might answer,
So it was, and rest contented. Or perhaps he might have heard, and might
tell us by way of comment, that these pieces had for long ages been
destined to be "the price of him that was valued, whom they of the
children of Israel did value;" had been coined by Abraham's father for
Ninus, and been given by Terah to his son; had passed through various
hands to the Ishmaelites, had been paid by them as the price of Joseph,
and been repaid to Joseph by his brethren for corn in Egypt; thence were
transferred to Sheba, and in the course of events were brought by the
Queen of the South as an offering to Solomon's temple; when the temple
was despoiled by Nebuchadnezzar, were given by him to the king of
Godolia, and after the kingdom of Godolia had been fused in that of
Nubia, were brought as his tribute to the infant Jesus by Melchior, king
of the same, etc.[205]
It is much to be regretted that the manuscript from which this piece was
taken has been for some years lost from Trinity College Library, so that
a collation of Wright's text has not been possible.
1
Hit wes upon a Scere-thorsday that ure loverd aros;
Ful milde were the wordes he spec to Judas.
2
'Judas, thou most to Jurselem, oure mete for to bugge;
Thritti platen of selver thou bere up othi rugge.
3
'Thou comest fer ithe brode stret, fer ithe brode strete;
Summe of thine tunesmen ther thou meiht imete.'
4
. . . . . . .
Imette wid is soster, the swikele wimon.
5
'Judas, thou were wrthe me stende the wid ston,
For the false prophete that tou bilevest upon.'
6
'Be stille, leve soster, thin herte the tobreke!
Wiste min loverd Crist, ful wel he wolde be wreke.'
7
'Judas, go thou on the roc, heie upon the ston;
Lei thin heved imy barm, slep thou the anon.'
8
Sone so Judas of slepe was awake,
Thritti platen of selver from hym weren itake.
9
He drou hymselve bi the cop, that al it lavede a blode;
The Jewes out of Jurselem awenden he were wode.
10
Foret hym com the riche Jeu that heihte Pilatus:
'Wolte sulle thi loverd, that hette Jesus?'
11
'I nul sulle my loverd [for] nones cunnes eihte,
Bote hit be for the thritti platen that he me bitaihte.'
12
'Wolte sulle thi lord Crist for enes cunnes golde?'
'Nay, bote hit be for the platen that he habben wolde.'
13
In him com ur lord Crist gon, as is postles seten at mete:
'Wou sitte ye, postles, ant wi nule ye ete?
14
['Wou sitte ye, postles, ant wi nule ye ete?]
Ic am ibouht ant isold today for oure mete.'
15
Up stod him Judas: 'Lord, am I that ...?
'I nas never othe stude ther me the evel spec.'
16
Up him stod Peter, and spec wid al is mihte,
. . . . . . .
17
'Thau Pilatus him come wid ten hundred cnihtes,
Yet ic wolde, loverd, for thi love fihte.'
18
'Still thou be, Peter, wel I the icnowe;
Thou wolt fursake me thrien ar the coc him crowe.'
* * * * *
_Not divided into stanzas in Reliquiæ Antiquæ._
3^2. meist.
10^1. heiste.
11^1. eiste.
11^2. bitaiste.
14^2. i-boust.
16^1. miste.
17^1. cnistes.
17^2. fiste.
_In the absence of the original manuscript, I have thought
it better to change Wright's ~s~ in the above instances
(3-17) to ~h~. In this substitution I follow Mätzner's
Altenglische Sprachproben, I, 114._
[204] Legenda Aurea, Grässe, 2d ed., p. 184 ff; Mone's Anzeiger, VII,
col. 532 f, and du Méril, Poésies populaires latines du Moyen Age, p.
326 ff; Furnivall, Early English Poems and Lives of Saints, p. 107 ff;
Douhet, Dictionnaire des Légendes, col. 714 ff; Das alte Passional, ed.
K.A. Hahn, p. 312 ff; Bäckström, Svenska Folkböcker, II, 198 ff; etc.
[205] See Fabricius, Codex Pseudepigraphus Veteris Testamenti, II, 79;
Godfrey of Viterbo (who derives his information from a lost writing of
the apostle Bartholomew) in his Pantheon, Pistorius, German. Script.,
ed. Struve, II, 243, or E. du Méril, Poésies pop. latines du Moyen Age,
p. 321; Genesi de Scriptura, Biblioteca Catalana, p. 20, etc.
24
BONNIE ANNIE
#A.# 'Bonnie Annie,' Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads,
p. 123.
#B.# 'The High Banks o Yarrow,' Motherwell's MS., p. 652.
Had an old copy of this still pretty and touching, but much disordered,
ballad been saved, we should perhaps have had a story like this. Bonnie
Annie, having stolen her father's gold and her mother's fee, and fled
with her paramour (like the maid in No 4), the ship in which she is
sailing encounters a storm and cannot get on. Annie is seized with the
pangs of travail, and deplores the absence of women (#B# 6, 7, #A# 9,
10; compare No 15, 21-26). The sailors say there is somebody on board
who is marked for death, or flying from a just doom. They cast lots, and
the lot falls on Annie,--a result which strikes us as having more
semblance of the "corrupted currents of this world" than of a pure
judgment of God. Annie, conscious only of her own guilt, asks to be
thrown overboard. Her paramour offers great sums to the crew to save
her, but their efforts prove useless, and Annie again begs, or they now
insist, that she shall be cast into the sea with her babe. This done,
the ship is able to sail on; Annie floats to shore and is buried there.
The captain of the ship is the guilty man in #A#, in #B# a rich squire.
#A# may exhibit the original plot, but it is just as likely that the
captain was substituted for a passenger, under the influence of another
ballad, in which there is no Annie, but a ship-master stained with many
crimes, whom the lot points out as endangering or obstructing the
vessel. See 'Brown Robyn's Confession,' further on.
If the narrative in Jonah, i, is the ultimate source of this and similar
stories, it must be owned that the tradition has maintained its
principal traits in this ballad remarkably well. Jonah flies from the
presence of the Lord in a ship; the ship is overtaken by a tempest;[206]
the sailors cast lots to know who is the guilty cause, and the lot falls
on Jonah; he bids the sailors take him up and cast him into the sea;
nevertheless the men row hard to bring the ship to land, but cannot
succeed; they throw Jonah into the water, and the storm ceases.[207]
Translated in Grundtvig's Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 199, No 31.
#A#
Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 123.
1
There was a rich lord, and he lived in Forfar,
He had a fair lady, and one only dochter.
2
O she was fair, O dear, she was bonnie!
A ship's captain courted her to be his honey.
3
There cam a ship's captain out owre the sea sailing,
He courted this young thing till he got her wi bairn.
4
'Ye'll steal your father's gowd, and your mother's money,
And I'll mak ye a lady in Ireland bonnie.'
5
She's stown her father's gowd, and her mother's money,
But she was never a lady in Ireland bonnie.
* * * * * * *
6
'There's fey fowk in our ship, she winna sail for me,
There's fey fowk in our ship, she winna sail for me.'
7
They've casten black bullets twice six and forty,
And ae the black bullet fell on bonnie Annie.
8
'Ye'll tak me in your arms twa, lo, lift me cannie,
Throw me out owre board, your ain dear Annie.'
9
He has tane her in his arms twa, lo, lifted her cannie,
He has laid her on a bed of down, his ain dear Annie.
10
'What can a woman do, love, I'll do for ye;'
'Muckle can a woman do, ye canna do for me.'
11
'Lay about, steer about, lay our ship cannie,
Do all ye can to save my dear Annie.'
12
'I've laid about, steerd about, laid about cannie,
But all I can do, she winna sail for me.
13
'Ye'll tak her in your arms twa, lo, lift her cannie,
And throw her out owre board, your ain dear Annie.'
14
He has tane her in his arms twa, lo, lifted her cannie,
He has thrown her out owre board, his ain dear Annie.
15
As the ship sailed, bonnie Annie she swam,
And she was at Ireland as soon as them.
16
He made his love a coffin of the gowd sae yellow,
And buried his bonnie love doun in a sea valley.
B
Motherwell's MS., p. 652. From the singing of a boy, Henry
French, Ayr.
1
Down in Dumbarton there wonnd a rich merchant,
Down in Dumbarton there wond a rich merchant,
And he had nae family but ae only dochter.
Sing fal lal de deedle, fal lal de deedle lair, O a day
2
There cam a rich squire, intending to woo her,
He wooed her until he had got her wi babie.
3
'Oh what shall I do! oh what shall come o me!
Baith father and mither will think naething o me.'
4
'Gae up to your father, bring down gowd and money,
And I'll take ye ower to a braw Irish ladie.'
5
She gade to her father, brought down gowd and money,
And she's awa ower to a braw Irish ladie.
6
She hadna sailed far till the young thing cried 'Women!'
'What women can do, my dear, I'll do for you.'
7
'O haud your tongue, foolish man, dinna talk vainly,
For ye never kent what a woman driet for you.
8
'Gae wash your hands in the cauld spring water,
And dry them on a towel a' giltit wi silver.
9
'And tak me by the middle, and lift me up saftlie,
And throw me ower shipboard, baith me and my babie.'
10
He took her by the middle, and lifted her saftly,
And threw her ower shipboard, baith her and her babie.
11
Sometimes she did sink, sometimes she did float it,
Until that she cam to the high banks o Yarrow.
12
'O captain tak gowd, O sailors tak money,
And launch out your sma boat till I sail for my honey.'
13
'How can I tak gowd, how can I tak money?
My ship's on a sand bank, she winna sail for me.'
14
The captain took gowd, the sailors took money,
And they launchd out their sma boat till he sailed for his honey.
15
'Mak my love a coffin o the gowd sae yellow,
Whar the wood it is dear, and the planks they are narrow,
And bury my love on the high banks o Yarrow.'
16
They made her a coffin o the gowd sae yellow,
And buried her deep on the high banks o Yarrow.
* * * * *
#A.#
_Printed by Kinloch in four-line stanzas._
16^1. coffin off the Goats of Yerrow.
#B.#
16. _Motherwell, Minstrelsy, p. xcix_, 146, _gives the
stanza thus_:
They made his love a coffin of the gowd sae yellow,
They made his love a coffin of the gowd sae yellow,
And they buried her deep on the high banks of Yarrow.
Sing fal lal, de deedle, fal lal, de deedle lair, Oh a Day!
[206] Jonah is asleep below. This trait we find in several Norse
ballads: see 'Brown Robyn's Confession.'
[207] A singular episode in the life of Saint Mary Magdalen in the
Golden Legend, Grässe, c. xcvi, 2, p. 409 ff, indicates a belief that
even a dead body might prejudice the safety of a ship. The princess of
Marseilles, in the course of a storm, has given birth to a boy and
expired. The sailors demand that the body shall be thrown into the sea
(and apparently the boy, too), for, they say, as long as it shall be
with us, this thumping will not cease. They presently see a hill, and
think it better to put off the corpse, _and the boy_, there, than that
these should be devoured by sea-monsters. Fear will fasten upon anything
in such a case.
The Digby Mystery of Mary Magdalene has this scene, at p. 122 of the New
Shakspere Society edition, ed. Furnivall.
25
WILLIE'S LYKE-WAKE
#A.# 'Willie, Willie,' Kinloch's MSS, I, 53.
#B. a.# 'Blue Flowers and Yellow,' Buchan's Ballads of the
North of Scotland, I, 185. #b.# 'The Blue Flowers and the
Yellow,' Christie, Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 120.
#C.# Motherwell's MS., p. 187.
#D.# 'Amang the blue flowers and yellow,' Motherwell's
Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xix, No XVII, one stanza.
This piece was first printed by Buchan, in 1828, and all the copies
which have been recovered are of about that date. The device of a
lover's feigning death as a means of winning a shy mistress enjoys a
considerable popularity in European ballads. Even more favorite is a
ballad in which the _woman_ adopts this expedient, in order to escape
from the control of her relations: see 'The Gay Goshawk,' with which
will be given another form of the present story.
A #Danish# ballad answering to our Feigned Lyke-Wake is preserved, as I
am informed by Professor Grundtvig, in no less than fourteen
manuscripts, some of them of the 16th century, and is still living in
tradition. Five versions, as yet unprinted, #A-E#, have been furnished
me by the editor of the Ballads of Denmark.
#A#, from a manuscript of the sixteenth century. Young Herre Karl asks
his mother's rede how he may get the maid his heart is set upon. She
advises him to feign sickness, and be laid on his bier, no one to know
his counsel but the page who is to do his errands. The page bids the
lady to the wake that night. Little Kirstin asks her mother's leave to
keep wake over Karl. The wake is to be in the upper room of Karl's
house. The mother says, Be on your guard; he means to cheat you; but
Kirstin, neither listening to her mother nor asking her father, goes to
keep wake in the upper room. When she went in she could not see the
lights for her tears. She begged all the good people to pray for Karl's
soul, sat down by his head and made her own prayer, and murmured, While
thou livedst I loved thee. She lifted the cloths, and there lay Karl
wide awake and laughing. "All the devils in hell receive thy soul!" she
cried. "If thou livedst a hundred years, thou shouldst never have my
good will! "Karl proposed that she should pass the night with him. "Why
would you deceive me!" Kirstin exclaimed. "Why did you not go to my
father and betroth me honorably?" Karl immediately rode to her father's
to do this, and they were married.
#B. a#, from MSS of 1610 and later, almost identical with #b#, 'Den
forstilte Vaagestue,' Levninger, Part II, 1784, p. 34, No 7.[208] This
version gives us some rather unnecessary previous history. Karl has sued
for Ingerlille three years, and had an ill answer. He follows her to
church one fine day, and, after mass, squeezes her fingers and asks,
Will you take pity on me? She replies, You must ask my father and
friends; and he, I have, and can get no good answer. If you will give me
your troth, we can see to that best ourselves. "Never," she says.
"Farewell, then; but Christ may change your mind." Karl meets his mother
on his way from church, who asks why he is so pale. He tells her his
plight, and is advised, as before, to use craft. The wake is held on
Karl's premises.[209] Ingerlille, in scarlet mantle, goes with her
maids. She avows her love, but adds that it was a fixed idea in her mind
that he would deceive her. She lifts up the white cloth that covers the
face. Karl laughs, and says, We were good friends before, so are we
still. Bear out the bier, and follow me to bed with the fair maid. She
hopes he will have respect for her honor. Karl reassures her, leaves her
with his mother, rides to Ingerlille's house, obtains her parents'
approbation, and buys wine for his wedding.
#C#, from manuscripts of the sixteenth century. Karl is given out for
dead, and his pages ride to the convent to ask that his body may be laid
in the cloister. The bier is borne in; the prioress comes to meet it,
with much respect. The pages go about bidding maids to the wake. Ellin
asks her mother if she may go. (This looks as if there had originally
been no convent in the ballad.) Her mother tells her to put on red gold
and be wary of Karl, he is so very tricky. When Ellin owns her
attachment, Karl whispers softly, Do not weep, but follow me. Horses
were ready at the portal--_black_ horses all!
Karl sprang from the bier, took Ellin, and made for the door. The nuns,
who stood reading in the choir, thought it was an angel that had
translated her, and wished one would come for them. Karl, with fifteen
men who were in waiting, carried Ellin home, and drank his bridal with
her.
#D#, from recent oral tradition. As Karl lay in his bed, he said, How
shall I get the fair maid out of the convent? His foster-mother heard
him, and recommended him to feign death and bid the fair maid to his
wake. The maid asked her father's leave to go, but he said, Nay, the
moment you are inside the door he will seize you by the foot. But when
the page, who had first come in blue, comes back in scarlet, she goes.
She stands at Karl's head and says, I never shall forget thee; at his
feet, "I wished thee well;" at his side, "Thou wast my dearest." Then
she turns and bids everybody good-night, but Karl seizes her, and calls
to his friends to come drink his bridal. We hear nothing of the convent
after the first stanza.
#E#, from oral tradition of another quarter. Karl consults his mother
how he shall get little Kirstin out of the convent, and receives the
same counsel. A page is sent to the convent, and asks who will come to
the wake now Herr Karl is dead? Little Kirstin, without application to
the prioress, goes to her mother, who does not forbid her, but warns her
that Karl will capture her as sure as she goes into the room.
The maid has the door by the handle,
And is wishing them all good-night;
Young Karl, that lay a corpse on the bier,
Sprang up and held her tight.
'Why here's a board and benches,
And there's no dead body here;
This eve I'll drink my mead and wine,
All with my Kirstin dear.
'Why here's a board and beds too,
And here there's nobody dead;
To-morrow will I go to the priest,
All with my plighted maid.'
#F#, another copy from recent tradition, was published in 1875, in
Kristensen's Jyske Folkeviser, II, 213, No 62, 'Vaagestuen.' There is no
word of a convent here. The story is made very short. Kirsten's mother
says she will be fooled if she goes to the wake. The last stanza,
departing from all other copies, says that when Kirsten woke in the
morning Karl was off.
#G.# 'Klosterranet,' Levninger, I, 23, No 4 (1780), Danske Viser, IV,
261, No 212, a very second-rate ballad, may have the praise of
preserving consistency and conventual discipline. The young lady does
not slip out to see her mother without leave asked and had. It is my
persuasion that the convent, with its little jest about the poor nuns,
is a later invention, and that #C# is a blending of two different
stories. In #G#, Herr Morten betroths Proud Adeluds, who is more
virtuous than rich. His friends object; her friends do not want spirit,
and swear that she shall never be his. Morten's father sends him out of
the country, and Adeluds is put into a convent. After nine years Morten
returns, and, having rejected an advantageous match proposed by his
father, advises with his brother, Herr Nilaus, how to get his true love
out of the cloister. The brother's plan is that of the mother and
foster-mother in the other versions. Herr Nilaus promises a rich gift if
Morten's body may be buried within the cloister. From this point the
story is materially the same as in #C#.
#H.# A copy, which I have not yet seen, in Rahbek's Læsning i blandede
Æmner (or Hesperus), III, 151, 1822 (Bergström).
* * * * *
'Hertugen af Skage,' Danske Viser, II, 191, No 88, has this slight
agreement with the foregoing ballads. Voldemar, the king's youngest son,
hearing that the duke has a daughter, Hildegerd, that surpasses all
maids, seeks her out in a convent in which she has taken refuge, and
gets a cold reception. He feigns death, desiring that his bones may
repose in the cloister. His bier is carried into the convent church.
Hildegerd lights nine candles for him, and expresses compassion for his
early death. While she is standing before the altar of the Virgin,
Voldemar carries her out of the church by force.
* * * * *
This, says Afzelius, 1814, is one of the commonest ballads in #Sweden#,
and is often represented as a drama by young people in country places.
#A a#, 'Herr Carl, eller Klosterrofvet,' Afzelius, I, 179, No 26, new
ed. No 24; #b#, Afzelius, Sago-Häfder, ed. 1851, IV, 106. #B#, Atterbom,
Poetisk Kalender for 1816, p. 63, 'Det Iefvande Liket.' #C#. Rancken,
Några Prof af Folksång, o. s. v., p. 13, No 4. These differ but slightly
from Danish #D#, #E#. All three conclude with the humorous verses about
the nuns, which in Rancken's copy take this rollicking turn:
And all the nuns in the convent they all danced in a ring;
'Christ send another such angel, to take us all under his wing!'
And all the nuns in the convent, they all danced each her lone;
'Christ send another such angel, to take us off every one!'
Bergström, new Afzelius, II, 131, refers to another version in
Gyllenmärs' visbok, p. 191, and to a good copy obtained by himself.
An Icelandic version for the 17th century, which is after the fashion of
Danish #C#, #G#, is given in Íslenzk Fornkvæði, II, 59, No 40, 'Marteins
kviða.' The lover has in all three a troop of armed men in waiting
outside of the convent.
Professor Bugge has obtained a version in Norway, which, however, is as
to language essentially Danish. (Bergström, as above.)
There is a very gay and pretty south-European ballad, in which the
artifice of feigning death is successfully tried by a lover after the
failure of other measures.
#A.# #Magyar.# Arany and Gyulai, I, 172, No 18, 'Pálbeli Szép Antal;'
translated by Aigner, Ungarische Volksdichtungen, p. 80, 'Schön Anton.'
Handsome Tony tells his mother that he shall die for Helen. The mother
says, Not yet. I will build a marvellous mill. The first wheel shall
grind out pearls, the middle stone discharge kisses, the third wheel
distribute small change. The pretty maids will come to see, and Helen
among them. Helen asks her mother's leave to see the mill. "Go not," the
mother replies. "They are throwing the net, and a fox will be caught."
Tony again says he must die. His mother says, not yet; for she will
build an iron bridge; the girls will come to see it, and Helen among
them. Helen asks to see the bridge; her mother answers as before. Tony
says once more that he shall die for Helen. His mother again rejoins,
Not yet. Make believe to be dead; the girls will come to see you, and
Helen among them. Helen entreats to be allowed to go to see the handsome
young man that has died. Her mother tells her she will never come back.
Tony's mother calls to him to get up; the girl he was dying for is even
now before the gate, in the court, standing at his feet. "Never," says
Helen, "saw I so handsome a dead man,--eyes smiling, mouth tempting
kisses, and his feet all ready for a spring." Up he jumped and embraced
her.
#B.# #Italian.# Ferraro, Canti popolari monferrini, p. 59, No 40, 'Il
Genovese.' The Genoese, not obtaining the beautiful daughter of a rich
merchant on demand, plants a garden. All the girls come for flowers,
except the one desired. He then gives a ball, with thirty-two musicians.
All the girls are there, but not the merchant's daughter. He then builds
a church, very richly adorned. All the girls come to mass, all but one.
Next he sets the bells a ringing, in token of his death. The fair one
goes to the window to ask who is dead. The good people ("ra bun-ha
gent," in the Danish ballad "det gode folk") tell her that it is her
first love, and suggest that she should attend the funeral. She asks her
father, who consents if she will not cry. As she was leaving the church,
the lover came to life, and called to the priests and friars to stop
singing. They went to the high altar to be married.
#C.# #Slovenian.# Vraz, Narodne peśni ilirske, p. 93, 'Čudna
bolezen' ('Strange Sickness'); translated by Anastasius Grün,
Volkslieder aus Krain, p. 36, 'Der Scheintodte.' "Build a church,
mother," cries the love-sick youth, "that all who will may hear mass;
perhaps my love among them." The mother built a church, one and another
came, but not his love. "Dig a well, mother, that those who will may
fetch water; perhaps my love among them." The well was dug, one and
another came for water, but not his love. "Say I am dead, mother, that
those who will may come to pray." Those who wished came, his love first
of all. The youth was peeping through the window. "What kind of dead man
is this, that stretches his arms for an embrace, and puts out his mouth
for a kiss?"
* * * * *
Danish #G# translated by the Rev. J. Johnstone, 'The Robbery of the
Nunnery, or, The Abbess Outwitted,' Copenhagen, 1786 (Danske Viser, IV,
366); by Prior, III, 400. Swedish #A#, by G. Stephens, For. Quar. Rev.,
1841, XXVI, 49, and by the Howitts, Lit. and Rom. of Northern Europe, I,
292. English #C#, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische V. 1., p. 144, No 33.
A
Kinloch's MSS, I, 53, from the recitation of Mary Barr,
Lesmahagow, aged upwards of seventy. May, 1827.
1
'Willie, Willie, I'll learn you a wile,'
And the sun shines over the valleys and a'
'How this pretty fair maid ye may beguile.'
Amang the blue flowrs and the yellow and a'
2
'Ye maun lie doun just as ye were dead,
And tak your winding-sheet around your head.
3
'Ye maun gie the bellman his bell-groat,
To ring your dead-bell at your lover's yett.'
4
He lay doun just as he war dead,
And took his winding-sheet round his head.
5
He gied the bellman his bell-groat,
To ring his dead-bell at his lover's yett.
6
'O wha is this that is dead, I hear?'
'O wha but Willie that loed ye sae dear.'
7
She is to her father's chamber gone,
And on her knees she's fallen down.
8
'O father, O father, ye maun grant me this;
I hope that ye will na tak it amiss.
9
'That I to Willie's burial should go;
For he is dead, full well I do know.'
10
'Ye'll tak your seven bauld brethren wi thee,
And to Willie's burial straucht go ye.'
11
It's whan she cam to the outmost yett,
She made the silver fly round for his sake.
12
It's whan she cam to the inmost yett,
She made the red gowd fly round for his sake.
13
As she walked frae the court to the parlour there,
The pretty corpse syne began for to steer.
14
He took her by the waist sae neat and sae sma,
And threw her atween him and the wa.
15
'O Willie, O Willie, let me alane this nicht,
O let me alane till we're wedded richt.'
16
'Ye cam unto me baith sae meek and mild,
But I'll mak ye gae hame a wedded wife wi child.'
B
#a.# Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 185.
#b.# Christie, Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 120.
1
'O Willie my son, what makes you sae sad?'
As the sun shines over the valley
'I lye sarely sick for the love of a maid.'
Amang the blue flowers and the yellow
2
'Were she an heiress or lady sae free,
That she will take no pity on thee?
3
'O Willie, my son, I'll learn you a wile,
How this fair maid ye may beguile.
4
'Ye'll gie the principal bellman a groat,
And ye'll gar him cry your dead lyke-wake.'
5
Then he gae the principal bellman a groat,
He bade him cry his dead lyke-wake.
6
This maiden she stood till she heard it a',
And down frae her cheeks the tears did fa.
7
She is hame to her father's ain bower:
'I'll gang to yon lyke-wake ae single hour.'
8
'Ye must take with you your ain brither John;
It's not meet for maidens to venture alone.'
9
'I'll not take with me my brither John,
But I'll gang along, myself all alone.'
10
When she came to young Willie's yate,
His seven brithers were standing thereat.
11
Then they did conduct her into the ha,
Amang the weepers and merry mourners a'.
12
When she lifted up the covering sae red,
With melancholy countenance to look on the dead,
13
He's taen her in his arms, laid her gainst the wa,
Says, 'Lye ye here, fair maid, till day.'
14
'O spare me, O spare me, but this single night,
And let me gang hame a maiden sae bright.'
15
'Tho all your kin were about your bower,
Ye shall not be a maiden ae single hour.
16
'Fair maid, ye came here without a convoy,
But ye shall return wi a horse and a boy.
17
'Ye came here a maiden sae mild,
But ye shall gae hame a wedded wife with child.'
C
Motherwell's MS., p. 187.
1
'O Willie, Willie, what makes thee so sad?'
And the sun shines over the valley
'I have loved a lady these seven years and mair.'
Down amang the blue flowers and the yellow
2
'O Willie, lie down as thou were dead,
And lay thy winding-sheet down at thy head.
3
'And gie to the bellman a belling-great,
To ring the dead-bell at thy love's bower-yett.'
4
He laid him down as he were dead,
And he drew the winding-sheet oer his head.
5 He gied to the bellman a belling-great,
To ring the dead-bell at his love's bower-yett.
* * * * * * *
6
When that she came to her true lover's gate,
She dealt the red gold and all for his sake.
7
And when that she came to her true lover's bower,
She had not been there for the space of half an hour,
8
Till that she cam to her true lover's bed,
And she lifted the winding-sheet to look at the dead.
9
He took her by the hand so meek and sma,
And he cast her over between him and the wa.
10
'Tho all your friends were in the bower,
I would not let you go for the space of half an hour.
11
'You came to me without either horse or boy,
But I will send you home with a merry convoy.'
D
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xix, No XVII.
'O Johnie, dear Johnie, what makes ye sae sad?'
As the sun shines ower the valley
'I think nae music will mak ye glad.'
Amang the blue flowers and the yellow
* * * * *
#B.#
#b# _is #a# with stanzas 3, 12-15 omitted, and_ "a few
alterations, _some_ of them given from the recitation of
an old woman." "Buchan's version differs little from the
way the old woman sang the ballad." _The old woman's
variations, so far as adopted, are certainly of the most
trifling._
1^2. I am.
2^1. Is she.
7^1. And she.
16^1. Ye've come.
16^4. And ye.
17. _Evidently by Christie_:
'Fair maid, I love thee as my life,
But ye shall gae hame a lovd wedded wife.'
#C.#
_Burden. The lines are transposed in the second stanza,
but are given in the third in the order of the first._
3^1, 5^1. _MS._ belling great.
11^2. you come.
[208] But #a# has two stanzas more: the first a stev-stamme, or lyrical
introduction (see p. 7), the other, 31, nearly a repetition of Sandvig's
29.
[209] After the page has bidden Ingerlille to the wake, we are told, #a#
27, 28, #b# 26, 27: all the convent bells were going, and the tidings
spreading that the knight was dead; all the ladies of the convent sat
sewing, except Ingerlille, who wept. But Ingerlille, in the next stanza,
puts on her scarlet cloak and goes to the höjeloft to see her father and
mother. The two stanzas quoted signify nothing in this version.
26
THE THREE RAVENS
#a.# Melismata. Musicall Phansies. Fitting the Court,
Cittie, and Countrey Humours. London, 1611, No 20.[210]
[T. Ravenscroft.]
#b.# 'The Three Ravens,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Appendix, p. xviii, No XII.
#a# was printed from Melismata, by Ritson, in his Ancient Songs, 1790,
p. 155. Mr. Chappell remarked, about 1855, Popular Music of the Olden
Time, I, 59, that this ballad was still so popular in some parts of the
country that he had "been favored with a variety of copies of it,
written down from memory, and all differing in some respects, both as to
words and tune, but with sufficient resemblance to prove a similar
origin." Motherwell, Minstrelsy, Introduction, p. lxxvii, note 49, says
he had met with several copies almost the same as #a.# #b# is the first
stanza of one of these (traditional) versions, "very popular in
Scotland."
The following verses, first printed in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border, and known in several versions in Scotland, are treated by
Motherwell and others as a traditionary form of 'The Three Ravens.' They
are, however, as Scott says, "rather a counterpart than a copy of the
other," and sound something like a cynical variation of the tender
little English ballad. Dr Rimbault (Notes and Queries, Ser. V, III, 518)
speaks of unprinted copies taken down by Mr Blaikie and by Mr Thomas
Lyle of Airth.
THE TWA CORBIES.
#a.# Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, III, 239, ed.
1803, communicated by C. K. Sharpe, as written down from
tradition by a lady. #b.# Albyn's Anthology, II, 27, 1818,
"from the singing of Mr Thomas Shortreed, of Jedburgh, as
sung and recited by his mother." #c.# Chambers's Scottish
Ballads, p. 283, partly from recitation and partly from
the Border Minstrelsy. #d.# Fraser-Tytler MS., p. 70.
1
As I was walking all alane,
I heard twa corbies making a mane;
The tane unto the t'other say,
'Where sall we gang and dine to-day?'
2
'In behint yon auld fail dyke,
I wot there lies a new slain knight;
And naebody kens that he lies there,
But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.
3
'His hound is to the hunting gane,
His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,
His lady's ta'en another mate,
So we may mak our dinner sweet.
4
'Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
And I'll pike out his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
We' theek our nest when it grows bare.
5
'Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sall ken where he is gane;
Oer his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sall blaw for evermair.'
'The Three Ravens' is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske
Folkeviser, p. 145, No 23; by Henrietta Schubart, p. 155; Gerhard, p.
95; Rosa Warrens, Schottische V. l. der Vorzeit, p. 198; Wolff, Halle
der Völker, I, 12, Hausschatz, p. 205.
'The Twa Corbies' (Scott), by Grundtvig, p. 143, No 22; Arndt, p. 224;
Gerhard, p. 94; Schubart, p. 157; Knortz, L. u. R. Alt-Englands, p. 194;
Rosa Warrens, p. 89. The three first stanzas, a little freely rendered
into four, pass for Pushkin's: Works, 1855, II, 462, xxiv.
1
There were three rauens sat on a tree,
Downe a downe, hay down, hay downe
There were three rauens sat on a tree,
With a downe
There were three rauens sat on a tree,
They were as blacke as they might be.
With a downe derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe
2
The one of them said to his mate,
'Where shall we our breakefast take?'
3
'Downe in yonder greene field,
There lies a knight slain vnder his shield.
4
'His hounds they lie downe at his feete,
So well they can their master keepe.
5
'His haukes they flie so eagerly,
There's no fowle dare him come nie.'
6
Downe there comes a fallow doe,
As great with yong as she might goe.
7
She lift vp his bloudy hed,
And kist his wounds that were so red.
8
She got him vp vpon her backe,
And carried him to earthen lake.
9
She buried him before the prime,
She was dead herselfe ere euen-song time.
10
God send euery gentleman,
Such haukes, such hounds, and such a leman.
* * * * *
#b.#
Three ravens sat upon a tree,
Hey down, hey derry day
Three ravens sat upon a tree,
Hey down
Three ravens sat upon a tree,
And they were black as black could be.
And sing lay doo and la doo and day
_Variations of The Twa Corbies._
#b.#
1.
As I cam by yon auld house end,
I saw twa corbies sittin thereon.
2^1. Whare but by yon new fa'en birk.
3.
We'll sit upon his bonny breast-bane,
And we'll pick out his bonny gray een;
We'll set our claws intil his yallow hair,
And big our bowr, it's a' blawn bare.
4.
My mother clekit me o an egg,
And brought me up i the feathers gray,
And bade me flee whereer I wad,
For winter wad be my dying day.
5.
Now winter it is come and past,
And a' the birds are biggin their nests,
But I'll flee high aboon them a',
And sing a sang for summer's sake.
#c.#
1.
As I gaed doun by yon hous-en,
Twa corbies there were sittand their lane.
2^1. O down beside yon new-faun birk.
3^1. His horse.
3^2. His hounds to bring the wild deer hame.
4.
O we'll sit on his bonnie breist-bane,
And we'll pyke out his bonnie grey een.
#d.#
1^1. walking forth.
1^2. the ither.
1^3. we twa dine.
3^2. wild bird.
5^2. naebody kens.
5^3. when we've laid them bare.
5^4. win may blaw.
[210] Misprinted 22.
27
THE WHUMMIL BORE
#a.# Motherwell's MS., p. 191. #b.# Motherwell's
Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xvi, No III.
This ballad, if it ever were one, seems not to have been met with, or at
least to have been thought worth notice, by anybody but Motherwell. As
already observed in the preface to 'Hind Horn,' stanza 2 seems to have
slipped into that ballad, in consequence of the resemblance of stanza 1
to #F# 2, #H# 3 of 'Hind Horn.' This first stanza is, however, a
commonplace in English and elsewhere: e. g., 'The Squire of Low Degree:'
He served the kyng, her father dere,
Fully the tyme of seven yere. vv 5, 6.
He loved her more then seven yere,
Yet was he of her love never the nere. vv 17, 18.
Ritson, Met. Rom. III, 145 f.
1
Seven lang years I hae served the king,
Fa fa fa fa lilly
And I never got a sight of his daughter but ane.
With my glimpy, glimpy, glimpy eedle,
Lillum too tee a ta too a tee a ta a tally
2
I saw her thro a whummil bore,
And I neer got a sight of her no more.
3
Twa was putting on her gown,
And ten was putting pins therein.
4
Twa was putting on her shoon,
And twa was buckling them again.
5
Five was combing down her hair,
And I never got a sight of her nae mair.
6
Her neck and breast was like the snow,
Then from the bore I was forced to go.
* * * * *
#a.#
2^2. _Variation_: And she was washing in a pond.
6^2. _Variation_: Ye might have tied me with a strae.
#b.#
_Burden_:
Fa, fa, falilly
With my glimpy, glimpy, glimpy eedle,
Lillum too a tee too a tally.
28
BURD ELLEN AND YOUNG TAMLANE
Maidment's North Countrie Garland, 1824, p. 21.
Communicated by R. Pitcairn, "from the recitation of a
female relative, who had heard it frequently sung in her
childhood," about sixty years before the above date.
Motherwell informs us, Minstrelsy, p. xciv of Introduction, note to 141,
that 'Burd Helen and Young Tamlene' is very popular, and that various
sets of it are to be found traditionally current (1827). Still I have
not found it, out of Maidment's little book; not even in Motherwell's
large folio.
I cannot connect this fragment with what is elsewhere handed down
concerning Tamlane, or with the story of any other ballad.
1
Burd Ellen sits in her bower windowe,
With a double laddy double, and for the double dow
Twisting the red silk and the blue.
With the double rose and the May-hay
2
And whiles she twisted, and whiles she twan,
And whiles the tears fell down amang.
3
Till once there by cam Young Tamlane:
'Come light, oh light, and rock your young son.'
4
'If you winna rock him, you may let him rair,
For I hae rockit my share and mair.'
* * * * * * *
5
Young Tamlane to the seas he's gane,
And a' women's curse in his company's gane.
29
THE BOY AND THE MANTLE
Percy MS., p. 284. Hales & Furnivall, II, 304.
This ballad and the two which follow it are clearly not of the same
rise, and not meant for the same ears, as those which go before. They
would come down by professional rather than by domestic tradition,
through minstrels rather than knitters and weavers. They suit the hall
better than the bower, the tavern or public square better than the
cottage, and would not go to the spinning-wheel at all. An exceedingly
good piece of minstrelsy 'The Boy and the Mantle' is, too; much livelier
than most of the numerous variations on the somewhat overhandled
theme.[211]
Of these, as nearest related, the fabliau or "romance" of Le Mantel
Mautaillié, 'Cort Mantel,' must be put first: Montaiglon et Raynaud,
Recueil Général des Fabliaux, III, 1, from four manuscripts, three of
the thirteenth century, one of the fourteenth; and previously by Michel,
from the three older manuscripts, in Wolf, Ueber die Lais, p. 324. A
rendering of the fabliau in prose, existing in a single manuscript, was
several times printed in the sixteenth century: given in Legrand, ed.
Renouard, I, 126, and before, somewhat modernized, by Caylus, 'Les
Manteaux,' Œuvres Badines, VI, 435.[212]
The story in 'Cort Mantel' goes thus. Arthur was holding full court at
Pentecost, never more splendidly. Not only kings, dukes, and counts were
there, but the attendance of all young bachelors had been commanded, and
he that had a _bele amie_ was to bring her. The court assembled on
Saturday, and on Sunday all the world went to church. After service the
queen took the ladies to her apartments, till dinner should be ready.
But it was Arthur's wont not to dine that day until he had had or heard
of some adventure;[213] dinner was kept waiting; and it was therefore
with great satisfaction that the knights saw a handsome and courteous
varlet arrive, who must certainly bring news; news that was not to be
good to all, though some would be pleased (cf. stanza 5 of the ballad).
A maid had sent him from a very distant country to ask a boon of the
king. He was not to name the boon or the lady till he had the king's
promise; but what he asked was no harm. The king having said that he
would grant what was asked, the varlet took from a bag a beautiful
mantle, of fairy workmanship. This mantle would fit no dame or damsel
who had in any way misbehaved towards husband or lover; it would be too
short or too long; and the boon was that the king should require all the
ladies of the court to put it on.
The ladies were still waiting dinner, unconscious of what was coming.
Gawain was sent to require their presence, and he simply told them that
the magnificent mantle was to be given to the one it best fitted. The
king repeated the assurance, and the queen, who wished much to win the
mantle, was the first to try it on. It proved too short. Ywain suggested
that a young lady who stood near the queen should try. This she readily
did, and what was short before was shorter still. Kay, who had been
making his comments unguardedly, now divulged the secret, and after that
nobody cared to have to do with the mantle. The king said, We may as
well give it back; but the varlet insisted on having the king's promise.
There was general consternation and bad humor.
Kay called his mistress, and very confidently urged her to put on the
mantle. She demurred, on the ground that she might give offence by
forwardness; but this roused suspicion in Kay, and she had no resource
but to go on. The mantle was again lamentably short. Bruns and Ydier let
loose some gibes. Kay bade them wait; he had hopes for them. Gawain's
_amie_ next underwent the test, then Ywain's, then Perceval's. Still a
sad disappointment. Many were the curses on the mantle that would fit
nobody, and on him that brought it. Kay takes the unlucky ladies, one
after the other, to sit with his mistress.
At this juncture Kay proposes that they shall have dinner, and continue
the experiment by and by. The varlet is relentless; but Kay has the
pleasure of seeing Ydier discomfited. And so they go on through the
whole court, till the varlet says that he fears he shall be obliged to
carry his mantle away with him. But first let the chambers be searched;
some one may be in hiding who may save the credit of the court. The king
orders a search, and they find one lady, not in hiding, but in her bed,
because she is not well. Being told that she must come, she presents
herself as soon as she can dress, greatly to the vexation of her lover,
whose name is Carados Briebras. The varlet explains to her the quality
of the mantle, and Carados, in verses very honorable to his heart, begs
that she will not put it on if she has any misgivings.[214] The lady
says very meekly that she dare not boast being better than other people,
but, if it so please her lord, she will willingly don the mantle. This
she does, and in sight of all the barons it is neither too short nor too
long. "It was well we sent for her," says the varlet. "Lady, your lover
ought to be delighted. I have carried this mantle to many courts, and of
more than a thousand who have put it on you are the only one that has
escaped disgrace. I give it to you, and well you deserve it." The king
confirms the gift, and no one can gainsay.
A Norse prose translation of the French fabliau was executed by order of
the Norwegian king, Hákon Hákonarson, whose reign covers the years
1217-63. Of this translation, 'Möttuls Saga,' a fragment has come down
which is as old as 1300; there are also portions of a manuscript which
is assigned to about 1400, and two transcripts of this latter, made when
it was complete, besides other less important copies. This translation,
which is reasonably close and was made from a good exemplar, has been
most excellently edited by Messrs Cederschiöld and Wulff, Versions
nordiques du Fabliau Le Mantel Mautaillié, Lund, 1877, p. 1.[215] It
presents no divergences from the story as just given which are material
here.
Not so with the 'Skikkju Rímur,' or Mantle Rhymes, an Icelandic
composition of the fifteenth century, in three parts, embracing in all
one hundred and eighty-five four-line stanzas: Cederschiöld and Wulff,
p. 51. In these the story is told with additions, which occur partially
in our ballad. The mantle is of white velvet. Three elf-women had been
not less than fifteen years in weaving it, and it seemed both yellow and
gray, green and black, red and blue: II, 22, 23, 26. Our English
minstrel describes these variations of color as occurring after Guenever
had put the mantle on: stanzas 11, 12. Again, there are among the
Pentecostal guests a king and queen of Dwarf Land; a beardless king of
Small-Maids Land, with a queen eight years old; and a King Felix, three
hundred years old, with a beard to the crotch, and a wife, tall and fat,
to whom he has been two centuries married,--all these severally attended
by generous retinues of pigmies, juveniles, and seniors: I, 28-35; III,
41. Felix is of course the prototype of the old knight pattering over a
creed in stanzas 21-24 of the ballad, and he will have his
representative in several other pieces presently to be spoken of. In the
end Arthur sends all the ladies from his court in disgrace, and his
knights to the wars; we will get better wives, he says: III, 74, 75.
The land of Small-Maids and the long-lived race are mentioned in a brief
geographical chapter (the thirteenth) of that singular gallimaufry the
saga of Samson the Fair, but not in connection with a probation by the
mantle, though this saga has appropriated portions of the story. Here
the mantle is one which four fairies have worked at for eighteen years,
as a penalty for stealing from the fleece of a very remarkable ram; and
it is of this same fleece, described as being of all hues, gold, silk,
_ok kolors_, that the mantle is woven. It would hold off from an
unchaste woman and fall off from a thief. Quintalin, to ransom his life,
undertakes to get the mantle for Samson. Its virtue is tried at two
weddings, the second being Samson's; and on this last occasion
Valentina, Samson's bride, is the only woman who can put it on. The
mantle is given to Valentina, as in the fabliau to Carados's wife, but
nevertheless we hear later of its being presented by Samson to another
lady, who, a good while after, was robbed of the same by a pirate, and
the mantle carried to Africa. From Africa it was sent to our Arthur by a
lady named Elida, "and hence the saga of the mantle."[216] Björner,
Nordiska Kämpa Dater, cc 12, 14, 15, 21, 22, 24.
There is also an incomplete German version of the fabliau, now credibly
shown to be the work of Heinrich von dem Türlin, dating from the
earliest years of the thirteenth century.[217] Though the author has
dealt freely with his original, there are indications that this, like
the Möttulssaga, was founded upon some version of the fabliau which is
not now extant. One of these is an agreement between vv 574-6 and the
sixth stanza of our ballad. The mantle, in English, is enclosed between
two nut-shells;[218] in German, the bag from which it is taken is hardly
a span wide. In the Möttulssaga, p. 9, l. 6, the mantle comes from a
púss, a small bag hanging on the belt; in Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's
Lanzelet, from ein mæzigez teschelîn, and in the latter case the mantle
instantaneously expands to full size (Warnatsch); it is also of all
colors known to man, vv 5807-19. Again, when Guenever had put on the
mantle, st. 10 of our ballad, "it was from the top to the toe as sheeres
had itt shread." So in 'Der Mantel,' vv 732, 733:
Unde [==unten] het man in zerizzen,
Oder mit mezzern zesnitten.[219]
The Lanzelet of Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, dating from the first years of
the thirteenth century, with peculiarities of detail and a partially new
set of names, presents the outline of the same story. A sea-fairy sends
a maid to Arthur with a magnificent gift, which is, however, conditioned
upon his granting a boon. Arthur assents, and the maid takes, from a
small bag which she wears at her girdle, a mantle, which is of all
colors that man ever saw or heard of, and is worked with every manner of
beast, fowl, and strange fish. The king's promise obliges him to make
all the court ladies don the mantle, she to have it whom it perfectly
fits. More than two hundred try, and there is no absolute fit.[220] But
Iblis, Lanzelet's wife, is not present: she is languishing on account of
his absence on a dangerous adventure. She is sent for, and by general
agreement the mantle is, on her, the best-fitting garment woman ever
wore. Ed. Hahn, vv 5746-6135.
The adventure of the Mantle is very briefly reported to Gawain, when on
his way with Ydain to Arthur, by a youth who had just come from the
court, in terms entirely according with the French fabliau, in Messire
Gauvain, ou La Vengeance de Raguidel, by the trouvère Raoul, ed.
Hippeau, p. 135 ff, vv 3906-55, and in the Dutch Lancelot, ed.
Jonckbloet, Part II, p. 85, vv 12,500-527, poems of the thirteenth
century. The one lady whom the mantle fits is in the latter Carados
vrindinne, in the other l'amie Caraduel Briefbras.
The Scalachronica, by Sir Thomas Gray of Heton, a chronicle of England
and Scotland, 1066-1362, begun in 1355, gives the analysis of many
romances, and that of the adventure of the Mantle in this form. There
was sent to Arthur's court the mantle of Karodes, which was of such
virtue that it would fit no woman who was not willing that her husband
should know both her act and her thought.[221] This was the occasion of
much mirth, for the mantle was either too short, or too long, or too
tight, for all the ladies except Karodes' wife. And it was said that
this mantle was sent by the father of Karodes, a magician, to prove the
goodness of his son's wife.[222]
Two fifteenth-century German versions of the Mantle story give it a
shape of their own. In Fastnachtspiele aus dem fünfzehnten Jahrhundert,
II, 665, No 81, 'Der Luneten Mantel,' the amiable Lunet, so well and
favorably known in romances, takes the place of the English boy and
French varlet. The story has the usual course. The mantle is
unsuccessfully tried by Arthur's queen, by the wife of the Greek
emperor, and by the queen of Lorraine. The king of Spain, who announces
himself as _the oldest man_ present, is willing to excuse his wife, who
is the youngest of the royal ladies. She says, If we lack lands and
gold, "so sei wir doch an eren reich," offers herself to the test with
the fearlessness of innocence, and comes off clear, to the delight of
her aged spouse. A meistergesang, Bruns, Beiträge zur kritischen
Bearbeitung alter Handschriften, p. 143,[223] 'Lanethen Mantel,' again
awards the prize to the young wife of a very old knight. Laneth, a clean
maid, who is Arthur's niece, having made herself poor by her bounty, is
cast off by her uncle's wife and accused of loose behavior. She makes
her trouble known to a dwarf, a good friend of her father's, and
receives from him a mantle to take to Arthur's court: if anybody huffs
her, she is to put it to use. The queen opens upon Laneth, as soon as
she appears, with language not unlike that which she employs of
Cradock's wife in stanzas 33, 34 of the ballad. The mantle is offered to
any lady that it will fit. In front it comes to the queen's knee, and it
drags on the ground behind. Three hundred and fifty knights' ladies fare
as ill as the sovereign.[224]
The Dean of Lismore's collection of Gaelic poetry, made in the early
part of the sixteenth century, contains a ballad, obscure in places, but
clearly presenting the outlines of the English ballad or French
fabliau.[225] Finn, Diarmaid, and four other heroes are drinking, with
their six wives. The women take too much, and fall to boasting of their
chastity. While they are so engaged, a maid approaches who is clad in a
seamless robe of pure white. She sits down by Finn, and he asks her what
is the virtue of the garment. She replies that her seamless robe will
completely cover none but the spotless wife. Conan, a sort of Kay, says,
Give it to my wife at once, that we may learn the truth of what they
have been saying. The robe shrinks into folds, and Conan is so angry
that he seizes his spear and kills his wife.[226] Diarmaid's wife tries,
and the robe clings about her hair; Oscar's, and it does not reach to
her middle; Maighinis, Finn's wife, and it folds around her ears.
MacRea's wife only is completely covered. The 'daughter of Deirg,'
certainly a wife of Finn, and here seemingly to be identified with
Maighinis, claims the robe: she has done nothing to be ashamed of; she
has erred only with Finn. Finn curses her and womankind, "because of her
who came that day."
The probation by the Horn runs parallel with that by the Mantle, with
which it is combined in the English ballad. Whether this or that is the
anterior creation it is not possible to say, though the 'Lai du Corn'
is, beyond question, as Ferdinand Wolf held, of a more original stamp,
fresher and more in the popular vein than the fabliau of the Mantle, as
we have it.[227] The 'Lai du Corn,' preserved in a single not very early
manuscript (Digby 86, Bodleian Library, "of the second half of the
thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century"), may well belong,
where Wolf puts it, in the middle of the twelfth. Robert Bikez, the
jongleur who composed it, attributes the first authorship to "Garadue,"
the hero, and says that he himself derived the story from the oral
communication of an abbé. Arthur has assembled thirty thousand knights
at a feast at Pentecost, and each of them is paired with a lady. Before
dinner there arrives a donzel, with an ivory horn adorned with four gold
bands and rich jewels. This horn has been sent Arthur by Mangounz, king
of Moraine. The youth is told to take his place before the king, who
promises to knight him after dinner and give him a handsome present the
next day; but he laughingly excuses himself, on the ground that it is
not proper for a squire to eat at a knight's table, and retires. Arthur
sees that there is an inscription on the horn, and desires that his
"chapelein" may read it. Everybody is eager to hear, but some repent
afterwards. The horn was made by a fairy, who endued it with this
quality, that no man should drink of it without spilling, if his wife
had not been true in act and thought. Even the queen hung her head, and
so did all the barons that had wives. The maids jested, and looked at
their lovers with "Now we shall see." Arthur was offended, but ordered
Kay to fill. The king drank and spilled; seized a knife, and was about
to strike the queen, but was withheld by his knights. Gawain gallantly
came to the queen's vindication. "Be not such a churl," he said, "for
there is no married woman but has her foolish thought." The queen
demanded an ordeal by fire: if a hair of her were burned, she would be
torn by horses. She confessed that the horn was in so far right that she
had once given a ring to a youth who had killed a giant that had accused
Gawain of treason, etc. She thought this youth would be a desirable
addition to the court. Arthur was not convinced: he would make everybody
try the horn now, king, duke, and count, for he would not be the only
one to be shamed. Eleven kings, thirty counts, all who essay, spill:
they are very angry, and bid the devil take him who brought and him who
sent the horn. When Arthur saw this, he began to laugh: he regarded the
horn as a great present, he said, and he would part with it to nobody
except the man that could drink out of it. The queen blushed so prettily
that he kissed her three times, and asked her pardon for his bad humor.
The queen said, Let everybody take the horn, small and great. There was
a knight who was the happiest man in all the court, the least a
braggart, the most mannerly, and the most redoubtable after Gawain. His
name was Garadue, and he had a wife, _mout leal_, who was a fairy for
beauty, and surpassed by none but the queen. Garadue looked at her. She
did not change color. "Drink," she said; "indeed, you are at fault to
hesitate." She would never have husband but him: for a woman should be a
dove, and accept no second mate. Garadue was naturally very much
pleased: he sprang to his feet, took the horn, and, crying Wassail! to
the king, drank out every drop. Arthur presented him with Cirencester,
and, for his wife's sake, with the horn, which was exhibited there on
great days.
The romance of Perceval le Gallois, by Chrestien de Troyes and others
(second half of the twelfth century), describes Arthur, like the
fabliau, as putting off dinner till he should hear of some strange news
or adventure. A knight rides into the hall, with an ivory horn,
gold-banded and richly jewelled, hanging from his neck, and presents it
to the king. Have it filled with pure water, says the bearer, and the
water will turn to the best wine in the world, enough for all who are
present. "A rich present!" exclaims Kay. But no knight whose wife or
love has betrayed him shall drink without spilling. "Or empire vostre
présens," says Kay. The king has the horn filled, and does not heed
Guenever, who begs him not to drink, for it is some enchantment, to
shame honest folk. "Then I pray God," says the queen, "that if you try
to drink you may be wet." The king essays to drink, and Guenever has her
prayer. Kay has the same luck, and all the knights,[228] till the horn
comes to Carados (Brisié-Bras). Carados, as in the lai, hesitates; his
wife (Guinon, Guimer) looks at him, and says, Drink! He spills not a
drop. Guenever and many a dame hate nothing so much as her. Perceval le
Gallois, ed. Potvin, II, 216 ff, vv 15,640-767.[229]
The story of 'Le Livre de Carados,' in Perceval, is given in abridgment
by the author of Le Roman du Renard contrefait, writing in the second
half of the fourteenth century: Tarbé, Poètes de Champagne antérieurs au
siècle de François I^{er}, Histoire de Quarados Brun-Bras, p. 79 ff. The
horn here becomes a cup.
A meistergesang, entitled 'Dis ist Frauw Tristerat Horn von Saphoien,'
and found in the same fifteenth-century manuscript as Der Lanethen
Mantel, Bruns, as before, p. 139, preserves many features of the lai.
While Arthur is at table with seven other kings and their wives, a
damsel comes, bringing an ivory horn, with gold letters about the rim, a
present from Frau Tristerat of Savoy. The king sends for a clerk to read
the inscription, and declares he will begin the experiment. The damsel
prudently retires. Arthur is thoroughly wet, and on the point of
striking the queen, but is prevented by a knight. The seven kings then
take the horn, one after the other. Six of them fare like Arthur. The
king of Spain looks at his wife, fearing shame. She encourages him to
drink, saying, as in the other meistergesang, If we are poor in goods,
we are rich in honor. Arthur presents him with the horn, and adds cities
and lands. Another copy of this piece was printed by Zingerle, in
Germania, V, 101, 'Das goldene Horn.' The queen is aus der Syrenen
lant.[230]
A fastnachtspiel gives substantially the same form to the story: Keller,
Nachlese, No 127, p. 183. Arthur invites seven kings and queens to his
court. His wife wishes him to ask his sister, the Queen of Cyprus, also;
but she has offended him, and he cannot be prevailed upon to do it. The
Queen of Cyprus sends the horn to Arthur by her maid as a gift from a
queen who is to be nameless, and in fulfilling her charge the messenger
describes her lady simply as a sea princess. The inscription is read
aloud by one of Arthur's knights. The King of Spain carries off the
honors, and receives in gift, besides the horn, a ducal crown, and gold
to boot. Arthur resolves that the horn shall be forgotten, and no grudge
borne against the women, and proposes a dance, which he leads off with
his wife.[231]
We have Arthur joining in a dance under nearly the same circumstances in
an English "bowrd" found in a MS. of about the middle of the fifteenth
century (Ashmolean Museum, No 61). The king has a bugle horn, which
always stands before him, and often amuses himself by experimenting with
it. Those who cannot drink without spilling are set at a table by
themselves, with willow garlands on their heads, and served with the
best. Upon the occasion of a visit from the Duke of Gloucester, the
king, wishing to entertain his guest with an exhibition of the property
of the horn, says he will try all who are present. He begins himself, as
he was wont to do, but this time spills. He takes the mishap merrily,
and says he may now join in a dance which the "freyry" were to have
after meat. 'The Cokwolds Daunce,' Hartshorne's Ancient Metrical Tales,
p. 209; Karajan, Frühlingsgabe [Schatzgräber], p. 17; Hazlitt, Remains
of Early Popular Poetry, I, 38.[232]
Heinrich von dem Türlîn narrates the episode of the probation by the
Horn with many variations of his own, among them the important one of
subjecting the women to the test as well as the men.[233] In his Crône,
put at 1200-10, a misshapen, dwarfish knight, whose skin is overgrown
with scales, riding on a monster who is fish before and dolphin behind,
with wings on its legs, presents himself to Arthur on Christmas Day as
an envoy from a sea king, who offers the British monarch a gift on
condition of his first granting a boon. The gift is a cup, made by a
necromancer of Toledo, of which no man or woman can drink who has been
false to love, and it is to be the king's if there shall be anybody at
the court who can stand the test. The ladies are sent for, and the
messenger gives the cup first to them. They all spill. The knights
follow, Arthur first; and he, to the general astonishment, bears the
proof, which no one else does except the sea king's messenger.
Caraduz[234] von Caz fails with the rest. Diu Crône, ed. Scholl, vv
466-3189.
The prose Tristan confines the proof to the women, and transfers the
scene to King Mark's court. Morgan the Fay having sent the enchanted
horn to Arthur's court by the hands of a damsel, to avenge herself on
Guenever, two knights who had a spite against Mark and Tristan intercept
it, and cause the horn to be taken to King Mark, who is informed that no
lady that has been false to her lord can drink of it without spilling.
Yseult spills, and the king says she deserves to die. But, fortunately
or unfortunately, all the rest of the ladies save four are found to be
in the same plight as the queen. The courtiers, resolved to make the
best of a bad matter, declare that they have no confidence in the
probation, and the king consents to treat the horn as a deception, and
acquits his wife.[235]
Ariosto has introduced the magical vessel made by Morgan the Fay for
Arthur's behoof[236] into Orlando Furioso. A gentleman tries it on his
guests for ten years, and they all spill but Rinaldo, who declines il
periglioso saggio: canto XLII, 70-73, 97-104; XLIII, 6-44. Upon
Ariosto's narrative La Fontaine founded the tale and the comedy of 'La
Coupe Enchantée,' Works ed. Moland, IV, 37, V, 361.
In a piece in the Wunderhorn, I, 389, ed. 1819, called 'Die
Ausgleichung,' and purporting to be from oral tradition, but reading
like an imitation, or at most a reconstruction, of a meistergesang, the
cup and mantle are made to operate conjointly: the former to convict a
king and his knights, the other a queen and her ladies, of
unfaithfulness in love. Only the youngest of the ladies can wear the
mantle, and only the oldest of the knights, to whom she is espoused, can
drink from the cup. This knight, on being presented with the cup, turns
into a dwarf; the lady, on receiving the gift of the mantle, into a fay.
They pour a drop of wine from the cup upon the mantle, and give the
mantle to the queen, and the cup, empty, to the king. After this, the
king and all the world can drink without inconvenience, and the mantle
fits every woman. But the stain on the mantle grows bigger every year,
and the cup gives out a hollow sound like tin! An allegory, we may
suppose, and, so far as it is intelligible, of the weakest sort.
Tegau Eurvron is spoken of in Welsh triads as one of the three chaste
ladies, and again as one of the three fair ladies, of Arthur's
court.[237] She is called the wife of Caradawe Vreichvras by various
Welsh writers, and by her surname of "Gold-breasted" she should be
so.[238] If we may trust the author of The Welsh Bards, Tegau was the
possessor of three treasures or rarities "which befitted none but
herself," a mantle, a goblet, and a knife. The mantle is mentioned in a
triad,[239] and is referred to as having the variable hue attributed to
it in our ballad and elsewhere. There are three things, says the triad,
of which no man knows the color; the peacock's expanded tail, the mantle
of Tegau Eurvron, and the miser's pence. Of this mantle, Jones, in whose
list of "Thirteen Rarities of Kingly Regalia" of the Island of Britain
it stands eleventh, says, No one could put it on who had dishonored
marriage, nor a young damsel who had committed incontinence; but it
would cover a chaste woman from top to toe: Welsh Bards, II, 49. The
mantle certainly seems to be identified by what is said of its color in
the (not very ancient) triad, and so must have the property attributed
to it by Jones, but one would be glad to have had Jones cite chapter and
verse for his description.
There is a drinking-horn among the Thirteen Precious Things of the
Island of Britain, which, like the conjurer's bottle of our day, will
furnish any liquor that is called for, and a knife which will serve
four-and-twenty men at meat "all at once." How this horn and this knife
should befit none but the chaste and lovely Tegau, it is not easy to
comprehend. Meanwhile the horn and the knife are not the property of
Cradock's wife, in the English ballad: the horn falls to Cradock of
right, and the knife was his from the beginning. Instead of Tegau's
mantle we have in another account a mantle of Arthur, which is the
familiar cloak that allows the wearer to see everything without himself
being seen. Not much light, therefore, but rather considerable mist,
comes from these Welsh traditions, of very uncertain date and
significance. It may be that somebody who had heard of the three Welsh
rarities, and of the mantle and horn as being two of them, supposed that
the knife must have similar virtues with the horn and mantle, whence its
appearance in our ballad; but no proof has yet been given that the Welsh
horn and knife had ever a power of testing chastity.[240]
Heinrich von dem Türlin, not satisfied with testing Arthur's court first
with the mantle, and again with the horn, renews the experiment with a
Glove, in a couple of thousand lines more of tedious imitation of 'Cort
Mantel,'[241] Crône, 22,990-24,719. This glove renders the right side of
the body invisible, when put on by man or woman free of blame, but
leaves in the other case some portion of that side visible and bare. A
great many ladies and knights don the glove, and all have reason to
regret the trial except Arthur and Gawain.[242]
There is another German imitation of the fabliau of the mantle, in the
form (1) of a farce of the fifteenth century and (2) of a meistergesang
printed in the sixteenth. In these there is substituted for the mantle a
Crown that exposes the infidelity of husbands.
1. "Das Vasnachtspil mit der Kron."[243] A "master" has been sent to
Arthur's court with a rich crown, which the King of Abian wishes to
present to whichever king or lord it shall fit, and it will fit only
those who have not "lost their honor." The King of Orient begins the
trial, very much against his will: the crown turns to ram's horns. The
King of Cyprus is obliged to follow, though he says the devil is in the
crown: the crown hangs about his neck. Appeals are made to Arthur that
the trial may now stop, so that the knights may devote themselves to the
object for which they had come together, the service and honor of the
ladies. But here Lanet, Arthur's sister (so she is styled), interposes,
and expresses a hope that no honors are intended the queen, for she is
not worthy of them, having broken her faith. Arthur is very angry, and
says that Lanet has by her injurious language forfeited all her lands,
and shall be expelled from court. (Cf. Der Lanethen Mantel, p. 261.) A
knight begs the king to desist, for he who heeds every tale that is told
of his wife shall never be easy.
2. The meistergesang 'Die Krone der Königin von Afion.'[244] While his
majesty of Afion is holding a great feast, a youth enters the hall
bearing a splendid crown, which has such chaste things in it that no
king can wear it who haunts false love. The crown had been secretly made
by order of the queen. The king wishes to buy the crown at any price,
but the youth informs him that it is to be given free to the man who can
wear it. The king asks the favor of being the first to try the crown:
when put on his head it falls down to his back. The King of Portugal is
eager to be next: the crown falls upon his shoulder. The King of Holland
at first refuses to put on the crown, for there was magic in it, and it
was only meant to shame them: but he is obliged to yield, and the crown
goes to his girdle. The King of Cyprus offers himself to the adventure:
the crown falls to his loins. And so with eleven. But there was a "Young
Philips," King of England, who thought he might carry off the prize. His
wife was gray and old and ugly, and quite willing, on this account, to
overlook e bisserle Falschheit, and told him that he might spare
himself. But he would not be prevented; so they put the crown on him,
and it fitted to a hair. This makes an edifying pendant to 'Der Luneten
Mantel,' p. 261.
Still another imitation is the Magical Bridge in the younger Titurel
which Klingsor throws over the Sibra. Knights and ladies assembled at
Arthur's court, if less than perfect[245], on attempting to ride over it
are thrown off into the water, or stumble and fall on the bridge: ed.
Hahn, p. 232 ff, st. 2337 ff. Hans Sachs has told this story twice, with
Virgil for the magician: ed. Keller, Historia, König Artus mit der
ehbrecher-brugk, II, 262; Goedeke, Dichtungen von Hans Sachs, I, 175.
Kirchhof follows Hans Sachs in a story in Wendunmuth, ed. Österley, II,
38.
Florimel's Girdle, in the fourth book of the 'Fairy Queen,' canto v,
once more, is formed on the same pattern.[246]
There might be further included in imitations of the horn or mantle test
several other inventions which are clearly, as to form, modelled on this
original, but which have a different object: the valley from which no
false lover could escape till it had been entered by one "qui de nulle
chose auroit vers s'amie fausé ne mespris, nè d'euvre nè de pensée nè de
talent," the prose Lancelot in Jonckbloet, II, lxix (Warnatsch),
Ferrario, Storia ed Analisi, Lancilotto del Lago, III, 372, Legrand,
Fabliaux, I, 156; the arch in Amadis, which no man or woman can pass who
has been unfaithful to a first love, and again, the sword which only the
knight who loves his lady best can draw, and the partly withered garland
which becomes completely fresh on the head of the lady who best loves
her husband or lover, Amadís de Gaula, l. ii, introduccion, c. 1, c. 14,
and ballad 1890 in Duran, II, 665; the cup of congealed tears in
Palmerin of England, which liquefies in the hand of the best knight and
faithfulest lover, chapters 87-89, II, 322 ff, ed. of London, 1807.
Besides those which have been spoken of, not a few other criterions of
chastity occur in romantic tales.
#Bed clothes and bed.# 'Gil Brenton,' #A#, #B#; the corresponding
Swedish ballad, #A#, #B#, #E#; Danish, Grundtvig, No 275:[247] see pp
64, 65, of this volume.
#A stepping-stone# by the bed-side. 'Vesle Aase Gaasepige,' Asbjørnsen
og Moe, No 29: see p. 66.
A chair in which no leal maiden can sit, or will sit till bidden (?).
'Gil Brenton,' #D#, #C#.
#Flowers# [foliage]. 1. In the Sanskrit story of Guhasena, the
merchant's son, and Devasmitá, this married pair, who are to be
separated for a time, receive from Shíva each a red lotus: if either
should be unfaithful, the lotus in the hand of the other would fade, but
not otherwise: Kathá Sarit Ságara, ch. 13, Tawney, I, 86, Brockhaus, I,
137. 2. In the Tales of a Parrot, a soldier, going into service,
receives from his wife a rose [flower, nosegay], which will keep fresh
as long as she remains true: Rosen, Tuti-nameh, from the Turkish
version, I, 109; Wickerhauser, also from the Turkish, p. 57; Iken, p.
30,[248] from the Persian of Kadiri. 3. So the knight Margon in the
French romance of Perceforest, vol. IV, ch. 16 and 17. 4. In a Turkish
tale found in a manuscript collection called 'Joy after Sorrow,' an
architect or housewright, having to leave home for want of employment,
is presented by his wife with a bunch of evergreen of the same property.
5. An English story of a wright reverts to the rose. A widow, having
nothing else to give with her daughter, presents the bridegroom with a
rose-garland, which will hold its hue while his wife is "stable:" 'The
Wright's Chaste Wife,' by Adam of Cobsam, from a manuscript of about
1462, ed. Furnivall.[249]
#A shirt# [mantle]. 1. In connection with the same incidents there is
substituted for the unfading flower, in Gesta Romanorum, 69, a shirt.
This a knight's wife gives to a carpenter or housewright who has married
her daughter, and it will not need washing, will not tear, wear, or
change color, as long as both husband and wife are faithful, but will
lose all its virtues if either is untrue. The shirt is given by a wife
to a husband in several versions of an otherwise different story. 2. In
the German meistergesang and the Flemish tale Alexander of Metz: Körner,
Historische Volkslieder, p. 49, No 8; Goedeke, Deutsche Dichtung im
Mittelalter, 2d ed., p. 569 ff; 'De Historia van Florentina,' etc., Van
den Bergh, De nederlandsche Volksromaus, p. 52 f. 3. In the story 'Von
dem König von Spanien[250] und seiner Frau,' Müllenhoff, Sagen, u. s.
w., p. 586, No 607, a wife gives the shirt to her husband the morning
after the wedding: it will always be white until she dies, when it will
turn black, or unless she misbehaves, in which case it will be spotted.
4. 'Die getreue Frau,' Plönnies, in Wolf's Zeitschrift für deutsche
Mythologie,' II, 377. An English princess gives her consort, a Spanish
prince, at parting, a white shirt which will not spot as long as she is
faithful. 5. 'Die treue Frau,' Curtze, Volksüberlieferungen aus Waldeck,
p. 146. A merchant's son, married to a princess, goes away for a voyage;
they change rings and shirts, and neither shirt will soil until one of
the two shall be untrue. 6. 'Die getreue Frau,' J. W. Wolf, Deutsche
Hausmärchen, at p. 102. A prince, going on a voyage, gives his sword to
his wife; as long as the blade is not spotted, he is faithful. He
receives from the princess a mantle; as long as it is white, her faith
is inviolate.
#A picture.# For the rose, as in Perceforest, there is substituted, in
a story otherwise essentially the same, a picture. A knight, compelled
to leave his wife, receives from a magician a picture of her, small
enough to carry in a box about his person, which will turn yellow if she
is tempted, pale if she wavers, black if she yields, but will otherwise
preserve its fresh hues: Bandello, Part I, nov. 21. This tale,
translated in Painter's Palace of Pleasure, 1567 (ed. Haslewood, II,
471, nov. 28), furnished the plot for Massinger's 'Picture,' 1630. The
miniature will keep its color as long as the woman is innocent and
unattempted, will grow yellow if she is solicited but unconquered, and
black if she surrenders: Act I, Scene 1. Bandello's story is also the
foundation of Sénecé's tale, 'Filer le parfait amour,' with a wax image
taking the place of the picture: Œuvres Choisies, ed. Charles et Cap,
p. 95.[251]
#A ring.# The picture is exchanged for a ring in a French tale derived,
and in parts almost translated, from Bandello's: the sixth in 'Les
Faveurs et les Disgraces de l'Amour,' etc., said to have appeared in
1696.[252] A white stone set in the ring may become yellow or black
under circumstances. Such a ring Rimnild gave Horn Child: when the stone
should grow wan, her thoughts would have changed; should it grow red,
she is no more a maid: see p. 192. A father, being required to leave
three daughters, gives them each such a ring in Basile, Pentamerone,
III, 4. The rings are changed into glass distaffs in 'L'Adroite
Princesse,' an imitation of this story by Mlle. Lhéritier de Villaudon,
which has sometimes been printed with Perrault's tales: Perrault, Contes
des Fées, ed. Giraud, p. 239; Dunlop, ch. 13.
#A mirror#, in the History of Prince Zeyn Alasnam, reflecting the image
of a chaste maid, will remain unblurred: Arabian Nights, Scott, IV, 120,
124; 1001 Nacht, Habicht, VI, 146, 150; etc. Virgil made a mirror of
like property; it exposed the woman that was "new-fangle," wandelmüetic,
by the ignition of a "worm" in the glass: Meisterlieder der Kolmarer
Handschrift, Bartsch, p. 605 (Warnatsch). There is also one of these
mirrors in Primaleon, l. ii, cap. 27; Rajna, Le Fonti dell' Orlando
Furioso, p. 504, note 3. Alfred de Musset, in 'Barberine,' substitutes a
pocket-mirror for the picture in Bandello, Part I, nov. 21: Œuvres
Complètes, III, 378 ff.
#A harp#, in the hands of an image, upon the approach of a
_despucellée_, plays out of tune and breaks a string: Perceval le
Gallois, II, 149, vv 13, 365-72 (Rajna, as above).
A crystal #brook#, in the amiral's garden in Flor and Blancheflor, when
crossed by a virgin remains pellucid, but in the other case becomes red,
or turbid: ed. Du Méril, p. 75, vv 1811-14; Bekker, Berlin Academy,
XLIV, 26, vv 2069-72; Fleck, ed. Sommer, p. 148, vv 4472-82; Swedish,
ed. Klemming, p. 38, 1122-25; Lower Rhine, Haupt's Zeitschrift, XXI,
321, vv 57-62; Middle Greek, Bekker, Berlin Academy, 1845, p. 165,
Wagner, Mediæval Greek Texts, p. 40 f, vv 1339-48; etc. In the English
poem, Hartshorne's Ancient Metrical Tales, p. 93, if a clean maid wash
her hands in the water, it remains quiet and clear; but if one who has
lost her purity do this, the water will yell like mad and become red as
blood.
The #stone# Aptor, in Wigamur, vv 1100-21, is red to the sight of clean
man or woman, but misty to others: Von der Hagen und Büsching, Deutsche
Gedichte des Mittelalters, p. 12 (Warnatsch).[253]
A #statue#, in an Italian ballad, moved its eyes when young women who
had sacrificed their honor were presented to it: Ferraro, Canti
popolari di Ferrara, Cento e Pontelagoscuro, p. 84, 'Il Conte
Cagnolino.' There was said to be a statue of Venus in Constantinople
which could not be approached by an incontinent woman without a very
shameful exposure; and again, a pillar surmounted by four horns, which
turned round three times if any κερατας came up to it.[254]
Virgil, 'Filius,' made a brass statue which no misbehaving woman might
touch, and a vicious one received violent blows from it: Meisterlieder
der Kolmarer Handschrift, Bartsch, p. 604, 14th century. This statue
would bite off the fingers of an adulteress if they were put in its
mouth, according to a poem of the same century published by Bartsch in
Germania, IV, 237; and a third version makes the statue do this to _all_
perjurers, agreeing in other respects with the second: Kolmarer
Meisterlieder, as before, p. 338. In the two last the offence of the
wife causes a horn to grow out of the husband's forehead. Much of the
story in these poems is derived from the fifteenth tale of the
Shukasaptati, where a woman offers to pass between the legs of a statue
of a Yaksha, which only an innocent one can do: Benfey, Pantschatantra,
I, 457.[255]
According to a popular belief in Austria, says J. Grimm, you may know a
clean maid by her being able to blow out a candle with one puff and to
light it again with another. The phrase was known in Spain: "Matar un
candil con un soplo y encenderlo con otro." Grimm adds that it is an
article of popular faith in India that a virgin can make a ball of
water, or carry water in a sieve: Rechtsalterthümer, p. 932.[256]
An ordeal for chastity is a feature in several of the Greek romances. In
Heliodorus's Æthiopica, X, 8, 9, victims to be offered to the sun and
moon, who must be pure, are obliged to mount a #brazier# covered with a
golden grating. The soles of those who are less than perfect are burned.
Theagenes and Chariclea experience no inconvenience. The Clitophon and
Leucippe of Achilles Tatius, VIII, 6, 13, 14, has a #cave# in the grove
of Diana of Ephesus, in which they shut up a woman. If it is a virgin, a
delicious melody is presently heard from a syrinx, the doors open of
themselves, and the woman comes out crowned with pine leaves; if not a
virgin, a wail is heard, and the woman is never seen again. There is
also a not perfectly convincing trial, by the Stygian #water#, in § 12,
which seems to be imitated in the Hysmine and Hysminias of Eustathius
[Eumathius], VIII, 7, XI, 17. In the temple of Diana, at Artycomis,
stands a statue of the goddess, with bow in hand, and from about her
feet flows water like a roaring river. A woman, crowned with laurel,
being put in, she will float quietly, if all is right; but should she
not have kept her allegiance to Dian, the goddess bends her bow as if to
shoot at her head, which causes the culprit to duck, and the water
carries off her wreath.[257]
It is prescribed in Numbers v, 11-31, that any man jealous of his wife
may bring her to the priest, who shall, with and after various
ceremonies, give her a bitter drink of holy water in which dust from the
floor of the tabernacle has been infused. If she have trespassed, her
body shall swell and rot. In the Pseudo-Matthew's Gospel, ch. xii,
Joseph and Mary successively take this aquam potationis domini. No
pretender to innocence could taste this and then make seven turns round
the altar, without some sign of sin appearing in the face. The
experiment shows both to be faultless. So, with some variation, the
sixteenth chapter of the Protevangelium of James. This trial is the
subject of one of the Coventry Mysteries, No 14, p. 137 ff, ed.
Halliwell, and no doubt of other scripture plays. It is naturally
introduced into Wernher's Maria, Hoffmann, Fundgruben, II, 188, line 26
ff, and probably into other lives of the Virgin.
Herodotus relates, II, 111, that Pheron, son of Sesostris, after a
blindness of ten years' duration, received an intimation from an oracle
that he would recover his sight upon following a certain prescription,
such as we are assured is still thought well of in Egypt in cases of
ophthalmia. For this the coöperation of a chaste woman was
indispensable. Repeatedly balked, the king finally regained his vision,
and collecting in a town many women of whom he had vainly hoped aid, in
which number his queen was included, he set fire to the place and burned
both it and them, and then married the woman to whom he was so much
indebted. (First cited in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1795, vol. 65, I,
114.) The coincidence with foregoing tales is certainly curious, but to
all appearance accidental.[258]
The 'Boy and the Mantle' was printed "verbatim" from his manuscript by
Percy in the Reliques, III, 3, ed. 1765. The copy at p. 314 is of course
the same "revised and altered" by Percy, but has been sometimes mistaken
for an independent one.
* * * * *
Translated by Herder, I, 219; Bodmer, I, 18; Bothe, p. 59.
Percy MS., p. 284: Hales and Furnivall, II, 304.
1
In the third day of May
to Carleile did come
A kind curteous child,
that cold much of wisdome.
2
A kirtle and a mantle
this child had vppon,
With brauches and ringes
full richelye bedone.
3
He had a sute of silke,
about his middle drawne;
Without he cold of curtesye,
he thought itt much shame.
4
'God speed thee, K_ing_ Arthur,
sitting att thy meate!
And the goodly Queene Gueneuer!
I canott her fforgett.
5
'I tell you lords in this hall,
I hett you all heede,
Except you be the more surer,
is you for to dread.'
6
He plucked out of his potewer,
and longer wold not dwell,
He pulled forth a pretty mantle,
betweene two nut-shells.
7
'Haue thou here,' K_ing_ Arthure,
haue thou heere of mee;
Giue itt to thy comely queene,
shapen as itt is alreadye.
8
'Itt shall neu_er_ become _tha_t wiffe
_tha_t hath once done amisse:'
Then euery k_nigh_t in the k_ing_s court
began to care for his.
9
Forth came dame Gueneuer,
to the mantle shee her bed;
The ladye shee was new-fangle,
but yett shee was affrayd.
10
When shee had taken the mantle,
shee stoode as she had beene madd;
It was from the top to the toe
as sheeres had itt shread.
11
One while was itt gaule,
another while was itt greene;
Another while was itt wadded;
ill itt did her beseeme.
12
Another while was it blacke,
and bore the worst hue;
'By my troth,' q_uo_th K_ing_ Arthur,
'I thinke thou be not true.'
13
Shee threw downe the mantle,
_tha_t bright was of blee,
Fast with a rudd redd
to her chamber can shee flee.
14
Shee curst the weauer and the walker
that clothe _tha_t had wrought,
And bade a vengeance on his crowne
_tha_t hither hath itt brought.
15
'I had rather be in a wood,
vnder a greene tree,
Then in K_ing_ Arthurs court
shamed for to bee.'
16
Kay called forth his ladye,
and bade her come neere;
Saies, 'Madam, and thou be guiltye,
I pray thee hold thee there.'
17
Forth came his ladye
shortlye and anon,
Boldlye to the mantle
then is shee gone.
18
When she had tane the mantle,
and cast it her about,
Then was shee bare
all aboue the buttocckes.
19
Then euery knight
_tha_t was in the kings court
Talked, laughed, and showted,
full oft att _tha_t sport.
20
Shee threw downe the mantle,
_tha_t bright was of blee,
Ffast with a red rudd
to her chamber can shee flee.
21
Forth came an old k_night_,
pattering ore a creede,
And he _pro_ferred to this little boy
twenty markes to his meede,
22
And all the time of the Christmasse
willinglye to ffeede;
For why, this mantle might
doe his wiffe some need.
23
When shee had tane the mantle,
of cloth _tha_t was made,
Shee had no more left on her
but a tassell and a threed:
Then euery k_night_ in the k_ing_s court
bade euill might shee speed.
24
Shee threw downe the mantle,
_tha_t bright was of blee,
And fast w_i_th a redd rudd
to her chamber can shee flee.
25
Craddocke called forth his ladye,
and bade her come in;
Saith, 'Winne this mantle, ladye,
with a litle dinne.
26
'Winne this mantle, ladye,
and it shalbe thine
If thou neuer did amisse
since thou wast mine.'
27
Forth came Craddockes ladye
shortlye and anon,
But boldlye to the mantle
then is shee gone.
28
When shee had tane the mantle,
and cast itt her about,
Vpp att her great toe
itt began to crinkle and crowt;
Shee said, 'Bowe downe, mantle,
and shame me not for nought.
29
'Once I did amisse,
I tell you certainlye,
When I kist Craddockes mouth
vnder a greene tree,
When I kist Craddockes mouth
before he marryed mee.'
30
When shee had her shreeuen,
and her sines shee had tolde,
The mantle stoode about her
right as shee wold;
31
Seemelye of coulour,
glittering like gold;
Then euery k_nigh_t in Arthurs court
did her behold.
32
Then spake dame Gueneuer
to Arthur our king:
'She hath tane yonder mantle,
not with wright but w_i_th wronge!
33
'See you not yonder woman
_tha_t maketh her selfe soe clene?
I haue seene tane out of her bedd
of men fiueteene;
34
'Preists, clarkes, and wedded men,
from her by-deene;
Yett shee taketh the mantle,
and maketh her-selfe cleane!'
35
Then spake the litle boy
_tha_t kept the mantle in hold;
Sayes 'K_ing_, chasten thy wiffe;
of her words shee is to bold.
36
'Shee is a bitch and a witch,
and a whore bold;
King, in thine owne hall
thou art a cuchold.'
37
The litle boy stoode
looking ou_e_r a dore;
He was ware of a wyld bore,
wold haue werryed a man.
38
He pulld forth a wood kniffe,
fast thither _tha_t he ran;
He brought in the bores head,
and quitted him like a man.
39
He brought in the bores head,
and was wonderous bold;
He said there was neu_e_r a cucholds kniffe
carue itt that cold.
40
Some rubbed their kniues
vppon a whetstone;
Some threw them vnder the table,
and said they had none.
41
K_ing_ Arthur and the child
stood looking them vpon;
All their kniues edges
turned backe againe.
42
Craddoccke had a litle kniue
of iron and of steele;
He birtled the bores head
wonderous weele,
_Tha_t euery k_nigh_t in the k_ing_s court
had a morssell.
43
The litle boy had a horne,
of red gold _tha_t ronge;
He said, 'there was noe cuckolde
shall drinke of my horne,
But he shold itt sheede,
either behind or beforne.'
44
Some shedd on their shoulder,
and some on their knee;
He _tha_t cold not hitt his mouth
put it in his eye;
And he _tha_t was a cuckold,
euery man might him see.
45
Craddoccke wan the horne
and the bores head;
His ladye wan the mantle
vnto her meede;
Euerye such a lonely ladye,
God send her well to speede!
* * * * *
_& is printed ~and~, wherever it occurs._
2^3. _MS. might be read ~branches~._
5^2. all heate.
6^4. 2 nut-shells.
8^4. his wiffe.
9^2. biled. "_Query the ~le~ in the MS._" Furnivall.
18^4. _Perhaps the last word was originally ~tout~, as Mr
T. Wright has suggested._
19^2. lauged.
21^4. 20 markes.
22^2. willignglye.
33^2. _MS. perhaps has ~cleare~ altered to ~clene~._
33^4. fiueteeene.
37^1. A litle.
37^2. _Perhaps, as Percy suggested, two lines have dropped
out after this, and the two which follow belong with the
next stanza._
40^1, 41^3. kiues.
41^1. Arthus.
44^2. sone on.
[211] After I had finished what I had to say in the way of introduction
to this ballad, there appeared the study of the Trinkhorn and
Mantelsage, by Otto Warnatsch: Der Mantel, Bruchstück eines
Lanzeletromans, etc., Breslau, 1883. To this very thorough piece of
work, in which the relations of the multiform versions of the
double-branched story are investigated with a care that had never before
been attempted, I naturally have frequent occasion to refer, and by its
help I have supplied some of my deficiencies, indicating always the
place by the author's name.
[212] The Bibliothèque des Romans, 1777, Février, pp. 112-115, gives an
abstract of a small printed piece in prose, there assigned to the
beginning of the sixteenth century, which, as Warnatsch observes, p. 72,
must have been a different thing from the tale given by Legrand,
inasmuch as it brings in Lancelot and Gawain as suppressing the jests of
Kay and Dinadam.
[213] The custom of Arthur not to eat till he had heard of some
adventure or strange news was confined to those days when he held full
court, according to Perceval le Gallois, II, 217, 15,664-71, and the
Roman de Perceval, fol. lxxviii. It is mentioned, with the same
limitations, I suppose, in the Roman de Lancelot, III, fol. lxxxii, and
we learn from this last romance, I, fol. xxxvi, that Arthur was
accustomed to hold a court and wear his crown five times in the year, at
Easter, Ascension-day, Pentecost, All Saints, and Christmas. The Roman
de Merlin, II, lvi^b, or, as cited by Southey, II, 48, 49, says that
"King Arthur, after his first dinner at Logres, when he brought home his
bride, made a vow that while he wore a crown he never would seat himself
at table till some adventure had occurred." In Malory's King Arthur, Kay
reminds the king that this had been the old custom of his court at
Pentecost. Arthur is said to observe this custom on Christmas, "vpon
such a dere day," in Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight, Madden, p. 6, vv
90-99. Messire Gauvain says "à feste ne mangast, devant," etc., p. 2, vv
18-21. Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival does not limit the custom to
high holidays, ed. Bartsch, I, 331, vv 875-79; and see Riddarasögur,
Parcevals Saga, etc., ed. Kölbing, p. 26. Neither does Wigalois, vv
247-51, or a fragment of Daniel von Blühenthal, Symbolæ ad literaturam
Teutonicam, p. 465, cited by Benecke, Wigalois, p. 436 f, or the Färöe
Galians kvæði, Kölbing, in Germania, XX, 397. See Madden's Syr Gawayne,
which has furnished much of this note, pp 310-12; Southey's King Arthur,
II, 203, 462. Robin Hood imitates Arthur: see the beginning of the
Little Gest.
[214]
'Quar je vous aim tant bonement,
Que je ne voudroie savoir
Vostre mesfet por nul avoir.
Miex en veuil je estre en doutance.
Por tot le royaume de France,
N'en voudroie je estre cert;
Quar qui sa bone amie pert
Molt a perdu, ce m'est avis.' 818-25.
[215] See also Brynjúlfsson, Saga af Tristram ok Ísönd, samt Möttuls
Saga, Udtog, pp 318-26, Copenhagen, 1878. There is a general presumption
that the larger part of the works translated for King Hákon were derived
from England. C. & W., p. 47.
[216] That is, the current one. The Samson saga professes to supply the
earlier history. Samson's father is another Arthur, king of England. An
abstract of so much of the saga as pertains to the Mantle is given by
Cederschiöld and Wulff, p. 90f. Warnatsch, p. 73 f, shows that the Rímur
and Samson had probably a common source, independent of the Möttulssaga.
[217] By Warnatsch, who gives the text with the corresponding passages
of the fabliau in a parallel column, pp 8-54: the argument for
Heinrich's authorship, pp 85-105. 'Der Mantel' had been previously
printed in Haupt and Hoffmann's Altdeutsche Blätter, II, 217, and by
Müllenhoff in his Altdeutsche Sprachproben, p. 125. Of this poem, which
Warnatsch, pp 105-110, holds to be a fragment of a lost romance of
Lanzelet, written before the 'Crône,' only 994 verses are left.
Deducting about a hundred of introduction, there are some 782 German
against some 314 French verses, an excess which is owing, no doubt,
largely to insertions and expansions on the part of Heinrich, but in
some measure to the existing texts of the fabliau having suffered
abridgment. The whole matter of the church service, with the going and
coming, is dispatched in less than a dozen verses in the French, but
occupies more than seventy in German, and just here we read in the
French:
Ci ne vueil je plus demorer,
Ni de noient fere lone conte,
Si con l'estoire le raconte.
But possibly the last verse should be taken with what follows.
[218] In Hahn, Griechische Märchen, No 70, II, 60 f, a walnut contains a
dress with the earth and its flowers displayed on it, an almond one with
the heaven and its stars, a hazel-nut one with the sea and its fishes.
No 7, I, 99, a walnut contains a complete costume exhibiting heaven with
its stars, a hazel-nut another with the sea and its waves. No 67, II,
33, an almond encloses a woman's dress with heaven and its stars on it,
a hazel-nut a suit for her husband. In the Grimms' No 113, three walnuts
contain successively each a finer dress than the other, II, 142 f, ed.
1857. There are three similar nuts in Haltrich, No 43, and in
Volksmärchen aus Venetien, Jahrbuch für r. u. e. Lit., VII, 249, No 12.
Ulrich's mantle is worked with all manner of beasts, birds, and sea
monsters, on earth or under, and betwixt earth and heaven: Lanzelet,
5820-27.
[219] I cite the text according to Warnatsch. Warnatsch thinks it worth
noticing that it is the queen only, in Mantel 771 f, as in our ballad,
st. 14, that curses the maker of the mantle; not, as in the fabliau, the
gentlemen whose feelings were so much tried. These, like the queen in
the ballad, ont maudit le mantel, et celui qui li aporta.
[220] Not even for Ginovere hübsch unde guot, or Enîte diu reine. The
queen has always been heedful of her acts, and has never done anything
wrong: doch ist siu an den gedenken missevarn, Heaven knows how. Ulrich
is very feeble here.
A remark is here in place which will be still more applicable to some of
the tests that are to be spoken of further on. Both the French fabliau
and the English ballad give to the mantle the power of detecting the
woman that has once done amiss, a de rien messerré. We naturally suppose
that we understand what is meant. The trial in the fabliau is so
conducted as to confirm our original conception of the nature of the
inquest, and so it is, in the case of Arthur's queen, Kay's lady, and
the old knight's wife, in the ballad. But when we come to the charmingly
pretty passage about Cradock's wife, what are we to think? Is the mantle
in a teasing mood, or is it exhibiting its real quality? If once to have
kissed Cradock's mouth before marriage is once to have done amiss,
Heaven keep our Mirandas and our Perditas, and Heaven forgive our
Juliets and our Rosalinds! ("Les dames et demoiselles, pour être baisées
devant leur noces, il n'est pas la coutume de France," we know, but this
nice custom could hardly have had sway in England. Is then this passage
rendered from something in French that is lost?) But the mantle, in the
ballad, after indulging its humor or its captiousness for a moment, does
Cradock's wife full justice. The mantle, if uncompromising as to acts,
at least does not assume to bring thoughts under its jurisdiction. Many
of the probations allow themselves this range, and as no definite idea
is given of what is charged, no one need be shocked, or perhaps
disturbed, by the number of convictions. The satire loses zest, and the
moral effect is not improved.
[221] Nul femme que [ne] vouloit lesser sauoir à soun marry soun fet et
pensé. T. Wright, in Archæologia Cambrensis, January, 1863, p. 10. Mr
Wright gives one of the texts of Cort Mantel, with an English
translation. We are further told, in Scalachronica, that this mantle was
afterwards made into a chasuble, and that it is "to this day" preserved
at Glastonbury. Three versions of the fabliau testify that Carados and
his _amie_ deposited the mantle in a Welsh abbey. The Skikkju Rímur say
that the lady presented it to the cloister of Cologne; the Möttulssaga
has simply a monastery (and, indeed, the mantle, as described by some,
must have had a vocation that way from the beginning). "Item, in the
castel of Douer ye may see Gauwayn's skull and Cradok's mantel:" Caxton,
in his preface to Kyng Arthur, 1485, I, ii, in Southey's ed.; cited by
Michel, Tristan, II, 181, and from him by Warnatsch.
[222] For this enchanter see _Le Livre de Karados_ in Perceval le
Gallois, ed. Potvin, II, 118 ff. It is not said in the printed copy that
he sent the mantle [horn].
[223] Another copy, assigned to the end of the 14th century, from the
Kolmar MS., Barisch, p. 373, No LXIX (Warnatsch).
[224] Warnatsch shows, p. 75 f, that the fastnachtspiel must have been
made up in part from some version of the Mantle story which was also the
source of the meisterlied, and in part from a meisterlied of the Horn,
which will be mentioned further on.
[225] The Dean of Lismore's Book, edited by Rev. Thomas M'Lauchlan, p.
72 of the translation, 50/51 of the original. Repeated in Campbell's
Heroic Gaelic Ballads, p. 138 f, 'The Maid of the White Mantle.' Mr
Campbell remarks: "This ballad, or the story of it, is known in Irish
writings. It is not remembered in Scotland now." Mr Wright cites this
poem, Archæologia Cambrensis, p. 14 f, 39 f.
[226] Cf. Arthur in the Lai du Corn and Fraw Tristerat Horn, a little
further on.
[227] Wolf at first speaks of the lai as being made over into the
fabliau, in regular court style, ganz nach höfischer Weise, about the
middle of the 13th century; then goes on to say that even if the author
of the fabliau followed another version of the story, he must have known
the jongleur's poem, because he has repeated some of the introductory
lines of the lai. This excellent scholar happened, for once, not to
observe that the first fourteen lines of the lai, excepting the fourth,
which is questionable, are in a longer metre than the rest of the poem,
in eights and sevens, not sixes, and the first three of the lai, which
agree with the first three of the fabliau, in the eight-syllable verse
of the latter; so that it was not the author of the fabliau that
borrowed. Warnatsch (who has also made this last remark) has noted other
agreements between lai and fabliau, p. 61. Both of these acknowledge
their derivation from an earlier _dit, estoire_, not having which we
shall find it hard to determine by which and from what the borrowing was
done.
[228] Montpellier MS.
[229] Perceval exhibits agreements, both as to phrase and matter, now
with the lai, now with the fabliau, and this phenomenon will occur again
and again. This suggests the likelihood of a source which combined
traits of both lai and fabliau: Warnatsch, pp 62-64.
[230] So amended by Zingerle from Syrneyer lant. A third copy is cited
as in the Kolmar MS., No 806, Bartsch, Meisterlieder der Kolmarer
Handschrift, p. 74 (Warnatsch). A remarkable agreement between the
French lai, 94, 97, 99-102, and Wigamur 2623-30 convinces Warnatsch that
the source of this meisterlied must have been a Middle High German
rendering of some form of the Drinking-horn Test closely resembling the
lai. See Warnatsch, p. 66.
[231] The king of _Spain_, who is again the poorest of all the kings, p.
206, line 32, p. 214, line 22, is addressed by Arthur as his nephew, p.
207, line 11, and p. 193, line 30. Carados is called Arthur's nephew in
Perceval (he is son of Arthur's niece), e.g. 15,782, and Carados, his
father, is Carados de _Vaigne_, II, 117. It is said of Kalegras's _amie_
in the 'Mantle Rhymes,' III, 59, that many a lady looked down upon her.
This may be a chance expression, or possibly point to the poverty which
is attributed to the royal pair of Spain in Fastnachtspiele, Nos 81,
127, and in Frau Tristerat Horn. In Der Lanethen Mantel, Laneth is
Arthur's niece, and poor: see p. 261.
The fastnachtspiel has points in common with the fabliau, and the
assumption of a source which combined features of both lai and fabliau
is warrantable: Warnatsch, pp 66-68.
[232] This is a thoroughly dissolute piece, but not ambiguous. It is
also the most humorous of the whole series.
[233] Warnatsch shows that Heinrich cannot have derived any part of his
Trinkhornprobe from the Perceval of Chrestien, characteristic agreements
with Perceval being entirely wanting. There are agreements with the lai,
many more with the fabliau; and Heinrich's poem, so far as it is not of
his own invention, he believes to be compounded from his own version of
the fabliau and some lost version of the Horn-test: pp 111-114.
[234] The principal variations of this name, of which the Welsh Caradoc
is assumed to be the original, are: Craddocke (English ballad); Carados,
Caradox (Cort Mantel); Karodes (Scalachronica); Caraduz (Crône, 2309,
elsewhere) Karadas; Carigras, Kaligras (Rímur); Karodeus, Caraduel
(Perceval, 12,466, 12,457, 12,491, but generally), Carados, -ot, or;
Caraduel (Messire Gauvain, 3943); Garadue (Lai du Corn); Karadin
(Möttuls Saga). Garadue probably==Caraduel, which, in Percival twice,
and once in Messire Gauvain, is used for Carados, through confusion with
Arthur's residence, Carduel, Cardoil. So Karadas is twice put in the
Crône, 16,726, 16,743, for Karidol==Cardoil. Might not Karadin have been
written for Karadiu?
[235] Tristan of Hélie de Borron, I, 73 verso, in Rajna, Fonti dell'
Orlando Furioso, p. 498 ff. So in Malory's King Arthur, Southey, I, 297,
Wright, II, 64. The Italian Tristan, La Tavola Ritonda, ed. Polidori,
XLIII, pp 157-160, makes 686 try, of whom only 13 prove to be innocent,
and those in spite of themselves. Another account exempts 2 out of 365:
Nannucci, Manuale, II, 168-171.
[236] Un vasello fatto da ber, qual già, per fare accorto il suo
fratello del fallo di Ginevra, fe Morgana: XLIII, 28; un bel nappo d'or,
di fuor di gamme, XLII, 98. The Orlando concurs with the prose Tristan
as to the malice of Morgan, but does not, with the Tristan, depart from
prescription in making the women drink. Warnatsch observes that the
Orlando agrees with the Horn Fastnachtspiel, and may with it follow some
lost version of the story: p. 69.
Before leaving these drinking-tests, mention may be made of Oberon's
gold cup, which, upon his passing his right hand three times round it
and making the sign of the cross, fills with wine enough for all the
living and the dead; but no one can drink s'il n'est preudom, et nes et
purs et sans pecié mortel: Huon de Bordeaux, ed. Guessard et
Grandmaison, p. 109 f, vv 3652-69.
[237] The Myvyrian Archæology of Wales, II, 13, triad 54==triad 103, p.
73; p. 17, triad 78==triad 108, p. 73.
[238] See the story in Le Livre de Carados, Perceval le Gallois, Potvin,
especially II, 214-16, vv 15,577-638. "The Rev. Evan Evans," says Percy,
Reliques, III, 349, ed. 1794, "affirmed that the story of the Boy and
the Mantle is taken from what is related in some of the old Welsh MSS of
Tegan Earfron, _one of King Arthur's mistresses_." This aspersion, which
is even absurd, must have arisen from a misunderstanding on the part of
the Bishop: no Welshman could so err.
[239] Myvyrian Archæology, III, 247^a, No 10, pointed out to me by
Professor Evans. The story of the 'Boy and the Mantle,' says Warton, "is
recorded in many manuscript Welsh chronicles, as I learn from original
letters of Llwyd, in the Ashmolean Museum:" History of English Poetry,
ed. 1871, I, 97, note 1.
[240] The horn is No 4 in Jones's list, and No 3 in a manuscript of
Justice Bosanquet; the knife is 13th in Jones and 6th in the other; the
mantle of invisibility is 13th in the Bosanquet series, and, under the
title of Arthur's veil or mask, 1st in Jones. The mantle of Tegau
Eurvron does not occur in the Bosanquet MS. Jones says, "The original
Welsh account of the above regalia was transcribed from a transcript of
Mr Edward Llwyd, the antiquary, who informs me that he copied it from an
old parchment MS. I have collated this with two other MSS." Not a word
of dates. Jones's Welsh Bards, II, 47-49; Lady Charlotte Guest's
Mabinogion, II, 353-55.
Lady Charlotte Guest remarks that a boar's head in some form appears as
the armorial bearing of all of Caradawc's name. Though most anxious to
believe all that is said of Caradawc, I am compelled to doubt whether
this goes far to prove that he owned the knife celebrated in the ballad.
[241] Heinrich seeks to put his wearisome invention off on Chrestien de
Troyes. Warnatsch argues with force against any authorship but
Heinrich's, pp 116 ff.
[242] Gawain had failed in the earlier trial, though he had no fault in
mind or body, except that he rated his favor with women too high:
1996-2000.
In the first two probations a false heart is the corpus delicti;
something is said of carnal offences, but not very distinctly.
The scope of the glove is of the widest. It takes cognizance of _rede
und gedanc_ in maids, _werc und gedanc_ in wives, _tugent und manheit,
unzuht und zageheit_, in men. One must have known as little what one was
convicted of as if one had been in the hands of the Holy Office.
[243] Fastnachtspiele aus dem fünfzehnten Jahrhundert, Zweiter Theil, p.
654, No 80.
[244] From Vulpius's Curiositäten, II, 463, in Erlach, I, 132, after a
printed copy of the beginning of the 16th century: Wolff, Halle der
Völker, II, 243, from a Fliegendes Blatt of the 16th century. Two copies
are cited by title in Mone's Anzeiger, VIII, 354 b, No 1; 378, No 165.
Wolff prints Asion.
[245] A man must be "clear as beryl." One of the knights is tumbled into
the water for having kissed a lady; but this is according to the code,
for he had done it without leave. We learn from Perceval that kissing is
permissible; marry, not without the lady be willing. 'Die bruck zu
Karidol' is alluded to in 'Der Spiegel,' Meister Alswert, ed. Holland u.
Keller, p. 179, vv 10-13. (Goedeke.) A man who has transferred his
devotion from an earlier love to the image of a lady shown him in a
mirror says the bridge would have thrown him over.
[246] Florimel's girdle is a poor contrivance every way, and most of all
for practical purposes; for we are told in stanza 3 that it _gives_ the
virtue of chaste love to all who wear it, and then that whosoever
contrary doth prove cannot keep it on. But what could one expect from a
cast-off girdle of Venus?
[247] Nightingales in Grundtvig, No 274, #A#, #B#: see p. 64. See, also,
Uhland, Zur Geschichte der Dichtung, III, 121 f.
[248] Neither the Sanskrit Shukasaptati nor Nakshabi's Persian version,
made early in the fourteenth century, has been published. The Turkish
version is said to have been made in the second half of the next
century, for Bajazet II. Kadiri's is probably of the seventeenth
century. An English and Persian version (Kadiri's), 1801, has the tale
at p. 43; Small's English, from a Hindustani version of Kadiri, 1875, at
p. 40.
[249] In the Contes à rire, p. 89, a sylph who loves a prince gives him
a flower and a vase which will blacken upon his wife's proving
unfaithful: Legrand, 1779, I, 78. I have not seen this edition of the
book, but presume that this tale is entirely akin with the above.
[250] Cf. the King of Spain, at pp. 261, 263. The agreement may, or may
not, be accidental.
[251] All these examples of the probation by flowers, shirt, or picture
are noticed in Loiseleur Deslongchamps, Essai sur les Fables Indiennes,
p. 107 ff; or in Von der Hagen's Gesammtabenteuer, III, lxxxiv ff; or in
an article by Reinhold Köhler, of his usual excellence, in Jahrbuch für
romanische und englische Literatur, VIII, 44 ff.
[252] Köhler, as above, p. 60 f.
[253] There is a stone in the Danish Vigoleis with the Gold Wheel which
no one could approach "who was not as clean as when he came from his
mother's body." Gawain could touch it with his hand, Arthur often sat
upon it, and Vigoleis was found sitting on it. Nyerup, Almindelig
Morskabslæsning i Danmark og Norge, p. 129, a chap-book of 1732. The
stone is not quite so strict in the German Volksbuch, Marbach, No 18, p.
13 f, Simrock, III, 432 f. In the German romance no man less than
immaculate in all respects can touch it: Wigalois, ed. Benecke, p. 57,
vv 1485-88.
[254] Georgii Codini Excerpta de antiquitatibus Constantinopolitanis, in
Corpus Scriptorum Historiæ Byzantinæ, XLV, 50 f, cited by Liebrecht,
Germania, I, 264; De Originibus Constantinopolitanis, cited by Lütcke,
Von der Hagen's Germania, I, 252, referred to by Liebrecht: both
anecdotes in Banduri, Imperium Orientale, Anonymus de Ant. Const. p. 35,
96, p. 57, 162. The statue again in a note of Nic. Alemannus to
Procopius, Arcana, 1623, p. 83: cited by Mr Wright, Archæologia
Cambrensis, as above, p. 17. Mr Wright also makes mention, p. 16, of the
blind dog that quidam Andreas (evidently a merry one) was exhibiting in
the seventeenth year of Justinian, which, among other clever
performances, ostendebat in utero habentes et fornicarios et adulteros
et avaros et magnanimos--omnes cum veritate: Historia Miscella,
Eyssenhardt, p. 377 f, l. 18, c. 23; Cedrenus, in the Byzantine Corpus,
XXXIII, 657, Theophanes, in XXXVIII, 347 f.
[255] The Meisterlieder and the Indian tale are cited by Warnatsch.
Virgil's statue was circumvented by an artifice which is employed in
this tale of the Shukasaptati, and in other oriental stories presumably
derived from it; and so was the well-known Bocca della Verità,
Kaiserchronik, Massmann, pp 448 f. The Bocca della Verità bit off the
fingers of perjurers, but took no particular cognizance of the unchaste.
A barley-corn [grain of wheat], again, which stood on end when _any_
false oath was sworn over it, Jülg, Mongolische Märchensammlung, Die
Geschichte des Ardschi-Bordschi Chan, pp 250-52, cited by Benfey,
Pantschatantra, I, 458, and referred to by Warnatsch, does not belong
with special tests of chastity.
[256] The phrase looks more malicious than _naïf_, whether Austrian or
Spanish, and implies, I fear, an exsufflicate and blown surmise about
female virtue; and so of the Indian 'Volksglaube.' The candle-test is
said to be in use for men in Silesia: Warnatsch, citing Weinhold, p. 58.
[257] These are all noted in Liebrecht's Dunlop, pp 11, 16, 33. The
spring, says the author of Hysmine, served as good a purpose for
Artycomis as the Rhine did for the Celts; referring to a test of the
legitimacy of children by swinging or dipping them in the Rhine, which
the "Celts" practiced, according to a poem in the Anthology: Jacobs, II,
42 f, No 125; Grimm, Deutsche Rechtsalterthümer, p. 935 (Warnatsch).
[258] Besides sources specially referred to, there may be mentioned, as
particularly useful for the history of these tests. Legrand, Fabliaux,
1779, I, 60, 76-78; Dunlop's History of Fiction, 1814, in many places,
with Liebrecht's notes, 1851; Grässe, Sagenkreise, 1842, pp 185-87; Von
der Hagen's Gesammtabenteuer, 1850, III, lxxxiv-xc, cxxxv f.
30
KING ARTHUR AND KING CORNWALL
Percy MS., p. 24. Hales & Furnivall, I, 61; Madden's Syr
Gawayne, p. 275.
The mutilation of the earlier pages of the Percy manuscript leaves us in
possession of only one half of this ballad, and that half in eight
fragments, so that even the outline of the story cannot be fully made
out.[259] We have, to be sure, the whole of a French poem which must be
regarded as the probable source of the ballad, and, in view of the
recklessness of the destroyer Time, may take comfort; for there are few
things in this kind that the Middle Ages have bequeathed which we could
not better spare. But the losses from the English ballad are still very
regrettable, since from what is in our hands we can see that the story
was treated in an original way, and so much so that comparison does not
stead us materially.
'King Arthur and King Cornwall' is apparently an imitation, or a
traditional variation, of Charlemagne's Journey to Jerusalem and
Constantinople, a _chanson de geste_ of complete individuality and of
remarkable interest. This all but incomparable relic exists in only a
single manuscript,[260] and that ill written and not older than the end
of the thirteenth century, while the poem itself may be assigned to the
beginning of the twelfth, if not to the latter part of the
eleventh.[261] Subsequently, the story, with modifications, was
introduced into the romance of Galien, and in this setting it occurs in
three forms, two manuscript of the fifteenth century, and the third a
printed edition of the date 1500. These are all in prose, but betray by
metrical remains imbedded in them their descent from a romance in verse,
which there are reasons for putting at least as early as the beginning
of the fourteenth century.[262]
A very little of the story, and this little much changed, is found in
Italian romances of Charles's Journey to Spain and of Ogier the Dane.
The derivation from Galien is patent.[263]
The Journey of Charlemagne achieved great popularity, as it needs must.
It forms a section of the Karlamagnus Saga, a prose translation into
Norse of _gestes_ of Charles and his peers, made in the thirteenth
century, and probably for King Hákon the Old, though this is not
expressly said, as in the case of the 'Mantle.' Through the Norwegian
version the story of Charles's journey passed into the other
Scandinavian dialects. There is a Swedish version, slightly defective,
existing in a manuscript earlier than 1450, and known to be older than
the manuscript, and a Danish abridgment, thought to have been made from
the Swedish version, is preserved in a manuscript dated 1480, which
again is probably derived from an elder. Like the 'Mantle,' the Journey
of Charlemagne is treated in Icelandic Rímur, the oldest manuscript
being put at about 1500. These Rhymes (Geiplur, Gabs, Japes), though
their basis is the Norwegian saga, present variations from the existing
manuscripts of this saga. There is also a Färöe traditional ballad upon
this theme, 'Geipa-táttur.' This ballad has much that is peculiar to
itself.[264]
Charlemagne's Journey was also turned into Welsh in the thirteenth
century. Three versions are known, of which the best is in the Red Book
of Hergest.[265]
Let us now see what is narrated in the French poem.
One day when Charlemagne was at St Denis he had put on his crown and
sword, and his wife had on a most beautiful crown, too. Charles took her
by the hand, under an olive-tree, and asked her if she had ever seen a
king to whom crown and sword were so becoming. The empress was so unwise
as to reply that possibly he thought too well of himself: she knew of a
king who appeared to even better advantage when he wore his crown.
Charles angrily demanded where this king was to be found: they would
wear their crowns together, and if the French sided with her, well; but
if she had not spoken truth, he would cut off her head. The empress
endeavored to explain away what she had said: the other king was simply
richer, but not so good a knight, etc. Charles bade her name him, on her
head. There being no escape, the empress said she had heard much of
Hugo, the emperor of Greece and Constantinople. "By my faith," said
Charles, "you have made me angry and lost my love, and are in a fair way
to lose your head, too. I will never rest till I have seen this king."
The emperor, having made his offering at St Denis, returned to Paris,
taking with him his twelve peers and some thousand of knights. To these
he announced that they were to accompany him to Jerusalem, to adore the
cross and the sepulchre, and that he would incidentally look up a king
that he had heard of. They were to take with them seven hundred camels,
laden with gold and silver, and be prepared for an absence of seven
years.
Charlemagne gave his people a handsome equipment, but not of arms. They
left behind them their lances and swords, and took the pilgrim's staff
and scrip. When they came to a great plain it appeared that the number
was not less than eighty thousand: but we do not have to drag this host
through the story, which concerns itself only with Charles and his
peers. They arrived at Jerusalem one fine day, selected their inns, and
went to the minster. Here Jesus and his apostles had sung mass, and the
chairs which they had occupied were still there. Charles seated himself
in the middle one, his peers on either side. A Jew came in, and, seeing
Charles, fell to trembling; so fierce was the countenance of the emperor
that he dared not look at it, but fled from the church to the patriarch,
and begged to be baptized, for God himself and the twelve apostles were
come. The patriarch went to the church, in procession, with his clergy.
Charles rose and made a profound salutation, the priest and the monarch
embraced, and the patriarch inquired who it was that had assumed to
enter that church as he had done. "Charles is my name," was the answer.
"Twelve kings have I conquered, and I am seeking a thirteenth whom I
have heard of. I have come to Jerusalem to adore the cross and the
sepulchre." The patriarch proving gracious, Charles went on to ask for
relics to take home with him. "A plentet en avrez," says the patriarch;
"St Simeon's arm, St Lazarus's head, St Stephen's--" "Thanks!" "The
sudarium, one of the nails, the crown of thorns, the cup, the dish, the
knife, some of St Peter's beard, some hairs from his head--" "Thanks!"
"Some of Mary's milk, of the holy shift--" And all these Charles
received.[266] He stayed four months in Jerusalem, and began the church
of St Mary. He presented the patriarch with a hundred mule-loads of gold
and silver, and asked "his leave and pardon" to return to France: but
first he would find out the king whom his wife had praised. They take
the way through Jericho to gather palms. The relics are so strong that
every stream they come to divides before them, every blind man receives
sight, the crooked are made straight, and the dumb speak.[267] On
reaching Constantinople they have ample reason to be impressed with the
magnificence of the place. Passing twenty thousand knights, who are
playing at chess and tables, dressed in pall and ermine, with fur cloaks
training at their feet, and three thousand damsels in equally sumptuous
attire, who are disporting with their lovers, they come to the king, who
is at that moment taking his day at the plough, not on foot, goad in
hand, but seated most splendidly in a chair drawn by mules, and holding
a gold wand, the plough all gold, too; none of this elegance, however,
impairing the straightness of his majesty's furrow. The kings exchange
greetings. Charles tells Hugo that he is last from Jerusalem, and should
be glad to see him and his knights. Hugo makes him free to stay a year,
if he likes, unyokes the oxen, and conducts his guests to the palace.
The palace is gorgeous in the extreme, and, omitting other architectural
details, it is circular, and so constructed as to turn like a wheel when
the wind strikes it from the west. Charles thinks his own wealth not
worth a glove in comparison, and remembers how he had threatened his
wife. "Lordings," he says, "many a palace have I seen, but none like
this had even Alexander, Constantine, or Cæsar." At that moment a strong
wind arose which set the palace in lively motion; the emperor was fain
to sit down on the floor; the twelve peers were all upset, and as they
lay on their backs, with faces covered, said one to the other, "This is
a bad business: the doors are open, and yet we can't get out!" But as
evening approached the wind subsided; the Franks recovered their legs,
and went to supper. At the table they saw the queen and the princess, a
beautiful blonde, of whom Oliver became at once enamored. After a most
royal repast, the king conducted Charles and the twelve to a
bed-chamber, in which there were thirteen beds. It is doubtful whether
modern luxury can vie with the appointments in any respect, and certain
that we are hopelessly behind in one, for this room was lighted by a
carbuncle. But, again, there was one luxury which Hugo did not allow
them, and this was privacy, even so much privacy as thirteen can have.
He had put a man in a hollow place under a marble stair, to watch them
through a little hole.
The Franks, as it appears later, had drunk heavily at supper, and this
must be their excuse for giving themselves over, when in a foreign
country, to a usage or propensity which they had no doubt indulged in at
home, and which is familiar in northern poetry and saga, that of making
brags (gabs, Anglo-Saxon beót, gilp[268]). Charles began: Let Hugo arm
his best man in two hauberks and two helms, and set him on a charger:
then, if he will lend me his sword, I will with a blow cut through
helms, hauberks, and saddle, and if I let it have its course, the blade
shall never be recovered but by digging a spear's depth in the ground.
"Perdy," says the man in hiding, "what a fool King Hugo was when he gave
you lodging!"
Roland followed: Tell Hugo to lend me his horn, and I will go into yon
plain and blow such a blast that not a gate or a door in all the city
shall be left standing, and a good man Hugo will be, if he faces me, not
to have his beard burned from his face and his fur robe carried away.
Again said the man under the stair, "What a fool was King Hugo!"
The emperor next called upon Oliver, whose gab was:
'Prenget li reis sa fille qui tant at bloi le peil,
En sa chambre nos metet en un lit en requeit;
Se jo n'ai testimoigne de li anuit cent feiz,
Demain perde la teste, par covent li otrei.'
"You will stop before that," said the spy; "great shame have you
spoken."
Archbishop Turpin's brag was next in order: it would have been more in
keeping for Turpin of Hounslow Heath, and we have all seen it performed
in the travelling circus. While three of the king's best horses are
running at full speed on the plain, he will overtake and mount the
foremost, passing the others, and will keep four big apples in constant
motion from one hand to the other; if he lets one fall, put out his
eyes.[269] "A good brag this," is the comment of the simple scout
(_l'escolte_), "and no shame to my lord."
William of Orange will take in one hand a metal ball which thirty men
have never been able to stir, and will hurl it at the palace wall and
bring down more than forty toises of it. "The king is a knave if he does
not make you try," says _l'escolte_.
The other eight gabs may be passed over, save one. Bernard de Brusban
says, "You see that roaring stream? To-morrow I will make it leave its
bed, cover the fields, fill the cellars of the city, drench the people,
and drive King Hugo into his highest tower, from which he shall never
come down without my leave." "The man is mad," says the spy. "What a
fool King Hugo was! As soon as morning dawns they shall all pack."
The spy carries his report to his master without a moment's delay. Hugo
swears that if the brags are not accomplished as made, his guests shall
lose their heads, and orders out a hundred thousand men-at-arms to
enforce his resolution.
When the devout emperor of the west came from mass the next morning
(Hugo was evidently not in a state of mind to go), he advanced to meet
his brother of Constantinople, olive branch in hand; but Hugo called out
from far off, "Charles, why did you make me the butt of your brags and
your scorns?" and repeated that all must be done, or thirteen heads
would fall. Charles replied that they had drunk a good deal of wine the
night before, and that it was the custom for the French when they had
gone to bed to allow themselves in jesting. He desired to speak with his
knights. When they were together, the emperor said that they had drunk
too much, and had uttered what they ought not. He caused the relics to
be brought, and they all fell to praying and beating their breasts, that
they might be saved from Hugo's wrath, when lo, an angel appeared, who
bade them not be afraid; they had committed a great folly yesterday, and
must never brag again, but for this time, "Go, begin, not one of them
shall fail."[270]
Charles returned to Hugo master of the situation. He repeated that they
had drunk too much wine the night before, and went on to say that it was
an outrage on Hugo's part to set a spy in the room, and that they knew a
land where such an act would be accounted villainy: "but all shall be
carried out; choose who shall begin." Hugo said, Oliver; and let him not
fall short of his boast, or I will cut off his head, and the other
twelve shall share his fate. The next morning, in pursuance of an
arrangement made between Oliver and the princess, the king was informed
that what had been undertaken had been precisely discharged. "The first
has saved himself," says Hugo; "by magic, I believe; now I wish to know
about the rest." "What next?" says Charlemagne. William of Orange was
called for, threw off his furs, lifted the huge ball with one hand,
hurled it at the wall, and threw down more than forty toises. "They are
enchanters," said the king to his men. "Now I should like to see if the
rest will do as much. If one of them fails, I will hang them all
to-morrow." "Do you want any more of the gabs?" asked Charles. Hugo
called upon Bernard to do what he had threatened. Bernard asked the
prayers of the emperor, ran down to the water, and made the sign of the
cross. All the water left its bed, spread over the fields, came into the
city, filled the cellars, drenched the people, and drove King Hugo into
his highest tower; Charles and the peers being the while ensconced in an
old pine-tree, all praying for God's pity.
Charles in the tree heard Hugo in the tower making his moan: he would
give the emperor all his treasure, would become his man and hold his
kingdom of him. The emperor was moved, and prayed that the flood might
stop, and at once the water began to ebb. Hugo was able to descend from
his tower, and he came to Charles, under an "ympe tree," and repeated
what he had uttered in the moment of extremity. "Do you want the rest of
the gabs?" asked Charles. "Ne de ceste semaine," replied Hugo. "Then,
since you are my man," said the emperor, "we will make a holiday and
wear our crowns together." When the French saw the two monarchs walking
together, and Charles overtopping Hugo by fifteen inches, they said the
queen was a fool to compare anybody with him.
After this promenade there was mass, at which Turpin officiated, and
then a grand dinner. Hugo once more proffered all his treasures to
Charles, but Charles would not take a denier. "We must be going," he
said. The French mounted their mules, and went off in high spirits. Very
happy was Charles to have conquered such a king without a battle.
Charles went directly to St Denis, and performed his devotions. The nail
and the crown he deposited on the altar, distributed the other relics
over the kingdom, and for the love of the sepulchre he gave up his anger
against the queen.
The story in the English ballad, so far as it is to be collected from
our eight fragments, is that Arthur, represented as King of Little
Britain, while boasting to Gawain of his round table, is told by
Guenever that she knows of one immeasurably finer; the very trestle is
worth his halls and his gold, and the palace it stands in is worth all
Little Britain besides; but not a word will she say as to where this
table and this goodly building may be. Arthur makes a vow never to sleep
two nights in one place till he sees that round table; and, taking for
companions Gawain, Tristram, Sir Bredbeddle, and an otherwise unknown
Sir Marramiles, sets out on the quest.
The pilgrimage which, to save his dignity, Charles makes a cover for his
visit to the rival king forms no part of Arthur's programme.[271] The
five assume a palmer's weed simply for disguise, and travel east and
west, in many a strange country, only to arrive at Cornwall, so very
little a way from home.
The proud porter of Cornwall's gate, a minion swain, befittingly clad in
a suit of gold, for his master is the richest king in Christendom, or
yet in heathenness, is evidently impressed with Arthur's bearing, as is
quite the rule in such cases:[272] he has been porter thirty years and
three, but [has never seen the like]. Cornwall would naturally ask the
pilgrims some questions. From their mentioning some shrine of Our Lady
he infers that they have been in Britain,--Little Britain we must
suppose to be meant. Cornwall asks if they ever knew King Arthur, and
boasts that he had lived seven years in Little Britain, and had had a
daughter by Arthur's wife, now a lady of radiant beauty, and Arthur has
none such.[273] He then sends for his steed, which he can ride three
times as far in a day as Arthur can any of his, and we may suppose that
he also exhibits to his guests a horn and a sword of remarkable
properties, and a Bur-low-Beanie, or Billy-Blin, a seven-headed,
fire-breathing fiend whom he has in his service. Arthur is then
conducted to bed, and the Billy-Blin, shut up, as far as we can make
out, in some sort of barrel, or other vessel,[274] is set by Arthur's
bed-side to hear and report the talk of the pilgrims. Now, it would
seem, the knights make each their vow or brag. Arthur's is that he will
be the death of Cornwall King before he sees Little Britain. Gawain, who
represents Oliver, will have Cornwall's daughter home with him. Here
there is an unlucky gap. Tristram should undertake to carry off the
horn, Marramiles the steed, and Sir Bredbeddle the sword. But first it
would be necessary to subdue the loathly fiend. Bredbeddle goes to work
without dallying, bursts open the rub-chadler with his sword, and fights
the fire-breathing monster in a style that is a joy to see; but sword,
knife, and axe all break, and he is left without a weapon. Yet he had
something better to fall back on, and that was a little book which he
had found by the seaside, no doubt in the course of those long travels
which conducted the pilgrims from Little Britain to Cornwall. It was
probably a book of Evangiles; our Lord had written it with his hands and
sealed it with his blood. With this little book, which in a manner takes
the place of the relics in the French tale, for the safety of the
pilgrims and the accomplishment of their vows are secured through it,
Bredbeddle conjures the Burlow-beanie, and shuts him up till wanted in a
"wall of stone," which reminds us of the place in which Hugo's spy is
concealed. He then reports to Arthur, who has a great desire to see the
fiend in all his terrors, and, upon the king's promising to stand firm,
Bredbeddle makes the fiend start out again, with his seven heads and the
fire flying out of his mouth. The Billy-Blin is now entirely amenable to
command: Bredbeddle has only to "conjure" him to do a thing, and it is
done. First he fetches down the steed. Marramiles, who perhaps had vowed
to bring off the horse, considers that he is the man to ride him, but
finds he can do nothing with him, and has to call on Bredbeddle for
help. The Billy-Blin is required to tell how the steed is to be ridden,
and reveals that three strokes of a gold wand which stands in Cornwall's
study-window will make him spring like spark from brand. And so it comes
out that Cornwall is a magician. Next the horn has to be fetched, but,
when brought, it cannot be sounded. For this a certain powder is
required. This the fiend procures, and Tristram blows a blast which
rends the horn up to the midst.[275] Finally the Billy-Blin is conjured
to fetch the sword, and with this sword Arthur goes and strikes off
Cornwall's head. So Arthur keeps his vow, and, so far as we can see, all
the rest are in a condition to keep theirs.
The English ballad retains too little of the French story to enable us
to say what form of it this little was derived from. The poem of Galien
would cover all that is borrowed as well as the Journey of Charlemagne.
It may be regarded as an indication of late origin that in this ballad
Arthur is king of _Little_ Britain, that Bredbeddle and Marramiles are
made the fellows of Gawain and Tristram, Bredbeddle carrying off all the
honors, and that Cornwall has had an intrigue with Arthur's queen. The
name Bredbeddle is found elsewhere only in the late Percy version of the
romance of the Green Knight, Hales and Furnivall, II, 56, which version
alludes to a custom of the Knights of the Bath, an order said to have
been instituted by Henry IV at his coronation, in 1399.
The Färöe ballad, 'Geipa-táttur,' exists in four versions: #A#, Svabo's
manuscript collection, 1782, III, 1, 85 stanzas; #B#, Sandøbog, 1822, p.
49, 140 stanzas; #C#, Fugløbog, c. 1840, p. 9, 120 stanzas; #D#, Syderø
version, obtained by Hammershaimb, 1848, 103 stanzas.[276] It repeats
the story of the Norse saga, with a moderate number of traditional
accretions and changes. The emperor, from his throne, asks his champions
where is his superior [equal]. They all drop their heads; no one
ventures to answer but the queen, who better had been silent. "The
emperor of Constantinople" (Hákin, #D#), she says, "is thy superior."
"If he is not," answers Karl, "thou shalt burn on bale." In #B#, when
they have already started for Constantinople, Turpin persuades them to
go rather to Jerusalem: in the other versions it must be assumed that
the holy city was on the route. As Karl enters the church the bells ring
and the candles light of themselves, #C#, #D#. There are thirteen seats
in the choir: Karl takes the one that Jesus had occupied, and the peers
those of the apostles. A heathen tells the patriarch[277] that the Lord
is come down from heaven, #C#, #D#. The patriarch proceeds to the
church, with no attendance but his altar-book [singing from his
altar-book]; he asks Karl what he has come for, and Karl replies, to see
the halidoms, #A#, #C#, #D#. In #B# the patriarch presents himself to
the emperor at his lodging, and inquires his purpose; and, learning that
he is on his way to Constantinople, for glory, advises him first to go
to the church, where the ways and means of success are to be found. The
patriarch gives Karl some of the relics: the napkin on which Jesus had
wiped his hands, cups from which he had drunk, etc. Karl, in #A#, #C#,
now announces that he is on his way to Constantinople; the patriarch
begs him not to go, for he will have much to suffer. At the exterior
gate of the palace will be twelve white bears, ready to go at him; the
sight of his sword [of the holy napkin, #B#] will cause them to fall
stone-dead, or at least harmless, #B#. At the gate next within there
will be twelve wolf-dogs[278] [and further on twelve toads, #B#], which
must be disposed of in like wise: etc. The castle stands on a hundred
pillars, #A#, and is full of ingenious contrivances: the floor goes up
to the sky, and the roof comes down to the ground, #B#. Karl now sets
out, with the patriarch's blessing and escort. Before they reach the
palace they come upon three hundred knights and ladies dancing, which
also had been foretold, and at the portals of the palace they find and
vanquish the formidable beasts. The palace is to the full as splendid
and as artfully constructed as they had been informed: the floor goes up
and the roof comes down, #B#; there are monstrous figures (?), with
horns at their mouths, and upon a wind rising the horns all sound, the
building begins to revolve, and the Frenchmen jump up, each clinging to
the other, #B#, #C#, #D#. Karl remembers what his wife had said, #A#,
#D#.
Of the reception by the monarch of Constantinople nothing further is
said. We are immediately taken to the bedroom, in which there are twelve
beds, with a thirteenth in the middle, and also a stone arch, or vault,
inside of which is a man with a candle. Karl proposes that they shall
choose feats, make boasts, rouses [_skemtar_, jests, #C#]. These would
inevitably be more or less deranged and corrupted in the course of
tradition. #A# and #C# have lost many. Karl's boast, dropped in #B#,
#C#, is that he will smite King Hákin, so that the sword's point shall
stick in the ground, #D#; hit the emperor on the neck and knock him off
his horse, #A#. Roland, in all, will blow the emperor's hair off his
head with the blast of his horn. Oliver's remains as in the French poem.
William of Orange's ball is changed to a bolt. The exploit with the
horses and apples is assigned to Bernard in #D#, the only version which
preserves it, as in the Norse saga; and, as in the saga again, it is
Turpin, and not Bernard, who brings in the river upon the town, and
forces the king to take refuge in the tower.
Early in the morning the spy reports in writing, and King Hákin, #D#,
says that Karl and his twelve peers shall burn on the bale, #A#, #C#,
#D#, if they cannot make good their boasts, #B#. Karl's queen appears to
him in his sleep, #A#, and bids him think of last night's words. It is
the queen of Constantinople in #B#, #C#, #D# who rouses Karl to a sense
of his plight; in #B# she tells him that the brags have been reported,
and that burning will be the penalty unless they be achieved. Karl then
sees that his wife knew what she was saying, and vows to give her
Hildarheim and a scarlet cloak if he gets home alive. He hastens to
church; a dove descends from heaven and sits on his arm [in #B# a voice
comes from heaven]; he is assured that the boasts shall all be
performed, but never let such a thing be done again. In #A# three of the
feats are executed, in #D# four, in #C# seven, Oliver's in each case
strictly, and Turpin's, naturally, last. The king in #C# does the feat
which is proposed by Eimer in the saga. #A# and #C# end abruptly with
Turpin's exploit. In #D# Karl falls on his knees and prays, and the
water retires; Karl rides out of Constantinople, followed three days on
the road by Koronatus, as Hákin is now called, stanza 103: it is
Karlamagnús that wears his crown higher. #B# takes a turn of its own.
Roland, Olger and Oliver are called upon to do their brags. Roland blows
so that nobody in Constantinople can keep his legs, and the emperor
falls into the mud, but he blows not a hair off the emperor's head;
Olger slings the gold-bolt over the wall, but breaks off none; Oliver
gives a hundred kisses, as in the saga. The emperor remarks each time, I
hold him no champion that performs his rouse that way. But Turpin's brag
is thoroughly done; the emperor is driven to the tower, and begs Karl to
turn off the water; no more feats shall be exacted. Now the two kaisers
walk in the hall, conferring about tribute, which Karl takes and rides
away. When he reaches home his queen welcomes him, and asks what
happened at Constantinople: "Hvat gekk af?" "This," says Karl; "I know
the truth now; you shall be queen as before, and shall have a voice in
the rule."
It is manifest that Charlemagne's pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the visit
to the king of Constantinople, though somewhat intimately combined in
the old French _geste_, were originally distinct narratives. As far as
we can judge, nothing of the pilgrimage was retained by the English
ballad. We are not certain, even, that it is Charlemagne's visit to Hugo
upon which the ballad was formed, though the great popularity of the
French poem makes this altogether likely. As M. Gaston Paris has said
and shown,[279] the visit to Hugo is one of a cycle of tales of which
the framework is this: that a king who regards himself as the richest or
most magnificent in the world is told that there is somebody that
outstrips him, and undertakes a visit to his rival to determine which
surpasses the other, threatening death to the person who has disturbed
his self-complacency, in case the rival should turn out to be his
inferior. A familiar example is afforded by the tale of Aboulcassem, the
first of the Mille et un Jours. Haroun Alraschid was incessantly
boasting that no prince in the world was so generous as he.[280] The
vizier Giafar humbly exhorted the caliph not to praise himself, but to
leave that to others. The caliph, much piqued, demanded, Do you then
know anybody who compares with me? Giafar felt compelled to reply that
there was a young man at Basra, who, though in a private station, was
not inferior even to the caliph in point of generosity. Haroun was very
angry, and, on Giafar's persisting in what he had said, had the vizier
arrested, and finally resolved to go to Basra to see with his own eyes:
if Giafar should have spoken the truth, he should be rewarded, but in
the other event he should forfeit his life.[281]
This story, it is true, shows no trace of the gabs which Charlemagne and
the peers make, and which Hugo requires to be accomplished on pain of
death. The gabs are a well-known North-European custom, and need not be
sought for further; but the requiring by one king of certain feats to be
executed by another under a heavy penalty is a feature of a large class
of Eastern tales of which there has already been occasion to speak: see
'The Elfin Knight,' p. 11. The demand in these, however, is made not in
person, but through an ambassador. The combination of a personal visit
with a task to be performed under penalty of death is seen in the
Vafþrúðnismál, where Odin, disguised as a traveller, seeks a contest in
knowledge with the wisest of the giants.[282]
The story of the gabs has been retold in two modern imitations: very
indifferently by Nivelle de la Chaussée, 'Le Roi Hugon,' Œuvres, t.
V, supplément, p. 66, ed. 1778, and well by M. J. Chénier, 'Les
Miracles,' III, 259, ed. 1824.[283] Uhland treated the subject
dramatically in a composition which has not been published: Keller,
Altfranzösische Sagen, 1876, Inhalt (Koschwitz).
Percy MS., p. 24. Hales and Furnivall, I, 61; Madden's Syr
Gawayne, p. 275.
* * * * * * *
1
[Saies, 'Come here, cuzen Gawaine so gay,]
My sisters sonne be yee;
Ffor you shall see one of the fairest round tables
That euer you see with your eye.'
2
Then bespake Lady Qu_een_ Gueneuer,
And these were the words said shee:
'I know where a round table is, thou noble k_ing_,
Is worth thy round table and other such three.
3
'The trestle that stands vnder this round table,' she said,
'Lowe downe to the mould,
It is worth thy round table, thou worthy k_ing_,
Thy halls, and all thy gold.
4
'The place where this round table stands in,
. . . . . . .
It is worth thy castle, thy gold, thy fee,
And all good Litle Britaine.'
5
'Where may that table be, lady?' q_uo_th hee,
'Or where may all that goodly building be?'
'You shall it seeke,' shee says, 'till you it find,
For you shall neuer gett more of me.'
6
Then bespake him noble K_ing_ Arthur,
These were the words said hee:
'He make mine avow to God,
And alsoe to the Trinity,
7
'He never sleepe one night there as I doe another,
Till _tha_t round table I see:
S_ir_ Marramiles and S_ir_ Tristeram,
Fellowes _tha_t ye shall bee.
8
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
'Weele be clad in palmers weede,
Fiue palmers we will bee;
9
'There is noe outlandish man will vs abide,
Nor will vs come nye.'
Then they riued east and thé riued west,
In many a strange country.
10
Then they tranckled a litle further,
They saw a battle new sett:
'Now, by my faith,' saies noble King Arthur,
. . . . . . well .
* * * * * * *
11
But when he cam to this ... c ...
And to the palace gate,
Soe ready was ther a proud porter,
And met him soone therat.
12
Shooes of gold the porter had on,
And all his other rayment was vnto the same:
'Now, by my faith,' saies noble K_ing_ Arthur,
'Yonder is a minion swaine.'
13
Then bespake noble K_ing_ Arthur,
These were the words says hee:
'Come hither, thou proud porter,
I pray thee come hither to me.
14
'I haue two poore rings of my finger,
The better of them Ile giue to thee;
Tell who may be lord of this castle,' he sayes,
'Or who is lord in this cuntry?'
15
'Cornewall K_ing_,' the porter sayes,
'There is none soe rich as hee;
Neither in christendome, nor yet in heathen-nest,
None hath soe much gold as he.'
16
And then bespake him noble K_ing_ Arthur,
These were the words sayes hee:
'I haue two poore rings of my finger,
The better of them Ile giue thee,
If thou wilt greete him well, Cornewall K_ing_,
And greete him well from me.
17
'Pray him for one nights lodging and two meales meate,
For his love that dyed vppon a tree;
Of one ghesting and two meales meate,
For his loue that dyed vppon a tree.
18
'Of one ghesting, of two meales meate,
For his love that was of virgin borne,
And in the morning _tha_t we may scape away,
Either w_i_thout scath or scorne.'
19
Then forth is gone this proud porter,
As fast as he cold hye,
And when he came befor Cornewall K_ing_,
He kneeled downe on his knee.
20
Sayes, 'I haue beene porter-man, at thy gate,
This thirty winter and three ...
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
* * * * * * *
21
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Our Lady was borne; then thought Cornewall K_ing_
These palmers had beene in Britt_aine_.
22
Then bespake him Cornwall King,
These were the words he said there:
'Did you euer know a comely k_ing_,
His name was King Arthur?'
23
And then bespake him noble K_ing_ Arthur,
These were the words said hee:
'I doe not know that comly k_ing_,
But once my selfe I did him see.'
Then bespake Cornwall K_ing_ againe,
These were the words said he:
24
Sayes, 'Seuen yeere I was clad and fed,
In Litle Brittaine, in a bower;
I had a daughter by K_ing_ Arthurs wife,
_Tha_t now is called my flower;
For K_ing_ Arthur, that kindly cockward,
Hath none such in his bower.
25
'For I durst sweare, and saue my othe,
_Tha_t same lady soe bright,
That a man _tha_t were laid on his death bed
Wold open his eyes on her to haue sight.'
'Now, by my faith,' sayes noble K_ing_ Arthur,
'And that's a full faire wight!'
26
And then bespake Cornewall [King] againe,
And these were the words he said:
'Come hither, fiue or three of my knights,
And feitch me downe my steed;
King Arthur, that foule cockeward,
Hath none such, if he had need.
27
'For I can ryde him as far on a day
As King Arthur can doe any of his on three;
And is it not a pleasure for a k_ing_
When he shall ryde forth on his iourney?
28
'For the eyes that beene in his head,
Thé glister as doth the gleed.'
'Now, by my faith,' says noble King Arthur,
'_Tha_t is a well faire steed.'
* * * * * * *
29
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
'Nobody say . . . .
But one _that_'s learned to speake.'
30
Then K_ing_ Arthur to his bed was brought,
A greeiued man was hee;
And soe were all his fellowes with him,
From him thé thought neuer to flee.
31
Then take they did that lodly groome,
And under the rub-chadler closed was hee,
And he was set by K_ing_ Arthurs bed-side,
To heere theire talke and theire comu_n_ye;
32
_Tha_t he might come forth, and make p_ro_clamation,
Long before it was day;
It was more for K_ing_ Cornwalls pleasure,
Then it was for K_ing_ Arthurs pay.
33
And when K_ing_ Arthur in his bed was laid,
These were the words said hee:
'Ile make mine avow to God,
And alsoe to the Trinity,
That Ile be the bane of Cornwall Kinge,
Litle Brittaine or euer I see!'
34
'It is an vnaduised vow,' saies Gawaine the gay,
'As ever k_ing_ hard make I;
But wee _tha_t beene fiue Christian men,
Of the christen faith are wee,
And we shall fight against anoynted k_ing_
And all his armorie.'
35
And then bespake him noble Arthur,
And these were the words said he:
'Why, if thou be afraid, S_ir_ Gawaine the gay,
Goe home, and drinke wine in thine owne country.'
36
And then bespake S_i_r Gawaine the gay,
And these were the words said hee:
'Nay, seeing you have made such a hearty vow,
Heere another vow make will I.
37
'Ile make mine avow to God,
And alsoe to the Trinity,
_Tha_t I will haue yonder faire lady
To Litle Brittaine with mee.
38
'Ile hose her hourly to my heart,
And with her Ile worke my will;'
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
* * * * * * *
39
. . . . . . .
These were the words sayd hee:
'Befor I wold wrestle with yonder feend,
It is better be drowned in the sea.'
40
And then, bespake S_i_r Bredbeddle,
And these were the words said he:
'Why, I will wrestle w_i_th yon lodly feend,
God, my gouernor thou wilt bee!'
41
Then bespake him noble Arthur,
And these were the words said he:
'What weapons wilt thou haue, thou gentle knight?
I pray thee tell to me.'
42
He sayes, 'Collen brand Ile haue in my hand,
And a Millaine knife fast by me knee,
And a Danish axe fast in my hands,
_Tha_t a sure weapon I thinke wilbe.'
43
Then with his Collen brand _tha_t he had in his hand
The bunge of that rub-chandler he burst in three;
W_i_th that start out a lodly feend,
W_i_th seuen heads, and one body.
44
The fyer towards the element flew,
Out of his mouth, where was great plentie;
The knight stoode in the middle and fought,
_Tha_t it was great ioy to see.
45
Till his Collaine brand brake in his hand,
And his Millaine knife burst on his knee,
And then the Danish axe burst in his hand first,
That a sur weapon he thought shold be.
46
But now is the knight left w_i_thout any weapons,
And alacke! it was the more pitty;
But a surer weapon then he had one,
Had neuer l_ord_ in Christentye;
And all was but one litle booke,
He found it by the side of the sea.
47
He found it at the sea-side,
Wrucked upp in a floode;
Our L_ord_ had written it w_i_th his hands,
And sealed it w_i_th his bloode.
* * * * * * *
48
'That thou doe not s ...
But ly still in that wall of stone,
Till I haue beene with noble K_ing_ Arthur,
And told him what I haue done.'
49
And when he came to the k_ing_s chamber,
He cold of his curtesie:
Says, 'Sleepe you, wake you, noble K_ing_ Arthur?
And euer Iesus waken yee!'
50
'Nay, I am not sleeping, I am waking,'
These were the words said hee;
'Ffor thee I haue card; how hast thou fared?
O gentle knight, let me see.'
51
The knight wrought the k_ing_ his booke,
Bad him behold, reede and see;
And euer he found it on the backside of the leafe
As noble Arthur wold wish it to be.
52
And then bespake him K_ing_ Arthur,
'Alas! thow gentle knight, how may this be,
That I might see him in the same licknesse
_Tha_t he stood vnto thee?'
53
And then bespake him the Greene Knight,
These were the words said hee:
'If youle stand stifly in the battell stronge,
For I haue won all the victory.'
54
Then bespake him the k_ing_ againe,
And these were the words said hee:
'If wee stand not stifly in this battell strong,
Wee are worthy to be hanged all on a tree.'
55
Then bespake him the Greene Knight,
These were the words said he:
Saies, 'I doe coniure thee, thou fowle feend,
In the same licknesse thou stood vnto me.'
56
W_i_th that start out a lodly feend,
W_i_th seuen heads, and one body;
The fier towards the element flaugh,
Out of his mouth, where was great plenty.
57
The knight stood in the middle p ...
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
* * * * * * *
58
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
... they stood the space of an houre,
I know not what they did.
59
And then bespake him the Greene Knight,
And these were the words said he:
Saith, 'I coniure thee, thou fowle feend,
_Tha_t thou feitch downe the steed that we see.'
60
And then forth is gone Burlow-beanie,
As fast as he cold hie,
And feitch he did _tha_t faire steed,
And came againe by and by.
61
Then bespake him S_ir_ Marramiles,
And these were the words said hee:
'Riding of this steed, brother Bredbeddle,
The mastery belongs to me.'
62
Marramiles tooke the steed to his hand,
To ryd him he was full bold;
He cold noe more make him goe
Then a child of three yeere old.
63
He laid vppon him w_i_th heele and hand,
W_i_th yard that was soe fell;
'Helpe! brother Bredbeddle,' says Marramile,
'For I thinke he be the devill of hell.
64
'Helpe! brother Bredbeddle,' says Marramile,
'Helpe! for Christs pittye;
Ffor w_i_thout thy help, brother Bredbeddle,
He will neuer be rydden for me.'
65
Then bespake him S_ir_ Bredbeddle,
These were the words said he:
'I coniure thee, thou Burlow-beane,
Thou tell me how this steed was riddin in his country.'
66
He saith, 'there is a gold wand
Stands in K_ing_ Cornwalls study windowe;
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
67
'Let him take that wand in _tha_t window,
And strike three strokes on that steed;
And then he will spring forth of his hand
As sparke doth out of gleede.'
68
And then bespake him the Greene Knight,
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
* * * * * * *
69
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
A lowd blast he may blow then.
70
And then bespake S_ir_ Bredebeddle,
To the ffeend these words said hee:
Says, 'I coniure thee, thou Burlow-beanie,
The powder-box thou feitch me.'
71
Then forth is gone Burlow-beanie,
As fast as he cold hie,
And feich he did the powder-box,
And came againe by and by.
72
Then S_ir_ Tristeram tooke powder forth of _tha_t box,
And blent it w_i_th warme sweet milke,
And there put it vnto that horne,
And swilled it about in that ilke.
73
Then he tooke the horne in his hand,
And a lowd blast he blew;
He rent the horne vp to the midst,
All his ffellowes this thé knew.
74
Then bespake him the Greene Knight,
These were the words said he:
Saies, 'I coniure thee, thou Burlow-beanie,
_Tha_t thou feitch me the sword _tha_t I see.'
75
Then forth is gone Burlow-beanie,
As fast as he cold hie,
And feitch he did that faire sword,
And came againe by and by.
76
Then bespake him Sir Bredbeddle,
To the k_ing_ these words said he:
'Take this sword in thy hand, thou noble K_ing_ A_rthur_,
For the vowes sake _tha_t thou made Ile giue it th[ee,]
And goe strike off K_ing_ Cornewalls head,
In bed were he doth lye.'
77
Then forth is gone noble K_ing_ Arthur,
As fast as he cold hye,
And strucken he hath off K_ing_ Cornwalls head,
And came againe by and by.
78
He put the head vpon a swords point,
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
* * * * * * *
* * * * *
1^1. _The tops of the letters of this line were cut off in
binding. Percy thought it had stood previously_,
come here Cuz_en_ Gawaine so gay.
_Furnivall says "~the bottoms of the letters left suit
better those in the text~" as given. 4 and 5, 8 and 9, are
joined in the MS._
10^4. _Half a page is gone from the MS., or about 38 or 40
lines; and so after 20^2, 28^4, 38^2, 47^4, 57^1, 68^1,
78^1._
14^2. they better.
17^3, 18^1. _The first two words are hard to make out, and
look like ~A vne~._
18^2. boirne.
19^1. his gone.
20^2. _The lower half of the letters is gone._
21. _In MS.:_
our Lady was borne
then thought cornewall K_ing_ these palmers had
beene in Brittanie.
28^4. _? MS. Only the upper part of the letters is left._
31^2. under thrub chadler.
35. _After this stanza is written, in the left margin of
the MS., ~The 3d Part~._
38^1. homly to my hurt. _Madden read ~hourly~._
39^1. _The top line is pared away._
41^2. they words.
43^2. of the trubchandler.
46^3. then had he.
64. p', _i. e._ pro _or_ per, me. _Madden._
66. _Attached to 65 in MS._
69^4. _? MS._
76^{5,6}. _Joined with 77 in MS. & and Arabic numerals
have been frequently written out._
[259] Half a page is gone in the manuscript between 'Robin Hood's Death'
and the beginning of this ballad, and again between the end of this
ballad and the beginning of 'Sir Lionel.' 'Robin Hood's Death,' judging
by another copy, is complete within two or three stanzas, and 'Sir
Lionel' appears to lack nothing. We may suppose that quite half a dozen
stanzas are lost from both the beginning and the end of 'King Arthur and
King Cornwall.'
[260] British Museum (but now missing), King's Library, 16, E, VIII,
fol. 131, recto: "Ci comence le liucr_e_ cu_m_ment charels de fraunce
voiet in ierh_usale_m Et pur p_ar_ols sa feme a co_n_stanti_n_noble
p_ur_ ver_e_ roy hugon." First published by Michel, London, 1836, and
lately reëdited, with due care, by Koschwitz: Karls des Grossen Reise
nach Jerusalem und Constantinopel, Heilbronn, 1880; 2d ed., 1883.
[261] See the argument of Gaston Paris, Romanis, XI, 7 ff; and of
Koschwitz, Karl des Grossen Reise, 2te Auflage, Einleitung, pp.
xiv-xxxii.
[262] Printed by Koschwitz in Sechs Bearbeitungen von Karls des Grossen
Reise, the last from a somewhat later edition, pp. 40-133. The recovery
of a metrical form of Galien is looked for. In the view of Gaston Paris,
the Pilgrimage was made over (renouvelé) at the end of the twelfth or
the beginning of the thirteenth century, and this _rifacimento_
intercalated in Galien by some rhymer of the fourteenth. See his
'Galien,' in Hist. Litt. de la France, XXVIII, 221-239, for all that
concerns the subject.
[263] Il Viaggio di Carlo Magno in Ispagna, pubblicato per cure di
Antonio Ceruti, c. LI, II, 170: Rajna, Uggeri il Danese nella
letteratura romanzesca degl' Italiani, Romania IV, 414 ff. A king of
Portugal, of the faith of Apollo and Mahound, takes the place of the
king of Constantinople in the former, and one Saracen or another in the
several versions of the second. G. Paris, in Romania, IX, 3, 10, notes.
[264] The Norwegian version in Karlamagnus Saga ok Kappa hans, ed.
Unger, p. 466, the Seventh Part. Both the Swedish and Danish are given
in Storm's Sagnkredsene om Karl den Store, etc., Kristiania, 1874, pp.
228-245. For the sources, see p. 160 ff. The whole of the Danish
Chronicle of Charlemagne is printed in Brandt's Romantisk Digtning fra
Middelalderen, Copenhagen, 1877, the Journey to the Holy Land, p. 146
ff. Brandt does not admit that the Danish chronicle was translated from
Swedish: p. 347. The 'Geiplur,' 968 vv, and one version of
'Geipa-táttur,' 340 vv, are included in Koschwitz's Sechs Bearbeitungen,
p. 139 ff, p. 174 ff. For a discussion of them see Kölbing in Germania,
XX, 233-239, and as to the relations of the several versions, etc.,
Koschwitz, in Romanische Studien, II, 1 ff, his Ueberlieferung und
Sprache der Chanson du Voyage de Charlemagne, and Sechs Bearbeitungen,
Einleitung. The Färöe ballad is thought to show traces in some places of
Christiern Pedersen's edition of the Danish chronicle, 1584 (Kölbing, as
above, 238, 239), or of stall prints founded on that. This does not,
however, necessarily put the ballad into the sixteenth century. Might
not Pedersen have had ballad authority for such changes and additions as
he made? It may well be supposed that he had, and if what is peculiar to
Pedersen may have come from ballads, we must hesitate to derive the
ballads from Pedersen. It is, moreover, neither strange nor unexampled
that popular ballads should be affected by tradition committed to print
as well as by tradition still floating in memory. The Färöe copies of
'Greve Genselin,' for example, as Grundtvig remarks, I, 223, note,
though undoubtedly original and independent of Danish, evince
acquaintance with Vedel's printed text.
[265] Given, with an English translation by Professor Rhys, in Sechs
Bearbeitungen, p. 1, p. 19.
[266] There are some variations in the list of relics in the other
versions. The Rímur say "many," without specifying.
[267] On the way from Jerusalem to Constantinople the French, according
to Galien, were waylaid by several thousand Saracens. Three or four of
the peers prepared for a fight, though armed only with swords ("which
they never or only most reluctantly put off," Arsenal MS.), but Charles
and the rest felt a better confidence in the relics, and through the
prayers of the more prudent and pious of the company their foes were
turned into rocks and stones.
[268] The heir of a Scandinavian king, or earl, at the feast which
solemnized his accession, drank a bragur-full, a chief's cup or king's
toast, to the memory of his father, and then made some important vow.
This he did before he took his father's seat. The guests then made vows.
The custom seems not to have been confined to these funeral banquets.
See Vigfusson, at the word $Bragr$. Charles and his peers show their
blood.
[269] Excepting the Welsh translation, which conforms to the original,
all other versions give Bernard's gab to Turpin, and most others
Turpin's to Bernard. The Danish chronicle assigns the "grand three-horse
act" to Gerard; the Färöe ballad omits it; the two manuscript Galiens
attribute it to Bernard [Berart] de Mondidier, the printed Galien to
Berenger. In these last the feat is, though enormously weighted with
armor, to leap over two horses and come down on the back of the third so
heavily as to break his bones. There are, in one version or another,
other differences as to the feats.
[270] In Galien, Hugo is exceedingly frightened by Charlemagne's fierce
demeanor and by what he is told by a recreant Frenchman who is living in
exile at his court, and rouses the city for an assault on his guests, in
which he loses two thousand of his people. A parley ensues. Hugo will
hear of no accommodation unless the gabs are performed. "Content," says
Charles, angrily, "they shall be, if you wish;" but he feels how great
the peril is, and goes to church to invoke the aid of heaven, which is
vouchsafed.
[271] Arthur is said to have "socht to the ciete of Criste," in
'Golagros and Gawane,' Madden's 'Syr Gawayne,' p. 143, v. 302. The
author probably followed the so-called Nennius, c. 63.
[272] Cf. 'Young Beichan,' where the porter has also served thirty years
and three; 'The Grene Knight,' Percy MS., Hales and Furnivall, II, 62;
the porter in Kilhwch and Olwen, Mabinogion, II, 255 f.
[273] In Heinrich vom Türlin's Crône we have the following passage, vv
3313-4888, very possibly to be found in some French predecessor, which
recalls the relations of Cornwall King and Guenever. The queen's
demeanor may be an imitation of Charlemagne's (Arthur's) wife's
bluntness, but the _liaison_ of which Cornwall boasts appears to be
vouched by no other tradition, and must be regarded as the invention of
the author of this ballad.
Arthur and three comrades return half frozen from a hunt. Arthur sits
down at the fire to warm himself. The queen taunts him: she knows a
knight who rides, winter and summer alike, in a simple shirt, chanting
love-songs the while. Arthur resolves to go out with the three the next
night to overhaul this hardy chevalier. The three attendants of the king
have an encounter with him and fare hard at his hands, but Arthur has
the advantage of the stranger, who reveals himself to the king as
Guenever's first love, by name Gasozein, and shows a token which he had
received from her.
[274]
Under thrub chadler closed was hee. 29^2.
The bunge of the trubchandler he burst in three. 43^2.
Being unable to make anything of thrub, trub, I am compelled to conjecture
_the rub-chadler, that rub-chandler_. The fiend is certainly closed under
a barrel or tub, and I suppose a rubbish barrel or tub. Rubb, however
derived, occurs in Icelandic in the sense of rubbish, and chalder, however
derived, is a Scottish form of the familiar chaldron. Professor Skeat,
with great probability, suggests that chadler==chaudeler, chaudière.
Caldaria _lignea_ are cited by Ducange. Cad or kad is well known in the
sense barrel, and cadiolus, cadulus, are found in Ducange. Cadler, chadler,
however, cannot be called a likely derivative from cad.
In stanza 48 the fiend, after he has been ousted from the
"trubchandler," is told to "lie still in that wall of stone," which is
perhaps his ordinary lair. The spy is concealed under a flight of stone
steps in the French poem; in "a large hollow stone in the door outside"
in the Welsh story; in a hollow pillar in Galien and the Rímur; in a
stone vault in the Färöe ballad: Koschwitz, Karls Reise, p. 64; Sechs
Bearbeitungen, pp 29, 52, 85, 117, 153, 179.
[275] Roland's last blast splits his horn. See the citations by G.
Paris, in Romania, XI, 506 f.
[276] The first has been printed by Kölbing in Koschwitz's Sechs
Bearbeitungen, as already said. The four texts were most kindly
communicated to me by Professor Grundtvig, a short time before his
lamentable death, copied by his own hand in parallel columns, with a
restoration of the order of the stanzas, which is considerably disturbed
in all, and a few necessary emendations.
[277] Pól, #A#, #C#, Kortunatus, #B#, i. e. Koronatus (Grundtvig).
Coronatus==clericus, tonsura seu corona clericali donatus: Ducange.
[278] The white bears and the wolf-dogs are found in another Färöe
ballad, as yet unprinted, 'Ásmundar skeinkjari,' where they are subdued
by an arm-ring and "rune-gold:" the white bears in a kindred ballad,
Grundtvig, No 71, #A# 4, 5, 8, 9, #C# 6, 7, 13, quelled with a
lily-twig; #E# 12, 13, with runes; and in No 70, #A# 28, #B# 27, 30. The
source of this ballad is Fjölsvinnsmál, which has two watch-dogs in 13,
14. 'Kilhweh and Olwen,' Mabinogion, II, has a similar story, and there
are nine watch-dogs, at p. 277. (Grundtvig.)
[279] Romania, IX, 8 ff. The English ballad has also combined two
stories: that of the gabs with another in which a magical horse, horn,
and sword are made prize of by a favored hero.
[280] The particular for which superiority is claimed will naturally
vary. The author of Charlemagne's Journey has the good taste not to give
prominence to simple riches, but in Galien riches is from the beginning
the point. So none hath so much gold as Cornwall King. Solomon's fame is
to exceed all the kings of the earth "for riches and for wisdom;" and
although the queen of Sheba came to prove him with hard questions, she
must have had the other matter also in view, for she says, The half was
not told me; thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard:
1 Kings, x. Coming down to very late times, we observe that it is the
wealth of the Abbot of Canterbury which exposes him to a visit from the
king.
[281] The tale in the Mille et un Jours is directly from the Persian,
but the Persian is in the preface said to be a version from Indian, that
is, Sanskrit. There are two Tatar traditional versions in Radloff, IV,
120, 310, which are cited by G. Paris.
[282] Cited by G. Paris, who refers also to King Gylfi's expedition to
Asgard (an imitation of Odin's to Vafþrúðnir), and sees some resemblance
to the revolving palace of King Hugo in the vanishing mansion in which
Gylfi is received in Gylfaginning; and again to Thor's visit to the
giant Geirröðr, Skáldskaparmál, 18, which terminates by the giant's
flinging a red-hot iron bar at Thor, who catches it and sends it back
through an iron pillar, through Geirröðr skulking behind the pillar,
through the wall of the house, and into the ground, a fair matching of
Charlemagne's gab. (The giant Geirröðr, like Cornwall King, is skilled
in magic.) The beginning of Biterolf and Dietleib also recalls that of
Charlemagne's Journey. Biterolf, a Spanish king, hears from an old
palmer, who has seen many a hero among Christians and heathens, that
none is the equal of Attila. Biterolf had thought that he himself had no
superior, and sets out with eleven chosen knights to see Etzel's court
with his own eyes. Romania, IX, 9 f.
Játmundr [Hlöðver], a haughty emperor in Saxon-land, sitting on his
throne one day, in the best humor with himself, asks Sigurðr, his prime
minister, where is the monarch that is his match. Sigurðr demurs a
little: the emperor specifies his hawk, horse, and sword as quite
incomparable. That may be, says the counsellor, but his master's glory,
to be complete, requires a queen that is his peer. The suggestion of a
possible equal rouses the emperor's ire. "But since you talk such folly,
name one," he says. Sigurðr names the daughter of Hrólfr [Hugo] of
Constantinople, and is sent to demand her in marriage. Magus saga jarls,
ed. Cederschiöld, c. I: Wulff, Recherches sur les Sagas de Mágus et de
Geirard, p. 14 f.
[283] G. Paris, Histoire Poétique de Charlemagne, p. 344.
31
THE MARRIAGE OF SIR GAWAIN
Percy MS., p. 46. Hales & Furnivall, I, 105; Madden's Syr
Gawayne, p. 288; Percy's Reliques, ed. 1794, III, 350.
We have here again half a ballad, in seven fragments, but the essentials
of the story, which is well known from other versions, happen to be
preserved, or may be inferred.
Arthur, apparently some day after Christmas, had been encountered at
Tarn Wadling,[284] in the forest of Inglewood, by a bold baron armed
with a club, who offered him the choice of fighting, or ransoming
himself by coming back on New Year's day and bringing word what women
most desire. Arthur puts this question in all quarters, and having
collected many answers, in which, possibly, he had little confidence, he
rides to keep his day. On the way he meets a frightfully ugly woman; she
intimates that she could help him. Arthur promises her Gawain in
marriage, if she will, and she imparts to him the right answer. Arthur
finds the baron waiting for him at the tarn, and presents first the
answers which he had collected and written down. These are
contemptuously rejected. Arthur then says that he had met a lady on a
moor, who had told him that a woman would have her will. The baron says
that the misshapen lady on the moor was his sister, and he will burn her
if he can get hold of her. Upon Arthur's return he tells his knights
that he has a wife for one of them, and they ride with the king to see
her, or perhaps for her to make her choice. When they see the bride,
they decline the match in vehement terms, all but Gawain, who is somehow
led to waive "a little foul sight and misliking." She is bedded in all
her repulsiveness, and turns to a beautiful young woman. To try Gawain's
compliance further, she asks him whether he will have her in this
likeness by night only or only by day. Putting aside his own preference,
Gawain leaves the choice to her, and this is all that is needed to keep
her perpetually beautiful. For a stepmother had witched her to go on the
wild moor in that fiendly shape until she should meet some knight who
would let her have all her will. Her brother, under a like spell, was to
challenge men either to fight with him at odds or to answer his hard
question.
These incidents, with the variation that Arthur (who does not show all
his customary chivalry in this ballad) waits for Gawain's consent before
he promises him in marriage, are found in a romance, probably of the
fifteenth century, printed in Madden's Syr Gawayne, and somewhat hastily
pronounced by the editor to be "unquestionably the original of the
mutilated poem in the Percy folio."[285]
Arthur, while hunting in Ingleswood, stalked and finally shot a great
hart, which fell in a fern-brake. While the king, alone and far from his
men, was engaged in making the assay, there appeared a groom, bearing
the quaint name of Gromer Somer Joure,[286] who grimly told him that he
meant now to requite him for having taken away his lands. Arthur
represented that it would be a shame to knighthood for an armed man to
kill a man in green, and offered him any satisfaction. The only terms
Gromer would grant were that Arthur should come back alone to that place
that day twelvemonth, and then tell him what women love best; not
bringing the right answer, he was to lose his head. The king gave his
oath, and they parted. The knights, summoned by the king's bugle, found
him in heavy cheer, and the reason he would at first tell no man, but
after a while took Gawain into confidence. Gawain advised that they two
should ride into strange country in different directions, put the
question to every man and woman they met, and write the answers in a
book. This they did, and each made a large collection. Gawain thought
they could not fail, but the king was anxious, and considered that it
would be prudent to spend the only month that was left in prosecuting
the inquiry in the region of Ingleswood. Gawain agreed that it was good
to be speering, and bade the king doubt not that some of his saws should
help at need.
Arthur rode to Ingleswood, and met a lady, riding on a
richly-caparisoned palfrey, but herself of a hideousness which beggars
words; nevertheless the items are not spared. She came up to Arthur and
told him that she knew his counsel; none of his answers would help. If
he would grant her one thing, she would warrant his life; otherwise, he
must lose his head. This one thing was that she should be Gawain's wife.
The king said this lay with Gawain; he would do what he could, but it
were a pity to make Gawain wed so foul a lady. "No matter," she
rejoined, "though I be foul: choice for a mate hath an owl. When thou
comest to thine answer, I shall meet thee; else art thou lost."
The king returned to Carlisle with a heart no lighter, and the first man
he saw was Gawain, who asked how he had sped. Never so ill: he had met a
lady who had offered to save his life, but she was the foulest he had
ever seen, and the condition was that Gawain should be her husband. "Is
that all?" said Gawain. "I will wed her once and again, though she were
the devil; else were I no friend." Well might the king exclaim, "Of all
knights thou bearest the flower!"
After five or six days more the time came for the answer. The king had
hardly ridden a mile into the forest when he met the lady, by name Dame
Ragnell. He told her Gawain should wed her, and demanded _her_ answer.
"Some say this and some say that, but above all things women desire to
have the sovereignty; tell this to the knight; he will curse her that
told thee, for his labor is lost." Arthur, thus equipped, rode on as
fast as he could go, through mire and fen. Gromer was waiting, and
sternly demanded the answer. Arthur offered his two books, for Dame
Ragnell had told him to save himself by any of those answers if he
could. "Nay, nay, king," said Gromer, "thou art but a dead man." "Abide,
Sir Gromer, I have an answer shall make all sure. Women desire
sovereignty." "She that told thee that was my sister, Dame Ragnell; I
pray I may see her burn on a fire." And so they parted.
Dame Ragnell was waiting for Arthur, too, and would hear of nothing but
immediate fulfillment of her bargain. She followed the king to his
court, and required him to produce Gawain instantly, who came and
plighted his troth. The queen begged her to be married privately, and
early in the morning. Dame Ragnell would consent to no such arrangement.
She would not go to church till high-mass time, and she would dine in
the open hall. At her wedding she was dressed more splendidly than the
queen, and she sat at the head of the table at the dinner afterwards.
There her appetite was all but as horrible as her person: she ate three
capons, three curlews, and great bake meats, all that was set before
her, less and more.[287]
A leaf is wanting now, but what followed is easily imagined. She chided
Gawain for his offishness, and begged him to kiss her, at least. "I will
do more," said Gawain, and, turning, beheld the fairest creature he ever
saw. But the transformed lady told him that her beauty would not hold:
he must choose whether she should be fair by night and foul by day, or
fair by day and foul by night.[288] Gawain said the choice was hard, and
left all to her. "Gramercy," said the lady, "thou shalt have me fair
both day and night." Then she told him that her step-dame had turned her
into that monstrous shape by necromancy, not to recover her own till the
best knight in England had wedded her and given her sovereignty in all
points.[289] A charming little scene follows, vv 715-99, in which Arthur
visits Gawain in the morning, fearing lest the fiend may have slain him.
Something of this may very likely have been in that half page of the
ballad which is lost after stanza 48.
Gower and Chaucer both have this tale, though with a different setting,
and with the variation, beyond doubt original in the story, that the man
whose life is saved by rightly answering the question has himself to
marry the monstrous woman in return for her prompting him.
Gower relates, Confessio Amantis, Book First, I, 89-104, ed. Pauli, that
Florent, nephew of the emperor, as Gawain is of Arthur, slew Branchus, a
man of high rank. Branchus's kin refrained from vengeance, out of fear
of the emperor; but a shrewd lady, grandmother to Branchus, undertook to
compass Florent's death in a way that should bring blame upon nobody.
She sent for Florent, and told him that she would engage that he should
not be molested by the family of Branchus if he could answer a question
she would ask. He was to have a proper allowance of time to find the
answer, but he was also to agree that his life should be forfeited
unless his answer were right. Florent made oath to this agreement, and
sought the opinions of the wisest people upon the subject, but their
opinions were in no accord. Considering, therefore, that he must
default, he took leave of the emperor, adjuring him to allow no revenge
to be taken if he lost his life, and went to meet his fate. But on his
way through a forest he saw an ugly old woman, who called to him to
stop. This woman told him that he was going to certain death, and asked
what he would give her to save him. He said, anything she should ask,
and she required of him a promise of marriage. That he would not give.
"Ride on to your death, then," said she. Florent began to reflect that
the woman was very old, and might be hidden away somewhere till she
died, and that there was no other chance of deliverance, and at last
pledged his word that he would marry her if it should turn out that his
life could be saved only through the answer that she should teach him.
She was perfectly willing that he should try all other shifts first, but
if they failed, then let him say that women cared most to be sovereign
in love. Florent kept back this answer as long as he could. None of his
own replies availed, and the lady who presided in judgment at last told
him that he could be allowed but one more. Then he gave the old woman's
answer, and was discharged, with a curse on her that told.[290]
The old woman was waiting for Florent, and he now had full leisure to
inspect all her points; but he was a knight, and would hold his troth.
He set her on his horse before him, rode by night and lay close by day,
till he came to his castle. There the ladies made an attempt to attire
her for the wedding, and she was the fouler for their pains. They were
married that night. He turned away from the bride; she prayed him not to
be so discourteous. He turned toward her, with a great moral effort, and
saw (for the chamber was full of light) a lady of eighteen, of
unequalled beauty. As he would have drawn her to him she forbade, and
said he must make his choice, to have her such by day or by night.
"Choose for us both," was his reply. "Thanks," quoth she, "for since you
have made me sovereign, I shall be both night and day as I am now." She
explained that, having been daughter of the king of Sicily, her
stepmother had forshapen her, the spell to hold till she had won the
love and the sovereignty of what knight passed all others in good name.
The scene of Chaucer's tale, The Wife of Bath, returns to Arthur's
court. One of the bachelors of the household, when returning from
hawking, commits a rape, for which he is condemned to death. But the
queen and other ladies intercede for him, and the king leaves his life
at the disposal of the queen. The queen, like the shrewd lady in Gower,
but with no intent to trapan the young man, says that his life shall
depend upon his being able to tell her what women most desire, and
gives him a year and a day to seek an answer. He makes extensive
inquiries, but there is no region in which two creatures can be found to
be of the same mind, and he turns homeward very downcast.
On his way through a wood he saw a company of ladies dancing, and moved
towards them, in the hope that he might learn something. But ere he came
the dancers had vanished, and all he found was the ugliest woman
conceivable sitting on the green. She asked the knight what he wanted,
and he told her it was to know what women most desire. "Plight me thy
troth to do the next thing I ask of thee, and I will tell thee." He gave
his word, and she whispered the secret in his ear.
The court assembled, the queen herself sitting as justice, and the
knight was commanded to say what thing women love best. He made his
response triumphantly; there was no dissenting voice. But as soon as he
was declared to have ransomed his life, up sprang the old woman he had
met in the wood. She had taught the man his answer, he had plighted his
word to do the first thing she asked of him, and now she asked him to
make her his wife. The promise was not disputed, but the poor youth
begged her to make some other request; to take all he had in the world,
and let him go. She would not yield, and they were married the next day.
When they have gone to bed, the old wife, "smiling ever mo," rallies her
husband for his indifference, and lectures him for objecting to
ugliness, age, and vulgar birth, which things, she says, are a great
security for him, and then gives him his election, to have her ugly and
old as she is, but true, or young and fair, with the possible
contingencies. The knight has the grace to leave the decision to her.
"Then I have the sovereignty," she says, "and I will be both fair and
good; throw up the curtain and see." Fair and young she was, and they
lived to their lives' end in perfect joy.
Chaucer has left out the step-mother and her bewitchment, and saves,
humbles, and rewards the young knight by the agency of a good fairy; for
the ugly old woman is evidently such by her own will and for her own
purposes. She is "smiling ever mo," and has the power, as she says, to
set all right whenever she pleases. Her fate is not dependent on the
knight's compliance, though his is.
The Wife of Bath's Tale is made into a ballad, or what is called a
sonnet, 'Of a Knight and a Fair Virgin,' in The Crown Garland of Golden
Roses, compiled by Richard Johnson, not far from 1600: see the Percy
Society reprint, edited by W. Chappell, vol. vi of the series, p. 68.
Upon Chaucer's story is founded Voltaire's tale, admirable in its way,
of Ce qui plaît aux Dames, 1762; of which the author writes, 1765,
November 4, that it had had great success at Fontainebleau in the form
of a comic opera, entitled La Fée Urgèle.[291] The amusing ballad of The
Knight and Shepherd's Daughter has much in common with the Wife of
Bath's Tale, and might, if we could trace its pedigree, go back to a
common original.[292]
Tales resembling the Marriage of Gawain must have been widely spread
during the Middle Ages. The ballad of 'King Henry' has much in common
with the one now under consideration, and Norse and Gaelic connections,
and is probably much earlier. At present I can add only one parallel out
of English, and that from an Icelandic saga.
Grímr was on the verge of marriage with Lopthæna, but a week before the
appointed day the bride was gone, and nobody knew what had become of
her. Her father had given her a step-mother five years before, and the
step-mother had been far from kind; but what then? Grímr was restless
and unhappy, and got no tidings. A year of scarcity coming, he left
home with two of his people. After an adventure with four trolls, he had
a fight with twelve men, in which, though they were all slain, he lost
his comrades and was very badly wounded. As he lay on the ground,
looking only for death, a woman passed, if so she might be called; for
she was not taller than a child of seven years, so stout that Grímr's
arms would not go round her, misshapen, bald, black, ugly, and
disgusting in every particular. She came up to Grímr, and asked him if
he would accept his life from her. "Hardly," said he, "you are so
loathsome." But life was precious, and he presently consented. She took
him up and ran with him, as if he were a babe, till she came to a large
cave; there she set him down, and it seemed to Grímr that she was uglier
than before. "Now pay me for saving your life," she said, "and kiss me."
"I cannot," said Grímr, "you look so diabolical." "Expect no help, then,
from me," said she, "and I see that it will soon be all over with you."
"Since it must be, loath as I am," said Grímr, and went and kissed her;
she seemed not so bad to kiss as to look at. When night came she made up
a bed, and asked Grímr whether he would lie alone or with her. "Alone,"
he answered. "Then," said she, "I shall take no pains about healing your
wounds." Grímr said he would rather lie with her, if he had no other
chance, and she bound up his wounds, so that he seemed to feel no more
of them. No sooner was Grímr abed than he fell asleep, and when he woke,
he saw lying by him almost the fairest woman he had ever laid eyes on,
and marvellously like his true-love, Lopthæna. At the bedside he saw
lying the troll-casing which she had worn; he jumped up and burned this.
The woman was very faint; he sprinkled her with water, and she came to,
and said, It is well for both of us; I saved thy life first, and thou
hast freed me from bondage. It was indeed Lopthæna, whom the step-mother
had transformed into a horrible shape, odious to men and trolls, which
she should never come out of till a man should consent to three
things,--which no man ever would,--to accept his life at her hands, to
kiss her, and to share her bed. Gríms saga loðinkinna, Rafn, Fornaldar
Sögur, II, 143-52.
Sir Frederic Madden, in his annotations upon this ballad, 'Syr Gawayne,'
p. 359, remarks that Sir Steven, stanza 31, does not occur in the Round
Table romances; that Sir Banier, 32, is probably a mistake for Beduer,
the king's constable; and that Sir Bore and Sir Garrett, in the same
stanza, are Sir Bors de Gauves, brother of Lionel, and Gareth, or
Gaheriet, the younger brother of Gawain.
'The Marriage of Sir Gawaine,' as filled out by Percy from the fragments
in his manuscript, Reliques, 1765, III, 11, is translated by Bodmer, I,
110; by Bothe, p. 75; by Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen Alt-Englands, p.
135.
1
Kinge Arthur liues in merry Carleile,
And seemely is to see,
And there he hath with him Queene Genev_er_,
_Tha_t bride soe bright of blee.
2
And there he hath w_i_th [him] Queene Genever,
_Tha_t bride soe bright in bower,
And all his barons about him stoode,
_Tha_t were both stiffe and stowre.
3
The k_ing_ kept a royall Christmasse,
Of mirth and great honor,
And when ...
. . . . . . .
* * * * * * *
4
'And bring me word what thing it is
T_ha_t a woman [will] most desire;
This shalbe thy ransome, Arthur,' he sayes,
'For Ile haue noe other hier.'
5
K_ing_ Arthur then held vp his hand,
According thene as was the law;
He tooke his leaue of the baron there,
And homward can he draw.
6
And when he came to merry Carlile,
To his chamber he is gone,
And ther came to him his cozen S_i_r Gawaine,
As he did make his mone.
7
And there came to him his cozen S_i_r Gawaine,
_Tha_t was a curteous knight;
'Why sigh you soe sore, vnckle Arthur,' he said,
'Or who hath done thee vnright? '
8
'O peace, O peace, thou gentle Gawaine,
_Tha_t faire may thee beffall!
For if thou knew my sighing soe deepe,
Thou wold not meruaile att all.
9
'Ffor when I came to Tearne Wadling,
A bold barron there I fand,
W_i_th a great club vpon his backe,
Standing stiffe and strong.
10
'And he asked me wether I wold fight
Or from him I shold begone,
O[r] else I must him a ransome pay,
And soe dep_ar_t him from.
11
'To fight w_i_th him I saw noe cause;
Methought it was not meet;
For he was stiffe and strong w_i_th-all,
His strokes were nothing sweete.
12
'Therefor this is my ransome, Gawaine,
I ought to him to pay;
I must come againe, as I am sworne,
Vpon the New Yeers day;
13
'And I must bring him word what thing it is
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
* * * * * * *
14
Then king Arthur drest him for to ryde,
In one soe rich array,
Toward the fore-said Tearne Wadling,
_Tha_t he might keepe his day.
15
And as he rode over a more,
Hee see a lady where shee sate
Betwixt an oke and a greene hollen;
She was cladd in red scarlett.
16
Then there as shold haue stood her mouth,
Then there was sett her eye;
The other was in her forhead fast,
The way that she might see.
17
Her nose was crooked and turnd outward,
Her mouth stood foule a-wry;
A worse formed lady than shee was,
Neuer man saw w_i_th his eye.
18
To halch vpon him, K_ing_ Arthur,
This lady was full faine,
But K_ing_ Arthur had forgott his lesson,
What he shold say againe.
19
'What knight art thou,' the lady sayd,
'That will not speak to me?
Of me be thou nothing dismayd,
Tho I be vgly to see.
20
'For I haue halched you curteouslye,
And you will not me againe;
Yett I may happen S_i_r Knight,' shee said,
'To ease thee of thy paine.'
21
'Giue thou ease me, lady,' he said,
'Or helpe me any thing,
Thou shalt have gentle Gawaine, my cozen,
And marry him w_i_th a ring.'
22
'Why, if I help thee not, thou noble K_ing_ Arthur,
Of thy owne hearts desiringe,
Of gentle Gawaine ...
. . . . . . .
* * * * * * *
23
And when he came to the Tearne Wadling,
The baron there cold he finde,
W_i_th a great weapon on his backe,
Standing stiffe and stronge.
24
And then he tooke K_ing_ Arthurs letters in his hands,
And away he cold them fling,
And then he puld out a good browne sword,
And cryd himselfe a k_ing_.
25
And he sayd, I have thee and thy land, Arthur,
To doe as it pleaseth me,
For this is not thy ransome sure,
Therfore yeeld thee to me.
26
And then bespoke him noble Arthur,
And bad him hold his hand:
'And giue me leaue to speake my mind
In defence of all my land.'
27
He said, As I came over a more,
I see a lady where shee sate
Betweene an oke and a green hollen;
Shee was clad in red scarlett.
28
And she says a woman will haue her will,
And this is all her cheef desire:
Doe me right, as thou art a baron of sckill,
This is thy ransome and all thy hyer.
29
He sayes, An early vengeance light on her!
She walkes on yonder more;
It was my sister that told thee this,
And she is a misshappen hore.
30
But heer Ile make mine avow to God
To doe her an euill turne,
For an euer I may thate fowle theefe get,
In a fyer I will her burne.
* * * * * * *
31
Sir Lancelott and S_i_r Steven bold,
They rode w_i_th them that day,
And the formost of the company
There rode the steward Kay.
32
Soe did S_i_r Banier and S_i_r Bore,
S_i_r Garrett with them soe gay,
Soe did S_i_r Tristeram _tha_t gentle k_nigh_t,
To the forrest fresh and gay.
33
And when he came to the greene forrest,
Vnderneath a greene holly tree,
Their sate that lady in red scarlet
_Tha_t vnseemly was to see.
34
S_i_r Kay beheld this ladys face,
And looked vppon her swire;
'Whosoeuer kisses this lady,' he sayes,
'Of his kisse he stands in feare.'
35
S_i_r Kay beheld the lady againe,
And looked vpon her snout;
'Whosoeuer kisses this lady,' he saies,
'Of his kisse he stands in doubt.'
36
'Peace, coz_en_ Kay,' then said S_i_r Gawaine,
'Amend thee of thy life;
For there is a knight amongst vs all
_Tha_t must marry her to his wife.'
37
'What! wedd her to wiffe!' then said S_i_r Kay,
'In the diuells name anon!
Gett me a wiffe where-ere I may,
For I had rather be slaine!'
38
Then some tooke vp their hawkes in hast,
And some tooke vp their hounds,
And some sware they wold not marry her
For citty nor for towne.
39
And then be-spake him noble K_ing_ Arthur,
And sware there by this day,
'For a litle foule sight and misliking
. . . . . . .
* * * * * * *
40
Then shee said, Choose thee, gentle Gawaine,
Truth as I doe say,
Wether thou wilt haue me in this liknesse
In the night or else in the day.
41
And then bespake him gentle Gawaine,
Was one soe mild of moode,
Sayes, Well I know what I wold say,
God grant it may be good!
42
To haue thee fowle in the night
When I w_i_th thee shold play--
Yet I had rather, if I might,
Haue thee fowle in the day.
43
'What! when lords goe w_i_th ther feires,' shee said,
'Both to the ale and wine,
Alas! then I must hyde my selfe,
I must not goe withinne.'
44
And then bespake him gentle Gawaine,
Said, Lady, that's but skill;
And because thou art my owne lady,
Thou shalt haue all thy will.
45
Then she said, Blesed be thou, gentle Gawain,
This day _tha_t I thee see,
For as thou seest me att this time,
From hencforth I wilbe.
46
My father was an old knight,
And yett it chanced soe
_Tha_t he marryed a younge lady
That brought me to this woe.
47
Shee witched me, being a faire young lady,
To the greene forrest to dwell,
And there I must walke in womans liknesse,
Most like a feend of hell.
48
She witched my brother to a carlish b ...
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
* * * * * * *
49
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
'That looked soe foule, and that was wont
On the wild more to goe.'
50
'Come kisse her, brother Kay,' then said S_i_r Gawaine,
'And amend thé of thy liffe;
I sweare this is the same lady
_Tha_t I marryed to my wiffe.'
51
S_i_r Kay kissed that lady bright,
Standing vpon his ffeete;
He swore, as he was trew knight,
The spice was neuer soe sweete.
52
'Well, coz_en_ Gawaine,' sayes S_i_r Kay,
'Thy chance is fallen arright,
For thou hast gotten one of the fairest maids
I euer saw with my sight.'
53
'It is my fortune,' said S_i_r Gawaine;
'For my vnckle Arthurs sake
I am glad as grasse wold be of raine,
Great ioy that I may take.'
54
S_i_r Gawaine tooke the lady by the one arme,
S_i_r Kay tooke her by the tother,
They led her straight to K_ing_ Arthur,
As they were brother and brother.
55
K_ing_ Arthur welcomed them there all,
And soe did Lady Geneuer his queene,
W_i_th all the knights of the Round Table,
Most seemly to be scene.
56
K_ing_ Arthur beheld that lady faire
That was soe faire and bright,
He thanked Christ in Trinity
For S_i_r Gawaine that gentle knight.
57
Soe did the knights, both more and lesse,
Reioyced all _tha_t day
For the good chance that hapened was
To S_i_r Gawaine and his lady gay.
* * * * *
1^3. Qqueene.
3^3. _Half a page gone from the MS., about 9 stanzas; and
so after 13^1, 22^3, 30^4, 39^3, 48^1._
19^1. _Perhaps ~sayes~._
23^2. he fimde.
25^1. _Perhaps ~sayes~._
26^2. _Perhaps ~hands~._
27^1. _~He~ altered from ~the~ in MS._
31. "The 2d Part" _is written here in the left margin of
the MS._ Furnivall.
34^2. her smire.
37^4. shaine.
41^2. w_i_th one.
43^1. seires.
44^2. a skill.
45^3. thou see
48^1. Carlist B ... _~&~ is printed ~and~._
[284] Still so called: near Aiketgate, Hesket. Lysons, Cumberland, p.
112.
[285] 'The Weddynge of S^r Gawen and Dame Ragnell,' Rawlinson MS., C 86,
Bodleian Library, the portion containing the poem being paper, and
indicating the close of Henry VII's reign. The poem is in six-line
stanzas, and, with a leaf that is wanting, would amount to about 925
lines. Madden's Syr Gawayne, lxiv, lxvii, 26, 298^a-298^y.
[286] Sir Gromer occurs in "The Turke and Gowin," Percy MS., Hales and
Furnivall, I, 102; Sir Grummore Grummorsum, "a good knight of Scotland,"
in Morte d'Arthur; ed. Wright, I, 286 and elsewhere (Madden).
[287] See 'King Henry,' the next ballad.
[288] The Gaelic tale of 'The Hoodie' offers a similar choice. The
hoodie, a species of crow, having married the youngest of a farmer's
three daughters, says to her, "Whether wouldst thou rather that I should
be a hoodie by day and a man at night, or be a hoodie at night and a man
by day?" The woman maintains her proper sovereignty, and does not leave
the decision to him: "'I would rather that thou wert a man by day and a
hoodie at night,' says she. After this he was a splendid fellow by day,
and a hoodie at night." Campbell, Popular Tales of the West Highlands,
I, 63.
The having one shape by day and another by night is a common feature in
popular tales: as, to be a bear by day and a man by night, Hrólfr
Kraki's Saga, c. 26, Asbjørnsen og Moe, Norske Folkeeventyr, No 41; a
lion by day and a man by night, Grimms, K. u. H. m., No 88; a crab by
day and a man by night, B. Schmidt, Griechische Märchen, u. s. w., No
10; a snake by day and a man by night, Karadshitch, Volksmärchen der
Serben, Nos 9, 10; a pumpkin by day and a man by night, A. & A. Schott,
Walachische Mærchen, No 23; a ring by day, a man by night, Müllenhoff,
No 27, p. 466, Karadshitch, No 6, Afanasief, VI, 189. Three princes in
'Kung Lindorm,' Nicolovius, Folklifwet, p. 48 ff, are cranes by day and
men by night, the king himself being man by day and worm by night. The
double shape is sometimes implied though not mentioned.
[289] The brother, Grower Somer Joure, was a victim of the same
necromancy; so the Carl of Carlile, Percy MS., Hales & Furnivall, III,
291.
[290]
And whan that this matrone herde
The maner how this knight answerde,
She saide, Ha, treson, wo the be!
That hast thus told the privete
Which alle women most desire:
I wolde that thou were a-fire!
So Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell, vv 474 f, and our ballad, stanzas 29, 30.
[291] This was a melodrama by Favart, in four acts: reduced in 1821 to
one act, at the Gymnase.
[292] Chaucer's tale is commonly said to be derived from Gower's, but
without sufficient reason. Vv 6507-14, ed. Tyrwhitt, are close to Dame
Ragnell, 409-420. Gower may have got his from some Example-book. I have
not seen it remarked, and therefore will note, that Example-books may
have been known in England as early as 1000, for Aelfric seems to speak
slightingly of them in his treatise on the Old Testament. The Proverbs,
he says, is a "bigspellbóc, _ná swilce gé secgað_, ac wísdómes bigspell
and warnung wið dysig," etc.
32
KING HENRY
'King Henry.' #a.# The Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. 31. #b.#
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1802, II, 132.
Scott describes his copy of 'King Henry' as "edited from the MS. of Mrs
Brown, corrected by a recited fragment." This MS. of Mrs Brown was
William Tytler's, in which, as we learn from Anderson's communication to
Percy (see p. 62, above), this ballad was No 11. Anderson notes that it
extended to twenty-two stanzas, the number in Scott's copy. No account
is given of the recited fragment. As published by Jamieson, II, 194, the
ballad is increased by interpolation to thirty-four stanzas. "The
interpolations will be found inclosed in brackets," but a painful
contrast of style of itself distinguishes them. They were entered by
Jamieson in his manuscript as well.
The fourteenth stanza, as now printed, the eighteenth in Jamieson's
copy, is not there bracketed as an interpolation, and yet it is not in
the manuscript. This stanza, however, with some verbal variation, is
found in Scott's version, and as it may have been obtained by Jamieson
in one of his visits to Mrs Brown, it has been allowed to stand.
Lewis rewrote the William Tytler version for his Tales of Wonder,
'Courteous King Jamie,' II, 453, No 57, and it was in this shape that
the ballad first came out, 1801.
The story is a variety of that which is found in 'The Marriage of Sir
Gawain,' and has its parallel, as Scott observed, in an episode in
Hrólfr Kraki's saga; #A#, Torfæus, Historia Hrolfi Krakii, c. vii,
Havniæ, 1705; #B#, Fornaldar Sögur, Rafn, I, 30 f, c. 15.
King Helgi, father of Hrólfr Kraki, in consequence of a lamentable
misadventure, was living in a solitary way in a retired lodge. One
stormy Yule-night there was a loud wail at the door, after he had gone
to bed. Helgi bethought himself that it was unkingly of him to leave
anything to suffer outside, and got up and unlocked the door. There he
saw a poor tattered creature of a woman, hideously misshapen, filthy,
starved, and frozen (#A#), who begged that she might come in. The king
took her in, and bade her get under straw and bearskin to warm herself.
She entreated him to let her come into his bed, and said that her life
depended on his conceding this boon. "It is not what I wish," replied
Helgi, "but if it is as thou sayest, lie here at the stock, in thy
clothes, and it will do me no harm." She got into the bed, and the king
turned to the wall. A light was burning, and after a while the king took
a look over his shoulder; never had he seen a fairer woman than was
lying there, and not in rags, but in a silk kirtle. The king turned
towards her now, and she informed him that his kindness had freed her
from a weird imposed by her stepmother, which she was to be subject to
till some king had admitted her to his bed, #A#. She had asked this
grace of many, but no one before had been moved to grant it.
Every point of the Norse saga, except the stepmother's weird, is found
in the Gaelic tale 'Nighean Righ fo Thuinn,' 'The Daughter of King
Under-waves,' Campbell's Popular Tales of the West Highlands, No lxxxvi,
III, 403 f.
The Finn were together one wild night, when there was rain and snow. An
uncouth woman knocked at Fionn's door about midnight, and cried to him
to let her in under cover. "Thou strange, ugly creature, with thy hair
down to thy heels, how canst thou ask _me_ to let thee in!" he answered.
She went away, with a scream, and the whole scene was repeated with
Oisean. Then she came to Diarmaid. "Thou art hideous," he said, "and thy
hair is down to thy heels, but come in." When she had come in, she told
Diarmaid that she had been travelling over ocean and sea for seven
years, without being housed, till he had admitted her. She asked that
she might come near the fire. "Come," said Diarmaid; but when she
approached everybody retreated, because she was so hideous. She had not
been long at the fire, when she wished to be under Diarmaid's blanket.
"Thou art growing too bold," said he, "but come." She came under the
blanket, and he turned a fold of it between them. "She was not long
thus, when he gave a start, and he gazed at her, and he saw the finest
drop of blood that ever was, from the beginning of the universe till the
end of the world, at his side."
Mr Campbell has a fragment of a Gaelic ballad upon this story, vol.
xvii., p. 212 of his manuscript collection, 'Collun gun Cheann,' or 'The
Headless Trunk,' twenty-two lines. In this case, as the title imports, a
body without a head replaces the hideous, dirty, and unkempt
draggle-tail who begs shelter of the Finn successively and obtains her
boon only from Diarmaid. See Campbell's Gaelic Ballads, p. ix.
The monstrous deformity of the woman is a trait in the ballad of 'The
Marriage of Sir Gawain,' and related stories, and is described in these
with revolting details. Her exaggerated appetite also is found in the
romance of The Wedding of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell, see p. 290. The
occasion on which she exhibits it is there the wedding feast, and the
scene consequently resembles, even more closely there than here, what we
meet with in the Danish ballads of 'Greve Genselin,' Grundtvig, No 16,
I, 222, and 'Tord af Havsgaard,' Grundtvig, No 1, I, 1, IV, 580
(==Kristensen, 'Thors Hammer,' I, 85, No 35) the latter founded on the
þrymskviða, or Hamarsheimt, of the older Edda. In a Norwegian version of
'Greve Genselin,' Grundtvig, IV, 732, the feats of eating and drinking
are performed not by the bride, but by an old woman who acts as
bridesmaid, brúrekvinne.[293]
A maid who submits, at a linden-worm's entreaty, to lie in the same bed
with him, finds a king's son by her side in the morning: Grundtvig,
'Lindormen,' No 65, #B#, #C#, II, 213, III, 839; Kristensen, I, 195, No
71; Afzelius, III, 121, No 88; Arwidsson, II, 270, No 139; Hazelius, Ur
de nordiska Folkens Lif, p. 117, and p. 149. In 'Ode und de Slang','
Müllenhoff, Sagen u. s. w., p. 383, a maid, without much reluctance,
lets a snake successively come into the house, into her chamber, and
finally into her bed, upon which the snake changes immediately into a
prince.
Scott's copy is translated by Schubart, p. 127, and by Gerhard, p. 129;
Jamieson's, without the interpolations, after Aytoun, II, 22, by Knortz,
Schottische Balladen, No 36.
1
Lat never a man a wooing wend
That lacketh thingis three;
A routh o gold, an open heart,
Ay fu o charity.
2
As this I speak of King Henry,
For he lay burd-alone;
An he's doen him to a jelly hunt's ha,
Was seven miles frae a town.
3
He chas'd the deer now him before,
An the roe down by the den,
Till the fattest buck in a' the flock
King Henry he has slain.
4
O he has doen him to his ha,
To make him beerly cheer;
An in it came a griesly ghost,
Steed stappin i the fleer.
5
Her head hat the reef-tree o the house,
Her middle ye mot wel span;
He's thrown to her his gay mantle,
Says, 'Lady, hap your lingcan.'
6
Her teeth was a' like teather stakes,
Her nose like club or mell;
An I ken naething she 'peard to be,
But the fiend that wons in hell.
7
'Some meat, some meat, ye King Henry,
Some meat ye gie to me!'
'An what meat's in this house, lady,
An what ha I to gie?'
'O ye do kill your berry-brown steed,
An you bring him here to me.'
8
O whan he slew his berry-brown steed,
Wow but his heart was sair!
Shee eat him [a'] up, skin an bane,
Left naething but hide an hair.
9
'Mair meat, mair meat, ye King Henry,
Mair meat ye gi to me!'
'An what meat's in this house, lady,
An what ha I to gi?'
'O ye do kill your good gray-hounds,
An ye bring them a' to me.'
10
O whan he slew his good gray-hounds,
Wow but his heart was sair!
She eat them a' up, skin an bane,
Left naething but hide an hair.
11
'Mair meat, mair meat, ye King Henry,
Mair meat ye gi to me!'
'An what meat's i this house, lady,
An what ha I to gi?'
'O ye do kill your gay gos-hawks,
An ye bring them here to me.'
12
O whan he slew his gay gos-hawks,
Wow but his heart was sair!
She eat them a' up, skin an bane,
Left naething but feathers bare.
13
'Some drink, some drink, now, King Henry,
Some drink ye bring to me!'
'O what drink's i this house, lady,
That you're nae welcome ti?'
'O ye sew up your horse's hide,
An bring in a drink to me.'
| 14
| And he's sewd up the bloody hide,
| A puncheon o wine put in;
| She drank it a' up at a waught,
| Left na ae drap ahin.
15
'A bed, a bed, now, King Henry,
A bed you mak to me!
For ye maun pu the heather green,
An mak a bed to me.'
16
O pu'd has he the heather green,
An made to her a bed,
An up has he taen his gay mantle,
An oer it has he spread.
17
'Tak aff your claiths, now, King Henry,
An lye down by my side!'
'O God forbid,' says King Henry,
'That ever the like betide;
That ever the fiend that wons in hell
Shoud streak down by my side.'
* * * * * * *
18
Whan night was gane, and day was come,
An the sun shone throw the ha,
The fairest lady that ever was seen
Lay atween him an the wa.
19
'O well is me!' says King Henry,
'How lang'll this last wi me?'
Then out it spake that fair lady,
'Even till the day you dee.
20
'For I've met wi mony a gentle knight
That's gien me sic a fill,
But never before wi a courteous knight
That ga me a' my will.'
* * * * *
#a.#
13^6. shew.
19^1. will.
#b.#
1. _The first stanza of the original of this copy, as
cited by Anderson, is_:
Let never a man a wooing wend
That lacketh things three,
A routh of gold, and open heart,
An fu o charity.
1^4. And fu o courtesey.
2^1. And this was seen o.
2^3. And he has taen him to a haunted hunt's ha.
3^1. He's chaced the dun deer thro the wood.
3^3. in a' the herd.
4.
He's taen him to his hunting ha,
For to make burly cheir;
When loud the wind was heard to sound,
And an earthquake rocked the floor.
And darkness coverd a' the hall,
Where they sat at their meat;
The gray dogs, youling, left their food,
And crept to Henrie's feet.
And louder houled the rising wind
And burst the fastned door;
And in there came a griesly ghost,
Stood stamping on the floor.
_The wind and darkness are not of Scott's invention, for
nearly all that is not in #a# is found in Lewis, too._
5^{3,4}.
Each frighted huntsman fled the ha,
And left the king alone.
7^{4-6}.
That ye're nae wellcum tee?'
'O ye's gae kill your berry brown steed,
And serve him up to me.'
9^4. That ye're na wellcum tee?
10^3. a' up, ane by ane.
11^{4-6}.
That I hae left to gie?'
'O ye do fell your gay goss-hawks,
And bring them a' to me.'
12^1. he felled.
12^3. bane by bane.
14^2. And put in a pipe of wine.
14^3. up a' at ae draught.
14^4. drap therein.
15. _Between ^2 and ^3_:
And what's the bed i this house, ladye,
That ye're nae wellcum tee?
15^3. O ye maun pu the green heather.
17^{1,2}.
Now swear, now swear, ye king Henrie,
To take me for your bride.
18^1. When day was come, and night was gane.
19^3. And out and spak that ladye fair.
20.
For I was witched to a ghastly shape,
All by my stepdame's skill,
Till I should meet wi a courteous knight
Wad gie me a' my will.
[293] The like by a carlin at a birth-feast, 'Kællingen til Barsel,'
Kristensen, II, 341, No 100, Landstad, p. 666, No 96; known also in
Sweden. Again, by a fighting friar, 'Den stridbare Munken,' Arwidsson,
I, 417. 'Greve Genselin' is translated by Prior, I, 173, and by
Jamieson, Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 310; 'Tord af
Havsgaard' by Prior, I, 3.
33
KEMPY KAY
#A.# 'Kempy Kay.' Pitcairn's MSS, II, 125. Scotish Ballads
and Songs [James Maidment], Edinb. 1859, p. 85; Sharpe's
Ballad Book, p. 81.
#B.# 'Kempy Kaye.' #a.# Kinloch MSS, I, 65. #b.# Kinloch's
Ballad Book, p. 41.
#C.# 'Kempy Kay,' or 'Kempy Kane,' Motherwell's MS., p.
193. The first stanza in Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Appendix, p. xxiv, No XXX.
#D.# 'Kempy Kay,' Motherwell's MS., p. 192.
#E.# 'Drowsy Lane.' Campbell MSS, II, 122.
#F.# 'Bar aye your bower door weel.' Campbell MSS, II,
101.
#G.# 'King Knapperty.' Buchan's MSS, I, 133.
All these versions of 'Kempy Kay' are known, or may be presumed, to have
been taken down within the first three decades of this century; #A# is
traced as many years back into the last. The fourth stanza of #A#
clearly belongs to some other ballad. Both #A# and #B# appear to have
undergone some slight changes when published by Sharpe and Kinloch
respectively. Some verses from this ballad have been adopted into one
form of a still more unpleasant piece in the Campbell collection,
concerning a wife who was "the queen of all sluts."[294]
Sharpe remarks: "This song my learned readers will perceive to be of
Scandinavian origin, and that the wooer's name was probably suggested by
Sir Kaye's of the Round Table.... The description of Bengoleer's
daughter resembles that of the enchanted damsel who appeared to
courteous King Henrie." It is among possibilities that the ballad was an
outgrowth from some form of the story of The Marriage of Sir Gawain, in
the Percy version of which the "unseemly" lady is so rudely commented on
and rejected by Kay. This unseemly lady, in The Wedding of Gawen and
Dame Ragnell, and her counterpart in 'King Henry,' who is of superhuman
height, show an extravagant voracity which recalls the giantess in
'Greve Genselin.' In 'Greve Genselin,' a burlesque form of an heroic
ballad which is preserved in a pure shape in three Färöe versions
(Grundtvig, IV, 737-42), there are many kemps invited to the wedding,
and in a little dance which is had the smallest kemp is fifteen ells to
[below] the knee, Grundtvig, No 16, #A# 26, #B# 29, #C# 29. Kempy Kay
has gigantic dimensions in #A# 7, #C# 9, #E# 7: teeth like
tether-stakes, a nose three [nine, five] feet long, three ells [nine
yards] between his shoulders, a span between his eyne.[295] Of the bride
it is said in #A# 12 that her finger nails were like the teeth of a rake
and her teeth like tether-stakes. This is not decisive; it is her
ugliness, filthiness, and laziness that are made most of. We may assume
that she would be in dimension and the shape of nature a match for the
kemp, but she does not comport herself especially like a giantess.
If Kempy Kay be the original name of the wooer, Knapperty and Chickmakin
might easily be derived from corrupt pronunciations like Kampeky,
Kimpaky.
A
Pitcairn's MSS, II, 125, as taken down by Mr Pitcairn from
the singing of his aunt, Mrs Gammell, who had learned it
in the neighborhood of Kincaid, Stirlingshire, when a
child, or about 1770. Scotish Ballads and Songs [James
Maidment], Edinburgh, 1859, p. 35; Sharpe's Ballad Book,
p. 81.
1
Kempy Kaye's a wooing gane,
Far, far ayont the sea,
And he has met with an auld, auld man,
His gudefaythir to be.
2
'It's I'm coming to court your daughter dear,
And some part of your gear:'
'And by my sooth,' quoth Bengoleer,
'She'll sare a man a wear.
3
'My dochter she's a thrifty lass,
She span seven year to me,
And if it were weel counted up,
Full three heire it would be.
4
'What's the matter wi you, my fair creature,
You look so pale and wan?
I'm sure you was once the fairest creature
That ever the sun shined on.
5
'Gae scrape yoursel, and gae scart yoursel,
And mak your brucket face clean,
For the wooers are to be here to nighte,
And your body's to be seen.'
6
Sae they scrapit her, and they scartit her,
Like the face of an aussy pan;
Syne in cam Kempy Kay himself,
A clever and tall young man.
7
His teeth they were like tether-sticks,
His nose was three fit lang,
Between his shouthers was ells three,
And tween his eyne a span.
8
He led his dochter by the hand,
His dochter ben brought he:
'O is she not the fairest lass
That's in great Christendye?'
9
Ilka hair intil her head
Was like a heather-cowe,
And ilka louse anunder it
Was like a bruckit ewe.
10
She had tauchy teeth and kaily lips,
And wide lugs, fou o hair;
Her pouches fou o peasemeal-daighe
A' hinging down her spare.
11
Ilka eye intil her head
Was like a rotten plumbe,
And down browed was the queyne,
And sairly did she gloom.
12
Ilka nail upon her hand
Was like an iron rake,
And ilka tooth intil her head
Was like a tether-stake.
* * * * * * *
13
She gied to him a gravat,
O the auld horse's sheet,
And he gied her a gay gold ring,
O the auld couple-root.
B
#a.# Kinloch MSS, I, 65. #b.# Kinloch's Ballad Book, p.
41. From the recitation of Mary Barr.
1
Kempy Kaye is a wooing gane,
Far ayont the sea,
And there he met wi auld Goling,
His gudefather to be, be,
His gudefather to be.
2
'Whar are ye gaun, O Kempy Kaye,
Whar are ye gaun sae sune?'
'O I am gaun to court a wife,
And think na ye that's weel dune?'
3
'An ye be gaun to court a wife,
As ye do tell to me,
'T is ye sal hae my Fusome Fug,
Your ae wife for to be.'
4
Whan auld Goling cam to the house,
He lookit thro a hole,
And there he saw the dirty drab
Just whisking oure the coal.
5
'Rise up, rise up my Fusome Fug,
And mak your foul face clean,
For the brawest wooer that ere ye saw
Is come develling doun the green.'
6
Up then rose the Fusome Fug,
To mak her foul face clean;
And aye she cursed her mither
She had na water in.
7
She rampit out, and she rampit in,
She rampit but and ben;
The tittles and tattles that hang frae her tail
Wad muck an acre o land.
8
She had a neis upon her face
Was like an auld pat-fit;
Atween her neis hot an her mon
Was inch thick deep wi dirt.
9
She had twa een intil her head
War like twa rotten plums;
The heavy brows hung doun her face,
And O I vow she glooms!
10
He gied to her a braw silk napkin,
Was made o' an auld horse-brat:
'I ne'er wore a silk napkin a' my life,
But weel I wat Ise wear that.'
11
He gied to her a braw gowd ring,
Was made frae an auld brass pan:
'I neer wore a gowd ring in a' my life,
But now I wat Ise wear ane.'
12
Whan thir twa lovers had met thegither,
O kissing to get their fill,
The slaver that hang atween their twa gabs
Wad hae tetherd a ten year auld bill.
C
Motherwell's MS., p. 193. Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Appendix, p. xxiv, No XXX, the first stanza.
1
Kempy Kaye's a wooing gane,
And far beyond the sea, a wee
And there he met wi Drearylane,
His gay gudefather to be. a wee
2
'Gude een, gude een,' quo Drearylane,
'Gude een, gude een,' quo he, a wee
'I've come your dochter's love to win,
I kenna how it will do.' a wee
3
'My dochter she's a thrifty lass,
She's spun this gay seven year,
And if it come to gude guiding,
It will be half a heer.'
4
'Rise up, rise up, ye dirty slut,
And wash your foul face clean;
The wooers will be here the night
That suld been here yestreen.'
5
They took him ben to the fire en,
And set him on a chair;
He looked on the lass that he loved best,
And thought she was wondrous fair.
6
The een that was in our bride's head
Was like twa rotten plooms;
She was a chaunler-chaftit quean,
And O but she did gloom!
7
The skin that was on our bride's breast
Was like a saffron bag,
And aye her hand was at her neek,
And riving up the scabs.
8
The hair that was on our bride's head
Was like a heather-cow,
And every louse that lookit out
Was like a brockit ewe.
9
Betwixd Kempy's shouthers was three ells,
His nose was nine feet lang,
His teeth they were like tether sticks,
Between his eyne a span.
10
So aye they kissed, and aye they clapped,
I wat they kissed weel;
The slaver that hang between their mouths
Wad hae tethered a twa year auld bill.
D
Motherwell's MS., p. 192.
* * * * * * *
1
The father came unto the door,
And keeked thro the key-hole, a wee
And there he saw his dochter Jean,
Sitting on a coal. a wee
2
They scartit her, and scrapit her,
Wi the hand o a rusty pan, a wee
Her father he did all his best
For to get her a man. a wee
3
She is to the stoups gane,
There is nae water in;
She's cursed the hands and ban'd the feet
That did na bring it in.
4
Out then spak her auld mither,
In her bed whare she lay:
'If there is nae water in the house,
Gae harl her thro the lin.'
5
O she is to the taipy tapples gane,
That stood for seven year,
And there she washed her foul face clean,
And dried it wi a huggar.
6
He's gien her a gay gold ring,
Just like a cable-rope,
And she's gien him a gay gravat,
Made out o the tail o a sark.
E
Campbell MSS, II, 122.
1
'Gud een, gud een,' says Chickmakin,
'Ye're welcome here,' says Drowsy Lane;
'I'm comd to court your daughter Jean,
And marry her wi yer will, a wee.'
2
'My daughter Jean's a thrifty lass,
She's spun these seven lang years to me,
And gin she spin another seven,
She'll munt a half an heir, a wee.'
3
Drowsy Lane, it's he's gane hame,
And keekit through the hole, a wee
And there he saw his daughter Jean
A reeking oer the coal. a wee
4
'Get up, get up, ye dirty bitch,
And wash yer foul face clean,
For they are to be here the night
That should hae been here yestreen.'
5
Up she rose, pat on her clothes,
She's washen her foul face clean;
She cursd the hands, she ban'd the feet,
That wadna bring the water in.
6
She rubbit hersel, she scrubbit hersel,
Wi the side of a rustit pan, a wee,
And in a little came Chickmakin,
A braw young lad indeed was he.
7
His teeth they were like tether-steeks,
His nose was five feet lang;
Between his shoulders was nine yards broad,
And between his een a span.
8
Ilka hair into his head
Was like a heather-cowe,
And ilka louse that lookit out
Was like a brookit ewe.
9
Thae twa kissd and thae twa clapt,
And thae twa kissd their fill,
And aye the slaver between them hang
Wad tetherd a ten-pund bull.
10
They twa kissd and they twa clapt,
And they gaed to their bed, a wee,
And at their head a knocking stane
And at their feet a mell, a wee.
11
The auld wife she lay in her bed:
'And gin ye'll do my bidding a wee,
And gin ye'll do my bidding,' quoth she,
'Yees whirl her oer the lea, a wee.'
F
Campbell MSS, II, 101.
1
As I cam oer yon misty muir,
And oer yon grass-green hill,
There I saw a campy carle
Going to the mill.
And bar aye yer bower door weel weel,
And bar aye yer bower door weel.
2
I lookit in at her window,
And in at her hove hole,
And there I saw a fousome fag,
Cowering oer a coal.
3
'Get up, get up, ye fousome fag,
And make yer face fou clean;
For the wooers will be here the night,
And your body will be seen.'
4
He gave her a gay cravat,
'T was of an auld horse-sheet;
He gave her a gay goud ring,
'T was of an auld tree root.
5
He laid his arms about her neck,
They were like kipple-roots;
And aye he kissd her wi his lips,
They were like meller's hoops.
6
When they were laid in marriage bed,
And covered oer wi fail,
The knocking mell below their heads
Did serve them wondrous weel.
7
Ilka pap into her breasts
Was like a saffron bag,
And aye his hand at her a..e
Was tearing up the scabs.
8
Ilka hair into her head
Was like a heather-cow,
And ilka louse that lookit out
Was like a brookit ewe.
G
Buchan's MSS, I, 133.
1
King Knapperty he's a hunting gane,
Oer hills and mountains high, high, high,
A gude pike-staff intill his hand,
And dulgets anew forbye, I, I, I,
And dulgets anew forbye.
2
Then he met in wi an auld woman,
Was feeding her flocks near by, I, I, I:
'I'm come a wooing to your daughter,
And a very gude bargain am I, I, I.'
3
And she's awa to her wee hole house,
Lookd in a wee chip hole,
And there she saw her filthy wee flag,
Was sitting athort the coal.
4
'Get up, get up, ye filthy foul flag,
And make your foul face clean;
There are wooers coming to the town,
And your foul face mauna be seen.'
5
Then up she raise, an awa she gaes,
And in at the back o the door,
And there a pig o water she saw,
'T was seven years auld an mair.
6
Aye she rubbed, an aye she scrubbed,
To make her foul face clean,
And aye she bannd the auld wife, her mither,
For nae bringing clean water in.
7
King Knapperty he came in at the door,
Stood even up in the floor;
Altho that she had neer seen him before,
She kent him to be her dear.
8
He has taen her in his arms twa,
And kissd her, cheek and chin:
'I neer was kissd afore in my life,
But this night got mony ane.'
9
He has put his hand in his pocket,
And he's taen out a ring:
Says, 'Take ye that, my dearest dear,
It is made o the brazen pan.'
10
She thankd him ance, she thankd him twice,
She thankd him oer again:
'I neer got a ring before in my life,
But this night hae gotten ane.'
11
These lovers bed it was well made,
And at their hearts' desire;
These lovers bed it was well made,
At the side o the kitchen fire.
12
The bolster that these lovers had
Was the mattock an the mell,
And the covring that these lovers had
Was the clouted cloak an pale.
13
The draps that fell frae her twa een
Woud have gard a froth-mill gang,
An [the] clunkerts that hung at their heels
Woud hae muckd an acre o land.
14
An ilka hair that was in their head
Was like a heather-cow,
And ilka tenant that it containd
Was like a lintseed-bow.
* * * * *
#A.#
5^{3,4}. _Var._
For Kempy Kay will be here the night
Or else the morn at een.
9^4. _Var._ Was like a lintseed bow.
_These variations are found in Sharpe's copy. The first
seven stanzas are put in the order 1, 6, 7, 3, 2, 4, 5._
2^1. I'm coming.
3^4. Full ten wobs it would be.
4^{1,3}. fair maiden, fairest maiden.
5^2. bruchty.
6^3. And in.
7^4. Between his een.
10^1. _~tauchty~ is misprinted ~lauchty~._
10^4. War hinging.
11^3. An down down.
12^3. _~teeth~, no doubt to indicate the pronunciation._
#B. a.#
4^1. Whan Kempy Kaye. _Other copies show that it must be
the father, and not the wooer._
6^3. _~ae~, with ~ay~ in the margin: qu. ~aye as~?_
#b.#
_The variations of the ~Ballad Book~ are apparently
arbitrary._
1^2. Far far.
8^4. o dirt.
_After 9 follows_:
Ilka hair that was on her head
Was like a heather cow,
And ilka Iouse that lookit out
Was like a lintseed bow.
_#a^4# succeeds, with ~Kempy Kaye~ for ~auld Goling~, and
is necessarily transferred if the reading ~Kempy Kaye~ is
retained._
#C.#
_The order of the first five stanzas in the MS is 1, 2, 5,
4, 3._
_~A wee~ is the burden after every second and fourth
verse, and so with #D#._
1^{1,2}. _In Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xxiv,
No_ XXX,
Kempy Kane's a wooin gane,
And far ayont the sea awee.
3^2. years.
5^2. on a stool.
#D.#
_The first stanza is numbered 3 in the MS., the second 5,
and there is space left, as if for another, between 2 and
3._
#E.#
_~A wee~, originally a burden at the middle and the end of
the stanza, as in #C#, #D#, has been adopted into the
verse in 1, 2, 6, 10(?), 11, in which stanzas the even
lines are of four accents instead of three. 2, 6 can be
easily restored, on the model of #C# 3, #A# 6._
5^4. in the water.
#G.#
_~I, I, I~ is added as burden to every second and fourth
line; except 1^2, which adds ~high, high~, and 2^4, only
~I, I~._
[294] MSS, II, 294, "What a bad luck had I"==The Queen of all Sluts, the
same, p. 297. Stanzas 2, 3, 4, of the former are:
Then een in her head are like two rotten plumbs;
Turn her about and see how she glooms.
The teeth in her head were like harrow-pins;
Turn her about, and see how she girns.
The hair in her head was like heathercrows,
The l ...s were in't thick as linseed bows.
A comparatively inoffensive version, 'The Queen of Sluts,' in Chambers'
Scottish Songs, p. 454.
[295] The Carl of Carlile has the space of a large span between his
brows, three yards over his shoulders, fingers like tether-stakes, and
fifty cubits of height. Percy MS., Hales & Furnivall, III, 283 f, vv
179-187.
34
KEMP OWYNE
#A.# 'Kemp Owyne.' Buchan's Ballads of the North of
Scotland, II, 78; Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 373; 'Kemp
Owayne,' Motherwell's MS., p. 448.
#B.# 'Kempion.' #a.# Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. 29. #b.#
Scott's Minstrelsy, 1802, II, 93, from William Tytler's
Brown MS., No 9, "with corrections from a recited
fragment."
It is not, perhaps, material to explain how Owain, "the king's son
Urien," happens to be awarded the adventure which here follows. It is
enough that his right is as good as that of other knights to whom the
same achievement has been assigned, though the romance, or, as the
phrase used to be, "the book," says nothing upon the subject. Owain's
slaying the fire-drake who was getting the better of the lion may have
led to his name becoming associated with the still more gallant exploit
of thrice kissing a fire-drake to effect a disenchantment. The ring in
#A# 9 might more plausibly be regarded as being a repetition of that
which Owain's lady gave him on leaving her for a twelvemonth's outing, a
ring which would keep him from loss of blood, and also from prison,
sickness, and defeat in battle--in short, preserve him against all the
accidents which the knight suggested might prevent his holding his
day--provided that he had it by him and thought on her. Ritson, Ywaine
and Gawin, vv 1514-38.
But an Icelandic saga comes near enough to the story of the ballad as
given in #A# to show where its connections lie. Alsól and a brother and
sister are all transformed by a stepmother, a handsome woman, much,
younger than her husband. Alsól's heavy weird is to be a nondescript
monster with a horse's tail, hoofs, and mane, white eyes, big mouth, and
huge hands, and never to be released from the spell till a king's son
shall consent to kiss her. One night when Hjálmtèr had landed on a woody
island, and it had fallen to him to keep watch, he heard a great din and
crashing in the woods, so that the oaks trembled. Presently this monster
came out of the thicket with a fine sword in her hand, such as he had
not seen the like of. They had a colloquy, and he asked her to let him
have the sword. She said he should not have it unless he would kiss her.
"I will not kiss thy snout," said Hjálmtèr, "for mayhap I should stick
to it." But something came into his mind which made him think better of
her offer, and he said he was ready. "You must leap upon my neck, then,"
she said, "when I throw up the sword, and if you then hesitate, it will
be your death." She threw up the sword, he leaped on her neck and kissed
her, and she gave him the sword, with an augury of victory and good luck
for him all his days. The retransformation does not occur on the spot,
but further on Hjálmtèr meets Álsól as a young lady at the court of her
brother, who has also been restored to his proper form and station;
everything is explained; Hjálmtèr marries her, and his foster-brother
her sister. Hjálmtèrs ok Ölvers Saga, cc 10, 22, Rafn, Fornaldar Sögur,
III, 473 ff, 514 ff.
In many tales of the sort a single kiss suffices to undo the spell and
reverse the transformation; in others, as in the ballad, three are
required. The triplication of the kiss has led in #A# to a triplication
of the talisman against wounds. The popular genius was inventive enough
to vary the properties of the several gifts, and we may believe that
belt, ring, and sword had originally each its peculiar quality. The
peril of touching fin or tail in #A# seems to correspond to that in the
saga of hesitating when the sword is thrown up.
The #Danish# ballad, 'Jomfruen i Ormeham,' from MSS of the sixteenth and
the seventeenth century, Grundtvig, No 59, II, 177, resembles both the
first version of the Scottish ballad and the Icelandic saga in the
points that the maid offers gifts and is rehabilitated by a kiss. The
maid in her proper shape, which, it appears, she may resume for a
portion of the day, stands at Sir Jenus's bedside and offers him
gifts--five silver-bowls, all the gold in her kist, twelve foals, twelve
boats--and ends with saying, "Were I a swain, as you are, I would
betroth a maid." It is now close upon midnight, and she hints that he
must be quick. But Jenus is fast asleep the while; twelve strikes, and
the maid instantly turns into a little snake. The page, however, has
been awake, and he repeats to his master all that has occurred.[296] Sir
Jenus orders his horse, rides along a hillside, and sees the little
snake in the grass. He bends over and kisses it, and it turns to a
courteous maid, who thanks him, and offers him any boon he may ask. He
asks her to be his, and as she has loved him before this, she has no
difficulty in plighting him her troth.
A maid transformed by a step-mother into a tree is freed by being kissed
by a man, in 'Jomfruen i Linden,' Grundtvig, II, 214, No 66, Kristensen,
II, 90, No 31; 'Linden,' Afzelius, III, 114, 118, No 87. In 'Linden,'
Kristensen, I, 13, No 5, a combination of two ballads, a prince cuts
down the linden, which changes to a linden-worm; he kisses the worm, and
a young maid stands before him.
A knight bewitched into the shape of a troll is restored by being kissed
by a peasant's wife thrice [once], 'Trolden og Bondens Hustru,'
Grundtvig, II, 142, No 52, #A#, #B#; a prince by a kiss from a maid,
'Lindormen,' Grundtvig, D. g. F., II, 211, No 65 #A#, 'Slangen og den
lille Pige,' Danske Folkeminder, 1861, p. 15.
The removal of a spell which compels man or woman to appear continuously
or alternately as a monster, commonly a snake, by three kisses or by
one, is a regular feature in the numerous German tales of
Schlangenjungfrauen, Weissefrauen. Often the man is afraid to venture
the third kiss, or even a single one. See Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, No 13,
No 222; Dobeneck, Des deutschen Mittelalters Volksglauben, I, 18==Grimm,
No 13; Mone's Anzeiger, III, 89, VII, 476; Panzer, Bayerische Sagen u.
Bräuche, I, 196, No 214; Schönhuth, Die Burgen u.s.w. Badens u. der
Pfalz, I, 105; Stöber, Die Sagen des Elsasses, p. 346, No 277, p. 248,
No 190; Curtze, Volksüberlieferungen aus Waldeck, p. 198; Sommer, Sagen,
Märchen u. Gebräuche aus Sachsen u. Thüringen, p. 21, No 16; Schambach
u. Müller, p. 104, No 132; Müllenhoff, p. 580, No 597; Wolf, Hessische
Sagen, No 46; etc., etc.: also, Kreutzwald, Ehstnische Märchen, by Löwe,
No 19, p. 270 f. So in some forms of 'Beauty and the Beast:' Töppen,
Aberglauben aus Masuren, p. 142; Mikuličić, Narodne Pripovietke,
p. 1, No 1; Afanasief, VII, 153, No 15; Coelho, Contos populares
portuguezes, p. 69, No 29.[297]
Rivals or peers of Owain among romantic knights are, first, Lanzelet, in
Ulrich von Zatzikhoven's poem, who kisses a serpent on the mouth once,
which, _after bathing in a spring_ (see 'Tam Lin'), becomes the finest
woman ever seen: vv 7836-7939. Brandimarte, again, in Orlando
Innamorato, lib. II., c. XXVI, stanzas 7-15; and Carduino, I Cantari di
Carduino, Rajna, stanzas 49, 54 f, 61-64, pp 35-41. Le Bel Inconnu is an
involuntary instrument in such a disenchantment, for the snake
fascinates him first and kisses him without his knowledge; he afterwards
goes to sleep, and finds a beautiful woman standing at his head when he
wakes: ed. Hippeau, p. 110 ff, v. 3101 ff. The English Libius Disconius
is kist or he it wist, and the dragon at once turns to a beautiful
woman: Percy MS., Hales & Furnivall, II, 493f; Ritson, Romances, II, 84
f. Espertius, in Tiran le Blanc, is so overcome with fear that he cannot
kiss the dragon,--a daughter of Hippocrates, transformed by Diana, in
the island of Lango,--but Espertius not running away, as two men before
him had done, the dragon kisses him with equally good effect: Caylus,
Tiran le Blanc, II, 334-39. This particular disenchantment had not been
accomplished down to Sir John Mandeville's time, for he mentions only
the failures: Voyage and Travel, c. iv, pp 28-31, ed. 1725. Amadis
d'Astra touches two dragons on the face and breast, and restores them to
young-ladyhood: Historia del Principe Sferamundi, the 13th book of
Amadis of Gaul, P. II, c. xcvii, pp 458-462, Venice, 1610. This feat is
shown by the details to be only a variation of the story in Tiran le
Blanc.[298]
The Rev. Mr Lamb, of Norham, communicated to Hutchinson, author of 'A
View of Northumberland,' a ballad entitled 'The Laidley Worm of
Spindleston Heughs,' with this harmless preamble: "A song 500 years old,
made by the old Mountain Bard, Duncan Frasier, living on Cheviot, A.D.
1270. From an ancient manuscript." This composition of Mr Lamb's--for
nearly every line of it is his--is not only based on popular tradition,
but evidently preserves some small fragments of a popular ballad, and
for this reason is given in an Appendix. There is a copy deviating but
very little from the print in Kinloch's MSS, I, 187. It was obtained
from the recitation of an old woman in Berwickshire.[299] In this
recited version the Child of Wynd, or Childy Wynd (Child O-wyne), has
become Child o Wane (Child O-wayn).
Mr R.H. Evans, in his preface to this ballad, Old Ballads, 1810, IV,
241, says that Mr Turner had informed him "that a lady upwards of
seventy had heard her mother repeat an older and nearly similar ballad."
* * * * *
#A# is translated by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, p. 19; #B b#
by Gerhard, p. 171, by Schubart, p. 110, by Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen
Alt-Englands, p. 201. 'Jomfruen i Ormeham' by Prior, III, 135.
A
Buchan, Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 78, from Mr
Nicol of Strichen, as learned in his youth from old
people; Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 374; Motherwell's MS.,
p. 448.
1
Her mother died when she was young,
Which gave her cause to make great moan;
Her father married the warst woman
That ever lived in Christendom.
2
She served her with foot and hand,
In every thing that she could dee,
Till once, in an unlucky time,
She threw her in ower Craigy's sea.
3
Says, 'Lie you there, dove Isabel,
And all my sorrows lie with thee;
Till Kemp Owyne come ower the sea,
And borrow you with kisses three,
Let all the warld do what they will,
Oh borrowed shall you never be!'
4
Her breath grew strang, her hair grew lang,
And twisted thrice about the tree,
And all the people, far and near,
Thought that a savage beast was she.
5
These news did come to Kemp Owyne,
Where he lived, far beyond the sea;
He hasted him to Craigy's sea,
And on the savage beast lookd he.
6
Her breath was strang, her hair was lang,
And twisted was about the tree,
And with a swing she came about:
'Come to Craigy's sea, and kiss with me.
7
'Here is a royal belt,' she cried,
'That I have found in the green sea;
And while your body it is on,
Drawn shall your blood never be;
But if you touch me, tail or fin,
I vow my belt your death shall be.'
8
He stepped in, gave her a kiss,
The royal belt he brought him wi;
Her breath was strang, her hair was lang,
And twisted twice about the tree,
And with a swing she came about:
'Come to Craigy's sea, and kiss with me.
9
'Here is a royal ring,' she said,
'That I have found in the green sea;
And while your finger it is on,
Drawn shall your blood never be;
But if you touch me, tail or fin,
I swear my ring your death shall be.'
10
He stepped in, gave her a kiss,
The royal ring he brought him wi;
Her breath was strang, her hair was lang,
And twisted ance about the tree,
And with a swing she came about:
'Come to Craigy's sea, and kiss with me.
11
'Here is a royal brand,' she said,
'That I have found in the green sea;
And while your body it is on,
Drawn shall your blood never be;
But if you touch me, tail or fin,
I swear my brand your death shall be.'
12
He stepped in, gave her a kiss,
The royal brand he brought him wi;
Her breath was sweet, her hair grew short,
And twisted nane about the tree,
And smilingly she came about,
As fair a woman as fair could be.
B
#a.# Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. 29. #b.# Scott's Minstrelsy,
II, 93, 1802, from William Tytler's Brown MS., No 9, "with
corrections from a recited fragment."
1
'Come here, come here, you freely feed,
An lay your head low on my knee;
The hardest weird I will you read
That eer war read to a lady.
2
'O meikle dollour sall you dree,
An ay the sat seas oer ye['s] swim;
An far mair dollour sall ye dree
On Eastmuir craigs, or ye them clim.
3
'I wot ye's be a weary wight,
An releived sall ye never be
Till Kempion, the kingis son,
Come to the craig and thrice kiss thee.'
4
O meickle dollour did she dree,
An ay the sat seas oer she swam;
An far mair dollour did she dree
On Eastmuir craigs, or them she clam;
An ay she cried for Kempion,
Gin he would come till her han.
5
Now word has gane to Kempion
That sich a beast was in his lan,
An ay be sure she would gae mad
Gin she gat nae help frae his han.
6
'Now by my sooth,' says Kempion,
'This fiery beast I['ll] gang to see;'
'An by my sooth,' says Segramour,
'My ae brother, I'll gang you wi.'
7
O biggit ha they a bonny boat,
An they hae set her to the sea,
An Kempion an Segramour
The fiery beast ha gane to see:
A mile afore they reachd the shore,
I wot she gard the red fire flee.
8
'O Segramour, keep my boat afloat,
An lat her no the lan so near;
For the wicked beast she'll sure gae mad,
An set fire to the land an mair.'
9
'O out o my stye I winna rise--
An it is na for the fear o thee--
Till Kempion, the kingis son,
Come to the craig an thrice kiss me.'
10
He's louted him oer the Eastmuir craig,
An he has gien her kisses ane;
Awa she gid, an again she came,
The fieryest beast that ever was seen.
11
'O out o my stye I winna rise--
An it is na for fear o thee--
Till Kempion, the kingis son,
Come to the craig an thrice kiss me.'
12
He louted him oer the Eastmuir craig,
An he has gien her kisses twa;
Awa she gid, an again she came,
The fieryest beast that ever you saw.
13
'O out o my stye I winna rise--
An it is na for fear o ye--
Till Kempion, the kingis son,
Come to the craig an thrice kiss me.'
14
He's louted him oer the Eastmuir craig,
An he has gien her kisses three;
Awa she gid, an again she came,
The fairest lady that ever coud be.
15
'An by my sooth,' say[s] Kempion,
'My ain true love--for this is she--
O was it wolf into the wood,
Or was it fish intill the sea,
Or was it man, or wile woman,
My true love, that misshapit thee?'
16
'It was na wolf into the wood,
Nor was it fish into the sea,
But it was my stepmother,
An wae an weary mot she be.
17
'O a heavier weird light her upon
Than ever fell on wile woman;
Her hair's grow rough, an her teeth's grow lang,
An on her four feet sal she gang.
18
'Nane sall tack pitty her upon,
But in Wormie's Wood she sall ay won,
An relieved sall she never be,
Till St Mungo come oer the sea.'
* * * * *
#A.#
_Buchan gives 4-6 in two six-line stanzas. There are a few
trivial diversities between Motherwell's manuscript, or my
copy of it, and his printed text, which conforms to
Buchan's._
#B. a.#
_Written in long or double lines in the manuscript._
2^2, 4^2. or.
5^3. a besure.
8^4. landy mair
11^4. twice.
16^3. _~wicked~ is inserted before stepmother, seemingly
by Jamieson._
#b.#
_The first stanza, as given by Anderson, Nichols, Literary
Illustrations, VII, 177, is_:
'Come here, come here, ye freely feed,
And lay your head low on my knee;
The heaviest weird I will you read
That ever was read till a lady.'
1^3. heaviest.
1^4. gaye ladye.
2^2. ye'se.
2^4. when ye.
3^1. I weird ye to a fiery beast.
5==#a# 4^{5,6} + #a# 5^{1,2}: #a# 5^{3,4} _omitted:_
And aye she cried for Kempion,
Gin he would but cum to her hand;
Now word has gane to Kempion
That sicken a beast was in his land.
6^4. wi thee.
7 _omits #a#^{3,4}._
7^5. But a mile before.
7^6. Around them she.
8^2. oer near.
8^3. will sure.
8^4. to a' the land and mair.
_After 8 is inserted:_
Syne has he bent an arblast bow,
And aimd an arrow at her head,
And swore if she didna quit the land,
Wi that same shaft to shoot her dead.
9^1. stythe.
9^2. awe o thee.
10^1. dizzy crag.
10^2. gien the monster.
11^1. stythe.
11^2. And not for a' thy bow nor thee.
12^1. Estmere craigs.
13^1. my den.
13^2. Nor flee it for the feir o thee.
13^3. Kempion, that courteous knight.
14^1. lofty craig.
14^4. loveliest lady eer.
15^{1,2}. _After this is inserted:_
They surely had a heart o stane,
Could put thee to such misery.
15^{3-6} _make a separate stanza._
15^3, 16^1. warwolf in the wood.
15^4, 16^2. mermaid in the sea.
15^6. my ain true.
17^1. weird shall light her on.
17^3. Her hair shall grow ... teeth grow.
18^2. In Wormeswood she aye shall won.
18^{5,6}.
And sighing said that weary wight,
I doubt that day I'll never see.
[296] The incident of a woman trying to move a man who all the while is
in a deep sleep, and of his servant reporting what has been going on,
can hardly have belonged to this ballad from the beginning. It is
exceedingly common in popular tales: see 'The Red Bull of Norroway,' in
Chambers's Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 3d ed., p. 99; Grimms, 'Das
singende springende Löweneckerchen,' No 88, 'Der Eisenhofen,' No 127,
and the notes in vol. iii; Leskien u. Brugman, Litanische V. l. u.
Märchen, 'Vom weissen Wolf,' No 23, p. 438, and Wollner's note, p. 571.
[297] But not in Mme Villeneuve's or in Mme de Beaumont's 'La Belle et
la Bête.'
[298] Lanzelet is cited by J. Grimm; Brandimarte by Walter Scott;
Carduino by G. Paris; Espertius by Dunlop; Amadis d'Astra by Valentin
Schmidt. Dunlop refers to a similar story in the sixth tale of the
Contes Amoureux de Jean Flore, written towards the end of the fifteenth
century.
[299] "The Childe of Wane, as a protector of disconsolate damsels, is
still remembered by young girls at school in the neighborhood of
Bamborough, who apply the title to any boy who protects them from the
assaults of their school-fellows." (Kinloch.)
APPENDIX
THE LAIDLEY WORM OF SPINDLESTON HEUGHS.
A View of Northumberland, by W. Hutchinson, Anno 1776,
Newcastle, 1778, II, 162-64. Communicated by the Rev. Mr
Lamb, of Norham.
Kinloch's account of the tradition in relation to the queen, as it
maintains itself in Berwickshire, is quite in accord with German _sagen_
about enchanted ladies, innocent or guilty, and as such may be worth
giving: Kinloch MSS, I, 187.
"Though the ballad mentions that the queen was transformed into 'a
spiteful toad of monstrous size,' and was doomed in that form to wend on
the earth until the end of the world, yet the tradition of the country
gives another account of the endurance of her enchantment. It is said
that in form of a toad as big as a 'clockin hen' she is doomed to
expiate her guilt by confinement in a cavern in Bamborough castle, in
which she is to remain in her enchanted shape until some one shall have
the hardihood to break the spell by penetrating the cavern, whose
'invisible' door only opens every seven years, on Christmas eve. The
adventurer, after entering the cavern, must take the sword and horn of
the Childe of Wane, which hang on the wall, and having unsheathed and
resheathed the sword thrice, and wound three blasts on the horn, he must
kiss the toad three times; upon which the enchantment will be dissolved,
and the queen will recover her human form.
"Many adventurers, it is said, have attempted to disenchant the queen,
but have all failed, having immediately fallen into a trance, something
similar to the princes in the Arabian tale who went in search of the
Talking Bird, Singing Tree, and Yellow Water. The last one, it is said,
who made the attempt was a countryman, about sixty years ago, who,
having watched on Christmas eve the opening of the door, entered the
cavern, took the sword and horn from the wall, unsheathed and resheathed
the sword thrice, blew three blasts on the horn, and was proceeding to
the final disenchantment by kissing the toad, which he had saluted
twice, when, perceiving the various strange sleepers to arise from the
floor, his courage failed, and he fled from the cavern, having just
attained the outside of the door when it suddenly shut with a loud clap,
catching hold of the skirt of his coat, which was torn off and left in
the door.
And none since that time
To enter the cavern presume."
1
The king is gone from Bambrough castle,
Long may the princess mourn;
Long may she stand on the castle wall,
Looking for his return.
2
She has knotted the keys upon a string,
And with her she has them taen,
She has cast them oer her left shoulder,
And to the gate she is gane.
3
She tripped out, she tripped in,
She tript into the yard;
But it was more for the king's sake,
Than for the queen's regard.
4
It fell out on a day the king
Brought the queen with him home,
And all the lords in our country
To welcome them did come.
5
'O welcome, father,' the lady cries,
'Unto your halls and bowers;
And so are you, my stepmother,
For all that is here is yours.'
6
A lord said, wondering while she spake,
This princess of the North
Surpasses all of female kind
In beauty and in worth.
7
The envious queen replied: At least,
You might have excepted me;
In a few hours I will her bring
Down to a low degree.
8
I will her liken to a laidley worm,
That warps about the stone,
And not till Childy Wynd comes back
Shall she again be won.
9
The princess stood at the bower door,
Laughing, who could her blame?
But eer the next day's sun went down,
A long worm she became.
10
For seven miles east, and seven miles west,
And seven miles north and south,
No blade of grass or corn could grow,
So venomous was her mouth.
11
The milk of seven stately cows--
It was costly her to keep--
Was brought her daily, which she drank
Before she went to sleep.
12
At this day may be seen the cave
Which held her folded up,
And the stone trough, the very same
Out of which she did sup.
13
Word went east, and word went west,
And word is gone over the sea,
That a laidley worm in Spindleston Heughs
Would ruin the north country.
14
Word went east, and word went west,
And over the sea did go;
The Child of Wynd got wit of it,
Which filled his heart with woe.
15
He called straight his merry men all,
They thirty were and three:
'I wish I were at Spindleston,
This desperate worm to see.
16
'We have no time now here to waste,
Hence quickly let us sail;
My only sister Margaret,
Something, I fear, doth ail.'
17
They built a ship without delay,
With masts of the rown tree,
With fluttering sails of silk so fine,
And set her on the sea.
18
They went aboard; the wind with speed
Blew them along the deep;
At length they spied an huge square tower,
On a rock high and steep.
19
The sea was smooth, the weather clear;
When they approached nigher,
King Ida's castle they well knew,
And the banks of Bambroughshire.
20
The queen looked out at her bower-window,
To see what she could see;
There she espied a gallant ship,
Sailing upon the sea.
21
When she beheld the silken sails,
Full glancing in the sun,
To sink the ship she sent away
Her witch-wives every one.
22
Their spells were vain; the hags returned
To the queen in sorrowful mood,
Crying that witches have no power
Where there is rown-tree wood.
23
Her last effort, she sent a boat,
Which in the haven lay,
With armed men to board the ship,
But they were driven away.
24
The worm leapt up, the worm leapt down,
She plaited round the stane;
And ay as the ship came to the land
She banged it off again.
25
The Child then ran out of her reach
The ship on Budle sand,
And jumping into the shallow sea,
Securely got to land.
26
And now he drew his berry-brown sword,
And laid it on her head,
And swore, if she did harm to him,
That he would strike her dead.
27
'O quit thy sword, and bend thy bow,
And give me kisses three;
For though I am a poisonous worm,
No hurt I will do to thee.
28
'O quit thy sword, and bend thy bow,
And give me kisses three;
If I am not won eer the sun go down,
Won I shall never be.'
29
He quitted his sword, he bent his bow,
He gave her kisses three;
She crept into a hole a worm,
But stept out a lady.
30
No cloathing had this lady fine,
To keep her from the cold;
He took his mantle from him about,
And round her did it fold.
31
He has taken his mantle from him about,
And it he wrapt her in,
And they are up to Bambrough castle,
As fast as they can win.
32
His absence and her serpent shape
The king had long deplored;
He now rejoiced to see them both
Again to him restored.
33
The queen they wanted, whom they found
All pale, and sore afraid,
Because she knew her power must yield
To Childy Wynd's, who said:
34
'Woe be to thee, thou wicked witch,
An ill death mayest thou dee;
As thou my sister hast likened,
So likened shalt thou be.
35
'I will turn you into a toad,
That on the ground doth wend,
And won, won shalt thou never be,
Till this world hath an end.'
36
Now on the sand near Ida's tower,
She crawls a loathsome toad,
And venom spits on every maid
She meets upon her road.
37
The virgins all of Bambrough town
Will swear that they have seen
This spiteful toad, of monstrous size,
Whilst walking they have been.
38
All folks believe within the shire
This story to be true,
And they all run to Spindleston,
The cave and trough to view.
39
This fact now Duncan Frasier,
Of Cheviot, sings in rhime,
Lest Bambroughshire men should forget
Some part of it in time.
* * * * *
28^3. son.
35
ALLISON GROSS
'Allison Gross,' Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. 40.
'Allison Gross' was printed by Jamieson, Popular Ballads, II, 187,
without deviation from the manuscript save in spelling.
In a Greek tale, a nereid, that is elf or fairy, turns a youth who had
refused to espouse her into a snake, the curse to continue till he finds
another love who is as fair as she: 'Die Schönste,' B. Schmidt,
Griechische Märchen, etc., No 10. This tale is a variety of 'Beauty and
the Beast,' one of the numerous wild growths from that ever charming
French story.[300]
An elf, a hill-troll, a mermaid, make a young man offers of splendid
gifts, to obtain his love or the promise of his faith, in 'Elveskud,'
Grundtvig, No 47, many of the Danish and two of the Norwegian copies;
'Hertig Magnus och Elfvorna,' Afzelius, III, 172; 'Hr. Magnus og
Bjærgtrolden,' Grundtvig, No 48, Arwidsson, No 147 B; 'Herr Magnus och
Hafstrollet,' Afzelius, No 95, Bugge, No 11; a lind-worm, similarly, to
a young woman, 'Lindormen,' Grundtvig, No 65. Magnus answers the
hill-troll that he should be glad to plight faith with her were she like
other women, but she is the ugliest troll that could be found:
Grundtvig, II, 121, #A# 6, #B# 7; Arwidsson, II, 303, #B# 5; Afzelius,
III, 169, st. 5, 173, st. 6. This is like what we read in stanza 7 of
our ballad, but the answer is inevitable in any such case. Magnus comes
off scot-free.
The queen of the fairies undoing the spell of the witch is a remarkable
feature, not paralleled, so far as I know, in English or northern
tradition. The Greek nereids, however, who do pretty much everything,
good or bad, that is ascribed to northern elves or fairies, and even
bear an appellation resembling that by which fairies are spoken of in
Scotland and Ireland, "the good damsels," "the good ladies," have a
queen who is described as taking no part in the unfriendly acts of her
subjects, but as being kindly disposed towards mankind, and even as
repairing the mischief which subordinate sprites have done against her
will. If now the fairy queen might interpose in behalf of men against
her own kith and kin, much more likely would she be to exert herself to
thwart the malignity of a witch.[301]
The object of the witch's blowing thrice on a grass-green horn in 8^2 is
not clear, for nothing comes of it. In the closely related ballad which
follows this, a witch uses a horn to summon the sea-fishes, among whom
there is one who has been the victim of her spells. The horn is
appropriate. Witches were supposed to blow horns when they joined the
wild hunt, and horn-blower, "hornblâse," is twice cited by Grimm as an
equivalent to witch: Deutsche Mythologie, p. 886.
* * * * *
Translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No 19; by Rosa
Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, No 7; Knortz, Lieder und Romanzen
Alt-Englands, No 9; Loève-Veimars, Ballades de l'Angleterre, p. 353.
1
O Allison Gross, that lives in yon towr,
The ugliest witch i the north country,
Has trysted me ae day up till her bowr,
An monny fair speech she made to me.
2
She stroaked my head, an she kembed my hair,
An she set me down saftly on her knee;
Says, Gin ye will be my lemman so true,
Sae monny braw things as I woud you gi.
3
She showd me a mantle o red scarlet,
Wi gouden flowrs an fringes fine;
Says, Gin ye will be my lemman so true,
This goodly gift it sal be thine.
4
'Awa, awa, ye ugly witch,
Haud far awa, an lat me be;
I never will be your lemman sae true,
An I wish I were out o your company.'
5
She neist brought a sark o the saftest silk,
Well wrought wi pearles about the ban;
Says, Gin you will be my ain true love,
This goodly gift you sal comman.
6
She showd me a cup of the good red gold,
Well set wi jewls sae fair to see;
Says, Gin you will be my lemman sae true,
This goodly gift I will you gi.
7
'Awa, awa, ye ugly witch,
Had far awa, and lat me be;
For I woudna ance kiss your ugly mouth
For a' the gifts that ye coud gi.'
8
She's turnd her right and roun about,
An thrice she blaw on a grass-green horn,
An she sware by the meen and the stars abeen,
That she'd gar me rue the day I was born.
9
Then out has she taen a silver wand,
An she's turnd her three times roun an roun;
She's mutterd sich words till my strength it faild,
An I fell down senceless upon the groun.
10
She's turnd me into an ugly worm,
And gard me toddle about the tree;
An ay, on ilka Saturdays night,
My sister Maisry came to me,
11
Wi silver bason an silver kemb,
To kemb my heady upon her knee;
But or I had kissd her ugly mouth,
I'd rather a toddled about the tree.
12
But as it fell out on last Hallow-even,
When the seely court was ridin by,
The queen lighted down on a gowany bank,
Nae far frae the tree where I wont to lye.
13
She took me up in her milk-white han,
An she's stroakd me three times oer her knee;
She chang'd me again to my ain proper shape,
An I nae mair maun toddle about the tree.
[300] Of these Dr Reinhold Köhler has given me a note of more than
twenty. The French tale itself had, in all likelihood, a popular
foundation.
[301] B. Schmidt, Das Volksleben der Neugriechen, pp 100 f, 107, 123.
Euphemistically the nereids are called ἡ καλαις αρχοντισσαις, ἡ
καλαις κυραδες, ἡ καλοκαρδαις, ἡ καλοτυχαις; their sovereign is
ἡ μεγαλη κυρα, ἡ πρωτη, etc.
36
THE LAILY WORM AND THE MACHREL OF THE SEA
Skene MS., p. 30: taken down from recitation in the north
of Scotland, in 1802 or 1803.
Somewhat mutilated, and also defaced, though it be, this ballad has
certainly never been retouched by a pen, but is pure tradition. It has
the first stanza in common with 'Kemp Owyne,' and shares more than that
with 'Allison Gross.' But it is independent of 'Allison Gross,' and has
a far more original sound.
Maisry's services in washing and combing are more conceivable when
rendered by a maid in her proper shape, as in 'Allison Gross,' than when
attributed to a machrel of the sea; and it is likely that the machrel
returned to her own figure every Saturday, and that this is one of the
points lost from the story. It is said, here as in 'Allison Gross,' that
Maisry kames the laily head on her knee.[302] It would be a mere cavil
to raise a difficulty about combing a laily worm's head. The fiery beast
in 'Kemp Owyne,' #A#, has long hair, and the laily worm may have had
enough to be better for combing.[303]
It is only natural that the transformed maid should not wish to trust
herself again in the hands of the stepmother, but it is not according to
poetical justice that she should remain a machrel of the sea, and here
again we may suppose something to have dropped out.
We have had a double transformation, of sister and brother, in the
'Marriage of Gawain' and in the 'Wedding of Gawen and Dame Ragnell,' and
again, with a second sister added, in the story of Álsól. Brother and
sister are transformed in the Danish 'Nattergalen,' Grundtvig, No 57. It
is an aggravation of stepmother malice that the victim of enchantment,
however amiable and inoffensive before, should become truculent and
destructive; so with the brother of Gawain's bride, and with the Carl of
Carlile. The stepmother is satisfactorily disposed of, as she is in
'Kemp Owyne,' #B#, and the 'Laidly Worm of Spindleston Heughs.'
1
'I was but seven year auld
When my mither she did die;
My father married the ae warst woman
The warld did ever see.
2
'For she has made me the laily worm,
That lies at the fit o the tree,
An my sister Masery she's made
The machrel of the sea.
3
'An every Saturday at noon
The machrel comes to me,
An she takes my laily head
An lays it on her knee,
She kaims it wi a siller kaim,
An washes't in the sea.
4
'Seven knights hae I slain,
Sin I lay at the fit of the tree,
An ye war na my ain father,
The eight ane ye should be.'
5
'Sing on your song, ye laily worm,
That ye did sing to me:'
'I never sung that song but what
I would it sing to thee.
6
'I was but seven year auld,
When my mither she did die;
My father married the ae warst woman
The warld did ever see.
7
'For she changed me to the laily worm,
That lies at the fit o the tree,
And my sister Masery
To the machrel of the sea.
8
'And every Saturday at noon
The machrel comes to me,
An she takes my laily head
An lays it on her knee,
An kames it wi a siller kame,
An washes it i the sea.
9
'Seven knights hae I slain,
Sin I lay at the fit o the tree,
An ye war na my ain father,
The eighth ane ye shoud be.'
10
He sent for his lady,
As fast as send could he:
'Whar is my son that ye sent frae me,
And my daughter, Lady Masery?'
11
'Your son is at our king's court,
Serving for meat an fee,
An your daughter's at our queen's court,
. . . . . . . '
12
'Ye lie, ye ill woman,
Sae loud as I hear ye lie;
My son's the laily worm,
That lies at the fit o the tree,
And my daughter, Lady Masery,
Is the machrel of the sea!'
13
She has tane a siller wan,
An gien him strokes three,
And he has started up the bravest knight
That ever your eyes did see.
14
She has taen a small horn,
An loud an shrill blew she,
An a' the fish came her untill
But the proud machrel of the sea:
'Ye shapeit me ance an unseemly shape,
An ye's never mare shape me.'
15
He has sent to the wood
For whins and for hawthorn,
An he has taen that gay lady,
An there he did her burn.
* * * * *
2^2, 7^2. lays: _but ~lies~, 12^4._
3^3. _~ducks~, but compare 8^3._
[302] Dives, in one version of a well-known carol, has "a place prepared
in hell, to sit upon a _serpent's knee_." The pious chanson in question
is a very different thing from an old ballad, which, it is hoped, no one
will think capable of fatuity.
[303] As, for example, a dragon has in Hahn's Griechische Märchen, No
26, I, 187, and elsewhere.
37
THOMAS RYMER
#A.# 'Thomas Rymer and Queen of Elfland,' Alexander Fraser
Tytler's Brown MS., No 1.
#B.# 'Thomas the Rhymer,' Campbell MSS, II, 83.
#C.# 'Thomas the Rhymer,' Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border, II, 251, 1802, "from a copy obtained from a lady
residing not far from Erceldoune, corrected and enlarged
by one in Mrs Brown's MS."
#A# is one of the nine ballads transmitted to Alexander Fraser Tytler by
Mrs Brown in April, 1800, as written down from her recollection.[304]
This copy was printed by Jamieson, II, 7, in his preface to 'True Thomas
and the Queen of Elfland.' #B#, never published as yet, has been
corrupted here and there, but only by tradition. #C# being compounded of
#A# and another version, that portion which is found in #A# is put in
smaller type.
Thomas of Erceldoune, otherwise Thomas the Rhymer, and in the popular
style True Thomas, has had a fame as a seer, which, though progressively
narrowed, is, after the lapse of nearly or quite six centuries, far from
being extinguished. The common people throughout the whole of Scotland,
according to Mr Robert Chambers (1870), continue to regard him with
veneration, and to preserve a great number of his prophetic sayings,
which they habitually seek to connect with "dear years" and other
notable public events.[305] A prediction of Thomas of Erceldoune's is
recorded in a manuscript which is put at a date before 1320, and he is
referred to with other soothsayers in the Scalacronica, a French
chronicle of English history begun in 1355. Erceldoune is spoken of as a
poet in Robert Mannyng's translation of Langtoft's chronicle, finished
in 1338; and in the Auchinleck copy of 'Sir Tristrem,' said to have been
made about 1350, a Thomas is said to have been consulted at Erþeldoun
touching the history of Tristrem. So that we seem safe in holding that
Thomas of Erceldoune had a reputation both as prophet and poet in the
earlier part of the fourteenth century. The vaticinations of Thomas are
cited by various later chroniclers, and had as much credit in England as
in Scotland. "During the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries," says Chambers, "to fabricate a prophecy in the name of
Thomas the Rhymer appears to have been found a good stroke of policy on
many occasions. Thus was his authority employed to countenance the views
of Edward III against Scottish independence, to favor the ambitious
views of the Duke of Albany in the minority of James V, and to sustain
the spirits of the nation under the harassing invasions of Henry VIII."
During the Jacobite rising of 1745 the accomplishment of Thomas's as
then unfulfilled predictions was looked for by many. His prophecies, and
those of other Scotch soothsayers, were consulted, says Lord Hailes,
"with a weak if not criminal curiosity." Even as late as the French
revolutionary war a rhyme of Thomas's caused much distress and
consternation in the border counties of Scotland, where people were
fearing an invasion. The 'Whole Prophecie' of Merlin, Thomas Rymour, and
others, collected and issued as early as 1603, continued to be printed
as a chap-book down to the beginning of this century, when, says Dr
Murray, few farm-houses in Scotland were without a copy of it.
All this might have been if Thomas of Erceldoune had been not more
historical than Merlin. But the name is known to have belonged to a real
person. Thomas Rymor de Ercildune is witness to a deed whereby one
Petrus de Haga obliges himself to make a certain payment to the Abbey of
Melrose. Petrus de Haga is, in turn, witness to a charter made by
Richard de Moreville. Unluckily, neither of these deeds is dated. But
Moreville was constable of Scotland from 1162 to 1189. If we suppose
Moreville's charter to have been given towards 1189, and Haga to have
been then about twenty years old, and so born about 1170, and further
suppose Haga to have made his grant to Melrose towards the end of a life
of threescore, or three score and ten, the time of Thomas Rymer's
signature would be about 1230 or 1240. If Thomas Rymer was then twenty
years of age, his birth would have been at 1210 or 1220. In the year
1294 Thomas de Ercildoun, son and heir of Thomas Rymour de Ercildoun,
conveyed to a religious house his inheritance of lands in Ercildoun.
With Thomas Rhymer in mind, one naturally interprets Thomas Rymour as
the prophet and Thomas de Ercildoun as his son. If Rymour was the
surname of this family,[306] it would have been better, for us at least,
if the surname had been subjoined to the first Thomas also. As the
language stands, we are left to choose among several possibilities.
Thomas the Rhymer may have been dead in 1294; Thomas Rymour, meaning the
same person, may have made this cession of lands in 1294, and have
survived still some years. Thomas, the father, may, as Dr Murray
suggests, have retired from the world, but still be living, and it may
be his son who resigns the lands. Blind Harry's Life of Wallace makes
Thomas Rimour to be alive down to 1296 or 1297. A story reported by
Bower in his continuation of Fordun, c. 1430, makes Thomas to have
predicted the death of Alexander III in 1286, when, according to the
previous (necessarily very loose) calculation, the seer would have been
between sixty-six and seventy-six. Neither of these last dates is
established by the strongest evidence, but there is no reason for
refusing to admit, at least, that Thomas of Erceldoune may have been
alive at the latter epoch.
Thomas of Erceldoune's prophetic power was a gift of the queen of the
elves; the modern elves, equally those of northern Europe and of Greece,
resembling in respect to this attribute the nymphs of the ancient
Hellenic mythology. How Thomas attained this grace is set forth in the
first of three fits of a poem which bears his name. This poem has come
down in four somewhat defective copies: the earliest written a little
before the middle of the fifteenth century, two others about 1450, the
fourth later. There is a still later manuscript copy of the second and
third fits.[307] All the manuscripts are English, but it is manifest
from the nature of the topics that the original poem was the work of a
Scotsman. All four of the complete versions speak of an older story:
'gyff it be als the storye sayes,' v. 83, 'als the storye tellis full
ryghte,' v. 123. The older story, if any, must be the work of Thomas.
The circumstance that the poem, as we have it, begins in the first
person, and after a long passage returns for a moment to the first
person, though most of the tale is told in the third, is of no
importance; nor would it have been important if the whole narrative had
been put into Thomas's mouth, since that is the simplest of literary
artifices.
Thomas, having found favor with the queen of Elfland, was taken with her
to that country, and there he remained more than three [seven] years.
Then the time came round when a tribute had to be paid to hell, and as
Thomas was too likely to be chosen by the fiend, the elf queen conducted
him back to the world of men. At the moment of parting Thomas desires
some token which may authenticate his having spoken with her. She gives
him the gift of soothsaying. He presses her to stay and tell him some
ferly. Upon this she begins a train of predictions, which Thomas more
than once importunes her to continue. The first two of these, the
failure of Baliol's party and the battle of Halidon Hill, 1333, stand by
themselves, but they are followed by a series in chronological order,
extending from the battle of Falkirk to the battle of Otterbourn,
1298-1388. The third fit, excepting, perhaps, a reference to Henry IV's
invasion of Scotland in 1401, seems to consist, not of predictions made
after the event, but of "adaptations of legendary prophecies,
traditionally preserved from far earlier times, and furbished up anew at
each period of national trouble and distress, in expectation of their
fulfilment being at length at hand."[308]
The older "story," which is twice referred to in the prologue to the
prophecies of Thomas of Erceldoune, was undoubtedly a romance which
narrated the adventure of Thomas with the elf queen _simply_, without
specification of his prophecies. In all probability it concluded, in
accordance with the ordinary popular tradition, with Thomas's return to
fairy-land after a certain time passed in this world.[309] For the story
of Thomas and the Elf-queen is but another version of what is related of
Ogier le Danois and Morgan the Fay. Six fairies made gifts to Ogier at
his birth. By the favor of five he was to be the strongest, the bravest,
the most successful, the handsomest, the most susceptible, of knights:
Morgan's gift was that, after a long and fatiguing career of glory, he
should live with her at her castle of Avalon, in the enjoyment of a
still longer youth and never wearying pleasures. When Ogier had passed
his hundredth year, Morgan took measures to carry out her promise. She
had him wrecked, while he was on a voyage to France, on a loadstone rock
conveniently near to Avalon, which Avalon is a little way this side of
the terrestrial paradise. In due course he comes to an orchard, and
there he eats an apple, which affects him so peculiarly that he looks
for nothing but death. He turns to the east, and sees a beautiful lady,
magnificently attired. He takes her for the Virgin; she corrects his
error, and announces herself as Morgan the Fay. She puts a ring on his
finger which restores his youth, and then places a crown on his head
which makes him forget all the past. For two hundred years Ogier lived
in such delights as no worldly being can imagine, and the two hundred
years seemed to him but twenty. Christendom was then in danger, and even
Morgan thought his presence was required in the world. The crown being
taken from his head, the memory of the past revived, and with it the
desire to return to France. He was sent back by the fairy, properly
provided, vanquished the foes of Christianity in a short space, and
after a time was brought back by Morgan the Fay to Avalon.[310]
The fairy adventures of Thomas and of Ogier have the essential points in
common, and even the particular trait that the fairy is taken to be the
Virgin. The occurrence of this trait again in the ballad, viewed in
connection with the general similarity of the two, will leave no doubt
that the ballad had its source in the romance. Yet it is an entirely
popular ballad as to style,[311] and must be of considerable age, though
the earliest version (#A#) can be traced at furthest only into the first
half of the last century.
The scene of the meeting of Thomas with the elf queen is Huntly Banks
and the Eildon Tree in versions #B#, #C# of the ballad, as in the
romance.[312] Neither of these is mentioned in #A#, the reciter of which
was an Aberdeen woman. The elf-lady's costume and equipment, minutely
given in the romance (henceforth referred to as #R#), are reduced in the
ballad to a skirt of grass-green silk and a velvet mantle, #A#, and a
dapple-gray horse, #B# 2 (#R# 5), with nine and fifty bells on each tett
of its mane, #A# 2 (three bells on either side of the bridle, #R#
9).[313] Thomas salutes the fairy as queen of heaven, #A# 3, #R# 11. #B#
3 has suffered a Protestant alteration which makes nonsense of the
following stanza. She corrects his mistake in all, and in #B# 4 tells
him she is out hunting, as in #R# 16. As #C# 5 stands, she challenges
Thomas to kiss her, warning him at the same time, unnaturally, and of
course in consequence of a corrupt reading, of the danger; which Thomas
defies, #C# 6. These two stanzas in #C# represent the passage in the
romance, 17-21, in which Thomas embraces the fairy queen, and are
wanting in #A#, #B#, though not to be spared. It is contact with the
fairy that gives her the power to carry her paramour off; for carry him
off she does, and he is in great fright at having to go. The ballad is
no worse, and the romance would have been much better, for the omission
of another passage, impressive in itself, but incompatible with the
proper and original story. The elf-queen had told Thomas that he would
ruin her beauty, if he had his will, and so it came to pass: her eyes
seemed out, her rich clothing was away, her body was like the lead; and
it is while thus disfigured that she bids Thomas take leave of sun and
moon, so that his alarm is not without reason.[314] He must go with her
for seven years, #A#, #B#; only for a twelvemonth, #R#. She takes him up
behind her, #A#; she rides and he runs, #B#; she leads him in at Eldon
hill, #R#; they cross a water, he wading up to the knee, #B#, #R#. The
water is subterranean in #R#, and for three days naught is heard but the
soughing of the flood. Then they come to an orchard, #A#, #B#, #R#, and
Thomas, like to tyne for lack of food, is about to pull fruit, but is
told that the fruit is cursed, #A# 9, #B# 8;[315] if he plucks it, his
soul goes to the fire of hell, #R# 35. The fairy has made a provision of
safe bread and wine for him in the ballad, #A# 10, #B# 9, but he has
still to fast a while in the romance. #C#, which lacks this passage,
makes them ride till they reach a wide desert, and leave living land
behind, 9; and here (but in #A#, #B#, and #R# in the vicinity of the
orchard) the fairy bids Thomas lay his head on her knee, and she will
show him rare sights. These are the way to heaven, #A# 12, #B# 11, #R#
38; the way to hell, #A# 13, #B# 10, #R# 41; the road to Elfland,
whither they are going, #A# 14. #R# does not point out the road to
Elfland, but the elf-queen's castle on a high hill; and there are two
additional ferlies, the way to paradise and the way to purgatory,[316]
39, 40. Thomas, in #A# 15, is now admonished that he must hold his
tongue, for if he speaks a word he will never get back to his own
country; in #R# 44 he is told to answer none but the elf-queen, whatever
may be said to him, and this course he takes in #B# 12. But before they
proceed to the castle the lady resumes all the beauty and splendor which
she had lost, and no explanation is offered save the naive one in the
Lansdowne copy, that if she had not, the king, her consort, would have
known that she had been in fault. Now follows in #A# 15 (as recited,
here 7), #C# 15, 16, the passage through the subterranean water, which
should come before they reach the orchard, as in #B# 6, #R# 30, 31.
There is much exaggeration in the ballad: they wade through rivers in
darkness and hear the sea roaring, #C# 15, #A# 7, as in #R#, but they
also wade through red blood to the knee, #A# 7, #C# 16, and the crossing
occupies not three days, as in #R# 31, but forty days, #A# 7. In #C#
they _now_ come to the garden. Stanzas 15, 16 are out of place in #C#,
as just remarked, and 17 is entirely perverted. The cursed fruit which
Thomas is not to touch in #A# 9, #B# 8, #R# 35, is offered him by the
elf-queen as his wages, and will give him the tongue that can never
lie,--a gift which is made him in the romance at the beginning of the
second fit, when the fairy is preparing to part with him. Stanzas 18,19
of #C# are certainly a modern, and as certainly an ill-devised,
interpolation. #B# has lost the conclusion. In #A#, #C#, Thomas gets a
fairy costume, and is not seen on earth again for seven years.
The romance, after some description of the life at the elf-castle,
informs us that Thomas lived there more than three years [Cambridge MS.,
seven], and thought the time but a space of three days, an almost
moderate illusion compared with the experience of other mortals under
analogous circumstances.[317] The fairy queen then hurried him away, on
the eve of the day when the foul fiend was to come to fetch his tribute.
He was a mickle man and hend, and there was every reason to fear that he
would be chosen. She brought him again to Eldon Tree, and was bidding
him farewell. Thomas begged of her a token of his conversation with her,
and she gave him the gift of true speaking. He urged her further to tell
him some ferly, and she made him several predictions, but he would not
let her go without more and more. Finally, with a promise to meet him on
Huntly Banks when she might, she left him under the tree.
Popular tradition, as Sir Walter Scott represents, held that, though
Thomas was allowed to revisit the earth after a seven years' sojourn in
fairy-land, he was under an obligation to go back to the elf-queen
whenever she should summon him. One day while he "was making merry with
his friends in the town of Erceldoune, a person came running in, and
told, with marks of fear and astonishment, that a hart and hind had left
the neighboring forest, and were composedly and slowly parading the
street of the village. The prophet instantly arose, left his habitation,
and followed the wonderful animals to the forest, whence he was never
seen to return." He is, however, expected to come back again at some
future time.
What we learn from the adventures of Thomas concerning the perils of
dealing with fairies, and the precautions to be observed, agrees with
the general teaching of tradition upon the subject. In this matter there
is pretty much one rule for all "unco" folk, be they fairies, dwarfs,
water-sprites, devils, or departed spirits, and, in a limited way, for
witches, too. Thomas, having kissed the elf-queen's lips, must go with
her. When the dead Willy comes to ask back his faith and troth of
Margaret, and she says he must first kiss her, cheek and chin, he
replies, "If I should kiss your red, red lips, your days would not be
long."[318] When Thomas is about to pull fruit in the subterranean
garden, or paradise, the elf bids him let be: all the plagues of hell
light on the fruit of this country; "if thou pluck it, thy soul goes to
the fire of hell."[319] The queen had taken the precaution of bringing
some honest bread and wine with her for Thomas's behoof. So when Burd
Ellen's brother sets out to rescue his sister, who had been carried off
by the king of Elfland, his sage adviser enjoins him to eat and drink
nothing in fairy-land, whatever his hunger or thirst; "for if he tasted
or touched in Elfland, he must remain in the power of the elves, and
never see middle-eard again."[320] Abstinence from speech is equally
advisable, according to our ballad and to other authority: Gin ae word
you should chance to speak, you will neer get back to your ain countrie,
#A# 15. They've asked him questions, one and all, but he answered none
but that fair ladie, #B# 12. What so any man to thee say, look thou
answer none but me, #R# 44.
That eating and drinking, personal contact, exchange of speech,
receiving of gifts, in any abode of unearthly beings, including the
dead, will reduce a man to their fellowship and condition might be
enforced by a great number of examples, and has already been abundantly
shown by Professor Wilhelm Müller in his beautiful essay, Zur Symbolik
der deutschen Volkssage.[321] The popular belief of the northern nations
in this matter is more completely shown than anywhere else in Saxo's
account of King Gormo's visit to Guthmund, and it will be enough to cite
that. The Danish King Gormo, having heard extraordinary things of the
riches of Geruth (the giant Geirröðr), determines to verify the reports
with his own eyes, under the guidance of Thorkill, from whom he has
received them. The land of Geruth is far to the northeast, beyond the
sun and stars, and within the realm of Chaos and Old Night. It is, in
fact, a very dismal and terrific sort of Hades. The way to it lies
through the dominion of Guthmund, Geruth's brother, which is described
as a paradise, but a paradise of the same dubious attractions as that in
Thomas of Erceldoune. Guthmund, himself a giant, receives the
travellers, a band of about three hundred, very graciously, and conducts
them to his palace. Thorkill takes his comrades apart, and puts them on
their guard: they must eat and drink nothing that is offered them, but
live on the provisions which they have brought, must keep off from the
people of the place and not touch them; if they partake of any of the
food, they will forget everything, and have to pass their lives in this
foul society. Guthmund complains that they slight his hospitality, but
Thorkill, now and always, has an excuse ready. The genial monarch offers
Gormo one of his twelve beautiful daughters in marriage, and their
choice of wives to all the rest of the train. Most of the Danes like the
proposition, but Thorkill renews his warnings. Four take the bait, and
lose all recollection of the past. Guthmund now commends the delicious
fruits of his garden, and tries every art to make the king taste them.
But he is again foiled by Thorkill, and clearly perceiving that he has
met his match, transports the travellers over the river which separates
him and his brother, and allows them to continue their journey.[322]
* * * * *
#C# is translated by Talvj, Versuch, etc., p. 552; by Doenniges, p. 64;
by Arndt, Blütenlese, p. 246; by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder,
p. 14; by Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen, p. 1; by Edward Barry, Cycle
populaire de Robin Hood, p. 92; and by F.H. Bothe, Janus, p. 122, after
Barry.
A
Alexander Fraser Tytler's Brown MS., No 1: Jamieson's
Popular Ballads, II, 7.
1
True Thomas lay oer yond grassy bank,
And he beheld a ladie gay,
A ladie that was brisk and bold,
Come riding oer the fernie brae.
2
Her skirt was of the grass-green silk,
Her mantel of the velvet fine,
At ilka tett of her horse's mane
Hung fifty silver bells and nine.
3
True Thomas he took off his hat,
And bowed him low down till his knee:
'All hail, thou mighty Queen of Heaven!
For your peer on earth I never did see.'
4
'O no, O no, True Thomas,' she says,
'That name does not belong to me;
I am but the queen of fair Elfland,
And I'm come here for to visit thee.
* * * * * * *
5
'But ye maun go wi me now, Thomas,
True Thomas, ye maun go wi me,
For ye maun serve me seven years,
Thro weel or wae as may chance to be.'
6
She turned about her milk-white steed,
And took True Thomas up behind,
And aye wheneer her bridle rang,
The steed flew swifter than the wind.
7
For forty days and forty nights
He wade thro red blude to the knee,
And he saw neither sun nor moon,
But heard the roaring of the sea.
8
O they rade on, and further on,
Until they came to a garden green:
'Light down, light down, ye ladie free,
Some of that fruit let me pull to thee.'
9
'O no, O no, True Thomas,' she says,
'That fruit maun not be touched by thee,
For a' the plagues that are in hell
Light on the fruit of this countrie.
10
'But I have a loaf here in my lap,
Likewise a bottle of claret wine,
And now ere we go farther on,
We'll rest a while, and ye may dine.'
11
When he had eaten and drunk his fill,
'Lay down your head upon my knee,'
The lady sayd, 'ere we climb yon hill,
And I will show you fairlies three.
12
'O see not ye yon narrow road,
So thick beset wi thorns and briers?
That is the path of righteousness,
Tho after it but few enquires.
13
'And see not ye that braid braid road,
That lies across yon lillie leven?
That is the path of wickedness,
Tho some call it the road to heaven.
14
'And see not ye that bonny road,
Which winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elfland,
Whe[re] you and I this night maun gae.
15
'But Thomas, ye maun hold your tongue,
Whatever you may hear or see,
For gin ae word you should chance to speak,
You will neer get back to your ain countrie.'
16
He has gotten a coat of the even cloth,
And a pair of shoes of velvet green,
And till seven years were past and gone
True Thomas on earth was never seen.
B
Campbell MSS, II, 83.
1
As Thomas lay on Huntlie banks--
A wat a weel bred man was he--
And there he spied a lady fair,
Coming riding down by the Eildon tree.
2
The horse she rode on was dapple gray,
And in her hand she held bells nine;
I thought I heard this fair lady say
These fair siller bells they should a' be mine.
3
It's Thomas even forward went,
And lootit low down on his knee:
'Weel met thee save, my lady fair,
For thou'rt the flower o this countrie.'
4
'O no, O no, Thomas,' she says,
'O no, O no, that can never be,
For I'm but a lady of an unco land,
Comd out a hunting, as ye may see.
5
'O harp and carp, Thomas,' she says,
'O harp and carp, and go wi me;
It's be seven years, Thomas, and a day,
Or you see man or woman in your ain countrie.'
6
It's she has rode, and Thomas ran,
Until they cam to yon water clear;
He's coosten off his hose and shon,
And he's wooden the water up to the knee.
7
It's she has rode, and Thomas ran,
Until they cam to yon garden green;
He's put up his hand for to pull down ane,
For the lack o food he was like to tyne.
8
'Hold your hand, Thomas,' she says,
'Hold your hand, that must not be;
It was a' that cursed fruit o thine
Beggared man and woman in your countrie.
9
'But I have a loaf and a soup o wine,
And ye shall go and dine wi me;
And lay yer head down in my lap,
And I will tell ye farlies three.
10
'It's dont ye see yon broad broad way,
That leadeth down by yon skerry fell?
It's ill's the man that dothe thereon gang,
For it leadeth him straight to the gates o hell.
11
'It's dont ye see yon narrow way,
That leadeth down by yon lillie lea?
It's weel's the man that doth therein gang,
For it leads him straight to the heaven hie.'
* * * * * * *
12
It's when she cam into the hall--
I wat a weel bred man was he--
They've asked him question[s], one and all,
But he answered none but that fair ladie.
13
O they speerd at her where she did him get,
And she told them at the Eildon tree;
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
C
Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, II, 251, ed. 1802.
| 1
| True Thomas lay on Huntlie bank,
| A ferlie he spied wi' his ee,
| And there he saw a lady bright,
| Come riding down by the Eildon Tree.
| 2
| Her shirt was o the grass-green silk,
| Her mantle o the velvet fyne,
| At ilka tett of her horse's mane
| Hang fifty siller bells and nine.
| 3
| True Thomas, he pulld aff his cap,
| And louted low down to his knee:
| 'All hail, thou mighty Queen of Heaven!
| For thy peer on earth I never did see.'
| 4
| 'O no, O no, Thomas,' she said,
| 'That name does not belang to me;
| I am but the queen of fair Elfland,
| That am hither come to visit thee.
5
'Harp and carp, Thomas,' she said,
'Harp and carp along wi me,
And if ye dare to kiss my lips,
Sure of your bodie I will be.'
6
'Betide me weal, betide me woe,
That weird shall never daunton me;'
Syne he has kissed her rosy lips,
All underneath the Eildon Tree.
| 7
| 'Now, ye maun go wi me,' she said,
| 'True Thomas, ye maun go wi me,
| And ye maun serve me seven years,
| Thro weal or woe, as may chance to be.'
| 8
| She mounted on her milk-white steed,
| She's taen True Thomas up behind,
| And aye wheneer her bridle rung,
| The steed flew swifter than the wind.
| 9
| O they rade on, and farther on--
| The steed gaed swifter than the wind--
| Untill they reached a desart wide,
| And living land was left behind.
| 10
| 'Light down, light down, now, True Thomas,
| And lean your head upon my knee;
| Abide and rest a little space,
| And I will shew you ferlies three.
| 11
| 'O see ye not yon narrow road,
| So thick beset with thorns and briers?
| That is the path of righteousness,
| Tho after it but few enquires.
| 12
| 'And see not ye that braid braid road,
| That lies across that lily leven?
| That is the path of wickedness,
| Tho some call it the road to heaven.
| 13
| 'And see not ye that bonny road,
| That winds about the fernie brae?
| That is the road to fair Elfland,
| Where thou and I this night maun gae.
| 14
| 'But, Thomas, ye maun hold your tongue,
| Whatever ye may hear or see,
| For, if you speak word in Elflyn land,
| Ye'll neer get back to your ain countrie.'
15
O they rade on, and farther on,
And they waded thro rivers aboon the knee,
And they saw neither sun nor moon,
But they heard the roaring of the sea.
16
It was mirk mirk night, and there was nae stern light,
And they waded thro red blude to the knee;
For a' the blude that's shed on earth
Rins thro the springs o that countrie.
17
Syne they came on to a garden green,
And she pu'd an apple frae a tree:
'Take this for thy wages, True Thomas,
It will give the tongue that can never lie.'
18
'My tongue is mine ain,' True Thomas said;
'A gudely gift ye wad gie to me:'
I neither dought to buy nor sell,
At fair or tryst where I may be.
19
'I dought neither speak to prince or peer,
Nor ask of grace from fair ladye:'
'Now hold thy peace,' the lady said,
'For as I say, so must it be.'
20
He has gotten a coat of the even cloth,
And a pair of shoes of velvet green,
And till seven years were gane and past
True Thomas on earth was never seen.
* * * * *
#A.#
_7 stands 15 in the MS._
8^2. _~golden green~, if my copy is right._
_11^{2,3} are 11^{3,2} in the MS.: the order of words is
still not simple enough for a ballad._
14^4. goe.
_Jamieson has a few variations, which I suppose to be his
own._
1^1. oer yonder bank.
3^4. your like.
4^4. And I am come here to.
6^4. Her steed.
8^2. garden, _rightly_.
10^2. clarry.
11^2. Lay your head.
12^1. see you not.
12^4. there's few.
13. see ye not yon.
14^1. see ye not.
14^2. Which winds.
#B.#
3^2. her knee.
3^3. thou save.
12^1. _MS. perhaps ~unto~._
13^{1,2} _follow st. 12 without separation_.
#C.#
20^1. a cloth.
APPENDIX.
THOMAS OFF ERSSELDOUNE.
Thornton MS., leaf 149, back, as printed by Dr. J. A. H.
Murray.
[A prologue of six stanzas, found only in the Thornton
MS., is omitted, as being, even if genuine, not to the
present purpose.]
1
Als I me wente þis endres daye,
Ffull faste i_n_ mynd makand my mone,
In a mery morny_n_ge of Maye,
By Huntle bankkes my selfe allone,
2
I herde þe jaye and þe throstelle,
The mawys menyde of hir songe,
þe wodewale beryde als a belle,
That alle þe wode a-bowte me ronge.
3
Allon_n_e in longynge thus als I laye,
Vndyre-nethe a semely tre,
[Saw] I whare a lady gaye
[Came ridand] ou_er_ a longe lee.
4
If I solde sytt to domesdaye,
W_i_t_h_ my tonge to wrobbe and wrye,
Certanely þat lady gaye
Neu_er_ bese scho askryede for mee.
5
Hir palfraye was a dappill graye,
Swylke one ne saghe I neu_er_ none;
Als dose þe sonne on som_er_es daye,
þ_a_t faire lady hir selfe scho schone.
6
Hir selle it was of roelle bone,
Ffull semely was þ_a_t syghte to see;
Stefly sett w_i_t_h_ p_re_cyous stones,
And compaste all with crapotee;
7
Stones of oryente, grete plente.
Hir hare abowte hir hede it hange;
Scho rade ou_er_ þat lange lee;
A whylle scho blewe, a-noþ_er_ scho sange.
8
Hir garthes of nobyll sylke þay were,
The bukylls were of berelle stone,
Hir steraps were of crystalle clere,
And all w_i_t_h_ perelle ou_er_-by-gone.
9
Hir payetrelle was of irale fyne,
Hir cropoure was of orpharë,
And als clere golde hir brydill it schone;
One aythir syde hange bellys three.
10
[Scho led _three_ grehoundis in a leesshe,]
And seuen_e_ raches by hir þay rone;
Scho bare an horne abowte hir halse,
And vndir hir belte full many a flone.
11
Thom_a_s laye and sawe þat syghte,
Vndir-nethe ane semly tree;
He sayd, ȝone es Marye, moste of myghte,
Þat bare þ_a_t childe þat dyede for mee.
12
Bot if I speke w_i_t_h_ ȝone lady bryghte,
I hope myn_e_ herte will bryste i_n_ three;
Now sall I go w_i_t_h_ all my myghte,
Hir for to mete at Eldoun_e_ tree.
13
Thomas rathely vpe he rase,
And he rane ou_er_ þat mountayne hye;
Gyff it be als the storye sayes,
He hir mette at Eldone tree.
14
He knelyde down_e_ appon_e_ his knee,
Vndir-nethe þat grenwode spraye,
And sayd, Lufly ladye, rewe one mee,
Qwene of heuen_e_, als þou wele maye!
15
Then spake þat lady milde of thoghte:
Thomas, late swylke wordes bee;
Qwene of heuen_e_ ne am I noghte,
Ffor I tuke neu_er_ so heghe degre.
16
Bote I ame of ane oþ_er_ cou_n_tree,
If I be payrelde moste of pryse;
I ryde aftyre this wylde fee;
My raches rynnys at my devyse.'
17
'If þ_o_u be parelde moste of pryse,
And here rydis thus in thy folye,
Of lufe, lady, als þ_o_u erte wyse,
Þou gyffe me leue to lye the bye.'
18
Scho sayde, þou man_e_, þat ware folye;
I praye þe, Thomas, þ_o_u late me bee;
Ffor I saye þe full sekirlye,
Þat synne will fordoo all my beaute.
19
'Now, lufly ladye, rewe one mee,
And I will eu_er_ more w_i_t_h_ the duelle;
Here my trouthe I will the plyghte,
Whethir þ_o_u will in heuen_e_ or helle.'
20
'Mane of molde, þ_o_u will me marre,
But ȝitt þou sall hafe all thy will;
And trowe it wele, þ_o_u chewys þe werre,
Ffor alle my beaute will þ_o_u spylle.'
21
Down_e_ þan_e_ lyghte þat lady bryghte,
Vndir-nethe þat grenewode spraye;
And, als the storye tellis full ryghte,
Seuen_e_ sythis by hir he laye.
22
Scho sayd, Man_e_, the lykes thy playe:
Whate byrde in boure maye delle w_i_t_h_ the?
Thou merrys me all þis longe daye;
I pray the, Thomas, late me bee.
23
Thom_a_s stode vpe i_n_ þat stede,
And he by-helde þat lady gaye;
Hir hare it hange all ou_er_ hir hede,
Hir eghne semede owte, þ_a_t are were graye.
24
And alle þe riche clothynge was a-waye,
Þat he by-fore sawe i_n_ þat stede;
Hir a schanke blake, hir oþer graye,
And all hir body lyke the lede.
25
Thom_a_s laye, and sawe þat syghte,
Vndir-nethe þat grenewod tree.
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
26
Þan said Thom_a_s, Allas! allas!
In faythe þis es a dullfull syghte;
How arte þ_o_u fadyde þus i_n_ þe face,
Þat schane by-fore als þe sonne so bryght[e]!
27
Scho sayd, Thom_a_s, take leue at sone and mon[e],
And als at lefe þ_a_t grewes on tree;
This twelmoneth sall þ_o_u w_i_t_h_ me gone,
And medill-erthe sall þ_o_u none see.'
28
He knelyd downe appon_e_ his knee,
Vndir-nethe þ_a_t grenewod spraye,
And sayd, Lufly lady, rewe on mee,
Mylde qwene of heuen_e_, als þ_o_u beste maye!
29
'Allas!' he sayd, 'and wa es mee!
I trowe my dedis wyll wirke me care;
My saulle, Jh_e_su, by-teche I the,
Whedir-some þ_a_t eu_er_ my banes sall fare.'
30
Scho ledde hy_m_ in at Eldone hill,
Vndir-nethe a derne lee,
Whare it was dirke as mydnyght myrke,
And eu_er_ þe wat_e_r till his knee.
31
The montenans of dayes three,
He herd bot swoghynge of þe flode;
At þe laste he sayde, Full wa es mee!
Almaste I dye, for fawte of f[ode.]
32
Scho lede hy_m_ in-till a faire herbere,
Whare frwte was g[ro]wan[d gret plentee];
Pere and appill, bothe ryppe þay were,
The date, and als the damasee.
33
Þe fygge, and alsso þe wyneberye,
The nyghtgales byggande on þair neste;
Þe papeioyes faste abowte gan_e_ flye,
And throstylls sange, wolde hafe no reste.
34
He p_re_ssede to pulle frowte w_i_t_h_ his hande,
Als man_e_ for fude þ_a_t was nere faynt;
Scho sayd, Thom_a_s, þ_o_u late þam_e_ stande,
Or ells þe fende the will atteynt.
35
If þ_o_u it plokk, sothely to saye,
Thi saule gose to þe fyre of helle;
It co_m_mes neu_er_ owte or domesdaye,
Bot þ_er_ in payne ay for to duelle.
36
Thomas, sothely I the hyghte,
Come lygge thyn_e_ hede down_e_ on my knee,
And [þou] sall se þe fayreste syghte
Þat eu_er_ sawe man_e_ of thi contree.
37
He did in hye als scho hym badde;
Appone hir knee his hede he layde,
Ffor hir to paye he was full glade;
And þan_e_ þat lady to hy_m_ sayde:
38
Seese þ_o_u nowe ȝone faire waye,
Þat lygges ou_er_ ȝone heghe mou_n_tayne?
ȝone es þe waye to heuen_e_ for aye,
When_e_ synfull sawles are passed þer payne.
39
Seese þ_o_u nowe ȝone oþ_er_ waye,
Þat lygges lawe by-nethe ȝone rysse?
ȝone es þe waye, þe sothe to saye,
Vn-to þe joye of paradyse.
40
Seese þ_o_u ȝitt ȝone thirde waye,
Þat ligges vndir ȝone grene playne?
ȝone es þe waye, w_i_t_h_ tene and traye,
Whare synfull saulis suffirris þaire payne.
41
Bot seese þ_o_u nowe ȝone ferthe waye,
Þat lygges ou_er_ ȝone depe delle?
ȝone es þe waye, so waylawaye!
Vn-to þe birnande fyre of helle.
42
Seese þ_o_u ȝitt ȝone faire castelle,
[Þ_a_t standis ouer] ȝone heghe hill?
Of towne and towre it beris þe belle;
In erthe es none lyke it vn-till.
43
Ffor sothe, Thom_a_s, ȝone es myn_e_ awenn_e_,
And þe kynges of this countree;
Bot me ware leu_er_ be hanged and drawen_e_,
Or þat he wyste þou laye by me.
44
When þ_o_u co_m_mes to ȝone castelle gay,
I pray þe curtase man_e_ to bee;
And whate so any man_e_ to þe saye,
Luke þ_o_u answere none bott mee.
45 My lorde es seruede at ylk a mese
W_i_t_h_ thritty knyghttis faire and free;
I sall saye, syttande at the desse,
I tuke thi speche by-ȝonde the see
46
Thom_a_s still als stane he stude,
And he by-helde þat lady gaye;
Scho come agayne als faire and gude,
And also ryche one hir palfraye.
47
Hir grewehundis fillide w_i_t_h_ dere blode,
Hir raches couplede, by my faye;
Scho blewe hir horne w_i_t_h_ mayne and mode,
Vn-to þe castelle scho tuke þe waye.
48
In-to þe haulle sothely scho went,
Thomas foloued at hir hande;
Than ladyes come, bothe faire and gent,
With curtassye to hir knelande.
49
Harpe and fethill bothe þay fande,
Gett_er_ne, and als so þe sawtrye;
Lutte and ryhyne bothe gangande,
And all man_er_e of mynstralsye.
50
Þe most m_er_uelle þ_a_t Thom_a_s thoghte,
When_e_ þat he stode appon_e_ the flore;
Ffor feftty hertis in were broghte,
Þat were bothe grete and store.
51
Raches laye lapande in þe blode,
Cokes come w_i_t_h_ dryssynge knyfe;
Thay brittened þam_e_ als þay were wode;
Reuelle amanges þame was full ryfe.
52
Knyghtis dawnesede by three and three,
There was revelle, gamen_e_ and playe;
Lufly ladyes, faire and free,
That satte and sange one riche araye.
53
Thom_a_s duellide i_n_ that solace
More þan_e_ I ȝowe saye, p_a_rde,
Till one a daye, so hafe I grace,
My lufly lady sayde to mee:
54
Do buske the, Thom_a_s, þe buse agayne,
Ffor þ_o_u may here no lengare be;
Hye the faste, w_i_t_h_ myghte and mayne,
I sall the brynge till Eldone tree.
55
Thom_a_s sayde þan_e_, w_i_t_h_ heuy chere,
Lufly lady, nowe late me bee;
Ffor certis, lady, I hafe bene here
Noghte bot þe space of dayes three.
56
'Ffor sothe, Thomas, als I þe telle,
Þou hase bene here thre ȝere and more;
Bot langere here þ_o_u may noghte duelle;
The skylle I sall þe telle whare-fore.
57
'To morne of helle þe foulle fende
Amange this folke will feche his fee;
And þ_o_u arte mekill man_e_ and hende;
I trowe full wele he wolde chese the.
58
'Ffor alle þe gold þ_a_t eu_e_r may bee,
Ffro hethyn_e_ vn-to þe worldis ende,
Þou bese neu_er_ be-trayede for mee;
Þerefore w_i_t_h_ me I rede thou wende.'
59
Scho broghte hy_m_ agayne to Eldone tree,
Vndir-nethe þ_a_t grenewode spraye;
In Huntlee bannkes es mery to bee,
Whare fowles synges bothe nyght and daye.
60
'Fferre owtt in ȝone mountane graye,
Thomas, my fawkon_e_ bygges a neste;
A fawconn_e_ es an erlis praye;
Ffor-thi in na place may he reste.
61
'Ffare well, Thomas, I wend my waye,
Ffor me by-houys ou_er_ thir benttis brown_e:_'
Loo here a fytt: more es to saye,
All of Thomas of Erselldown_e_.
FYTT II.
1
'Fare wele, Thom_a_s, I wend my waye,
I may no lengare stande wit_h_ the:'
'Gyff me a tokynynge, lady gaye,
That I may saye I spake wit_h_ the.'
2
'To harpe or carpe, whare-so þ_o_u gose,
Thom_a_s, þ_o_u sall hafe þe chose sothely:'
And he saide, Harpynge kepe I none,
Ffor tonge es chefe of mynstralsye.
3
'If þ_o_u will spelle, or tales telle,
Thom_a_s, þ_o_u sall neu_er_ lesynge lye;
Whare eu_er_ þ_o_u fare, by frythe or felle,
I praye the speke none euyll of me.
4
'Ffare wele, Thom_a_s, wit_h_-owttyn_e_ gyle,
I may no lengare duelle with the:'
'Lufly lady, habyde a while,
And telle þ_o_u me of some ferly.'
5
'Thom_a_s, herkyn_e_ what I the saye:' etc.
_Here begin the prophecies._
* * * * *
_~&~ and ~j~ are replaced by ~and~ and ~I~._
2^1. throstyll cokke: throstell, _Cambridge MS._
2^2. menyde hir.
10^1. _Wanting._ She led, etc., _Cambridge_.
12^4, 13^4. _Lansdowne_, elden; _Cambridge_, eldryn,
eldryn_e_.
16^2. prysse.
17^1. prysee.
17^3. wysse.
43^4. me by. _Cambridge_, be me.
46^4. also.
FYTT 2.
2^1. þ_o_u gose. _Cambridge_, ȝe gon.
[304] See the letter of Dr Anderson to Bishop Percy, December 29, 1800,
in Nichols's Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth
Century, VII, 178 f.
[305] Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1870, pp. 211-224. See,
also, Scott's Minstrelsy, IV, 110-116, 129-151, ed. 1833. But, above
all, Dr J. A. H. Murray's Introduction to The Romance and Prophecies of
Thomas of Erceldoune, 1875.
[306] Hector Boece (1527) says the surname was Leirmont, but there is no
evidence for this that is of value. See Murray, p. xiii.
[307] The five copies have been edited by Dr J. A. H. Murray, and
printed by the Early English Text Society. A reconstructed text by Dr
Alois Brandl makes the second volume of a Sammlung englischer Denkmäler
in kritischen Ausgaben, Berlin, 1880.
[308] Murray, pp xxiv-xxvii. As might be expected, the Latin texts
corrupt the names of persons and of places, and alter the results of
battles. Dr Murray remarks: "The oldest text makes the Scots win Halidon
Hill, with the slaughter of six thousand Englishmen, while the other
texts, wise after the fact, makes the Scots lose, as they actually did."
This, and the consideration that a question about the conflict between
the families of Bruce and Baliol would not be put after 1400, when the
Baliol line was extinct, disposes Dr Murray to think that verses 326-56
of the second fit, with perhaps the first fit, the conclusion of the
poem, and an indefinite portion of fit third, may have been written on
the eve of Halidon Hill, with a view to encourage the Scots.
[309] The poem, vv 675-80, says only that Thomas and the lady did not
part for ever and aye, but that she was to visit him at Huntley banks.
[310] The relations of Thomas Rhymer and Ogier might, perhaps, be
cleared up by the poem of The Visions of Ogier in Fairy Land. The book
is thus described by Brunet, ed. 1863, IV, 173: Le premier (second et
troisième) livre des visions d'Oger le Dannoys au royaulme de Fairie,
Paris, 1542, pet. in-8, de 48 ff. Brunet adds: A la suite de ce poëme,
dans l'exemplaire de la Bibliothèque impériale, se trouve, Le liure des
visions fantastiques, Paris, 1542, pet. in-8, de 24 ff. The National
Library is not now in possession of the volume; nor have all the
inquiries I have been able to make, though most courteously aided in
France, resulted, as I hoped, in the finding of a copy.
[311] Excepting the two satirical stanzas with which Scott's version
(#C#) concludes. "The repugnance of Thomas to be debarred the use of
falsehood when he should find it convenient," may have, as Scott says,
"a comic effect," but is, for a ballad, a miserable conceit. Both ballad
and romance are serious.
[312] Eildon Tree, the site of which is supposed now to be marked by the
Eildon Tree Stone, stood, or should have stood, on the slope of the
eastern of the three Eildon Hills. Huntly Banks are about half a mile to
the west of the Eildon Stone, on the same hill-slope. Erceldoun, a
village on the Leader, two miles above its junction with the Tweed, is
all but visible from the Eildon Stone. Murray, pp l-lii.
[313] In #B# 2, absurdly, the lady holds nine bells in her hand. Ringing
or jingling bridles are ascribed to fairies, Tam Lin, #A# 37, Cromek's
Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p. 298 ("manes hung wi whustles
that the win played on," p. 299). The fairy's saddle has a bordure of
bells in the English Launfal, Halliwell's Illustrations of Fairy
Mythology, p. 31, but not in Marie's lai. The dwarf-king Antiloie, in
Ulrich Von Eschenbach's Alexander, has bells on his bridle: Grimm,
Deutsche Mythologie, I, 385. These bells, however, are not at all
distinctive of fairies, but are the ordinary decoration of elegant
"outriders" in the Middle Ages, especially of women. In the romance of
Richard Cœur de Lion, a messenger's trappings ring with five hundred
bells. Besides the bridle, bells were sometimes attached to the horse's
breastplate, to the saddle-bow, crupper, and stirrups. Conde Claros's
steed has three hundred around his breastplate. See Weber's Metrical
Romances, R.C. de Lion, vv 1514-17, 5712-14, cited by T. Wright, History
of Domestic Manners in England, 214 f; Liebrecht, Gervasius, p. 122;
Kölbing, Englische Studien, III, 105; Zupitza and Varnhagen, Anglia,
III, 371, IV, 417; and particularly A. Schultz, Das höfische Leben zur
Zeit der Minnesinger, I, 235, 388-91.
[314] The original I suppose to be the very cheerful tale of Ogier, with
which the author of Thomas of Erceldoune has blended a very serious one,
without any regard to the irreconcilableness of the two. He is presently
forced to undo this melancholy transformation of the fairy, as we shall
see. Brandl, 'Thomas of Erceldoune,' p. 20, cites from Giraldus
Cambrensis, Itinerarium Cambriæ, I, 5, a story about one Meilyr, a
Welshman, the like of which our poet had in mind. This Meilyr was a
great soothsayer, and "owed his skill to the following adventure:" Being
in company one evening with a girl for whom he had long had a passion,
desideratis amplexibus atque deliciis cum indulsisset, statim loco
puellæ formosæ formam quamdam villosam, hispidam et hirsutam, adeoque
enormiter deformem invenit, quod in ipso ejusdem aspectu dementire
cœpit et insanire. Meilyr recovered his reason after several years,
through the merits of the saints, but always kept up an intimacy with
unclean spirits, and by their help foretold the future. It is not said
that they gave him the tongue that never could lie, but no other tongue
could lie successfully in his presence: he always saw a little devil
capering on it. He was able, by similar indications, to point out the
lies and errors of books. The experiment being once tried of laying the
Gospel of John in his lap, every devil instantly decamped. Geoffrey of
Monmouth's history was substituted, and imps swarmed all over the book
and him, too.
[315] #B# 8^{3,4} "It was a' that cursed fruit o thine beggared man and
woman in your countrie:" the fruit of the Forbidden Tree.
[316] Purgatory is omitted in the Cotton MS. of the romance, as in the
ballad.
[317] Ogier le Danois hardly exceeded the proportion of the ordinary
hyperbole of lovers: two hundred years seemed but twenty. The British
king Herla lived with the king of the dwarfs more than two hundred
years, and thought the time but three days: Walter Mapes, Nugæ
Curialium, ed. Wright, p. 16 f (Liebrecht). The strongest case, I
believe, is the exquisite legend, versified by Trench, of the monk, with
whom three hundred years passed, while he was listening to a bird's
song--as he thought, less than three hours. For some of the countless
repetitions of the idea, see Pauli's Schimpf und Ernst, ed. Oesterley,
No 562, and notes, p. 537; Liebrecht's Gervasins, p. 89; W. Hertz,
Deutsche Sage im Elsass, pp 115-18, 263; A. Graf, La Leggenda del
Paradiso Terrestre, pp 26-29, 31-33, and notes; J. Koch, Die
Siebenschläferlegende, kap. ii.
[318] In an exquisite little ballad obtained by Tommaseo from a
peasant-girl of Empoli, I, 26, a lover who had visited hell, and there
met and kissed his mistress, is told by her that he must not hope ever
to go thence. How the lover escaped in this instance is not explained.
Such things happen sometimes, but not often enough to encourage one to
take the risk.
Sono stato all' inferno, e son tornato:
Misericordia, la gente che c'era!
V'era una stanza tutta illuminata,
E dentro v'era la speranza mia.
Quando mi vedde, gran festa mi fece,
E poi mi disse: Dolce anima mia,
Non ti arricordi del tempo passato,
Quando tu mi dicevi, "anima mia?"
Ora, mio caro ben, baciami in bocca,
Baciami tanto ch'io contenta sia.
È tanto saporita la tua bocca!
Di grazia saporisci anco la mia.
Ora, mio caro ben, che m'hai baciato,
Di qui non isperar d'andarne via.
[319] #A# 8, 9, #R# 34, 35. It was not that Thomas was about to pluck
fruit from the Forbidden Tree, though #B# understands it so: cf. #R# 32,
33. The curse of this tree seems, however, to have affected all
Paradise. In modern Greek popular poetry Paradise occurs sometimes
entirely in the sense of Hades. See B. Schmidt, Volksleben der
Neugriechen, p. 249.
[320] Jamieson, in Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 398: 'Child
Rowland and Burd Ellen.'
[321] Niedersächsische Sagen und Märchen, Schambach und Müller, p. 373.
Shakspere has this: "They are fairies; he that speaks to them shall
die;" Falstaff, in Merry Wives of Windsor, V, 5. Ancient Greek tradition
is not without traces of the same ideas. It was Persephone's eating of
the pomegranate kernel that consigned her to the lower world, in spite
of Zeus and Demeter's opposition. The drinking of Circe's brewage and
the eating of lotus had an effect on the companions of Ulysses such as
is sometimes ascribed to the food and drink of fairies, or other demons,
that of producing forgetfulness of home: Odyssey, X, 236, IX, 97. But it
would not be safe to build much on this. A Hebrew tale makes the human
wife of a demon charge a man who has come to perform, a certain service
for the family not to eat or drink in the house, or to take any present
of her husband, exactly repeating the precautions observed in Grimm,
Deutsche Sagen, Nos 41, 49: Tendlan, Das Buch der Sagen und Legenden
jüdischer Vorzeit, p. 141. The children of Shem may probably have
derived this trait in the story from the children of Japhet. Aladdin, in
the Arabian Nights, is to have a care, above all things, that he does
not touch the walls of the subterranean chamber so much as with his
clothes, or he will die instantly. This again, by itself, is not very
conclusive.
[322] Historia Danica, l. viii: Müller et Velschow, I, 420-25.
38
THE WEE WEE MAN
#A. a.# 'The Wee Wee Man,' Herd's MSS, I, 153; Herd's
Scottish Songs, 1776, I, 95.
#B.# Caw's Poetical Museum, p. 348.
#C.# 'The Wee Wee Man,' Scott's Minstrelsy, II, 234, ed.
1802.
#D.# 'The Wee Wee Man,' Kinloch MSS, VII, 253.
#E. a.# 'The Wee Wee Man,' Motherwell's Note-Book, fol.
40; Motherwell's MS., p. 195. #b.# Motherwell's
Minstrelsy, p. 343.
#F.# 'The Wee Wee Man,' Motherwell's MS., p. 68.
#G.# 'The Little Man,' Buchan's Ballads of the North of
Scotland, I, 263.
This extremely airy and sparkling little ballad varies but slightly in
the half dozen known copies. The one in the Musical Museum, No 370, p.
382, and that in Ritson's Scotish Songs, II, 139, are reprinted from
Herd.
Singularly enough, there is a poem in eight-line stanzas, in a
fourteenth-century manuscript, which stands in somewhat the same
relation to this ballad as the poem of Thomas of Erceldoune does to the
ballad of Thomas Rymer, but with the important difference that there is
no reason for deriving the ballad from the poem in this instance. There
seems to have been an intention to make it, like Thomas of Erceldoune,
an introduction to a string of prophecies which follows, but no junction
has been effected. This poem is given in an appendix.
* * * * *
#A# is translated by Arndt, Blütenlese, p. 210; #B#, with a few
improvements from #E b#, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, p.
12.
A
Herd's MSS, I, 153, Herd's Ancient and Modern Scottish
Songs, 1776, I, 95.
1
As I was wa'king all alone,
Between a water and a wa,
And there I spy'd a wee wee man,
And he was the least that ere I saw.
2
His legs were scarce a shathmont's length,
And thick and thimber was his thigh;
Between his brows there was a span,
And between his shoulders there was three.
3
He took up a meikle stane,
And he flang't as far as I could see;
Though I had been a Wallace wight,
I couldna liften 't to my knee.
4
'O wee wee man, but thou be strang!
O tell me where thy dwelling be?'
'My dwelling's down at yon bonny bower;
O will you go with me and see?'
5
On we lap, and awa we rade,
Till we came to yon bonny green;
We lighted down for to bait our horse,
And out there came a lady fine.
6
Four and twenty at her back,
And they were a' clad out in green;
Though the King of Scotland had been there,
The warst o them might hae been his queen.
7
On we lap, and awa we rade,
Till we came to yon bonny ha,
Whare the roof was o the beaten gould,
And the floor was o the cristal a'.
8
When we came to the stair-foot,
Ladies were dancing, jimp and sma,
But in the twinkling of an eye,
My wee wee man was clean awa.
B
Caw's Poetical Museum, p. 348.
1
As I was walking by my lane,
Atween a water and a wa,
There sune I spied a wee wee man,
He was the least that eir I saw.
2
His legs were scant a shathmont's length,
And sma and limber was his thie;
Atween his shoulders was ae span,
About his middle war but three.
3
He has tane up a meikle stane,
And flang 't as far as I cold see;
Ein thouch I had been Wallace wicht,
I dought na lift 't to my knie.
4
'O wee wee man, but ye be strang!
Tell me whar may thy dwelling be?
'I dwell beneth that bonnie bouir;
O will ye gae wi me and see?'
5
On we lap, and awa we rade,
Till we cam to a bonny green;
We lichted syne to bait our steid,
And out there cam a lady sheen.
6
Wi four and twentie at her back,
A' comely cled in glistering green;
Thouch there the King of Scots had stude,
The warst micht weil hae been his queen.
7
On syne we past wi wondering cheir,
Till we cam to a bonny ha;
The roof was o the beaten gowd,
The flure was o the crystal a'.
8
When we cam there, wi wee wee knichts
War ladies dancing, jimp and sma,
But in the twinkling of an eie,
Baith green and ha war clein awa.
C
Scott's Minstrelsy, II, 234, ed. 1802, incorporated with
'The Young Tamlane.' From recitation.
1
'Twas down by Carterhaugh, father,
I walked beside the wa,
And there I saw a wee wee man,
The least that eer I saw.
2
His legs were skant a shathmont lang,
Yet umber was his thie;
Between his brows there was ae span,
And between his shoulders three.
3
He's taen and flung a meikle stane,
As far as I could see;
I could na, had I been Wallace wight,
Hae lifted it to my knee.
4
'O wee wee man, but ye be strang!
Where may thy dwelling be?'
'It 's down beside yon bonny bower;
Fair lady, come and see.'
5
On we lap, and away we rade,
Down to a bonny green;
We lighted down to bait our steed,
And we saw the fairy queen.
6
With four and twenty at her back,
Of ladies clad in green;
Tho the King of Scotland had been there,
The worst might hae been his queen.
7
On we lap, and away we rade,
Down to a bonny ha;
The roof was o the beaten goud,
The floor was of chrystal a'.
8
And there were dancing on the floor,
Fair ladies jimp and sma;
But in the twinkling o an eye,
They sainted clean awa.
D
Kinloch MSS, VII, 253. From Mrs Elder.
1
As I gaed out to tak a walk,
Atween the water and the wa,
There I met wi a wee wee man,
The weest man that ere I saw.
2
Thick and short was his legs,
And sma and thin was his thie,
And atween his een a flee might gae,
And atween his shouthers were inches three.
3
And he has tane up a muckle stane,
And thrown it farther than I c_ou_d see;
If I had been as strong as ere Wallace was,
I c_ou_d na lift it to my knie.
4
'O,' quo I, 'but ye be strong!
And O where may your dwelling be?'
'It 's down in to yon bonnie glen;
Gin ye dinna believe, ye can come and see.'
5
And we rade on, and we sped on,
Till we cam to yon bonny glen,
And there we lichted and louted in,
And there we saw a dainty dame.
6
There was four and twenty wating on her,
And ilka ane was clad in green,
And he had been the king of fair Scotland,
The warst o them micht hae been his queen.
7
There war pipers playing on ilka stair,
And ladies dancing in ilka ha,
But before ye c_ou_d hae sadd what was that,
The house and wee manie was awa.
E
#a.# Motherwell's Note-Book, fol. 40, "from Agnes Lyle;"
Motherwell's MS., p. 195, "from the recitation of Agnes
Laird, Kilbarchan." #b.# Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 343.
1
As I was walking mine alone,
Betwext the water and the wa,
There I spied a wee wee man,
He was the least ane that eer I saw.
2
His leg was scarse a shaftmont lang,
Both thick and nimble was his knee;
Between his eyes there was a span,
Betwixt his shoulders were ells three.
3
This wee wee man pulled up a stone,
He flang't as far as I could see;
Tho I had been like Wallace strong,
I wadna gotn't up to my knee.
4
I said, Wee man, oh, but you're strong!
Where is your dwelling, or where may't be?
'My dwelling's at yon bonnie green;
Fair lady, will ye go and see?'
5
On we lap, and awa we rade,
Until we came to yonder green;
We lichtit down to rest our steed,
And there cam out a lady soon.
6
Four and twenty at her back,
And every one of them was clad in green;
Altho he had been the King of Scotland,
The warst o them a' micht hae been his queen.
7
There were pipers playing in every neuk,
And ladies dancing, jimp and sma,
And aye the owre-turn o their tune
Was 'Our wee wee man has been lang awa.'
F
Motherwell's MS., p. 68, "from the recitation of Mrs
Wilson, of the Renfrewshire Tontine; now of the Caledonian
Hotel, Inverness."
1
As I was walking mine alane,
Between the water and the wa,
And oh there I spy'd a wee wee mannie,
The weeest mannie that ere I saw.
2
His legs they were na a gude inch lang,
And thick and nimble was his thie;
Between his een there was a span,
And between his shouthers there were ells three.
3
I asked at this wee wee mannie
Whare his dwelling place might be;
The answer that he gied to me
Was, Cum alang, and ye shall see.
4
So we'll awa, and on we rade,
Till we cam to yon bonnie green;
We lichted down to bait our horse,
And up and started a lady syne.
5
Wi four and twenty at her back,
And they were a' weell clad in green;
Tho I had been a crowned king,
The warst o them might ha been my queen.
6
So we'll awa, and on we rade,
Till we cam to yon bonnie hall;
The rafters were o the beaten gold,
And silver wire were the kebars all.
7
And there was mirth in every end,
And ladies dancing, ane and a,
And aye the owre-turn o their sang
Was 'The wee wee mannie's been lang awa.'
G
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 263.
1
As I gaed out to tak the air,
Between Midmar and bonny Craigha,
There I met a little wee man,
The less o him I never saw.
2
His legs were but a finger lang,
And thick and nimle was his knee;
Between his brows there was a span,
Between his shoulders ells three.
3
He lifted a stane sax feet in hight,
He lifted it up till his right knee,
And fifty yards and mair, I'm sure,
I wyte he made the stane to flee.
4
'O little wee man, but ye be wight!
Tell me whar your dwelling be;'
'I hae a bower, compactly built,
Madam, gin ye'll cum and see.'
5
Sae on we lap, and awa we rade,
Till we come to yon little ha;
The kipples ware o the gude red gowd,
The reef was o the proseyla.
6
Pipers were playing, ladies dancing,
The ladies dancing, jimp and sma;
At ilka turning o the spring,
The little man was wearin's wa.
7
Out gat the lights, on cam the mist,
Ladies nor mannie mair coud see
I turnd about, and gae a look,
Just at the foot o' Benachie.
* * * * *
#A.#
2^2. _The printed copy has ~thighs~._
4^3. dwelling down.
_There is a copy of this ballad in ~Cunningham's Songs of
Scotland, I, 303~. Though no confidence can be felt in the
genuineness of the "~several variations from recitation
and singing~," with which Cunningham says he sought to
improve Herd's version, the more considerable ones are
here noted._
1^3. O there I met.
2^1. a shathmont lang.
3^3. been a giant born.
4^1. ye're wonder strong.
4^4. O ladie, gang wi me.
5^1. away we flew.
5^2. to a valley green.
5^3. down and he stamped his foot.
5^4. And up there rose.
6^1. Wi four.
6^2. the glossy green.
7^2. stately ha.
8.
And there were harpings loud and sweet,
And ladies dancing, jimp and sma;
He clapped his hands, and ere I wist,
He sank and saunted clean awa.
#E. a.#
4^1. your.
_Motherwell has made one or two slight changes in copying
from his Note-Book into his MS._
#b.# _Besides some alterations of his own, Motherwell has
introduced readings from #F#._
2^4. there were.
3^3 as Wallace.
5^4. lady sheen.
6^1. Wi four.
6^2. And they were a' weel clad.
_After 6 is inserted #F# 6, with the first line changed
to_
So on we lap, and awa we rade.
APPENDIX.
This piece is found in Cotton MS., Julius, A, V, the ninth article in
the manuscript, fol. 175, r^o, (otherwise 180, r^o). It is here given
nearly as printed by Mr Thomas Wright in his edition of the Chronicle of
Pierre de Langtoft, II, 452. It had been previously printed in Ritson's
Ancient Songs, ed. 1829, I, 40; Finlay's Scottish Ballads, II, 168; the
Retrospective Review, Second Series, II, 326. The prophecies, omitted
here, are given by all the above.
1
Als y yod on ay Mounday
Bytwene Wyltinden and Walle,
Me ane aftere brade waye,
Ay litel man y mette withalle;
The leste that ever I sathe, [sothe] to say,
Oithere in boure, oithere in halle;
His robe was noithere grene na gray,
Bot alle yt was of riche palle.
2
On me he cald, and bad me bide;
Well stille y stode ay litel space;
Fra Lanchestre the parke syde
Yeen he come, wel fair his pase.
He hailsed me with mikel pride;
Ic haved wel mykel ferly wat he was;
I saide, Wel mote the bityde!
That litel man with large face.
3
I biheld that litel man
Bi the stretes als we gon gae;
His berd was syde ay large span,
And glided als the fethere of pae;
His heved was wyte als any swan,
His hegehen ware gret and grai alsso;
Brues lange, wel I the can
Merke it to five inches and mae.
4
Armes scort, for sothe I saye,
Ay span seemed thaem to bee;
Handes brade, vytouten nay,
And fingeres lange, he scheued me.
Ay stan he toke op thare it lay,
And castid forth that I mothe see;
Ay merke-soote of large way
Bifor me strides he castid three.
5
Wel stille I stod als did the stane,
To loke him on thouth me nouthe lange;
His robe was alle golde bigane,
Wel craftlike maked, I underestande;
Botones asurd, everlke ane,
Fra his elbouthe on til his hande;
Eldelike man was he nane,
That in myn herte icke onderestande.
6
Til him I sayde ful sone on ane,
For forthirmare I wald him fraine,
Glalli wild I wit thi name,
And I wist wat me mouthe gaine;
Thou ert so litel of flesse and bane,
And so mikel of mithe and mayne;
Ware vones thou, litel man, at hame?
Wit of the I walde ful faine.
7
'Thoth I be litel and lith,
Am y nothe wytouten wane;
Fferli frained thou wat I hith,
Yat thou salt noth with my name.
My wonige stede ful wel es dyth,
Nou sone thou salt se at hame.'
Til him I sayde, For Godes mith,
Lat me forth myn erand gane.
8
'The thar noth of thin errand lette,
Thouth thou come ay stonde wit me;
Forthere salt thou noth bisette
Bi miles twa noythere bi three.'
Na linger durste I for him lette,
But forth ij fundid wyt that free;
Stintid vs broke no becke;
Ferlicke me thouth hu so mouth bee.
9
He vent forth, als ij you say,
In at ay yate, ij underestande;
Intil ay yate, wundouten nay;
It to se thouth me nouth lange.
The bankers on the binkes lay,
And fair lordes sette ij fonde;
In ilka ay hirn ij herd ay lay,
And levedys south meloude sange.
The meeting with the little man was on Monday. We are now
invited to listen to a tale told on Wednesday by "a moody
barn," who is presently addressed, in language which, to
be sure, fits the elf well enough, as "merry man, that is
so wight:" but things do not fay at all here.
10 Lithe, bothe yonge and alde:
Of ay worde ij will you saye,
A litel tale that me was tald
Erli on ay Wedenesdaye.
A mody barn, that was ful bald,
My frend that ij frained aye,
Al my yerning he me tald,
And yatid me als we went bi waye.
11
'Miri man, that es so wythe,
Of ay thinge gif me answere:
For him that mensked man wyt mith,
Wat sal worth of this were?' &c.
* * * * *
_The orthography of this piece, if rightly rendered, is
peculiar, and it is certainly not consistent._
1^5. _~saith~ for ~saw~ occurs in 23^3._
2^4. _Wright_, Y cen: _Retrosp. Rev._, Yeen.
3^8. _W._, Merkes: _R. R._, Merke. fize.
5^5. _W._, everlkes: _R. R._, euerelke.
6^8. _W._, of their: _R. R._, of ye (þe). i. wald.
7^4. _W._, That thou: _R. R._, yat.
7^5. dygh.
9^4. south me.
9^8. me loude.
10^7. _W._, thering: _R. R._, yering.
10^8. _W._, y atid: _R. R._, yatid.
39
TAM LIN
#A.# 'Tam Lin,' Johnson's Museum, p. 423, 1792.
Communicated by Burns.
#B.# 'Young Tom Line,' Glenriddell MS., vol. xi, No 17,
1791.
#C.# 'Kertonha, or, The Fairy Court,' Herd, The Ancient
and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 300.
#D.# 'Tom Linn.' #a.# Motherwell's MS., p. 532. #b.#
Maidment's New Book of Old Ballads, p. 54. #c.# 'Tom o
Linn,' Pitcairn's MSS, III, fol. 67.
#E.# 'Young Tamlin,' Motherwell's Note-Book, fol. 13.
#F.# 'Tomaline,' Motherwell's MS., p. 64.
#G.# 'Tam-a-line, the Elfin Knight,' Buchan's MSS, I, 8;
'Tam a-Lin, or The Knight of Faerylande,' Motherwell's
MS., p. 595. Dixon, Scottish Traditionary Versions of
Ancient Ballads, Percy Society, XVII, 11.
#H.# 'Young Tam Lane,' Campbell MSS, II, 129.
#I.# 'The Young Tamlane.' Minstrelsy of the Scottish
Border: #a#, II, 337, ed. 1833; #b#, II, 228, ed. 1802.
The first twenty-two stanzas of #B# differ from the corresponding ones
in #A#, 1-23, omitting 16, by only a few words, and there are other
agreements in the second half of these versions. Burns's intimacy with
Robert Riddell would naturally lead to a communication from one to the
other; but both may have derived the verses that are common from the
same third party. Herd's fragment, #C#, was the earliest printed.
Scott's version, #I#, as he himself states, was compounded of the Museum
copy, Riddell's, Herd's, and "several recitals from tradition." #I b#,
the edition of 1802, contained fragments of 'The Bromfield Hill' and of
'The Wee Wee Man,' which were dropped from the later edition; but
unfortunately this later edition was corrupted with eleven new stanzas,
which are not simply somewhat of a modern cast as to diction, as Scott
remarks, but of a grossly modern invention, and as unlike popular verse
as anything can be. #I# is given according to the later edition, with
those stanzas omitted; and all that is peculiar to this version, and not
taken from the Museum, Glenriddell, or Herd, is distinguished from the
rest by the larger type. This, it will be immediately seen, is very
little.
The copy in Tales of Wonder, II, 459, is #A#, altered by Lewis. Mr
Joseph Robertson notes, Kinloch MSS, VI, 10, that his mother had
communicated to him some fragments of this ballad slightly differing
from Scott's version, with a substitution of the name True Tammas for
Tam Lane.
The Scots Magazine for October, 1818, LXXXII, 327-29, has a "fragment"
of more than sixty stanzas, composed in an abominable artificial lingo,
on the subject of this ballad, and alleged to have been taken from the
mouth of a good old peasant, who, not having heard the ballad for thirty
years, could remember no more. Thomas the Rhymer appears in the last
lines with very great distinction, but it is not clear what part he has
in the story.[323]
A copy printed in Aberdeen, 1862, and said to have been edited by the
Rev. John Burnett Pratt, of Cruden, Aberdeenshire, is made up from
Aytoun and Scott, with a number of slight changes.[324]
'The Tayl of the ȝong Tamlene' is spoken of as told among a company
of shepherds, in Vedderburn's Complaint of Scotland, 1549, p. 63 of Dr
James A. H. Murray's edition for the Early English Text Society. 'Thom
of Lyn' is mentioned as a dance of the same party, a little further on,
Murray, p. 66, and 'Young Thomlin' is the name of an air in a medley in
"Wood's MS.," inserted, as David Laing thought, between 1600 and 1620,
and printed in Forbes's Cantus, 1666: Stenhouse's ed. of The Scots
Musical Museum, 1853, IV, 440. "A ballett of Thomalyn" is licensed to
Master John Wallye and Mistress Toye in 1558: Arber, Transcript of the
Registers of the Company of Stationers, I, 22; cited by Furnivall,
Captain Cox, &c., Ballad Society, p. clxiv.
Sir Walter Scott relates a tradition of an attempt to rescue a woman
from fairydom which recalls the ill success of many of the efforts to
disenchant White Ladies in Germany: "The wife of a farmer in Lothian had
been carried off by the fairies, and, during the year of probation,
repeatedly appeared on Sunday, in the midst of her children, combing
their hair. On one of these occasions she was accosted by her husband;
when she related to him the unfortunate event which had separated them,
instructed him by what means he might win her, and exhorted him to exert
all his courage, since her temporal and eternal happiness depended on
the success of his attempt. The farmer, who ardently loved his wife, set
out at Halloween, and, in the midst of a plot of furze, waited
impatiently for the procession of the fairies. At the ringing of the
fairy bridles, and the wild, unearthly sound which accompanied the
cavalcade, his heart failed him, and he suffered the ghostly train to
pass by without interruption. When the last had rode past, the whole
troop vanished, with loud shouts of laughter and exultation, among which
he plainly discovered the voice of his wife, lamenting that he had lost
her forever." The same author proceeds to recount a real incident, which
took place at the town of North Berwick, within memory, of a man who was
prevented from undertaking, or at least meditating, a similar rescue
only by shrewd and prompt practical measures on the part of his
minister.[325]
This fine ballad stands by itself, and is not, as might have been
expected, found in possession of any people but the Scottish. Yet it has
connections, through the principal feature in the story, the
retransformation of Tam Lin, with Greek popular tradition older than
Homer.
Something of the successive changes of shape is met with in a
Scandinavian ballad: 'Nattergalen,' Grundtvig, II, 168, No 57; 'Den
förtrollade Prinsessan,' Afzelius, II, 67, No 41, Atterbom, Poetisk
Kalender, 1816, p. 44; Dybeck, Runa, 1844, p. 94, No 2; Axelson,
Vandring i Wermlands Elfdal, p. 21, No 3; Lindeman, Norske
Fjeldmelodier, Tekstbilag til 1ste Bind, p. 3, No 10.
Though many copies of this ballad have been obtained from the mouth of
the people, all that are known are derived from flying sheets, of which
there is a Danish one dated 1721 and a Swedish of the year 1738. What is
of more account, the style of the piece, as we have it, is not quite
popular. Nevertheless, the story is entirely of the popular stamp, and
so is the feature in it, which alone concerns us materially. A
nightingale relates to a knight how she had once had a lover, but a
step-mother soon upset all that, and turned her into a bird and her
brother into a wolf. The curse was not to be taken off the brother till
he drank of his step-dame's blood, and after seven years he caught her,
when she was taking a walk in a wood, tore out her heart, and regained
his human shape. The knight proposes to the bird that she shall come and
pass the winter in his bower, and go back to the wood in the summer:
this, the nightingale says, the step-mother had forbidden, as long as
she wore feathers. The knight seizes the bird by the foot, takes her
home to his bower, and fastens the windows and doors. She turns to all
the marvellous beasts one ever heard of,--to a lion, a bear, a variety
of small snakes, and at last to a loathsome lind-worm. The knight makes
a sufficient incision for blood to come, and a maid stands on the floor
as fair as a flower. He now asks after her origin, and she answers,
Egypt's king was my father, and its queen my mother; my brother was
doomed to rove the woods as a wolf. "If Egypt's king," he rejoins, "was
your father, and its queen your mother, then for sure you are my
sister's daughter, who was doomed to be a nightingale."[326]
We come much nearer, and indeed surprisingly near, to the principal
event of the Scottish ballad in a Cretan fairy-tale, cited from
Chourmouzis by Bernhard Schmidt.[327] A young peasant of the village
Sgourokepháli, who was a good player on the rote, used to be taken by
the nereids into their grotto for the sake of his music. He fell in love
with one of them, and, not knowing how to help himself, had recourse to
an old woman of his village. She gave him this advice: that just before
cock-crow he should seize his beloved by the hair, and hold on,
unterrified, till the cock crew, whatever forms she should assume. The
peasant gave good heed, and the next time he was taken into the cave
fell to playing, as usual, and the nereids to dancing. But as cock-crow
drew nigh, he put down his instrument, sprang upon the object of his
passion, and grasped her by her locks. She instantly changed shape;
became a dog, a snake, a camel, fire. But he kept his courage and held
on, and presently the cock crew, and the nereids vanished all but one.
His love returned to her proper beauty, and went with him to his home.
After the lapse of a year she bore a son, but in all this time never
uttered a word. The young husband was fain to ask counsel of the old
woman again, who told him to heat the oven hot, and say to his wife that
if she would not speak he would throw the boy into the oven. He acted
upon this prescription; the nereid cried out, Let go my child, dog! tore
the infant from his arms, and vanished.
This Cretan tale, recovered from tradition even later than our ballad,
repeats all the important circumstances of the forced marriage of Thetis
with Peleus. Chiron, like the old woman, suggested to his protégé that
he should lay hands on the nereid, and keep his hold through whatever
metamorphosis she might make. He looked out for his opportunity and
seized her; she turned to fire, water, and a wild beast, but he did not
let go till she resumed her primitive shape. Thetis, having borne a son,
wished to make him immortal; to which end she buried him in fire by
night, to burn out his human elements, and anointed him with ambrosia by
day. Peleus was not taken into counsel, but watched her, and saw the boy
gasping in the fire, which made him call out; and Thetis, thus thwarted,
abandoned the child and went back to the nereids. Apollodorus,
Bibliotheca, III, 13, 5, 6.
The Cretan tale does not differ from the one repeated by Apollodorus
from earlier writers a couple of thousand years ago more than two
versions of a story gathered from oral tradition in these days are apt
to do. Whether it has come down to our time from mouth to mouth through
twenty-five centuries or more, or whether, having died out of the
popular memory, it was reintroduced through literature, is a question
that cannot be decided with certainty; but there will be nothing
unlikely in the former supposition to those who bear in mind the
tenacity of tradition among people who have never known books.[328]
#B# 34,
First dip me in a stand of milk,
And then in a stand of water;
Haud me fast, let me na gae,
I'll be your bairnie's father,
has an occult and very important significance which has only very lately
been pointed out, and which modern reciters had completely lost
knowledge of, as appears by the disorder into which the stanzas have
fallen.[329] Immersion in a liquid, generally water, but sometimes milk,
is a process requisite for passing from a non-human shape, produced by
enchantment, back into the human, and also for returning from the human
to a non-human state, whether produced by enchantment or original. We
have seen that the serpent which Lanzelet kisses, in Ulrich's romance,
is not by that simple though essential act instantly turned into a
woman. It is still necessary that she should bathe in a spring (p. 308).
In an Albanian tale, 'Taubenliebe,' Hahn, No 102, II, 130, a dove flies
into a princess's window, and, receiving her caresses, asks, Do you love
me? The princess answering Yes, the dove says, Then have a dish of milk
ready to-morrow, and you shall see what a handsome man I am. A dish of
milk is ready the next morning; the dove flies into the window, dips
himself in the milk, drops his feathers, and steps out a beautiful
youth. When it is time to go, the youth dips in the milk, and flies off
a dove. This goes on every day for two years. A Greek tale, 'Goldgerte,'
Hahn, No 7, I, 97, has the same transformation, with water for milk. Our
#B# 34 has well-water only.[330] Perhaps the bath of milk occurred in
one earlier version of our ballad, the water-bath in another, and the
two accounts became blended in time.
The end of the mutations, in #F# 11, #G# 43, is a naked man, and a
mother-naked man in #B# 33, under the presumed right arrangement;
meaning by right arrangement, however, not the original arrangement, but
the most consistent one for the actual form of the tradition. Judging by
analogy, the naked man should issue from the bath of milk or of water;
into which he should have gone in one of his non-human shapes, a dove,
swan, or snake (for which, too, a "stand" of milk or of water is a more
practicable bath than for a man). The fragment #C# adds some slight
probability to this supposition. The last change there is into "a dove
but and a swan;" then Tam Lin bids the maiden to let go, for he'll "be a
perfect man:" this, nevertheless, he could not well become without some
further ceremony. #A# is the only version which has preserved an
essentially correct process: Tam Lin, when a burning gleed, is to be
thrown into well-water, from which he will step forth a naked
knight.[331]
At stated periods, which the ballads make to be seven years, the fiend
of hell is entitled to take his teind, tithe, or kane from the people of
fairy-land: #A# 24, #B# 23, #C# 5, #D# 15, #G# 28, #H# 15. The fiend
prefers those that are fair and fu o flesh, according to #A#, #G#; ane o
flesh and blood, #D#. #H# makes the queen fear for herself; "the koors
they hae gane round about, and I fear it will be mysel." #H# is not
discordant with popular tradition elsewhere, which attributes to fairies
the practice of abstracting young children to serve as substitutes for
themselves in this tribute: Scott's Minstrelsy, II, 220, 1802. #D# 15
says "the last here goes to hell," which would certainly not be
equitable, and #C# "we're a' dung down to hell," where "all" must be
meant only of the naturalized members of the community. Poor Alison
Pearson, who lost her life in 1586 for believing these things, testified
that the tribute was annual. Mr William Sympson, who had been taken away
by the fairies, "bidd her sign herself that she be not taken away, for
the teind of them are tane to hell everie year:" Scott, as above, p.
208. The kindly queen of the fairies[332] will not allow Thomas of
Erceldoune to be exposed to this peril, and hurries him back to earth
the day before the fiend comes for his due. Thomas is in peculiar
danger, for the reason given in #A#, #G#, #R#.
To morne of helle þe foulle fende
Amange this folke will feche his fee;
And þou art mekill man and hende;
I trowe full wele he wolde chese the.
The elf-queen, #A# 42, #B# 40, would have taken out Tam's twa gray een,
had she known he was to be borrowed, and have put in twa een of tree,
#B# 41, #D# 34, #E# 21, #H# 14; she would have taken out his heart of
flesh, and have put in, #B#, #D#, #E#, a heart of stane, #H# of tree.
The taking out of the eyes would probably be to deprive Tam of the
faculty of recognizing fairy folk thereafter. Mortals whose eyes have
been touched with fairies' salve can see them when they are to others
invisible, and such persons, upon distinguishing and saluting fairies,
have often had not simply this power but their ordinary eyesight taken
away: see Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p. 304,
Thiele, Danmarks Folkesagn, 1843, II, 202, IV, etc. Grimm has given
instances of witches, Slavic, German, Norse and Italian, taking out the
heart of man (which they are wont to devour), and replacing it in some
instances with straw, wood, or something of the kind; nor do the Roman
witches appear to have been behind later ones in this dealing: Deutsche
Mythologie, 904 f, and the note III, 312.
The fairy in the Lai de Lauval, v. 547, rides on a white palfrey, and
also two damsels, her harbingers, v. 471; so the fairy princess in the
English Launfal, Halliwell, Fairy Mythology, p. 30. The fairy king and
all his knights and ladies ride on white steeds in King Orfeo,
Halliwell, as above, p. 41. The queen of Elfland rides a milk-white
steed in Thomas Rymer, #A#, #C#; in #B#, and all copies of Thomas of
Erceldoune, her palfrey is dapple gray. Tam Lin, #A# 28, #B# 27, etc.,
is distinguished from all the rest of his "court" by being thus mounted;
all the other horses are black or brown.
Tam Lane was taken by the fairies, according to #G# 26, 27, while
sleeping under an apple-tree. In Sir Orfeo (ed. Zielke, v. 68) it was
the queen's sleeping under an ympe-tree that led to her being carried
off by the fairy king, and the ympe-tree we may suppose to be some kind
of fruit tree, if not exclusively the apple. Thomas of Erceldoune is
lying under a semely [derne, cumly] tree, when he sees the fairy queen.
The derivation of that poem from Ogier le Danois shows that this must
have been an apple-tree. Special trees are considered in Greece
dangerous to lie under in summer and at noon, as exposing one to be
taken by the nereids or fairies, especially plane, poplar, fig, nut, and
St John's bread: Schmidt, Volksleben der Neugriechen, p. 119. The elder
and the linden are favorites of the elves in Denmark.
The rencounter at the beginning between Tam Lin and Janet (in the wood,
#D#, #F#, #G#) is repeated between Hind Etin [Young Akin] and Margaret
in 'Hind Etin,' further on. Some Slavic ballads open in a similar way,
but there is nothing noteworthy in that: see p. 41. "First they did call
me Jack," etc., #D# 9, is a commonplace of frequent occurrence: see,
e.g., 'The Knight and Shepherd's Daughter.'
Some humorous verses, excellent in their way, about one Tam o Lin are
very well known: as Tam o the Linn, Chambers, Scottish Songs, p. 455,
Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 33, ed. 1870; Sharpe's Ballads, new ed.,
p. 44, p. 137, No XVI; Tommy Linn, North Country Chorister, ed. Ritson,
p. 3; Halliwell's Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales, p. 271, ed. 1849;
Thomas o Linn, Kinloch MSS, III, 45, V, 81; Tam o Lin, Campbell MSS.,
II, 107. (Miss Joanna Baillie tried her hand at an imitation, but the
jocosity of the real thing is not feminine.) A fool sings this stanza
from such a song in Wager's comedy, 'The longer thou livest, the more
fool thou art,' put at about 1568; see Furnivall, Captain Cox, his
Ballads and Books, p. cxxvii:
Tom a Lin and his wife, and his wiues mother,
They went ouer a bridge all three together;
The bridge was broken, and they fell in:
'The deuil go with all!' quoth Tom a Lin.
Mr Halliwell-Phillips (as above) says that "an immense variety of songs
and catches relating to Tommy Linn are known throughout the country."
Brian o Lynn seems to be popular in Ireland: Lover's Legends and Stories
of Ireland, p. 260 f. There is no connection between the song and the
ballad beyond the name: the song is no parody, no burlesque, of the
ballad, as it has been called.
"Carterhaugh is a plain at the confluence of the Ettrick with the
Yarrow, scarcely an English mile above the town of Selkirk, and on this
plain they show two or three rings on the ground, where, they say, the
stands of milk and water stood, and upon which grass never grows."
Glenriddell MS.
* * * * *
Translated, after Scott, by Schubart, p. 139, and Büsching's
Wöchentliche Nachrichten, I, 247; by Arndt, Blütenlese, p. 212; after
Aytoun, I, 7, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, No 8; by Knortz,
Schottische Balladen, No 17, apparently after Aytoun and Allingham. The
Danish 'Nattergalen' is translated by Prior, III, 118, No 116.
A
Johnson's Museum, p. 423, No 411. Communicated by Robert
Burns.
1
O I forbid you, maidens a',
That wear gowd on your hair,
To come or gae by Carterhaugh,
For young Tam Lin is there.
2
There's nane that gaes by Carterhaugh
But they leave him a wad,
Either their rings, or green mantles,
Or else their maidenhead.
3
Janet has kilted her green kirtle
A little aboon her knee,
And she has broded her yellow hair
A little aboon her bree,
And she's awa to Carterhaugh,
As fast as she can hie.
4
When she came to Carterhaugh
Tam Lin was at the well,
And there she fand his steed standing,
But away was himsel.
5
She had na pu'd a double rose,
A rose but only twa,
Till up then started young Tam Lin,
Says, Lady, thou's pu nae mae.
6
Why pu's thou the rose, Janet,
And why breaks thou the wand?
Or why comes thou to Carterhaugh
Withoutten my command?
7
'Carterhaugh, it is my ain,
My daddie gave it me;
I'll come and gang by Carterhaugh,
And ask nae leave at thee.'
* * * * * * *
8
Janet has kilted her green kirtle
A little aboon her knee,
And she has snooded her yellow hair
A little aboon her bree,
And she is to her father's ha,
As fast as she can hie.
9
Four and twenty ladies fair
Were playing at the ba,
And out then cam the fair Janet,
Ance the flower amang them a'.
10
Four and twenty ladies fair
Were playing at the chess,
And out then cam the fair Janet,
As green as onie glass.
11
Out then spak an auld grey knight,
Lay oer the castle wa,
And says, Alas, fair Janet, for thee
But we'll be blamed a'.
12
'Haud your tongue, ye auld fac'd knight,
Some ill death may ye die!
Father my bairn on whom I will,
I'll father nane on thee.'
13
Out then spak her father dear,
And he spak meek and mild;
'And ever alas, sweet Janet,' he says,
'I think thou gaes wi child.'
14
'If that I gae wi child, father,
Mysel maun bear the blame;
There's neer a laird about your ha
Shall get the bairn's name.
15
'If my love were an earthly knight,
As he's an elfin grey,
I wad na gie my ain true-love
For nae lord that ye hae.
16
'The steed that my true-love rides on
Is lighter than the wind;
Wi siller he is shod before,
Wi burning gowd behind.'
17
Janet has kilted her green kirtle
A little aboon her knee,
And she has snooded her yellow hair
A little aboon her bree,
And she's awa to Carterhaugh,
As fast as she can hie.
18
When she cam to Carterhaugh,
Tam Lin was at the well,
And there she fand his steed standing,
But away was himsel.
19
She had na pu'd a double rose,
A rose but only twa,
Till up then started young Tam Lin,
Says Lady, thou pu's nae mae.
20
Why pu's thou the rose, Janet,
Amang the groves sae green,
And a' to kill the bonie babe
That we gat us between?
21
'O tell me, tell me, Tam Lin,' she says,
'For's sake that died on tree,
If eer ye was in holy chapel,
Or christendom did see?'
22
'Roxbrugh he was my grandfather,
Took me with him to bide,
And ance it fell upon a day
That wae did me betide.
23
'And ance it fell upon a day,
A cauld day and a snell,
When we were frae the hunting come,
That frae my horse I fell;
The Queen o Fairies she caught me,
In yon green hill to dwell.
24
'And pleasant is the fairy land,
But, an eerie tale to tell,
Ay at the end of seven years
We pay a tiend to hell;
I am sae fair and fu o flesh,
I'm feard it be mysel.
25
'But the night is Halloween, lady,
The morn is Hallowday;
Then win me, win me, an ye will,
For weel I wat ye may.
26
'Just at the mirk and midnight hour
The fairy folk will ride,
And they that wad their true-love win,
At Miles Cross they maun bide.'
27
'But how shall I thee ken, Tam Lin,
Or how my true-love know,
Amang sae mony unco knights
The like I never saw?'
28
'O first let pass the black, lady,
And syne let pass the brown,
But quickly run to the milk-white steed,
Pu ye his rider down.
29
'For I'll ride on the milk-white steed,
And ay nearest the town;
Because I was an earthly knight
They gie me that renown.
30
'My right hand will be glovd, lady,
My left hand will be bare,
Cockt up shall my bonnet be,
And kaimd down shall my hair,
And thae's the takens I gie thee,
Nae doubt I will be there.
31
'They'll turn me in your arms, lady,
Into an esk and adder;
But hold me fast, and fear me not,
I am your bairn's father.
32
'They'll turn me to a bear sae grim,
And then a lion bold;
But hold me fast, and fear me not,
As ye shall love your child.
33
'Again they'll turn me in your arms
To a red het gaud of airn;
But hold me fast, and fear me not,
I'll do to you nae harm.
34
'And last they'll turn me in your arms
Into the burning gleed;
Then throw me into well water,
O throw me in wi speed.
35
'And then I'll be your ain true-love,
I'll turn a naked knight;
Then cover me wi your green mantle,
And cover me out o sight.'
36
Gloomy, gloomy was the night,
And eerie was the way,
As fair Jenny in her green mantle
To Miles Cross she did gae.
37
About the middle o the night
She heard the bridles ring;
This lady was as glad at that
As any earthly thing.
38
First she let the black pass by,
And syne she let the brown;
But quickly she ran to the milk-white steed,
And pu'd the rider down.
39
Sae weel she minded whae he did say,
And young Tam Lin did win;
Syne coverd him wi her green mantle,
As blythe's a bird in spring.
40
Out then spak the Queen o Fairies,
Out of a bush o broom:
'Them that has gotten young Tam Lin
Has gotten a stately groom.'
41
Out then spak the Queen o Fairies,
And an angry woman was she:
'Shame betide her ill-far'd face,
And an ill death may she die,
For she's taen awa the boniest knight
In a' my companie.
42
'But had I kend, Tam Lin,' she says,
'What now this night I see,
I wad hae taen out thy twa grey een,
And put in twa een o tree.'
B
Glenriddell's MSS, vol. xi, No 17.
1
I forbid ye, maidens a',
That wear goud on your gear,
To come and gae by Carterhaugh,
For young Tom Line is there.
2
There's nane that gaes by Carterhaugh
But they leave him a wad.
Either their things or green mantles,
Or else their maidenhead.
3
But Janet has kilted her green kirtle
A little above her knee,
And she has broded her yellow hair
A little above her bree,
And she has gaen for Carterhaugh,
As fast as she can hie.
4
When she came to Carterhaugh
Tom Line was at the well,
And there she fand his steed standing,
But away was himsell.
5
She hadna pu'd a double rose,
A rose but only twae,
Till up then started young Tom Line,
Says, Lady, thou's pu nae mae.
6
Why pu's thou the rose, Janet?
Why breaks thou the wand?
Why comest thou to Carterhaugh
Withouthen my command?
7
'Fair Carterhaugh it is my ain,
My daddy gave it me;
I'll come and gae by Carterhaugh,
And ask nae leave at thee.'
* * * * * * *
8
Janet has kilted her green kirtle
A little aboon her knee,
And she has snooded her yellow hair
A little aboon her bree,
And she is on to her father's ha,
As fast as she can hie.
9
Four and twenty ladies fair
Were playing at the ba,
And out then came fair Janet,
The flowr amang them a'.
10
Four and twenty ladies fair
Were playing at the chess,
Out then came fair Janet,
As green as ony glass.
11
Out spak an auld grey-headed knight,
Lay owre the castle wa,
And says, Alas, fair Janet,
For thee we'll be blam'd a'.
12
'Had your tongue, you auld grey knight,
Some ill dead may ye die!
Father my bairn on whom I will,
I'll father nane on thee.'
13
Out then spak her father dear,
He spak baith thick and milde;
'And ever alas, sweet Janet,' he says,
'I think ye gae wi childe.'
14
'If that I gae wi child, father,
Mysell bears a' the blame;
There's not a laird about your ha
Shall get the bairnie's name.
15
'If my lord were an earthly knight,
As he's an elfish grey,
I wad na gie my ain true-love
For nae lord that ye hae.'
16
Janet has kilted her green kirtle
A little aboon her knee,
And she has snooded her yellow hair
A little aboon her bree,
And she's away to Carterhaugh,
As fast as she can hie.
17
When she came to Carterhaugh,
Tom Line was at the well,
And there she faund his steed standing,
But away was himsell.
18
She hadna pu'd a double rose,
A rose but only twae,
Till up then started young Tom Line,
Says, Lady, thou's pu na mae.
19
Why pu's thou the rose, Janet,
Out owr yon groves sae green,
And a' to kill your bonny babe,
That we gat us between?
20
'O tell me, tell me, Tom,' she says,
'For's sake who died on tree,
If eer ye were in holy chapel,
Or christendom did see.'
21
'Roxburgh he was my grandfather,
Took me with him to bide,
And ance it fell upon a day
That wae did me betide.
22
'Ance it fell upon a day,
A cauld day and a snell,
When we were frae the hunting come,
That from my horse I fell.
23
'The Queen of Fairies she came by,
Took me wi her to dwell,
Evn where she has a pleasant land
For those that in it dwell,
But at the end o seven years,
They pay their teind to hell.
24
'The night it is gude Halloween,
The fairie folk do ride,
And they that wad their true-love win,
At Miles Cross they maun bide.'
25
'But how shall I thee ken, Thomas,
Or how shall I thee knaw,
Amang a pack o uncouth knights
The like I never saw?'
26
'The first company that passes by,
Say na, and let them gae;
The next company that passes by,
Say na, and do right sae;
The third company that passes by,
Then I'll be ane o thae.
27
'Some ride upon a black, lady,
And some ride on a brown,
But I ride on a milk-white steed,
And ay nearest the town:
Because I was an earthly knight
They gae me that renown.
28
'My right hand will be glovd, lady,
My left hand will be bare,
And thae's the tokens I gie thee,
Nae doubt I will be there.
29
'Then hie thee to the milk-white steed,
And pu me quickly down,
Cast thy green kirtle owr me,
And keep me frae the rain.
30
'They'll turn me in thy arms, lady,
An adder and a snake;
But hold me fast, let me na gae,
To be your warldly mate.
31
'They'll turn me in your arms, lady,
A grey greyhound to girn;
But hald me fast, let me na gae,
The father o your bairn.
32
'They'll turn me in your arms, lady,
A red het gad o iron;
Then hand me fast, and be na feard,
I'll do to you nae harm.
33
'They'll turn me in your arms, lady,
A mother-naked man;
Cast your green kirtle owr me,
To keep me frae the rain.
34
'First dip me in a stand o milk,
And then a stand o water;
Haud me fast, let me na gae,
I'll be your bairnie's father.'
35
Janet has kilted her green kirtle
A little aboon her knee,
And she has snooded her yellow hair
A little aboon her bree,
And she is on to Miles Cross,
As fast as she can hie.
36
The first company that passd by,
She said na, and let them gae;
The next company that passed by,
She said na, and did right sae;
The third company that passed by,
Then he was ane o thae.
37
She hied her to the milk-white steed,
And pu'd him quickly down;
She cast her green kirtle owr him,
To keep him frae the rain;
Then she did all was orderd her,
And sae recoverd him.
38
Then out then spak the Queen o Fairies,
Out o a bush o broom:
'They that hae gotten young Tom Line
Hae got a stately groom.'
39
Out than spak the Queen o Fairies,
Out o a bush of rye:
'Them that has gotten young Tom Line
Has the best knight in my company.
40
'Had I kend, Thomas,' she says,
'A lady wad hae borrowd thee,
I wad hae taen out thy twa grey een,
Put in twa een o tree.
41
'Had I but kend, Thomas,' she says,
'Before I came frae hame,
I had taen out that heart o flesh,
Put in a heart o stane.'
C
Herd, The Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 300.
* * * * * * *
1
She's prickt hersell and prind hersell,
By the ae light o the moon,
And she's awa to Kertonha,
As fast as she can gang.
2
'What gars ye pu the rose, Jennet?
What gars ye break the tree?
What gars you gang to Kertonha
Without the leave of me?'
3
'Yes, I will pu the rose, Thomas,
And I will break the tree;
For Kertonha shoud be my ain,
Nor ask I leave of thee.'
4
'Full pleasant is the fairy land,
And happy there to dwell;
I am a fairy, lyth and limb,
Fair maiden, view me well.
5
'O pleasant is the fairy land,
How happy there to dwell!
But ay at every seven years end
We're a' dung down to hell.
6
'The morn is good Halloween,
And our court a' will ride;
If ony maiden wins her man,
Then she may be his bride.
7
'But first ye'll let the black gae by,
And then ye'll let the brown;
Then I'll ride on a milk-white steed,
You'll pu me to the ground.
8
'And first, I'll grow into your arms
An esk but and an edder;
Had me fast, let me not gang,
I'll be your bairn's father.
9
'Next, I'll grow into your arms
A toad but and an eel;
Had me fast, let me not gang,
If you do love me leel.
10
'Last, I'll grow into your arms
A dove but and a swan;
Then, maiden fair, you'll let me go,
I'll be a perfect man.'
* * * * * * *
D
#a.# Motherwell's MS., p. 532, a North Country version.
#b.# Maidment's New Book of Old Ballads, 1844, p. 54, from
the recitation of an old woman. #c.# Pitcairn's MSS,
1817-25, III, p. 67: "procured by David Webster,
Bookseller, from tradition."
1
O all you ladies young and gay,
Who are so sweet and fair,
Do not go into Chaster's wood,
For Tomlin will be there.
2
Fair Margret sat in her bonny bower,
Sewing her silken seam,
And wished to be in Chaster's wood,
Among the leaves so green.
3
She let her seam fall to her foot,
The needle to her toe,
And she has gone to Chaster's wood,
As fast as she could go.
4
When she began to pull the flowers,
She pulld both red and green;
Then by did come, and by did go,
Said, Fair maid, let aleene.
5
'O why pluck you the flowers, lady,
Or why climb you the tree?
Or why come ye to Chaster's wood
Without the leave of me?'
6
'O I will pull the flowers,' she said,
'Or I will break the tree,
For Chaster's wood it is my own,
I'll no ask leave at thee.'
7
He took her by the milk-white hand,
And by the grass green sleeve,
And laid her low down on the flowers,
At her he asked no leave.
8
The lady blushed, and sourly frowned,
And she did think great shame;
Says, 'If you are a gentleman,
You will tell me your name.'
9
'First they did call me Jack,' he said,
'And then they called me John,
But since I lived in the fairy court
Tomlin has always been my name.
10
'So do not pluck that flower, lady,
That has these pimples gray;
They would destroy the bonny babe
That we've got in our play.'
11
'O tell me, Tomlin,' she said,
'And tell it to me soon,
Was you ever at good church-door,
Or got you christendoom?'
12
'O I have been at good church-door,
And aff her yetts within;
I was the Laird of Foulis's son,
The heir of all this land.
13
'But it fell once upon a day,
As hunting I did ride,
As I rode east and west yon hill
There woe did me betide.
14
'O drowsy, drowsy as I was!
Dead sleep upon me fell;
The Queen of Fairies she was there,
And took me to hersell.
15
'The Elfins is a pretty place,
In which I love to dwell,
But yet at every seven years' end
The last here goes to hell;
And as I am ane o flesh and blood,
I fear the next be mysell.
16
'The morn at even is Halloween;
Our fairy court will ride,
Throw England and Scotland both,
Throw al the world wide;
And if ye would me borrow,
At Rides Cross ye may bide.
17
'You may go into the Miles Moss,
Between twelve hours and one;
Take holy water in your hand,
And cast a compass round.
18
'The first court that comes along,
You'll let them all pass by;
The next court that comes along,
Salute them reverently.
19
'The next court that comes along
Is clad in robes of green,
And it's the head court of them all,
For in it rides the queen.
20
'And I upon a milk-white steed,
With a gold star in my crown;
Because I am an earthly man
I'm next to the queen in renown.
21
'Then seize upon me with a spring,
Then to the ground I'll fa,
And then you'll hear a rueful cry
That Tomlin is awa.
22
'Then I'll grow in your arms two
Like to a savage wild;
But hold me fast, let me not go,
I'm father of your child.
23
'I'll grow into your arms two
Like an adder or a snake;
But hold me fast, let me not go,
I'll be your earthly maick.
24
'I'll grow into your arms two
Like iron in strong fire;
But hold me fast, let me not go,
Then you'll have your desire.'
25
She rid down to Miles Cross,
Between twelve hours and one,
Took holy water in her hand,
And cast a compass round.
26
The first court that came along,
She let them all pass by;
The next court that came along
Saluted reverently.
27
The next court that came along
Were clad in robes of green,
When Tomlin, on a milk-white steed,
She saw ride with the queen.
28
She seized him in her arms two,
He to the ground did fa,
And then she heard a ruefull cry
'Tomlin is now awa.'
29
He grew into her arms two
Like to a savage wild;
She held him fast, let him not go,
The father of her child.
30
He grew into her arms two
Like an adder or a snake;
She held him fast, let him not go,
He was her earthly maick.
31
He grew into her arms two
Like iron in hot fire;
She held him fast, let him not go,
He was her heart's desire.
32
Then sounded out throw elphin court,
With a loud shout and a cry,
That the pretty maid of Chaster's wood
That day had caught her prey.
33
'O stay, Tomlin,' cried Elphin Queen,
'Till I pay you your fee;'
'His father has lands and rents enough,
He wants no fee from thee.'
34
'O had I known at early morn
Tomlin would from me gone,
I would have taken out his heart of flesh
Put in a heart of stone.'
E
Motherwell's Note-book, p. 13.
1
Lady Margaret is over gravel green,
And over gravel grey,
And she's awa to Charteris ha,
Lang lang three hour or day.
2
She hadna pu'd a flower, a flower,
A flower but only ane,
Till up and started young Tamlin,
Says, Lady, let alane.
3
She hadna pu'd a flower, a flower,
A flower but only twa,
Till up and started young Tamlene,
Atween her and the wa.
4
'How daur you pu my flower, madam?
How daur ye break my tree?
How daur ye come to Charter's ha,
Without the leave of me?'
5
'Weel I may pu the rose,' she said,
'But I daurna break the tree;
And Charter's ha is my father's,
And I'm his heir to be.'
6
'If Charteris ha be thy father's,
I was ance as gude mysell;
But as I came in by Lady Kirk,
And in by Lady Well,
7
'Deep and drowsy was the sleep
On my poor body fell;
By came the Queen of Faery,
Made me with her to dwell.
8
'But the morn at een is Halloween,
Our fairy foks a' do ride;
And she that will her true-love win,
At Blackstock she must bide.
9
'First let by the black,' he said,
'And syne let by the brown;
But when you see the milk-white steed,
You'll pull his rider down.
10
'You'll pull him into thy arms,
Let his bricht bridle fa,
And he'll fa low into your arms
Like stone in castle's wa.
11
'They'll first shape him into your arms
An adder or a snake;
But hold him fast, let him not go,
He'll be your world's make.
12
'They'll next shape him into your arms
Like a wood black dog to bite;
Hold him fast, let him not go,
For he'll be your heart's delight.
13
'They'll next shape [him] into your arms
Like a red-het gaud o airn;
But hold him fast, let him not go,
He's the father o your bairn.
14
'They'll next shape him into your arms
Like the laidliest worm of Ind;
But hold him fast, let him not go,
And cry aye "Young Tamlin."'
* * * * * * *
15
Lady Margaret first let by the black,
And syne let by the brown,
But when she saw the milk-white steed
She pulled the rider down.
16
She pulled him into her arms,
Let his bright bridle fa',
And he fell low into her arms,
Like stone in castle's wa.
17
They first shaped him into arms
An adder or a snake;
But she held him fast, let him not go,
For he'd be her warld's make.
18
They next shaped him into her arms
Like a wood black dog to bite;
But she held him fast, let him not go,
For he'd be her heart's delight.
19
They next shaped him into her arms
Like a red-het gaud o airn;
But she held him fast, let him not go,
He'd be father o her bairn.
20
They next shaped him into her arms
Like the laidliest worm of Ind;
But she held him fast, let him not go,
And cried aye 'Young Tamlin.'
21
The Queen of Faery turned her horse about,
Says, Adieu to thee, Tamlene!
For if I had kent what I ken this night,
If I had kent it yestreen,
I wad hae taen out thy heart o flesh,
And put in a heart o stane.
F
Motherwell's MS., p. 64, from the recitation of widow
McCormick, February, 1825.
* * * * * * *
1
She's taen her petticoat by the band,
Her mantle owre her arm,
And she's awa to Chester wood,
As fast as she could run.
2
She scarsely pulled a rose, a rose,
She scarse pulled two or three,
Till up there starts Thomas
On the Lady Margaret's knee.
3
She's taen her petticoat by the band,
Her mantle owre her arm,
And Lady Margaret's gane hame agen,
As fast as she could run.
4
Up starts Lady Margaret's sister,
An angry woman was she:
'If there ever was a woman wi child,
Margaret, you are wi!'
5
Up starts Lady Margaret's mother,
An angry woman was she:
'There grows ane herb in yon kirk-yard
That will scathe the babe away.'
6
She took her petticoats by the band,
Her mantle owre her arm,
And she's gane to yon kirk-yard
As fast as she could run.
7
She scarcely pulled an herb, an herb,
She scarse pulled two or three,
Till up starts there Thomas
Upon this Lady Margret's knee.
8
'How dare ye pull a rose?' he says,
'How dare ye break the tree?
How dare ye pull this herb,' he says,
'To scathe my babe away?
9
'This night is Halloweve,' he said,
'Our court is going to waste,
And them that loves their true-love best
At Chester bridge they'll meet.
10
'First let pass the black,' he says,
'And then let pass the brown,
But when ye meet the milk-white steed,
Pull ye the rider down.
11
'They'll turn me to an eagle,' he says,
'And then into an ass;
Come, hold me fast, and fear me not,
The man that you love best.
12
'They'll turn me to a flash of fire,
And then to a naked man;
Come, wrap you your mantle me about,
And then you'll have me won.'
13
She took her petticoats by the band,
Her mantle owre her arm,
And she's awa to Chester bridge,
As fast as she could run.
14
And first she did let pass the black,
And then let pass the brown,
But when she met the milk-white steed,
She pulled the rider down.
15
They turned him in her arms an eagle,
And then into an ass;
But she held him fast, and feared him not,
The man that she loved best.
16
They turned him into a flash of fire,
And then into a naked man;
But she wrapped her mantle him about,
And then she had him won.
17
'O wae be to ye, Lady Margaret,
And an ill death may you die,
For you've robbed me of the bravest knight
That eer rode in our company.'
G
Buchan's MSS, I, 8; Motherwell's MS., p. 595.
1
Take warning, a' ye ladies fair,
That wear gowd on your hair,
Come never unto Charter's woods,
For Tam-a-line he's there.
2
Even about that knight's middle
O' siller bells are nine;
Nae ane comes to Charter wood,
And a maid returns again.
3
Lady Margaret sits in her bower door,
Sewing at her silken seam;
And she langd to gang to Charter woods,
To pou the roses green.
4
She hadna poud a rose, a rose,
Nor broken a branch but ane,
Till by it came him true Tam-a-line,
Says, Ladye, lat alane.
5
O why pou ye the rose, the rose?
Or why brake ye the tree?
Or why come ye to Charter woods,
Without leave askd of me?
6
'I will pou the rose, the rose,
And I will brake the tree;
Charter woods are a' my ain,
I'll ask nae leave o thee.'
7
He's taen her by the milk-white hand,
And by the grass-green sleeve,
And laid her low on gude green wood,
At her he spierd nae leave.
8
When he had got his wills of her,
His wills as he had taen,
He's taen her by the middle sma,
Set her to feet again.
9
She turnd her right and round about,
To spier her true-love's name,
But naething heard she, nor naething saw,
As a' the woods grew dim.
10
Seven days she tarried there,
Saw neither sun nor meen;
At length, by a sma glimmering light,
Came thro the wood her lane.
11
When she came to her father's court,
As fine as ony queen;
But when eight months were past and gane,
Got on the gown o' green.
12
Then out it speaks an eldren knight,
As he stood at the yett:
'Our king's daughter, she gaes wi bairn,
And we'll get a' the wyte.'
13
'O had your tongue, ye eldren man,
And bring me not to shame;
Although that I do gang wi bairn,
Yese naeways get the blame.
14
'Were my love but an earthly man,
As he's an elfin knight,
I woudna gie my ain true love
For a' that's in my sight.'
15
Then out it speaks her brither dear,
He meant to do her harm:
'There is an herb in Charter wood
Will twine you an the bairn.'
16
She's taen her mantle her about,
Her coffer by the band,
And she is on to Charter wood,
As fast as she coud gang.
17
She hadna poud a rose, a rose,
Nor braken a branch but ane,
Till by it came him Tam-a-Line,
Says, Ladye, lat alane.
18
O why pou ye the pile, Margaret,
The pile o the gravil green,
For to destroy the bonny bairn
That we got us between?
19
O why pou ye the pile, Margaret,
The pile o the gravil gray,
For to destroy the bonny bairn
That we got in our play?
20
For if it be a knave-bairn,
He's heir o a' my land;
But if it be a lass-bairn,
In red gowd she shall gang.
21
'If my luve were an earthly man,
As he's an elfin rae,
I coud gang bound, love, for your sake,
A twalmonth and a day.'
22
'Indeed your love's an earthly man,
The same as well as thee,
And lang I've haunted Charter woods,
A' for your fair bodie.'
23
'O tell me, tell me, Tam-a-Line,
O tell, an tell me true,
Tell me this night, an mak nae lie,
What pedigree are you?'
24
'O I hae been at gude church-door,
An I've got Christendom;
I'm the Earl o' Forbes' eldest son,
An heir ower a' his land.
25
'When I was young, o three years old,
Muckle was made o me;
My step-mother put on my claithes,
An ill, ill sained she me.
26
'Ae fatal morning I went out,
Dreading nae injury,
And thinking lang, fell soun asleep,
Beneath an apple tree.
27
'Then by it came the Elfin Queen,
And laid her hand on me;
And from that time since ever I mind,
I've been in her companie.
28
'O Elfin it's a bonny place,
In it fain woud I dwell;
But ay at ilka seven years' end
They pay a tiend to hell,
And I'm sae fou o flesh an blude,
I'm sair feard for mysell.'
29
'O tell me, tell me, Tam-a-Line,
O tell, an tell me true;
Tell me this night, an mak nae lie,
What way I'll borrow you?'
30
'The morn is Halloweven night,
The elfin court will ride,
Through England, and thro a' Scotland,
And through the world wide.
31
'O they begin at sky setting,
Rides a' the evening tide;
And she that will her true-love borrow,
[At] Miles-corse will him bide.
32
'Ye'll do you down to Miles-corse,
Between twall hours and ane,
And full your hands o holy water,
And cast your compass roun.
33
'Then the first an court that comes you till
Is published king and queen;
The next an court that comes you till,
It is maidens mony ane.
34
'The next an court that comes you till
Is footmen, grooms and squires;
The next an court that comes you till
Is knights, and I'll be there.
35
'I Tam-a-Line, on milk-white steed,
A goud star on my crown;
Because I was an earthly knight,
Got that for a renown.
36
'And out at my steed's right nostril,
He'll breathe a fiery flame;
Ye'll loot you low, and sain yoursel,
And ye'll be busy then.
37
'Ye'll take my horse then by the head,
And lat the bridal fa;
The Queen o' Elfin she'll cry out,
True Tam-a-Line's awa.
38
'Then I'll appear in your arms
Like the wolf that neer woud tame;
Ye'll had me fast, lat me not go,
Case we neer meet again.
39
'Then I'll appear in your arms
Like the fire that burns sae bauld;
Ye'll had me fast, lat me not go,
I'll be as iron cauld.
40
'Then I'll appear in your arms
Like the adder an the snake;
Ye'll had me fast, lat me not go,
I am your warld's make.
41
'Then I'll appear in your arms
Like to the deer sae wild;
Ye'll had me fast, lat me not go,
And I'll father your child.
42
'And I'll appear in your arms
Like to a silken string;
Ye'll had me fast, lat me not go,
Till ye see the fair morning.
43
'And I'll appear in your arms
Like to a naked man;
Ye'll had me fast, lat me not go,
And wi you I'll gae hame.'
44
Then she has done her to Miles-corse,
Between twall hours an ane,
And filled her hands o holy water,
And kiest her compass roun.
45
The first an court that came her till
Was published king and queen;
The niest an court that came her till
Was maidens mony ane.
46
The niest an court that came her till
Was footmen, grooms and squires;
The niest an court that came her till
Was knights, and he was there.
47
True Tam-a-Line, on milk-white steed,
A gowd star on his crown;
Because he was an earthly man,
Got that for a renown.
48
And out at the steed's right nostril,
He breathd a fiery flame;
She loots her low, an sains hersell,
And she was busy then.
49
She's taen the horse then by the head,
And loot the bridle fa;
The Queen o Elfin she cried out,
'True Tam-a-Line's awa.'
50
'Stay still, true Tam-a-Line,' she says,
'Till I pay you your fee:'
'His father wants not lands nor rents,
He'll ask nae fee frae thee.'
51
'Gin I bad kent yestreen, yestreen,
What I ken weel the day,
I shoud taen your fu fause heart,
Gien you a heart o clay.'
52
Then he appeared in her arms
Like the wolf that neer woud tame;
She held him fast, let him not go,
Case they neer meet again.
53
Then he appeared in her arms
Like the fire burning bauld;
She held him fast, let him not go,
He was as iron cauld.
54
And he appeared in her arms
Like the adder an the snake;
She held him fast, let him not go,
He was her warld's make.
55
And he appeared in her arms
Like to the deer sae wild;
She held him fast, let him not go,
He's father o her child.
56
And he appeared in her arms
Like to a silken string;
She held him fast, let him not go,
Till she saw fair morning.
57
And he appeared in her arms
Like to a naked man;
She held him fast, let him not go,
And wi her he's gane hame.
58
These news hae reachd thro a' Scotland,
And far ayont the Tay,
That Lady Margaret, our king's daughter,
That night had gaind her prey.
59
She borrowed her love at mirk midnight,
Bare her young son ere day,
And though ye'd search the warld wide,
Ye'll nae find sic a may.
H
Campbell MSS, II, 129.
1
I forbid ye, maidens a',
That wears gowd in your hair,
To come or gang by Carterhaugh,
For young Tam Lane is there.
2
I forbid ye, maidens a',
That wears gowd in your green,
To come or gang by Carterhaugh,
For fear of young Tam Lane.
3
'Go saddle for me the black,' says Janet,
'Go saddle for me the brown,
And I'll away to Carterhaugh,
And flower mysell the gown.
4
'Go saddle for me the brown,' says Janet,
'Go saddle for me the black,
And I'll away to Carterhaugh,
And flower mysel a hat.'
* * * * * * *
5
She had not pulld a flowr, a flowr,
A flower but only three,
Till up there startit young Tam Lane,
Just at bird Janet's knee.
6
'Why pullst thou the herb, Janet,
And why breaks thou the tree?
Why put you back the bonny babe
That's between you and me?'
7
'If my child was to an earthly man,
As it is to a wild buck rae,
I would wake him the length of the winter's night,
And the lea lang simmer's day.'
8
'The night is Halloween, Janet,
When our gude neighbours will ride,
And them that would their true-love won
At Blackning Cross maun bide.
9
'Many will the black ride by,
And many will the brown,
But I ride on a milk-white steed,
And ride nearest the town:
Because I was a christened knight
They gie me that renown.
10
'Many will the black ride by,
But far mae will the brown;
But when ye see the milk-white stead,
Grip fast and pull me down.
11
'Take me in yer arms, Janet,
An ask, an adder lang;
The grip ye get ye maun haud fast,
I'll be father to your bairn.
12
'Take me in your arms, Janet,
An adder and a snake;
The grip ye get ye maun haud fast,
I'll be your warld's make.'
* * * * * * *
13
Up bespak the Queen of Fairies,
She spak baith loud and high:
'Had I kend the day at noon
Tam Lane had been won from me,
14
'I wad hae taen out his heart o flesh,
Put in a heart o tree,
That a' the maids o Middle Middle Mist
Should neer hae taen Tam Lane frae me.'
15
Up bespack the Queen of Fairies,
And she spak wi a loud yell:
'Aye at every seven year's end
We pay the kane to hell,
And the koors they hae gane round about,
And I fear it will be mysel.'
I
#a.# Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, II, 337, ed. 1833.
#b.# II, 228, ed. 1802.
1
'O I forbid ye, maidens a',
That wear gowd on your hair,
To come or gae by Carterhaugh,
For young Tamlane is there.
2
'There's nane that gaes by Carterhaugh
But maun leave him a wad,
Either gowd rings, or green mantles,
Or else their maidenheid.
3
'Now gowd rings ye may buy, maidens,
Green mantles ye may spin,
But, gin ye lose your maidenheid,
Ye'll neer get that agen.'
4
But up then spak her, fair Janet,
The fairest o a' her kin:
'I'll cum and gang to Carterhaugh,
And ask nae leave o him.'
5
Janet has kilted her green kirtle
A little abune her knee,
And she has braided her yellow hair
A little abune her bree.
6
And when she came to Carterhaugh,
She gaed beside the well,
And there she fand his steed standing,
But away was himsell.
7
She hadna pu'd a red red rose,
A rose but barely three,
Till up and starts a wee wee man,
At lady Janet's knee.
8
Says, Why pu ye the rose, Janet?
What gars ye break the tree?
Or why come ye to Carterhaugh,
Withouten leave o me?
9
Says, Carterhaugh it is mine ain,
My daddie gave it me;
I'll come and gang to Carterhaugh,
And ask nae leave o thee.
10
He's taen her by the milk-white hand,
Among the leaves sae green,
And what they did I cannot tell,
The green leaves were between.
11
He's taen her by the milk-white hand,
Among the roses red,
And what they did I cannot say,
She neer returnd a maid.
12
When she cam to her father's ha,
She looked pale and wan;
They thought she'd dreed some sair sickness,
Or been with some leman.
13
She didna comb her yellow hair
Nor make meikle o her head,
And ilka thing that lady took
Was like to be her deid.
14
It's four and twenty ladies fair
Were playing at the ba;
Janet, the wightest of them anes,
Was faintest o them a'.
15
Four and twenty ladies fair
Were playing at the chess;
And out there came the fair Janet,
As green as any grass.
16
Out and spak an auld grey-headed knight,
Lay oer the castle wa:
'And ever, alas! for thee, Janet,
But we'll be blamed a'!'
17
'Now haud your tongue, ye auld grey knight,
And an ill deid may ye die!
Father my bairn on whom I will,
I'll father nane on thee.'
18
Out then spak her father dear,
And he spak meik and mild:
'And ever, alas! my sweet Janet,
I fear ye gae with child.'
19
'And if I be with child, father,
Mysell maun bear the blame;
There's neer a knight about your ha
Shall hae the bairnie's name.
20
'And if I be with child, father,
'T will prove a wondrous birth,
For weel I swear I'm not wi bairn
To any man on earth.
21
'If my love were an earthly knight,
As he's an elfin grey,
I wadna gie my ain true love
For nae lord that ye hae.'
22
She prinkd hersell and prinnd hersell,
By the ae light of the moon,
And she's away to Carterhaugh,
To speak wi young Tamlane.
23
And when she cam to Carterhaugh,
She gaed beside the well,
And there she saw the steed standing,
But away was himsell.
24
She hadna pu'd a double rose,
A rose but only twae,
When up and started young Tamlane,
Says, Lady, thou pu's nae mae.
25
Why pu ye the rose, Janet,
Within this garden grene,
And a' to kill the bonny babe
That we got us between?
26
'The truth ye'll tell to me, Tamlane,
A word ye mauna lie;
Gin eer ye was in haly chapel,
Or sained in Christentie?'
27
'The truth I'll tell to thee, Janet,
A word I winna lie;
A knight me got, and a lady me bore,
As well as they did thee.
28
'Randolph, Earl Murray, was my sire,
Dunbar, Earl March, is thine;
We loved when we were children small,
Which yet you well may mind.
29
'When I was a boy just turnd of nine,
My uncle sent for me,
To hunt and hawk, and ride with him,
And keep him companie.
30
'There came a wind out of the north,
A sharp wind and a snell,
And a deep sleep came over me,
And frae my horse I fell.
31
'The Queen of Fairies keppit me
In yon green hill to dwell,
And I'm a fairy, lyth and limb,
Fair ladye, view me well.
32
'Then would I never tire, Janet,
In Elfish land to dwell,
But aye, at every seven years,
They pay the teind to hell;
And I am sae fat and fair of flesh,
I fear 't will be mysell.
33
'This night is Halloween, Janet,
The morn is Hallowday,
And gin ye dare your true love win,
Ye hae nae time to stay.
34
'The night it is good Halloween,
When fairy folk will ride,
And they that wad their true-love win,
At Miles Cross they maun bide.'
35
'But how shall I thee ken, Tamlane?
Or how shall I thee knaw,
Amang so many unearthly knights,
The like I never saw?'
36
'The first company that passes by,
Say na, and let them gae;
The next company that passes by,
Say na, and do right sae;
The third company that passes by,
Then I'll be ane o thae.
37
'First let pass the black, Janet,
And syne let pass the brown,
But grip ye to the milk-white steed,
And pu the rider down.
38
'For I ride on the milk-white steed,
And aye nearest the town;
Because I was a christend knight,
They gave me that renown.
39
'My right hand will be gloved, Janet,
My left hand will be bare;
And these the tokens I gie thee,
Nae doubt I will be there.
40
'They'll turn me in your arms, Janet,
An adder and a snake;
But had me fast, let me not pass,
Gin ye wad be my maik.
41
'They'll turn me in your arms, Janet,
An adder and an ask;
They'll turn me in your arms, Janet,
A bale that burns fast.
42
'They'll turn me in your arms, Janet,
A red-hot gad o airn;
But haud me fast, let me not pass,
For I'll do you no harm.
43
'First dip me in a stand o milk,
And then in a stand o water;
But had me fast, let me not pass,
I'll be your bairn's father.
44
'And next they'll shape me in your arms
A tod but and an eel;
But had me fast, nor let me gang,
As you do love me weel.
45
'They'll shape me in your arms, Janet,
A dove but and a swan,
And last they'll shape me in your arms
A mother-naked man;
Cast your green mantle over me,
I'll be myself again.'
46
Gloomy, gloomy, was the night,
And eiry was the way,
As fair Janet, in her green mantle,
To Miles Cross she did gae.
47
About the dead hour o the night
She heard the bridles ring,
And Janet was as glad o that
As any earthly thing.
48
And first gaed by the black black steed,
And then gaed by the brown;
But fast she gript the milk-white steed,
And pu'd the rider down.
49
She pu'd him frae the milk-white steed,
And loot the bridle fa,
And up there raise an erlish cry,
'He's won amang us a'!'
50
They shaped him in fair Janet's arms
An esk but and an adder;
She held him fast in every shape,
To be her bairn's father.
51
They shaped him in her arms at last
A mother-naked man,
She wrapt him in her green mantle,
And sae her true love wan.
52
Up then spake the Queen o Fairies,
Out o a bush o broom:
'She that has borrowd young Tamlane
Has gotten a stately groom.'
53
Up then spake the Queen o Fairies,
Out o a bush o rye:
'She's taen awa the bonniest knight
In a' my cumpanie.
54
'But had I kennd, Tamlane,' she says,
'A lady wad borrowd thee
I wad taen out thy twa grey een,
Put in twa een o tree.
55
'Had I but kennd, Tamlane,' she says,
'Before ye came frae hame,
I wad taen out your heart o flesh,
Put in a heart o stane.
56
'Had I but had the wit yestreen
That I hae coft the day,
I'd paid my kane seven times to hell
Ere you'd been won away.'
* * * * *
#A.#
_Divided in the Museum into 45-1/2 four-line stanzas,
without heed to rhyme or reason, 3^{5,6} making a stanza
with 4^{1,2}, etc._
3^1. has belted.
4^2. _~Tom~, elsewhere ~Tam~._
17^4. brie.
34^2. burning lead.
#B.#
"An Old Song called Young Tom Line." _Written in
twenty-six stanzas of four [three, two] long, or double,
lines._
19^3. yon bonny babes.
26^2. and do right sae.
26^4. and let them gae. _See 36._
_26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 stand in MS. 31, 26, 27,
32, 28, 29, 33, 30._
#D.#
_#b# has 26 stanzas, #c# has 12. The first 12 stanzas of
#a# and #b# and the 12 of #c#, and again the first 22
stanzas of #a#, and #b#, are almost verbally the same, and
#a# 23==#b# 24. #b# has but 26 stanzas._
#a.# _15 stands 24 in MS._
17^1. Miles Cross: #b#, Moss.
17^3. the holy.
19^2. So(?)clad: #b#, is clad.
22^1. twa.
25^1. ride.
#b.# 4^4. let abeene.
6^4. I'll ask no.
7^8. her down.
10^4. gotten in.
11^1. to me.
11^3. at a.
12^4. his land.
15^3. and through.
16^5. if that.
16^6. _Rides Cross, as in #a#._
17^8. Take holy.
20^4. next the.
_After 23_:
'I'll grow into your arms two
Like ice on frozen lake;
But hold me fast, let me not go,
Or from your goupen break.'
25.
And it's next night into Miles Moss
Fair Margaret has gone,
When lo she stands beside Rides Cross,
Between twelve hours and one.
26.
There's holy water in her hand,
She casts a compass round,
And presently a fairy band
Comes riding oer the mound.
#c.# _1^3, and always, ~Chester's wood~._
3^1. the seam.
4^4. let alane.
6^1. will pluck.
6^4. ask no.
9^4. has been.
11^1. me, Tom o Lin.
12^4. his land.
#E.#
_18, 19, 20 are not written out. We are directed to
understand them to be "~as in preceding stanzas, making
the necessary grammatical changes~."_
#F.#
11^2, 15^2. _~ass~, somebody's blunder for ~ask~._
#G.#
21^2. _~elfin gray~, Motherwell, but see #H#, 7^2._
26^1. Ay.
31^1. began.
58^2. _Motherwell_: far's the river Tay.
58^4. _Motherwell_: she gained.
_Motherwell, as usual, seems to have made some slight
changes in copying._
#I.#
_Scott's copy having been "~prepared from a collation of
the printed copies~," namely, those in Johnson's Museum
and Herd's Scottish Songs, "~with a very accurate one in
Glenriddell's MS., and with several recitals from
tradition~," what was not derived from tradition, but from
the Museum, Glenriddell, and Herd, is printed in smaller
type._
#a.# _3, 20, not in #b.#_
_After 31 are omitted five stanzas of the copy obtained by
Scott "~from a gentleman residing near Langholm~," and
others, of the same origin, after 46 and 47._
32
'But we that live in Fairy-land
No sickness know nor pain;
I quit my body when I will,
And take to it again.
33
'I quit my body when I please,
Or unto it repair;
We can inhabit at our ease
In either earth or air.
34
'Our shapes and size we can convert
To either large or small;
An old nut-shell's the same to us
As is the lofty hall.
35
'We sleep in rose-buds soft and sweet,
We revel in the stream;
We wanton lightly on the wind
Or glide on a sunbeam.
36
'And all our wants are well supplied
From every rich man's store,
Who thankless sins the gifts he gets,
And vainly grasps for more.'
40^4. _~buy me maik~, a plain misprint for the ~be my
maik~ of #b# 57._
46. _After this stanza are omitted:_
52
The heavens were black, the night was dark,
And dreary was the place,
But Janet stood with eager wish
Her lover to embrace.
53
Betwixt the hours of twelve and one
A north wind tore the bent,
And straight she heard strange elritch sounds
Upon that wind which went.
47. _After this stanza are omitted:_
55
Their oaten pipes blew wondrous shrill,
The hemlock small blew clear,
And louder notes from hemlock large,
And bog-reed, struck the ear;
But solemn sounds, or sober thoughts,
The fairies cannot bear.
56
They sing, inspired with love and joy,
Like skylarks in the air;
Of solid sense, or thought that's grave,
You'll find no traces there.
57
Fair Janet stood, with mind unmoved,
The dreary heath upon,
And louder, louder waxd the sound
As they came riding on.
58
Will o Wisp before them went,
Sent forth a twinkling light,
And soon she saw the fairy bands
All riding in her sight.
#b# _6-12 is a fragment of '~The Broomfield-Hill~,'
introduced by a stanza formed on the sixth, as here
given:_
5.
And she's away to Carterhaugh,
And gaed beside the wood,
And there was sleeping young Tamlane,
And his steed beside him stood.
_After the fragment of '~The Broomfield-Hill~' follows:_
13.
Fair Janet, in her green cleiding,
Returned upon the morn,
And she met her father's ae brother,
The laird of Abercorn.
_And then these two stanzas, the first altered from Herd's
fragment of '~The Broomfield Hill~,' '~I'll wager, I'll
wager~,' p. 310, ed. 1769, and the second from Herd's
fragment, '~Kertonha~,' or version #C# of this ballad:_
14.
I'll wager, I'll wager, I'll wager wi you
Five hunder merk and ten,
I'll maiden gang to Carterhaugh,
And maiden come again.
15.
She princked hersell, and prin'd hersell,
By the ae light of the moon,
And she's away to Carterhaugh
As fast as she could win.
_Instead of #a# 10, 11, #b# has:_
He's taen her by the milk-white hand,
And by the grass-green sleeve,
He's led her to the fairy ground,
And spierd at her nae leave.
_Instead of 14 of #a#, #b# has something nearer to #A#,
#B# 9:_
23.
It's four and twenty ladies fair
Were in her father's ha,
Whan in there came the fair Janet,
The flower amang them a'.
_After 21 of #a# follows in #b# a copy of '~The Wee Wee
Man~,' 32-39, attached by these two stanzas, which had
been "~introduced in one recital only~:"_
30.
'Is it to a man of might, Janet,
Or is it to a man o mean?
Or is it unto young Tamlane,
That 's wi the fairies gane?'
31.
''T was down by Carterhaugh, father,
I walked beside the wa,
And there I saw a wee, wee man,
The least that eer I saw.'
_Instead of 22, which had been used before, we have in
#b#:_
40.
Janet's put on her green cleiding,
Whan near nine months were gane,
And she's awa to Carterhaugh,
To speak wi young Tamlane.
#b# _has in place of #a# 28-30:_
46.
Roxburgh was my grandfather,
Took me with him to bide,
And as we frae the hunting came
This harm did me betide.
47.
Roxburgh was a hunting knight,
And loved hunting well,
And on a cauld and frosty day
Down frae my horse I fell.
#b# _49 has #A# 24 instead of #a# 37, #I# 32._
#b# _61^2==#a# 49^2==#I# 44^2 has ~toad~, and so has #C#
9^2, from which the stanza is taken. ~Tod~ is an
improvement, but probably an editorial improvement._
[323] These are the concluding verses, coming much nearer to the
language of this world than the rest. They may have a basis of
tradition:
Whar they war aware o the Fairy King,
A huntan wi his train.
Four an twenty gentlemen
Cam by on steeds o brown;
In his hand ilk bore a siller wand,
On his head a siller crown.
Four an twenty beltit knichts
On duiplit greys cam by;
Gowden their wands an crowns, whilk scanct
Like streamers in the sky.
Four an twenty noble kings
Cam by on steeds o snaw,
But True Thomas, the gude Rhymer,
Was king outower them a'.
[324] "Tamlane: an old Scottish Border Ballad. Aberdeen, Lewis and James
Smith, 1862. "I am indebted for a sight of this copy, and for the
information as to the editor, to Mr Macmath.
[325] Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, II, 221-24, ed. 1802.
[326] Restoration from enchantment is effected by drinking blood, in
other ballads, as Grundtvig, No 55, II, 156, No 58, II, 174; in No 56,
II, 158, by a maid in falcon shape eating of a bit of flesh which her
lover had cut from his breast.
[327] Volksleben der Neugriechen, pp 115-17, "from Chourmouzis,
Κρητικα, p. 69 f, Athens, 1842." Chourmouzis heard this story, about
1820 or 1830, from an old Cretan peasant, who had heard it from his
grandfather.
[328] The silence of the Cretan fairy, as #B#. Schmidt has remarked,
even seems to explain Sophocles calling the nuptials of Peleus and
Thetis "speechless," αφθογγους γαμους. Sophocles gives the
transformations as being lion, snake, fire, water: Scholia in Pindari
Nemea, III, 60; Schmidt, as before, p. 116, note. That a firm grip and a
fearless one would make any sea-god do your will would appear from the
additional instances of Menelaus and Proteus, in Odyssey, IV, and of
Hercules and Nereus, Apollodorus, II, 5, 11, 4, Scholia in Apollonii
Argonaut., IV, 1396. Proteus masks as lion, snake, panther, boar,
running water, tree; Nereus as water, fire, or, as Apollodorus says, in
all sorts of shapes. Bacchus was accustomed to transform himself when
violence was done him, but it is not recorded that he was ever brought
to terms like the watery divinities. See Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte,
II, 60-64, who also well remarks that the tales of the White Ladies,
who, to be released from a ban, must be kissed three times in various
shapes, as toad, wolf, snake, etc., have relation to these Greek
traditions.
[329] The significance of the immersion in water is shown by Mannhardt,
Wald-u. Feldkulte, II, 64 ff. The disorder in the stanzas of #A# at this
place has of course been rectified. In Scott's version, #I#,
transformations are added at random from #C#, _after_ the dipping in
milk and in water, which seems indeed to have been regarded by the
reciters only as a measure for cooling red-hot iron or the burning
gleed, and not as the act essential for restoration to the human nature.
[330] Possibly the holy water in #D# 17, #G# 32, is a relic of the
water-bath.
[331] In the MS. of #B# also the transformation into a het gad of iron
comes just before the direction to dip the object into a stand of milk;
but we have the turning into a mother-naked man several stanzas earlier.
By reading, in 33^1, I'll turn, and putting 33 after 34, we should have
the order of events which we find in #A#.
That Tam Lin should go into water or milk as a dove or snake, or in some
other of his temporary forms, and _come out_ a man, is the only
disposition which is consistent with the order of the world to which he
belongs. Mannhardt gives us a most curious and interesting insight into
some of the laws of that world in Wald-u. Feldkulte, II, 64-70. The wife
of a Cashmere king, in a story there cited from Benfey's Pantschatantra,
I, 254, § 92, is delivered of a serpent, but is reported to have borne a
son. Another king offers his daughter in marriage, and the Cashmere
king, to keep his secret, accepts the proposal. In due time the princess
claims her bridegroom, and they give her the snake. Though greatly
distressed, she accepts her lot, and takes the snake about to the holy
places, at the last of which she receives a command to put the snake
into the water-tank. As soon as this is done the snake takes the form of
a man. A woman's giving birth to a snake was by no means a rare thing in
Karst in the seventeenth century, and it was the rule in one noble
family that all the offspring should be in serpent form, or at least
have a serpent's head; but a bath in water turned them into human shape.
For elves and water nymphs who have entered into connections with men in
the form of women, bathing in water is equally necessary for resuming
their previous shape, as appears from an ancient version of the story of
Melusina: Gervasius, ed. Liebrecht, p. 4 f, and Vincentius
Bellovacensis, Speculum Naturale, 2, 127 (from Helinaudus), cited by
Liebrecht, at p. 66.
A lad who had been changed into an ass by a couple of witches recovers
his shape merely by jumping into water and rolling about in it: William
of Malmesbury's Kings of England, c. 10, cited by Vincent of Beauvais,
Speculum Naturale, iii, 109; Düntzer, Liebrecht's Dunlop, p. 538. Simple
illusions of magic, such as clods and wisps made to appear swine to our
eyes, are inevitably dissolved when the unrealities touch water.
Liebrecht's Gervasius, p. 65.
[332] Cf. 'Allison Gross.'
40
THE QUEEN OF ELFAN'S NOURICE
Skene MSS, No 8, p. 25. Sharpe's Ballad Book, ed. Laing,
p. 169.
We see from this pretty fragment, which, after the nature of the best
popular ballad, forces you to chant and will not be read, that a woman
had been carried off, four days after bearing a son, to serve as nurse
in the elf-queen's family. She is promised that she shall be permitted
to return home if she will tend the fairy's bairn till he has got the
use of his legs. We could well have spared stanzas 10-12, which belong
to 'Thomas Rymer,' to know a little more of the proper story.
That elves and water-spirits have frequently solicited the help of
mortal women at lying-in time is well known: see Stewart's Popular
Superstitions of the Highlands, p. 104; Grimm, Deutsche Sagen, Nos 41,
49, 68, 69, 304; Müllenhoff, Nos 443, 444; Thiele, Danmarks Folkesagen,
1843, II, 200, Nos 1-4; Asbjørnsen, Norske Huldre-Eventyr, 2d ed., I,
16; Maurer, Isländische Volkssagen, p. 6 f; Keightley's Fairy Mythology,
pp 122, 261, 275, 301, 311, 388, 488.[333] They also like to have their
offspring suckled by earthly women. It is said, writes Gervase of
Tilbury, that nobody is more exposed to being carried off by
water-sprites than a woman in milk, and that they sometimes restore
such a woman, with pay for her services, after she has nursed their
wretched fry seven years. He had himself seen a woman who had been
abducted for this purpose, while washing clothes on the bank of the
Rhone. She had to nurse the nix's son under the water for that term, and
then was sent back unhurt. Otia Imperialia, III, 85, Liebrecht, p. 38.
Choice is naturally made of the healthiest and handsomest mothers for
this office. "A fine young woman of Nithsdale, when first made a mother,
was sitting singing and rocking her child, when a pretty lady came into
her cottage, covered with a fairy mantle. She carried a beautiful child
in her arms, swaddled in green silk. 'Gie my bonnie thing a suck,' said
the fairy. The young woman, conscious to whom the child belonged, took
it kindly in her arms, and laid it to her breast. The lady instantly
disappeared, saying, 'Nurse kin', an ne'er want.' The young mother
nurtured the two babes, and was astonished, whenever she awoke, at
finding the richest suits of apparel for both children, with meat of
most delicious flavor. This food tasted, says tradition, like loaf mixed
with wine and honey," etc. Cromek, Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway
Song, p. 302.
1
I heard a cow low, a bonnie cow low,
An a cow low down in yon glen;
Lang, lang will my young son greet
Or his mither bid him come ben.
2
I heard a cow low, a bonnie cow low,
An a cow low down in yon fauld;
Lang, lang will my young son greet
Or his mither take him frae cauld.
* * * * * * *
3
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
Waken, Queen of Elfan,
An hear your nourice moan.'
4
'O moan ye for your meat,
Or moan ye for your fee,
Or moan ye for the ither bounties
That ladies are wont to gie?'
5
'I moan na for my meat,
Nor moan I for my fee,
Nor moan I for the ither bounties
That ladies are wont to gie.
6
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
But I moan for my young son
I left in four nights auld.
7
'I moan na for my meat,
Nor yet for my fee,
But I mourn for Christen land,
It's there I fain would be.'
8
'O nurse my bairn, nourice,' she says,
'Till he stan at your knee,
An ye's win hame to Christen land,
Whar fain it's ye wad be.
9
'O keep my bairn, nourice,
Till he gang by the hauld,
An ye's win hame to your young son
Ye left in four nights auld.'
* * * * * * *
10
'O nourice lay your head
Upo my knee:
See ye na that narrow road
Up by yon tree?
11
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
That's the road the righteous goes,
And that's the road to heaven.
12
'An see na ye that braid road,
Down by yon sunny fell?
Yon's the road the wicked gae,
An that's the road to hell.'
* * * * * * *
1^1. an a bonnie cow low, _with ~an~ crossed out_.
2^2. yon fall: _~fauld~ in margin_.
6^4. _~auld~ not in MS., supplied from 9^4._
7^3. Christend.
8^1. _~she says~ is probably the comment of the singer or
reciter._
[333] Many of these instances are cited by Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,
1875, I, 378. In Thiele's first example the necessity of having
Christian aid comes from the lying-in woman being a Christian who had
been carried off by an elf. In Asbjørnsen's tale, the woman who is sent
for to act as midwife finds that her own serving-maid is forced, without
being aware of it, to work all night in the elfin establishment, and is
very tired with double duty.
41
HIND ETIN
#A.# 'Young Akin,' Buchan's Ballads of the North of
Scotland, I, 6. Motherwell's MS., p. 554.
#B.# 'Hynde Etin,' Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p.
228.
#C.# 'Young Hastings,' Buchan, Ballads of the North of
Scotland, II, 67. 'Young Hastings the Groom,' Motherwell's
MS., p. 450; Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 287.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that this ballad, like too many
others, has suffered severely by the accidents of tradition. #A# has
been not simply damaged by passing through low mouths, but has been
worked over by low hands. Something considerable has been lost from the
story, and fine romantic features, preserved in Norse and German
ballads, have been quite effaced.
Margaret, a king's daughter, #A#, an earl's daughter, #B#, a lady of
noble birth, #C#, as she sits sewing in her bower door, hears a note in
Elmond's wood and wishes herself there, #A#. The wood is Amon-shaw in
#C#, Mulberry in #B#: the Elmond (Amond, Elfman?) is probably
significant. So far the heroine resembles Lady Isabel in No 4, who,
sewing in her bower, hears an elf-horn, and cannot resist the enchanted
tone. Margaret makes for the wood as fast as she can go. The note that
is heard in #A# is mistaken in #B# for _nuts_: Margaret, as she stands
in her bower door, spies some nuts growing in the wood, and wishes
herself there. Arrived at the wood, Margaret, in #A# as well as #B#,
immediately takes to pulling nuts.[334] The lady is carried off in #C#
under cover of a magical mist, and the hero in all is no ordinary hind.
Margaret has hardly pulled a nut, when she is confronted by young Akin,
#A#, otherwise, and correctly, called Etin in #B#, a hind of giant
strength in both, who accuses her of trespassing, and stops her. Akin
pulls up the highest tree in the wood and builds a bower, invisible to
passers-by, for their habitation. #B#, which recognizes no influence of
enchantment upon the lady's will, as found in #A#, and no prepossession
on her part, as in #C#, makes Hind Etin pull up the biggest tree in the
forest as well, but it is to scoop out a cave many fathoms deep, in
which he confines Margaret till she comes to terms, and consents to _go
home_ with him, wherever that may be. Hastings, another corruption of
Etin, carries off the lady on his horse to the wood, "where again their
loves are sworn," and there they take up their abode in a cave of stone,
#C# 9. Lady Margaret lives with the etin seven years, and bears him
seven sons, #A# 9; many years, and bears seven sons, #B#; ten years, and
bears seven bairns, #C# 6, 8, 9.[335]
Once upon a time the etin goes hunting, and takes his eldest boy with
him. The boy asks his father why his mother is so often in tears, and
the father says it is because she was born of high degree, but had been
stolen by him; "is wife of Hynde Etin, wha ne'er got christendame," #B#
15. The etin, who could pull the highest tree in the wood up by the
roots, adds in #A# 15 that when he stole his wife he was her father's
cup-bearer! and that he caught her "on a misty night," which reminds us
of the mist which Young Hastings, "the groom," cast before the lady's
attendants when he carried her off.
The next time Akin goes hunting he leaves his young comrade behind, and
the boy tells his mother that he heard "fine music ring" when he was
coming home, on the other occasion. She wishes she had been there. He
takes his mother and six brothers, and they make their way through the
wood at their best speed, not knowing in what direction they are going.
But luckily they come to the gate of the king, the father and
grandfather of the band. The mother sends her eldest boy in with three
rings, to propitiate the porter, the butler-boy, who acts as usher in
this particular palace, and the minstrel who plays before the king. His
majesty is so struck with the resemblance of the boy to his daughter
that he is blinded with tears. The boy informs his grandfather that his
mother is standing at the gates, with six more brothers, and the king
orders that she be admitted. He asks her to dine, but she can touch
nothing till she has seen her mother and sister. Admitted to her mother,
the queen in turn says, You will dine with me; but she can touch nothing
till she has seen her sister. Her sister, again, invites her to dine,
but now she can touch nothing till she has seen her "dear husband."
Rangers are sent into the wood to fetch Young Akin, under promise of a
full pardon. He is found tearing his yellow hair. The king now asks Akin
to dine with him, and there appears to have been a family dinner. While
this is going on the boy expresses a wish to be christened, "to get
christendoun;" in all his eight years he had never been in a church. The
king promises that he shall go that very day with his mother, and all
seven of the boys seem to have got their christendoun; and so, we may
hope, did Hind Etin, who was, if possible, more in want of it than they;
#B# 15, 19.
In this story #A# and #B# pretty nearly agree. #C# has nothing of the
restoration of the lady to her parents and home. The mother, in this
version, having harped her seven bairns asleep, sits down and weeps
bitterly. She wishes, like Fair Annie, that they were rats, and she a
cat, to eat them one and all. She has lived ten years in a stone cave,
and has never had a churching. The eldest boy suggests that they shall
all go to some church: they be christened and she be churched. This is
accomplished without any difficulty, and, as the tale stands, we can
only wonder that it had not been attempted before.
The etin of the Scottish story is in Norse and German a dwarf-king,
elf-king, hill-king, or even a merman. The ballad is still sung in
Scandinavia and Germany, but only the Danes have versions taken down
before the present century.
#Danish.# 'Jomfruen og Dværgekongen,' Grundtvig, No 37, #A-C# from
manuscripts of the sixteenth century. #A-G#, Grundtvig, II, 39-46; #H#,
I, III, 806-808; #K-T#, IV, 795-800, #P-S# being short fragments. #K#
previously in "Fylla," a weekly newspaper, 1870, Nos 23, 30; #L-O#, #Q#,
#R#, 'Agnete i Bjærget,' in Kristensen's Jyske Folkeviser, II, 72, 77,
349, 74, I, xxxi, II, 79; #U#, a short fragment, Danske Viser, V, x,
xi.
#Swedish.# 'Den Bergtagna,' #A#, #B#, Afzelius, I, 1, No 1, II, 201.
#C#, 'Bergkonungen,' Afzelius, II, 22, No 35. #D#, #E#, 'Herr Elver,
Bergakonungen,' Arwidsson, II, 277, No 141 B, II, 275, No 141 A. #F#,
'Jungfrun och Bergakonungen,' Arwidsson, II, 280, No 142. #G#, 'Agneta
och Bergamannen,' Wigström, Folkdiktning, p. 13. #H#, 'Jungfrun och
Bergamannen,' the same, p. 21. #I#, #K#, #L#, in Cavallius and Stephens'
manuscript collection (#K#, #L#, fragments), given by Grundtvig, IV,
803. #M#, F. L. Borgströms Folkvisor, No 11, described by Grundtvig, IV,
802. #N#, Werner's Westergötlands Fornminnen, p. 93 f, two stanzas.
#Norwegian.# #A#, #B#,[336] #C#, 'Liti Kersti, som vart inkvervd,'
Landstad, p. 431, No 42, p. 442, No 44, p. 446, No 45. #D#, 'Margit
Hjuxe, som vart inkvervd,' the same, p. 451, No 46. #E#, #F#, 'Målfri,'
'Antonetta,' Grundtvig, IV, 801 f, the last evidently derived from
Denmark. #G-P#, nine versions communicated to Grundtvig by Professor
Sophus Bugge, and partially described in Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, III,
808-10. Lindeman gives the first stanza of #A# with airs No 214, No 262
of his Fjeldmelodier, and perhaps had different copies. Nos 323, 320 may
also have been versions of this ballad. #C#, rewritten, occurs in #J#.
M. Moe og Ivar Mortensen's Norske Fornkvæde og Folkevisur, p. 16. Mixed
forms, in which the ballad proper is blended with another, Landstad, No
43==Swedish, Arwidsson, No 145; eight, communicated by Bugge, Grundtvig,
III, 810-13; two others, IV, 483 f.[337]
#Färöe.# #A#, #B#, Grundtvig, IV, 803 f.
#Icelandic.# 'Rika álfs kvæði,' Íslenzk fornkvæði, No 4.
Danish #A#, one of the three sixteenth-century versions, tells how a
knight, expressing a strong desire to obtain a king's daughter, is
overheard by a dwarf, who says this shall never be. The dwarf pretends
to bargain with the knight for his services in forwarding the knight's
object, but consults meanwhile with his mother how he may get the lady
for himself.[338] The mother tells him that the princess will go to
even-song, and the dwarf writes runes on the way she must go by, which
compel her to come to the hill. The dwarf holds out his hand and asks,
How came ye to this strange land? to which the lady answers mournfully,
I wot never how. The dwarf says, You have pledged yourself to a knight,
and he has betrayed you with runes: this eve you shall be the dwarf's
guest. She stayed there the night, and was taken back to her mother in
the morning. Eight years went by; her hand was sought by five kings,
nine counts, but no one of them could get a good answer. One day her
mother asked, Why are thy cheeks so faded? Why can no one get thee? She
then revealed that she had been beguiled by the dwarf, and had seven
sons and a daughter in the hill, none of whom she ever saw. She thought
she was alone, but the dwarf-king was listening. He strikes her with an
elf-rod, and bids her hie to the hill after him. Late in the evening the
poor thing dons her cloak, knocks at her father's door, and says
good-night to the friends that never will see her again, then sadly
turns to the hill. Her seven sons advance to meet her, and ask why she
told of their father. Her tears run sore; she gives no answer; she is
dead ere midnight.
With #A# agrees another of the three old Danish copies, #B#, and three
modern ones, #D#, #M#, #N#, have something of the opening scene which
characterizes #A#. So also Swedish #C#, #I#, and the Icelandic ballad.
In Swedish #C#, Proud Margaret, who is daughter of a king of seven
kingdoms, will have none of her suitors (this circumstance comes too
soon). A hill-king asks his mother how he may get her. She asks in
return, What will you give me to make her come of herself to the hill?
He promises red gold and chestfuls of pence; and one Sunday morning
Margaret, who has set out to go to church, is made--by magical
operations, of course--to take the way to the hill.
A second form begins a stage later: Danish #C#, #G#, #K#, Swedish #D#,
#E#, #K#, Norwegian #A#, #C#, #E#, #G#, #H#, #I# (?), #K#, #L#, #M# (?),
#N# (?), Färöe #A#, #B#. We learn nothing of the device by which the
maid has been entrapped. Mother and daughter are sitting in their bower,
and the mother asks her child why her cheeks are pale, why milk is
running from her breasts. She answers that she has been working too
hard; that what is taken for milk is mead. The mother retorts that other
women do not suffer from their industry; that mead is brown, and milk is
white. Hereupon the daughter reveals that she has been beguiled by an
elf, and, though living under her mother's roof, has had eight or nine
children (seven or eight sons and a daughter; fifteen children, Färöe
#A#, #B#), none of whom she ever saw, since after birth they were always
transferred to the hill (see, especially, Danish #C#, #G#, also #A#;
Norwegian #H#, #I#; Färöe #A#, #B#). The mother (who disowns her, Danish
#C#, #G#, Swedish #D#, #E#, Norwegian #K#), in several versions, asks
what gifts she got for her honor. Among these was a harp [horn,
Norwegian #L#], which she was to play when she was unhappy. The mother
asks for a piece, and the first tones bring the elf, who reproaches the
daughter for betraying him: had she concealed their connection she might
still have lived at home, #C#; but now she must go with him. She is
kindly received by her children. They give her a drink which makes her
forget father and mother, heaven and earth, moon and sun, and even makes
her think she was born in the hill, Danish #C#, #G#, Swedish #D#,
Norwegian #A#, #C#.[339]
Danish #G#, #K#, Färöe #A#, #B#, take a tragic turn: the woman dies in
the first two the night she comes to the hill. Danish #C#, one of the
sixteenth-century versions, goes as far as possible in the other
direction. The elf-king pats Maldfred's cheek, takes her in his arms,
gives her a queen's crown and name.
And this he did for the lily-wand,
He had himself christened and all his land!
A third series of versions offers the probable type of the
much-corrupted Scottish ballads, and under this head come Danish #E#,
#F#, #H#, #I#, #L-R#, #T#; Swedish #A#, #B#, #F-I#, and also #C#, after
an introduction which belongs to the first class; Norwegian #D#, #F#.
The characteristic feature is that the woman has been living eight or
nine years in the hill, and has there borne her children, commonly seven
sons and a daughter. She sets out to go to matins, and whether under the
influence of runes, or accidentally, or purposely, takes the way to the
hill. In a few cases it is clear that she does not seek the hill-man or
put herself in his way, e.g., Danish #N#, Swedish #G#, but Swedish #A#,
#H#, #N# make her apply for admission at the hill-door. In Danish #I#,
#N-R#, #T#, Norwegian #F#, it is not said that she was on her way to
church; she is in a field or in the hill. In Swedish #F# she has been
two years in the cave, and it seems to her as if she had come yesterday.
After her eight or nine years with the hill-man the woman longs to go
home, Danish #E#, #F#, #I#, Swedish #A#, #F#, #I#, Norwegian #D#; to go
to church, Danish #L#, #M#, #N#, #P#, #T#, Norwegian #F#; for she had
heard Denmark's bells, church bells, Danish #L-P#, #T#, Swedish #G#,
Norwegian #D#, #F#. She had heard these bells as she watched the
cradle, Danish #T#, #P#, Swedish #G#; sat by the cradle and sang, #T# 4;
compare English #C# 7. She asks the hill-man's permission, and it is
granted on certain terms: she is not to talk of him and her life in the
hill, Danish #E#, #I#, Swedish #A#, #F#, #I#, is to come back, Danish
#F#, must not stay longer than an hour or two, Norwegian #D#; she is not
to wear her gold, her best clothes, not to let out her hair, not to go
into her mother's pew at the church, not to bow when the priest
pronounces the holy name, or make an offering, or go home after service,
etc., Danish #I#, #L-P#, #T#, Norwegian #F#. All these last conditions
she violates, nor does she in the least heed the injunction not to speak
of the hill-man. The consequence is that he summarily presents himself,
whether at the church or the paternal mansion, and orders her back to
the hill, sometimes striking her on the ear or cheek so that blood runs,
or beating her with a rod, Danish #E#, #I#, #L#, #M#, #S#, #T#, Swedish
#A#, #B#, #C#, #H#, #I#, Norwegian #F#. In a few versions, the hill-man
tells her that her children are crying for her, and she replies, Let
them cry; I will never go back to the hill; Danish #M#, #N#, #O#,
Norwegian #F#. In Danish #E#, Swedish #G#, a gold apple thrown into her
lap seems to compel her to return; more commonly main force is used. She
is carried dead into the hill, or dies immediately on her arrival, in
Norwegian #F#, Danish #T#; she dies of grief, according to traditional
comment, in Norwegian #D#. They give her a drink, and her heart breaks,
Swedish #A#, #G#, #H#, #M#; but elsewhere the drink only induces
forgetfulness, Danish #L#, #M#, Swedish #B#, #C#, #F#.
Much of the story of 'Jomfruen og Dværgekongen' recurs in the ballad of
'Agnete og Havmanden,' which, for our purposes, may be treated as a
simple variation of the other. The Norse forms are again numerous, but
all from broadsides dating, at most, a century back, or from recent
tradition.
#Danish.# 'Agnete og Havmanden,' Grundtvig, No 38, #A-D#, II, 51 ff, 656
ff, III, 813 ff. Copies of #A# are numerous, and two had been previously
printed; in Danske Viser, I, 313, No 50, and "in Barfod's Brage og Idun,
II, 264." #E#, Rask's Morskabslæsning, III, 81, Grundtvig, II, 659. #F#,
one stanza, Grundtvig, p. 660. #G#, #H#, the same, III, 816. #I#,
Kristensen, II, 75, No 28 C, Grundtvig, IV, 807. #K#, Grundtvig, IV,
808.[340]
#Swedish.# #A#, #B#, #C#, in Cavallius and Stephens' unprinted
collection, described by Grundtvig, II, 661. #D#, 'Agneta och
Hafsmannen,' Eva Wigström's Folkdiktning, p. 9. #E#, Bergström's
Afzelius, II, 308. #F#, 'Skön Anna och Hafskungen,' Aminson, Bidrag till
Södermanlands äldre Kulturhistoria, III, 43. #G#, 'Helena och
Hafsmannen,' the same, p. 46.
#Norwegian.# #A#, Grundtvig, III, 817, properly Danish rather than
Norwegian. #B#, a version partly described at p. 818. #C#, Grundtvig,
IV, 809, also more Danish than Norwegian. All these communicated by
Bugge.
Danish #C#, #G#, Norwegian #A#, have a hillman instead of a merman, and
might as well have been put with the other ballad. On the other hand,
the Danish versions #M#, #N#, #O# of 'The Maid and the Dwarf-King' call
the maid Agenet, and give the hill-man a name, Nek, Netmand, Mekmand,
which implies a watery origin for him, and the fragments #P#, #Q#, #R#
have similar names, Nekmand, Negen, Lækkemand, as also Agenete, and
might as well have been ranked with 'Agnes and the Merman.' In 'The Maid
and the Dwarf-King,' Swedish #L# (one stanza) the maid is taken by "Pel
Elfven" to the sea.
Agnes goes willingly with the merman to the sea-bottom, Danish #A#, #D#,
#E#, #K#, Swedish #A#, #D#, #E#, Norwegian #A#, #C#. She lives there,
according to many versions, eight years, and has seven children. As she
is sitting and singing by the cradle one day, she hears the bells of
England, Danish #A#, #C#, #D#, #E#, #H#, #I#, #K#, Swedish #D# [church
bells, bells, #F#, #G#], Norwegian #A#, #C#. She asks if she may go to
church, go home, and receives permission on the same terms as in the
other ballad. Her mother asks her what gifts she had received, Danish
#A#, #D#, #E#, #H#, #I#, Swedish #E#, #F#, Norwegian #C#. When the
merman comes into the church all the images turn their backs, Danish
#A#, #D#, #K#, Swedish #D#, #F#, #G#, Norwegian #A#, #C#; and, in some
cases, for Agnes, too. He tells her that the children are crying for
her; she refuses to go back, Danish #A#, #C#,# D#, #I#, #K#, Swedish
#D#, #F#, #G# (and apparently #A#, #B#, #C#), Norwegian #C#. In
Norwegian #A# the merman strikes her on the cheek, and she returns; in
Danish #I# she is taken back quietly; in Danish #C# he gives her so sore
an ail that she dies presently; in Danish #H# she is taken away by
force, and poisoned by her children; in Danish #K# the merman says that
if she stays with her mother they must divide the children (five). He
takes two, she two, and each has to take half of the odd one.
The Norse forms of 'Agnes and the Merman' are conceded to have been
derived from Germany: see Grundtvig, IV, 812. Of the #German# ballad,
which is somewhat nearer to the English, the following versions have
been noted:
#A.# 'Die schöne Agniese,' Fiedler, Volksreime und Volkslieder in
Anhalt-Dessau, p. 140, No 1==Mittler, No 553. #B.# 'Die schöne Agnese,'
Parisius, Deutsche Volkslieder in der Altmark und im Magdeburgischen
gesammelt, p. 29, No 8 B, from nearly the same region as #A#. #C.#
Parisius, p. 28, No 8 A, Pechau on the Elbe. #D.# 'Die schöne Angnina,'
Erk's Neue Sammlung, ii, 40, No 26==Mittler, No 552, from the
neighborhood of Magdeburg. #E.# 'Die Schöne Agnete,' Erk's Liederhort,
No 16^a, p. 47, Erk's Wunderhorn, IV, 91, from the neighborhood of
Guben. _F._ 'Die schöne Dorothea,' Liederhort, No 16^b, p. 48, Gramzow
in der Ukermark. #G.# 'Die schöne Hannăle,' Liederhort, No 16, p. 44,
Erk's Wunderhorn, IV, 87, Silesia. #H.# 'Die schöne Hannele,' Hoffmann
u. Richter, Schlesische Volkslieder, p. 3, No 1==Mittler, No 551, Böhme,
No 90 A, Breslau. 'Der Wassermann,' Simrock, No 1, is a compounded copy.
A wild merman has become enamored of the King of England's daughter,
#A#, #B#, #C#, #D#. He plates a bridge with gold; she often walks over
the bridge; it sinks with her into the water [the merman drags her down
into the water, #H#]. She stays below seven years, and bears seven sons.
One day [by the cradle, #C#, #G#] she hears the bells of England, #A# 6,
#B#, #C#, #D#, #F# [bells, #E#, #G#, #H#], and longs to go to church.
She expresses this wish to the merman, #C#, #D#, #G#, #H#. The merman
says she must take her seven sons with her, #B#, #C#, #D#; she must come
back, #G#, #H#. She takes her seven sons by the hand, and goes with them
to England, #A# 5, #B# 7; cf. Scottish #C# 13, 14, #A# 22, 50. When she
enters the church everything in it bows, #A#, #B#, #F#. Her parents are
there, #C#, #D#; her father opens the pew, her mother lays a cushion for
her, #G#, #H#. As she goes out of the church, there stands the merman,
#A#, #B#, #E#, #F#. Her parents take her home in #D#, #G#, #H#. They
seat her at the table, and while she is eating, a gold apple falls into
her lap (cf. 'The Maid and the Dwarf-King,' Danish #E#, Swedish #G#),
which she begs her mother to throw into the fire; the merman appears,
and asks if she wishes him burnt, #G#, #H#. The merman, when he presents
himself at the church, asks whether the woman will go back with him, or
die where she is, and she prefers death on the spot, #A#, #B#, #E#. In
the other case, he says that if she will not return, the children must
be divided,--three and three, and half of the seventh to each; the
mother prefers the water to this. #D# has a peculiar and not very happy
trait. The merman fastens a chain to his wife's foot before she goes up,
and, having been kept long waiting, draws it in. But the people at the
church have taken off the chain, and he finds nothing at the end of it.
He asks whether she does not wish to live with him; she replies, I will
no longer torment you, or fret myself to death.
The story of Agnes and the Merman occurs in a Wendish ballad, with an
introductory scene found in the beautiful German ballad, 'Wassermanns
Braut:'[341] Haupt und Schmaler, I, 62, No 34. A maid begs that she may
be left to herself for a year, but her father says it is time for her to
be married. She goes to her chamber, weeps and wrings her hands. The
merman comes and asks, Where is my bride? They tell him that she is in
her chamber, weeping and wringing her hands. The merman asks her the
reason, and she answers, They all say that you are the merwoman's son.
He says he will build her a bridge of pure silver and gold, and have her
driven over it with thirty carriages and forty horses; but ere she has
half passed the bridge it goes down to the bottom. She is seven years
below, has seven sons in as many years, and is going with the eighth.
She implores her husband to permit her to go to church in the upper
world, and he consents, with the proviso that she shall not stay for the
benediction. At church she sees her brother and sister, who receive her
kindly. She tells them that she cannot stay till the benediction;[342]
they beg her to come home to dine with them. She does wait till the
benediction; the merman rushes frantically about. As she leaves the
church and is saying good-by to her sister, she meets the merman, who
snatches the youngest child from her (she appears to have all seven with
her), tears it in pieces, strangles the rest, scatters their limbs on
the road, and hangs himself, asking, Does not your heart grieve for your
children? She answers, I grieve for none but the youngest.[343]
A Slovenian ballad has the story with modifications, Achacel and
Korytko, [S,]lovénşke Péşmi krajnskiga Naróda, I, 30,[344]
'Povodnji mósh;' given in abstract by Haupt and Schmaler, I, 339, note
to No. 34. Mizika goes to a dance, in spite of her mother's forbidding.
Her mother, in a rage, wishes that the merman may fetch her. A young man
who dances with her whirls her round so furiously that she complains,
but he becomes still more violent. Mizika sees how it is, and exclaims,
The merman has come for me! The merman flies out of the window with her,
and plunges into the water. She bears a son, and asks leave to pay a
visit to her mother; and this is allowed on conditions, one of which is
that she shall not expose herself to a benediction. She does not
conform, and the merman comes and says that her son is crying for her.
She refuses to go with him, and he tears the boy in two, that each may
have a half.
Two or three of the minuter correspondences between the Scottish and the
Norse or German ballads, which have not been referred to, may be
indicated in conclusion. The hillman, in several Norwegian copies, as
#B#, #M#, carries off the lady on horseback, and so Hastings in #C#. In
#A# 34-39, the returned sister, being invited to dine, cannot eat a bit
or drink a drop. So, in 'The Maid and the Dwarf-King,' Swedish #G# 15,
16, they set before Agnes dishes four and five, dishes eight and nine,
but she can take nothing:
Agneta ej smakte en endaste bit.
Young Akin, in #A# 43, is found in the wood, "tearing his yellow hair."
The merman has golden hair in Danish #A# 16, Swedish #D# 2, 19,
Norwegian #A# 17 (nothing very remarkable, certainly), and in Danish #D#
31 wrings his hands and is very unhappy, because Agnes refuses to
return. It is much more important that in one of the Swedish copies of
the merman ballad, Grundtvig, II, 661a, we find a trace of the
'christendom' which is made such an object in the Scottish ballads:
'Nay,' said the mother, 'now thou art mine,'
And christened her with water and with wine.
'The Maid and the Dwarf-King,' Danish #E#, is translated by Prior, III,
338; Swedish #A# by Stephens, Foreign Quarterly Review, XXV, 35; Swedish
#C# by Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 103. 'Agnes and the Merman,'
Danish #A#, #C#, by Prior, III, 332, 335; some copy of #A# by Borrow, p.
120; Øhlenschlæger's ballad by Buchanan, p. 76.
Scottish #B# is translated, after Allingham, by Knortz, Lieder u.
Romanzen, No 30; #A# 1-8, #C# 6-14, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische
Volkslieder, No 2; a compounded version by Roberts into German by
Podhorszki, Acta Comparationis, etc., VIII, 69-73.
A
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 6;
Motherwell's MS., p. 554.
1
Lady Margaret sits in her bower door,
Sewing at her silken seam;
She heard a note in Elmond's wood,
And wishd she there had been.
2
She loot the seam fa frae her side,
And the needle to her tae,
And she is on to Elmond's wood
As fast as she coud gae.
3
She hadna pu'd a nut, a nut,
Nor broken a branch but ane,
Till by it came a young hind chiel,
Says, Lady, lat alane.
4
O why pu ye the nut, the nut,
Or why brake ye the tree?
For I am forester o this wood:
Ye shoud spier leave at me.
5
'I'll ask leave at no living man,
Nor yet will I at thee;
My father is king oer a' this realm,
This wood belongs to me.'
6
She hadna pu'd a nut, a nut,
Nor broken a branch but three,
Till by it came him Young Akin,
And gard her lat them be.
7
The highest tree in Elmond's wood,
He's pu'd it by the reet,
And he has built for her a bower,
Near by a hallow seat.
8
He's built a bower, made it secure
Wi carbuncle and stane;
Tho travellers were never sae nigh,
Appearance it had nane.
9
He's kept her there in Elmond's wood,
For six lang years and one,
Till six pretty sons to him she bear,
And the seventh she's brought home.
10
It fell ance upon a day,
This guid lord went from home,
And he is to the hunting gane,
Took wi him his eldest son.
11
And when they were on a guid way,
Wi slowly pace did walk,
The boy's heart being something wae,
He thus began to talk:
12
'A question I woud ask, father,
Gin ye woudna angry be:'
'Say on, say on, my bonny boy,
Ye'se nae be quarrelld by me.'
13
'I see my mither's cheeks aye weet,
I never can see them dry;
And I wonder what aileth my mither,
To mourn continually.'
14
'Your mither was a king's daughter,
Sprung frae a high degree,
And she might hae wed some worthy prince,
Had she nae been stown by me.
15
'I was her father's cup-bearer,
Just at that fatal time;
I catchd her on a misty night,
Whan summer was in prime.
16
'My luve to her was most sincere,
Her luve was great for me,
But when she hardships doth endure,
Her folly she does see.'
17
'I'll shoot the buntin o the bush,
The linnet o the tree,
And bring them to my dear mither,
See if she'll merrier be.'
18
It fell upo another day,
This guid lord he thought lang,
And he is to the hunting gane,
Took wi him his dog and gun.
19
Wi bow and arrow by his side,
He's aff, single, alane,
And left his seven children to stay
Wi their mither at hame.
20
'O I will tell to you, mither,
Gin ye wadna angry be:'
'Speak on, speak on, my little wee boy,
Ye'se nae be quarrelld by me.'
21
'As we came frae the hynd-hunting,
We heard fine music ring:'
'My blessings on you, my bonny boy,
I wish I'd been there my lane.'
22
He's taen his mither by the hand,
His six brithers also,
And they are on thro Elmond's wood,
As fast as they coud go.
23
They wistna weel where they were gaen,
Wi the stratlins o their feet;
They wistna weel where they were gaen,
Till at her father's yate.
24
'I hae nae money in my pocket,
But royal rings hae three;
I'll gie them you, my little young son,
And ye'll walk there for me.
25
'Ye'll gie the first to the proud porter,
And he will lat you in;
Ye'll gie the next to the butler-boy,
And he will show you ben;
26
'Ye'll gie the third to the minstrel
That plays before the king;
He'll play success to the bonny boy
Came thro the wood him lane.'
27
He gae the first to the proud porter,
And he opend an let him in;
He gae the next to the butler-boy,
And he has shown him ben;
28
He gae the third to the minstrel
That playd before the king;
And he playd success to the bonny boy
Came thro the wood him lane.
29
Now when he came before the king,
Fell low down on his knee;
The king he turned round about,
And the saut tear blinded his ee.
30
'Win up, win up, my bonny boy,
Gang frae my companie;
Ye look sae like my dear daughter,
My heart will birst in three.'
31
'If I look like your dear daughter,
A wonder it is none;
If I look like your dear daughter,
I am her eldest son.'
32
'Will ye tell me, ye little wee boy,
Where may my Margaret be?'
'She's just now standing at your yates,
And my six brithers her wi.'
33
'O where are all my porter-boys
That I pay meat and fee,
To open my yates baith wide and braid?
Let her come in to me.'
34
When she came in before the king,
Fell low down on her knee;
'Win up, win up, my daughter dear,
This day ye'll dine wi me.'
35
'Ae bit I canno eat, father,
Nor ae drop can I drink,
Till I see my mither and sister dear,
For lang for them I think.'
36
When she came before the queen,
Fell low down on her knee;
'Win up, win up, my daughter dear
This day ye'se dine wi me.'
37
'Ae bit I canno eat, mither,
Nor ae drop can I drink,
Until I see my dear sister,
For lang for her I think.'
38
When that these two sisters met,
She haild her courteouslie;
'Come ben, come ben, my sister dear,
This day ye'se dine wi me.'
39
'Ae bit I canno eat, sister,
Nor ae drop can I drink,
Until I see my dear husband,
For lang for him I think.'
40
'O where are all my rangers bold
That I pay meat and fee,
To search the forest far an wide,
And bring Akin to me?'
41
Out it speaks the little wee boy:
Na, na, this maunna be;
Without ye grant a free pardon,
I hope ye'll nae him see.
42
'O here I grant a free pardon,
Well seald by my own han;
Ye may make search for Young Akin,
As soon as ever you can.'
43
They searchd the country wide and braid,
The forests far and near,
And found him into Elmond's wood,
Tearing his yellow hair.
44
'Win up, win up now, Young Akin,
Win up, and boun wi me;
We're messengers come from the court,
The king wants you to see.'
45
'O lat him take frae me my head,
Or hang me on a tree;
For since I've lost my dear lady,
Life's no pleasure to me.'
46
'Your head will nae be touchd, Akin,
Nor hangd upon a tree;
Your lady's in her father's court,
And all he wants is thee.'
47
When he came in before the king,
Fell low down on his knee;
'Win up, win up now, Young Akin,
This day ye'se dine wi me.'
48
But as they were at dinner set,
The boy asked a boun:
'I wish we were in the good church,
For to get christendoun.
49
'We hae lived in guid green wood
This seven years and ane;
But a' this time, since eer I mind,
Was never a church within.'
50
'Your asking's nae sae great, my boy,
But granted it shall be;
This day to guid church ye shall gang,
And your mither shall gang you wi.'
51
When unto the guid church she came,
She at the door did stan;
She was sae sair sunk down wi shame,
She coudna come farer ben.
52
Then out it speaks the parish priest,
And a sweet smile gae he:
'Come ben, come ben, my lily flower,
Present your babes to me.'
53
Charles, Vincent, Sam and Dick,
And likewise James and John;
They calld the eldest Young Akin,
Which was his father's name.
54
Then they staid in the royal court,
And livd wi mirth and glee,
And when her father was deceasd,
Heir of the crown was she.
B
Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 228.
1
May Margret stood in her bouer door,
Kaiming doun her yellow hair;
She spied some nuts growin in the wud,
And wishd that she was there.
2
She has plaited her yellow locks
A little abune her bree,
And she has kilted her petticoats
A little below her knee,
And she's aff to Mulberry wud,
As fast as she could gae.
3
She had na pu'd a nut, a nut,
A nut but barely ane,
Till up started the Hynde Etin,
Says, Lady, let thae alane!
4
'Mulberry wuds are a' my ain;
My father gied them me,
To sport and play when I thought lang;
And they sall na be tane by thee.'
5
And ae she pu'd the tither berrie,
Na thinking o' the skaith,
And said, To wrang ye, Hynde Etin,
I wad be unco laith.
6
But he has tane her by the yellow locks,
And tied her till a tree,
And said, For slichting my commands,
An ill death sall ye dree.
7
He pu'd a tree out o the wud,
The biggest that was there,
And he howkit a cave monie fathoms deep,
And put May Margret there.
8
'Now rest ye there, ye saucie may;
My wuds are free for thee;
And gif I tak ye to mysell,
The better ye'll like me.'
9
Na rest, na rest May Margret took,
Sleep she got never nane;
Her back lay on the cauld, cauld floor,
Her head upon a stane.
10
'O tak me out,' May Margret cried,
'O tak me hame to thee,
And I sall be your bounden page
Until the day I dee.'
11
He took her out o the dungeon deep,
And awa wi him she's gane;
But sad was the day an earl's dochter
Gaed hame wi Hynde Etin.
* * * * * * *
12
It fell out ance upon a day
Hynde Etin's to the hunting gane,
And he has tane wi him his eldest son,
For to carry his game.
13
'O I wad ask ye something, father,
An ye wadna angry be;'
'Ask on, ask on, my eldest son,
Ask onie thing at me.'
14
'My mother's cheeks are aft times weet,
Alas! they are seldom dry;'
'Na wonder, na wonder, my eldest son,
Tho she should brast and die.
15
'For your mother was an earl's dochter,
Of noble birth and fame,
And now she's wife o Hynde Etin,
Wha neer got christendame.
16
'But we'll shoot the laverock in the lift,
The buntlin on the tree,
And ye'll tak them hame to your mother,
And see if she'll comforted be.'
* * * * * * *
17
'I wad ask ye something, mother,
An ye wadna angry be;'
'Ask on, ask on, my eldest son,
Ask onie thing at me.'
18
'Your cheeks they are aft times weet,
Alas! they're seldom dry;'
'Na wonder, na wonder, my eldest son,
Tho I should brast and die.
19
'For I was ance an earl's dochter,
Of noble birth and fame,
And now I am the wife of Hynde Etin,
Wha neer got christendame.'
* * * * * * *
C
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 67,
communicated by Mr James Nicol, of Strichen; Motherwell's
Minstrelsy, p. 287; Motherwell's MS., p. 450.
1
'O well like I to ride in a mist,
And shoot in a northern win,
And far better a lady to steal,
That's come of a noble kin.'
2
Four an twenty fair ladies
Put on this lady's sheen,
And as mony young gentlemen
Did lead her ower the green.
3
Yet she preferred before them all
Him, young Hastings the Groom;
He's coosten a mist before them all,
And away this lady has taen.
4
He's taken the lady on him behind,
Spared neither grass nor corn,
Till they came to the wood o Amonshaw,
Where again their loves were sworn.
5
And they hae lived in that wood
Full mony a year and day,
And were supported from time to time
By what he made of prey.
6
And seven bairns, fair and fine,
There she has born to him,
And never was in gude church-door,
Nor ever got gude kirking.
7
Ance she took harp into her hand,
And harped them a' asleep,
Then she sat down at their couch-side,
And bitterly did weep.
8
Said, Seven bairns hae I born now
To my lord in the ha;
I wish they were seven greedy rats,
To run upon the wa,
And I mysel a great grey cat,
To eat them ane and a'.
9
For ten lang years now I hae lived
Within this cave of stane,
And never was at gude church-door,
Nor got no gude churching.
10
O then out spake her eldest child,
And a fine boy was he:
O hold your tongue, my mother dear;
I'll tell you what to dee.
11
Take you the youngest in your lap,
The next youngest by the hand,
Put all the rest of us you before,
As you learnt us to gang.
12
And go with us unto some kirk--
You say they are built of stane--
And let us all be christened,
And you get gude kirking.
13
She took the youngest in her lap,
The next youngest by the hand,
Set all the rest of them her before,
As she learnt them to gang.
14
And she has left the wood with them,
And to the kirk has gane,
Where the gude priest them christened,
And gave her gude kirking.
* * * * *
#C.# _Motherwell's copies exhibit five or six slight
variations from Buchan._
[334] This reading, _nuts_, may have subsequently made its way into #A#
instead of _rose_, which it would be more ballad-like for Margaret to be
plucking, as the maid does in 'Tam Lin,' where also the passage #A# 3-6,
#B# 2-4 occurs. Grimm suggests a parallel to Tam Lin in the dwarf
Laurin, who does not allow trespassing in his rose-garden: Deutsche
Mythologie, III, 130. But the resemblance seems not material, there
being no woman in the case. The pretence of trespass in Tam Lin and Hind
Etin is a simple commonplace, and we have it in some Slavic forms of No
4, as at p. 41.
[335] #B# is defective in the middle and the end. "The reciter,
unfortunately, could not remember more of the ballad, although the story
was strongly impressed on her memory. She related that the lady, after
having been taken home by Hynde Etin, lived with him many years, and
bore him seven sons, the eldest of whom, after the inquiries at his
parents detailed in the ballad, determines to go in search of the earl,
his grandfather. At his departure his mother instructs him how to
proceed, giving him a ring to bribe the porter at her father's gate, and
a silken vest, wrought by her own hand, to be worn in presence of her
father. The son sets out, and arrives at the castle, where, by bribing
the porter, he gets admission to the earl, who, struck with the
resemblance of the youth to his lost daughter, and the similarity of the
vest to one she had wrought for himself, examines the young man, from
whom he discovers the fate of his daughter. He gladly receives his
grandson, and goes to his daughter's residence, where he meets her and
Hynde Etin, who is pardoned by the earl, through the intercession of his
daughter." Kinloch, Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 226 f.
[336] #B#, Landstad 44 (which has only this in common with the Scottish
ballad, that a hill-man carries a maid to his cave), has much
resemblance at the beginning to 'Kvindemorderen,' Grundtvig, No 183, our
No 4. See Grundtvig's note ** at III, 810. This is only what might be
looked for, since both ballads deal with abductions.
[337] It is not necessary, for purposes of the English ballad, to notice
these mixed forms.
[338] In 'Nøkkens Svig,' #C#, Grundtvig, No 39, the merman consults with
his mother, and then, as also in other copies of the ballad, transforms
himself into a knight. See the translation by Prior, III, 269; Jamieson,
Popular Ballads, I, 210; Lewis, Tales of Wonder, I, 60.
[339] The beauty of the Norse ballads should make an Englishman's heart
wring for his loss. They are particularly pretty here, where the
forgetful draught is administered; as Norwegian #C#, #A#:
Forth came her daughter, as jimp as a wand,
She dances a dance, with silver can in hand.
'O where wast thou bred, and where wast thou born?
And where were thy maiden-garments shorn?'
'In Norway was I bred, in Norway was I born,
And in Norway were my maiden-garments shorn.'
The ae first drink from the silver can she drank,
What stock she was come of she clean forgat.
'O where wast thou bred, and where wast thou born?
And where were thy maiden-garments shorn?'
'In the hill was I bred, and there was I born,
In the hill were my maiden-garments shorn.'
[340] For reasons, doubtless sufficient, but to me unknown, Grundtvig
has not noticed two copies in Boisen's Nye og gamle Viser, 10th edition,
p. 192, p. 194. The former of these is like #A#, with more resemblance
here and there to other versions, and may be a made-up copy; the other,
'Agnete og Bjærgmanden, fra Sønderjylland,' consists of stanzas 1-5 of
#C#.
[341] See five versions in Mittler, Nos 546-550. As Grundtvig remarks,
what is one ballad in Wendish is two in German and three in Norse: #D#.
g. #F#., IV, 810.
[342] This trait, corresponding to the prohibition in the Norse ballads
of bowing when the holy name is pronounced, occurs frequently in
tradition, as might be expected. In a Swedish merman-ballad, 'Necken,'
Afzelius, III, 133, the nix, who has attended to church the lady whom he
is about to kidnap, makes off with his best speed when the priest reads
the benediction. See, further, Árnason's Íslenzkar þjóðsögur, I, 73 f;
Maurer's Isländische Volksagen, 19 f; Liebrecht, Gervasius, p. 26, LVII,
and p. 126, note (Grundtvig).
[343] The merfolk are apt to be ferocious, as compared with hill-people,
elves, etc. See Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, I, 409 f.
[344] I 79, of a second edition, which, says Vraz, has an objectionable
fantastic spelling due to the publisher.
42
CLERK COLVILL
#A.# 'Clark Colven,' from a transcript of No 13 of William
Tytler's Brown MS.
#B.# 'Clerk Colvill, or, The Mermaid,' Herd's Ancient and
Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 302.
#C.# W. F. in Notes and Queries, Fourth Series, VIII, 510,
from the recitation of a lady in Forfarshire.
Although, as has been already said, William Tytler's Brown manuscript is
now not to be found, a copy of two of its fifteen ballads has been
preserved in the Fraser Tytler family, and 'Clerk Colvill,' #A# ('Clark
Colven') is one of the two.[345] This ballad is not in Jamieson's Brown
manuscript. Rewritten by Lewis, #A# was published in Tales of Wonder,
1801, II, 445, No 56. #B#, 1769, is the earliest printed English copy,
but a corresponding Danish ballad antedates its publication by
seventy-five years. Of #C#, W. F., who communicated it to Notes and
Queries, says: "I have reason to believe that it is originally from the
same source as that from which Scott, and especially Jamieson, derived
many of their best ballads." This source should be no other than Mrs
Brown, who certainly may have known two versions of Clerk Colvill; but
#C# is markedly different from #A#. An Abbotsford manuscript, entitled
"Scottish Songs," has, at fol. 3, a version which appears to have been
made up from Lewis's copy, its original, #A#, and Herd's, #B#.
All the English versions are deplorably imperfect, and #C# is corrupted,
besides. The story which they afford is this. Clerk Colvill, newly
married as we may infer, is solemnly entreated by his gay lady never to
go near a well-fared may who haunts a certain spring or water. It is
clear that before his marriage he had been in the habit of resorting to
this mermaid, as she is afterwards called, and equally clear, from the
impatient answer which he renders his dame, that he means to visit her
again. His coming is hailed with pleasure by the mermaid, who, in the
course of their interview, does something which gives him a strange pain
in the head,--a pain only increased by a prescription which she pretends
will cure it, and, as she then exultingly tells him, sure to grow worse
until he is dead. He draws his sword on her, but she merrily springs
into the water. He mounts his horse, rides home tristful, alights
heavily, and bids his mother make his bed, for all is over with him.
#C# is at the beginning blended with verses which belong to 'Willie and
May Margaret,' Jamieson, I, 135 (from Mrs Brown's recitation), or 'The
Drowned Lovers,' Buchan, I, 140. In this ballad a mother adjures her son
not to go wooing, under pain of her curse. He goes, nevertheless, and is
drowned. It is obvious, without remark, that the band and belt in #C# 1
do not suit the mother; neither does the phrase 'love Colin' in the
second stanza.[346] #C# 9-11 afford an important variation from the
other versions. The mermaid appears at the foot of the young man's bed,
and offers him a choice between dying then and living with her in the
water. (See the Norwegian ballads at p. 377.)
Clerk Colvill is not, as his representative is or may be in other
ballads, the guiltless and guileless object of the love or envy of a
water-sprite or elf. His relations with the mermaid began before his
marriage with his gay lady, and his death is the natural penalty of his
desertion of the water-nymph; for no point is better established than
the fatal consequences of inconstancy in such connections.[347] His
history, were it fully told, would closely resemble that of the Knight
of Staufenberg, as narrated in a German poem of about the year
1300.[348]
The already very distinguished chevalier, Peter Diemringer, of
Staufenberg (in the Ortenau, Baden, four leagues from Strassburg), when
riding to mass one Whitsunday, saw a lady of surpassing beauty, dressed
with equal magnificence, sitting on a rock by the wayside. He became
instantaneously enamored, and, greeting the lady in terms expressive of
his admiration, received no discouraging reply. The lady rose; the
knight sprang from his horse, took a hand which she offered, helped her
from the rock, and they sat down on the grass. The knight asked how she
came to be there alone. The lady replied that she had been waiting for
him: ever since he could bestride a horse she had been devoted to him;
she had been his help and protection in tourneys and fights, in all
climes and regions, though he had never seen her. The knight wished he
might ever be hers. He could have his wish, she said, and never know
trouble or sickness, on one condition, and that was that he never should
marry: if he did this, he would die in three days. He vowed to be hers
as long as he lived; they exchanged kisses, and then she bade him mount
his horse and go to mass. After the benediction he was to return home,
and when he was alone in his chamber, and wished for her, she would
come, and so always; that privilege God had given her: "swâ ich wil, dâ
bin ich." They had their meeting when he returned from church: he
redoubled his vows, she promised him all good things, and the bounties
which he received from her overflowed upon all his friends and comrades.
The knight now undertook a chivalrous tour, to see such parts of the
world as he had not visited before. Wherever he went, the fair lady had
only to be wished for and she was by him: there was no bound to her love
or her gifts. Upon his return he was beset by relatives and friends, and
urged to marry. He put them off with excuses: he was too young to
sacrifice his freedom, and what not. They returned to the charge before
long, and set a wise man of his kindred at him to beg a boon of him.
"Anything," he said, "but marrying: rather cut me into strips than
that." Having silenced his advisers by this reply, he went to his closet
and wished for his lady. She was full of sympathy, and thought it might
make his position a little easier if he should tell his officious
friends something of the real case, how he had a wife who attended him
wherever he went and was the source of all his prosperity; but he must
not let them persuade him, or what she had predicted would surely come
to pass.
At this time a king was to be chosen at Frankfurt, and all the nobility
flocked thither, and among them Staufenberg, with a splendid train. He,
as usual, was first in all tourneys, and made himself remarked for his
liberal gifts and his generous consideration of youthful antagonists:
his praise was in everybody's mouth. The king sent for him, and offered
him an orphan niece of eighteen, with a rich dowry. The knight excused
himself as unworthy of such a match. The king said his niece must accept
such a husband as he pleased to give, and many swore that Staufenberg
was a fool. Bishops, who were there in plenty, asked him if he had a
wife already. Staufenberg availed himself of the leave which had been
given him, and told his whole story, not omitting that he was sure to
die in three days if he married. "Let me see the woman," said one of the
bishops. "She lets nobody see her but me," answered Staufenberg. "Then
it is a devil," said another of the clergy, "and your soul is lost
forever." Staufenberg yielded, and said he would do the king's will. He
was betrothed that very hour, and set out for Ortenau, where he had
appointed the celebration of the nuptials. When night came he wished for
the invisible lady. She appeared, and told him with all gentleness that
he must prepare for the fate of which she had forewarned him, a fate
seemingly inevitable, and not the consequence of her resentment. At the
wedding feast she would display her foot in sight of all the guests:
when he saw that, let him send for the priest. The knight thought of
what the clergy had said, and that this might be a cheat of the devil.
The bride was brought to Staufenberg, the feast was held, but at the
very beginning of it a foot whiter than ivory was seen through the
ceiling. Staufenberg tore his hair and cried, Friends, ye have ruined
yourselves and me! He begged his bride and all who had come with her to
the wedding to stay for his funeral, ordered a bed to be prepared for
him and a priest to be sent for. He asked his brothers to give his bride
all that he had promised her. But she said no; his friends should rather
have all that she had brought; she would have no other husband, and
since she had been the cause of his death she would go into a cloister,
where no eye should see her: which she did after she had returned to her
own country.
A superscription to the old poem denominates Staufenberg's amphibious
consort a mer-fey, sea-fairy; but that description is not to be strictly
interpreted, no more than mer-fey, or fata morgana, is in some other
romantic tales. There is nothing of the water-sprite in her, nor is she
spoken of by any such name in the poem itself. The local legends of
sixty years ago,[349] and perhaps still, make her to have been a proper
water-nymph. She is first met with by the young knight near a spring or
a brook, and it is in a piece of water that he finds his death, and that
on the evening of his wedding day.
Clerk Colvill and the mermaid are represented by Sir Oluf and an elf in
Scandinavian ballads to the number of about seventy. The oldest of these
is derived from a Danish manuscript of 1550, two centuries and a half
later than the Staufenberg poem, but two earlier than Clerk Colvill, the
oldest ballad outside of the Scandinavian series. Five other versions
are of the date 1700, or earlier, the rest from tradition of this
century. No ballad has received more attention from the heroic Danish
editor, whose study of 'Elveskud' presents an admirably ordered synoptic
view of all the versions known up to 1881: Grundtvig, No 47, II, 109-19,
663-66; III, 824-25; IV, 835-74.[350]
The Scandinavian versions are:
#Färöe#, four: #A#, 39 sts, #B#, 24 sts, #C#, 18 sts, #D#, 23 sts,
Grundtvig, IV, 849-52.
#Icelandic#, twelve, differing slightly except at the very end: #A#,
'Kvæði af Ólafi Liljurós,' 24 sts, MS. of 1665; #B#, #C#, MS. of about
1700, 20 sts, 1 st.; #D#, 18 sts; #E#, 17 sts; #F#, #G#, 16 sts; #H#,
'Ólafs kvæði,' 22 sts; #I a#, 18 sts;# I b#, 20 sts; #K#, 22 sts; #L#,
24 sts; #M#, 25 sts. These in Íslenzk fornkvæði, pp 4-10, #A a# in full,
but only the variations of the other versions. #I b#, previously,
'Ólafur og álfamær,' Berggreen, Danske Folke-Sange og Melodier, 2d ed.,
pp 56, 57, No 20 d; and #M#, "Snót, p. 200."
#Danish#, twenty-six: 'Elveskud' #A#, 54 sts, MS. of 1550, Grundtvig,
II, 112; #B#, 25 sts, Syv No 87 (1695), Danske Viser, I, 237, Grundtvig,
II, 114; #C#, 29 sts, the same, II, 115; #D a#, #D b#, 31, 15 sts, II,
116, 665; #E-G#, 20, 16, 8 sts, II, 117-19; #H#, _I_, 32, 25 sts, II,
663-64; #K#, 29 sts, #L#, 15 sts, #M#, 27 sts, #N#, 16 sts, #O#, 33 sts,
#P#, 22 sts, #Q#, 7 sts, #R#, 22 sts, #S#, 32 sts, #T#, 27 sts, #U#, 25
sts, #V#, 18 sts, #X#, 11 sts, #Y#, 11 sts, #Z#, 8 sts, #Æ#, 23 sts, IV,
835-47; #Ø#, 10 sts, Boisen, Nye og gamle Viser, 1875, p. 191, No 98.
#Swedish#, eight: #A#, 15 sts, 'Elf-Qvinnan och Herr Olof,' MS. of
seventeenth century, Afzelius, III, 165; #B#, 12 sts, 'Herr Olof i
Elfvornas dans,' Afzelius, III, 160; #C#, 18 sts, Afzelius, III, 162;
#D#, 21 sts, 'Herr Olof och Elfvorna,' Arwidsson, II, 304; #E#, 20 sts,
Arwidsson, II, 307; #F#, 19 sts, Grundtvig, IV, 848; #G#, 12 sts, 'Herr
Olof och Elffrun,' Djurklou, p. 94; _H_, 8 sts, Afzelius, Sago-Häfder,
ed. 1844, ii, 157.
#Norwegian#, eighteen: #A#, 39 sts, 'Olaf Liljukrans,' Landstad, p. 355;
#B#, 15 sts, Landstad, p. 843; #C-S#, collections of Professor Bugge,
used in manuscript by Grundtvig; #C#, 36 sts, partly printed in
Grundtvig, III, 824; #D#, 23 sts, Grundtvig, III, 824-25, partly; #E#,
22 sts; #F#, 11 sts; #G#, 27 sts; #H#, 13 sts; #I#, 7 sts; #K#, 4 sts,
two printed, _ib._, p. 824.[351]
Of these the Färöe versions are nearest to the English. Olaf's mother
asks him whither he means to ride; his corselet is hanging in the loft;
#A#, #C#, #D#. "I am going to the heath, to course the hind," he says.
"You are not going to course the hind; you are going to your leman.
White is your shirt, well is it washed, but bloody shall it be when it
is taken off," #A#, #D#. "God grant it be not as she bodes!" exclaims
Olaf, as he turns from his mother, #A#. He rides to the hills and comes
to an elf-house. An elf comes out, braiding her hair, and invites him to
dance. "You need not braid your hair for me; I have not come a-wooing,"
he says. "I must quit the company of elves, for to-morrow is my bridal."
"If you will have no more to do with elves, a sick bridegroom shall you
be! Would you rather lie seven years in a sick-bed, or go to the mould
to-morrow?" He would rather go to the mould to-morrow. The elf brought
him a drink, with an atter-corn, a poison grain, floating in it: at the
first draught his belt burst #A#, #B*#. "Kiss me," she said, "before you
ride." He leaned over and kissed her, though little mind had he to it:
she was beguiling him, him so sick a man. His mother came out to meet
him: "Why are you so pale, as if you had been in an elf-dance?" "I have
been in an elf-dance," he said,[352] went to bed, turned his face to the
wall, and was dead before midnight. His mother and his love (moy, vív)
died thereupon.
Distinct evidence of previous converse with elves is lacking in the
Icelandic versions. Olaf rides along the cliffs, and comes upon an
elf-house. One elf comes out with her hair twined with gold, another
with a silver tankard, a third in a silver belt, and a fourth welcomes
him by name. "Come into the booth and drink with us." "I will not live
with elves," says Olaf; "rather will I believe in God." The elf answers
that he might do both, excuses herself for a moment, and comes back in a
cloak, which hides a sword. "You shall not go without giving us a kiss,"
she says. Olaf leans over his saddle-bow and kisses her, with but half a
heart, and she thrusts the sword under his shoulder-blade into the roots
of his heart. He sees his heart's blood under his horse's feet, and
spurs home to his mother. "Whence comest thou, my son, and why so pale,
as if thou hadst been in an elf-dance (leik)?" "It boots not to hide it
from thee: an elf has beguiled me. Make my bed, mother; bandage my side,
sister." He dies presently: there was more mourning than mirth; three
were borne to the grave together.
Nearly all the Danish and Swedish versions, and a good number of the
Norwegian, interpose an affecting scene between the death of the hero
and that of his bride and his mother. The bride, on her way to Olaf's
house, and on her arrival, is disconcerted and alarmed by several
ominous proceedings or circumstances. She hears bells tolling; sees
people weeping; sees men come and go, but not the bridegroom. She is put
off for a time with false explanations, but in the end discovers the
awful fact. Such a passage occurs in the oldest Danish copy, which is
also the oldest known copy of the ballad. The importance of this version
is such that the story requires to be given with some detail.
Oluf rode out before dawn, but it seemed to him bright as day.[353] He
rode to a hill where dwarfs were dancing. A maid stepped out from the
dance, put her arm round his neck, and asked him whither he would ride.
"To talk with my true-love," said he. "But first," said she, "you must
dance with us." She then went on to make him great offers if he would
plight himself to her: a horse that would go to Rome and back in an
hour, and a gold saddle for it; a new corselet, having which he never
need fly from man; a sword such, as never was used in war. Such were all
her benches as if gold were laid in links, and such were all her
drawbridges as the gold on his hands. "Keep your gold," he answered; "I
will go home to my true-love." She struck him on the cheek, so that the
blood spattered his coat; she struck him midshoulders, so that he fell
to the ground: "Stand up, Oluf, and ride home; you shall not live more
than a day." He turned his horse, and rode home a shattered man. His
mother was at the gate: "Why comest thou home so sad?" "Dear mother,
take my horse; dear brother, fetch a priest," "Say not so, Oluf; many a
sick man does not die. To whom do you give your betrothed?" "Rise, my
seven brothers, and ride to meet my young bride."
As the bride's train came near the town, they heard the bells going.
"Why is this?" she asked, her heart already heavy with pain; "I know of
no one having been sick." They told her it was a custom there to receive
a bride so. But when she entered the house, all the women were weeping.
"Why are these ladies weeping?" No one durst answer a word. The bride
went on into the hall, and took her place on the bride-bench. "I see,"
she said, "knights go and come, but I see not my lord Oluf." The mother
answered, Oluf is gone to the wood with hawk and hound. "Does he care
more for hawk and hound than for his young bride?"
At evening they lighted the torches as if to conduct the bride to the
bride-bed; but Oluf's page, who followed his lady, revealed the truth on
the way. "My lord," he said, "lies on his bier above, and you are to
give your troth to his brother." "Never shalt thou see that day that I
shall give my troth to two brothers." She begged the ladies that she
might see the dead. They opened the door; she ran to the bier, threw
back the cloth, kissed the body precipitately; her heart broke in
pieces; grievous was it to see.
Danish #B#, printed by Syv in 1695, is the copy by which the ballad of
the Elf-shot has become so extensively known since Herder's time,
through his translation and others.[354]
The principal variations of the Scandinavian ballads, so far as they
have not been given, now remain to be noted.
The hero's name is mostly Oluf, Ole, or a modification of this, Wolle,
Rolig, Volder; sometimes with an appendage, as Färöe Ólavur Riddararós,
Rósinkrans, Icelandic Ólafur Liljurós, Norwegian Olaf Liljukrans, etc.
It is Peder in Danish #H#, #I#, #O#, #P#, #Q#, #R#, #Æ#.
Excepting the Färöe ballads, Oluf is not distinctly represented as
having had previous acquaintance with the elves. In Swedish #A# 5 he
says, I cannot dance with you, my betrothed has forbidden me; in Danish
#C#, I should be very glad if I could; to-morrow is my wedding-day.
The object of his riding out is to hunt, or the like, in Danish #D b#,
#E#, #F#, #I#, #R#, #T#, #X#, #Y#; to bid guests to his wedding, Danish
#B#, #C#, #D a#, #G#, #H#, #K-N#, #P#, #S#, #U#, #V#, #Ø#, Norwegian
#A#, #B#.
He falls in with dwarfs, Danish #A#, #H#, Norwegian _A_; trolds, Danish
#I#; elves and dwarfs, Norwegian #B#, and a variation of #A#: elsewhere
it is elves.
There is naturally some diversity in the gifts which the elf offers Oluf
in order to induce him to dance with her. He more commonly replies that
the offer is a handsome one, 'kan jeg vel få,' but dance with her he
cannot; sometimes that his true-love has already given him that, or two,
three, seven such, Danish #D a#, #I#, #T#, #X#, #Y#.
If he will not dance with her, the elf threatens him with sore sickness,
Danish #B#, #E#, #H#, #Z#, #Ø#, Norwegian #A#, Swedish #E#, #F#; a great
misfortune, Danish #F#, Swedish #A#; sharp knives, Danish #P#; it shall
cost him his young life, Danish #D a, b#, #T#, #Y#.
Oluf dances with the elves, obviously under compulsion, in Danish #C#,
#D#, #G-N#, #S#, #T#, #U#, #X#, #Y#, Swedish #F#, and only in these. He
dances till both his boots are full of blood, #D a# 15, #D b# 4, #G# 5,
#I# 11, #K# 5, #L# 5, #M# 6, #N# 7, #S# 6 [shoes], #T# 10, #U# 5, #X# 8,
#Y# 7; he dances so long that he is nigh dead, #I# 12.
The hard choice between dying at once or lying sick seven years is
found, out of the Färöe ballads, only in Danish #H# 8, #M# 8, #O# 4, #Q#
2, #S# 8. Norwegian ballads, like English #C#, present an option between
living with elves and dying, essentially a repetition of the terms under
which Peter of Staufenberg weds the fairy, that he shall forfeit his
life if he takes a mortal wife. So Norwegian
#A# 12
Whether wilt thou rather live with the elves,
Or leave the elves, a sick man?
13
Whether wilt thou be with the elves,
Or bid thy guests and be sick?
#B# 9
Whether wilt thou stay with the elves,
Or, a sick man, flit [bring home] thy true-love?
10
Whether wilt thou be with elves,
Or, a sick man, flit thy bride?
There is no answer.
Norwegian #C#, #E#, #G#, #I# resemble #A#. #H# is more definite.
6
Whether wilt thou go off sick, "under isle,"
Or wilt thou marry an elf-maid?
7
Whether wilt thou go off sick, under hill,
Or wilt thou marry an elf-wife?
To which Olaf answers that he lists not to go off a sick man, and he
cannot marry an elf.
The two last stanzas of English #C#, which correspond to these,
'Will ye lie there an die, Clerk Colin,
Will ye lie there an die?
Or will ye gang to Clyde's water,
To fish in flood wi me?'
'I will lie here an die,' he said,
'I will lie here an die;
In spite o a' the deils in hell,
I will lie here an die,'
may originally have come in before the mermaid and the clerk parted; but
her visit to him as he lies in bed is paralleled by that of the fairy to
Staufenberg after he has been persuaded to give up what he had been
brought to regard as an infernal _liaison_; and certainly Clerk Colin's
language might lead us to think that some priest had been with him, too.
Upon Oluf's now seeking to make his escape through the elves' flame,
ring, dance, etc., Norwegian #A#, #B#, #C#, #E#, #G#, #I#, #H#, #K#, the
elf-woman strikes at him with a gold band, her wand, hand, a branch or
twig; gives him a blow on the cheek, between the shoulders, over his
white neck; stabs him in the heart, gives him knife-strokes five, nine;
sickness follows the stroke, or blood: Danish #A#, #B#, #F#, #N#, #O#,
#R#, #V#, #Z#, #Æ#, #Ø#, Swedish #D#, #G#, Norwegian #A-E#, #H#, #I#,
Icelandic. The knife-stabs are delayed till the elves have put him on
his horse in Danish #D#, #G#, #X#; as he sprang to his horse the knives
rang after him, #H#. "Ride home," they say, "you shall not live more
than a day" [five hours, two hours], Danish #A#, #C#, #K-N#, #S#, #U#,
#V#. His hair fades, Danish #E#; his cheek pales, Danish #E#, Norwegian
#A#; sickness follows him home, Swedish #A#, #C#, #D#, #E#; the blood is
running out of the wound in his heart, Swedish #G#; when he reaches his
father's house both his boots are full of blood, Danish #R#, #Æ#.
His mother [father] is standing without, and asks, Why so pale? Why runs
the blood from thy saddle? Oluf, in some instances, pretends that his
horse, not being sure-footed, had stumbled, and thrown him against a
tree, but is told, or of himself adds, that he has been among the elves.
He asks one or the other of his family to take his horse, bring a
priest, make his bed, put on a bandage. He says he shall never rise from
his bed, Swedish #C#, Danish #F#; fears he shall not live till the
priest comes, Danish #O#, #P#.
The important passage which relates the arrival of the bride, the
ominous circumstances at the bridegroom's house, the attempts to keep
the bride in ignorance of his death, and her final discovery that she is
widowed before marriage, occupies some thirty stanzas in Danish #A#,
the oldest of all copies; in Danish #B# it is reduced to six; in other
Danish versions it has a range of from fifteen to two; but, shorter or
longer, it is found in all versions but #R#, #Ø#, and the fragments #G#,
#L#, #Q#, #X#, #Z#. All the Swedish versions have a similar scene,
extending from three to nine stanzas, with the exception of #G# and of
#A#, which latter should perhaps be treated as a fragment. In Norwegian
#A#, again, this part of the story fills ten stanzas; #B# lacks it, but
#C-H# (which have not been published in full) have it, and probably
other unpublished copies.
The bride is expected the next day, Danish #D#, #F#, #I#, #K#, #N#, #O#,
#S#, #T#, #U#, Swedish #A#, #D#. In Danish #A# Oluf begs his brothers,
shortly after his reaching home, to set out to meet her; he fears she
may arrive that very night, Danish #Æ#. "What shall I answer your young
bride?" asks the mother, Danish #B#, #C#, #D#, etc., Swedish #H#. "Tell
her that I have gone to the wood, to hunt and shoot, to try my horse and
my dogs," Danish #B#, #C#, #D#, #F#, #H#, #I#, #K#, #O#, #S#, #T#, #U#,
Swedish #D#, #H#, Norwegian #A#, #L#; in Danish #N# only, "Say I died in
the night." Oluf now makes his will; he wishes to assign his bride to
his brother, Danish #L#, #O#, #R#, Norwegian #C#, #F#; he dies before
the bride can come to him. (Norwegian #F# seems to have gone wrong
here.)
The bride, with her train, comes in the morning, Danish #B#, #D#, #E#,
#I#, #M#, #T#, Swedish #D#, Norwegian #D#; Swedish #C# makes her wait
for her bridegroom several days. As she passes through the town the
bells are tolling, and she anxiously asks why, Danish #A#, #K#, #O#,
#S#, #U#; she is told that it is a custom there to ring when the bride
comes, Danish #A#, Swedish #B#. In Danish #H#, though it is day, she
sees a light burning in Oluf's chamber, and this alarms her. When she
comes to the house, Oluf's mother is weeping, all the ladies are
weeping, or there are other signs of grief, Danish #A#, #C#, #H#, #U#,
#Æ#. When she asks the reason, no one can answer, or she is told that a
woman, a fair knight, is dead, #A#, #C#, #H#. Now she asks, Where is
Oluf, who should have come to meet me, should have been here to receive
me? Danish #K#, #O#, #S#, #U#, #D#, #E#, #I#, #T#, etc. They conduct the
bride into the hall and seat her on the bride bench; knights come and
go; they pour out mead and wine. "Where is Oluf," she asks again; the
mother replies, as best she can, that Oluf is gone to the wood, Danish
#B#, #H#, Norwegian #A#, #D#, Swedish #H#, etc. "Does he then care more
for that than for his bride?" Danish #A#, #D#, #I#, #M#, etc., Swedish
#C#, #D#, Norwegian #A#, #E#, #G#.
The truth is now avowed that Oluf is dead, Danish #A#, #D#, #I#, #T#,
#Y#, #Æ#, Swedish #B#, Norwegian #G#. The bride begs that she may see
the dead, Danish #A#, #C#, #P#, #Æ#, Swedish #F#, Norwegian #D#, #E#,
and makes her way to the room where Oluf is lying. She puts aside the
cloths that cover him, or the curtains, or the flowers, Danish #A#, #B#,
#K#, #V#, etc., Swedish #C#, #D#, Norwegian #C#, #D#, #E#, #G#; says a
word or two to her lover, Danish #A#, #C#, #E#, #H#, Swedish #E#, #F#,
Norwegian #G#; kisses him, Danish #A#, #C#, #H#; her heart breaks,
Danish #A#, #C#; she swoons dead at his feet, Danish #K#, #M#, #S#, #U#.
In Norwegian #A#, #C#, #D#, she kills herself with Olaf's sword; in
Swedish #E#, with her own knife. In Danish #R# she dies in Oluf's
mother's arms. On the morrow, when it was day, in Oluf's house three
corpses lay: the first was Oluf, the second his maid, the third his
mother, of grief was she dead: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian,
_passim_.[355]
#Breton# ballads preserve the story in a form closely akin to the
Scandinavian, and particularly to the oldest Danish version. I have seen
the following, all from recent tradition: #A#, #C#, 'Ann Aotro ar
C'hont,' 'Le Seigneur Comte,' Luzel, I, 4/5, 16/17, fifty-seven and
fifty-nine two-line stanzas. #B#, 'Ann Aotro Nann,' 'Le Seigneur Nann,'
Luzel, #I#, 10/11, fifty-seven stanzas.[356] #D#, 'Aotrou Nann hag ar
Gorrigan,' 'Le Seigneur Nann et la Fée,' Villemarqué, p. 25, ed. 1867,
thirty-nine stanzas. #E#, 'Monsieur Nann,' Poésies populaires de la
France, MS., V, fol. 381, fifty-three verses. #F#, 'Sonen Gertrud guet
hi Vam,' 'Chant de Gertrude et de sa Mère,' L. Kérardven [==Dufilhol],
Guionvac'h, Études sur la Bretagne, 2d ed., Paris, 1835, p. 362, p. 13,
eleven four-line stanzas. #G#, Rolland in Romania, XII, 117, a somewhat
abridged literal translation, in French.
The count [Nann] and his wife were married at the respective ages of
thirteen and twelve. The next year a son was born [a boy and girl, #D#].
The young husband asked the countess if she had a fancy for anything.
She owned that she should like a bit of game, and he took his gun
[lance] and went to the wood. At the entrance of the wood he met a fairy
[a dwarf, #E#; a hind, #G#; saw a white hind, which he pursued hotly
till evening, when he dismounted near a grotto to drink, and there was a
korrigan, sitting by the spring, combing her hair with a gold comb,
#D#]. The fairy [dwarf, hind] said that she had long been looking for
him, #A#, #B#, #C#, #E#, #G#. "Now that I have met you, you must marry
me."[357] "Marry you? Not I. I am married already." "Choose either to
die in three days or to lie sick in bed seven [three] years" [and then
die, #C#]. He would rather die in three days, for his wife is very
young, and would suffer greatly [he would rather die that instant than
wed a korrigan, #D#].
On reaching home the young man called to his mother to make his bed; he
should never get up again. [His mother, in #C# 21, says, Do not weep so:
it is not every sick man that dies, as in Danish #A# 22.] He recounted
his meeting with the fairy, and begged that his wife might not be
informed of his death.
The countess asked, What has happened to my husband, that he does not
come to see me? She was told that he had gone to the wood to get her
something, #A# [to Paris, #C#; to the city, #D#]. Why were the
men-servants weeping? The best horse had been drowned in bathing him,
#A#, #E#; had been eaten by the wolves, #B#; had broken his neck, #C#;
had died, #F#. They were not to weep; others should be bought. And why
were the maids weeping? Linen had been lost in washing, #A#, #C#, #E#,
#F#; the best silver cover had been stolen, #F#. They must not weep; the
loss would be supplied. Why were the priests chanting? [the bells
tolling, #E#, #F#]. A poor person whom they had lodged had died in the
night, #A-E# [a young prince had died, #F#]. What dress should she wear
for her churching,--red or blue? #D#, #F#.[358] The custom had come in
of wearing black [she asks for red, they give her black, #F#]. On
arriving at the church, or cemetery, she saw that the earth had been
disturbed; her pew was hung with black, #B#; why was this? "I can no
longer conceal it," said her mother-in-law: "your husband is dead." She
died upon the spot, #A#, #D#. "Take my keys, take care of my son; I will
stay with his father," #B#, #C#. "Your son is dead, your daughter is
dead," #F#.[359]
This ballad has spread, apparently from Brittany, over all France. No
distinct trace of the fairy remains, however, except in a single case.
The versions that have been made public, so far as they have come to my
knowledge, are as follows, resemblance to the Breton ballad principally
directing the arrangement.
#A.# 'Le fils Louis,' Vendée, pays de Retz, Poésies populaires de la
France, MS., III, fol. 118, printed in Romania, XI, 100, 44 verses. #B.#
Normandy, 1876, communicated by Legrand to Romania, X, 372, 61 verses.
#C.# "Forez, Frédéric Noëlas, Annales de la Société impériale
d'agriculture, industrie, sciences, arts et belles-lettres du
département de la Loire, Année 1865, p. 210, 64 verses," Grundtvig, IV,
867-70. #D.# Victor Smith, Chants populaires du Velay et du Forez,
Romania, X, 583, 68 verses. #E.# The same, p. 581, 64 verses. #F.#
Saint-Denis, Poés. pop. de la France, III, fol. 103, Romania, XI, 98, 74
verses, as sung by a young girl, her mother and grandmother. #G.# Poitou
et Vendée, Études historiques et artistiques par B. Fillon et O. De
Rochbrune, 7^e-10^e livraisons, Fontenay-le-Comte, 1865, article
Nalliers, pp 17, 18, nineteen four-line stanzas and a couplet; before by
B. Fillon in "L'Histoire véridique des fraudes et exécrables voleries et
subtilités de Guillery, depuis sa naissance jusqu'à la juste punition de
ses crimes, Fontenay, 1848," extracted in Poés, pop., III, fol. 112;
other copies at fol. 108 and at fol. 116; Romania, XI, 101, 78 verses.
#H.# Bourbonnais, Poés. pop. III, fol. 91, Romania, XI, 103, 38 verses,
sung by a woman seventy-two years old. #I.# Bretagne, Loudéac, Poés.
pop., III, fol. 121, Romania, XI, 103 f, 64 verses. #J.# Poés. pop.,
III, fol. 285, Romania, XII, 115 (I), 50 verses. #K.# Bretagne (?),
Romania, XII, 115 f, 36 verses. #L.# V. Smith, Chants pop. du Velay et
du Forez, Romania, X, 582. 57 verses. #M.# 'Le roi Renaud,' Flévy,
Puymaigre, I, 39, 78 verses. #N.# Touraine, Bléré, Brachet in Revue
Critique, II, 125, 60 verses. #O.# The same, variations of a later
version. #P.# 'L'Arnaud l'Infant,' Limoges, Laforest, Limoges au XVII^e
siècle, 1862, p. 300, Poés. pop., III, fol. 95, Romania, XI, 104, 82
verses. #Q.# Charente, Poés. pop., III, fol. 107, Romania, XI, 99, 60
verses. #R.# Cambes, Lot-et-Garonne, Romania, XII, 116, 46 verses. #S.#
Jura, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1854, Août, p. 486, 50 verses. #T.# Rouen,
Poés. pop. III, fol. 100, Romania, XI, 102, 60 verses, communicated by a
gentleman who at the beginning of the century had learned the ballad
from an aunt, who had received it from an aged nun. #U. a#, Buchon,
Noëls et Chants populaires de la Franche-Comté, p. 85, 34 verses; #b#,
Tarbé, Romancero de Champagne, Vol. II, Chants Populaires, p. 125, 32
verses; #c#, G. de Nerval, La Bohème Galante, ed. 1866, p. 77, Les
Filles du Feu, ed. 1868, p. 130, 30 verses; #d#, 'Jean Renaud,' Bujeaud,
Chants et Chansons populaires des Provinces de l'Ouest, II, 213, 32
verses. #V.# Poés. pop., III, fol. 122, Romania, XI, 100 f, 32 verses.
#W.# Le Blésois, Ampère, Instructions, etc., p. 37, 36 verses. #X.#
Provence, Poés. pop., III, fol. 114, Romania, XI, 105, 44 verses. #Y.#
'Lou Counte Arnaud,' Bivès, Gers, Bladé, Poés. pop. de la Gascogne, II,
134/135, 48 verses. #Z.# Vagney, Vosges, Mélusine, p. 75, 44 verses.
#AA.# Cambes, Lot-et-Garonne, Romania, XII, 116 f, 40 verses. #BB.#
Quercy, Sérignac, Poés. pop., Romania, XI, 106, 34 verses. #CC.# Quercy,
Poés. pop., Romania, XI, 107, 26 verses. #DD.# Bretagne, Villemarqué,
Barzaz-Breiz, ed. 1846, I, 46, 12 verses. #EE.# Orléans, Poés. pop.,
III, fol. 102, Romania, XI, 107, 10 verses. #FF.# Auvergne, Poés, pop.,
III, fol. 89, Romania, XI, 107 f, 6 verses. #GG.# Boulonnais, 'La
Ballade du Roi Renaud,' E. Hamy, in Almanach de Boulogne-sur-Mer pour
1863, p. 110 (compounded from several versions), 16 four-line
stanzas.[360]
The name of the hero in the French ballad is mostly Renaud, or some
modification of Renaud: Jean Renaud, #G#, #H#, #U#; Renom, #AA#; Arnaud,
#C#, #E#, #L#, #Y#, #BB#; L'Arnaud l'Infant, #P#; Louis Renaud, brother
of Jean, #F#. It is Louis in #A#, #I#, #J#, #V#. He is king, or of the
royal family, #F#, #M#, #N#, #O#, #Q#, #W#, #BB#, #CC#, #GG#; count,
#Y#; Renaud le grand, #H#, #Z#. In #A#, while he is walking in his
meadows, he meets Death, who asks him, peremptorily, Would you rather
die this very night, or languish seven years? and he answers that he
prefers to die at once. Here there is a very plain trace of the older
fairy. He is mortally hurt, while hunting, by a wolf, #B#; by a boar,
#DD#. But in more than twenty versions he returns from war, often with a
horrible wound, "apportant son cœur dans sa main," #C#; "tenant ses
tripes dans ses mains," #N#; "oque ses tripes on sa main, sen estoumac
on sen chapea, sen cûr covert de sen mentea," #G#; etc. In #F#, #I#, #J#
he comes home in a dying state from prison (to which he was consigned,
according to #I#, for robbing a church!). In these versions the story is
confused with that of another ballad, existing in Breton, and very
likely in French, 'Komt ar Chapel,' 'Le Comte des Chapelles,' Luzel, I,
456/457, or 'Le Page de Louis XIII,' Villemarqué, Barzaz-Breiz, p. 301.
A fragment of a corresponding Italian ballad is given by Nigra, Romania,
XI, 397, No 9.
Renaud, as it will be convenient to call the hero, coming home triste et
chagrin, #F#, #P#, #U b, c#, triste et bien malau #Y#, receives on his
arriving felicitations from his mother on account of the birth of a son.
He has no heart to respond to these: "Ni de ma femme, ni de mon fils, je
ne saurais me réjoui." He asks that his bed may be made, with
precautions against his wife's hearing. At midnight he is dead.
The wife, hearing the men-servants weeping, asks her mother-in-law the
cause. The best horse [horses] has been found dead in the stable, has
strayed away, etc., #B#, #D-S#, #GG#. "No matter for that," says the
wife; "when Renaud comes he will bring better," #B#, #D-G#, #L-Q#, #GG#.
The maids are heard weeping; why is that? They have lost, or injured,
sheets in the washing, #B#, #D#, #E#, #G#, #J#. When Renaud comes we
shall have better, #B#, #D#, #E#, #G#. Or a piece of plate has been lost
or broken, #A#, #F#, #H#, #I#, #K#, #O#. [It is children with the
toothache, #F#, #U a, b, c, d#]. "What is this chanting which I hear?"
It is a procession, making the tour of the house: #B#, #D-F#, #L#,
#P-X#, #GG#. "What gown shall I wear when I go to church?" Black is the
color for women at their churching, #B#, #F#, #I#, #L#, #M#, #O#, #P#,
#V#, #Y#; black is more becoming, plus joli, plus convenant, plus
conséquent, #A#, #D#, #H#, #K#, #N#, #R#, #X#, #BB#, #DD#, #GG#;
"quittez le ros', quittez le gris, prenez le noir, pour mieux choisir,"
etc., #Q#, #W#, #U#, #E#, #S#, #T#.
Besides these four questions, all of which occur in Breton ballads,
there are two which are met with in many versions, always coming before
the last. "What is this pounding (frapper, cogner, taper) which I hear?"
It is carpenters, or masons, repairing some part of the house, #D#, #E#,
#K#, #L#, #N#, #P-U#, #W#; #A#, #V#, #X#, #AA#; #GG#. "Why are the bells
ringing?" For a procession, or because a distinguished personage has
come, has died, etc., #A#, #B#, #F-L#, #Q#, #R#, #W#, #Y#, #AA#, #DD#,
#GG#. On the way to church [or cemetery] herdboys or others say to one
another, as the lady goes by, That is the wife of the king, the
seigneur, that was buried last night, or the like; and the mother-in-law
has again to put aside the lady's question as to what they were saying,
#D#, #E#, #G#, #H#, #L-P#, #S#, #T#, #X#, #Y#, #FF#, #GG#.
Flambeaux or candles are burning at the church, #E#, #V#; a taper is
presented to the widow, #M#, or holy water, #N#, #T#, #Z#, #GG#; the
church is hung with black, #D#, #O#, #FF#; the funeral is going on,
#AA#, #CC#. "Whose is this new monument?" "What a fine tomb!" #M#, #N#,
#R#, #T#, #Z#, #GG#. The scene in other cases is transferred to the
cemetery. "Why has the earth been disturbed?" "What new monument is
this?" #A#, #DD#; #C#, #F#, #I#, #J#, #P#. In #B# the tomb is in the
garden; in #L#, #S#, #X#, #BB# the place is not defined.
The young wife utters a piercing shriek, #C#, #D#, #K#, #L#, #N#. Open
earth, split tomb, split tiles! #A#, #B#, #Q#, #R#, #V#, #W#, #X#, #Y#;
I will stay with my husband, will die with my husband, will not go back,
#A#, #C#, #D#, #M#, #N#, #Q#, #R#, #S#, #X#, #Y#, #Z#, #BB#, #CC#, #GG#.
She bids her mother take her keys, #B#, #C#, #G#, #L#, #M#, #P#, #Y#,
#BB#, #CC#, #GG#, and commits her son [children] to her kinsfolk, to
bring up piously, #B#, #G#, #I#, #J#, #L#, #M#, #O#, #Z#, #BB#, #CC#. In
#H#, #P#, #Q#, #W#, #X#, #Y# the earth opens, and in the last four it
encloses her. In #K# heaven is rent by her shriek, and she sees her
husband in light (who says, strangely, that his mouth smacks of rot); he
bids her bring up the children as Christians. Heaven opens to her prayer
in #AA#, and a voice cries, Wife, come up hither! In #GG# the voice from
heaven says, Go to your child: I will keep your husband safe. There are
other variations.[361]
#G#, #T#, #I# say expressly that Renaud's wife died the next day, or
after hearing three masses, or soon after. #M#, #O#, by a feeble modern
perversion, make her go into a convent.
#Italian# ballads cover very much the same ground as the French. The
versions hitherto published are:
#A.# 'La Lavandaia,' Cento, Ferraro, Canti popolari di Ferrara, Cento e
Pontelagoscuro, p. 52, 16 verses, Romania, XI, 397, amended. #B.# 'Il
Cavaliere della bella Spada,' Pontelagoscuro, Ferraro, p. 107,
previously in Rivista di Filologia romanza, II, 205, 28 verses, Romania,
XI, 398. #C.# Piedmont, communicated by Nigra, with other versions, to
Romania, XI, 394, No 4, 48 verses. #D.# Romania, XI, 393 f, No 3, 34
verses. #E.# _Ib._ p. 395, No 6, 42 verses. #F.# _Ib._ p. 392 f, No 2,
46 verses. #G.# 'Conte Anzolin,' Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, p. 61,
57 verses. #H.# Romania, XI, 396, No 7, 38 verses. #I.# _Ib._ p. 394 f,
No 5, 26 verses. #J.# 'Il re Carlino,' Ferraro, Canti popolari
monferrini, p. 34, 42 verses. #K.# Romania, XI, 392, No 1, 20 verses.
#L.# 'Il Conte Angiolino,' Rovigno, Ive, Canti popolari istriani, p.
344, 34 verses. #M.# 'Il Conte Cagnolino,' Pontelagoscuro, Ferraro, as
above, p. 84, Rivista di Filologia romanza, II, 196, 36 verses. All
these are from recent tradition.
The name Rinaldo, Rinald, is found only in _I_, #C#, and the latter has
also Lüis. Lüis is the name in #E#; Carlino, Carlin, in #J#, #H#;
Angiolino, Anzolin, #L#, #G#; Cagnolino, #M#. The rank is king in #C#,
#E#, #H-K#; prince, #D#; count, #G#, #L#, #M#.
#A# and #B#, corrupted fragments though they be, retain clear traces of
the ancient form of the story, and of the English variety of that form.
Under the bridge of the Rella [Diamantina] a woman is washing clothes,
gh' è 'na lavandera. A knight passes, #B#, and apparently accosts the
laundress. She moves into the water, and the knight after her; the
knight embraces her, #A#. Dowy rade he hame, el va a cà tüto mojà, #A#.
In #B# (passing over some verses which have intruded) he has many
knife-stabs, and his horse many also.[362] He asks his mother to put him
to bed and his horse into the stable, and gives directions about his
funeral.
All of the story which precedes the hero's return home is either
omitted, #D#, #F#, #J#, #K#, #L#, or abridged to a single stanza: ven da
la cassa lo re Rinald, ven da la cassa, l'è tüt ferì, #C#; ven da la
guerra re Rinaldo, ven da la guerra, l'è tüt ferì, #I#, #E#, #H#; save
that #G#, which like #C# makes him to have been hunting (and to have
been bitten by a mad dog), adds that, while he was hunting, his wife had
given birth to a boy. #M# has an entirely false beginning: Count
Cagnolino was disposed to marry, but wished to be secure about his
wife's previous life. He had a marble statue in his garden which moved
its eyes when any girl that had gone astray presented herself before it.
The daughter of Captain Tartaglia having been declined, for reason, and
another young woman espoused, Tartaglia killed the count while they were
hunting.
The wounded man, already feeling the approach of death, #F#, #G#, #L#,
asks that his bed may be made; he shall die before the morrow, #D#, #F#,
#J#; let not his wife know, #F#, #G#. The wife asks why the
men-servants, coachmen, are weeping, and is told that they have drowned
[lost] some of the horses, #C-J#, #M# [have burned the king's carriage,
#K#]. We will get others when the king comes, she answers, #C#, #D#, #H#
[when I get up, #F#, as in Breton #A#]. Why are the maids weeping? The
maids have lost sheets or towels in washing, #F#, #I#, #K#; have
scorched the shirts in ironing, #C#, #D#, #H#. When the king comes, he
will buy or bring better, #C#, #D#, #H# [when I get up, #F#, as in
Breton #A#]. Why are the priests chanting? For a great feast to-morrow,
#F#. Why are the carpenters at work? They are making a cradle for your
boy, #C-E#, #H-K#. Why do the bells ring? A great lord is dead; in honor
of somebody or something; #C#, #E-L#. Why does not Anzolin come to see
me? He has gone a-hunting, #G#, #L#. What dress shall I put on to go to
church? [When I get up I shall put on red, #F#, #I#.] You in black and I
in gray, as in our country is the way, #C-F#, #H#, #I# [#H# moda a
_Paris_, by corruption of dël pais]; I white, you gray, #J#; you will
look well in black, #M#; put on red, or put on white, or put on black
for custom's sake, #G#.
The children in the street say, That is the wife of the lord who was
buried, or the people look at the lady in a marked way, #C#, #J#, #G#,
#M#; and why is this? For the last time the mother-in-law puts off the
question. At the church, under the family bench, there is a grave new
made, and now it has to be said that the husband is buried there, #C-K#,
#M#.
A conclusion is wanting in half of the ballads, and what there is is
corrupted in others. The widow commends her boy to her husband's mother,
#G#, #M#, and says she will die with her dear one, #D#, #E#, #J#, #M#.
In #C#, as in French #V#, she wishes to speak to her husband. If the
dead ever spake to the quick, she would speak once to her dear Lüis; if
the quick ever spake to the dead, she would speak once to her dear
husband. In #G# she bids the grave unlock, that she may come into the
arms of her beloved, and then bids it close, that in his arms she may
stay: cf. French #Y#, #Q#, #X#, #R#, #AA#.
The story of the Italian ballad, under the title of 'Il Conte
Angiolino,' was given in epitome by Luigi Carrer, in his Prose e Poesie,
Venice, 1838, IV, 81 f, before any copy had been published (omitted in
later editions). According to Carrer's version, the lady, hearing bells,
and seeing from her windows the church lighted up as for some office,
extracts the fact from her mother-in-law on the spot, and then, going to
the church and seeing her husband's tomb, prays that it would open and
receive her.
A fragment of an Italian ballad given by Nigra, Romania, XI, 396, No 8,
describes three card players, quarrelling over their game, as passing
from words to knives, and from knives to pistols, and one of the party,
the king of Spain, as being wounded in the fray. He rides home with a
depressed air, and asks his mother to make his bed, for he shall be dead
at midnight and his horse at dawn. There is a confusion of two stories
here, as will be seen from Spanish ballads which are to be spoken of.
Both stories are mixed with the original adventure of the mermaid in 'Il
Cavaliere della bella spada,' already referred to as #B#. In this last
the knight has a hundred and fifty stabs, and his horse ninety.[363]
Nigra has added to the valuable and beautiful ballads furnished to
Romania, XI, a tale (p. 398) from the province of Turin, which preserves
the earlier portion of the Breton story. A hunter comes upon a beautiful
woman under a rock. She requires him to marry her, and is told by the
hunter that he is already married. The beautiful woman, who is of course
a fairy, presents the hunter with a box for his wife, which he is not to
open. This box contains an explosive girdle, intended to be her death;
and the hunter's curiosity impelling him to examine the gift, he is so
much injured by a detonation which follows that he can just drag himself
home to die.
#Spanish.# This ballad is very common in Catalonia, and has been found
in Asturias. Since it is also known in Portugal, we may presume that it
might be recovered in other parts of the peninsula. #A.# 'La bona
viuda,' Briz, Cansons de la Terra, III, 155, 32 verses. #B.# 'La Viuda,'
33 verses, Milá y Fontanals, Romancerillo Catalan, 2d ed., p. 155, No
204. #C-I#. _Ib._ p. 156 f. #J.# _Ib._ p. 157 f, No 204, 36 verses. #K.#
'Romance de Doña Ana,' Asturias, the argument only, Amador de los Rios,
Historia Critica de la Literatura Española, VII, 446, being No 30 of
that author's unpublished collection.
The name of the husband is Don Joan de Sevilla, #D#, Don Joan, #F#, Don
Olalbo, #I#, Don Francisco, #J#, Don Pedro, #K#. His wife, a princess,
#A#, #G#, has given birth to a child, or is on the eve of so doing. The
gentleman is away from home, or is about to leave home on a pilgrimage
of a year and a day, #A#, #G#; has gone to war, #D#; to a hunt, #I#,
#K#. He dies just as he returns home or is leaving home, or away from
home, in other versions, but in #K# comes back in a dying condition, and
begs that his state may be concealed from his wife. The lady, hearing a
commotion in the house, and asking the cause, is told that it is the
noisy mirth of the servants, #A-D#. There is music, chanting, tolling of
bells; and this is said to be for a great person who has died, #B#, #D#,
#A#. In #B#, #D#, the wife asks, Can it be for my husband? In #J# the
mother-in-law explains her own sorrowful demeanor as occasioned by the
death of an uncle, and we are informed that the burial was without
bells, in order that the new mother might not hear. In #J# only do we
have the question, Where is my husband? He has been summoned to court,
says the mother-in-law, where, as a favorite, he will stay a year and
ten days. When should the young mother go to mass? Peasants go after a
fortnight, tradesfolk after forty days, etc.; she, as a great lady, will
wait a year and a day, #A#, #D#, #I#, a year, #B#, a year and ten days,
#J#. What dress should she wear, silk, gold tissue, silver? etc. Black
would become her best, #A#, #J#, #K#. [Doña Ana, in #K#, like the lady
in Italian #G#, resists the suggestion of mourning, as proper only for a
widow, and appears in a costume de Pascua florida: in some other copies
also she seems to wear a gay dress.] The people, the children, point to
her, and say, There is the widow, and her mother-in-law parries the
inquiry why she is the object of remark; but the truth is avowed when
they see a grave digging, and the wife asks for whom it is, #A#. In #J#
the lady sees a monument in the church, hung with black, reads her
husband's name, and swoons. #B#, #C# make the mother's explanation
follow upon the children's talk. In #K# the announcement is made first
by a shepherd, then confirmed by gaping spectators and by a rejected
lover. The widow commends her child to its grandmother, and says she
will go to her husband in heaven, #A-D#; dies on the spot, #K#; Don
Francisco dies in March, Doña Ana in May, #J#.
'Don Joan y Don Ramon' is a ballad in which a young man returns to his
mother mortally wounded, and therefore would be likely to blend in the
memory of reciters with any other ballad in which the same incident
occurred. A version from the Balearic Islands may be put first, which
has not yet taken up any characteristic part of the story of Renaud:
Recuerdos y Bellezas de España, Mallorca, p. 336, 1842==Milá, 1853, p.
114, No 15, Briz, III, 172; Die Balearen in Wort und Bild geschildert,
by the Archduke Ludwig Salvator, Leipzig, 1871, II, 556.[364]
Don Joan and Don Ramon are returning from the chase. Don Ramon falls
from his horse; Don Joan rides off. Don Ramon's mother sees her son
coming through a field, gathering plants to heal his wounds. "What is
the matter?" she asks; "you are pale." "I have been bled, and they made
a mistake." "Ill luck to the barber!" "Curse him not; it is the last
time. Between me and my horse we have nine and twenty lance thrusts; the
horse has nine and I the rest. The horse will die to-night and I in the
morning. Bury him in the best place in the stable, and me in St Eulalia;
lay a sword crosswise over my grave, and if it is asked who killed me,
let the answer be, Don Joan de la cassada."
There are numerous Catalan versions, and most of them add something to
this story: Milá, 2d ed., 'El guerrero mal herido,' p. 171, No 210,
#A-F#, #A_{1}-G_{1}#, #A_{11}#; Briz, III, 171 f, two copies. These
disagree considerably as to the cause of the hero's death, and the names
are not constant. In #A_{1}# of Milá, as in the Balearic ballad, Don
Joan and Don Ramon are coming from the chase, and have a passage at
lances; Don Joan is left dead, and Don Ramon is little short of it. #A#,
#B#, of Milá, tell us that Don Pedro died on the field of battle and Don
Joan came home mortally wounded. #E# says that Don Joan and Don Ramon
come from the chase, but Don Joan immediately says that he comes from a
great battle. It is battle in #F_{1}#, in #E_{1}# (with Gastó
returning), and in both the Catalan copies of Briz, the hero being Don
Joan in the first of these last, and in the other nameless. The wounded
man says he has been badly bled, Milá, #A#, #B#, #A_{1}#, #C_{1}#, Briz
2; he and his horse have lance wounds fifty-nine, thirty-nine,
twenty-nine, etc., the horse nine and he the rest, Milá, #A#, #B#, #E#,
#A_{1}#, Briz 1. His mother informs him that his wife has borne a child,
"a boy like the morning star," Briz 1, and says that if he will go to
the best chamber he will find her surrounded by dames and ladies. This
gives him no pleasure; he does not care for wife, nor dames, nor ladies,
nor boys, nor morning stars: Briz 1, Milá, #A_{1}-G_{1}#. He asks to
have his bed made, Milá, #A-D#, #B_{1}#, #C_{1}#, Briz 1, 2, for he
shall die at midnight and his horse at dawn, #A-D#, #A_{1}#, Briz 2, and
gives directions for his burial and that of his horse. Let the bells
toll when he is dead, and when people ask for whom it is, the answer
will be, For Don Joan, Briz 1, Gastó, Milá, #E_{1}#, who was killed in
battle. Let his arms be put over the place where his horse is buried,
and when people ask whose arms they are his mother will say, My son's,
who died in battle, Milá #A#, #B_{1}#. Let a drawn sword be laid across
his grave, and let those that ask who killed him be told, Don Joan, at
the chase, Milá, #A_{1}#.[365]
We have, probably, to do with two different ballads here, versions #A-F#
of Milá's 'Guerrero mal herido,' and Briz's second, belonging with 'Don
Joan y Don Ramon,' while #A_{1}-G_{1}# of Milá, and Briz's first,
represent a ballad of the Renaud class. It is, however, possible that
the first series may be imperfect copies of the second.
'Don Joan y Don Ramon' has agreements with Italian #B#, #A#: in #B#,
particularly, we note the hundred and fifty stabs of the knight and the
ninety of his horse.
#Portuguese.# A good Portuguese version, 'D. Pedro e D. Leonarda,' in
fifty short verses, unfortunately lacking the conclusion, has been
lately communicated to Romania (XI, 585) by Leite de Vasconcellos. Dom
Pedro went hunting, to be gone a year and a day, but was compelled to
return home owing to a malady which seized him. His mother greets him
with the information that his wife has given birth to a son. "Comfort
and cheer her," he says, "and for me make a bed, which I shall never
rise from." The wife asks, Where is my husband, that he does not come to
see me? "He has gone a-hunting for a year and a day," replies the
mother. What is this commotion in the house? "Only visitors." But the
bells are tolling! Could it be for my husband? "No, no; it is for a
feast-day." When do women go to mass after child-birth? "Some in three
weeks and some in two, but a lady of your rank after a year and a day."
And what color do they wear? "Some light blue and some a thousand
wonders, but you, as a lady of rank, will go in mourning." The ballad
stops abruptly with a half-pettish, half-humorous imprecation from the
daughter-in-law against the mother for keeping her shut up so long.
There is a Slavic ballad, which, like the versions that are so popular
with the Romance nations, abridges the first part of the story, and
makes the interest turn upon the gradual discovery of the hero's death,
but in other respects agrees with northern tradition.
#Bohemian.# #A a.# Erben, p. 473, No 9, Heřman a Dornička==Waldau,
Böhmische Granaten, I, 73, No 100; #b.# Čelakowsky, I, 26==Haupt u.
Schmaler, I, 327. #B.# Erben, p. 475. #C.# Moravian, Sušil, p. 82, No
89 a, 'Nešt'astná svatba,' 'The Doleful Wedding.' #D.# Sušil, p.
83, No 89 b. #E.# Slovak, Čelakowsky, I, 80.
#Wendish.# #A.# Haupt und Schmaler, I, 31, No 3, 'Zrudny kwas,' 'The
Doleful Wedding.' #B.# II, 131, No 182, 'Plakajuen ńeẃesta,' 'The
Weeping Bride' (the last eight stanzas, the ten before being in no
connection).
The hero on his wedding day is making ready his horse to fetch the
bride; for he is, as in the Scandinavian ballads, not yet a married man.
His mother, Bohemian #A#, ascertaining his intention, begs him not to go
himself with the bridal escort. Obviously she has a premonition of
misfortune. Herman will never invite guests, and not go for them. The
mother, in an access of passion, exclaims, If you go, may you break your
neck, and never come back! Here we are reminded of the Färöe ballad.
Bohemian #C#, #D# make the forebodings to rise in Herman's mind, not in
his mother's. The mother opposes the match in Bohemian #E#, and the
sister wishes that he may break his neck. Wendish #A# has nothing of
opposition or bodement before the start, but the crows go winging about
the young men who are going for the bride, and caw a horrible song, how
the bridegroom shall fall from his horse and break his neck. The train
sets off with a band of trumpets, drums, and stringed instruments, or,
Bohemian #D#, with a discharge of a hundred muskets, and when they come
to a linden in a meadow Herman's horse "breaks his foot," and the rider
his neck; Bohemian #D#, when they come to a copse in a meadow the
hundred pieces are again discharged, and Herman is mortally wounded. His
friends stand debating what they shall do. The dying man bids them keep
on: since the bride cannot be his, she shall be his youngest brother's,
Bohemian #A#, #C#; cf. Danish #L#, #O#, #R#, Norwegian #C#, #F#. The
train arrives at the bride's house; the bride comes out to greet them,
but, not seeing the bridegroom, inquires affrightedly what has become of
him. They pretend that he has remained at home to see to the tables. The
mother is reluctant to give them the bride, but finally yields. When the
train comes again to the linden in the mead, Dorothy sees blood. It is
Herman's! she cries; but they assure her that it is the blood of a deer
that Herman had killed for the feast. They reach Herman's house, where
the bride has an appalling reception, which need not be particularized.
In Bohemian #A#, while they are at supper (or at half-eve==three in the
afternoon), a death-bell is heard. Dorothy turns pale. For whom are they
tolling? Surely it is for Herman. They tell her that Herman is lying in
his room with a bad headache, and that the bell is ringing for a child.
But she guesses the truth, sinks down and dies, #a#. She wears two
knives in her hair, and thrusts one of them into her heart, #b#. The two
are buried in one grave. In Bohemian #B# the bell sounds for the first
time as the first course is brought on, and a second time when the
second course comes. The bride is told in each case that the knell is
for a child. Upon the third sounding, when the third course is brought
in, they tell her that it is for Herman. She seizes two knives and runs
to the graveyard: with one she digs herself a grave, and with the other
stabs herself. In the Wendish fragment #B#, at the first and second
course (there is no bell) the bride asks where the bridegroom is, and at
the third repeats the question with tears. She is told that he is
ranging the woods, killing game for his wedding. In Bohemian #C# the
bell tolls while they are getting the table ready. The bride asks if it
is for Herman, and is told that it is for a child. When they sit down to
table, the bells toll again. For whom should this be? For whom but
Herman? She springs out of the window, and the catastrophe is the same
as in Bohemian #B#. In #D# the bride hears the bell as the train is
approaching the house, and they say it is for a child. On entering the
court she asks where Herman is. He is in the cellar drawing wine for his
guests. She asks again for Herman as the company sits down to table, and
the answer is, In the chamber, lying in a coffin. She springs from the
table and rushes to the chamber, seizing two golden knives, one of which
she plunges into her heart. In Bohemian #E#, when the bride arrives at
John the bridegroom's house, and asks where he is, they tell her she had
better go to bed till midnight. The moment she touches John she springs
out of bed, and cries, Dear people, why have ye laid a living woman with
a dead man? They stand, saying, What shall we give her, a white cap or a
green chaplet? "I have not deserved the white (widow's) cap," she says;
"I have deserved a green chaplet." In Wendish #A#, when the bell first
knolls, the bride asks, Where is the bridegroom? and they answer, In the
new chamber, putting on his fine clothes. A second toll evokes a second
inquiry; and they say he is in the new room, putting on his sword. The
third time they conceal nothing: He fell off his horse and broke his
neck. "Then tear off my fine clothes and dress me in white, that I may
mourn a year and a day, and go to church in a green chaplet, and never
forget him that loved me!" It will be remembered that the bride takes
her own life in Norwegian #A#, #C#, #D#, and in Swedish #E#, as she does
in Bohemian #A b#, #B#, #C#, #D#.
* * * * *
#B# is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 305,
No 48; by Doenniges, p. 25.
'Der Ritter von Staufenberg' is translated by Jamieson, from the
"Romanzen" in the Wunderhorn, in Illustrations of Northern Antiquities,
p. 257. Danish #A# by Prior, II, 301; #B# by Jamieson, Popular Ballads,
I, 219, and by Prior, II, 306, Buchanan, p. 52. 'The Erl-King's
Daughter,' "Danish," in Lewis's Tales of Wonder, I, 53, No 10, is
rendered from Herder. Swedish #A# by Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 84;
#B# by Keightley, p. 82, and by William and Mary Howitt, Literature and
Romance of Northern Europe, I, 269. There is a version from Swedish by
J. H. Dixon, in Notes and Queries, 4th Series, I, 168. Breton #D# by
Keightley, as above, p. 433, and by Tom Taylor, Ballads and Songs of
Brittany, 'Lord Nann and the Fairy,' p. 9. Bohemian #A b# by Bowring,
Cheskian Anthology, p. 69.
#A#
From a transcript from William Tytler's Brown MS.
1
Clark Colven and his gay ladie,
As they walked to yon garden green,
A belt about her middle gimp,
Which cost Clark Colven crowns fifteen:
2
'O hearken weel now, my good lord,
O hearken weel to what I say;
When ye gang to the wall o Stream,
O gang nae neer the well-fared may.'
3
'O haud your tongue, my gay ladie,
Tak nae sic care o me;
For I nae saw a fair woman
I like so well as thee.'
4
He mounted on his berry-brown steed,
And merry, merry rade he on,
Till he came to the wall o Stream,
And there he saw the mermaiden.
5
'Ye wash, ye wash, ye bonny may,
And ay's ye wash your sark o silk:'
'It's a' for you, ye gentle knight,
My skin is whiter than the milk.'
6
He's taen her by the milk-white hand,
He's taen her by the sleeve sae green,
And he's forgotten his gay ladie,
And away with the fair maiden.
* * * * * * *
7
'Ohon, alas!' says Clark Colven,
'And aye sae sair's I mean my head!'
And merrily leugh the mermaiden,
'O win on till you be dead.
8
'But out ye tak your little pen-knife,
And frae my sark ye shear a gare;
Row that about your lovely head,
And the pain ye'll never feel nae mair.'
9
Out he has taen his little pen-knife,
And frae her sark he's shorn a gare,
Rowed that about his lovely head,
But the pain increased mair and mair.
10
'Ohon, alas!' says Clark Colven,
'An aye sae sair's I mean my head!'
And merrily laughd the mermaiden,
'It will ay be war till ye be dead.'
11
Then out he drew his trusty blade,
And thought wi it to be her dead,
But she's become a fish again,
And merrily sprang into the fleed.
12
He's mounted on his berry-brown steed,
And dowy, dowy rade he home,
And heavily, heavily lighted down
When to his ladie's bower-door he came.
13
'Oh, mither, mither, mak my bed,
And, gentle ladie, lay me down;
Oh, brither, brither, unbend my bow,
'T will never be bent by me again.'
14
His mither she has made his bed,
His gentle ladie laid him down,
His brither he has unbent his bow,
'T was never bent by him again.
B
Herd's Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 302; ed.
1776, I, 161.
1
Clerk Colvill and his lusty dame
Were walking in the garden green;
The belt around her stately waist
Cost Clerk Colvill of pounds fifteen.
2
'O promise me now, Clerk Colvill,
Or it will cost ye muckle strife,
Ride never by the wells of Slane,
If ye wad live and brook your life.'
3
'Now speak nae mair, my lusty dame,
Now speak nae mair of that to me;
Did I neer see a fair woman,
But I wad sin with her body?'
4
He's taen leave o his gay lady,
Nought minding what his lady said,
And he's rode by the wells of Slane,
Where washing was a bonny maid.
5
'Wash on, wash on, my bonny maid,
That wash sae clean your sark of silk;'
'And weel fa you, fair gentleman,
Your body whiter than the milk.'
* * * * * * *
6
Then loud, loud cry'd the Clerk Colvill,
'O my head it pains me sair;'
'Then take, then take,' the maiden said,
'And frae my sark you'll cut a gare.'
7
Then she's gied him a little bane-knife,
And frae her sark he cut a share;
She's ty'd it round his whey-white face,
But ay his head it aked mair.
8
Then louder cry'd the Clerk Colvill,
'O sairer, sairer akes my head;'
'And sairer, sairer ever will,'
The maiden crys, 'till you be dead.'
9
Out then he drew his shining blade,
Thinking to stick her where she stood,
But she was vanishd to a fish,
And swam far off, a fair mermaid.
10
'O mother, mother, braid my hair;
My lusty lady, make my bed;
O brother, take my sword and spear,
For I have seen the false mermaid.'
C
Notes and Queries, 4th Series, VIII, 510, from the
recitation of a lady in Forfarshire.
1
Clerk Colin and his mother dear
Were in the garden green;
The band that was about her neck
Cost Colin pounds fifteen;
The belt about her middle sae sma
Cost twice as much again.
2
'Forbidden gin ye wad be, love Colin,
Forbidden gin ye wad be,
And gang nae mair to Clyde's water,
To court yon gay ladie.'
3
'Forbid me frae your ha, mother,
Forbid me frae your bour,
But forbid me not frae yon ladie;
She's fair as ony flour.
4
'Forbidden I winna be, mother,
Forbidden I winna be,
For I maun gang to Clyde's water,
To court yon gay ladie.'
5
An he is on his saddle set,
As fast as he could win,
An he is on to Clyde's water,
By the lee licht o the moon.
6
An when he cam to the Clyde's water
He lichted lowly down,
An there he saw the mermaiden,
Washin silk upon a stane.
7
'Come down, come down, now, Clerk Colin,
Come down an [fish] wi me;
I'll row ye in my arms twa,
An a foot I sanna jee.'
* * * * * * *
8
'O mother, mother, mak my bed,
And, sister, lay me doun,
An brother, tak my bow an shoot,
For my shooting is done.'
9
He wasna weel laid in his bed,
Nor yet weel fa'en asleep,
When up an started the mermaiden,
Just at Clerk Colin's feet.
10
'Will ye lie there an die, Clerk Colin,
Will ye lie there an die?
Or will ye gang to Clyde's water,
To fish in flood wi me?'
11
'I will lie here an die,' he said,
'I will lie here an die;
In spite o a' the deils in hell
I will lie here an die.'
* * * * *
#A.#
7^3. _~laugh~; but we have ~laughd~ in 10^3._
9^3. _~Rowed~ seems to be written ~Round~, possibly
~Rowad~._
14^3. brother.
#B.#
5^4. _The edition of 1776 has ~body's~._
#C.#
7. When they part he returns home, and on the way his head
becomes "wondrous sair:" _seemingly a comment of the
reciter_.
_The Abbotsford copy in "~Scottish Songs~," fol. 3, has
these readings, not found in Lewis, the Brown MS., or
Herd._
3^2.
And dinna deave me wi your din: _Lewis_,
And haud, my Lady gay, your din.
6^3. He's laid her on the flowery green.
[345] "From a MS. in my grandfather's writing, with the following note:
Copied from an old MS. in the possession of Alexander Fraser Tytler."
Note of Miss Mary Fraser Tytler. The first stanza agrees with that which
is cited from the original by Dr Anderson in Nichols's Illustrations,
VII, 177, and the number of stanzas is the same.
Colvill, which has become familiar from Herd's copy, is the correct
form, and Colven, Colvin, a vulgarized one, which in #C# lapses into
Colin.
[346] Still, though these _particular verses_ appear to have come from
'The Drowned Lovers,' they may represent other original ones which were
to the same effect. See, further on, the beginning of some Färöe
versions.
[347] Hoc equidem a viris omni exceptione majoribus quotidie scimus
probatum, quod quosdam hujusmodi larvarum quas fadas nominant amatores
audivimus, et cum ad aliarum foeminarum matrimonia se transtulerunt,
ante mortuos quam cum superinductis carnali se copula immiscuerunt. Des
Gervasius von Tilbury Otia Imperialia (of about 1211), Liebrecht, p. 41.
[348] Der Ritter von Stauffenberg, from a MS. of perhaps 1437, C. M.
Engelhardt, Strassburg, 1823. Edited by Oskar Jänicke, in Altdeutsche
Studien von O. Jänicke, E. Steinmeyer, W. Wilmanns, Berlin, 1871. Die
Legende vom Ritter Herrn Peter Diemringer von Staufenberg in der
Ortenau, reprint by F. Culemann of the Strassburg edition of Martin
Schott, 1480-82. The old printed copy was made over by Fischart in 1588
(Jobin, Strassburg, in that year), and this 'ernewerte Beschreibung der
alten Geschicht' is rehashed in seven 'Romanzen' in Wunderhorn, I,
407-18, ed. 1806, 401-12, ed. 1853. Simrock, Die deutschen Volksbücher,
III, 1-48.
[349] Engelhardt, pp 6, 13 f: Sagen aus Baden und der Umgegend,
Carlsruhe, 1834, pp 107-122.
[350] Separately printed, under the title, Elveskud, dansk, svensk,
norsk, færøsk, islandsk, skotsk, vendisk, bømisk, tysk, fransk,
italiensk, katalonsk, spansk, bretonsk Folkevise, i overblik ved Svend
Grundtvig. Kjøbenhavn, 1881.
[351] All the Norse versions are in two-line stanzas.
[352] In 'Jomfruen og Dværgekongen,' #C# 25, 26, Grundtvig, No 37, the
woman who has been carried off to the hill, wishing to die, asks that
atter-corns may be put into her drink. She evidently gets, however, only
the villar-konn, elvar-konn, of Landstad, Nos 42-45, which are of
lethean property. But in J. og D. #F#, we may infer an atter-corn,
though none is mentioned, from the effect of the draughts, which is that
belt, stays, and sark successively burst. See p. 363 f.
[353] So, also, Swedish #A#, #F#, Norwegian #A#, #C#. This is a cantrip
sleight of the elves. The Icelandic burden supposes this illumination,
"The low was burning red;" and when Olaf seeks to escape, in Norwegian
#A#, #C#, #E#, #G#, #I#, #K#, he has to make his way through the
elf-flame, elvelogi.
[354] Grundtvig remarks that Herder's translation, 'Erlkönigs Tochter,'
Volkslieder, II, 158, took so well with the Germans that at last it came
to pass for an original German ballad. The Wunderhorn, I, 261, ed. 1806,
gives it with the title, 'Herr Olof,' as from a flying sheet
(==Scherer's Deutsche Volkslieder, 1851, p. 371). It appears, with some
little changes, in Zarnack's Deutsche Volkslieder, 1819, I, 29, whence
it passed into Erlach, IV, 6, and Richter und Marschner, p. 60.
Kretzschmer has the translation, again, with a variation here and there,
set to a "North German" and to a "Westphalian" air, p. 8, p. 9.
[355] Owing to a close resemblance of circumstances in 'The Elf-shot,'
in 'Frillens Hævn' ('The Leman's Wreak'), Grundtvig, No 208, and in
'Ribold og Guldborg,' Grundtvig, No 82, these ballads naturally have
details in common. The pretence that the horse was not sure-footed and
hurtled his rider against a tree; the request to mother, father, etc.,
to make the bed, take care of the horse, apply a bandage, send for a
priest, etc.; the testament, the assignment of the bride by the dying
man to his brother, and her declaration that she will never give her
troth to two brothers; and the nearly simultaneous death of hero, bride,
and mother, occur in many versions of both Elveskud and Ribold, and most
of them in Frillens Hævn. A little Danish ballad, 'Hr. Olufs Død,' cited
by Grundtvig, IV, 847, seems to be Elveskud with the elf-shot omitted.
[356] Luzel was in possession of other versions, but he assures us that
every detail is contained in one or the other of these three.
[357] #B# 13, "You must marry me straightway, or give me my weight in
silver;" _then_, "or die in three days," etc. It is not impossible that
this stanza, entirely out of place in this ballad, was derived from 'Le
Comte des Chapelles,' Luzel, p. 457, from which certain French versions
have taken a part of their story. See Luzel, the eighth and ninth
stanzas, on p. 461.
[358] #B# 50, "A white gown, or _broget_, or my violet petticoat?" Luzel
says he does not understand _broget_, and in his Observations, prefixed
to the volume, expresses a conjecture that it must have been altered
from _droged_, robe d'enfant, robe de femme, but we evidently want a
color. Grundtvig remarks that _broget_ would make sense in Danish, where
it means party-colored. Scotch _broakit_ is black and white. Icelandic
_brók_, tartan, party-colored cloth, is said to be from Gaelic _breac_,
versicolor (Vigfusson). This points to a suitable meaning for Breton
_broget_.
[359] #D# adds: "It was a marvel to see, the night after husband and
wife had been buried, two oaks rise from the common tomb, and on their
branches two white doves, which sang there at daybreak, and then took
flight for the skies."
[360] It will be observed that some of the Renaud ballads in the Poésies
populaires de la France were derived from earlier publications: such as
were communicated by collectors appear to have been sent in in 1852 or
1853. The versions cited by Rathery, Revue Critique, II, 287 ff, are all
from the MS. Poésies populaires. #BB#, #CC# have either been overlooked
by me in turning over the first five volumes, or occur in vol. vi, which
has not yet been received. #GG# came to hand too late to be ranked at
its proper place.
[361] In #C# the mother-in-law tells her daughter, austerely:
Vous aurez plutôt trouvé un mari
Que moi je n'aurai trouvé un fils.
So #E#, nearly. A mother makes a like remark to the betrothed of a dead
son in the Danish ballad of 'Ebbe Tygesen,' Grundtvig, Danske Kæmpeviser
og Folkesange, fornyede i gammel Stil, 1867, p. 122, st. 14. #F# and #T#
conclude with these words of the wife:
'Ma mère, dites au fossoyeur
Qu'il creuse une fosse pour deux;
'Et que l'espace y soit si grand
Que l'on y mette aussi l'enfant.'
The burial of father, mother, and child in a common grave is found
elsewhere in ballads, as in 'Redselille og Medelvold,' Grundtvig, No
271, #A# 37, #G# 20, #M# 26, #X# 27.
[362] Shutting our eyes to other Romance versions, or, we may say,
opening them to Scandinavian ones, we might see in these stabs the
wounds made by the elf-knives in Danish #D#, #G#, #H#, #N#, #O#, #R#,
#X#, Swedish #G#, Norwegian #H#, #I#. See 'Don Joan y Don Ramon,'
further on.
[363] The ballad of 'Luggieri,' published by Salvatori in the Rassegna
Settimanale, Rome, June 22, 1879, and reprinted by Nigra in Romania, XI,
391 (a variety of 'Rizzardo bello,' Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, p.
62, No 83), appears to me not to belong with 'Renaud,' but with the
class of 'The Cruel Brother,' as already remarked of the Venetian ballad
at p. 142.
[364] The version in the Recuerdos was obtained in Majorca by Don J. M.
Quadrado. The editor remarks that the employment of the articles Il and
La instead of Es and Sa proves it to be as old as the sixteenth century.
Die Balearen, etc., is cited after Grundtvig.
[365] I do not entirely understand Professor Milá's arrangement of those
texts which he has not printed in full, and it is very likely that more
of his copies than I have cited exhibit some of the traits specified.
43
THE BROOMFIELD HILL
#A.# 'The Broomfield Hill.' #a.# Scott's Minstrelsy, III,
271, 1803. #b.# The same, II, 229, 1802.
#B.# 'I'll wager, I'll wager,' etc., Herd's Ancient and
Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 310.
#C.# 'Broomfield Hills,' Buchan's Ballads of the North of
Scotland, II, 291.
#D.# 'Lord John,' Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p.
195.
#E.# Joseph Robertson's Note-Book, January, 1830, p. 7.
#F.# 'The Merry Broomfield, or The West Country Wager.'
#a.# Douce Ballads, III, fol. 64^b. #b.# The same, IV,
fol. 10.
A song of 'Brume, brume on hil' is one of those named in The Complaint
of Scotland, 1549, p. 64 of Dr J. A. H. Murray's edition. "The foot of
the song" is sung, with others, by Moros in Wager's "very merry and
pithy Comedy called The longer thou livest the more fool thou art," c.
1568. 'Broom, broom on hil' is also one of Captain Cox's "bunch of
ballets and songs, all auncient," No 53 of the collection, 1575.[366]
The lines that Moros sings are:
Brome, brome on hill,
The gentle brome on hill, hill,
Brome, brome on Hive hill,
The gentle brome on Hive hill,
The brome stands on Hive hill #a#.
"A more sanguine antiquary than the editor," says Scott, "might perhaps
endeavor to identify this poem, which is of undoubted antiquity, with
the 'Broom, broom on hill' mentioned ... as forming part of Captain
Cox's collection." Assuredly "Broom, broom on hill," if that were all,
would justify no such identification, but the occurrence of Hive hill,
both in the burden which Moros sings and in the eighth stanza of Scott's
ballad, is a circumstance that would embolden even a very cautious
antiquary, if he had received Hive hill from tradition, and was
therefore unaffected by a suspicion that this locality had been
introduced by an editor from the old song.[367]
Most of the versions give no explicit account of the knight's prolonged
sleep. He must needs be asleep when the lady comes to him, else there
would be no story; but his heavy slumber, not broken by all the efforts
of his horse and his hawk, is as a matter of course not natural; es geht
nicht zu mit rechten dingen; the witch-wife of #A# 4 is at the bottom of
that. And yet the broom-flowers strewed on his hals-bane in #A# 8, #B#
3, and the roses in #D# 6, are only to be a sign that the maid had been
there and was gone. Considering the character of many of Buchan's
versions, we cannot feel sure that #C# has not borrowed the second and
third stanzas from #B#, and the witch-wife, in the sixth, from #A#; but
it would be extravagant to call in question the genuineness of #C# as a
whole. The eighth stanza gives us the light which we require.
'Ye'll pu the bloom frae aff the broom,
Strew't at his head and feet,
And aye the thicker that ye do strew,
The sounder he will sleep.'
The silver belt about the knight's head in #A# 5 can hardly have to do
with his sleeping, and to me seems meaningless. It is possible that
roses are not used at random in #D# 6, though, like the posie of
pleasant perfume in #F# 9, they serve only to prove that the lady had
been there. An excrescence on the dog-rose, rosenschwamm, schlafkunz,
kunz, schlafapfel, it is believed in Germany, if laid under a man's
pillow, will make him sleep till it is taken away. Grimm, Deutsche
Mythologie, p. 1008, and Deutsches Wörterbuch (Hildebrand), V, 2753 _e_.
#C# makes the lady hide in the broom to hear what the knight will say
when he wakes, and in this point agrees with the broadside #F#, as also
in the comment made by the men on their master in stanza 24; cf. #F# 16.
Mr J. W. Dixon has reprinted an Aldermary Churchyard copy of the
broadside, differing as to four or five words only from #F#, in Ancient
Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England, p. 116, Percy
Society, Volume XVII. The editor remarks that #A# is evidently taken
from #F#; from which it is clear that the pungent buckishness of the
broadside does not necessarily make an impression. #A# smells of the
broom; #F# suggests the groom.[368]
The sleep which is produced in #A# by strewing the flower of the broom
on a man's head and feet, according to a witch's advice, is brought
about in two Norse ballads by means not simply occult, but altogether
preternatural; that is, by the power of runes. One of these,
'Sömn-runorna,' Arwidsson, II, 249, No 133, is preserved in a manuscript
of the end of the seventeenth, or the beginning of the eighteenth,
century. The other, 'Sövnerunerne,' Grundtvig, II, 337, No 81, was taken
down in 1847 from the singing of a woman seventy-five years of age.
The Swedish ballad runs thus. There is a damsel in our land who every
night will sleep with a man, and dance a maid in the morning. The fame
of this comes to the ears of the son of the king of England, who orders
his horse, thinking to catch this damsel. When he arrives at the castle
gate, there stands the lady, and asks him what is his haste. He frankly
answers that he expects to get a fair maid's honor for his pains, and
she bids him follow her to the upper room. She lays sheets on the bed,
and writes strong runes on them. The youth sits down on the bed, and is
asleep before he can stretch himself out. He sleeps through that day,
and the next, and into the third. Then the lady rouses him. "Wake up;
you are sleeping your two eyes out." He is still so heavy that he can
hardly stir. He offers her his horse and saddle to report the matter as
he wishes. "Keep your horse," she says; "shame fa such liars."
The Danish story is much the same. One of a king's five sons goes to
make trial of the maid. She tells him to fasten his horse while she goes
before and unlocks; calls to her maid to bring five feather-beds,
feather-beds nine, and write a sleep on each of them. He sleeps through
three days, and is roused the fourth, with "Wake up, wake up; you have
slept away your pluck." He offers her a bribe, as before, which she
scornfully rejects, assuring him that he will not be spared when she
comes among maids and knights.
A sleep produced by runes or gramarye is one of the two main incidents
of a tale in the Gesta Romanorum, better known through the other, which
is the forfeit of flesh for money not forthcoming at the day set, as in
the Merchant of Venice: Latin, Oesterley, No 195, p. 603;[369] English,
Harleian MS. 7333, No 40, printed by Douce, Illustrations of Shakspere,
I, 281, Madden, p. 130, Herrtage, p. 158; German, No 68, of the printed
edition of 1489 (which I have not seen). A knight, who has a passion
for an emperor's daughter, engages to give a thousand [hundred] marks
for being once admitted to her bed. He instantly falls asleep, and has
to be roused in the morning. Like terms are made for a second night, and
the man's lands have to be pledged to raise the money. He sleeps as
before, but stipulates for a third night at the same price. A merchant
lends him the thousand marks, on condition that, if he breaks his day,
his creditor may take the money's weight of flesh from his body. Feeling
what a risk he is now running, the knight consults a philosopher,
Virgil, in the English version. The philosopher (who in the Latin
version says he ought to know, for he had helped the lady to her trick)
tells the knight that between the sheet and coverlet of the bed there is
a letter, which causes the sleep; this he must find, and, when found,
cast far from the bed. The knight follows these directions, and gets the
better of the lady, who conceives a reciprocal passion for him, and
delivers him, in the sequel, from the fearful penalty of his bond by
pleading that the flesh must be taken without shedding of blood.
The romance of Dolopathos, a variety of the Seven Wise Masters, written
about 1185, considerably before the earliest date which has hitherto been
proposed for the compilation of the Gesta, has this story, with
variations, of which only these require to be noted. The lady has herself
been a student in magic. She is wooed of many; all comers are received,
and pay a hundred marks; any one who accomplishes his will may wed her the
next day. An enchanted feather of a screech-owl, laid under the pillow,
makes all who enter the bed fall asleep at once, and many have been
baffled by this charm. At last a youth of high birth, but small means,
tries his fortune, and, failing at the first essay, tries once more.
Thinking that the softness of his couch was the cause of his falling
asleep, he puts away the pillow, and in this process the feather is thrown
out: Iohannis de Alta Silva Dolopathos, ed. Oesterley, pp 57-59; Herbers,
Li Romans de Dolopathos, Brunet et Montaiglon, vv 7096-7498, pp 244-59; Le
Roux de Lincy, in a sequel to Loiseleur-Deslongchamps's Essai sur les
Fables indiennes, pp 211 ff. This form of the tale is found in German, in
a fifteenth-century manuscript, from which it was printed by Haupt in
Altdeutsche Blätter, I, 143-49; but here the sleep is produced by the use
of _both_ the means employed in the Gesta and in Dolopathos, letter
(runes) and feather, "the wild man's feather."[370]
Magic is dropped, and a sleeping draught administered, just as the man
is going to bed, in a version of the story in the Pecorone of Ser
Giovanni Fiorentino, Giornata, IV^a, Nov. 1_{a} (last quarter of the
fourteenth century). Upon the third trial the man, warned by a friendly
chambermaid not to drink, pours the medicated wine into his bosom. The
account of Ser Giovanni is adopted in Les Adventures d'Abdalla fils
d'Hanif, etc., La Haye, 1713, Bibliothèque de Romans, 1778, Janvier, I,
112-14, 143 f.
Ellin writes sleep-runes on the cushions on which her husband is to
sleep, in the Danish ballad 'Frændehævn,' Grundtvig, No 4, #A# 33 [#C#
45].
In Icelandic tales a sleep-thorn[371] is employed, probably a thorn
inscribed with runes. The thorn is stuck into the clothes or into the
head (the ears, according to the popular notion, Vigfusson), and the
sleep lasts till the thorn is taken out. Odin stuck such a thorn into
Brynhild's garments: Fáfnismál, 43; Sigrdrífumál, 7; Völsúnga Saga,
Fornaldar Sögur, I, 166. The thorn is put into the clothes also in the
Icelandic fairy-tale, Mærþöll, Maurer, Isländische Volkssagen, p. 286.
Ólöf, to save herself from Helgi's violence, and to punish his
insolence, sticks him with a sleep-thorn after he is dead drunk: Hrólfs
Saga Kraka, Forn. S. I, 18f, Torfæus, p. 32. Vilhjálmr sticks a
sleep-thorn into Hrólfr, and he lies as if dead so long as the thorn is
in him: Gaungu-Hrólfs Saga, Forn. S., III, 303, 306.
A pillow of soporific quality, which Kamele, by Isot's direction, puts
under Kaedin's head, assures her safety though she lies all night by his
side: Ulrich's continuation of Gottfried's Tristan, vv 1668-99, 1744-85;
and Heinrich's continuation, omitting the last circumstance, vv
4861-4960 (J. Grimm).
The witch-woman, in the English ballad, #A# 4, represents the
philosopher in the Gesta, and the wager in the other versions the fee or
fine exacted by the lady in the Gesta and elsewhere.
An Italian ballad, a slight and unmeritable thing, follows the story of
Ser Giovanni, or agrees with it, in respect to the sleeping-draught. A
man falls in with a girl at a spring, and offers her a hundred ducats,
or scudi, per una nottina. The girl says that she must consult her
mother. The mother advises her to accept the offer: she will give the
man a drug, and the money will serve for a dowry. The man, roused in the
morning, counts out the money with one hand and wipes his eyes with the
other. When asked why he is crying, he replies that the money is not the
loss he weeps for, and makes a second offer of the same amount. The girl
wishes to refer the matter to her mother again, but the gallant says the
mother shall not take him in a second time. One version (#A#) ends
somewhat more respectably: the girl declares that, having come off with
her honor once, she will not again expose herself to shame. #A.#
Ferraro, Canti popolari monferrini, 'La Ragazza onesta,' p. 66, No 47.
#B.# Ferraro, C. p. di Ferrara, Cento e Pontelagoscuro, p. 53 (Cento) No
4, 'La Ragazza onesta.' #C.# The same, p. 94 (Pontelagoscuro) No 8, 'La
Brunetta,' previously in Rivista di Filologia Romanza, II, 200. #D.#
Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, p. 74, 'La Contadina alla Fonte.' #E.#
Bernoni, C. p. veneziani, Puntata V, No 4, p. 6, 'La bella Brunetta.'
#F.# Bolza, Canzoni p. comasche, p. 677, No 57, 'L'Amante deluso.' #G.#
Ive, C. p. istriani, p. 324, No 4, 'La Contadina alla Fonte.' #H.#
Ginandrea, C. p. marchigiani, p. 277, No 12, 'La Madre indegna.' #I.#
Ferraro, C. p. della Bassa Romagna, Rivista di Letteratura popolare, p.
57, 'La Ragazza onesta.' #J.# Casetti e Imbriani, C. p. della Provincie
meridionali, p. 1, No 1 (Chieti), the first sixteen verses. #K.#
Archivio per Tradizioni popolari, I, 89, No 4, 'La Fandéll e lu
Cavalére,' the first thirteen lines.
'The Sleepy Merchant,' a modern ballad, in Kinloch's MSS, V, 26, was
perhaps fashioned on some traditional report of the story in Il
Pecorone. The girl gives the merchant a drink, and when the sun is up
starts to her feet, crying, "I'm a leal maiden yet!" The merchant comes
back, and gets another dram, but "tooms it a' between the bolster and
the wa," and then sits up and sings.
A ballad found everywhere in Germany, but always in what appears to be
an extremely defective form, must originally, one would think, have had
some connection with those which we are considering. A hunter meets a
girl on the heath, and takes her with him to his hut, where they pass
the night. She rouses him in the morning, and proclaims herself still a
maid. The hunter is so chagrined that he is of a mind to kill her, but
spares her life. 'Der Jäger,' 'Der ernsthafte Jäger,' 'Des Jägers
Verdruss,' 'Der Jäger und die reine Jungfrau,' 'Der verschlafene Jäger:'
Meinert, p. 203; Wunderhorn, 1857, I, 274, Birlinger u. Crecelius, I,
190; Büsching u. von der Hagen, p. 134, No 51; Nicolai, Almanach, I, 77
(fragment); Erk u. Irmer, ii, 12, No 15; Meier, p. 305, No 170; Pröhle,
No 54, p. 81; Fiedler, p. 175; Erk, Liederhort, pp 377 f, Nos 174,
174^a; Hoffmann u. Richter, p. 202, No 176; Ditfurth, Fränkische
Volkslieder, II, 26 f, Nos 30, 31; Norrenberg, Des dülkener Fiedlers
Liederbuch, No 16, p. 20; J. A. E. Köhler, Volksbrauch im Voigtlande, p.
307; Jeitteles, Volkslied in Steiermark, Archiv für Lit. gesch., IX,
361, etc.; Uhland, No 104, Niederdeutsches Liederbuch, No 59,
'vermuthlich vom Eingang des 17. Jhd.' Cf. Die Mâeget, Flemish,
Büsching u. von der Hagen, p. 311; Willems, p. 160, No 61.[372]
#A a# is translated by Doenniges, p. 3; by Gerhard, p. 146; by Arndt,
Blütenlese, p. 226.
A
#a.# Scott's Minstrelsy, III, 271, ed. 1803. #b.# Sts.
8-14; the same, II, 229, ed. 1802.
1
There was a knight and a lady bright,
Had a true tryste at the broom;
The ane gaed early in the morning,
The other in the afternoon.
2
And ay she sat in her mother's bower door,
And ay she made her mane:
'O whether should I gang to the Broomfield Hill,
Or should I stay at hame?
3
'For if I gang to the Broomfield Hill,
My maidenhead is gone;
And if I chance to stay at hame,
My love will ca me mansworn.'
4
Up then spake a witch-woman,
Ay from the room aboon:
'O ye may gang to the Broomfield Hill,
And yet come maiden hame.
5
'For when ye gang to the Broomfield Hill,
Ye'll find your love asleep,
With a silver belt about his head,
And a broom-cow at his feet.
6
'Take ye the blossom of the broom,
The blossom it smells sweet,
And strew it at your true-love's head,
And likewise at his feet.
7
'Take ye the rings off your fingers,
Put them on his right hand,
To let him know, when he doth awake,
His love was at his command.'
8
She pu'd the broom flower on Hive Hill,
And strewd on 's white hals-bane,
And that was to be wittering true
That maiden she had gane.
9
'O where were ye, my milk-white steed,
That I hae coft sae dear,
That wadna watch and waken me
When there was maiden here?'
10
'I stamped wi my foot, master,
And gard my bridle ring,
But na kin thing wald waken ye,
Till she was past and gane.'
11
'And wae betide ye, my gay goss-hawk,
That I did love sae dear,
That wadna watch and waken me
When there was maiden here.'
12
'I clapped wi my wings, master,
And aye my bells I rang,
And aye cry'd, Waken, waken, master,
Before the ladye gang.'
13
'But haste and haste, my gude white steed,
To come the maiden till,
Or a' the birds of gude green wood
Of your flesh shall have their fill.'
14
'Ye need na burst your gude white steed
Wi racing oer the howm;
Nae bird flies faster through the wood,
Than she fled through the broom.'
B
Herd, Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 310.
1
'I'll wager, I'll wager, I'll wager with you
Five hundred merks and ten,
That a maid shanae go to yon bonny green wood,
And a maiden return agen.'
2
'I'll wager, I'll wager, I'll wager with you
Five hundred merks and ten,
That a maid shall go to yon bonny green wood,
And a maiden return agen.'
* * * * * * *
3
She's pu'd the blooms aff the broom-bush,
And strewd them on 's white hass-bane:
'This is a sign whereby you may know
That a maiden was here, but she's gane.'
4
'O where was you, my good gray steed,
That I hae loed sae dear?
O why did you not awaken me
When my true love was here?'
5
'I stamped with my foot, master,
And gard my bridle ring,
But you wadnae waken from your sleep
Till your love was past and gane.'
6
'Now I may sing as dreary a sang
As the bird sung on the brier,
For my true love is far removd,
And I'll neer see her mair.'
C
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 291.
1
There was a knight and lady bright
Set trysts amo the broom,
The one to come at morning ear,
The other at afternoon.
2
'I'll wager a wager wi you,' he said,
'An hundred merks and ten,
That ye shall not go to Broomfield Hills,
Return a maiden again.'
3
'I'll wager a wager wi you,' she said,
'A hundred pounds and ten,
That I will gang to Broomfield Hills,
A maiden return again.'
4
The lady stands in her bower door,
And thus she made her mane:
'O shall I gang to Broomfield Hills,
Or shall I stay at hame?
5
'If I do gang to Broomfield Hills,
A maid I'll not return;
But if I stay from Broomfield Hills,
I'll be a maid mis-sworn.'
6
Then out it speaks an auld witch-wife,
Sat in the bower aboon:
'O ye shall gang to Broomfield Hills,
Ye shall not stay at hame.
7
'But when ye gang to Broomfield Hills,
Walk nine times round and round;
Down below a bonny burn bank,
Ye'll find your love sleeping sound.
8
'Ye'll pu the bloom frae aff the broom,
Strew 't at his head and feet,
And aye the thicker that ye do strew,
The sounder he will sleep.
9
'The broach that is on your napkin,
Put it on his breast bane,
To let him know, when he does wake,
That's true love's come and gane.
10
'The rings that are on your fingers,
Lay them down on a stane,
To let him know, when he does wake,
That's true love's come and gane.
11
'And when ye hae your work all done,
Ye'll gang to a bush o' broom,
And then you'll hear what he will say,
When he sees ye are gane.'
12
When she came to Broomfield Hills,
She walkd it nine times round,
And down below yon burn bank,
She found him sleeping sound.
13
She pu'd the bloom frae aff the broom,
Strew'd it at 's head and feet,
And aye the thicker that she strewd,
The sounder he did sleep.
14
The broach that was on her napkin,
She put on his breast bane,
To let him know, when he did wake,
His love was come and gane.
15
The rings that were on her fingers,
She laid upon a stane,
To let him know, when he did wake,
His love was come and gane.
16
Now when she had her work all dune,
She went to a bush o broom,
That she might hear what he did say,
When he saw she was gane.
17
'O where were ye, my guid grey hound,
That I paid for sae dear,
Ye didna waken me frae my sleep
When my true love was sae near?'
18
'I scraped wi my foot, master,
Till a' my collars rang,
But still the mair that I did scrape,
Waken woud ye nane.'
19
'Where were ye, my berry-brown steed,
That I paid for sae dear,
That ye woudna waken me out o my sleep
When my love was sae near?'
20
'I patted wi my foot, master,
Till a' my bridles rang,
But still the mair that I did patt,
Waken woud ye nane.'
21
'O where were ye, my gay goss-hawk,
That I paid for sae dear,
That ye woudna waken me out o my sleep
When ye saw my love near?'
22
'I flapped wi my wings, master,
Till a' my bells they rang,
But still the mair that I did flap,
Waken woud ye nane.'
23
'O where were ye, my merry young men,
That I pay meat and fee,
Ye woudna waken me out o' my sleep
When my love ye did see?'
24
'Ye'll sleep mair on the night, master,
And wake mair on the day;
Gae sooner down to Broomfield Hills
When ye've sic pranks to play.
25
'If I had seen any armed men
Come riding over the hill--
But I saw but a fair lady
Come quietly you until.'
26
'O wae mat worth you, my young men,
That I pay meat and fee,
That ye woudna waken me frae sleep
When ye my love did see.
27
'O had I waked when she was nigh,
And o her got my will,
I shoudna cared upon the morn
Tho sma birds o her were fill.'
28
When she went out, right bitter wept,
But singing came she hame;
Says, I hae been at Broomfield Hills,
And maid returnd again.
D
Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 195.
1
'I'll wager, I'll wager,' says Lord John,
'A hundred merks and ten,
That ye winna gae to the bonnie broom-fields,
And a maid return again.'
2
'But I'll lay a wager wi you, Lord John,
A' your merks oure again,
That I'll gae alane to the bonnie broom-fields,
And a maid return again.'
3
Then Lord John mounted his grey steed,
And his hound wi his bells sae bricht,
And swiftly he rade to the bonny broom-fields,
Wi his hawks, like a lord or knicht.
4
'Now rest, now rest, my bonnie grey steed,
My lady will soon be here,
And I'll lay my head aneath this rose sae red,
And the bonnie burn sae near.'
5
But sound, sound was the sleep he took,
For he slept till it was noon,
And his lady cam at day, left a taiken and away,
Gaed as licht as a glint o the moon.
6
She strawed the roses on the ground,
Threw her mantle on the brier,
And the belt around her middle sae jimp,
As a taiken that she'd been there.
7
The rustling leaves flew round his head,
And rousd him frae his dream;
He saw by the roses, and mantle sae green,
That his love had been there and was gane.
8
'O whare was ye, my gude grey steed,
That I coft ye sae dear,
That ye didna waken your master,
Whan ye kend that his love was here?'
9
'I pautit wi my foot, master,
Garrd a' my bridles ring,
And still I cried, Waken, gude master,
For now is the hour and time.'
10
'Then whare was ye, my bonnie grey hound,
That I coft ye sae dear,
That ye didna waken your master,
Whan ye kend that his love was here?'
11
'I pautit wi my foot, master,
Garrd a' my bells to ring,
And still I cried, Waken, gude master,
For now is the hour and time.'
12
'But whare was ye, my hawks, my hawks,
That I coft ye sae dear,
That ye didna waken your master,
Whan ye kend that his love was here?'
13
'O wyte na me, now, my master dear,
I garrd a' my young hawks sing,
And still I cried, Waken, gude master,
For now is the hour and time.'
14
'Then be it sae, my wager gane,
'T will skaith frae meikle ill,
For gif I had found her in bonnie broom-fields,
O her heart's blude ye'd drunken your fill.'
E
Joseph Robertson's Note-Book, January 1, 1830, p. 7.
1
'I'll wager, I'll wager wi you, fair maid,
Five hunder punds and ten,
That a maid winna gae to the bonnie green bower,
An a maid return back agen.'
2
'I'll wager, I'll wager wi you, kin' sir,
Five hunder punds and ten,
That a maid I'll gang to the bonnie green bower,
An a maid return again.'
3
But when she cam to the bonnie green bower,
Her true-love was fast asleep;
Sumtimes she kist his rosie, rosie lips,
An his breath was wondrous sweet.
4
Sometimes she went to the crown o his head,
Sometimes to the soles o his feet,
Sometimes she kist his rosie, rosie lips,
An his breath was wondrous sweet.
5
She's taen a ring frae her finger,
Laid it upon his breast-bane;
It was for a token that she had been there,
That she had been there, but was gane.
6
'Where was you, where was ye, my merrymen a',
That I do luve sae dear,
That ye didna waken me out o my sleep
When my true love was here?
7
'Where was ye, where was ye, my gay goshawk,
That I do luve sae dear,
That ye didna waken me out o my sleep
When my true love was here?'
8
'Wi my wings I flaw, kin' sir,
An wi my bill I sang,
But ye woudna waken out o yer sleep
Till your true love was gane.'
9
'Where was ye, my bonnie grey steed,
That I do luve sae dear,
That ye didna waken me out o my sleep
When my true love was here?'
10
'I stampit wi my fit, maister,
And made my bridle ring,
But ye wadna waken out o yer sleep,
Till your true love was gane.'
F
#a.# Douce Ballads, III, fol. 64b: Newcastle, printed and
sold by John White, in Pilgrim Street. #b.# Douce Ballads,
IV, fol. 10.
1
A noble young squire that livd in the west,
He courted a young lady gay,
And as he was merry, he put forth a jest,
A wager with her he would lay.
2
'A wager with me?' the young lady reply'd,
'I pray, about what must it be?
If I like the humour you shan't be deny'd;
I love to be merry and free.'
3
Quoth he, 'I will lay you an hundred pounds,
A hundred pounds, aye, and ten,
That a maid if you go to the merry broomfield,
That a maid you return not again.'
4
'I'll lay you that wager,' the lady she said,
Then the money she flung down amain;
'To the merry broomfield I'll go a pure maid,
The same I'll return home again.'
5
He coverd her bett in the midst of the hall
With an hundred and ten jolly pounds,
And then to his servant straightway he did call,
For to bring forth his hawk and his hounds.
6
A ready obedience the servant did yield,
And all was made ready oer night;
Next morning he went to the merry broomfield,
To meet with his love and delight.
7
Now when he came there, having waited a while,
Among the green broom down he lies;
The lady came to him, and coud not but smile,
For sleep then had closed his eyes.
8
Upon his right hand a gold ring she secur'd,
Down from her own finger so fair,
That when he awaked he might be assur'd
His lady and love had been there.
9
She left him a posie of pleasant perfume,
Then stept from the place where he lay;
Then hid herself close in the besom of the broom,
To hear what her true-love would say.
10
He wakend and found the gold ring on his hand,
Then sorrow of heart he was in:
'My love has been here, I do well understand,
And this wager I now shall not win.
11
'O where was you, my goodly gawshawk,
The which I have purchasd so dear?
Why did you not waken me out of my sleep
When the lady, my lover, was here?'
12
'O with my bells did I ring, master,
And eke with my feet did I run;
And still did I cry, Pray awake, master,
She's here now, and soon will be gone.'
13
'O where was you, my gallant greyhound,
Whose collar is flourishd with gold?
Why hadst thou not wakend me out of my sleep
When thou didst my lady behold?'
14
'Dear master, I barkd with my mouth when she came,
And likewise my coller I shook,
And told you that here was the beautiful dame,
But no notice of me then you took.'
15
'O where was thou, my serving-man,
Whom I have cloathed so fine?
If you had wak'd me when she was here,
The wager then had been mine.'
16
'In the night ye should have slept, master,
And kept awake in the day;
Had you not been sleeping when hither she came,
Then a maid she had not gone away.'
17 Then home he returnd, when the wager was lost,
With sorrow of heart, I may say;
The lady she laughd to find her love crost,--
This was upon midsummer-day.
18
'O squire, I laid in the bushes conceald,
And heard you when you did complain;
And thus I have been to the merry broomfield,
And a maid returnd back again.
19
'Be chearful, be chearful, and do not repine,
For now 't is as clear as the sun,
The money, the money, the money is mine,
The wager I fairly have won.'
* * * * *
#A. b.#
8^1. flower frae the bush.
8^3. a witter true.
9^2. I did love.
11^1. gray goshawk.
11^2. sae well.
11^3. When my love was here hersell.
12^4. Afore your true love gang.
13^3. in good.
14^{2-4}.
By running oer the howm;
Nae hare runs swifter oer the lea
Nor your love ran thro the broom.
#E#
_concludes with these stanzas, which do not belong to this
ballad_:
11
'Rise up, rise up, my bonnie grey cock,
And craw when it is day,
An your neck sall be o the beaten gowd,
And your wings o the silver lay.'
12
But the cock provd fauss, and untrue he was,
And he crew three hour ower seen,
The lassie thocht it day, and sent her love away,
An it was but a blink o the meen.
13
'If I had him but agen,' she says,
'O if I but had him agen,
The best grey cock that ever crew at morn
Should never bereave me o 's charms.'
#F. a.#
8^2. fingers.
11^1, 13^1. Oh.
15^2. I am.
#b.#
2^2. I pray you now, what.
3^1. Said he.
3^4. _omits_ That.
4^3. _omits_ pure.
4^4. And the ... back again.
5^2. ten good.
5^3. he strait.
5^4. _omits_ For.
6^1. his servants.
6^2. _omits_ made.
6^4. his joy.
7^4. sleep had fast.
8^2. finger.
9^3. in the midst.
9^4. what her lover.
10^1. Awaking he found.
10^2. of bearst.
10^3. _omits_ do.
11^3. wake.
11^4. and lover.
12^{1,2}. I did.
12^3. wake.
12^4. here and she.
13^3. Why did you not wake.
14^1. I barked aloud when.
14^3. that there was my.
15^2. I have.
15^3. when she had been here.
15^4. had been surely mine.
16^1. _omits_ should.
17^3. to see.
18^1. lay.
18^3. so I.
18^4. have returnd.
#b# _has no imprint._
[366] Furnivall, Captain Cox, his Ballads and Books, pp cxxvii f. Ritson
cited the comedy in the dissertation prefixed to his Ancient Songs,
1790, p. lx.
[367] Motherwell remarks, at page 42 of his Introduction, "The song is
popular still, and is often to be met with." It was printed in a cheap
American song-book, which I have not been able to recover, under the
title of 'The Green Broomfield,' and with some cis-atlantic variations.
Graham's Illustrated Magazine, September, 1858, gives these stanzas:
"Then when she went to the green broom field,
Where her love was fast asleep,
With a gray _goose_-hawk and a green laurel bough,
And a green broom under his feet.
"And when he awoke from out his sleep,
An angry man was he;
He looked to the East, and he looked to the West,
And he wept for his sweetheart to see.
"Oh! where was you, my gray _goose_-hawk,
The hawk that I loved so dear,
That you did not awake me from out my sleep,
When my sweetheart was so near?"
[368] The broadside is also copied into Buchan's MSS, II, 197.
[369] The Anglo-Latin text in Harleian MS. 2270, No 48.
[370] Sy ... bereytte keyn abende das bette met der czöberye met der
schryft und met des wylden mannes veddere, p. 145, lines 8, 10-12; das
quam alles von der czoyberye, das die jungfrowe dy knaben alle beczobert
hatte met schryft und met bryven, dy sy en under dy höbt leyte under dy
kussen, und met den veddern von den wylden ruchen lüten, lines 1-5. Only
_one_ letter and one feather is employed in each case.
[371] Svefnþorn, Danish søvntorn, or søvnpreen: blundstafir,
sleep-staves, rods (if not letters, runes) in Sigrdrífumál, 2.
[372] The first stanza of the German ballad occurs in a music-book of
1622: Hoffmann u. Richter, p. 202, who add that the ballad is extant in
Dutch and Flemish.
44
THE TWA MAGICIANS
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 24;
Motherwell's MS., p. 570.
A base-born cousin of a pretty ballad known over all Southern Europe,
and elsewhere, and in especially graceful forms in France.
The French ballad generally begins with a young man's announcing that he
has won a mistress, and intends to pay her a visit on Sunday, or to give
her an _aubade_. She declines his visit, or his music. To avoid him she
will turn, e. g., into a rose; then he will turn bee, and kiss her. She
will turn quail; he sportsman, and bag her. She will turn carp; he
angler, and catch her. She will turn hare; and he hound. She will turn
nun; he priest, and confess her day and night. She will fall sick; he
will watch with her, or be her doctor. She will become a star; he a
cloud, and muffle her. She will die; he will turn earth, into which they
will put her, or St Peter, and receive her into Paradise. In the end she
says, Since you are inevitable, you may as well have me as another; or
more complaisantly, Je me donnerai à toi, puisque tu m'aimes tant.
This ballad might probably be found anywhere in France, but most of the
known versions are from south of the Loire. #A.# Romania, X, 390, E.
Legrand, from Normandy; also known in Champagne. #B.# 'Les
Transformations,' V. Smith, Vielles Chansons du Velay et du Forez,
Romania, VII, 61 ff. #C.# Poésies populaires de la France, MS., III,
fol. 233, Vienne. #D.# The same, II, fol. 39, Guéret, Creuse. #E, F.#
The same volume, fol. 41, fol. 42. #G.# 'La maitresse gagnée,' the same
volume, fol. 38: "on chante cette chanson sur les confines du
département de l'Ain qui le séparent de la Savoie."[373] #H.# 'J'ai fait
une maitresse,' Champfleury, Chansons populaires des Provinces, p. 90,
Bourbonnais. #I.# 'Adiu, Margaridoto,' Bladé, Poésies pop. de la
Gascogne, II, 361. #J.# Mélusine, col. 338 f, Carcasonne. #K.# Montel et
Lambert, Chansons pop. du Languedoc, p. 544-51, and Revue des Langues
romanes, XII, 261-67, four copies. #L.# 'Les Transfourmatiens,' Arbaud,
II, 128. The Provençal ballad is introduced by Mistral into Mirèio,
Chant III, as the song of Magali. #M.# 'La Poursuite d'Amour,' Marelle,
in Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen, LVI, 191. #N.# 'J'ai
fait une maitresse,' Gagnon, Chansons populaires du Canada, p. 137, and
Lovell, Recueil de Chansons canadiennes, 'Chanson de Voyageur,' p. 68.
#O.# Gagnon, p. 78.
#Catalan.# Closely resembling the French: #A.# 'La Esquerpa,' Briz,
Cansons de la Terra, I, 125. #B, C, D.# 'Las Transformaciones,' Milá,
Romancerillo Catalan, p. 393, No 513.
#Italian.# Reduced to a _rispetto_, Tigri, Canti popolari toscani, ed.
1860, p. 241, No 861.
#Roumanian.# 'Cucul si Turturica,' Alecsandri, Poesiě populare ale
Românilor, p. 7, No 3; French version, by the same, Ballades et Chants
populaires, p. 35, No 7; Schuller, Romänische Volkslieder, p. 47. The
cuckoo, or the lover under that style, asks the dove to be his mistress
till Sunday. The dove, for his sake, would not say No, but because of
his mother, who is a witch, if not let alone will change into a roll,
and hide under the ashes. Then he will turn into a shovel, and get her
out. She will turn into a reed, and hide in the pond. He will come as
shepherd to find a reed for a flute, put her to his lips, and cover her
with kisses. She will change to an image, and hide in the depths of the
church. He will come every day in the week, as deacon or chorister, to
kiss the images (a pious usage in those parts), and she will not thus
escape him. Schuller refers to another version, in Schuster's unprinted
collection, in which youth and maid carry on this contest in their
proper persons, and not under figure.
#Ladin.# Flugi, Die Volkslieder des Engadin, p. 83, No 12. "Who is the
younker that goes a-field ere dawn? Who is his love?" "A maid all too
fair, with dowry small enough." "Maid, wilt give me a rose?" "No; my
father has forbidden." "Wilt be my love?" "Rather a seed, and hide in
the earth." "Then I will be a bird, and pick thee out," etc.
#Greek.# Tommaseo, III, 61, Passow, p. 431, No 574a. A girl tells her
mother she will kill herself rather than accept the Turk: she will turn
swallow, and take to the woods. The mother replies, Turn what you will,
he will turn hunter, and take you from me. The same kernel of this
ballad of transformations in Comparetti, Saggi dei Dialetti greci dell'
Italia meridionale, p. 38, No 36, as M. Paul Meyer has remarked, Revue
Critique, II, 302.
The ballad is well known to the Slavic nations.
#Moravian.# Čelakovský, p. 75, No 6, Wenzig, Slawische Volkslieder,
p. 72, Bibliothek slavischer Poesien, p. 92. A youth threatens to carry
off a maid for his wife. She will fly to the wood as a dove. He has a
rifle that will bring her down. She will jump into the water as a fish.
He has a net that will take the fish. She will turn to a hare; he to a
dog; she cannot escape him.
#Polish.# Very common. #A a.# Wacław z Oleska, p. 417, No 287;
Konopka, p. 124. A young man says, though he should ride night and day
for it, ride his horse's eyes out, the maid must be his. She will turn
to a bird, and take to the thicket. But carpenters have axes which can
fell a wood. Then she will be a fish, and take to the water. But
fishermen have nets which will find her. Then she will become a wild
duck, and swim on the lake. Sportsmen have rifles to shoot ducks. Then
she will be a star in the sky, and give light to the people. He has a
feeling for the poor, and will bring the star down to the earth by his
prayers. "I see," she says, "it's God's ordinance; whithersoever I
betake myself, you are up with me; I will be yours after all." Nearly
the same mutations in other versions, with some variety of introduction
and arrangement. #A b.# Kolberg, Lud, VI, 129, No 257. #A c.#
"Przyjaciel ludu, 1836, rok 2, No 34;" Lipiński, p. 135; Kolberg, Lud
XII, 98, No 193. #B.# Pauli, Pieśńi ludu polskiego, I, 135. #C.#
The same, p. 133. #D.# Kolberg, Lud, XII, 99, No 194. #E.# Lud, IV, 19,
No 137. #F.# Lud, XII, 97, No 192. #G.# Lud, II, 134, No 161. #H.# Lud,
VI, 130, No 258. #I.# Woicicki, I, 141, Waldbrühl, Slawische Balalaika,
p. 433. #J. a, b.# Roger, p. 147, No 285, p. 148, No 286.
#Servian.# Karadshitch, I, 434, No 602; Talvj, II, 100; Kapper, II, 208;
Pellegrini, p. 37. Rather than be her lover's, the maid will turn into a
gold-jug in a drinking-house; he will be mine host. She will change into
a cup in a coffee-house; he will be _cafetier_. She will become a quail,
he a sportsman; a fish, he a net. Pellegrini has still another form, 'La
fanciulla assediata,' p. 93. An old man desires a maid. She will rather
turn into a lamb; he will turn into a wolf. She will become a quail; he
a hawk. She will change into a rose; he into a goat, and tear off the
rose from the tree.
There can be little doubt that these ballads are derived, or take their
hint, from popular tales, in which (1) a youth and maid, pursued by a
sorcerer, fiend, giant, ogre, are transformed by the magical powers of
one or the other into such shapes as enable them to elude, and finally
to escape, apprehension; or (2) a young fellow, who has been apprenticed
to a sorcerer, fiend, etc., and has acquired the black art by
surreptitious reading in his master's books, being pursued, as before,
assumes a variety of forms, and his master others, adapted to the
destruction of his intended victim, until the tables are turned by the
fugitive's taking on the stronger figure and despatching his adversary.
Specimens of the first kind are afforded by Gonzenbach, Sicilianische
Märchen, Nos 14, 15, 54, 55; Grimms, Nos 51, 56, 113; Schneller, No 27;
Pitrè, Fiabe, Novelle e Racconti siciliani, No 15; Imbriani, Novellaja
milanese, No 27, N. fiorentana, No 29; Maspons y Labrós, Rondallayre, I,
85, II, 30; Cosquin, Contes lorrains, in Romania, V, 354; Ralston's
Russian Folk-Tales, p. 129 f, from Afanasief V, No 23; Bechstein,
Märchenbuch, p. 75, ed. 1879, which combines both. Others in Köhler's
note to Gonzenbach, No 14, at II, 214.
Of the second kind, among very many, are Straparola, viii, 5, see
Grimms, III, 288, Louveau et Larivey, II, 152; Grimms, Nos 68, 117;
Müllenhoff, No 27, p. 466; Pröhle, Märchen für die Jugend, No 26;
Asbjørnsen og Moe, No 57; Grundtvig, Gamle danske Minder, 1854, Nos 255,
256; Hahn, Griechische Märchen, No 68; the Breton tale Koadalan, Luzel,
in Revue Celtique, I, 106/107; the Schotts, Walachische Mærchen, No
18;[374] Woicicki, Klechdy, II, 26, No 4; Karadshitch, No 6; Afanasief,
V, 95 f, No 22, VI, 189 ff, No 45 a, b, and other Russian and Little
Russian versions, VIII, 340. Köhler adds several examples of one kind or
the other in a note to Koadalan, Revue Celtique, I, 132, and Wollner
Slavic parallels in a note to Leskien und Brugman, Litanische
Volkslieder und Märchen, p. 537 f.
The usual course of events in these last is that the prentice takes
refuge in one of many pomegranate kernels, barley-corns, poppy-seeds,
millet-grains, pearls; the master becomes a cock, hen, sparrow, and
picks up all of these but one, which turns into a fox, dog, weasel,
crow, cat, hawk, vulture, that kills the bird.
The same story occurs in the Turkish Forty Viziers, Behrnauer, p. 195
ff, the last transformations being millet, cock, man, who tears off the
cock's head. Also in the introduction to Siddhi-Kür, Jülg, pp 1-3, where
there are seven masters instead of one, and the final changes are worms,
instead of seeds, seven hens, a man with a cane who kills the hens.[375]
The pomegranate and cock (found in Straparola) are among the
metamorphoses in the contest between the afrite and the princess in the
tale of the Second Calender in the Arabian Nights.
Entirely similar is the pursuit of Gwion the pigmy by the goddess
Koridgwen, cited by Villemarqué, Barzaz Breiz, p. lvi, ed. 1867, from
the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, I, 17. Gwion having, by an accident,
come to the knowledge of superhuman mysteries, Koridgwen wishes to take
his life. He flees, and turns successively into a hare, fish, bird; she
follows, in the form of hound, otter, hawk; finally he becomes a wheaten
grain, she a hen, and swallows the grain.
The ordinary tale has found its way into rhyme in a German broadside
ballad, Longard, Altrheinländische Mährlein und Liedlein, p. 76, No 40,
'Von einem gottlosen Zauberer und seiner unschuldigen Kindlein
wunderbarer Erlösung.' The two children of an ungodly magician, a boy
and a girl, are devoted by him to the devil. The boy had read in his
father's books while his father was away. They flee, and are pursued:
the girl becomes a pond, the boy a fish. The wicked wizard goes for a
net. The boy pronounces a spell, by which the girl is turned into a
chapel, and he into an image on the altar. The wizard, unable to get at
the image, goes for fire. The boy changes the girl into a
threshing-floor, himself into a barley-corn. The wizard becomes a hen,
and is about to swallow the grain of barley. By another spell the boy
changes himself into a fox, and then twists the hen's neck.
* * * * *
Translated by Gerhard, p. 18.
* * * * *
1
The lady stands in her bower door,
As straight as willow wand;
The blacksmith stood a little forebye,
Wi hammer in his hand.
2
'Weel may ye dress ye, lady fair,
Into your robes o red;
Before the morn at this same time,
I'll gain your maidenhead.'
3
'Awa, awa, ye coal-black smith,
Woud ye do me the wrang
To think to gain my maidenhead,
That I hae kept sae lang!'
4
Then she has hadden up her hand,
And she sware by the mold,
'I wudna be a blacksmith's wife
For the full o a chest o gold.
5
'I'd rather I were dead and gone,
And my body laid in grave,
Ere a rusty stock o coal-black smith
My maidenhead shoud have.'
6
But he has hadden up his hand,
And he sware by the mass,
'I'll cause ye be my light leman
For the hauf o that and less.'
O bide, lady, bide,
And aye he bade her bide;
The rusty smith your leman shall be,
For a' your muckle pride.
7
Then she became a turtle dow,
To fly up in the air,
And he became another dow,
And they flew pair and pair.
O bide, lady, bide, &c.
8
She turnd hersell into an eel,
To swim into yon burn,
And he became a speckled trout,
To gie the eel a turn.
O bide, lady, bide, &c.
9
Then she became a duck, a duck,
To puddle in a peel,
And he became a rose-kaimd drake,
To gie the duck a dreel.
O bide, lady, bide, &c.
10
She turnd hersell into a hare,
To rin upon yon hill,
And he became a gude grey-hound,
And boldly he did fill.
O bide, lady, bide, &c.
11
Then she became a gay grey mare,
And stood in yonder slack,
And he became a gilt saddle.
And sat upon her back.
Was she wae, he held her sae,
And still he bade her bide;
The rusty smith her leman was,
For a' her muckle pride.
12
Then she became a het girdle,
And he became a cake,
And a' the ways she turnd hersell,
The blacksmith was her make.
Was she wae, &c.
13
She turnd hersell into a ship,
To sail out ower the flood;
He ca'ed a nail intill her tail,
And syne the ship she stood.
Was she wae, &c.
14
Then she became a silken plaid,
And stretchd upon a bed,
And he became a green covering,
And gaind her maidenhead.
Was she wae, &c.
[373] There are two other versions in this great collection besides the
five cited, but either I have overlooked these, or they are in Volume
VI, not yet received.
[374] The Schotts are reminded by their story that Wade puts his son
Weland in apprenticeship to Mimir Smith, and to the dwarfs. They might
have noted that the devil, in the Wallachian tale, wishes to keep his
prentice a second year, as the dwarfs wish to do in the case of Weland.
That little trait comes, no doubt, from Weland's story; but we will not,
therefore, conclude that our smith is Weland Smith, and his adventure
with the lady founded upon that of Weland with Nidung's daughter.
[375] See Benfey, Pantschatantra, I, 410 f, who maintains the Mongol
tale to be of Indian origin, and thinks the story to have been derived
from the contests in magic between Buddhist and Brahman saints, of which
many are related in Buddhist legends.
45
KING JOHN AND THE BISHOP
#A.# 'Kinge John and Bishoppe,' Percy MS., p. 184; Hales
and Furnivall, I, 508.
#B.# 'King John and the Abbot of Canterbury,' broadside
printed for P. Brooksby.
The broadside #B# was printed, with trifling variations, or corrections,
in Pills to purge Melancholy, IV, 29 (1719), and in Old Ballads, II, 49
(1723). It is found in several of the collections: Pepys, II, 128, No
112; Roxburghe, III, 883; Ouvry, No 47; the Bagford; and it was among
Heber's ballads. Brooksby published from 1672 to 1695, and #B# was
"allowed" by Roger l'Estrange, who was licenser from 1663 to 1685:
Chappell, The Roxburghe Ballads, I, xviii, xxiii. The title of #B# is A
_new_ ballad of King John and the Abbot of Canterbury, to the tune of
'The King and the Lord Abbot.'[376] This older ballad seems not to have
come down.
There are at least two other broadsides extant upon the same subject,
both mentioned by Percy, and both inferior even to #B#, and in a far
less popular style: 'The King and the Bishop,' Pepys, I, 472, No 243,
Roxburghe, III, 170, Douce, fol. 110; and 'The Old Abbot and King
Olfrey,' Douce, II, fol. 169, Pepys, II, 127, No 111, printed in Old
Ballads, II, 55.[377] In both of these the Shepherd is the Bishop's
brother, which he is not in #B#; in #A# he is half-brother. Pepys's
Penny Merriments contain, I, 14, 'The pleasant History of King Henry the
Eighth and the Abbot of Reading.'[378] This last may, without rashness,
be assumed to be a variation of 'King John and the Abbot.'
Percy admitted 'King John and the Abbot' to his Reliques, II, 302,
introducing many lines from #A# "worth reviving," and many improvements
of his own,[379] and thus making undeniably a very good ballad out of a
very poor one.
The story of this ballad was told in Scotland, some fifty years ago, of
the Gudeman of Ballengeigh, James the V, the hero of not a few other
tales. Once on a time, falling in with the priest of Markinch (near
Falkland), and finding him a dullard, he gave the poor man four
questions to think of till they next met, with an intimation that his
benefice would be lost were they not rightly answered. The questions
were those of our ballad, preceded by Where is the middle of the earth?
The parson could make nothing of them, and was forced to resort to a
miller of the neighborhood, who was reputed a clever fellow. When called
to answer the first question, the miller put out his staff, and said,
There, as your majesty will find by measuring. The others were dealt
with as in the ballad. The king said that the miller should have the
parson's place, but the miller begged off from this in favor of the
incumbent. Small, Interesting Roman Antiquities recently discovered in
Fife, p. 289 ff.
Riddle stories in which a forfeit is to be paid by a vanquished party
have incidentally been referred to under No 1 and No 2. They are a very
extensive class. The oldest example is that of Samson's riddle, with a
stake of thirty sheets (or shirts) and thirty change of garments:
Judges, xiv, 12 ff. Another from Semitic tradition is what is related of
Solomon and Hiram of Tyre, in Josephus against Apion, i, 17, 18, and
Antiquities, viii, 5. After the manner of Amasis and the Æthiopian king
in Plutarch (see p. 13), they send one another riddles, with a heavy
fine for failure,--in this case a pecuniary one. Solomon at first poses
Hiram; then Hiram guesses Solomon's riddles, by the aid of Abdemon (or
the son of Abdemon), and in turn poses Solomon with riddles devised by
Abdemon.[380]
'Pá grönaliðheiði,' Landstad, p. 369, is a contest in riddles between
two brothers (refreshingly original in some parts), introduced by three
stanzas, in which it is agreed that the defeated party shall forfeit his
share of their inheritance: and this the editor seems to take quite
seriously.
Death is the penalty attending defeat in many of these wit-contests.
Odin (Vafþrúðnismál), jealous of the giant Vafþrúðnir's wisdom, wishes
to put it to test. He enters the giant's hall, assuming the name of
Gagnráðr, and announces the object of his visit. The giant tells him he
shall never go out again unless he prove the wiser, asks a few questions
to see whether he be worth contending with, and, finding him so,
proposes a decisive trial, with their heads for the stake. Odin now
propounds, first, twelve questions, mostly in cosmogony, and then five
relating to the future of the universe; and all these the giant is
perfectly competent to answer. The very unfair question is then put,
What did Odin say in his son's ear ere Balder mounted the funeral pile?
Upon this Vafþrûðnir owns himself vanquished, and we may be sure he was
not spared by his antagonist.
The Hervarar saga contains a story which, in its outlines, approximates
to that of our ballad until we come to the conclusion, where there is no
likeness. King Heiðrekr, after a long career of blood, gave up war and
took to law-making. He chose his twelve wisest men for judges, and
swore, with one hand on the head and the other on the bristles of a huge
hog which he had reared, that no man should do such things that he
should not get justice from these twelve, while any one who preferred
might clear himself by giving the king riddles which he could not guess.
There was a man named Gestr, and surnamed the Blind, a very bad and
troublesome fellow, who had withheld from Heiðrekr tribute that was due.
The king sent him word to come to him and submit to the judgment of the
twelve: if he did not, the case would be tried with arms. Neither of
these courses pleased Gestr, who was conscious of being very guilty: he
took the resolution of making offerings to Odin for help. One night
there was a knock. Gestr went to the door, and saw a man, who announced
his name as Gestr. After mutual inquiries about the news, the stranger
asked whether Gestr the Blind was not in trouble about something. Gestr
the Blind explained his plight fully, and the stranger said, "I will go
to the king and try what I can effect: we will exchange looks and
clothes." The stranger, in the guise of Gestr, entered the king's hall,
and said, Sire, I am come to make my peace. "Will you abide by the
judgment of my men of law?" asked the king. "Are there not other ways?"
inquired Gestr. "Yes: you shall give me riddles which I cannot guess,
and so purchase your peace." Gestr assented, with feigned hesitation;
chairs were brought, and everybody looked to hear something fine. Gestr
gave, and Heiðrekr promptly answered, some thirty riddles.[381] Then
said Gestr: Tell thou me this only, since thou thinkest to be wiser than
all kings: What said Odin in Balder's ear before he was borne to the
pile? "Shame and cowardice," exclaimed Heiðrekr, "and all manner of
poltroonery, jugglery, goblinry! no one knows those words of thine save
thou thyself, evil and wretched wight!" So saying, Heiðrekr drew
Tyrfing, that never was bared but somebody must fall, to cut down Gestr.
The disguised Odin changed to a hawk, and made for the window, but did
not escape before Heiðrekr's sword had docked the bird's tail. For
breaking his own truce Odin said Heiðrekr should die by the hand of a
slave, which came to pass. Fornaldar Sögur, Rafn, I, 462 ff.
The same story has come down in a Färöe ballad, 'Gátu ríma,'
Hammershaimb, Færöiske Kvæder, No 4, p. 26 (and previously published in
the Antiquarisk Tidsskrift, 1849-51, pp 75-78), translated by Dr Prior,
I, 336 ff. Gest promises Odin twelve gold marks to take his place. The
riddles are announced as thirteen in number, but the ballad is slightly
defective, and among others the last question, What were Odin's words to
Balder? is lost. Odin flies off in the shape of a falcon; Hejdrek and
all his men are burned up.
A tale presenting the essential traits of our ballad is cited in Vincent
of Beauvais's Speculum Morale, i, 4, 10, at the end. We read, he says,
of a king, who, seeking a handle for wrenching money out of a wealthy
and wise man, put him three questions, apparently insoluble, intending
to make him pay a large sum for not answering them: 1, Where is the
middle point of the earth? 2, How much water is there in the sea? 3, How
great is the mercy of God? On the appointed day, having been brought
from prison into the presence to ransom himself if he could, the
respondent, by the _advice of a certain philosopher_, proceeded thus. He
planted his staff where he stood, and said, Here is the centre; disprove
it if you can. If you wish me to measure the sea, stop the rivers, so
that nothing may flow in till I have done; then I will give you the
contents. To answer your third question, I must borrow your robes and
your throne. Then mounting the throne, clothed with the royal insignia,
"Behold," said he, "the height of the mercy of God: but now I was a
slave, now I am a king; but now poor, and now rich; but now in prison
and in chains, and now at liberty," etc.
Of the same stamp is a story in the English Gesta Romanorum, Madden, p.
55, No 19. A knight was accused to the emperor by his enemies, but not
so as to give a plausible ground for steps against him. The emperor
could hit upon no way but to put him questions, on pain of life and
death. The questions were seven; the third and the sixth will suffice:
How many gallons of salt water been in the sea? Answer: Let all the
outpassings of fresh water be stopped, and I shall tell thee. How many
days' journey beth in the circle of the world? Answer: Only the space of
one day.
Much nearer to the ballad, and earlier than either of the preceding, is
the Stricker's tale of Âmîs and the Bishop, in the Pfaffe Âmîs, dated at
about 1236. Âmîs, a learned and bountiful priest in England, excited the
envy of his bishop, who sent for him, told him that he lived in better
style than his superior, and demanded a subvention. The priest flatly
refused to give the bishop anything but a good dinner. "Then you shall
lose your church," said the bishop in wrath. But the priest, strong in a
good conscience, felt small concern about that: he said the bishop might
test his fitness with any examination he pleased. That I will do, said
the bishop, and gave him five questions. "How much is there in the sea?"
"One tun," answered Âmîs; "and if you think I am not right, stop all the
rivers that flow in, and I will measure it and convince you." "Let the
rivers run," said the bishop. "How many days from Adam to our time?"
"Seven," said the parson; "for as soon as seven are gone, they begin
again." The bishop, fast losing his temper, next demanded "What is the
exact middle of the earth? Tell me, or lose your church." "Why, my
church stands on it," replied Âmîs. "Let your men measure, and take the
church if it prove not so." The bishop declined the task, and asked once
more: How far is it from earth to sky? and then: What is the width of
the sky? to which Âmîs replied after the same fashion.
In this tale of the Stricker the parson answers for himself, and not by
deputy, and none of the questions are those of our ballad. But in a tale
of Franco Sacchetti,[382] given in two forms, Novella iv^a, we have both
the abbot and his humble representative, and an agreement as to one of
the questions. Bernabò Visconti († 1385) was offended with a rich
abbot, who had neglected some dogs that had been entrusted to his care,
and was minded to make the abbot pay him a fine; but so far yielded to
the abbot's protest as to promise to release him from all penalties if
he could answer four questions: How far is it from here to heaven? How
much water is there in the sea? What is going on in hell? What is the
value of my person? A day was given to get up the answers. The abbot
went home, in the depths of melancholy, and met on the way one of his
millers, who inquired what was the matter, and, after receiving an
explanation, offered to take the abbot's place, disguising himself as
well as he could. The answers to the two first questions are not the
usual ones: huge numbers are given, and the seigneur is told to measure
for himself, if not willing to accept them. The answer to the fourth is
twenty-nine deniers; for our Lord was sold for thirty, and you must be
worth one less than he. Messer Bernabò said the miller should be abbot,
and the abbot miller, from that time forth. Sacchetti says that others
tell the story of a pope and an abbot, adding one question. The gardener
of the monastery presents the abbot, makes the usual answer to the
second question as to the water in the sea, and prizes Christ's vicar at
twenty-eight deniers.
The excellent old farce, "Ein Spil von einem Kaiser und eim Apt,"
Fastnachtspiele aus dem 15^n Jahrhundert, I, 199, No 22, obliges the
abbot to answer three questions, or pay for all the damages done in the
course of a calamitous invasion. The abbot has a week's grace allowed
him. The questions are three: How much water in the sea? How much is the
emperor worth? Whose luck came quickest? The miller answers for the
abbot: Three tubs, if they are big enough; eight and twenty pence; and
_he_ is the man whose luck came quickest, for just before he was a
miller, now he is an abbot. The emperor says that, since the miller has
acted for the abbot, abbot he shall be.
Very like this, as to the form of the story, is the anecdote in Pauli's
Schimpf und Ernst, LV, p. 46, ed. Oesterley (c. 1522). A nobleman, who
is seeking an occasion to quarrel with an abbot, tells him that he must
answer these questions in three days, or be deposed: What do you value
me at? Where is the middle of the world? How far apart are good and bad
luck? A swineherd answers for him: Since Christ was sold for thirty
pence, I rate the emperor at twenty-nine and you at twenty-eight; my
church is the mid-point of the world, and, if you will not believe me,
measure for yourself; good and bad luck are but one night apart, for
yesterday I was a swineherd, to-day I am an abbot. Then, says the
nobleman, an abbot shall you stay. With this agrees, say the Grimms, the
tale in Eyring's Proverbiorum Copia (1601), I, 165-168, III, 23-25.
Waldis, Esopus (1548), B. 3, Fabel 92, Kurz, I, 382, agrees in general
with Pauli: but in place of the first two questions has these three: How
far is to heaven? How deep is the sea? How many tubs will hold all the
sea-water? The answers are: A short day's journey, for Christ ascended
in the morning and was in heaven before night; a stone's cast; one tub,
if large enough.
Teofilo Folengo (1491-1544), as pointed out by Köhler, has the story in
the 8th canto of his Orlandino; and here we find the third question of
our ballad. There are three besides: How far from earth to heaven? From
the east to the west?--a modification of the second question in the
ballad; How many drops of water in the seas about Italy? The abbot's
cook, Marcolf, answers to the first, One leap, as proved by Satan's
fall; to the second, One day's journey, if the sun is to be trusted; and
insists that, for a correct count under the third, all the rivers shall
first be stopped. To the fourth he makes the never-stale reply, You
_think_ I am the abbot, but I am the cook. Rainero says he shall remain
abbot, and the abbot the cook. (Stanzas 38, 39, 64-69, pp 186 f, 195 ff,
London edition of 1775.)
A capital Spanish story, 'Gramatica Parda, Trueba, Cuentos Populares, p.
287, has all three of the questions asked and answered as in our ballad.
There is a curate who sets up to know everything, and the king, "el rey
que rabió," has found him out, and gives him a month to make his three
answers, with a premium and a penalty. The curate is forced to call in a
despised goatherd, who also had all along seen through the shallowness
of the priest. The king makes the goatherd "archipámpano" of Seville,
and condemns the curate to wear the herdsman's garb and tend his goats
for a month.[383]
The first and third questions of the ballad are found in the
thirty-eighth tale of Le Grand Parangon des Nouvelles Nouvelles of
Nicolas de Troyes, 1536 (ed. Mabille, p. 155 ff); in the Patrañuelo of
Juan de Timoneda, 1576, Pat. 14, Novelistas anteriores á Cervantes, in
the Rivadeneyra Biblioteca, p. 154 f; and in the Herzog Heinrich Julius
von Braunschweig's comedy, Von einem Edelman welcher einem Abt drey
Fragen auffgegeben, 1594, ed. Holland, p. 500 ff. The other question is
as to the centre of the earth, and the usual answers are given by the
abbot's miller, cook, servant, except that in Timoneda the cook is so
rational as to say that the centre must be under the king's feet, seeing
that the world is as round as a ball.[384] The question Where is the
middle of the earth? is replaced by How many stars are there in the sky?
the other two remaining, in Balthasar Schupp, Schriften, Franckfurt,
1701, I, 91 f (Köhler), and in Gottlieb Cober († 1717),
Cabinet-prediger, 2^r Theil, No 65, p. 323 (Gräter, Idunna u. Hermode,
1814, No 33, p. 131, and p. 87). The abbot's miller gives a huge number,
and bids the king (of France) verify it, if he wishes. This last is no
doubt the version of the story referred to by the Grimms in their note
to K. u. H. märchen, No 152.
We encounter a slight variation, not for the better, in L'Élite des
Contes du Sieur d'Ouville († 1656 or 1657), Rouen, 1699, I, 241; à la
Haye, 1703, I, 296; ed. Ristelhuber, 1876, p. 46 (Köhler); Nouveaux
Contes à Rire, Cologne, 1709, p. 266; Contes à Rire, Paris, 1781, I,
184. An ignorant and violent nobleman threatens a parson, who plumes
himself on a little astrology, that he will expose him as an impostor if
he does not answer four questions: Where is the middle of the world?
What am I worth? What am I thinking? What do I believe? The village
miller answers for the curé. The reply to the third question is, You are
thinking more of your own interest than of mine; the others as before.
This story is retold, after tradition, by Cénac Moncaut, Contes
populaires de la Gascogne, p. 50, of a marquis, archiprêtre, and miller.
The query, What am I thinking of? with the answer, More of your interest
than of mine (which is not exactly in the popular manner), is replaced
by a logical puzzle, not found elsewhere: Quel est le nombre qui se
trouve renfermé dans deux [oeufs]?
The King and the Abbot is preserved, in modern German tradition, in this
form. An emperor, riding by a cloister, reads the inscription, We are
two farthings poorer than the emperor, and live free of cares. Wait a
bit, says the emperor, and I will give you some cares. He sends for the
abbot, and says, Answer these three questions in three days, or I will
depose you. The questions are, How deep is the sea? How many stars in
the sky? How far from good luck to bad? The shepherd of the monastery
gives the answers, and is told, as in several cases before, If you are
the abbot, abbot you shall be. J. W. Wolf, Hessische Sagen, p. 166, No
262, II. 'Gustav Adolf und der Abt von Benediktbeuern,' in Sepp's
Altbayerischer Sagenschatz, p. 554, No 153, is another form of the same
story, with a substitution of How far is it to heaven? for the first
question, and the answers are given by a kitchie-boy.[385] In 'Hans ohne
Sorgen,' Meier, Deutsche Volksmärchen aus Schwaben, p. 305, the
questions are, How far is it to heaven? How deep is the sea? How many
leaves has a linden? and the shepherd again undertakes the
answers.[386] 'Der Müller ohne Sorgen,' Müllenhoff, p. 153, 208, is a
mutilated variation of these. The abbot disappears, and the questions
are put to the miller, who answers for himself. The second question is
How much does the moon weigh? and the answer, Four quarters; if you
don't believe it, you must weigh for yourself.
We meet the miller _sans souci_ again in a Danish tale, which otherwise
agrees entirely with our ballad. The questions are answered by the rich
miller's herdsman: Grundtvig, Gamle danske Minder, 1854, p. 112, No 111.
A Croatian version of the story is given by Valyavets, 'Frater i turski
car,' p. 262. The Turkish tsar is disposed to expel all monks from his
dominions, but determines first to send for an abbot to try his calibre.
The abbot is too much frightened to go, and his cook, as in Foligno and
Timoneda, takes his place. The questions are, Where is the centre of the
world? What is God doing now? What am I thinking? The first and third
are disposed of in the usual way. When called to answer the second, the
cook said, You can't see through the ceiling: we must go out into the
field. When they came to the field, the cook said again, How can I see
when I am on such a small ass? Let me have your horse. The sultan
consented to exchange beasts, and then the cook said, God is wondering
that a sultan should be sitting on an ass and a monk on a horse. The
sultan was pleased with the answers, and reasoning, If the cook is so
clever, what must the abbot be, decided to let the monks alone.
Afanasief, who cites this story from Valyavets (Narodnuiya russkiya
Skazki, VIII, 460), says that he heard in the government of Voroneje a
story of a soldier who dressed himself as a monk and presented himself
before a tsar who was in the habit of puzzling people with riddles. The
questions are, How many drops in the sea? How many stars in the sky?
What do I think? And the answer to the last is, Thou thinkest, gosudar,
that I am a monk, but I am merely a soldier.[387]
A few tales, out of many remaining, may be now briefly mentioned, on
account of variations in the setting.
A prisoner is to be released if he can tell a queen how much she is
worth, the centre of the world, and what she thinks. A peasant changes
clothes with the prisoner, and answers _pro more_. Kurtzweiliger
Zeitvertreiber durch C. A. M. von W., 1668, p. 70 f, in Köhler, Orient
u. Occident, I, 43.
A scholar has done learning. His master says he must now answer three
questions, or have his head taken off. The master's brother, a miller,
comes to his aid. The questions are, How many ladders would reach to the
sky? Where is the middle of the world? What is the world worth? Or,
according to another tradition, the two last are, How long will it take
to go round the world? What is my thought? Campbell, Popular Tales of
the West Highlands, II, 391 f.
Eulenspiegel went to Prague, and advertised himself on the doors of the
churches and lecture-rooms as a great master, capable of answering
questions that nobody else could solve. To put him down, the rector and
his colleagues summoned Eulenspiegel to an examination before the
university. Five questions were given him: How much water is there in
the sea? How many days from Adam to now? Where is the middle of the
world? How far from earth to heaven? What is the breadth of the sky?
Lappenberg, Dr Thomas Murners Ulenspiegel, p. 38, No 28; Howleglas, ed.
Ouvry, p. 28.
A herdboy had a great fame for his shrewd answers. The king did not
believe in him, but sent for him, and said, If you can answer three
questions that I shall put, I will regard you as my own child, and you
shall live in my palace. The questions are, How many drops of water are
there in the ocean? How many stars in the sky? How many seconds in
eternity? The Grimms, K. u. H. märchen, No 152, 'Das Hirtenbüblein.'
Three questions are put to a counsellor of the king's, of which the
first two are, Where does the sun rise? How far from heaven to earth?
The answers, by a shepherd, are extraordinarily feeble. Jüdisches
Maasäbuch, cap. 126, cited from Helwigs Jüdische Historien, No 39, in
the Grimms' note to Das Hirtenbüblein.
Three monks, who know everything, in the course of their travels come to
a sultan's dominions, and he invites them to turn Mussulmans. This they
agree to do if he will answer their questions. All the sultan's doctors
are convened, but can do nothing with the monks' questions. The hodja
(the court-fool) is sent for. The first question, Where is the middle of
the earth? is answered as usual. The second monk asks, How many stars
are there in the sky? The answer is, As many as there are hairs on my
ass. Have you counted? ask the monks. Have _you_ counted? rejoins the
fool. Answer me this, says the same monk, and we shall see if your
number is right: How many hairs are there in my beard? "As many as in my
ass's tail." "Prove it." "My dear man, if you don't believe me, count
yourself; or we will pull all the hairs out of both, count them, and
settle the matter." The monks submit, and become Mussulmans. Les
plaisanteries de Nasr-eddin Hodja, traduites du turc par J. A.
Decourdemanche, No 70, p. 59 ff.
The Turkish emperor sends word to Kaiser Leopold that unless the emperor
can answer three questions he shall come down upon him with all his
Turks. The counsellors are summoned, but there is no help in them. The
court-fool offers to get his master out of the difficulty, if he may
have the loan of crown and sceptre. When the fool comes to
Constantinople, there lies the sultan in the window, and calls out, Are
you the emperor, and will you answer my questions? Where does the world
end? "Here, where my horse is standing." How far is it to heaven? "One
day's journey, and no inn on the road." What is God thinking of now? "He
is thinking that I am one fool and you another." J. W. Wolf, Hessische
Sagen, p. 165, No 262I.[388]
For the literature, see especially the Grimms' Kinder und Hausmärchen,
notes to No 152; R. Köhler in Orient und Occident, I, 439-41;
Oesterley's note to Pauli's Schimpf und Ernst, No 55, p. 479.
* * * * *
Translated, after Percy's Reliques, II, 302, 1765, by Bodmer, II, III;
by Doenniges, p. 152; by Ritter, Archiv für das Studium der neueren
Sprachen, XXII, 222. Retold by Bürger, 'Der Kaiser und der Abt,'
Göttinger Musenalmanach für 1785, p. 177.
A
Percy MS., p. 184. Hales and Furnivall, I, 508.
1
Off an ancient story Ile tell you anon,
Of a notable prince _tha_t was called K_in_g Iohn,
In England was borne, with maine and with might;
Hee did much wrong and mainteined litle right.
2
This noble prince was vexed in veretye,
For he was angry w_i_th the Bishopp of Canterbury;
Ffor his house-keeping and his good cheere,
Thé rode post for him, as you shall heare.
3
They rode post for him verry hastilye;
The k_in_g sayd the bishopp kept a better house then hee:
A hundred men euen, as I [have heard] say,
The bishopp kept in his house eu_er_ye day,
And fifty gold chaines, w_i_thout any doubt,
In veluett coates waited the bishopp about.
4
The bishopp, he came to the court anon,
Before his prince _tha_t was called K_ing_ Iohn.
As soone as the bishopp the k_ing_ did see,
'O,' q_uo_th the k_ing_, 'bishopp, thow art welcome to mee.
There is noe man soe welcome to towne
As thou _tha_t workes treason against my crowne.'
5
'My leege,' q_uo_th the bishopp, 'I wold it were knowne
I spend, yo_u_r grace, nothing but _tha_t _tha_t's my owne;
I trust yo_u_r grace will doe me noe deare
For spending my owne trew gotten geere.'
6
'Yes,' q_uo_th the k_ing_, 'bishopp, thou must needs dye,
Eccept thou can answere mee questions three;
Thy head shalbe smitten quite from thy bodye,
And all thy liuing remayne vnto mee.
7
'First,' q_uo_th the k_ing_, 'tell me in this steade,
W_i_th this crowne of gold heere vpon my head,
Amongst my nobilitye, w_i_th ioy and much mirth,
Lett me know w_i_thin one pennye what I am worth.
8
'Secondlye, tell me without any dowbt
How soone I may goe the whole world about;
And thirdly, tell mee or eu_er_ I stinte,
What is the thing, bishopp, _tha_t I doe thinke.
Twenty dayes pardon thoust haue trulye,
And come againe and answere mee.'
9
The bishopp bade the k_ing_ god night att a word;
He rode betwixt Cambridge and Oxenford,
But neu_er_ a doctor there was soe wise
Cold shew him these questions or enterprise.
10
Wherew_i_th the bishopp was nothing gladd,
But in his hart was heauy and sadd,
And hyed him home to a house in the countrye,
To ease some p_ar_t of his melanchollye.
11
His halfe-brother dwelt there, was feirce and fell,
Noe better but a shepard to the bishoppe himsell;
The shepard came to the bishopp anon,
Saying, My Lord, you are welcome home!
12
'What ayles you,' q_uo_th the shepard,' _tha_t you are soe sadd,
And had wonte to haue beene soe merry and gladd?'
'Nothing,' q_uo_th the bishopp, 'I ayle att this time;
Will not thee availe to know, brother mine.'
13
'Brother,' q_uo_th the shepeard, 'you haue heard itt,
_Tha_t a ffoole may teach a wisemane witt;
Say me therfore whatsoeu_er_ you will,
And if I doe you noe good, Ile doe you noe ill.'
14
Q_uo_th the bishop: I haue beene att the court anon,
Before my prince is called K_ing_ Iohn,
And there he hath charged mee
Against his crowne with traitorye.
15
If I cannott answer his misterye,
Three questions hee hath p_ro_pounded to mee,
He will haue my land soe faire and free,
And alsoe the head from my bodye.
16
The first question was, to tell him in _tha_t stead,
W_i_th the crowne of gold vpon his head,
Amongst his nobilitye, w_i_th ioy and much mirth,
To lett him know w_i_thin one penye what hee is worth.
17
And secondlye, to tell him w_i_th-out any doubt
How soone he may goe the whole world about;
And thirdlye, to tell him, or ere I stint,
What is the thinge _tha_t he does thinke.
18
'Brother,' q_uo_th the shepard, 'you are a man of learninge;
What neede you stand in doubt of soe small a thinge?
Lend me,' q_uo_th the shepard, 'yo_u_r ministers apparrell,
Ile ryde to the court and answere yo_u_r quarrell.
19
'Lend me yo_u_r serving men, say me not nay,
W_i_th all yo_u_r best horsses _tha_t ryd on the way;
Ile to the court, this matter to stay;
Ile speake w_i_th K_ing_ Iohn and heare what heele say.'
20
The bishopp w_i_th speed p_re_pared then
To sett forth the shepard with horsse and man;
The shepard was liuely w_i_thout any doubt;
I wott a royall companye came to the court.
21
The shepard hee came to the court anon
Before [his] prince _tha_t was called K_ing_ Iohn.
As soone as the k_ing_ the shepard did see,
'O,' q_uo_th the king, 'bishopp, thou art welcome to me.'
The shepard was soe like the bishopp his brother,
The k_ing_ cold not know the one from the other.
22
Q_uo_th the k_ing_, Bishopp, thou art welcome to me
If thou can answer me my questions three.
Said the shepeard, If it please yo_u_r grace,
Show mee what the first quest[i]on was.
23
'First,' q_uo_th the k_ing_, 'tell mee in this stead,
W_i_th the crowne of gold vpon my head,
Amongst my nobilitye, w_i_th ioy and much mirth,
W_i_thin one pennye what I am worth.'
24
Q_uo_th the shepard, To make yo_u_r grace noe offence,
I thinke you are worth nine and twenty pence;
For our L_ord_ Iesus, _tha_t bought vs all,
For thirty pence was sold into thrall
Amongst the cursed Iewes, as I to you doe showe;
But I know Christ was one penye better then you.
25
Then the k_ing_ laught, and swore by St Andrew
He was not thought to bee of such a small value.
'Secondlye, tell mee w_i_th-out any doubt
How soone I may goe the world round about.'
26
Saies the shepard, It is noe time with yo_u_r grace to scorne,
But rise betime w_i_th the sun in the morne,
And follow his course till his vprising,
And then you may know w_i_thout any leasing.
27
And this [to] yo_u_r grace shall proue the same,
You are come to the same place from whence you came;
[In] twenty-four houres, w_i_th-out any doubt,
Yo_u_r grace may the world goe round about;
The world round about, euen as I doe say,
If w_i_th the sun you can goe the next way.
28
'And thirdlye tell me or eu_er_ I stint,
What is the thing, bishoppe, _tha_t I doe thinke.'
'_Tha_t shall I doe,' q_uo_th the shepeard; 'for veretye,
You thinke I am the bishopp of Canterburye.'
29
'Why, art not thou? the truth tell to me;
For I doe thinke soe,' q_uo_th the k_ing_, 'by St Marye.'
'Not soe,' q_uo_th the shepeard; 'the truth shalbe knowne,
I am his poore shepeard; my brother is att home.'
30
'Why,' q_uo_th the k_ing_, 'if itt soe bee,
Ile make thee bishopp here to mee.'
'Noe, Sir,' q_uo_th the shepard, 'I pray you be still,
For Ile not bee bishop but against my will;
For I am not fitt for any such deede,
For I can neither write nor reede.'
31
'Why then,' q_uo_th the k_ing_, 'Ile giue thee cleere
A pattent of three hundred pound a yeere;
_Tha_t I will giue thee franke and free;
Take thee _tha_t, shepard, for coming to me.
32
'Free p_ar_don Ile giue,' the k_ing_s grace said,
'To saue the bishopp, his land and his head;
W_i_th him nor thee Ile be nothing wrath;
Here is the p_ar_don for him and thee both.'
33
Then the shepard he had noe more to say,
But tooke the p_ar_don and rode his way:
When he came to the bishopps place,
The bishopp asket anon how all things was.
34
'Brother,' q_uo_th the shepard, 'I haue well sped,
For I haue saued both yo_u_r land and yo_u_r head;
The k_ing_ with you is nothing wrath,
For heere is the p_ar_don for you and mee both.'
35
Then the bishopes hart was of a merry cheere:
'Brother, thy paines Ile quitt them cleare;
For I will giue thee a patent to thee and to thine
Of fifty pound a yeere, land good and fine.'
36
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
'I will to thee noe longer croche nor creepe,
Nor Ile serue thee noe more to keepe thy sheepe.'
37
Whereeu_er_ wist you shepard before,
_Tha_t had in his head witt such store
To pleasure a bishopp in such a like case,
To answer three questions to the k_ing_s grace?
Whereeu_er_ wist you shepard gett cleare
Three hundred and fifty pound a yeere?
38
I neu_er_ hard of his fellow before,
Nor I neu_er_ shall: now I need to say noe more.
I neu_er_ knew shepeard _tha_t gott such a liuinge
But David, the shepeard, _tha_t was a k_ing_.
B
Broadside, printed for P. Brooksby, at the Golden Ball in
Pye-corner (1672-95).
1
I'll tell you a story, a story anon,
Of a noble prince, and his name was King John;
For he was a prince, and a prince of great might,
He held up great wrongs, he put down great right.
Derry down, down hey, derry down
2
I'll tell you a story, a story so merry,
Concerning the Abbot of Canterbury,
And of his house-keeping and high renown,
Which made him resort to fair London town.
3
'How now, father abbot? 'T is told unto me
That thou keepest a far better house than I;
And for [thy] house-keeping and high renown,
I fear thou has treason against my crown.'
4
'I hope, my liege, that you owe me no grudge
For spending of my true-gotten goods:'
'If thou dost not answer me questions three,
Thy head shall be taken from thy body.
5
'When I am set so high on my steed,
With my crown of gold upon my head,
Amongst all my nobility, with joy and much mirth,
Thou must tell me to one penny what I am worth.
6
'And the next question you must not flout,
How long I shall be riding the world about;
And the third question thou must not shrink,
But tell to me truly what I do think.'
7
'O these are hard questions for my shallow wit,
For I cannot answer your grace as yet;
But if you will give me but three days space,
I'll do my endeavor to answer your grace.'
8
'O three days space I will thee give,
For that is the longest day thou hast to live.
And if thou dost not answer these questions right,
Thy head shall be taken from thy body quite.'
9
And as the shepherd was going to his fold,
He spy'd the old abbot come riding along:
'How now, master abbot? You'r welcome home;
What news have you brought from good King John?'
10
'Sad news, sad news I have thee to give,
For I have but three days space for to live;
If I do not answer him questions three,
My head will be taken from my body.
11
'When he is set so high on his steed,
With his crown of gold upon his head,
Amongst all his nobility, with joy and much mirth,
I must tell him to one penny what he is worth.
12
'And the next question I must not flout,
How long he shall be riding the world about;
And the third question I must not shrink,
But tell him truly what he does think.'
13
'O master, did you never hear it yet,
That a fool may learn a wiseman wit?
Lend me but your horse and your apparel,
I'll ride to fair London and answer the quarrel.'
14
'Now I am set so high on my steed,
With my crown of gold upon my head,
Amongst all my nobility, with joy and much mirth,
Now tell me to one penny what I am worth.'
15
'For thirty pence our Saviour was sold,
Amongst the false Jews, as you have been told,
And nine and twenty's the worth of thee,
For I think thou are one penny worser than he.'
16
'And the next question thou mayst not flout;
How long I shall be riding the world about.'
'You must rise with the sun, and ride with the same,
Until the next morning he rises again,
And then I am sure you will make no doubt
But in twenty-four hours you'l ride it about.'
17
'And the third question you must not shrink,
But tell me truly what I do think.'
'All that I can do, and 't will make you merry;
For you think I'm the Abbot of Canterbury,
But I'm his poor shepherd, as you may see,
And am come to beg pardon for he and for me.'
18
The king he turned him about and did smile,
Saying, Thou shalt be the abbot the other while:
'O no, my grace, there is no such need,
For I can neither write nor read.'
19
'Then four pounds a week will I give unto thee
For this merry jest thou hast told unto me;
And tell the old abbot, when thou comest home,
Thou hast brought him a pardon from good King John.'
* * * * *
#A.#
_Not divided into stanzas in the MS._
3^3, 3^5, 6^2, 8^5, 15^2, 22^2, 24^4, 27^3, 31^2, 37^4.
_Arabic numerals are expressed in letters._
14^1. thy court.
24^2. worth 29 pence.
31^2. patten.
31^4. caming.
35^4. 50_{:}^11.
37^6. 350_{:}^11.
#B.#
5^1, 11^1, 14^1. on my [his] steed so high.
7^1. my sh ow.
11^1. sat.
12^3. thou must.
19^4. K. John.
[376] A New Ballad of King John and the Abbot of Canterbury. To the Tune
of The King and the Lord Abbot. With allowance. Ro. L'Estrange. Printed
for P. Brooksby at the Golden Ball in Pye-corner.
[377] The King and the Bishop, or,
Unlearned Men hard matters out can find
When Learned Bishops Princes eyes do blind.
To the Tune of Chievy Chase. Printed for F. Coles, T. Vere, and J.
Wright (1655-80). Printed for J. Wright, Clarke, W. Thackeray, and T.
Passenver.
The Old Abbot and King Olfrey. To the tune of the Shaking of the Sheets.
Printed by and for A. M., and sold by the booksellers of London.
J. Wright's date is 1650-82, T. Passinger's, 1670-82. Chappell.
[378] Printed by J. M. for C. D., at the Stationers Armes within
Aldgate. C. D. is, no doubt, C. Dennison, who published 1685-89. See
Chappell, The Roxburghe Ballads, I, xix.
[379] Among these, St Bittel for St Andrew of #A# 26, with the note,
"meaning probably St Botolph:" why "probably"?
[380] This story serves as a gloss on 2 Chronicles, ii, 13, 14, where
Hiram sends Solomon a cunning Tyrian, skilful to find out every device
which shall be put to him by the cunning men of Jerusalem. The Queen of
Sheba's hard questions to Solomon, not specified in 1 Kings, x, 1-13,
were, according to tradition, of the same general character as the
Indian ones spoken of at p. 12. See Hertz, Die Rätsel der Königin von
Saba, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, XXVII, 1 ff.
[381] These are proper riddles, and of a kind still current in popular
tradition. See, e. g., Svend Vonved, Grundtvig, I, 237 f. There are
thirty-five, before the last, in the oldest text, given, with a
translation, by Vigfusson and Powell, Corpus Poeticum Boreale, 'King
Heidrek's Riddles,' I, 86 ff.
[382] Sacchetti's life extended beyond 1400, or perhaps beyond 1410.
[383] The form of the third question is slightly varied at first ¿Cuál
es el error en que yo estoy pensando? But when put to the herdsman the
question is simply ¿En qué estoy yo pensando? I was pointed to this
story by Seidemann, in Archiv für Litteraturgeschichte, IX, 423.
Trueba's C. P. forms vol. 19 of Brockhaus's Coleccion de Autores
Españoles.
[384] The editor of the Grand Parangon, at p. xiii, cites from an older
source an anecdote of a king insisting upon being told how much he ought
to bring if offered for sale. While his courtiers are giving flattering
replies, a fool leaps forward and says, Twenty-nine deniers, and no
more; for if you were worth thirty, that would be autant que le
tout-puissant Dieu valut, quant il fut vendu. The king took this answer
to heart, and repented of his vanities. So an emperor is converted by
this reply from a man-at-arms, Van den verwenden Keyser, Jan van
Hollant, c. 1400, Willems, Belgisch Museum, X, 57; Thijm, p. 145. The
like question and answer, as a riddle, in a German MS. of the fifteenth
century, and in Questions énigmatiques, Lyon, 1619; Köhler, in
Weimarisches Jahrbuch, V, 354 ff.
[385] In Prussia Frederick the Great plays the part of Gustavus. Sepp,
p. 558.
[386] Another Swabian story, in Meier, No 28, p. 99, is a mixed form.
The Duke of Swabia reads "Hans sans cares" over a miller's house-door,
and says, "Bide a wee: if you have no cares, I will give you some." The
duke, to give the miller a taste of what care is, says he must solve
this riddle or lose his mill: Come to me neither by day nor by night,
neither naked nor clothed, neither on foot nor on horseback. The miller
promises his man his daughter in marriage and the mill in succession, if
he will help him out of his dilemma. The man at once says, Go on
Mid-week, for Mid-week is no day (Mitt-woch ist ja gar kein Tag, wie
Sonn-tag, Mon-tag), neither is it night; and if you are to be neither
clothed nor bare, put on a fishing-net; and if you are to go neither on
foot nor on horseback, ride to him on an ass. All but the beginning of
this is derived from the cycle of 'The Clever Wench:' see No 2.
Haltrich, Deutsche Volksmärchen in Siebenbürgen, No 45, which is also of
this cycle, has taken up a little of 'Hans ohne Sorgen.' A church has an
inscription, Wir leben ohne Sorgen. This vexes the king, who says as
before, Just wait, and I will give you reason for cares, p. 244, ed.
1856.
[387] These two stories were communicated to me by Mr Ralston.
[388] In the beginning there is a clear trace of the Oriental tales of
'The Clever Lass' cycle.
46
CAPTAIN WEDDERBURN'S COURTSHIP
#A. a.# 'I'll no ly neist the wa,' Herd's MS., I, 161.
#b.# 'She'll no ly neist [the] wa,' the same, II, 100.
#B. a.# 'The Earl of Rosslyn's Daughter,' Kinloch MSS, I,
83. #b.# 'Lord Roslin's Daughter,' Lord Roslin's
Daughter's Garland, p. 4. #c.# 'Lord Roslin's Daughter,'
Buchan's MSS, II, 34. #d.# 'Captain Wedderburn's
Courtship,' Jamieson's Popular Ballads, II, 159. #e.#
Harris MS., fol. 19 b, No 14. #f.# Notes and Queries, 2d
S., IV, 170.
#C.# 'The Laird of Roslin's Daughter,' Sheldon's
Minstrelsy of the English Border, p. 232.
A copy of this ballad was printed in The New British Songster, a
Collection of Songs, Scots and English, with Toasts and Sentiments for
the Bottle, Falkirk, 1785: see Motherwell, p. lxxiv.[389] Few were more
popular, says Motherwell, and Jamieson remarks that 'Captain
Wedderburn' was equally in vogue in the north and the south of Scotland.
Jamieson writes to the Scots Magazine, 1803, p. 701: "Of this ballad I
have got one whole copy and part of another, and I remember a good deal
of it as I have heard it sung in Morayshire when I was a child." In his
Popular Ballads, II, 154, 1806, he says that the copy which he prints
was furnished him from Mr Herd's MS. by the editor of the Border
Minstrelsy, and that he had himself supplied a few readings of small
importance from his own recollection. There is some inaccuracy here. The
version given by Jamieson is rather #B#, with readings from #A#.
We have had of the questions six, #A# 11, 12, What is greener than the
grass? in No 1, #A# 15, #C# 13, #D# 5; What's higher than the tree? in
#C# 9, #D# 1; What's war than a woman's wiss? ("than a woman _was_") #A#
15, #C# 13, #D# 5; What's deeper than the sea? #A# 13, #B# 8, #C# 9, #D#
1. Of the three dishes, #A# 8, 9, we have the bird without a gall in Ein
Spil von den Freiheit, Fastnachtspiele aus dem 15^n Jhdt, II, 558, v.
23,[390] and the two others in the following song, from a manuscript
assigned to the fifteenth century, and also preserved in several forms
by oral tradition:[391] Sloane MS., No 2593, British Museum; Wright's
Songs and Carols, 1836, No 8; as printed for the Warton Club, No xxix,
p. 33.
I have a ȝong suster fer beȝondyn the se,
Many be the drowryis that che sente me.
Che sente me the cherye, withoutyn ony ston,
And so che dede [the] dowe, withoutyn ony bon.
Sche sente me the brere, withoutyn ony rynde,
Sche bad me love my lemman withoute longgyng.
How xuld ony cherye be withoute ston?
And how xuld ony dowe ben withoute bon?
How xuld any brere ben withoute rynde?
How xuld y love myn lemman without longyng?
Quan the cherye was a flour, than hadde it non ston;
Quan the dowe was an ey, than hadde it non bon.
Quan the brere was onbred, than hadde it non rynd;
Quan the mayden haȝt that che lovit, che is without longyng.
'Captain Wedderburn's Courtship,' or 'Lord Roslin's Daughter,'[392] is a
counterpart of the ballad in which a maid wins a husband by guessing
riddles. (See Nos 1 and 2, and also the following ballad, for a lady who
_gives_ riddles.) The ingenious suitor, though not so favorite a
subject as the clever maid, may boast that he is of an old and
celebrated family. We find him in the Gesta Romanorum, No 70; Oesterley,
p. 383, Madden's English Versions, No 35, p. 384. A king had a beautiful
daughter, whom he wished to dispose of in marriage; but she had made a
vow that she would accept no husband who had not achieved three tasks:
to tell her how many feet long, broad, and deep were the four elements;
to change the wind from the north; to take fire into his bosom, next the
flesh, without harm. The king issued a proclamation in accordance with
these terms. Many tried and failed, but at last there came a soldier who
succeeded. To answer the first question he made his servant lie down,
and measured him from head to foot. Every living being is composed of
the four elements, he said, and I find not more than seven feet in them.
A very easy way was hit on for performing the second task: the soldier
simply turned his horse's head to the east, and, since wind is the life
of every animal, maintained that he had changed the wind. The king was
evidently not inclined to be strict, and said, Clear enough. Let us go
on to the third. Then, by the aid of a stone which he always carried
about him, the soldier put handfuls of burning coals into his bosom
without injury. The king gave his daughter to the soldier.
An extraordinary ballad in Sakellarios's _Κυπριακα_ III, 15, No 6,
'The Hundred Sayings,' subjects a lover to a severe probation of
riddles. (Liebrecht has given a full abstract of the story in Gosche's
Archiv, II, 29.) A youth is madly enamored of a king's daughter, but,
though his devotion knows no bound, cannot for a long time get a word
from her mouth, and then only disdain. She shuts herself up in a tower.
He prays for a heat that may force her to come to the window, and that
she may drop her spindle, and he be the only one to bring it to her. The
heavens are kind: all this comes to pass, and she is fain to beg him to
bring her the spindle. She asks, Can you do what I say? Shoulder a
tower? make a stack of eggs? trim a date-tree, standing in a great
river?[393] All this he can do. She sends him away once and again to
learn various things; last of all, the hundred sayings that lovers use.
He presents himself for examination. "One?" "There is one only God: may
he help me!" "Two?" "Two doves with silver wings are sporting together:
I saw how they kissed," etc. "Three?" "Holy Trinity, help me to love the
maid!" "Four?" "There is a four-pointed cross on thy smock, and it
implores God I may be thy mate:" and so he is catechised through all the
units and tens.[394] Then the lady suddenly turns about, concedes
everything, and proposes that they shall go to church: but the man says,
If I am to marry all my loves, I have one in every town, and wife and
children in Constantinople. They part with reciprocal scurrilities.
Usually when the hand of a princess is to be won by the performance of
tasks, whether requiring wit, courage, the overcoming of magic arts, or
what not, the loss of your head is the penalty of failure. (See the
preface to the following ballad.) Apollonius of Tyre, of Greek original,
but first found in a Latin form, is perhaps the oldest riddle-story of
this description. Though its age has not been determined, the tale has
been carried back even to the end of the third or the beginning of the
fourth century, was a great favorite with the Middle Ages, and is kept
only too familiar by the play of Pericles.
More deserving of perpetuation is the charming Persian story of Prince
Calaf, in Pétis de La Croix's 1001 Days (45^e-82^e jour), upon which
Carlo Gozzi founded his play of "La Turandot," now best known through
Schiller's translation. Tourandocte's riddles are such as we should call
legitimate, and are three in number. "What is the being that is found in
every land, is dear to all the world, and cannot endure a fellow?" Calaf
answers, The sun. "What mother swallows the children she has given birth
to, as soon as they have attained their growth?" The sea, says Calaf,
for the rivers that flow into it all came from it. "What is the tree
that has all its leaves white on one side and black on the other?" This
tree, Calaf answers, is the year, which is made up of days and
nights.[395]
A third example of this hazardous wooing is the story of The Fair One of
the Castle, the fourth in the Persian poem of The Seven Figures (or
Beauties), by Nisami of Gendsch († 1180). A Russian princess is shut
up in a castle made inaccessible by a talisman, and every suitor must
satisfy four conditions: he must be a man of honor, vanquish the
enchanted guards, take away the talisman, and obtain the consent of her
father. Many had essayed their fortune, and their heads were now arrayed
on the pinnacles of the castle.[396] A young prince had fulfilled the
first three conditions, but the father would not approve his suit until
he had solved the princess's riddles. These are expressed symbolically,
and answered in the same way. The princess sends the prince two pearls
from her earring: he at once takes her meaning,--life is like two drops
of water,--and returns the pearls with three diamonds, to signify that
joy--faith, hope, and love--can prolong life. The princess now sends him
three jewels in a box, with sugar. The prince seizes the idea,--life is
blended with sensuous desire,--and pours milk on the sugar, to intimate
that as milk dissolves sugar, so sensuous desire is quenched by true
love. After four such interchanges, the princess seals her consent with
a device not less elegant than the others.[397]
A popular tale of this class is current in Russia, with this variation:
that the hard-hearted princess requires her lovers to give her riddles,
and those who cannot pose her lose their heads. Foolish Iván, the
youngest of three brothers, adventures after many have failed. On his
way to the trial he sees a horse in a cornfield and drives it out with a
whip, and further on kills a snake with a lance, saying in each case,
Here's a riddle! Confronted with the princess, he says to her, As I came
to you, I saw by the roadside what was good; and in the good was good;
so I set to work, and with what was good I drove the good from the good.
The good fled from the good out of the good. The princess pleads a
headache, and puts off her answer till the next day, when Iván gives her
his second enigma: As I came to you, I saw on the way what was bad, and
I struck the bad with a bad thing, and of what was bad the bad died. The
princess, unable to solve these puzzles, is obliged to accept foolish
Iván. (Afanasief, Skazki, II, 225 ff, No 20, in Ralston's Songs of the
Russian People, p. 354 f.) Closely related to this tale, and still
nearer to one another, are the Grimms' No 22, 'Das Räthsel' (see, also,
the note in their third volume), and the West Highland story, 'The
Ridere (Knight) of Riddles,' Campbell, No 22, II, 27. In the former, as
in the Russian tale, it is the princess that must be puzzled before she
will yield her hand; in the latter, an unmatchable beauty is to be had
by no man who does not put a question which her father cannot solve.
Here may be put three drolleries, all clearly of the same origin, in
which a fool wins a princess by nonplussing her: 'The Three Questions,'
Halliwell's Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales, p. 32; a "schwank" of the
fourteenth century, by Heinz der Kellner, von der Hagen's
Gesammtabenteuer, No 63, III, 179 (there very improperly called
Turandot); 'Spurningen,' Asbjørnson og Moe, Norske Folkeeventyr, No 4,
Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, p. 148. According to the first of
these, the king of the East Angles promises his clever daughter to any
one who can answer three of her questions (in the other versions, more
correctly, _silence_ her). Three brothers, one of them a natural, set
out for the court, and, on the way, Jack finds successively an egg, a
crooked hazel-stick, and a nut, and each time explodes with laughter.
When they are ushered into the presence, Jack bawls out, What a troop of
fair ladies! "Yes," says the princess, "we are fair ladies, for we carry
fire in our bosoms." "Then roast me an egg," says Jack, pulling out the
egg from his pocket. "How will you get it out again?" asks the princess?
"With a crooked stick," says Jack, producing the same. "Where did that
come from?" says the princess. "From a nut," answers Jack, pulling out
the nut. And so, as the princess is silenced, the fool gets her in
marriage.[398]
Even nowadays riddles play a noteworthy part in the marriages of Russian
peasants. In the government Pskof, as we are informed by Khudyakof, the
bridegroom's party is not admitted into the bride's house until all the
riddles given by the party of the bride have been answered; whence the
saying or proverb, to the behoof of bridegrooms, Choose comrades that
can guess riddles. In the village of Davshina, in the Yaroslav
government, the bridegroom's best man presents himself at the bride's
house on the wedding-day, and finding a man, called the bride-seller,
sitting by the bride, asks him to surrender the bride and vacate his
place. "Fair and softly," answers the seller; "you will not get the
bride for nothing; make us a bid, if you will. And how will you trade?
will you pay in riddles or in gold?" If the best man is prepared for the
emergency, as we must suppose he always would be, he answers, I will pay
in riddles. Half a dozen or more riddles are now put by the seller, of
which these are favorable specimens: Give me the sea, full to the brim,
and with a bottom of silver. The best man makes no answer in words, but
fills a bowl with beer and lays a coin at the bottom. Tell me the thing,
naked itself, which has a shift over its bosom. The best man hands the
seller a candle. Finally the seller says, Give me something which the
master of this house lacks. The best man then brings in the bridegroom.
The seller gives up his seat, and hands the best man a plate, saying,
Put in this what all pretty girls like. The best man puts in what money
he thinks proper, the bridesmaids take it and quit the house, and the
bridegroom's friends carry off the bride.
So, apparently in some ballad, a maid gives riddles, and will marry only
the man who will guess them.
By day like a hoop,
By night like a snake;
Who reads my riddle,
I take him for mate. (A belt.)
No 1103 of Khudyakof.[399]
In Radloff's Songs and Tales of the Turkish tribes in East Siberia, I,
60, a father, wanting a wife for his son, applies to another man, who
has a marriageable daughter. The latter will not make a match unless the
young man's father will come to him with pelt and sans pelt, by the road
and not by the road, on a horse and yet not on a horse: see 8 ff of this
volume. The young man gives his father proper instructions, and wins his
wife.
A Lithuanian mother sends her daughter to the wood to fetch "winter May
and summer snow." She meets a herdsman, and asks where she can find
these. The herdsman offers to teach her these riddles in return for her
love, and she complying with these terms, gives her the answers: The
evergreen tree is winter May, and sea-foam is summer snow. Beiträge zur
Kunde Preussens, I, 515 (Rhesa), and Ausland, 1839, p. 1230.
The European tales, excepting the three drolleries (and even they are
perhaps to be regarded only as parodies of the others), must be of
Oriental derivation; but the far north presents us with a similar story
in the lay of Alvíss, in the elder Edda. The dwarf Alvíss comes to claim
Freya for his bride by virtue of a promise from the gods. Thor[400] says
that the bride is in his charge, and that he was from home when the
promise was made: at any rate, Alvíss shall not have the maid unless he
can answer all the questions that shall be put him. Thor then requires
Alvíss to give him the names of earth, heaven, moon, sun, etc., ending
with barley and the poor creature small beer, in all the worlds; that
is, in the dialect of the gods, of mankind, giants, elves, dwarfs, etc.
Alvíss does this with such completeness as to extort Thor's admiration,
but is craftily detained in so doing till after sunrise, when Thor
cries, You are taken in! Above ground at dawn! and the dwarf turns to
stone.
* * * * *
Translated, in part, after Aytoun, by Knortz, Schottische Balladen, p.
107.
A
#a.# Herd's MS., I, 161. #b.# The same, II, 100.
1
The laird of Bristoll's daughter was in the woods walking,
And by came Captain Wetherbourn, a servant to the king;
And he said to his livery man, Wer 't not against the law,
I would tak her to mine ain bed, and lay her neist the wa.
2
'I'm into my father's woods, amongst my father's trees,
O kind sir, let mee walk alane, O kind sir, if you please;
The butler's bell it will be rung, and I'll be mist awa;
I'll lye into mine ain bed, neither at stock nor wa.'
3
'O my bonny lady, the bed it's not be mine,
For I'll command my servants for to call it thine;
The hangings are silk satin, the sheets are holland sma,
And we's baith lye in ae bed, but you's lye neist the wa.
4
'And so, my bonny lady,--I do not know your name,--
But my name's Captain Wetherburn, and I'm a man of fame;
Tho your father and a' his men were here, I would na stand in awe
To tak you to mine ain bed, and lay you neist the wa.
5
'Oh my bonny, bonny lady, if you'll gie me your hand,
You shall hae drums and trumpets to sound at your command;
Wi fifty men to guard you, sae weel their swords can dra,
And wee's baith lye in ae bed, but you's lye neist the wa.'
6
He's mounted her upon a steid, behind his gentleman,
And he himself did walk afoot, to had his lady on,
With his hand about her midle sae jimp, for fear that she should fa;
She man lye in his bed, but she'll not lye neist the wa.
7
He's taen her into Edinburgh, his landlady cam ben:
'And monny bonny ladys in Edinburgh hae I seen,
But the like of this fine creature my eyes they never sa;'
'O dame bring ben a down-bed, for she's lye neist the wa.'
8
'Hold your tongue, young man,' she said, 'and dinna trouble me,
Unless you get to my supper, and that is dishes three;
Dishes three to my supper, tho I eat nane at a',
Before I lye in your bed, but I winna lye neist the wa.
9
'You maun get to my supper a cherry but a stane,
And you man get to my supper a capon but a bane,
And you man get a gentle bird that flies wanting the ga,
Before I lye in your bed, but I'll not lye neist the wa.'
10
'A cherry whan in blossom is a cherry but a stane;
A capon when he's in the egg canna hae a bane;
The dow it is a gentle bird that flies wanting the ga;
And ye man lye in my bed, between me and the wa.'
11
'Hold your tongue, young man,' she said, 'and dinna me perplex,
Unless you tell me questions, and that is questions six;
Tell me them as I shall ask them, and that is twa by twa,
Before I lye in your bed, but I'll not lye neist the wa.
12
'What is greener than the grass, what's higher than the tree?
What's war than a woman's wiss, what's deeper than the sea?
What bird sings first, and whereupon the dew down first does fa?
Before I lye in your bed, but I'll not lye neist the wa.'
13
'Virgus is greener than the grass, heaven's higher than the tree;
The deil's war than a woman's wish, hell's deeper than the sea;
The cock sings first, on the Sugar Loaf the dew down first does fa;
And ye man lye in my bed, betweest me and the wa.'
14
'Hold your tongue, young man,' she said, 'I pray you give it oer,
Unless you tell me questions, and that is questions four;
Tell me them as I shall ask them, and that is twa by twa,
Before I lye in your bed, but I winna lye neist the wa.
15
'You man get to me a plumb that does in winter grow;
And likewise a silk mantle that never waft gaed thro;
A sparrow's horn, a priest unborn, this night to join us twa,
Before I lye in your bed, but I winna lye neist the wa.'
16
'There is a plumb in my father's yeard that does in winter grow;
Likewise he has a silk mantle that never waft gaed thro;
A sparrow's horn, it may be found, there's ane in every tae,
There's ane upo the mouth of him, perhaps there may be twa.
17
'The priest is standing at the door, just ready to come in;
Nae man could sae that he was born, to lie it is a sin;
For a wild boar bored his mother's side, he out of it did fa;
And you man lye in my bed, between me and the wa.'
18
Little kent Grizey Sinclair, that morning when she raise,
'T was to be the hindermost of a' her single days;
For now she's Captain Wetherburn's wife, a man she never saw,
And she man lye in his bed, but she'll not lye neist the wa.
B
#a.# Kinloch MSS, I, 83, from Mary Barr's recitation. #b.#
Lord Roslin's Daughter's Garland. #c.# Buchan's MSS, II,
34. #d.# Jamieson's Popular Ballads, II, 159. #e.# Harris
MS., fol. 19 b, No 14, from Mrs Harris's recitation. #f.#
Notes and Queries, 2d S., IV, 170, "as sung among the
peasantry of the Mearns," 1857.
1
The Lord of Rosslyn's daughter gaed through the wud her lane,
And there she met Captain Wedderburn, a servant to the king.
He said unto his livery-man, Were 't na agen the law,
I wad tak her to my ain bed, and lay her at the wa.
2
'I'm walking here my lane,' she says, 'amang my father's trees;
And ye may lat me walk my lane, kind sir, now gin ye please.
The supper-bell it will be rung, and I'll be missd awa;
Sae I'll na lie in your bed, at neither stock nor wa.'
3
He said, My pretty lady, I pray lend me your hand,
And ye'll hae drums and trumpets always at your command;
And fifty men to guard ye wi, that weel their swords can draw;
Sae we'll baith lie in ae bed, and ye'll lie at the wa.
4
'Haud awa frae me, kind sir, I pray let go my hand;
The supper-bell it will be rung, nae langer maun I stand.
My father he'll na supper tak, gif I be missd awa;
Sae I'll na lie in your bed, at neither stock nor wa.'
5
'O my name is Captain Wedderburn, my name I'll neer deny,
And I command ten thousand men, upo yon mountains high.
Tho your father and his men were here, of them I'd stand na awe,
But should tak ye to my ain bed, and lay ye neist the wa.'
6
Then he lap aff his milk-white steed, and set the lady on,
And a' the way he walkd on foot, he held her by the hand;
He held her by the middle jimp, for fear that she should fa;
Saying, I'll tak ye to my ain bed, and lay thee at the wa.
7
He took her to his quartering-house, his landlady looked ben,
Saying, Monie a pretty ladie in Edinbruch I've seen;
But sic 'na pretty ladie is not into it a':
Gae, mak for her a fine down-bed, and lay her at the wa.
8
'O haud awa frae me, kind sir, I pray ye lat me be,
For I'll na lie in your bed till I get dishes three;
Dishes three maun be dressd for me, gif I should eat them a',
Before I lie in your bed, at either stock or wa.
9
''T is I maun hae to my supper a chicken without a bane;
And I maun hae to my supper a cherry without a stane;
And I maun hae to my supper a bird without a gaw,
Before I lie in your bed, at either stock or wa.'
10
'Whan the chicken's in the shell, I am sure it has na bane;
And whan the cherry's in the bloom, I wat it has na stane;
The dove she is a genty bird, she flees without a gaw;
Sae we'll baith lie in ae bed, and ye'll be at the wa.'
11
'O haud awa frae me, kind sir, I pray ye give me owre,
For I'll na lie in your bed, till I get presents four;
Presents four ye maun gie me, and that is twa and twa,
Before I lie in your bed, at either stock or wa.
12
''T is I maun hae some winter fruit that in December grew;
And I maun hae a silk mantil that waft gaed never through;
A sparrow's horn, a priest unborn, this nicht to join us twa,
Before I lie in your bed, at either stock or wa.'
13
'My father has some winter fruit that in December grew;
My mither has a silk mantil the waft gaed never through;
A sparrow's horn ye soon may find, there's ane on evry claw,
And twa upo the gab o it, and ye shall get them a'.
14
'The priest he stands without the yett, just ready to come in;
Nae man can say he eer was born, nae man without he sin;
He was haill cut frae his mither's side, and frae the same let fa;
Sae we'll baith lie in ae bed, and ye'se lie at the wa.'
15
'O haud awa frae me, kind sir, I pray don't me perplex,
For I'll na lie in your bed till ye answer questions six:
Questions six ye maun answer me, and that is four and twa,
Before I lie in your bed, at either stock or wa.
16
'O what is greener than the gress, what's higher than thae trees?
O what is worse than women's wish, what's deeper than the seas?
What bird craws first, what tree buds first, what first does on them
fa?
Before I lie in your bed, at either stock or wa.'
17
'Death is greener than the gress, heaven higher than thae trees;
The devil's waur than women's wish, hell's deeper than the seas;
The cock craws first, the cedar buds first, dew first on them does fa;
Sae we'll baith lie in ae bed, and ye'se lie at the wa.'
18
Little did this lady think, that morning whan she raise,
That this was for to be the last o a' her maiden days.
But there's na into the king's realm to be found a blither twa,
And now she's Mrs. Wedderburn, and she lies at the wa.
C
Sheldon's Minstrelsy of the English Border, p. 232, as
recited "by a lady of Berwick on Tweed, who used to sing
it in her childhood, and had learnt it from her nurse."
1
The laird of Roslin's daughter walked thro the wood her lane,
And by came Captain Wedderburn, a servant to the Queen;
He said unto his serving man, Wer 't not agaynst the law,
I would tak her to my ain house as lady o my ha.
2
He said, My pretty ladye, I pray give me your hand;
You shall have drums and trumpets always at your command;
With fifty men to guard you, that well their swords can draw,
And I'll tak ye to my ain bed, and lay you next the wa.
3
'I'm walking in my feyther's shaws:' quo he, My charming maid,
I am much better than I look, so be you not afraid;
For I serve the queen of a' Scotland, and a gentil dame is she;
So we'se be married ere the morn, gin ye can fancy me.
4
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
'The sparrow shall toot on his horn, gif naething us befa,
And I'll mak you up a down-bed, and lay you next the wa.
5
'Now hold away from me, kind sir, I pray you let me be;
I wont be lady of your ha till you answer questions three:
Questions three you must answer me, and that is one and twa,
Before I gae to Woodland's house, and be lady o your ha.
6
'You must get me to my supper a chicken without a bone;
You must get me to my supper a cherry without a stone;
You must get me to my supper a bird without a ga,
Before I go to Woodland's house and be lady of your ha.'
7
'When the cherry is in the bloom, I'm sure it has no stone;
When the chicken's in the shell, I'm sure it has nae bone;
The dove she is a gentil bird, and flies without a ga;
So I've answered you your questions three, and you're lady of my ha.'
* * * * * * *
8
'Questions three you must answer me: What's higher than the trees?
And what is worse than woman's voice? What's deeper than the seas?'
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
9
He answered then so readily: Heaven's higher than the trees;
The devil's worse than woman's voice; hell's deeper than the seas;
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
10
'One question still you must answer me, or you I laugh to scorn;
Go seek me out an English priest, of woman never born;'
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
11
'Oh then,' quo he, 'my young brother from mother's side was torn,
And he's a gentil English priest, of woman never born;'
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
12
Little did his lady think, that morning when she raise,
It was to be the very last of all her mayden days;
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
* * * * *
#A. a.#
2^4. I lye.
4^{3,4} _and 5^{3,4} have been interchanged_.
5^4. lye you.
#b.# lay.
7^1. teen.
17^1. priest was.
17^2. it was.
17^3. boned (?)
_#b# has ~bored~._
_#b# is a copy of #a#, but with the long lines broken up
into two, and some slight variations._
#b.#
3^4. And we'll.
5^1. _Omits_ if.
6^3. _Omits_ sae jimp.
11^2. and they are questions.
12^2. wish.
13^4. betwixt.
#B.#
_In stanzas of four short lines._
#a.#
16^2, 17^2. _Var._ women's vice.
17^1. _Var._ Poison is greener.
17^2. _Var._ There's nathing waur.
#b.#
Lord Roslin's Daughter's Garland. Containing three
excellent new songs.
I. The Drunkard Reformed.
II. The Devil and the Grinder.
III. Lord Roslin's Daughter.
Licensed and entered according to order.
1^1, walks throw.
1^2. And by came.
1^3, servant man.
1^4, 3^4, 6^4, 7^4, 10^4, 14^4, 18^4. next the wa.
17^4. neist.
2^3, 4^3. missd you know.
3^4. And we'll ... and thou's ly next.
4^2. will I.
4^4. So I not.
5^{1,2}.
Then said the pretty lady, I pray tell me your name.
My name is Captain Wedderburn, a servant to the king.
5^3. of him I'd not stand in aw.
6^1. He lighted off.
6^2. And held her by the milk-white hand even as they rode
along.
6^3. so jimp.
6^4. So I'll take.
7^1. lodging house.
7^3. But such a pretty face as thine in it I never saw.
7^4. make her up a down-bed.
8^2. will not go to your bed till you dress me.
8^3. three you must do to me.
9^1. O I must have ... a cherry without a stone.
9^2. a chicken without a bone.
10^{1,2}.
When the cherry is into the bloom I am sure it hath no stone,
And when the chicken's in the shell I'm sure it hath no bone.
10^3. it is a gentle.
11^2. I will not go till ... till you answer me questions.
11^3. Questions four you must tell me.
12^1. You must get to me.
12^2. That the wraft was neer ca'd.
12^{3,4} _and 16^{3,4} (and consequently 13^{3,4},
17^{3,4}) are wrongly interchanged in #b#, mixing up
ferlies and questions._
#a# 12^{3,4}, 13^{3,4}, 14, 15, 16^{1,2}, 16^{3,4},
17^{1,2}, 17^{3,4}==#b# 15^{3,4}, 16^{3,4}, 17, 14,
15^{1,2}, 12^{3,4}, 16^{1,2}, 13^{3,4}.
13^2. the wraft was neer ca'd throw.
13^{3,4}. A sparrow's horn you well may get, there's one
on ilka pa.
14^1. standing at the door.
14^3. A hole cut in his mother's side, he from the same
did fa.
16^2. And what ... women's voice.
16^3. What bird sings best, and wood buds first, that dew
does on them fa.
17^1. sky is higher.
17^2. worse than women's voice.
17^3. the dew does on them fa.
18^2. the last night.
18^3. now they both lie in one bed.
_#c# closely resembling #b#, the variations from #b# are
given._
#c.#
1. came _omitted_, _v._ 2; unto, _v._ 3.
2. into your bed, _v._ 4.
3. guard you ... who well, _v._ 3; into ... thou'lt, _v._
4.
5^{1,2}. Then says, _v._ 1.
6. lighted from ... this lady, _v._ 1; middle jimp, _v._
3.
7. pretty fair, _v._ 2; as this, _v._ 3.
8. dress me, _v._ 3.
9. unto, _vv_ 1,2; O I must, _v._ 2.
10. in the bloom, _v._ 1; we both shall ly in, _v._ 4.
11. will give oer, _v._ 1; to your ... you tell me, _v._
2.
12. You must get to me ... that waft, _v._ 2; bird sings
first ... on them does, _v._ 3.
13. sings first, _v._ 3.
14. in your ... you tell me, _v._ 2; I'll ly in, _v._ 4.
15. What is ... woman's, _v._ 2; I'll ly in, _v._ 4.
16.
Death's greener than the grass, hell's deeper than the seas,
The devil's worse than woman's voice, sky's higher than the
trees, _vv_ 1,2; every paw, _v._ 3; thou shalt, _v._ 4.
18. the lady ... rose, _v._ 1; It was to be the very last,
_v._ 2; they ly in ae, _v._ 4.
#d.#
_Follows the broadside (#b#, #c#) through the first nine
stanzas, with changes from Jamieson's "~own
recollection,~" or invention, and one from #A#. 10 has
certainly arbitrary alterations. The remaining eight
stanzas are the corresponding ones of #A# treated freely.
The comparison here is with #b#, readings from #A# in
11-18 not being noticed._
1^3, serving men.
2^3. _~mist awa~, from #A#; so in 4^3, a stanza not in
#A#._
5^3. I'd have nae awe.
6^1. He lighted aff ... this lady.
6^3. middle jimp.
6^4. To tak her to his ain.
7^3. sic a lovely face as thine.
7^4. Gae mak her down.
8^3. maun dress to me.
9^1. It's ye maun get.
9^{2,3}. And ye maun get.
10^1. It's whan the cherry is in the flirry.
10^2. in the egg.
10^3. And sin the flood o Noah the dow she had nae ga.
#A, B d#, 11, 12^{1,2}, 13^{1,2}, 14, 15^{1,2},
16^{1,2}==#B b, c#, 14, 15^{1,2}, 16^{1,2}, 11, 12^{1,2},
13^{1,2}.
11^1. and gie your fleechin oer.
11^2. Unless you'll find me ferlies, and that is ferlies
four.
11^3. Ferlies four ye maun find me.
11^4. Or I'll never lie.
12^2. And get to me.
12^3. doth first down.
12^4. Ye sall tell afore I lay me down between you and the
wa.
13^2. has an Indian gown that waft.
13^3. on cedar top the dew.
14^2. that gait me perplex.
14^3. three times twa.
15^1. the greenest grass.
15^2. war nor an ill woman's wish.
16^3. horn is quickly found ... on every claw.
16^4. There's ane upon the neb of him.
17^3. A wild bore tore his mither's side.
18^3. now there's nae within the realm, I think.
#e#
_has stanzas 1, 5 (?), 9, 12, 10, 13, 14 of #a#, the first
two imperfect. The last line of each stanza is changed, no
doubt for delicacy's sake, to ~I will tak you wi me, I
tell you, aye or na~, or the like_.
1.
The Earl o Roslin's dochter gaed out to tak the air;
She met a gallant gentleman, as hame she did repair;
. . . . . . .
I will tak you wi me, I tell you, aye or no.
5(?).
I am Captain Wedderburn, a servant to the king.
. . . . . . .
I will tak you wi me, I tell you, aye or no.
9^1. I maun hae to my supper a bird without a bone.
9^3. An I maun hae a gentle bird that flies.
9^4. Before that I gae with you, I tell you, aye or na.
10^1. When the bird is in the egg.
10^2. in the bud ... I'm sure.
10^3. it is a gentle bird.
12^2, 13^2. a gey mantle ... neer ca'ed.
13^3. sune sall get.
14^1. is standing at.
14^2. say that he was ... a sin.
#f.#
_Stanzas 9, 10 only._
9^1. 'T is I maun hae to my supper a bird without a bone.
9^2. withouten stone.
9^3. withouten ga.
10^1. When the bird is in the shell, I'm sure.
10^2. I'm sure.
10^3. a gentle ... withouten ga.
#C.#
_Printed in stanzas of four short lines._
[389] This book has been pursued by me for years, with the coöperation
of many friends and agents, but in vain.
[390] Followed by Virgil's riddle, Ecl. iii, 104-5, Where is the sky but
three spans broad?
[391] Halliwell's Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales, p. 150; Halliwell's
Nursery Rhymes, No 375; Notes and Queries, 3d Ser., IX, 401; 4th Ser.,
III, 501, 604; Macmillan's Magazine, V, 248, by T. Hughes. The first of
these runs:
I have four sisters beyond the sea,
Para-mara, dictum, domine
And they did send four presents to me.
Partum, quartum, paradise, tempum,
Para-mara, dictum, domine
The first it was a bird without eer a bone,
The second was a cherry without eer a stone.
The third it was a blanket without eer a thread,
The fourth it was a book which no man could read.
How can there be a bird without eer a bone?
How can there be a cherry without eer a stone?
How can there be a blanket without eer a thread?
How can there be a book which no man can read?
When the bird's in the shell, there is no bone;
When the cherry's in the bud, there is no stone.
When the blanket's in the fleece, there is no thread;
When the book's in the press, no man can read.
The Minnesinger dames went far beyond our laird's daughter in the way of
requiring "ferlies" from their lovers. Der Tanhuser and Boppe represent
that their ladies would be satisfied with nothing short of their turning
the course of rivers; bringing them the salamander, the basilisk, the
graal, Paris's apple; giving them a sight of Enoch and Elijah in the
body, a hearing of the sirens, etc. Von der Hagen, Minnesinger, II, 91
f, 385 f.
[392] There were, no doubt, Grissels enough in the very distinguished
family of the Sinclairs of Roslin to furnish one for this ballad. I see
two mentioned among the Sinclairs of Herdmanstoun. Even a Wedderburn
connection, as I am informed, is not absolutely lacking. George Home of
Wedderburn († 1497), married the eldest daughter of John Sinclair of
Herdmanstoun: Douglas's Peerage of Scotland, ed. Wood, 1813, II, 174.
[393] The difficulty here is the want of a _που στω_, from which
to climb the tree.
[394] These number-riddles or songs are known to every nation of Europe.
E. g., Chambers' Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 44, ed. 1870, from
Buchan's MSS, I, 280:
O what will be our ane, boys?
O what will be our ane, boys?
My only ane, she walks alane,
And evermair has dune, boys, etc.
See Köhler in Orient u. Occident, II, 558-9. A dragon, in Hahn's
Griechische u. Albanesische Märchen, II, 210, gives Penteklimas ten of
these number-riddles: if he answers them he is to have a fine castle; if
not, he is to be eaten. An old woman answers for him: "One is God, two
are the righteous, etc.; ten is your own word, and now burst, dragon!"
The dragon bursts, and Penteklimas inherits his possessions.
[395] Gozzi retains the first and third riddles, Schiller only the
third. By a happy idea, new riddles were introduced at the successive
performances of Schiller's play. Turandot appears as a traditional tale
in Schneller's Märchen u. Sagen aus Wälschtirol, No 49, p. 132, "I tre
Indovinelli."
[396] The castle with walls and gate thus equipped, or a palisade of
stakes each crowned with a head, is all but a commonplace in such
adventures. This grim stroke of fancy is best in 'La mule sanz frain,'
where there are four hundred stakes, _all but one_ surmounted with a
bloody head: Méon, Nouveau Recueil, 1, 15, vv 429-37. For these parlous
princesses, of all sorts, see Grundtvig, 'Den farlige Jomfru,' IV, 43
ff, No 184.
[397] Von Hammer, Geschichte der schönen Redekünste Persiens, p. 116,
previously cited by von der Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer, III, lxii.
[398] The German schwank affixes the forfeit of the head to failure. In
the Norwegian the unsuccessful brothers get off with a thrashing. The
fire in the English, found also in the German, recalls the third task in
the Gesta Romanorum.
[399] Khudyakof, in the Ethnographical Collection of the Russian
Geographical Society, Etnografitcheskiy Sbornik, etc., VI, 9, 10, 8.
Ralston, The Songs of the Russian People, p. 353.
[400] Vigfusson objects to Thor being the interlocutor, though that is
the name in the MS., because cunning does not suit Thor's blunt
character, and proposes Odin instead. "May be the dwarf first met Thor
(Wingthor), whereupon Woden (Wingi) came up." Corpus Poeticum Boreale,
I, 81.
47
PROUD LADY MARGARET
#A.# 'Proud Lady Margaret,' Scott's Minstrelsy, III, 275,
ed. 1803.
#B. a.# 'The Courteous Knight,' Buchan's Ballads of the
North of Scotland, I, 91; Motherwell's MS., p. 591. #b.#
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Introduction, p. lxxxi.
#C.# 'The Jolly Hind Squire,' Buchan's MSS, II, 95.
#D.# 'The Knicht o Archerdale,' Harris MS., fol. 7, No 3.
#E.# 'Fair Margret,' A. Laing, Ancient Ballads and Songs,
MS., 1829, p. 6.
#A# was communicated to Scott "by Mr Hamilton, music-seller, Edinburgh,
with whose mother it had been a favorite." Two stanzas and one line were
wanting, and were supplied by Scott "from a different ballad, having a
plot somewhat similar." The stanzas were 6 and 9. #C# was printed from
the MS., with a few changes, under the title of 'The Bonny Hind Squire,'
by Dixon, in Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 42,
and from Dixon in Bell's Early Ballads, p. 183. Christie, Traditional
Ballad Airs, I, 28, says the ballad was called 'Jolly Janet' by the old
people in Aberdeenshire.
#A-D# are plainly compounded of two ballads, the conclusion being
derived from #E#. The lady's looking oer her castle wa, her putting
riddles, and her having gard so mony die, make the supposition far from
incredible that the Proud Lady Margaret of the first part of the ballad
may originally have been one of the cruel princesses spoken of in the
preface to 'Captain Wedderburn's Courtship,' p. 417. But the corrupt
condition of the texts of #A-D# forbids any confident opinion.
A dead mistress similarly admonishes her lover, in a ballad from
Brittany, given in Ampère, Instructions relatives aux Poésies populaires
de la France, p. 36.
"Non, je ne dors ni ne soumeille,
Je sis dans l'enfer à brûler.
"Auprès de moi reste une place,
C'est pour vous, Piar', qu'on l'a gardée."
"Ha! dites-moi plustot, ma Jeanne,
Comment fair' pour n'y point aller?"
"Il faut aller à la grand-messe,
Et aux vêpres, sans y manquer.
"Faut point aller aux fileries,
Comm' vous aviez d'accoutumé.
"Ne faut point embrasser les filles
Sur l' bout du coffre au pied du lect."
So Beaurepaire, Étude, p. 53; Puymaigre, 'La Damnée,' Chants populaires,
I, 115; V. Smith, Chants du Velay et du Forez, Romania, IV, 449 f, 'La
Concubine;' and Luzel, "Celui qui alla voir sa maitresse en enfer," I,
44, 45. In this last, a lover, whose mistress has died, goes into a
monastery, where he prays continually that he may see her again. The
devil presents himself in the likeness of a young man, and on condition
of being something gently considered takes him to hell. He sees his
mistress sitting in a fiery chair (cf. #B#, 30, 31), devoured by
serpents night and day, and is informed that fasts and masses on his
part will only make things worse. Like Dives, she sends word to her
sister not to do as she has done. Some of these traits are found also in
one or another of the French versions.
* * * * *
Translated by Doenniges, p. 6, after Scott, and by Knortz, Schottische
Balladen, No 1, after Aytoun, II, 62.
A
Scott's Minstrelsy, III, 275, ed. 1803. Communicated "by
Mr Hamilton, music-seller, Edinburgh, with whose mother it
had been a favorite."
1
'T was on a night, an evening bright,
When the dew began to fa,
Lady Margaret was walking up and down,
Looking oer her castle wa.
2
She looked east and she looked west,
To see what she could spy,
When a gallant knight came in her sight,
And to the gate drew nigh.
3
'You seem to be no gentleman,
You wear your boots so wide;
But you seem to be some cunning hunter,
You wear the horn so syde.'
4
'I am no cunning hunter,' he said,
'Nor neer intend to be;
But I am come to this castle
To seek the love of thee.
And if you do not grant me love,
This night for thee I'll die.'
5
'If you should die for me, sir knight,
There's few for you will meane;
For mony a better has died for me,
Whose graves are growing green.
6
['But ye maun read my riddle,' she said,
'And answer my questions three;
And but ye read them right,' she said,
'Gae stretch ye out and die.]
7
'Now what is the flower, the ae first flower,
Springs either on moor or dale?
And what is the bird, the bonnie bonnie bird,
Sings on the evening gale?'
8
'The primrose is the ae first flower
Springs either on moor or dale,
And the thristlecock is the bonniest bird
Sings on the evening gale.'
9
['But what's the little coin,' she said,
'Wald buy my castle bound?
And what's the little boat,' she said,
'Can sail the world all round?']
10
'O hey, how mony small pennies
Make thrice three thousand pound?
Or hey, how mony salt fishes
Swim a' the salt sea round?'
11
'I think you maun be my match,' she said,
'My match and something mair;
You are the first eer got the grant
Of love frae my father's heir.
12
'My father was lord of nine castles,
My mother lady of three;
My father was lord of nine castles,
And there's nane to heir but me.
13
'And round about a' thae castles
You may baith plow and saw,
And on the fifteenth day of May
The meadows they will maw.'
14
'O hald your tongue, Lady Margaret,' he said,
'For loud I hear you lie;
Your father was lord of nine castles,
Your mother was lady of three;
Your father was lord of nine castles,
But ye fa heir to but three.
15
'And round about a' thae castles
You may baith plow and saw,
But on the fifteenth day of May
The meadows will not maw.
16
'I am your brother Willie,' he said,
'I trow ye ken na me;
I came to humble your haughty heart,
Has gard sae mony die.'
17
'If ye be my brother Willie,' she said,
'As I trow weel ye be,
This night I'll neither eat nor drink,
But gae alang wi thee.'
18
'O hold your tongue, Lady Margaret,' he said,
'Again I hear you lie;
For ye've unwashen hands and ye've unwashen feet,
To gae to clay wi me.
19
'For the wee worms are my bedfellows,
And cauld clay is my sheets,
And when the stormy winds do blow,
My body lies and sleeps.'
B
#a.# Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, 1, 91;
Motherwell's MS., p. 591. #b.# Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Introduction, p. lxxxi.
1
There was a knight, in a summer's night,
Appeard in a lady's hall,
As she was walking up and down,
Looking oer her castle wall.
2
'God make you safe and free, fair maid,
God make you safe and free!'
'O sae fa you, ye courteous knight,
What are your wills wi me?'
3
'My wills wi you are not sma, lady,
My wills wi you nae sma,
And since there's nane your bower within,
Ye'se hae my secrets a'.
4
'For here am I a courtier,
A courtier come to thee,
And if ye winna grant your love,
All for your sake I'll dee.'
5
'If that ye dee for me, sir knight,
Few for you will make meen;
For mony gude lord's done the same,
Their graves are growing green.'
6
'O winna ye pity me, fair maid,
O winna ye pity me?
O winna ye pity a courteous knight,
Whose love is laid on thee?'
7
'Ye say ye are a courteous knight,
But I think ye are nane;
I think ye're but a millar bred,
By the colour o your claithing.
8
'You seem to be some false young man,
You wear your hat sae wide;
You seem to be some false young man,
You wear your boots sae side.'
9
'Indeed I am a courteous knight,
And of great pedigree;
Nae knight did mair for a lady bright
Than I will do for thee.
10
'O I'll put smiths in your smithy,
To shoe for you a steed,
And I'll put tailors in your bower,
To make for you a weed.
11
'I will put cooks in your kitchen,
And butlers in your ha,
And on the tap o your father's castle
I'll big gude corn and saw.'
12
'If ye be a courteous knight,
As I trust not ye be,
Ye'll answer some o the sma questions
That I will ask at thee.
13
'What is the fairest flower, tell me,
That grows in mire or dale?
Likewise, which is the sweetest bird
Sings next the nightingale?
Or what's the finest thing,' she says,
'That king or queen can wile?'
14
'The primrose is the fairest flower
That grows in mire or dale;
The mavis is the sweetest bird
Next to the nightingale;
And yellow gowd's the finest thing
That king or queen can wale.
15
'Ye hae asked many questions, lady,
I've you as many told;'
'But how many pennies round
Make a hundred pounds in gold?
16
'How many of the small fishes
Do swim the salt seas round?
Or what's the seemliest sight you'll see
Into a May morning?'
* * * * * * *
17
'Berry-brown ale and a birken speal,
And wine in a horn green;
A milk-white lace in a fair maid's dress
Looks gay in a May morning.'
18
'Mony's the questions I've askd at thee,
And ye've answerd them a';
Ye are mine, and I am thine,
Amo the sheets sae sma.
19
'You may be my match, kind sir,
You may be my match and more;
There neer was ane came sic a length
Wi my father's heir before.
20
'My father's lord o nine castles,
My mother she's lady ower three,
And there is nane to heir them all,
No never a ane but me;
Unless it be Willie, my ae brother,
But he's far ayont the sea.'
21
'If your father's laird o nine castles,
Your mother lady ower three,
I am Willie your ae brother,
Was far beyond the sea.'
22
'If ye be Willie, my ae brother,
As I doubt sair ye be,
But if it's true ye tell me now,
This night I'll gang wi thee.'
23
'Ye've ower ill washen feet, Janet,
And ower ill washen hands,
And ower coarse robes on your body,
Alang wi me to gang.
24
'The worms they are my bed-fellows,
And the cauld clay my sheet,
And the higher that the wind does blaw,
The sounder I do sleep.
25
'My body's buried in Dumfermline,
And far beyond the sea,
But day nor night nae rest coud get,
All for the pride o thee.
26
'Leave aff your pride, jelly Janet,' he says,
'Use it not ony mair;
Or when ye come where I hae been
You will repent it sair.
27
'Cast aff, cast aff, sister,' he says,
'The gowd lace frae your crown;
For if ye gang where I hae been,
Ye'll wear it laigher down.
28
'When ye're in the gude church set,
The gowd pins in your hair,
Ye take mair delight in your feckless dress
Than ye do in your morning prayer.
29
'And when ye walk in the church-yard,
And in your dress are seen,
There is nae lady that sees your face
But wishes your grave were green.
30
'You're straight and tall, handsome withall,
But your pride owergoes your wit,
But if ye do not your ways refrain,
In Pirie's chair ye'll sit.
31
'In Pirie's chair you'll sit, I say,
The lowest seat o hell;
If ye do not amend your ways,
It's there that ye must dwell.'
32
Wi that he vanishd frae her sight,
Wi the twinkling o an eye;
Naething mair the lady saw
But the gloomy clouds and sky.
C
Buchan's MSS, II, 95.
1
Once there was a jolly hind squire
Appeard in a lady's ha,
And aye she walked up and down,
Looking oer her castle wa.
2
'What is your wills wi me, kind sir?
What is your wills wi me?'
'My wills are [not] sma wi thee, lady,
My wills are [not] sma wi thee.
3
'For here I stand a courtier,
And a courtier come to thee,
And if ye will not grant me your love,
For your sake I will die.'
4
'If you die for my sake,' she says,
'Few for you will make moan;
Many better's died for my sake,
Their graves are growing green.
5
'You appear to be some false young man,
You wear your hat so wide;
You appear to be some false young man,
You wear your boots so side.
6
'An asking, asking, sir,' she said,
'An asking ye'll grant me:'
'Ask on, ask on, lady,' he said,
'What may your asking be?'
7
'What's the first thing in flower,' she said,
'That springs in mire or dale?
What's the next bird that sings,' she says,
'Unto the nightingale?
Or what is the finest thing,' she says,
'That king or queen can wile?'
8
'The primrose is the first in flower
That springs in mire or dale;
The thristle-throat is the next that sings
Unto the nightingale;
And yellow gold is the finest thing
That king or queen can wile.
9
'You have asked many questions, lady,
I've you as many told;'
'But how many pennies round
Make a hundred pounds in gold?
10
'How many small fishes
Do swim the salt seas round?
Or what's the seemliest sight you'll see
Into a May morning?
* * * * * * *
11
'There's ale into the birken scale,
Wine in the horn green;
There's gold in the king's banner
When he is fighting keen.'
12
'You may be my match, kind sir,' she said,
'You may be my match and more;
There neer was one came such a length
With my father's heir before.
13
'My father's lord of nine castles,
No body heir but me.'
'Your father's lord of nine castles,
Your mother's lady of three;
14
'Your father's heir of nine castles,
And you are heir to three;
For I am William, thy ae brother,
That died beyond the sea.'
15
'If ye be William, my ae brother,
This night, O well is me!
If ye be William, my ae brother,
This night I'll go with thee.'
16
'For no, for no, jelly Janet,' he says,
'For no, that cannot be;
You've oer foul feet and ill washen hands
To be in my company.
17
'For the wee wee worms are my bedfellows,
And the cold clay is my sheet,
And the higher that the winds do blow,
The sounder I do sleep.
18
'Leave off your pride, jelly Janet,' he says,
'Use it not any more;
Or when you come where I have been
You will repent it sore.
19
'When you go in at yon church door,
The red gold on your hair,
More will look at your yellow locks
Than look on the Lord's prayer.
20
'When you go in at yon church door,
The red gold on your crown;
When you come where I have been,
You'll wear it laigher down.'
21
The jolly hind squire, he went away
In the twinkling of an eye,
Left the lady sorrowful behind,
With many bitter cry.
D
Harris's MS., fol. 7, No 3. From Mrs Harris's recitation.
1
There cam a knicht to Archerdale,
His steed was winder sma,
An there he spied a lady bricht,
Luikin owre her castle wa.
2
'Ye dinna seem a gentle knicht,
Though on horseback ye do ride;
Ye seem to be some sutor's son,
Your butes they are sae wide.'
3
'Ye dinna seem a lady gay,
Though ye be bound wi pride;
Else I'd gane bye your father's gate
But either taunt or gibe.'
4
He turned aboot his hie horse head,
An awa he was boun to ride,
But neatly wi her mouth she spak:
Oh bide, fine squire, oh bide.
5
'Bide, oh bide, ye hindy squire,
Tell me mair o your tale;
Tell me some o that wondrous lied
Ye've learnt in Archerdale.
6
'What gaes in a speal?' she said,
'What in a horn green?
An what gaes on a lady's head,
Whan it is washen clean?'
7
'Ale gaes in a speal,' he said,
'Wine in a horn green;
An silk gaes on a lady's head,
Whan it is washen clean.'
8
Aboot he turned his hie horse head,
An awa he was boun to ride,
When neatly wi her mouth she spak:
Oh bide, fine squire, oh bide.
9
'Bide, oh bide, ye hindy squire,
Tell me mair o your tale;
Tell me some o that unco lied
You've learnt in Archerdale.
10
'Ye are as like my ae brither
As ever I did see;
But he's been buried in yon kirkyaird
It's mair than years is three.'
11
'I am as like your ae brither
As ever ye did see;
But I canna get peace into my grave,
A' for the pride o thee.
12
'Leave pride, Janet, leave pride, Janet,
Leave pride an vanitie;
If ye come the roads that I hae come,
Sair warned will ye be.
13
'Ye come in by yonder kirk
Wi the goud preens in your sleeve;
When you're bracht hame to yon kirkyaird,
You'll gie them a' thier leave.
14
'Ye come in to yonder kirk
Wi the goud plaits in your hair;
When you're bracht hame to yon kirkyaird,
You will them a' forbear.'
15
He got her in her mither's bour,
Puttin goud plaits in her hair;
He left her in her father's gairden,
Mournin her sins sae sair.
E
Alex. Laing, Ancient Ballads and Songs, etc., etc., from
the recitation of old people. Never published. 1829. P. 6.
1
Fair Margret was a young ladye,
An come of high degree;
Fair Margret was a young ladye,
An proud as proud coud be.
2
Fair Margret was a rich ladye,
The king's cousin was she;
Fair Margaret was a rich ladye,
An vain as vain coud be.
3
She war'd her wealth on the gay cleedin
That comes frae yont the sea,
She spent her time frae morning till night
Adorning her fair bodye.
4
Ae night she sate in her stately ha,
Kaimin her yellow hair,
When in there cum like a gentle knight,
An a white scarf he did wear.
5
'O what's your will wi me, sir knight,
O what's your will wi me?
You're the likest to my ae brother
That ever I did see.
6
'You're the likest to my ae brother
That ever I hae seen,
But he's buried in Dunfermline kirk,
A month an mair bygane.'
7
'I'm the likest to your ae brother
That ever ye did see,
But I canna get rest into my grave,
A' for the pride of thee.
8
'Leave pride, Margret, leave pride, Margret,
Leave pride an vanity;
Ere ye see the sights that I hae seen,
Sair altered ye maun be.
9
'O ye come in at the kirk-door
Wi the gowd plaits in your hair;
But wud ye see what I hae seen,
Ye maun them a' forbear.
10
'O ye come in at the kirk-door
Wi the gowd prins i your sleeve;
But wad ye see what I hae seen,
Ye maun gie them a' their leave.
11
'Leave pride, Margret, leave pride, Margret,
Leave pride an vanity;
Ere ye see the sights that I hae seen,
Sair altered ye maun be.'
12
He got her in her stately ha,
Kaimin her yellow hair,
He left her on her sick sick bed,
Sheding the saut saut tear.
* * * * *
#B#
_15^{3,4}, 16^{1,2}, #C# 9^{3,4}, 10^{1,2} are rightly
answers, not questions: cf. #A# 9, 10. #D# 6 furnishes the
question answered in #B# 17._
#B. b.#
_Motherwell begins at st. 25._
27^2. gowd band.
28^1, 29^1. kirk.
30^2. owergangs.
32^2. In the.
32^3. And naething.
#C.#
_~Kind Squire~ in the title, and ~kind~ in 1^1, 21^1; I
suppose by mistake of my copyist._
16^3. You're (?).
17^2. the clay cold.
#E.#
8^3, 11^3. E'er.
48
YOUNG ANDREW
Percy MS., p. 292. Hales and Furnivall, II, 328.
'Young Andrew' is known only from the Percy manuscript. The story
recalls both 'Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight,' No 4, and 'The Fair
Flower of Northumberland,' No 9. The lady, Helen, 25^3, is bidden to
take, and does take, gold with her in stanzas 5-7, as in No 4, English
#E# 2, 3, #D# 7, Danish #A# 12, #E# 7, 9, #I# 5, #L# 5, 6, and nearly
all the Polish copies, and again in No 9, #A# 14. She is stripped of her
clothes and head-gear in 8-17, as in No 4, English #C-E#, German #G#,
#H#, and many of the Polish versions. These are destined by Young Andrew
for his lady ("that dwells so far in a strange country") in 10, 12, 14,
as by Ulinger for his sister, and by Adelger for his mother, in German
#G# 18, #H# 15. In 15 the lady entreats Young Andrew to leave her her
smock; so in No 4, Polish #L# 8, "You brought me from home in a green
gown; take me back in a shift of tow," and #R# 13, "You took me away in
red satin; let me go back at least in a smock." 18 has the choice
between dying and going home again which is presented in 'Lady Isabel,'
Polish #AA# 4, #H# 10, #R# 11, and implied in 'The Fair Flower of
Northumberland,' #D# 2-5; in #A# 25 of this last the choice is between
dying and being a paramour. In 20, 21, the lady says, "If my father ever
catches you, you're sure to flower a gallows-tree," etc.; in No 4,
Polish #J# 5, "If God would grant me to reach the other bank, you know,
wretch, what death you would die." The father is unrelenting in this
ballad, v. 26, and receives his daughter with severity in 'The Fair
Flower of Northumberland,' #B# 13, #C# 13. The conclusion of 'Young
Andrew' is mutilated and hard to make out. He seems to have been pursued
and caught, as John is in the Polish ballads, #O#, #P#, #T#, etc., of No
4. Why he was not promptly disposed of, and how the wolf comes into the
story, will probably never be known.
1
As I was cast in my ffirst sleepe,
A dreadffull draught in my mind I drew,
Ffor I was dreamed of a yong man,
Some men called him yonge Andrew.
2
The moone shone bright, and itt cast a ffayre light,
Sayes shee, Welcome, my honey, my hart, and my sweete!
For I haue loued thee this seuen long yeere,
And our chance itt was wee cold neuer meete.
3
Then he tooke her in his armes two,
And kissed her both cheeke and chin,
And twise or thrise he pleased this may
Before they tow did p_ar_t in twinn.
4
Saies, Now, good s_i_r, you haue had yo_u_r will,
You can demand no more of mee;
Good s_i_r, remember what you said before,
And goe to the church and marry mee.
5
'Ffaire maid, I cannott doe as I wold;
. . . . . . .
Goe home and fett thy fathers redd gold,
And I'le goe to the church and marry thee.
6
This ladye is gone to her ffathers hall,
And well she knew where his red gold lay,
And counted fforth five hundred pound,
Besides all other iuells and chaines:
7
And brought itt all to younge Andrew,
Itt was well counted vpon his knee;
Then he tooke her by the lillye white hand,
And led her vp to an hill soe hye.
8
Shee had vpon a gowne of blacke veluett,
(A pittyffull sight after yee shall see:)
'Put of thy clothes, bonny wenche,' he sayes,
'For noe ffoote further thoust gang w_i_th mee.'
9
But then shee put of her gowne of veluett,
W_i_th many a salt teare from her eye,
And in a kirtle of ffine breaden silke
Shee stood beffore young Andrews eye.
10
Sais, O put off thy kirtle of silke,
Ffor some and all shall goe with mee;
And to my owne lady I must itt beare,
Who I must needs loue better then thee.
11
Then shee put of her kirtle of silke,
W_i_th many a salt teare still ffrom her eye;
In a peticoate of scarlett redd
Shee stood before young Andrewes eye.
12
Saies, O put of thy peticoate,
For some and all of itt shall goe w_i_th mee;
And to my owne lady I will itt beare,
W_hi_ch dwells soe ffarr in a strange countrye.
13
But then shee put of her peticoate,
W_i_th many a salt teare still from her eye,
And in a smocke of braue white silke
Shee stood before young Andrews eye.
14
Saies, O put of thy smocke of silke,
For some and all shall goe w_i_th mee;
Vnto my owne ladye I will itt beare,
_Tha_t dwells soe ffarr in a strange countrye.
15
Sayes, O remember, young Andrew,
Once of a woman you were borne;
And ffor _tha_t birth _tha_t Marye bore,
I pray you let my smocke be vpon!
16
'Yes, ffayre ladye, I know itt well,
Once of a woman I was borne;
Yett ffor noe birth _tha_t Mary bore,
Thy smocke shall not be left here vpon.'
17
But then shee put of her head-geere ffine;
Shee hadd billaments worth a hundred pound;
The hayre _tha_t was vpon this bony wench head
Couered her bodye downe to the ground.
18
Then he pulled forth a Scottish brand,
And held itt there in his owne right hand;
Saies, Whether wilt thou dye vpon my swords point, ladye,
Or thow wilt goe naked home againe?
19
'Liffe is sweet,' then, 's_i_r,' said shee,
'Therfore I pray you leaue mee w_i_th mine;
Before I wold dye on yo_u_r swords point,
I had rather goe naked home againe.
20
'My ffather,' shee sayes, 'is a right good erle
As any remaines in his countrye;
If euer he doe yo_u_r body take,
Yo_u_'r sure to fflower a gallow tree.
21
'And I haue seuen brethren,' shee sayes,
'And they are all hardy men and bold;
Giff euer thé doe yo_u_r body take,
You must neuer gang quicke ou_er_ the mold.'
22
'If yo_u_r ffather be a right good erle
As any remaines in his owne countrye,
Tush! he shall neuer my body take,
I'le gang soe ffast ouer the sea.
23
'If you haue seuen brethren,' he sayes,
'If they be neu_er_ soe hardy or bold,
Tush! they shall neu_er_ my body take,
I'le gang soe ffast into the Scottish mold.'
24
Now this ladye is gone to her fathers hall,
When euery body their rest did take;
But the Erle w_hi_ch was her ffather
Lay waken for his deere daughters sake.
25
'But who is _tha_t,' her ffather can say,
'_Tha_t soe priuilye knowes the pinn?'
'It's Hellen, yo_u_r owne deere daughter, ffather,
I pray you rise and lett me in.'
26
. . . . . . .
'Noe, by my hood!' q_uo_th her ffather then,
'My [house] thoust neuer come w_i_thin,
W_i_thout I had my red gold againe.'
27
'Nay, yo_u_r gold is gone, ffather!' said shee,
. . . . . . .
'Then naked thou came into this world,
And naked thou shalt returne againe.'
28
'Nay! God fforgaue his death, father,' shee sayes,
'And soe I hope you will doe mee;'
'Away, away, thou cursed woman,
I pray God an ill death thou may dye!'
29
Shee stood soe long quacking on the ground
Till her hart itt burst in three;
And then shee ffell dead downe in a swoond,
And this was the end of this bonny ladye.
30
Ithe morning, when her ffather gott vpp,
A pittyffull sight there he might see;
His owne deere daughter was dead, w_i_thout clothes,
The teares they trickeled fast ffrom his eye.
31
. . . . . . .
Sais, Fye of gold, and ffye of ffee!
For I sett soe much by my red gold
_Tha_t now itt hath lost both my daughter and mee!'
32
. . . . . . .
But after this time he neere dought good day,
But as flowers doth fade in the frost,
Soe he did wast and weare away.
33
But let vs leaue talking of this ladye,
And talke some more of young Andrew;
Ffor ffalse he was to this bonny ladye,
More pitty _tha_t he had not beene true.
34
He was not gone a mile into the wild forrest,
Or halfe a mile into the hart of Wales,
But there they cought him by such a braue wyle
_Tha_t hee must come to tell noe more tales.
* * * * * * *
35
. . . . . . .
Ffull soone a wolfe did of him smell,
And shee came roaring like a beare,
And gaping like a ffeend of hell.
36
Soe they ffought together like two lyons,
And fire betweene them two glashet out;
Thé raught eche other such a great rappe,
_Tha_t there young Andrew was slaine, well I wott.
37
But now young Andrew he is dead,
But he was neuer buryed vnder mold,
For ther as the wolfe devoured him,
There lyes all this great erles gold.
* * * * *
1^3. of one.
3^3. 2.^{se}, 3.^{se}.
7^4. to one. 17^2. 100_{:}^li.
19^1. My liffe.
25^2. _tha_t pinn.
30^3. _~any~ follows ~without~, but is crossed out_.
30^4. they teares.
33^4. itt had.
_Arabic numbers are in several cases expressed in
letters._
49
THE TWA BROTHERS
#A.# Sharpe's Ballad Book, p. 56, No 19.
#B.# 'The Cruel Brother,' Motherwell's MS., p. 259. From
the recitation of Mrs McCormick.
#C.# 'The Twa Brithers,' Motherwell's MS., p. 649. From
the recitation of Mrs Cunningham.
#D.# 'The Twa Brothers, or, The Wood o Warslin,'
Jamieson's Popular Ballads, I, 59. From the recitation of
Mrs Arrott.
#E.# 'The Twa Brothers,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 60.
#F.# 'The Two Brothers,' Buchan's MSS, I, 57; Motherwell's
MS., p. 662.
#G. a.# 'John and William,' taken down from the singing of
little girls in South Boston. #b.# From a child in New
York. Both communicated by Mr W. W. Newell.
All the Scottish versions were obtained within the first third of this
century, and since then no others have been heard of. It is interesting
to find the ballad still in the mouths of children in American
cities,--in the mouths of the poorest, whose heritage these old things
are.[401] The American versions, though greatly damaged, preserve the
names John and William, which all the other copies have.
#B# and #C# are considerably corrupted. It need hardly be mentioned that
the age of the boys in the first two stanzas of #B# does not suit the
story. According to #C# 8, 15, the mother had cursed John, before he
left home, with a wish that he might never return; and in #C# 9, John
sends word to his true-love that he is in his grave for her dear sake
alone. These points seem to have been taken from some copy of 'Willie
and May Margaret,' or 'The Drowned Lovers.' The conclusion of both #B#
and #C# belongs to 'Sweet William's Ghost.' #C# 18 may be corrected by
#B# 10, though there is an absurd jumble of pipes and harp in the
latter. The harp, in a deft hand, effects like wonders in many a ballad:
e. g., 'Harpens Kraft,' Grundtvig, II, 65, No 40; even a pipe in #C#
14-16 of the same.
#D#, #E#, #F#, #G# supplement the story with more or less of the ballad
of 'Edward:' see p. 168.
Jamieson inquires for this ballad in the Scots Magazine for October,
1803, p. 701, at which time he had only the first stanza and the first
half of the third. He fills out the imperfect stanza nearly as in the
copy which he afterwards printed:
But out an Willie's taen his knife,
And did his brother slay.
Of the five other Scottish versions, all except #B# make the deadly
wound to be the result of accident, and this is, in Motherwell's view, a
point essential. The other reading, he says, is at variance with the
rest of the story, and "sweeps away the deep impression this simple
ballad would otherwise have made upon the feelings: for it is almost
unnecessary to mention that its touching interest is made to centre in
the boundless sorrow and cureless remorse of him who had been the
unintentional cause of his brother's death, and in the solicitude which
that high-minded and generous spirit expresses, even in the last agonies
of nature, for the safety and fortunes of the truly wretched and unhappy
survivor." But the generosity of the dying man is plainly greater if his
brother has killed him in an outburst of passion; and what is gained
this way will fully offset the loss, if any, which comes from the
fratricide having cause for "cureless remorse" as well as boundless
sorrow. Motherwell's criticism, in fact, is not quite intelligible.
(Minstrelsy, p. 61.)
The variation in the story is the same as that between the English
'Cruel Brother' and the German 'Graf Friedrich:' in the former the bride
is killed by her offended brother; in the latter it is the bridegroom's
sword slipping from its sheath that inflicts the mortal hurt.
Motherwell was inclined to believe, and Kirkpatrick Sharpe was
convinced, that this ballad was founded upon an event that happened near
Edinburgh as late as 1589, that of one of the Somervilles having been
killed by his brother's pistol accidentally going off. Sharpe afterward
found a case of a boy of thirteen killing a young brother in anger at
having his hair pulled. This most melancholy story, the particulars of
which are given in the last edition of the Ballad Book, p. 130, note
xix, dates nearly a hundred years later, 1682. Only the briefest mention
need be made of these unusually gratuitous surmises.
Kirkland, in #D#, was probably suggested by the kirkyard of other
versions, assisted, possibly, by a reminiscence of the Kirkley in 'Robin
Hood's Death and Burial;' for it will be observed that stanzas 8, 9 of
#D# come pretty near to those in which Robin Hood gives direction for
his grave; #F# 9, 10, #B# 5, 6 less near.[402]
Cunningham has entitled a romance of his, upon the theme of 'The Two
Brothers' (which, once more, he ventures to print nearly in the state in
which he once had the pleasure of hearing it sung), 'Fair Annie of
Kirkland:' Songs of Scotland, II, 16.
The very pathetic passage in which the dying youth directs that father,
mother, and sister shall be kept in ignorance of his death, and then,
feeling how vain the attempt to conceal the fact from his true-love will
be, bids that she be informed that he is in his grave and will never
come back, is too truly a touch of nature to be found only here.
Something similar occurs in 'Mary Hamilton,' where, however, the
circumstances are very different:
'And here's to the jolly sailor lad
That sails upon the faeme!
And let not my father nor mother get wit
But that I shall come again.
'And here's to the jolly sailor lad
That sails upon the sea!
But let not my father nor mother get wit
O the death that I maun dee.'
In a fine Norse ballad (see 'Brown Robyn's Confession,' further on) a
man who is to be thrown overboard to save a ship takes his leave of the
world with these words:
'If any of you should get back to land,
And my foster-mother ask for me,
Tell her I'm serving in the king's court,
And living right merrily.
'If any of you should get back to land,
And my true-love ask for me,
Bid her to marry another man,
For I am under the sea.'
A baron, who has been mortally wounded in a duel, gives this charge to
his servant:
'Faites mes compliments à ma femme,
Mais ne lui dites pas que j'ai été tué;
Mais dites lui que je serai allé à Paris,
Pour saluer le roi Louis.
'Dites que je serai allé à Paris,
Pour saluer le roi Louis,
Et que j'ai acheté un nouveau cheval,
Le petit cœur de mon cheval était trop gai.'
(Le Seigneur de Rosmadec, Luzel, I, 368/369, 374/375.)
In like manner a dying klepht: "If our comrades ask about me, tell them
not that I have died: say only that I have married in strange lands;
have taken the flat stone for mother-in-law, the black earth for my
wife, the black worms for brothers-in-law." Zambelios, p. 606, No 11,
Fauriel, I, 51, Passow, p. 118, No 152; and again, Zambelios, p. 672, No
94, Passow, p. 113, No 146. In the Danish 'Elveskud,' Grundtvig, II,
115, No 47, B* 18, Ole would simply have the tragic truth kept from his
bride:
'Hearken, Sir Ole, of mickle pride,
How shall I answer thy young bride?'
'You must say I am gone to the wood,
To prove horse and hounds, if they be good.'
Such questions and answers as we have in #D# 20, #E# 17, #F# 24, are of
the commonest occurrence in popular poetry, and not unknown to the
poetry of art. Ballads of the 'Edward' class end generally or always in
this way: see p. 168. We have again the particular question and answer
which occur here in 'Lizie Wan' and in one version of 'The Trooper and
Fair Maid,' Jamieson's Popular Ballads, II, 158. The question may be:
When will you come back? When shall you cease to love me? When shall we
be married? etc.; and the answer: When apple-trees grow in the seas;
when fishes fly and seas gang dry; when all streams run together; when
all swift streams are still; when it snows roses and rains wine; when
all grass is rue; when the nightingale sings on the sea and the cuckoo
is heard in winter; when poplars bear cherries and oaks roses; when
feathers sink and stones swim; when sand sown on a stone germinates,
etc., etc. See Virgil, Ecl. i, 59-63; Ovid, Met. xiii, 324-27; Wolf,
Ueber die Lais, p. 433; 'Svend Vonved,' Grundtvig, I, 240, No 18, #A#,
#D#; Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, 'Lord Jamie Douglas,' I,
232 f, Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. vii, Kinloch, Finlay, etc.;
Pills to Purge Melancholy, V, 37; 'Der verwundete Knabe,' 'Die
verwundete Dame,' Mittler, Nos 49-53, Erk's Liederhort, pp 111-115,
Wunderhorn, IV, 358-63, Longard, p. 39, No 18, Pröhle, Welt. u. geist.
Volkslieder, p. 12, No 6; Meinert, pp 28, 60, 73; Uhland, p. 127, No 65;
Wunderhorn (1857), II, 223, Reifferscheid, p. 23, Liederhort, p. 345,
Erk, Neue Sammlung, ii, 39, Kretzschmer, I, 143; Zuccalmaglio, pp 103,
153, 595; Peter, Volksthümliches aus Öst.-schlesien, I, 274; Ditfurth,
II, 9, No 10; Fiedler, p. 187; Des Turcken Vassnachtspiel, Tieck's
Deutsches Theater, I, 8; Uhland, Zur Geschichte der Dichtung, III, 216
ff; Tigri, Canti popolari toscani (1860), pp 230-242, Nos 820, 822, 823,
832, 836-40, 857, 858, 862, 868; Visconti, Saggio dei Canti p. della
Provincia di Marritima e Campagna, p. 21, No 18; Nino, Saggio di Canti
p. sabinesi, p. 28 f, p. 30 f; Pitrè, Saggi di Critica letteraria, p.
25; Braga, Cantos p. do Archipelago açoriano, p. 220; Möckesch,
Romänische Dichtungen, p. 6 f, No 2; Passow, p. 273 f, Nos 387, 388; B.
Schmidt, Griechische Märchen, etc., p. 154, No 10, and note, p. 253;
Morosi, Studi sui Dialetti greci della Terra d'Otranto, p. 30, lxxv, p.
32, lxxix; Pellegrini, Canti p. dei Greci di Cargese, p. 21; De Rada,
Rapsodie d'un Poema albanese, p. 29; Haupt u. Schmaler, Volkslieder der
Wenden, I, 76, No 47, I, 182, No 158, I, 299, No 300; Altmann,
Balalaika, Russische Volkslieder, p. 233, No 184; Golovatsky, Narodnyya
Piesni galitzskoy i ugorskoy Rusi, II, 585, No 18, III, i, 12, No 9;
Maximovitch, Sbornik ukrainskikh Pyesen, p. 7, No 1, p. 107, No 30;
Dozon, Chansons p. bulgares, p. 283, No 57; Bodenstedt, Die poetische
Ukraine, p. 46, No 14; Jordan, Ueber kleinrussische Volkspoesie, Blätter
für lit. Unterhaltung, 1840, No 252, p. 1014 (Uhland); Rhesa, Ueber
litthauische Volkspoesie, in Beiträge zur Kunde Preussens, I, 523;
Aigner, Ungarische Volksdichtungen, pp 147, 149: etc.
* * * * *
#A# is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 168;
Afzelius, III, 7; Grimm, Drei altschottische Lieder, p. 5; Talvi,
Charakteristik, p. 567; Rosa Warrens, Schottische V. L. der Vorzeit, p.
91. Knortz, Schottische Balladen, No 4, translates Aytoun, I, 193.
A
Sharpe's Ballad Book, p. 56, No 19.
1
There were twa brethren in the north,
They went to the school thegither;
The one unto the other said,
Will you try a warsle afore?
2
They warsled up, they warsled down,
Till Sir John fell to the ground,
And there was a knife in Sir Willie's pouch,
Gied him a deadlie wound.
3
'Oh brither dear, take me on your back,
Carry me to yon burn clear,
And wash the blood from off my wound,
And it will bleed nae mair.'
4
He took him up upon his back,
Carried him to yon burn clear,
And washd the blood from off his wound,
But aye it bled the mair.
5
'Oh brither dear, take me on your back,
Carry me to yon kirk-yard,
And dig a grave baith wide and deep,
And lay my body there.'
6
He's taen him up upon his back,
Carried him to yon kirk-yard,
And dug a grave baith deep and wide,
And laid his body there.
7
'But what will I say to my father dear,
Gin he chance to say, Willie, whar's John?'
'Oh say that he's to England gone,
To buy him a cask of wine.'
8
'And what will I say to my mother dear,
Gin she chance to say, Willie, whar's John?'
'Oh say that he's to England gone,
To buy her a new silk gown.'
9
'And what will I say to my sister dear,
Gin she chance to say, Willie, whar's John?'
'Oh say that he's to England gone,
To buy her a wedding ring.'
10
'But what will I say to her you loe dear,
Gin she cry, Why tarries my John?'
'Oh tell her I lie in Kirk-land fair,
And home again will never come.'
B
Motherwell's MS., p. 259. From Widow McCormick, January
19, 1825.
1
There was two little boys going to the school,
And twa little boys they be,
They met three brothers playing at the ba,
And ladies dansing hey.
2
'It's whether will ye play at the ba, brither,
Or else throw at the stone?'
'I am too little, I am too young,
O brother let me alone.'
3
He pulled out a little penknife,
That was baith sharp and sma,
He gave his brother a deadly wound
That was deep, long and sair.
4
He took the holland sark off his back,
He tore it frae breast to gare,
He laid it to the bloody wound,
That still bled mair and mair.
5
'It's take me on your back, brother,' he says,
'And carry me to yon kirk-yard,
And make me there a very fine grave,
That will be long and large.
6
'Lay my bible at my head,' he says,
'My chaunter at my feet,
My bow and arrows by my side,
And soundly I will sleep.
7
'When you go home, brother,' he says,
'My father will ask for me;
You may tell him I am in Saussif town,
Learning my lesson free.
8
'When you go home, brother,' he says,
'My mother will ask for me;
You may tell her I am in Sausaf town,
And I'll come home merrily.
9
'When you go home, brother,' he says,
'Lady Margaret will ask for me;
You may tell her I'm dead and in grave laid,
And buried in Sausaff toun.'
10
She put the small pipes to her mouth,
And she harped both far and near,
Till she harped the small birds off the briers,
And her true love out of the grave.
11
'What's this? what's this, lady Margaret?' he says,
'What's this you want of me?'
'One sweet kiss of your ruby lips,
That's all I want of thee.'
12
'My lips they are so bitter,' he says,
'My breath it is so strong,
If you get one kiss of my ruby lips,
Your days will not be long.'
C
Motherwell's MS., p. 649. From the recitation of Mrs
Cunningham, Ayr.
1
There were twa brithers at ae scule;
As they were coming hame,
Then said the ane until the other
'John, will ye throw the stane?'
2
'I will not throw the stane, brither,
I will not play at the ba;
But gin ye come to yonder wood
I'll warsle you a fa.'
3
The firsten fa young Johnie got,
It brought him to the ground;
The wee pen-knife in Willie's pocket
Gied him a deadly wound.
4
'Tak aff, tak aff my holland sark,
And rive it frae gore to gore,
And stap it in my bleeding wounds,
They'll aiblins bleed noe more.'
5
He pouit aff his holland sark,
And rave it frae gore to gore,
And stapt it in his bleeding wounds,
But ay they bled the more.
6
'O brither, tak me on your back,
And bear me hence away,
And carry me to Chester kirk,
And lay me in the clay.'
7
'What will I say to your father,
This night when I return?'
'Tell him I'm gane to Chester scule,
And tell him no to murn.'
8
'What will I say to your mother,
This nicht whan I gae hame?'
'She wishd afore I cam awa
That I might neer gae hame.'
9
'What will I say to your true-love,
This nicht when I gae hame?'
'Tell her I'm dead and in my grave,
For her dear sake alane.'
10
He took him upon his back
And bore him hence away,
And carried him to Chester kirk,
And laid him in the clay.
11
He laid him in the cauld cauld clay,
And he cuirt him wi a stane,
And he's awa to his fathers ha,
Sae dowilie alane.
12
'You're welcome, dear son,' he said,
'You're welcome hame to me;
But what's come o your brither John,
That gade awa wi thee?'
13
'Oh he's awa to Chester scule,
A scholar he'll return;
He bade me tell his father dear
About him no to murn.'
14
'You're welcome hame, dear son,' she said,
'You're welcome hame to me;
But what's come o your brither John,
That gade awa wi thee?'
15
'He bade me tell his mother dear,
This nicht when I cam hame,
Ye wisht before he gade awa,
That he might neer return.'
16
Then next came up his true-love dear,
And heavy was her moan;
'You're welcome hame, dear Will,' she said,
'But whare's your brither John?'
17
'O lady, cease your trouble now,
O cease your heavy moan;
He's dead and in the cauld cauld clay,
For your dear sake alone.'
18
She ran distraught, she wept, she sicht,
She wept the sma brids frae the tree,
She wept the starns adoun frae the lift,
She wept the fish out o the sea.
19
'O cease your weeping, my ain true-love,
Ye but disturb my rest;'
'Is that my ain true lover John,
The man that I loe best?'
20
''T is naething but my ghaist,' he said,
'That's sent to comfort thee;
O cease your weeping, my true-love,
And 't will gie peace to me.'
D
Jamieson's Popular Ballads, I, 59. From the recitation of
Mrs W. Arrott, of Aberbrothick.
1
'O will ye gae to the school, brother?
Or will ye gae to the ba?
Or will ye gae to the wood a-warslin,
To see whilk o's maun fa?'
2
'It's I winna gae to the school, brother,
Nor will I gae to the ba;
But I will gae to the wood a-warslin,
And it is you maun fa.'
3
They warstled up, they warstled down,
The lee-lang simmer's day;
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
4
'O lift me up upon your back,
Tak me to yon wall fair;
You'll wash my bluidy wounds oer and oer,
And syne they'll bleed nae mair.
5
'And ye'll tak aff my hollin sark,
And riv 't frae gair to gair;
Ye'll stap it in my bluidy wounds,
And syne they'll bleed nae mair.'
6
He's liftit his brother upon his back,
Taen him to yon wall fair;
He's washed his bluidy wounds oer and oer,
But ay they bled mair and mair.
7
And he's taen aff his hollin sark,
And riven 't frae gair to gair;
He's stappit it in his bluidy wounds,
But ay they bled mair and mair.
8
'Ye'll lift me up upon your back,
Tak me to Kirkland fair;
Ye'll mak my greaf baith braid and lang,
And lay my body there.
9
'Ye'll lay my arrows at my head,
My bent bow at my feet,
My sword and buckler at my side,
As I was wont to sleep.
10
'Whan ye gae hame to your father,
He'll speer for his son John:
Say, ye left him into Kirkland fair,
Learning the school alone.
11
'When ye gae hame to my sister,
She'll speer for her brother John:
Ye'll say, ye left him in Kirkland fair,
The green grass growin aboon.
12
'Whan ye gae hame to my true-love,
She'll speer for her lord John:
Ye'll say, ye left him in Kirkland fair,
But hame ye fear he'll never come.'
13
He's gane hame to his father;
He speered for his son John:
'It's I left him into Kirkland fair,
Learning the school alone.'
14
And whan he gaed hame to his sister,
She speered for her brother John:
'It's I left him into Kirkland fair,
The green grass growin aboon.'
15
And whan he gaed home to his true-love,
She speerd for her lord John:
'It's I left him into Kirkland fair,
And hame I fear he'll never come.'
16
'But whaten bluid's that on your sword, Willie?
Sweet Willie, tell to me;'
'O it is the bluid o my grey hounds,
They wadna rin for me.'
17
'It's nae the bluid o your hounds, Willie,
Their bluid was never so red;
But it is the bluid o my true-love,
That ye hae slain indeed.'
18
That fair may wept, that fair may mournd,
That fair may mournd and pin'd:
'When every lady looks for her love,
I neer need look for mine.'
19
'O whaten a death will ye die, Willie?
Now, Willie, tell to me;'
'Ye'll put me in a bottomless boat,
And I'll gae sail the sea.'
20
'Whan will ye come hame again, Willie?
Now, Willie, tell to me;'
'Whan the sun and moon dances on the green,
And that will never be.'
E
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 60.
1
There were twa brothers at the scule,
And when they got awa,
'It's will ye play at the stane-chucking,
Or will ye play at the ba,
Or will ye gae up to yon hill head,
And there we'll warsel a fa?'
2
'I winna play at the stane-chucking,
Nor will I play at the ba;
But I'll gae up to yon bonnie green hill,
And there we'll warsel a fa.'
3
They warsled up, they warsled down,
Till John fell to the ground;
A dirk fell out of William's pouch,
And gave John a deadly wound.
4
'O lift me upon your back,
Take me to yon well fair,
And wash my bluidy wounds oer and oer,
And they'll neer bleed nae mair.'
5
He's lifted his brother upon his back,
Taen him to yon well fair;
He's wash'd his bluidy wounds oer and oer,
But they bleed ay mair and mair.
6
'Tak ye aff my holland sark,
And rive it gair by gair,
And row it in my bluidy wounds,
And they'll neer bleed nae mair.'
7
He's taken aff his holland sark,
And torn it gair by gair;
He's rowit it in his bluidy wounds,
But they bleed ay mair and mair.
8
'Tak now aff my green cleiding,
And row me saftly in,
And tak me up to yon kirk-style,
Whare the grass grows fair and green.'
9
He's taken aff the green cleiding,
And rowed him saftly in;
He's laid him down by yon kirk-style,
Whare the grass grows fair and green.
10
'What will ye say to your father dear,
When ye gae hame at een?'
'I'll say ye're lying at yon kirk-style,
Whare the grass grows fair and green.'
11
'O no, O no, my brother dear,
O you must not say so;
But say that I'm gane to a foreign land,
Whare nae man does me know.'
12
When he sat in his father's chair,
He grew baith pale and wan:
'O what blude's that upon your brow?
O dear son, tell to me;'
'It is the blude o my gude gray steed,
He wadna ride wi me.'
13
'O thy steed's blude was neer sae red,
Nor eer sae dear to me:
O what blude's this upon your cheek?
O dear son, tell to me;'
'It is the blude of my greyhound,
He wadna hunt for me.'
14
'O thy hound's blude was neer sae red,
Nor eer sae dear to me:
O what blude's this upon your hand?
O dear son, tell to me;'
'It is the blude of my gay goss-hawk,
He wadna flee for me.'
15
'O thy hawk's blude was neer sae red,
Nor eer sae dear to me:
O what blude's this upon your dirk?
Dear Willie, tell to me;'
'It is the blude of my ae brother,
O dule and wae is me!'
16
'O what will ye say to your father?
Dear Willie, tell to me;'
'I'll saddle my steed, and awa I'll ride,
To dwell in some far countrie.'
17
'O when will ye come hame again?
Dear Willie, tell to me;'
'When sun and mune leap on yon hill,
And that will never be.'
18
She turnd hersel right round about,
And her heart burst into three:
'My ae best son is deid and gane,
And my tother ane I'll neer see.'
F
Buchan's MSS, I, 57; Motherwell's MS., p. 662.
1
There were twa brothers in the east,
Went to the school o Ayr;
The one unto the other did say,
Come let us wrestle here.
2
They wrestled up and wrestled down,
Till John fell to the ground;
There being a knife in Willie's pocket,
Gae John his deadly wound.
3
'O is it for my gold, brother?
Or for my white monie?
Or is it for my lands sae braid,
That ye hae killed me?'
4
'It is not for your gold,' he said,
'Nor for your white monie;
It is by the hand o accident
That I hae killed thee.'
5
'Ye'll take the shirt that's on my back,
Rive it frae gair to gair,
And try to stop my bloody wounds,
For they bleed wonderous sair.'
6
He's taen the shirt was on his back,
Reave it frae gare to gare,
And tried to stop his bleeding wounds,
But still they bled the mair.
7
'Ye'll take me up upon your back,
Carry me to yon water clear,
And try to stop my bloody wounds,
For they run wonderous sair.'
8
He's taen him up upon his back,
Carried him to yon water clear,
And tried to stop his bleeding wounds,
But still they bled the mair.
9
'Ye'll take me up upon your back,
Carry me to yon church-yard;
Ye'll dig a grave baith wide and deep,
And then ye'll lay me there.
10
'Ye'll put a head-stane at my head,
Another at my feet,
Likewise a sod on my breast-bane,
The souner I may sleep.
11
'Whenever my father asks of thee,
Saying, What's become of John?
Ye'll tell frae me, I'm ower the sea,
For a cargo of good wine.
12
'And when my sweetheart asks of thee,
Saying, What's become of John?
Ye'll tell frae me, I'm ower the sea,
To buy a wedding gown.
13
'And when my sister asks of thee,
Saying, William, where is John?
Ye'll tell frae me, I'm ower the sea,
To learn some merry sang.
14
'And when my mother asks of thee,
Saying, William, where is John?
Tell her I'm buried in green Fordland,
The grass growing ower my tomb.'
15
He's taen him up upon his back,
Carried him to yon church-yard,
And dug a grave baith wide and deep,
And he was buried there.
16
He laid a head-stane at his head,
Another at his feet,
And laid a green sod on his breast,
The souner he might sleep.
17
His father asked when he came hame,
Saying, 'William, where is John?'
Then John said, 'He is ower the sea,
To bring you hame some wine.'
18
'What blood is this upon you, William,
And looks sae red on thee?'
'It is the blood o my grey-hound,
He woudna run for me.'
19
'O that's nae like your grey-hound's blude,
William, that I do see;
I fear it is your own brother's blood
That looks sae red on thee.'
20
'That is not my own brother's blude,
Father, that ye do see;
It is the blood o my good grey steed,
He woudna carry me.'
21
'O that is nae your grey steed's blude,
William, that I do see;
It is the blood o your brother John,
That looks sae red on thee.'
22
'It's nae the blood o my brother John,
Father, that ye do see;
It is the blude o my good grey hawk,
Because he woudna flee.'
23
'O that is nae your grey hawk's blood,
William, that I do see:'
'Well, it's the blude o my brother,
This country I maun flee.'
24
'O when will ye come back again,
My dear son, tell to me?'
'When sun and moon gae three times round,
And this will never be.'
25
'Ohon, alas! now William, my son,
This is bad news to me;
Your brother's death I'll aye bewail,
And the absence o thee.'
G
#a.# Taken down lately from the singing of little girls in
South Boston. #b.# Two stanzas, from a child in New York,
1880. Communicated by Mr W. W. Newell.
1
As John and William were coming home one day,
One Saturday afternoon,
Says John to William, Come and try a fight,
Or will you throw a stone?
Or will you come down to yonder, yonder town
Where the maids are all playing ball, ball, ball,
Where the maids are all playing ball?
2
Says William to John, I will not try a fight,
Nor will I throw a stone,
Nor will I come down to yonder town,
Where the maids are all playing ball.
3
So John took out of his pocket
A knife both long and sharp,
And stuck it through his brother's heart,
And the blood came pouring down.
4
Says John to William, Take off thy shirt,
And tear it from gore to gore,
And wrap it round your bleeding heart,
And the blood will pour no more.'
5
So John took off his shirt,
And tore it from gore to gore,
And wrapped it round his bleeding heart,
And the blood came pouring more.
6
'What shall I tell your dear father,
When I go home to-night?'
'You'll tell him I'm dead and in my grave,
For the truth must be told.'
7
'What shall I tell your dear mother,
When I go home to-night?'
'You'll tell her I'm dead and in my grave,
For the truth must be told.'
8
'How came this blood upon your knife?
My son, come tell to me;'
'It is the blood of a rabbit I have killed,
O mother, pardon me.'
9
'The blood of a rabbit couldnt be so pure,
My son, come tell to me:'
'It is the blood of a squirrel I have killed,
O mother, pardon me.'
10
'The blood of a squirrel couldnt be so pure,
My son, come tell to me:'
'It is the blood of a brother I have killed,
O mother, pardon me.'
* * * * *
#A.#
1^2. _Var._ to the chase.
10^3. "As to Kirk-land, my copy has only kirk-yard, till
the last verse, where land has been added from
conjecture." _Sharpe's Ballad-Book, p. 56._
#D.#
1^3, 2^3. o Warslin.
#F.#
13^3. tell me free.
_Motherwell has Scotticised the spelling._
9^4. _Motherwell has_ leave.
11^1, 12^1, 13^1, 14^1. _Motherwell_, speirs at thee.
23^3. _Motherwell has_ my ae brother.
#G. b.#
1.
Jack and William was gone to school,
One fine afternoon;
Jack says to William, Will you try a fight?
Do not throw no stones.
2.
Jack took out his little penknife,
The end of it was sharp,
He stuck it through his brother's heart,
And the blood was teeming down.
[401] Mr Newell says: "I have heard it sung at a picnic, by a whole
carful of little girls. The melody is pretty. These children were of the
poorest class."
[402] "The house of Inchmurry, formerly called Kirkland, was built of
old by the abbot of Holyrood-house for his accommodation when he came to
that country, and was formerly the minister's manse." Statistical
Account of Scotland, XIII, 506, cited by Jamieson, I, 62. There are
still three or four Kirklands in Scotland and the north of England.
50
THE BONNY HIND
'The Bonny Hyn,' Herd's MSS, I, 224; II, fol. 65, fol. 83.
This piece is transcribed three times in Herd's manuscripts, with a note
prefixed in each instance that it was copied from the mouth of a
milkmaid in 1771. An endorsement to the same effect on the last
transcript gives the date as 1787, no doubt by mistake. Scott had only
MS. I in his hands, which accidentally omits two stanzas (13, 14), and
he printed this defective copy with the omission of still another (4):
Minstrelsy, II, 298, ed. 1802; III, 309, ed. 1833. Motherwell supplies
these omitted stanzas, almost in Herd's very words, in the Introduction
to his collection, p. lxxxiv, note 99. He remarks, p. 189, that tales of
this kind abound in the traditionary poetry of Scotland. The two ballads
which follow, Nos 51, 52, are of the same general description.
In the first half of the story 'The Bonny Hind' comes very near to the
fine Scandinavian ballad of 'Margaret,' as yet known to be preserved
only in Färöe and Icelandic. The conclusions differ altogether. Margaret
in the Färöe ballad, 'Margretu kvæði,' Færöiske Kvæder, Hammershaimb, No
18, is the only daughter of the Norwegian king Magnus, and has been put
in a convent. After two or three months she longs to see her father's
house again. On her way thither she is assaulted by a young noble with
extreme violence: to whom she says,
Now you have torn off all my clothes, and done me sin and shame,
I beg you, before God most high, tell me what is your name.
Magnus, he answers, is his father, and Gertrude his mother, and he
himself is Olaf, and was brought up in the woods. By this she recognizes
that he is her own brother. Olaf begs her to go back to the convent,
and say nothing, bearing her sorrow as she may. This she does. But every
autumn the king makes a feast, and invites to it all the nuns in the
cloister. Margaret is missed, and asked for. Is she sick or dead? Why
does she not come to the feast, like other merry dames? The wicked
abbess answers, Your daughter is neither sick nor dead; she goes with
child, like other merry dames. The king rides off to the cloister,
encounters his daughter, and demands who is the father of her child. She
replies that she will sooner die than tell. The king leaves her in
wrath, but returns presently, resolved to burn the convent, and Margaret
in it, Olaf comes from the wood, tired and weary, sees the cloister
burning, and quenches the flames with his heart's blood.
The Icelandic ballad, 'Margrètar kvæði,' Íslenzk Fornkvæði, Grundtvig
and Sigurðsson, No 14, has the same story. It is, however, the man who
brings on the discovery by asking the woman's parentage. The editors
inform us that the same subject is treated in an unprinted Icelandic
ballad, less popular as to style and stanza, in the Arne Magnussen
collection, 154.
The story of Kullervo, incorporated in what is called the national epic
of the Finns, the Kalevala, has striking resemblances with the ballads
of the Bonny Hind class. While returning home in his sledge from a
somewhat distant errand, Kullervo met three times a girl who was
travelling on snow-shoes, and invited her to get in with him. She
rejected his invitation with fierceness, and the third time he pulled
her into the sledge by force. She angrily bade him let her go, or she
would dash the sledge to pieces; but he won her over by showing her rich
things. The next morning she asked what was his race and family; for it
seemed to her that he must come of a great line. "No," he said, "neither
of great nor small. I am Kalervo's unhappy son. Tell me of what stock
art thou." "Of neither great nor small," she answered. "I am Kalervo's
unhappy daughter." She was, in fact, a long-lost sister of Kullervo's,
who, when a child, had gone to the wood for berries, and had never found
her way home. She had wept the first day and the second; the third and
fourth, the fifth and sixth, she had tried every way to kill herself.
She broke out in heart-piercing lamentations:
'O that I had died then, wretched!
O that I had perished, weak one!
Had not lived to hear these horrors,
Had not lived this shame to suffer!'
So saying she sprang from the sledge into the river, and found relief
under the waters.
Kullervo, mad with anguish, went home to his mother, and told her what
had happened. He asked only how he might die,--by wolf or bear, by whale
or sea-pike. His mother vainly sought to soothe him. He consented to
live only till the wrongs of his parents had been revenged. His mother
tried to dissuade him even from seeking a hero's death in fight.
'If thou die in battle, tell me,
What protection shall remain then
For the old age of thy father?'
'Let him die in any alley,
Lay his life down in the house-yard.'
'What protection shall remain then
For the old age of thy mother?'
'Let her die on any straw-truss;
Let her stifle in the stable.'
'Who shall then be left thy brother,
Who stand by him in mischances?'
'Let him pine away in the forest,
Let him drop down on the common.'
'Who shall then be left thy sister,
Who stand by her in mischances?'
'When she goes to the well for water,
Or to the washing, let her stumble.'
Kullervo had his fill of revenge. Meanwhile father, brother, sister, and
mother died, and he came back to his home to find it empty and cold. A
voice from his mother's grave seemed to direct him to go to the wood for
food: obeying it, he came again to the polluted spot, where grass or
flowers would not grow any more. He asked his sword would it like to
feed on guilty flesh and drink wicked blood. The sword said, Why should
I not like to feed on guilty flesh and drink wicked blood, I that feed
on the flesh of the good and drink the blood of the sinless? Kullervo
set the sword hilt in the earth, and threw himself on the point.
(Kalewala, übertragen von Schiefner, runes 35, 36.)
The dialogue between Kullervo and his mother is very like a passage in
another Finnish rune, 'Werinen Pojka,' 'The Bloody Son,' Schröter,
Finnische Runen, 124, ed. 1819; 150, ed. 1834. This last is a form of
the ballad known in Scottish as 'Edward,' No 13, or of 'The Twa
Brothers,' No 49. Something similar is found in 'Lizie Wan,' No 51.
The passage 5-7 is a commonplace that may be expected to recur under the
same or analogous circumstances, as it does in 'Tam Lin,' #D#, 'The
Knight and Shepherd's Daughter,' 'The Maid and the Magpie,' and in one
version of 'The Broom of Cowdenknows.' These are much less serious
ballads, and the tone of stanza 5, which so ill befits the distressful
situation, is perhaps owing to that stanza's having been transferred
from some copy of one of these. It might well change places with this,
from 'The Knight and Shepherd's Daughter,' #A#:
Sith you have had your will of me,
And put me to open shame,
Now, if you are a courteous knight,
Tell me what is your name.
Much better with the solemn adjuration in the Färöe 'Margaret,' or even
this in 'Ebbe Galt,' Danske Viser, No 63, 8:
Now you have had your will of me,
To both of us small gain,
By the God that is above all things,
I beg you tell your name.
Herd's MSS, II, fol. 65. "Copied from the mouth of a
milkmaid, by W. L. in 1771."
1
O may she comes, and may she goes,
Down by yon gardens green,
And there she spied a gallant squire
As squire had ever been.
2
And may she comes, and may she goes,
Down by yon hollin tree,
And there she spied a brisk young squire,
And a brisk young squire was he.
3
'Give me your green manteel, fair maid,
Give me your maidenhead;
Gif ye winna gie me your green manteel,
Gi me your maidenhead.'
4
He has taen her by the milk-white hand,
And softly laid her down,
And when he's lifted her up again
Given her a silver kaim.
5
'Perhaps there may be bairns, kind sir,
Perhaps there may be nane;
But if you be a courtier,
You'll tell to me your name.'
6
'I am nae courtier, fair maid,
But new come frae the sea;
I am nae courtier, fair maid,
But when I court 'ith thee.
7
'They call me Jack when I'm abroad,
Sometimes they call me John;
But when I'm in my father's bower
Jock Randal is my name.'
8
'Ye lee, ye lee, ye bonny lad,
Sae loud's I hear ye lee!
Ffor I'm Lord Randal's yae daughter,
He has nae mair nor me.'
9
'Ye lee, ye lee, ye bonny may,
Sae loud's I hear ye lee!
For I'm Lord Randal's yae yae son,
Just now come oer the sea.'
10
She's putten her hand down by her spare,
And out she's taen a knife,
And she has putn't in her heart's bluid,
And taen away her life.
11
And he's taen up his bonny sister,
With the big tear in his een,
And he has buried his bonny sister
Amang the hollins green.
12
And syne he's hyed him oer the dale,
His father dear to see:
'Sing O and O for my bonny hind,
Beneath yon hollin tree!'
13
'What needs you care for your bonny hyn?
For it you needna care;
There's aught score hyns in yonder park,
And five score hyns to spare.
14
'Four score of them are siller-shod,
Of thae ye may get three;'
'But O and O for my bonny hyn,
Beneath yon hollin tree!'
15
'What needs you care for your bonny hyn?
For it you need na care;
Take you the best, gi me the warst,
Since plenty is to spare.'
16
'I care na for your hyns, my lord,
I care na for your fee;
But O and O for my bonny hyn,
Beneath the hollin tree!'
17
'O were ye at your sister's bower,
Your sister fair to see,
Ye'll think na mair o your bonny hyn
Beneath the hollin tree.'
* * * * * * *
* * * * *
'The Bonny Heyn,' I, 224.
3^2. _Should be ~It's not for you a weed~. Motherwell._
4^3. _The third copy omits ~when~._
4^{3, 4}. he lifted, He gae her. _Motherwell._
5^{1, 2}. _The second copy has ~they~._
6^4. _All have ~courteth~. Scott prints ~wi' thee, with
thee~._
7^3. _The third copy has ~tower~._
10^{3, 4}.
She's soakt it in her red heart's blood,
And twin'd herself of life. _Motherwell._
13, 14. _The first copy omits these stanzas._
51
LIZIE WAN
#A. a.# 'Lizie Wan,' Herd's MSS, I, 151; II, 78. #b.#
Herd's Scottish Songs, 1776, I, 91.
#B.# 'Rosie Ann,' Motherwell's MS., p. 398.
#A#, first printed in Herd's Scottish Songs, ed. 1776, is here given
from his manuscript copy. #B# is now printed for the first time.
#A# is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og Skotske Folkeviser, No 50,
who subjoins a Danish ballad, 'Liden Ellen og hendes Broder,' of similar
character. Of this the editor had three versions, differing but little,
and all of slight poetical value, and he prints one which was committed
to writing some sixty or seventy years ago, with some readings from the
others. Liden Jensen, having killed Liden Ellen in a wood, pretends to
his mother that she has gone off with some knights. He is betrayed by
blood on his clothes, confesses the truth, and is condemned to be
burned. 'Herr Axel,' Arwidsson's Swedish collection, No 46, I, 308,
under similar circumstances, kills Stolts Kirstin's two children, is
asked by his mother why his hands are bloody, pretends to have slain a
hind in the wood, and has his head struck off by order of his father.
'Herr Peder og hans Söster,' an unpublished Danish ballad, of which
Grundtvig obtained a single traditional version, has also a slight
resemblance to 'Lizie Wan.' Kirsten invites Sir Peter to her bed. He
declines for various reasons, which she refutes. She discovers him to be
her brother by her needle-work in his shirt. He draws his knife and
stabs her. "This was also a pitiful sight, the twin children playing in
the mother's bosom." Compare Kristensen, II, No 74 #A#, #D#, #E#, at the
end.
The conclusion, #A# 11-12, #B# 10-17, resembles that of 'The Twa
Brothers,' No 49, but is poetically much inferior.
A
Herd's MSS, I, 151; stanzas 1-6, II, p. 78. Herd's
Scottish Songs, 1776, I, 91.
1
Lizie Wan sits at her father's bower-door,
Weeping and making a mane,
And by there came her father dear:
'What ails thee, Lizie Wan?'
2
'I ail, and I ail, dear father,' she said,
'And I'll tell you a reason for why;
There is a child between my twa sides,
Between my dear billy and I.'
3
Now Lizie Wan sits at her father's bower-door,
Sighing and making a mane,
And by there came her brother dear:
'What ails thee, Lizie Wan?'
4
'I ail, I ail, dear brither,' she said,
'And I'll tell you a reason for why;
There is a child between my twa sides,
Between you, dear billy, and I.'
5
'And hast thou tald father and mother o that?
And hast thou tald sae o me?'
And he has drawn his gude braid sword,
That hang down by his knee.
6
And he has cutted aff Lizie Wan's head,
And her fair body in three,
And he's awa to his mothers bower,
And sair aghast was he.
7
'What ails thee, what ails thee, Geordy Wan?
What ails thee sae fast to rin?
For I see by thy ill colour
Some fallow's deed thou hast done.'
8
'Some fallow's deed I have done, mother,
And I pray you pardon me;
For I've cutted aff my greyhound's head;
He wadna rin for me.'
9
'Thy greyhound's bluid was never sae red,
O my son Geordy Wan!
For I see by thy ill colour
Some fallow's deed thou hast done.'
10
'Some fallow's deed I hae done, mother,
And I pray you pardon me;
For I hae cutted aff Lizie Wan's head
And her fair body in three.'
11
'O what wilt thou do when thy father comes hame,
O my son Geordy Wan?'
'I'll set my foot in a bottomless boat,
And swim to the sea-ground.'
12
'And when will thou come hame again,
O my son Geordy Wan?'
'The sun and the moon shall dance on the green
That night when I come hame.'
B
Motherwell's MS., p. 398. From the recitation of Mrs
Storie, Lochwinnich.
1
Rosie she sat in her simmer bower,
Greitin and making grit mane,
When down by cam her father, saying,
What ails thee Rosie Ann?
2
'A deal, a deal, dear father,' she said,
'Great reason hae I to mane,
For there lyes a little babe in my side,
Between me and my brither John.'
3
Rosie she sat in her simmer bower,
Weeping and making great mane,
And wha cam doun but her mither dear,
Saying, What ails thee, Rosie Ann?
4
'A deal, a deal, dear mither,' she said,
'Great reason hae I to mane,
For there lyes a little babe in my side,
Between me and my brither John.'
5
Rosie she sat in her simmer bower,
Greiting and making great mane,
And wha came doun but her sister dear,
Saying, What ails thee, Rosie Ann?
6
'A deal, a deal, dear sister,' she said,
'Great reason hae I to mane,
For there lyes a little babe in my side,
Between me and my brither John.'
7
Rosie she sat in her simmer bower,
Weeping and making great mane,
And wha cam doun but her fause, fause brither,
Saying, What ails thee, Rosie Ann?
8
'A deal, a deal, dear brither,' she said,
'Great reason hae I to cry,
For there lyes a little babe in my side,
Between yoursell and I.'
9
'Weel ye hae tauld father, and ye hae tauld mither,
And ye hae tauld sister, a' three;'
Syne he pulled out his wee penknife,
And he cut her fair bodie in three.
10
'O what blude is that on the point o your knife,
Dear son, come tell to me?'
'It is my horse's, that I did kill,
Dear mother and fair ladie.'
11
'The blude o your horse was neer sae red,
Dear son, come tell to me:'
'It is my grandfather's, that I hae killed,
Dear mother and fair ladie.'
12
'The blude o your grandfather was neer sae fresh,
Dear son, come tell to me:'
'It is my sister's, that I did kill,
Dear mother and fair ladie.'
13
'What will ye do when your father comes hame,
Dear son, come tell to me?'
'I'll set my foot on yon shipboard,
And I hope she'll sail wi me.'
14
'What will ye do wi your bonny bonny young wife,
Dear son, come tell to me?'
'I'll set her foot on some other ship,
And I hope she'll follow me.'
15
'And what will ye do wi your wee son,
Dear son, come tell to me?'
'I'll leave him wi you, my dear mother,
To keep in remembrance of me.'
16
'What will ye do wi your houses and lands,
Dear son, come tell to me?'
'I'll leave them wi you, my dear mother,
To keep my own babie.'
17
'And whan will you return again,
Dear son, come tell to me?'
'When the sun and the mune meet on yon hill,
And I hope that'll neer be.'
* * * * *
#B.#
_Written without division into stanzas._
52
THE KING'S DOCHTER LADY JEAN
#A. a.# 'The King's Dochter Lady Jean,' Motherwell's MS.,
p. 657. #b.# 'Lady Jean,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Appendix, p. xxi.
#B.# Motherwell's MS., p. 275; the first six lines in
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 189 f.
#C.# 'Castle Ha's Daughter,' Buchan's Ballads of the North
of Scotland, I, 241.
#D.# 'Bold Burnet's Daughter.' #a.# Buchan's MSS, I, 120.
#b.# The same, II, 141.
#B# is the ballad referred to, and partly cited, in Motherwell's preface
to 'The Broom blooms bonnie and says it is fair,' Minstrelsy, p. 189.
This copy has been extremely injured by tradition; so much so as not to
be intelligible in places except by comparison with #A#. The act
described in stanza 9 should be done by the king's daughter's own hand;
stanza 12 should be addressed by her to her sister; stanza 13 is
composed of fragments of two. #C# and #D# have suffered worse, for they
have been corrupted and vulgarized.
At the beginning there is resemblance to 'Tam Lin' and to 'Hind Etin.'
A
#a.# Motherwell's MS., p. 657. From the recitation of Mrs
Storie, Lochwinnich. #b.# Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Appendix, p. xxi, No XXIII, one stanza.
1
The king's young dochter was sitting in her window,
Sewing at her silken seam;
She lookt out o the bow-window,
And she saw the leaves growing green, my luve,
And she saw the leaves growing green.
2
She stuck her needle into her sleeve,
Her seam down by her tae,
And she is awa to the merrie green-wood,
To pu the nit and slae.
3
She hadna pu't a nit at a',
A nit but scarcely three,
Till out and spak a braw young man,
Saying, How daur ye bow the tree?
4
'It's I will pu the nit,' she said,
'And I will bow the tree,
And I will come to the merrie green wud,
And na ax leive o thee.'
5
He took her by the middle sae sma,
And laid her on the gerss sae green,
And he has taen his will o her,
And he loot her up agen.
6
'Now syn ye hae got your will o me,
Pray tell to me your name;
For I am the king's young dochter,' she said,
'And this nicht I daurna gang hame.'
7
'Gif ye be the king's young dochter,' he said,
'I am his auldest son;
I wish I had died on some frem isle,
And never had come hame!
8
'The first time I came hame, Jeanie,
Thou was na here nor born;
I wish my pretty ship had sunk,
And I had been forlorn!
9
'The neist time I came hame, Jeanie,
Thou was sittin on the nourice knee;
And I wish my pretty ship had sunk,
And I had never seen thee!
10
'And the neist time I came hame, Jeanie,
I met thee here alane;
I wish my pretty ship had sunk,
And I had neer come hame!'
11
She put her hand down by her side,
And doun into her spare,
And she pou't out a wee pen-knife,
And she wounded hersell fu sair.
12
Hooly, hooly rase she up,
And hooly she gade hame,
Until she came to her father's parlour,
And there she did sick and mane.
13
'O sister, sister, mak my bed,
O the clean sheets and strae,
O sister, sister, mak my bed,
Down in the parlour below.'
14
Her father he came tripping down the stair,
His steps they were fu slow;
'I think, I think, Lady Jean,' he said,
'Ye're lying far ower low.'
15
'O late yestreen, as I came hame,
Down by yon castil wa,
O heavy, heavy was the stane
That on my briest did fa!'
16
Her mother she came tripping doun the stair,
Her steps they were fu slow;
'I think, I think, Lady Jean,' she said,
'Ye're lying far ower low.'
17
'O late yestreen, as I cam hame,
Down by yon castil wa,
O heavy, heavy was the stane
That on my breast did fa!'
18
Her sister came tripping doun the stair,
Her steps they were fu slow;
'I think, I think, Lady Jean,' she said,
'Ye're lying far ower low.'
19
'O late yestreen, as I cam hame,
Doun by yon castil wa,
O heavy, heavy was the stane
That on my breast did fa!'
20
Her brither he cam trippin doun the stair,
His steps they were fu slow;
He sank into his sister's arms,
And they died as white as snaw.
B
Motherwell's MS., p. 275; the first six lines in
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 189. From Margery Johnston.
1
Lady Margaret sits in her bow-window,
Sewing her silken seam;
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
2
She's drapt the thimble at her tae,
And her scissars at her heel,
And she's awa to the merry green-wood,
To see the leaves grow green.
3
She had scarsely bowed a branch,
Or plucked a nut frae the tree,
Till up and starts a fair young man,
And a fair young man was he.
4
'How dare ye shake the leaves?' he said,
'How dare ye break the tree?
How dare ye pluck the nuts,' he said,
'Without the leave of me?'
5
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
'Oh I know the merry green wood's my ain,
And I'll ask the leave of nane.'
6
He gript her by the middle sae sma,
He gently sat her down,
While the grass grew up on every side,
And the apple trees hang down.
7
She says, Young man, what is your name?
For ye've brought me to meikle shame;
For I am the king's youngest daughter,
And how shall I gae hame?
8
'If you're the king's youngest daughter,
It's I'm his auldest son,
And heavy heavy is the deed, sister,
That you and I have done.'
9
He had a penknife in his hand,
Hang low down by his gair,
And between the long rib and the short one
He woundit her deep and sair.
10
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
And fast and fast her ruddy bright blood
Fell drapping on the ground.
11
She took the glove off her right hand,
And slowly slipt it in the wound,
And slowly has she risen up,
And slowly slipped home.
* * * * * * *
12
'O sister dear, when thou gaes hame
Unto thy father's ha,
It's make my bed baith braid and lang,
Wi the sheets as white as snaw.'
* * * * * * *
13
'When I came by the high church-yard
Heavy was the stain that bruised my heel,
... that bruised my heart,
I'm afraid it shall neer heal.'
* * * * * * *
C
Buchan's Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland, I,
241.
1
As Annie sat into her bower,
A thought came in her head,
That she would gang to gude greenwood,
Across the flowery mead.
2
She hadna pu'd a flower, a flower,
Nor broken a branch but twa,
Till by it came a gentle squire,
Says, Lady, come awa.
3
There's nane that comes to gude greenwood
But pays to me a tein,
And I maun hae your maidenhead,
Or than your mantle green.
4
'My mantle's o the finest silk,
Anither I can spin;
But gin you take my maidenhead,
The like I'll never fin.'
5
He's taen her by the milk-white hand,
And by the grass-green sleeve,
There laid her low in gude greenwood,
And at her spierd nae leave.
6
When he had got his wills o her,
His wills as he had taen,
She said, If you rightly knew my birth,
Ye'd better letten alane.
7
'Is your father a lord o might?
Or baron o high degree?
Or what race are ye sprung frae,
That I should lat ye be?'
8
'O I am Castle Ha's daughter,
O birth and high degree,
And if he knows what ye hae done,
He'll hang you on a tree.'
9
'If ye be Castle Ha's daughter,
This day I am undone;
If ye be Castle Ha's daughter,
I am his only son.'
10
'Ye lie, ye lie, ye jelly hind squire,
Sae loud as I hear you lie,
Castle Ha, he has but ae dear son,
And he is far beyond the sea.'
11
'O I am Castle Ha's dear son,
A word I dinna lie;
Yes, I am Castle Ha's dear son,
And new come oer the sea.
12
''Twas yesterday, that fatal day,
That I did cross the faem;
I wish my bonny ship had sunk,
And I had neer come hame.'
13
Then dowie, dowie, raise she up,
And dowie came she hame,
And stripped aff her silk mantle,
And then to bed she's gane.
14
Then in it came her mother dear,
And she steps in the fleer:
'Win up, win up, now fair Annie,
What makes your lying here?'
15
'This morning fair, as I went out,
Near by yon castle wa,
Great and heavy was the stane
That on my foot did fa.'
16
'Hae I nae ha's, hae I nae bowers,
Towers, or mony a town?
Will not these cure your bonny foot,
Gar you gae hale and soun?'
17
'Ye hae ha's, and ye hae bowers,
And towers, and mony a town,
But nought will cure my bonny foot,
Gar me gang hale and soun.'
18
Then in it came her father dear,
And he trips in the fleer:
'Win up, win up, now fair Annie,
What makes your lying here?'
19
'This morning fair, as I went out,
Near by yon castle wa,
Great and heavy was the stane
That on my foot did fa.'
20
'Hae I nae ha's, hae I nae bowers,
And towers, and mony a town?
Will not these cure your bonny foot,
Gar you gang hale and soun?'
21
'O ye hae ha's, and ye hae bowers,
And towers, and mony a town,
But nought will cure my bonny foot,
Gar me gang hale and soun.'
22
Then in it came her sister Grace;
As she steps in the fleer,
'Win up, win up, now fair Annie,
What makes your lying here?
23
'Win up, and see your ae brother,
That's new come ower the sea;'
'Ohon, alas!' says fair Annie,
'He spake ower soon wi me.'
24
To her room her brother's gane,
Stroked back her yellow hair,
To her lips his ain did press,
But words spake never mair.
D
#a.# Buchan's MSS, I, 120. #b.# The same, II, 141.
1
The lady's taen her mantle her middle about,
Into the woods she's gane,
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
2
She hadna poud a flower o gude green-wood,
O never a flower but ane,
Till by he comes, an by he gangs,
Says, Lady, lat alane.
3
For I am forester o this wood,
And I hae power to pine
Your mantle or your maidenhead,
Which o the twa ye'll twine.
4
'My mantle is o gude green silk,
Another I can card an spin;
But gin ye tak my maidenhead,
The like I'll never fin.'
5
He's taen her by the milk-white hand,
And by the grass-green sleeve,
And laid her low at the foot o a tree,
At her high kin spierd nae leave.
6
'I am bold Burnet's ae daughter,
You might hae lat me be:'
'And I'm bold Burnet's ae dear son,
Then dear! how can this dee?'
7
'Ye lie, ye lie, ye jolly hind squire,
So loud's I hear you lie!
Bold Burnet has but ae dear son,
He's sailing on the sea.'
8
'Yesterday, about this same time,
My bonny ship came to land;
I wish she'd sunken in the sea,
And never seen the strand!
9
'Heal well this deed on me, lady,
Heal well this deed on me!'
'Although I would heal it neer sae well,
Our God above does see.'
10
She's taen her mantle her middle about,
And mourning went she hame,
And a' the way she sighd full sair,
Crying, Am I to blame!
11
Ben it came her father dear,
Stout stepping on the flear:
'Win up, win up, my daughter Janet,
And welcome your brother here.'
12
Up she's taen her milk-white hand,
Streakd by his yellow hair,
Then turnd about her bonny face,
And word spake never mair.
* * * * *
#A. b.#
1^2. fine silken.
1^3. She luikit out at her braw bower window.
#B.#
1^{1,2} _and 2 are joined in the MS._
5^{1,4} _joined with 4. 5^4. ~no leave of thee~, an
emendation by Motherwell, for rhyme._
9^4. He struck: _an emendation_.
10^{3,4} _are joined with 9._
13^3. That bruised by heart.
_After 13 is written_ A stanza wanting.
#D.#
_The first three stanzas are not properly divided in #a#,
and in #b# the first fourteen lines not divided at all._
#a.#
11^2. An stepping.
7^1. _~kind squire~ in both copies._
#b.#
5^4. kin's.
9^1. Heal well, heal well on me, Lady Janet.
11^2. Stout stepping.
12^3. She turned.
53
YOUNG BEICHAN
#A.# 'Young Bicham,' Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. 13, c. 1783.
#B.# 'Young Brechin,' Glenriddell MSS, XI, 80, 1791.
#C.# 'Young Bekie.' #a.# Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. 11, c.
1783. #b.# Jamieson's Popular Ballads, II, 127.
#D.# 'Young Beachen,' Skene MSS, p. 70, 1802-1803.
#E.# 'Young Beichan and Susie Pye,' Jamieson's Popular
Ballads, II, 117.
#F.# 'Susan Pye and Lord Beichan,' Pitcairn's MSS, III,
159.
#G.# Communicated by Mr Alex. Laing, of Newburgh-on-Tay.
#H.# 'Lord Beichan and Susie Pye,' Kinloch's Ancient
Scottish Ballads, p. 260.
#I.# Communicated by Mr David Loudon, Morham, Haddington.
#J.# Dr Joseph Robertson's Note-Book, 'Adversaria,' p. 85.
#K.# Communicated by Mr David Loudon.
#L.# The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman. Illustrated by
George Cruikshank, 1839.
#M.# 'Young Bondwell,' Buchan's MSS, I, 18. J. H. Dixon,
Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 1.
#N.# 'Susan Py, or Young Bichen's Garland.' #a.# Falkirk,
printed by T. Johnston, 1815. #b.# Stirling, M. Randall.
#A#, #B#, #D#, #F#, and the fragment #G# now appear for the first time
in print, and the same is true of #I#, #J#, #K#, which are of less
account. #C a# is here given according to the manuscript, without
Jamieson's "collations." Of #E# and #C b# Jamieson says: This ballad and
that which succeeds it are given from copies taken from Mrs Brown's
recitation,[403] collated with two other copies procured from Scotland;
one in MS.; another, very good, one printed for the stalls; a third, in
the possession of the late Reverend Jonathan Boucher, of Epsom, taken
from recitation in the north of England; and a fourth, about one third
as long as the others, which the editor picked off an old wall in
Piccadilly. #L#, the only English copy, was derived from the singing of
a London vagrant. It is, says Dixon, the common English broadsheet
"turned into the dialect of Cockaigne."[404] #M# was probably a
broadside or stall copy, and is certainly of that quality, but preserves
a very ancient traditional feature.
#D# and #M#, besides the name Linne, have in common a repetition of the
song, a trait which we also find in one version of 'The Heir of
Linne;'[405] see Dixon's Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient
Ballads, p. 30, stanzas 2-6, Percy Society, vol. XVII.
In Bell's Ancient Poems, Ballads, and Songs of the Peasantry of England,
p. 68, it is remarked that #L#, "the only ancient form in which the
ballad has existed in print," is one of the publications mentioned in
one of Thackeray's catalogues of broadsides. The 'Bateman,' in
Thackeray's list, is the title of an entirely different ballad, 'A
Warning for Maidens, or Young Bateman,' reprinted from the Roxburghe
collection by W. Chappell, III, 193.
"Young Beichan" is a favorite ballad, and most deservedly. There are
beautiful repetitions of the story in the ballads of other nations, and
it has secondary affinities with the extensive cycle of 'Hind Horn,' the
parts of the principal actors in the one being inverted in the other.
The hero's name is mostly Beichan, with slight modifications like Bekie,
#C#, Bicham, #A#, Brechin, #B#; in #L#, Bateman; in #M#, Bondwell. The
heroine is Susan Pye in ten of the fourteen versions; Isbel in #C#;
Essels, evidently a variety of Isbel, in #M#, which has peculiar
relations with #C#; Sophia in #K#, #L#.
Beichan is London born in #A#, #D#, [#E#], #H#, #I#, #N#, English born
in #B#; London city is his own, #A# 6, #B# 7, #F# 7, or he has a hall
there, #I# 7, #N# 27 f.; half Northumberland belongs to him, #L#; he is
lord of the towers of Line, #D# 9, #C# 5, #M# 5, which are in London,
#D# 15 f, but are transferred by reciters to the water of Tay, #M# 29,
and to Glasgow, or the vicinity, #H# 20. #H#, though it starts with
calling him London born, speaks of him thereafter as a Scottish lord,
12, 18, 31.[406]
Beichan has an Englishman's desire strange countries for to see, #A#,
#D#, [#E#], #I#, #L#, #N#. In #C#, #M# he goes abroad, Quentin Durward
fashion, not to gratify his taste for travel, but to serve for meat and
fee. #F# makes him go to the Holy Land, without specifying his motive,
but we may fairly suppose it religious. #C# sends him no further than
France, and #M# to an unnamed foreign land. He becomes the slave of a
Moor or Turk, #A#, #B#, #D#, #H#, #I#, #L#, #N#, or a "Prudent," #F#,
who treats him cruelly. They bore his shoulders and put in a "tree," and
make him draw carts, like horse or ox, #A#, #B#, #D#, [#E#], #H#; draw
plough and harrow, #F#, plough and cart, #N#; or tread the wine-press,
#I#. This is because he is a staunch Christian, and would never bend a
knee to Mahound or Termagant, #E#, or onie of their stocks, #H#, or
gods, #I#. They cast him into a dungeon, where he can neither hear nor
see, and he is nigh perishing with hunger. This, also, is done in #H# 5,
on account of his perseverance in Christianity; but in #C#, #M# he is
imprisoned for falling in love with the king's daughter, or other lovely
may.
From his prison Beichan makes his moan (not to a stock or a stone, but
to the Queen of Heaven, #D# 4). His hounds go masterless, his hawks flee
from tree to tree, his younger brother will heir his lands, and he shall
never see home again, #E#, #H#. If a lady [earl] would borrow him, he
would run at her stirrup; if a widow [auld wife] would borrow him, he
would become her son; and if a maid would borrow him, he would wed her
with a ring, #C#, #D#, #M#, #B#.[407] The only daughter of the Moor,
Turk, or king (of a 'Savoyen,' #B# 5, perhaps a corruption of Saracen),
already interested in the captive, or immediately becoming so upon
hearing Beichan's song, asks him if he has lands and means at home to
maintain a lady that should set him free, and is told that he has ample
estates, all of which he would bestow on such a lady, #A#, #B#, #E#,
#F#, #H#, #L#, #N#. She steals the keys and delivers the prisoner, #C#,
#D#, #E#, #I#, #J#, #L#, #M#, #N#; refreshes him with bread and wine
[wine], #A#, #D#, #E#, #F#, #J# 4, #K# 3, #B#, #H#, #L#; supplies him
with money, #C# 9, #H# 15, #M# 12, #N# 14, and with a ship, #F# 9, #H#
18, #L# 9; to which #C#, #M# add a horse and hounds [and hawks, #M#].
She bids him mind on the lady's love that freed him out of pine, #A# 8,
#D# 12, [#E# 13], #M# 14, #N# 15, and in #E# 16 breaks a ring from her
finger, and gives half of it to Beichan to assist his memory. There is a
solemn vow, or at least a clear understanding, that they are to marry
within seven years, #A# 9, #B# 9, #E# 12 f., #H# 17, 19, #L# 8, #N# 11
[three years, #C# 11].
When seven years are at an end, or even before, Susan Pye feels a
longing, or a misgiving, which impels her to go in search of the object
of her affections, and she sets her foot on good shipboard, and turns
her back on her own country, #A# 10, #B# 10, #D# 15, #L# 10, #N#
23.[408] #C# and #M# preserve here a highly important feature which is
wanting in the other versions. Isbel, or Essels, is roused from her
sleep by the Billy Blin, #C# 14, by a woman in green, a fairy, #M# 15,
who makes known to her that that very day, or the morn, is Bekie's
[Bondwell's] wedding day. She is directed to attire herself and her
maids very splendidly, and go to the strand; a vessel will come sailing
to her, and they are to go on board. The Billy Blin will row her over
the sea, #C# 19; she will stroke the ship with a wand, and take God to
be her pilot, #M# 19. Thus, by miraculous intervention, she arrives at
the nick of time.
Beichan's fickleness is not accounted for in most of the versions. He
soon forgot his deliverer and courted another, he was young, and thought
not upon Susan Pye, say #H#, #N#. #C#, on the contrary, tells us that
Beichan had not been a twelvemonth in his own country, when he was
forced to marry a duke's daughter or lose all his land. #E# and #K#
intimate that he acts under constraint; the wedding has lasted three and
thirty days, and he will not bed with his bride for love of one beyond
the sea, #E# 21, #K# 1.[409]
On landing, Susan Pye falls in with a shepherd feeding his flock, #E#,
#K# [a boy watering his steeds, #M#]. She asks, Whose are these sheep,
these kye, these castles? and is told they are Lord Beichan's, #G#. She
asks the news, and is informed that there is a wedding in yonder hall
that has lasted thirty days and three, #E#, #K#, or that there is to be
a wedding on the morn, #M#; it seems to be a matter generally known,
#N#. In other versions she comes directly to Young Beichan's hall, and
is first informed by the porter, #A#, #B#, #F#, #H#, #L#, or the fact is
confirmed by the porter, #E#, #M#, #N#; she hears the music within, and
divines, #C#. She bribes the porter to bid the bridegroom come and
speak to her, #A#, #B#, #C#, #D#, #J#, #N#; send her down bread and
wine, and not forget the lady who brought him out of prison, #B#, #F#,
#H#, #J#, #K#, #L#. In #E# 26 she sends up her half ring to the
bridegroom [a ring in #N# 40, but not till Beichan has declined to come
down].
The porter falls on his knee and informs his master that the fairest and
richest lady that eyes ever saw is at the gate [ladies, #C#, #M#]. The
bride, or the bride's mother more commonly, reproves the porter for his
graceless speech; he might have excepted the bride, or her mother, or
both: "Gin she be braw without, we's be as braw within." But the porter
is compelled by truth to persist in his allegation; fair as they may be,
they were never to compare with yon lady, #B#, #D#, #E#, #H#, #M#.
Beichan takes the table with his foot and makes the cups and cans to
flee, #B# 18, #D# 23, #F# 28, #G# 3, #H# 47, #J# 5, #N# 42;[410] he
exclaims that it can be none but Susie Pye, #A#, #B#, #D#, #G#, #H#, #I#
[Burd Isbel, #C#], and clears the stair, fifteen steps, thirty steps, in
three bounds, #A# 19, #D# 24, #N# 43. His old love reproaches him for
his forgetfulness, #A#, #C#, #D#, #M#, #N#;[411] she asks back her faith
and troth, #B# 21. Beichan bids the forenoon bride's mother take back
her daughter: he will double her dowry, #A# 22, #D# 27, #E# 39; she came
on horseback, she shall go back in chariots, coaches, three, #B# 22, #D#
27[412] [#H# 49, in chariot free]. He marries Susie Pye, having her
baptized by the name of Lady Jean, #A#, #B#, #D#, [#E#], #F#, #I#,
#J#.[413]
This story of Beichan, or Bekie, agrees in the general outline, and also
in some details, with a well-known legend about Gilbert Beket, father of
St Thomas. The earlier and more authentic biographies lack this
particular bit of romance, but the legend nevertheless goes back to a
date not much later than a century after the death of the saint, being
found in a poetical narrative preserved in a manuscript of about
1300.[414]
We learn from this legend that Gilbert Beket, in his youth, assumed the
cross and went to the Holy Land, accompanied only by one Richard, his
servant. They "did their pilgrimage" in holy places, and at last, with
other Christians, were made captive by the Saracens and put in strong
prison. They suffered great hardship and ignominy in the service of the
Saracen prince Admiraud. But Gilbert found more grace than the rest; he
was promoted to serve the prince at meat (in his chains), and the prince
often would ask him about England and the English faith. Admiraud's only
daughter fell in love with Gilbert, and when she saw her time, in turn
asked him the like questions. Gilbert told her that he was born in
London; told her of the belief of Christians, and of the endless bliss
that should be their meed. The maid asked him if he was ready to die
for his Lord's love, and Gilbert declared that he would, joyfully. When
the maid saw that he was so steadfast, she stood long in thought, and
then said, I will quit all for love of thee, and become Christian, if
thou wilt marry me. Gilbert feared that this might be a wile; he replied
that he was at her disposition, but he must bethink himself. She went on
loving him, the longer the more. After this Gilbert and the rest broke
prison and made their way to the Christians. The prince's daughter,
reduced to desperation by love and grief, left her heritage and her kin,
sparing for no sorrow, peril, or contempt that might come to her, not
knowing whither to go or whether he would marry her when found, and went
in quest of Gilbert. She asked the way to England, and when she had come
there had no word but London to assist her further. She roamed through
the streets, followed by a noisy and jeering crowd of wild boys and what
not, until one day by chance she stopped by the house in which Gilbert
lived. The man Richard, hearing a tumult, came out to see what was the
matter, recognized the princess, and ran to tell his master.[415]
Gilbert bade Richard take the lady to the house of a respectable woman
near by, and presently went to see her. She swooned when she saw him.
Gilbert was nothing if not discreet: he "held him still," as if he had
nothing in mind. But there was a conference of six bishops just then at
St. Paul's, and he went and told them his story and asked advice. One of
the six prophetically saw a divine indication that the two were meant to
be married, and all finally recommended this if the lady would become
Christian. Brought before the bishops, she said, Most gladly, if he will
espouse me; else I had not left my kin. She was baptized[416] with great
ceremony, and the marriage followed.
The very day after the wedding Gilbert was seized with such an
overmastering desire to go back to the Holy Land that he wist not what
to do. But his wife was thoroughly converted, and after a struggle with
herself she consented, on condition that Beket should leave with her the
man Richard, who knew her language. Gilbert was gone three years and a
half, and when he came back Thomas was a fine boy.
That our ballad has been _affected_ by the legend of Gilbert Beket is
altogether likely. The name Bekie is very close to Beket, and several
versions, #A#, #D#, #H#, #I#, #N#, set out rather formally with the
announcement that Bekie was London born, like the Latin biographies and
the versified one of Garnier de Pont Sainte Maxence. Our ballad, also,
in some versions, has the Moor's daughter baptized, a point which of
course could not fail in the legend. More important still is it that the
hero of the English ballad goes home and forgets the woman he has left
in a foreign land, instead of going away from home and forgetting the
love he has left there. But the ballad, for all that, is not derived
from the legend. Stories and ballads of the general cast of 'Young
Beichan' are extremely frequent.[417] The legend lacks some of the main
points of these stories, and the ballad, in one version or another, has
them, as will be seen by referring to what has been said under 'Hind
Horn,' pp 194 ff. Bekie and Beket go to the East, like Henry and
Reinfrit of Brunswick, the Noble Moringer, the good Gerhard, Messer
Torello, the Sire de Créqui, Alexander of Metz, and others. Like the
larger part of these, they are made prisoners by the Saracens. He will
not bow the knee to Mahound; neither will the Sire de Créqui, though he
die for it.[418] Beichan is made to draw cart, plough, harrow, like a
beast. So Henry of Brunswick in a Swedish and a Danish ballad,[419] and
Alexander von Metz, or the Graf von Rom, in his most beautiful and
touching story.[420] Henry of Brunswick is set free by a "heathen" lady
in the Danish ballad. In one version of Beichan, #E#, the lady on
parting with her love breaks her ring and gives him one half, as Henry,
or his wife, Reinfrit, Gerhard, Créqui, and others do. At this point in
the story the woman pursues the man, and parts are inverted. Susan Pye
is warned that Beichan is to be married the next day, in #C# by a
Billy-Blin, in #M# by a woman in green, or fairy, and is conveyed to
Beichan's castle or hall with miraculous despatch, just as Henry and
others are warned, and are transported to their homes by devil, angel,
or necromancer. In #E# and #N# the old love is identified by a half ring
or ring, as in so many of the stories of the class of Henry the Lion.
Norse, Spanish, and Italian ballads preserve a story essentially the
same as that of 'Young Beichan.'
#Scandinavian.#
#Danish.# 'Stolt Ellensborg,' Grundtvig, IV, 238, No 218, nine versions,
#A-G#, from manuscripts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, #H#,
#I#, from recent tradition. #B# is previously printed (with alterations)
in Levninger, 'Jomfrue Ellensborg,' I, 66, No 12, Danske Viser, III,
268, No 213; I, 'Stalt Ellen henter sin Fæstemand' is in Kristensen, I,
89, No 36. Of the older texts, #A#, #B#, #C# are absolutely pure and
true to tradition, #D-G# retouched or made over.
#Icelandic#, of the seventeenth century, Grundtvig, as above, p. 259,
#M#.
#Swedish#, from Cavallius and Stephens' collection, Grundtvig, p. 255,
#K#.
#Färöe#, taken down in 1827, Grundtvig, p. 256, #L#.
#Norwegian#, 'Herre Per i Riki,' Landstad, p. 596, No 76, #N#.
The variations of these twelve versions are insignificant. The names
Herr Peder den Rige and Ellensborg [Ellen] are found in nearly all. It
comes into Sir Peter's mind that he ought to go to Jerusalem to expiate
his sins, and he asks his betrothed, Ellensborg, how long she will wait
for him. She will wait eight years, and marry no other, though the king
should woo her [seven, #L#; nine, #M#, "If I do not come then, break the
engagement;" eight, and not more, #N#]. The time passes and Peter does
not come back. Ellensborg goes to the strand. Traders come steering in,
and she is asked to buy of their ware,--sendal, linen, and silk green as
leek. She cares not for these things; have they not seen her sister's
son [brother], for whom she is grieving to death? They know nothing of
her sister's son, but well they know Sir Peter the rich: he has
betrothed a lady in the Øster-king's realm;[421] a heathen woman, "and
you never came into his mind," #E# 13; he is to be married to-morrow,
#K# 6. A wee swain tells her, #M# 14, 16, that he sits in Austurríki
drinking the ale of forgetfulness, and will never come home; he shall
not drink long, says she. Ellensborg asks her brother to undertake a
voyage for her; he will go with her if she will wait till summer; rather
than wait till summer she will go alone, #A#, #D#, #G#. She asks
fraternal advice about going in search of her lover, #A#, #E#, the
advice of her uncles, #I#; asks the loan of a ship, #B#, #C#, #F#, #H#,
#N#. She is told that such a thing would be a shame; she had better take
another lover; the object is not worth the trouble; the voyage is bad
for a man and worse for a woman. Her maids give her advice that is more
to her mind, #E#, but are as prudent as the rest in the later #I#. She
attires herself like a knight, clips her maids' hair, #B#, #H#, #I#,
#L#, #M#, and puts them into men's clothes, #D#, #L#; sets herself to
steer and the maids to row, #A-G#, #L#.[422]
The voyage is less than two months, #B#, #C#, #E#; less than three
months, #I#; quite three months, #L#. It is the first day of the bridal
when she lands, #B# 22, #E# 24, #N# 14; in #B# Ellensborg learns this
from a boy who is walking on the sand. Sword at side, she enters the
hall where Peter is drinking his bridal. Peter, can in hand, rises and
says, Bless your eyes, my sister's son; welcome to this strange land. In
#B# he asks, How are my father and mother? and she tells him that his
father lies dead on his bier, his mother in sick-bed. In #L#, waiting
for no greeting, she says, Well you sit at the board with your wife! Are
all lords wont thus to keep their faith? The bride's mother, #D#, #G#,
the heathen bride, #E#, an unnamed person, probably the bride, #A#, #B#,
#F#, #N#, says, That is not your sister's son, but much more like a
woman; her hair is like spun gold, and braided up under a silk cap.
#A# tells us, and so #F#, #G#, that it was two months before Ellensborg
could speak to Peter privately. Then, on a Yule day, when he was going
to church, she said, It does not occur to you that you gave me your
troth. Sir Peter stood as if women had shorn his hair, and recollected
all as if it had been yesterday. In #B-E#, #H#, #I#, #L#, #M#, #N#, this
incident has, perhaps, dropped out. In these immediately, as in #A#,
#F#, #G#, after this interview, Sir Peter, recalled to his senses or to
his fidelity, conceives the purpose of flying with Ellensborg. Good
people, he says, knights and swains, ladies and maids, follow my bride
to bed, while I take my sister's son over the meads, through the wood,
#B-E#, #H#, #I#, #N#. In #A#, #F#, Sir Peter asks the bride how long she
will bide while he takes his nephew across the kingdom; in #G# begs the
boon that, since his sister's son is going, he may ride with him, just
accompany him to the strand and take leave of him; in #L#, #M#, hopes
she will not be angry if he convoys his nephew three days on his way.
(It is at this point in #C#, #H#, #I#, #L#, that the bride says it is no
sister's son, but a woman.) The bride remarks that there are knights and
swains enow to escort his sister's son, and that he might more fitly
stay where he is, but Sir Peter persists that he will see his nephew off
in person.
Sir Peter and Ellensborg go aboard the ship, he crying, You will see me
no more! When they are at sea Ellensborg lets out her hair, #A#, #B#,
#C#, #H#; she wishes that the abandoned bride may now feel the grief
which she herself had borne for years. The proceeding is less covert in
#I#, #L#, #M# than in the other versions.
As Ellensborg and Peter are making for the ship in #D# 30, 31 (and #G#
36, 37, borrowed from #D#), she says, Tell me, Sir Peter, why would you
deceive me so? Sir Peter answers that he never meant to deceive her; it
was the lady of Østerland that did it; she had changed his mind. A
magical change is meant. This agrees with what is said in #A# 24, 25
(also #F#, #G#), that when Ellensborg got Peter alone to herself, and
said, You do not remember that you plighted your troth to me, everything
came back to him as if it had happened yesterday. And again in the Färöe
copy, #L# 49, Ellensborg, from the prow, cries to Ingibjörg on the
strand, Farewell to thee with thy _elf-ways_, við títt elvargangi! I
have taken to myself my true love that I lent thee so long; implying
that Sir Peter had been detained by Circean arts, by a sleepy drench of
óminnis öl, or ale of forgetfulness, Icelandic #M# 14, which, in the
light of the other ballads, is to be understood literally, and not
figuratively. The feature of a man being made, by magical or other
means, to forget a first love who had done and suffered much for him,
and being suddenly restored to consciousness and his original
predilection, is of the commonest occurrence in traditional tales.[423]
Our English ballad affords no other positive trace of external
interference with the hero's will than the far-fetched allegation in #C#
that the choice before him was to accept a duke's daughter or forfeit
his lands. The explanation of his inconstancy in #H#, #N#, that young
men ever were fickle found, is vulgar, and also insufficient, for
Beichan returns to his old love _per saltum_, like one from whose eyes
scales have fallen and from whose back a weight has been taken, not
tamely, like a facile youth that has swerved. #E# and #K#, as already
said, distinctly recognize that Beichan was not acting with free mind,
and, for myself, I have little doubt that, if we could go back far
enough, we should find that he had all along been faithful at heart.
#Spanish.# #A.# 'El Conde Sol,' Duran, Romancero, I, 180, No 327, from
tradition in Andalusia, by the editor; Wolf and Hofmann, Primavera, II,
48, No 135. In this most beautiful romance the County Sol, named general
in great wars between Spain and Portugal, and leaving a young wife
dissolved in tears, tells her that she is free to marry if he does not
come back in six years. Six pass, and eight, and more than ten, yet the
county does not return, nor does there come news of him. His wife
implores and obtains leave of her father to go in search of her husband.
She traverses France and Italy, land and sea, and is on the point of
giving up hope, when one day she sees a herdsman pasturing cows. Whose
are these cows? she asks. The County Sol's, is the answer. And whose
these wheat-fields, these ewes, these gardens, and that palace? whose
the horses I hear neigh? The County Sol's, is the answer in each
case.[424] And who that lady that a man folds in his arms? The lady is
betrothed to him and the county is to marry her. The countess changes
her silken robe for the herdsman's sackcloth, and goes to ask an alms at
the county's gate. Beyond all hope, the county comes out himself to
bring it. "Whence comest thou, pilgrim?" he asks. She was born in Spain.
"How didst thou make thy way hither?" She came to seek her husband,
footing the thorns by land, risking the perils of the sea; and when she
found him he was about to marry, he had forgotten his faithful wife.
"Pilgrim, thou art surely the devil, come to try me." "No devil," she
said, "but thy wife indeed, and therefore come to seek thee." Upon this,
without a moment's tarrying, the county ordered his horse, took up his
wife, and made his best speed to his native castle. The bride he would
have taken remained unmarried, for those that put on others' robes are
sure to be stripped naked.
#B.# 'Gerineldo,' taken down in Asturias by Amador de los Rios, Jahrbuch
für romanische u. englische Literatur, III, 290, 1861, and the same year
(Nigra) in Revista Iberica, I, 51; a version far inferior to #A#, and
differing in no important respect as to the story.
#C.# 'La boda interrumpida,' Milá, Romancerillo Catalan, p. 221, No 244,
seven copies, A-G, none good. A, which is about one third Castilian,
relates that war is declared between France and Portugal, and the son of
Conde Burgos made general. The countess his wife does nothing but weep.
The husband tells her to marry again if he does not come back in seven
years. More than seven years are gone, and the lady's father asks why
she does not marry. "How can I," she replies, "if the count is living?
Give me your blessing, and let me go in search of him." She goes a
hundred leagues on foot, in the disguise of a pilgrim. Arrived at a
palace she sees pages pass, and asks them for whom a horse is intended.
It is for Count Burgos's son, who marries that night. She asks to be
directed to the young count, is told that she will find him in the hall,
enters, and begs an alms, as coming from Italy and without a penny. The
young man says, If you come from Italy, what is the news? Is Conde
Bueso's wife living? The pilgrim desires some description of the lady.
It seems that she wore a very costly petticoat on her wedding-day. The
pilgrim takes off _her glove_ and shows her ring; she also takes off and
shows the expensive petticoat. There is great weeping in that palace,
for first wives never can be forgotten. Don Bueso and the pilgrim clap
hands and go home.
#Italian: Piedmontese.# #A.# 'Moran d'Inghilterra,' communicated to
Rivista Contemporanea, XXXI, 3, 1862, by Nigra, who gives the variations
of four other versions. The daughter of the sultan is so handsome that
they know not whom to give her to, but decide upon Moran of England. The
first day of his marriage he did nothing but kiss her, the second he
wished to leave her, and the third he went off to the war. "When shall
you return?" asked his wife. "If not in seven years, marry." She waited
seven years, but Moran did not come. His wife went all over England on
horseback, and came upon a cowherd. "Whose cows are these?" she asked.
They were Moran's. "Has Moran a wife?" This is the day when he is to
marry, and if she makes haste she will be in time for the wedding. She
spurs her horse, and arrives in season. They offer her to drink in a
gold cup. She will drink from no cup that is not her own; she will not
drink while another woman is there; she will not drink till she is
mistress. Moran throws his arms round her neck, saying, Mistress you
ever have been and still shall be.
#B.# 'Morando,' Ferraro, Canti popolari monferrini, p. 42, No 32, from
Alessandria. Murando d'Inghilterra, of the king's household, fell in
love with the princess, for which the king sent him off. The lady
knocked at his door, and asked when he would come back. In seven years,
was the answer, and if not she was to marry. The princess stole a
hundred scudi from her father, frizzled her hair French fashion, bought
a fashionable suit, and rode three days and nights without touching
ground, eating, or drinking. She came upon a laundryman, and asked who
was in command there. Murando. She knocked at the door, and Murando
asked, Have you come to our wedding? She would come to the dance. At the
dance she was recognized by the servants. Murando asked, How came you
here? "I rode three days and three nights without touching ground,
eating, or drinking." This is my wife, said Murando; and the other lady
he bade return to her father.
It is possible that this ballad may formerly have been known in France.
Nothing is left and known that shows this conclusively, but there is an
approach to the Norse form in a fragment which occurs in several widely
separated localities. A lover goes off in November, promising his love
to return in December, but does not. A messenger comes to bid the lady,
in his name, seek another lover, for he has another love. "Is she fairer
than I, or more powerful?" She is not fairer, but more powerful: she
makes rosemary flower on the edge of her sleeve, changes the sea into
wine and fish into flesh. Bujeaud, I, 203. In 'La Femme Abandonnée,'
Puymaigre, I, 72, the lover is married to a Fleming:
Elle fait venir le soleil
A minuit dans sa chambre,
Elle fait bouiller la marmite
Sans feu et sans rente.
In a Canadian version, 'Entre Paris et Saint-Denis,' Gagnon, p. 303, the
deserted woman is a king's daughter, and the new love,
Ell' fait neiger, ell' fait grêler,
Ell' fait le vent qui vente.
Ell' fait reluire le soleil
A minuit dans sa chambre.
Ell' fait pousser le romarin
Sur le bord de la manche.
Puymaigre notes that there is a version very near to the Canadian in the
sixth volume of Poésies populaires de la France, cinquième recueil,
Ardennes, No 2.[425]
A broadside ballad, 'The Turkish Lady,' 'The Turkish Lady and the
English Slave,' printed in Logan's Pedlar's Pack, p. 16, Christie, I,
247, from singing, and preserved also in the Kinloch MSS, V, 53, I, 263,
from Elizabeth Beattie's recitation, simply relates how a Turkish
pirate's daughter fell in love with an Englishman, her slave, offered to
release him if he would turn Turk, but chose the better part of flying
with him to Bristol, and becoming herself a Christian brave.
Sir William Stanley, passing through Constantinople, is condemned to die
for his religion. A lady, walking under the prison walls, hears his
lament, and begs his life of the Turk. She would make him her husband,
and bring him to adore Mahomet. She offers to set the prisoner free if
he will marry her, but he has a wife and children on English ground. The
lady is sorry, but generously gives Stanley five hundred pounds to carry
him to his own country. Sir William Stanley's Garland, Halliwell's
Palatine Anthology, pp 277 f.
Two Magyars have been shut up in a dungeon by the sultan, and have not
seen sun, moon, or stars for seven years. The sultan's daughter hears
their moan, and offers to free them if they will take her to Hungary.
This they promise to do. She gets the keys, takes money, opens the
doors, and the three make off. They are followed; one of the Magyars
kills all the pursuers but one, who is left to carry back the news. It
is now proposed that there shall be a duel to determine who shall have
the lady. She begs them rather to cut off her head than to fight about
her. Szilágyi Niklas says he has a love at home, and leaves the sultan's
daughter to his comrade, Hagymási László. Aigner, Ungarische
Volksdichtungen, p. 93: see p. 107 of this volume.
* * * * *
#C b# is translated by Loève-Veimars, p. 330; #E# by Cesare Cantù,
Documenti alla Storia Universale, Torino, 1858, Tomo V^o, Parte III^a,
p. 796; #E#, as retouched by Allingham, by Knortz, L. u. R.
Alt-Englands, p. 18.
A
Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. 13.
1
In London city was Bicham born,
He longd strange countries for to see,
But he was taen by a savage Moor,
Who handld him right cruely.
2
For thro his shoulder he put a bore,
An thro the bore has pitten a tree,
An he's gard him draw the carts o wine,
Where horse and oxen had wont to be.
3
He's casten [him] in a dungeon deep,
Where he coud neither hear nor see;
He's shut him up in a prison strong,
An he's handld him right cruely.
4
O this Moor he had but ae daughter,
I wot her name was Shusy Pye;
She's doen her to the prison-house,
And she's calld Young Bicham one word by.
5
'O hae ye ony lands or rents,
Or citys in your ain country,
Coud free you out of prison strong,
An coud mantain a lady free?'
6
'O London city is my own,
An other citys twa or three,
Coud loose me out o prison strong,
An coud mantain a lady free.'
7
O she has bribed her father's men
Wi meikle goud and white money,
She's gotten the key o the prison doors,
An she has set Young Bicham free.
8
She's gi'n him a loaf o good white bread,
But an a flask o Spanish wine,
An she bad him mind on the ladie's love
That sae kindly freed him out o pine.
9
'Go set your foot on good ship-board,
An haste you back to your ain country,
An before that seven years has an end,
Come back again, love, and marry me.'
10
It was long or seven years had an end
She longd fu sair her love to see;
She's set her foot on good ship-board,
An turnd her back on her ain country.
11
She's saild up, so has she doun,
Till she came to the other side;
She's landed at Young Bicham's gates,
An I hop this day she sal be his bride.
12
'Is this Young Bicham's gates?' says she,
'Or is that noble prince within?'
'He's up the stairs wi his bonny bride,
An monny a lord and lady wi him.'
13
'O has he taen a bonny bride,
An has he clean forgotten me!'
An sighing said that gay lady,
I wish I were in my ain country!
14
But she's pitten her han in her pocket,
An gin the porter guineas three;
Says, Take ye that, ye proud porter,
An bid the bridegroom speak to me.
15
O whan the porter came up the stair,
He's fa'n low down upon his knee:
'Won up, won up, ye proud porter,
An what makes a' this courtesy?'
16
'O I've been porter at your gates
This mair nor seven years an three,
But there is a lady at them now
The like of whom I never did see.
17
'For on every finger she has a ring,
An on the mid-finger she has three,
An there's as meikle goud aboon her brow
As woud buy an earldome o lan to me.'
18
Then up it started Young Bicham,
An sware so loud by Our Lady,
'It can be nane but Shusy Pye,
That has come oer the sea to me.'
19
O quickly ran he down the stair,
O fifteen steps he has made but three;
He's tane his bonny love in his arms,
An a wot he kissd her tenderly.
20
'O hae you tane a bonny bride?
An hae you quite forsaken me?
An hae ye quite forgotten her
That gae you life an liberty?'
21
She's lookit oer her left shoulder
To hide the tears stood in her ee;
'Now fare thee well, Young Bicham,' she says,
'I'll strive to think nae mair on thee.'
22
'Take back your daughter, madam,' he says,
'An a double dowry I'll gi her wi;
For I maun marry my first true love,
That's done and suffered so much for me.'
23
He's take his bonny love by the han,
And led her to yon fountain stane;
He's changd her name frae Shusy Pye,
An he's cald her his bonny love, Lady Jane.
B
Glenriddell MSS, XI, 80.
1
In England was Young Brechin born,
Of parents of a high degree;
The selld him to the savage Moor,
Where they abused him maist cruellie.
2
Thro evry shoulder they bord a bore,
And thro evry bore they pat a tree;
They made him draw the carts o wine,
Which horse and owsn were wont to drie.
3
The pat him into prison strong,
Where he could neither hear nor see;
They pat him in a dark dungeon,
Where he was sick and like to die.
4
'Is there neer an auld wife in this town
That'll borrow me to be her son?
Is there neer a young maid in this town
Will take me for her chiefest one?'
5
A Savoyen has an only daughter,
I wat she's called Young Brichen by;
'O sleepst thou, wakest thou, Brichen?' she says,
'Or who is't that does on me cry?
6
'O hast thou any house or lands,
Or hast thou any castles free,
That thou wadst gi to a lady fair
That out o prison wad bring thee?'
7
'O lady, Lundin it is mine,
And other castles twa or three;
These I wad gie to a lady fair
That out of prison wad set me free.'
8
She's taen him by the milk-white hand,
And led him to a towr sae hie,
She's made him drink the wine sae reid,
And sung to him like a mavosie.
9
O these two luvers made a bond,
For seven years, and that is lang,
That he was to marry no other wife,
And she's to marry no other man.
10
When seven years were past and gane,
This young lady began to lang,
And she's awa to Lundin gane,
To see if Brechin's got safe to land.
11
When she came to Young Brechin's yett,
She chappit gently at the gin;
'Is this Young Brechin's yett?' she says,
'Or is this lusty lord within?'
'O yes, this is Lord Brechin's yett,
And I wat this be his bridal een.'
12
She's put her hand in her pocket,
And thrawin the porter guineas three;
'Gang up the stair, young man,' she says,
'And bid your master come down to me.
13
'Bid him bring a bite o his ae best bread,
And a bottle o his ae best wine,
And neer forget that lady fair
That did him out o prison bring.'
14
The porter tripped up the stair,
And fell low down upon his knee:
'Rise up, rise up, ye proud porter,
What mean you by this courtesie?'
15
'O I hae been porter at your yett
This thirty years and a' but three;
There stands the fairest lady thereat
That ever my twa een did see.
16
'On evry finger she has a ring,
On her mid-finger she has three;
She's as much gold on her horse's neck
As wad by a earldom o land to me.
17
'She bids you send o your ae best bread,
And a bottle o your ae best wine,
And neer forget the lady fair
That out o prison did you bring.'
18
He's taen the table wi his foot,
And made the cups and cans to flee:
'I'll wager a' the lands I hae
That Susan Pye's come oer the sea.'
* * * * * * *
19
Then up and spak the bride's mother:
'And O an ill deid may ye die!
If ye didna except the bonny bride,
Ye might hae ay excepted me.'
20
'O ye are fair, and fair, madam,
And ay the fairer may ye be!
But the fairest day that eer ye saw,
Ye were neer sae fair as yon lady.'
21
O when these lovers two did meet,
The tear it blinded baith their ee;
'Gie me my faith and troth,' she says,
'For now fain hame wad I be.'
22
'Tak hame your daughter, madam,' he says,
'She's neer a bit the war o me;
Except a kiss o her bonny lips,
Of her body I am free;
She came to me on a single horse,
Now I'll send her hame in chariots three.
23
He's taen her by the milk-white hand,
And he's led her to a yard o stane;
He's changed her name frae Susan Pye,
And calld her lusty Lady Jane.
C
#a.# Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. II. #b.# Jamieson's Popular
Ballads, II, 127.
1
Young Bekie was as brave a knight
As ever saild the sea;
An he's doen him to the court of France,
To serve for meat and fee.
2
He had nae been i the court of France
A twelvemonth nor sae long,
Til he fell in love with the king's daughter,
An was thrown in prison strong.
3
The king he had but ae daughter,
Burd Isbel was her name;
An she has to the prison-house gane,
To hear the prisoner's mane.
4
'O gin a lady woud borrow me,
At her stirrup-foot I woud rin;
Or gin a widow wad borrow me,
I woud swear to be her son.
5
'Or gin a virgin woud borrow me,
I woud wed her wi a ring;
I'd gi her ha's, I'd gie her bowers,
The bonny towrs o Linne.'
6
O barefoot, barefoot gaed she but,
An barefoot came she ben;
It was no for want o hose an shoone,
Nor time to put them on.
7
But a' for fear that her father dear
Had heard her making din:
She's stown the keys o the prison-house dor
An latten the prisoner gang.
8
O whan she saw him, Young Bekie,
Her heart was wondrous sair!
For the mice but an the bold rottons
Had eaten his yallow hair.
9
She's gien him a shaver for his beard,
A comber till his hair,
Five hunder pound in his pocket,
To spen, an nae to spair.
10
She's gien him a steed was good in need,
An a saddle o royal bone,
A leash o hounds o ae litter,
An Hector called one.
11
Atween this twa a vow was made,
'Twas made full solemnly,
That or three years was come an gane,
Well married they shoud be.
12
He had nae been in 's ain country
A twelvemonth till an end,
Till he's forcd to marry a duke's daughter,
Or than lose a' his land.
13
'Ohon, alas!' says Young Beckie,
'I know not what to dee;
For I canno win to Burd Isbel,
And she kensnae to come to me.'
14
O it fell once upon a day
Burd Isbel fell asleep,
An up it starts the Belly Blin,
An stood at her bed-feet.
15
'O waken, waken, Burd Isbel,
How [can] you sleep so soun,
Whan this is Bekie's wedding day,
An the marriage gain on?
16
'Ye do ye to your mither's bowr,
Think neither sin nor shame;
An ye tak twa o your mither's marys,
To keep ye frae thinking lang.
17
'Ye dress yoursel in the red scarlet,
An your marys in dainty green,
An ye pit girdles about your middles
Woud buy an earldome.
18
'O ye gang down by yon sea-side,
An down by yon sea-stran;
Sae bonny will the Hollans boats
Come rowin till your han.
19
'Ye set your milk-white foot abord,
Cry, Hail ye, Domine!
An I shal be the steerer o 't,
To row you oer the sea.'
20
She's tane her till her mither's bowr,
Thought neither sin nor shame,
An she took twa o her mither's marys,
To keep her frae thinking lang.
21
She dressd hersel i the red scarlet,
Her marys i dainty green,
And they pat girdles about their middles
Woud buy an earldome.
22
An they gid down by yon sea-side,
An down by yon sea-stran;
Sae bonny did the Hollan boats
Come rowin to their han.
23
She set her milk-white foot on board,
Cried, Hail ye, Domine!
An the Belly Blin was the steerer o 't,
To row her oer the sea.
24
Whan she came to Young Bekie's gate,
She heard the music play;
Sae well she kent frae a' she heard,
It was his wedding day.
25
She's pitten her han in her pocket,
Gin the porter guineas three;
'Hae, tak ye that, ye proud porter,
Bid the bride-groom speake to me.'
26
O whan that he cam up the stair,
He fell low down on his knee:
He haild the king, an he haild the queen,
An he haild him, Young Bekie.
27
'O I've been porter at your gates
This thirty years an three;
But there's three ladies at them now,
Their like I never did see.
28
'There's ane o them dressd in red scarlet,
And twa in dainty green,
An they hae girdles about their middles
Woud buy an earldome.'
29
Then out it spake the bierly bride,
Was a' goud to the chin;
'Gin she be braw without,' she says,
'We's be as braw within.'
30
Then up it starts him, Young Bekie,
An the tears was in his ee:
'I'll lay my life it's Burd Isbel,
Come oer the sea to me.'
31
O quickly ran he down the stair,
An whan he saw 't was shee,
He kindly took her in his arms,
And kissd her tenderly.
32
'O hae ye forgotten, Young Bekie,
The vow ye made to me,
Whan I took you out o the prison strong,
Whan ye was condemnd to die?
33
'I gae you a steed was good in need,
An a saddle o royal bone,
A leash o hounds o ae litter,
An Hector called one.'
34
It was well kent what the lady said,
That it wasnae a lee,
For at ilka word the lady spake,
The hound fell at her knee.
35
'Tak hame, tak hame your daughter dear,
A blessing gae her wi,
For I maun marry my Burd Isbel,
That's come oer the sea to me.'
36
'Is this the custom o your house,
Or the fashion o your lan,
To marry a maid in a May mornin,
An send her back at even?'
D
Skene MSS, p. 70. North of Scotland, 1802-3.
1
Young Beachen was born in fair London,
And foreign lands he langed to see;
He was taen by the savage Moor,
An the used him most cruellie.
2
Through his showlder they pat a bore,
And through the bore the pat a tree;
They made him trail their ousen carts,
And they used him most cruellie.
3
The savage Moor had ae daughter,
I wat her name was Susan Pay;
An she is to the prison house,
To hear the prisoner's moan.
4
He made na his moan to a stocke,
He made na it to a stone,
But it was to the Queen of Heaven
That he made his moan.
5
'Gin a lady wad borrow me,
I at her foot wad run;
An a widdow wad borrow me,
I wad become her son.
6
'But an a maid wad borrow me,
I wad wed her wi a ring;
I wad make her lady of haas and bowers,
An of the high towers of Line.'
7
'Sing oer yer sang, Young Beachen,' she says,
'Sing oer yer sang to me;'
'I never sang that sang, lady,
But I wad sing to thee.
8
'Gin a lady wad borrow me,
I at her foot wad run;
An a widdow wad borrow me,
I wad become her son.
9
'But an a maid wad borrow me,
I wad wed her wi a ring;
I wad make her lady of haas and bowers,
An of the high towers of Line.'
10
Saftly, [saftly] gaed she but,
An saftlly gaed she ben,
It was na for want of hose nor shoon,
Nor time to pet them on.
11
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
An she has staen the keys of the prison,
An latten Young Beachen gang.
12
She gae him a leaf of her white bread,
An a bottle of her wine,
She bad him mind on the lady's love
That freed him out of pine.
13
She gae him a steed was guid in need,
A saddle of the bane,
Five hundred pown in his pocket,
Bad him gae speeding hame.
14
An a leash of guid grayhounds,
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
15
Whan seven lang years were come and gane,
Shusie Pay thought lang,
An she is on to fair London,
As fast as she could gang.
16
Whan she cam to Young Beachen's gate,
. . . . . . .
'Is Young Beachan at hame,
Or is he in this countrie?'
17
'He is at hame, is hear,' they said,
. . . . . . .
An sighan says her Susie Pay,
Has he quite forgotten me?
18
On every finger she had a ring,
On the middle finger three;
She gae the porter ane of them:
'Get a word o your lord to me.'
19
He gaed up the stair,
Fell low down on his knee:
'Win up, my proud porter,
What is your will wi me?'
20
'I hae been porter at yer gate
This thirty year and three;
The fairst lady is at yer gate
Mine eyes did ever see.'
21
Out spak the bride's mither,
An a haghty woman was she:
'If ye had na eccepted the bonny bride,
Ye might well ha eccepted me.'
22
'No disparagement to you, madam,
Nor none unto her Grace;
The sole of your lady's foot
Is fairer than her face.'
23
He's gaen the table wi his foot,
And couped it wi his knee:
'I wad my head and a' my land
'T is Susie Pay, come oer the sea.'
24
The stair was thirty steps,
I wat he made them three;
He took her in his arms twa:
'Susie Pay, ye'r welcome to me.'
25
'Gie me a shive of your white bread,
An a bottle of your wine;
Dinna ye mind on the lady's love
That freed ye out of pine?'
26
He took her ...
Down to yon garden green,
An changed her name fra Susie Pay,
An called her bonny Lady Jean.
27
'Yer daughter came here on high horse-back,
She sal gae hame in coaches three,
An I sall double her tocher our,
She's nane the war o me.'
28
'It's na the fashion o our countrie,
Nor yet o yer nane,
To wed a maid in the morning,
An send her hame at een.'
29
'It's na the fashion o my countrie,
Nor is it of my nane,
But I man mind on the lady's love
That freed me out of pine.'
E
Jamieson's Popular Ballads, II, 117, compounded from #A#,
a manuscript and a stall copy from Scotland, a recited
copy from the north of England, and a short version picked
off a wall in London. (The parts which repeat #A# are in
smaller type.)
| 1
| In London was Young Beichan born,
| He longed strange countries for to see,
| But he was taen by a savage Moor,
| Who handled him right cruellie.
2
For he viewed the fashions of that land,
Their way of worship viewed he,
But to Mahound or Termagant
Would Beichan never bend a knee.
| 3
| So in every shoulder they've putten a bore,
| In every bore they've putten a tree,
| And they have made him trail the wine
| And spices on his fair bodie.
| 4
| They've casten him in a dungeon deep,
| Where he could neither hear nor see,
| For seven years they kept him there,
| Till he for hunger's like to die.
| 5
| This Moor he had but ae daughter,
| Her name was called Susie Pye,
| And every day as she took the air,
| Near Beichan's prison she passed by.
6
O so it fell upon a day
She heard Young Beichan sadly sing:
'My hounds they all go masterless,
My hawks they flee from tree to tree,
My younger brother will heir my land,
Fair England again I'll never see!'
7
All night long no rest she got,
Young Beichan's song for thinking on;
She's stown the keys from her father's head,
And to the prison strong is gone.
8
And she has opend the prison doors,
I wot she opend two or three,
Ere she could come Young Beichan at,
He was locked up so curiouslie.
9
But when she came Young Beichan before,
Sore wonderd he that may to see;
He took her for some fair captive:
'Fair Lady, I pray, of what countrie?'
10
'O have ye any lands,' she said,
'Or castles in your own countrie,
That ye could give to a lady fair,
From prison strong to set you free?'
11
'Near London town I have a hall,
With other castles two or three;
I'll give them all to the lady fair
That out of prison will set me free.'
12
'Give me the truth of your right hand,
The truth of it give unto me,
That for seven years ye'll no lady wed,
Unless it be along with me.'
13
'I'll give thee the truth of my right hand,
The truth of it I'll freely gie,
That for seven years I'll stay unwed,
For the kindness thou dost show to me.'
| 14
| And she has brib'd the proud warder
| Wi mickle gold and white monie,
| She's gotten the keys of the prison strong,
| And she has set Young Beichan free.
| 15
| She's gien him to eat the good spice-cake,
| She's gien him to drink the blood-red wine,
| She's bidden him sometimes think on her,
| That sae kindly freed him out of pine.
16
She's broken a ring from her finger,
And to Beichan half of it gave she:
'Keep it, to mind you of that love
The lady bore that set you free.
| 17
| 'And set your foot on good ship-board,
| And haste ye back to your own countrie,
| And before that seven years have an end,
| Come back again, love, and marry me.'
| 18
| But long ere seven years had an end,
| She longd full sore her love to see,
For ever a voice within her breast
Said, 'Beichan has broke his vow to thee:'
| So she's set her foot on good ship-board,
| And turnd her back on her own countrie.
19
She sailed east, she sailed west,
Till to fair England's shore she came,
Where a bonny shepherd she espied,
Feeding his sheep upon the plain.
20
'What news, what news, thou bonny shepherd?
What news hast thou to tell to me?'
'Such news I hear, ladie,' he says,
'The like was never in this countrie.
21
'There is a wedding in yonder hall,
Has lasted these thirty days and three;
Young Beichan will not bed with his bride,
For love of one that's yond the sea.'
22
She's put her hand in her pocket,
Gien him the gold and white monie:
'Hae, take ye that, my bonny boy,
For the good news thou tellst to me.'
23
When she came to Young Beichan's gate,
She tirled softly at the pin;
So ready was the proud porter
To open and let this lady in.
| 24
| 'Is this Young Beichan's hall,' she said,
| 'Or is that noble lord within?'
| 'Yea, he's in the hall among them all,
| And this is the day o his weddin.'
| 25
| 'And has he wed anither love?
| And has he clean forgotten me?'
| And sighin said that gay ladie,
| I wish I were in my own countrie!
| 26
| And she has taen her gay gold ring,
| That with her love she brake so free;
| Says, Gie him that, ye proud porter,
| And bid the bridegroom speak to me.
| 27
| When the porter came his lord before,
| He kneeled down low on his knee:
| 'What aileth thee, my proud porter,
| Thou art so full of courtesie?'
| 28
| 'I've been porter at your gates,
| It's thirty long years now and three;
| But there stands a lady at them now,
| The like o her did I never see.
| 29
| 'For on every finger she has a ring,
| And on her mid-finger she has three,
| And as meickle gold aboon her brow
| As would buy an earldom to me.'
30
It's out then spak the bride's mother,
Aye and an angry woman was shee:
'Ye might have excepted our bonny bride,
And twa or three of our companie.'
31
'O hold your tongue, thou bride's mother,
Of all your folly let me be;
She's ten times fairer nor the bride,
And all that's in your companie.
32
'She begs one sheave of your white bread,
But and a cup of your red wine,
And to remember the lady's love
That last relievd you out of pine.'
33
'O well-a-day!' said Beichan then,
'That I so soon have married thee!
| For it can be none but Susie Pye,
| That sailed the sea for love of me.'
| 34
| And quickly hied he down the stair;
| Of fifteen steps he made but three;
| He's taen his bonny love in his arms,
| And kist and kist her tenderlie.
| 35
| 'O hae ye taen anither bride?
| And hae ye quite forgotten me?
| And hae ye quite forgotten her
| That gave you life and libertie?'
36
She looked oer her left shoulder,
To hide the tears stood in her ee:
'Now fare thee well, Young Beichan,' she says,
'I'll try to think no more on thee.'
37
'O never, never, Susie Pye,
For surely this can never be,
Nor ever shall I wed but her
That's done and dreed so much for me.'
38
Then out and spak the forenoon bride:
'My lord, your love it changeth soon;
This morning I was made your bride,
And another chose ere it be noon.'
39
O hold thy tongue, thou forenoon bride,
Ye're neer a whit the worse for me,
And whan ye return to your own countrie,
A double dower I'll send with thee.'
40
He's taen Susie Pye by the white hand,
And gently led her up and down,
And ay as he kist her red rosy lips,
'Ye're welcome, jewel, to your own.'
| 41
| He's taen her by the milk-white hand,
| And led her to yon fountain stane;
| He's changed her name from Susie Pye,
| And he's call'd her his bonny love, Lady Jane.
F
Pitcairn's MSS, III, 159, 1817-25. From the recitation of
Widow Stevenson, aged seventy-three: "East Country."
1
In the lands where Lord Beichan was born,
Amang the stately steps of stane,
He wore the goud at his left shoulder,
But to the Holy Land he's gane.
2
He was na lang in the Holy Land,
Amang the Prudents that was black,
He was na lang in the Holy Land,
Till the Prudent did Lord Beichan tak.
3
The gard him draw baith pleugh and harrow,
And horse and oxen twa or three;
They cast him in a dark dungeon,
Whare he coud neither hear nor see.
4
The Prudent had a fair daughter,
I wot they ca'd her Susy Pye,
And all the keys in that city
Hang at that lady by and bye.
5
It once fell out upon a day
That into the prison she did gae,
And whan she cam to the prison door,
She kneeled low down on her knee.
6
'O hae ye ony lands, Beichan,
Or hae ye ony castles hie,
Whar ye wad tak a young thing to,
If out of prison I wad let thee?'
7
'Fair London's mine, dear lady,' he said,
'And other places twa or three,
Whar I wad tak a young thing to,
If out of prison ye wad let me.'
8
O she has opened the prison door,
And other places twa or three,
And gien him bread, and wine to drink,
In her own chamber privately.
9
O then she built a bonny ship,
And she has set it on the main,
And she has built a bonny ship,
It's for to tak Lord Beichan hame.
10
O she's gaen murning up and down,
And she's gaen murnin to the sea,
Then to her father she has gane in,
Wha spak to her right angrily.
11
'O do ye mourn for the goud, daughter,
Or do ye mourn for the whyte monie?
Or do ye mourn for the English squire?
I wat I will gar hang him hie.'
12
'I neither mourn for the goud, father,
Nor do I for the whyte monie,
Nor do I for the English squire;
And I care na tho ye hang him hie.
13
'But I hae promised an errand to go,
Seven lang miles ayont the sea,
And blythe and merry I never will be
Untill that errand you let me.'
14
'That errand, daughter, you may gang,
Seven long miles beyond the sea,
Since blythe and merry you'll neer be
Untill that errand I'll let thee.'
15
O she has built a bonny ship,
And she has set it in the sea,
And she has built a bonny ship,
It's all for to tak her a long journie.
16
And she's sailed a' the summer day,
I wat the wind blew wondrous fair;
In sight of fair London she has come,
And till Lord Beichan's yett she walked.
17
Whan she cam till Lord Beichan's yett,
She rappit loudly at the pin:
'Is Beichan lord of this bonny place?
I pray ye open and let me in.
18
'And O is this Lord Beichan's yett,
And is the noble lord within?'
'O yes, it is Lord Beichan's yett,
He's wi his bride and mony a ane.'
19
'If you'll gang up to Lord Beichan,
Tell him the words that I tell thee;
It will put him in mind of Susy Pye,
And the Holy Land, whareer he be.
20
'Tell him to send one bite of bread,
It's and a glass of his gude red wine,
Nor to forget the lady's love
That loosed him out of prison strong.'
* * * * * * *
21
'I hae been porter at your yett,
I'm sure this therty lang years and three,
But the fairest lady stands thereat
That evir my twa eyes did see.
22
'On ilka finger she has a ring,
And on the foremost she has three;
As muckle goud is on her head
As wad buy an earldom of land to thee.
23
'She bids you send a bite of bread,
It's and a glass of your gude red wine,
Nor to forget the lady's love
That let you out of prison strong.'
24
It's up and spak the bride's mother,
A weight of goud hung at her chin:
'There is no one so fair without
But there are, I wat, as fair within.'
25
It's up and spak the bride hersel,
As she sat by the gude lord's knee:
'Awa, awa, ye proud porter,
This day ye might hae excepted me.'
* * * * * * *
26
'Tak hence, tak hence your fair daughter,
Tak hame your daughter fair frae me;
For saving one kiss of her bonny lips,
I'm sure of her body I am free.
27
'Awa, awa, ye proud mither,
It's tak your daughter fair frae me;
For I brought her home with chariots six,
And I'll send her back wi coaches three.'
28
It's he's taen the table wi his fit,
And syne he took it wi his knee;
He gard the glasses and wine so red,
He gard them all in flinders flee.
29
O he's gane down the steps of stairs,
And a' the stately steps of stane,
Until he cam to Susy Pye;
I wat the tears blinded baith their eyne.
30
He led her up the steps of stairs,
And a' the stately steps of stane,
And changed her name from Susy Pye,
And ca'd her lusty Lady Jane.
31
'O fye, gar cooks mak ready meat,
O fye, gar cooks the pots supply,
That it may be talked of in fair London,
I've been twice married in ae day.'
G
Communicated by Mr Alexander Laing, of Newburg-on-Tay, as
derived from the recitation of Miss Walker.
* * * * * * *
1
'O wha's aught a' yon flock o sheep,
An wha's aught a' yon flock o kye?
An wha's aught a' yon pretty castles,
That you sae often do pass bye?'
2
'They're a' Lord Beekin's sheep,
They're a' Lord Beekin's kye;
They're a' Lord Beekin's castles,
That you sae often do pass bye.'
* * * * * * *
3
He's tane [the] table wi his feet,
Made cups an candlesticks to flee:
'I'll lay my life 't is Susy Pie,
Come owr the seas to marry me.'
H
Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 260.
1
Young Beichan was in London born,
He was a man of hie degree;
He past thro monie kingdoms great,
Until he cam unto Grand Turkie.
2
He viewd the fashions of that land,
Their way of worship viewed he,
But unto onie of their stocks
He wadna sae much as bow a knee:
3
Which made him to be taken straight,
And brought afore their hie jurie;
The savage Moor did speak upricht,
And made him meikle ill to dree.
4
In ilka shoulder they've bord a hole,
And in ilka hole they've put a tree;
They've made him to draw carts and wains,
Till he was sick and like to dee.
5
But Young Beichan was a Christian born,
And still a Christian was he;
Which made them put him in prison strang,
And cauld and hunger sair to dree,
And fed on nocht but bread and water,
Until the day that he mot dee.
6
In this prison there grew a tree,
And it was unco stout and strang,
Where he was chained by the middle,
Until his life was almaist gane.
7
The savage Moor had but ae dochter,
And her name it was Susie Pye,
And ilka day as she took the air,
The prison door she passed bye.
8
But it fell ance upon a day,
As she was walking, she heard him sing;
She listend to his tale of woe,
A happy day for Young Beichan!
9
'My hounds they all go masterless,
My hawks they flee frae tree to tree,
My youngest brother will heir my lands,
My native land I'll never see.'
10
'O were I but the prison-keeper,
As I'm a ladie o hie degree,
I soon wad set this youth at large,
And send him to his ain countrie.'
11
She went away into her chamber,
All nicht she never closd her ee;
And when the morning begoud to dawn,
At the prison door alane was she.
12
She gied the keeper a piece of gowd,
And monie pieces o white monie,
To tak her thro the bolts and bars,
The lord frae Scotland she langd to see;
She saw young Beichan at the stake,
Which made her weep maist bitterlie.
13
'O hae ye got onie lands,' she says,
'Or castles in your ain countrie?
It's what wad ye gie to the ladie fair
Wha out o prison wad set you free?'
14
'It's I hae houses, and I hae lands,
Wi monie castles fair to see,
And I wad gie a' to that ladie gay,
Wha out o prison wad set me free.'
15
The keeper syne brak aff his chains,
And set Lord Beichan at libertie;
She filld his pockets baith wi gowd,
To tak him till his ain countrie.
16
She took him frae her father's prison,
And gied to him the best o wine,
And a brave health she drank to him:
'I wish, Lord Beichan, ye were mine!
17
'It's seven lang years I'll mak a vow,
And seven lang years I'll keep it true;
If ye'll wed wi na ither woman,
It's I will wed na man but you.'
18
She's tane him to her father's port,
And gien to him a ship o fame:
'Farewell, farewell, my Scottish lord,
I fear I'll neer see you again.'
19
Lord Beichan turnd him round about,
And lowly, lowly loutit he:
'Ere seven lang years come to an end,
I'll tak you to mine ain countrie.'
* * * * * * *
20
Then whan he cam to Glasgow town,
A happy, happy man was he;
The ladies a' around him thrangd,
To see him come frae slaverie.
21
His mother she had died o sorrow,
And a' his brothers were dead but he;
His lands they a' were lying waste,
In ruins were his castles free.
22
Na porter there stood at his yett,
Na human creature he could see,
Except the screeching owls and bats,
Had he to bear him companie.
23
But gowd will gar the castles grow,
And he had gowd and jewels free,
And soon the pages around him thrangd,
To serve him on their bended knee.
24
His hall was hung wi silk and satin,
His table rung wi mirth and glee,
He soon forgot the lady fair
That lowsd him out o slaverie.
25
Lord Beichan courted a lady gay,
To heir wi him his lands sae free,
Neer thinking that a lady fair
Was on her way frae Grand Turkie.
26
For Susie Pye could get na rest,
Nor day nor nicht could happy be,
Still thinking on the Scottish lord,
Till she was sick and like to dee.
27
But she has builded a bonnie ship,
Weel mannd wi seamen o hie degree,
And secretly she stept on board,
And bid adieu to her ain countrie.
28
But whan she cam to the Scottish shore,
The bells were ringing sae merrilie;
It was Lord Beichan's wedding day,
Wi a lady fair o hie degree.
29
But sic a vessel was never seen;
The very masts were tappd wi gold,
Her sails were made o the satin fine,
Maist beautiful for to behold.
30
But whan the lady cam on shore,
Attended wi her pages three,
Her shoon were of the beaten gowd,
And she a lady of great beautie.
31
Then to the skipper she did say,
'Can ye this answer gie to me?
Where are Lord Beichan's lands sae braid?
He surely lives in this countrie.'
32
Then up bespak the skipper bold,
For he could speak the Turkish tongue:
'Lord Beichan lives not far away;
This is the day of his wedding.'
33
'If ye will guide me to Beichan's yetts,
I will ye well reward,' said she;
Then she and all her pages went,
A very gallant companie.
34
When she cam to Lord Beichan's yetts,
She tirld gently at the pin;
Sae ready was the proud porter
To let the wedding guests come in.
35
'Is this Lord Beichan's house,' she says,
'Or is that noble lord within?'
'Yes, he is gane into the hall,
With his brave bride and monie ane.'
36
'Ye'll bid him send me a piece of bread,
Bot and a cup of his best wine;
And bid him mind the lady's love
That ance did lowse him out o pyne.'
37
Then in and cam the porter bold,
I wat he gae three shouts and three:
'The fairest lady stands at your yetts
That ever my twa een did see.'
38
Then up bespak the bride's mither,
I wat an angry woman was she:
'You micht hae excepted our bonnie bride,
Tho she'd been three times as fair as she.'
39
'My dame, your daughter's fair enough,
And aye the fairer mot she be!
But the fairest time that eer she was,
She'll na compare wi this ladie.
40
'She has a gowd ring on ilka finger,
And on her mid-finger she has three;
She has as meikle gowd upon her head
As wad buy an earldom o land to thee.
41
'My lord, she begs some o your bread,
Bot and a cup o your best wine,
And bids you mind the lady's love
That ance did lowse ye out o pyne.'
42
Then up and started Lord Beichan,
I wat he made the table flee:
'I wad gie a' my yearlie rent
'T were Susie Pye come owre the sea.'
43
Syne up bespak the bride's mother,
She was never heard to speak sae free:
'Ye'll no forsake my ae dochter,
Tho Susie Pye has crossd the sea?'
44
'Tak hame, tak hame, your dochter, madam,
For she is neer the waur o me;
She cam to me on horseback riding,
And she sall gang hame in chariot free.'
45
He's tane Susie Pye by the milk-white hand,
And led her thro his halls sae hie:
'Ye're now Lord Beichan's lawful wife,
And thrice ye're welcome unto me.'
46
Lord Beichan prepard for another wedding,
Wi baith their hearts sae fu o glee;
Says, 'I'll range na mair in foreign lands,
Sin Susie Pye has crossd the sea.
47
'Fy! gar a' our cooks mak ready,
And fy! gar a' our pipers play,
And fy! gar trumpets gae thro the toun,
That Lord Beichan's wedded twice in a day!'
I
Communicated by Mr David Louden, as recited by Mrs Dodds,
Morham, Haddington, the reciter being above seventy in
1873.
1
In London was Young Bechin born,
Foreign nations he longed to see;
He passed through many kingdoms great,
At length he came unto Turkie.
2
He viewed the fashions of that land,
The ways of worship viewed he,
But unto any of their gods
He would not so much as bow the knee.
3
On every shoulder they made a bore,
In every bore they put a tree,
Then they made him the winepress tread,
And all in spite of his fair bodie.
4
They put him into a deep dungeon,
Where he could neither hear nor see,
And for seven years they kept him there,
Till for hunger he was like to die.
5
Stephen, their king, had a daughter fair,
Yet never a man to her came nigh;
And every day she took the air,
Near to his prison she passed by.
6
One day she heard Young Bechin sing
A song that pleased her so well,
No rest she got till she came to him,
All in his lonely prison cell.
7
'I have a hall in London town,
With other buildings two or three,
And I'll give them all to the ladye fair
That from this dungeon shall set me free.'
8
She stole the keys from her dad's head,
And if she oped one door ay she opened three,
Till she Young Bechin could find out,
He was locked up so curiouslie.
* * * * * * *
9
'I've been a porter at your gate
This thirty years now, ay and three;
There stands a ladye at your gate,
The like of her I neer did see.
10
'On every finger she has a ring,
On the mid-finger she has three;
She's as much gold about her brow
As would an earldom buy to me.'
* * * * * * *
11
He's taen her by the milk-white hand,
He gently led her through the green;
He changed her name from Susie Pie,
An he's called her lovely Ladye Jean.
J
Dr Joseph Robertson's Note-Book, "Adversaria," p. 85. From
tradition.
* * * * * * *
1
She's taen the keys frae her fadder's coffer,
Tho he keeps them most sacredlie,
And she has opend the prison strong,
And set Young Beichan at libertie.
* * * * * * *
2
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
'Gae up the countrie, my chile,' she says,
'Till your fadder's wrath be turned from thee.'
* * * * * * *
3
She's put her han intill her purse,
And gave the porter guineas three;
Says, 'Tak ye that, ye proud porter,
And tell your master to speak wi me.
4
'Ye'll bid him bring a shower o his best love,
But and a bottle o his wine,
And do to me as I did to him in time past,
And brought him out o muckle pine.'
5
He's taen the table wi his foot,
And he has keppit it wi his knee:
'I'll wager my life and a' my lan,
It's Susan Pie come ower the sea.
6
'Rise up, rise up, my bonnie bride,
Ye're neither better nor waur for me;
Ye cam to me on a horse and saddle,
But ye may gang back in a coach and three.'
K
Communicated by Mr David Louden, as obtained from Mrs
Dickson, Rentonhall.
* * * * * * *
1
'There is a marriage in yonder hall,
Has lasted thirty days and three;
The bridegroom winna bed the bride,
For the sake of one that's owre the sea.'
* * * * * * *
2
'What news, what news, my brave young porter?
What news, what news have ye for me?'
'As beautiful a ladye stands at your gate
As eer my two eyes yet did see.'
3
'A slice of bread to her get ready,
And a bottle of the best of wine;
Not to forget that fair young ladye
Who did release thee out of close confine.'
4
Lord Bechin in a passion flew,
And rent himself like a sword in three,
Saying, 'I would give all my father's riches
If my Sophia was 'cross the sea.'
5
Up spoke the young bride's mother,
Who never was heard to speak so free,
Saying, 'I hope you'll not forget my only daughter,
Though your Sophia be 'cross the sea.'
6
'I own a bride I've wed your daughter,
She's nothing else the worse of me;
She came to me on a horse and saddle,
She may go back in a coach and three.'
L
The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman. Illustrated by George
Cruikshank. 1839.
1
Lord Bateman was a noble lord,
A noble lord of high degree;
He shipped himself all aboard of a ship,
Some foreign country for to see.
2
He sailed east, he sailed west,
Until he came to famed Turkey,
Where he was taken and put to prison,
Until his life was quite weary.
3
All in this prison there grew a tree,
O there it grew so stout and strong!
Where he was chained all by the middle,
Until his life was almost gone.
4
This Turk he had one only daughter,
The fairest my two eyes eer see;
She steel the keys of her father's prison,
And swore Lord Bateman she would let go free.
5
O she took him to her father's cellar,
And gave to him the best of wine;
And every health she drank unto him
Was, 'I wish, Lord Bateman, as you was mine.'
6
'O have you got houses, have you got land,
And does Northumberland belong to thee?
And what would you give to the fair young lady
As out of prison would let you go free?'
7
'O I've got houses and I've got land,
And half Northumberland belongs to me;
And I will give it all to the fair young lady
As out of prison would let me go free.'
8
'O in seven long years, I'll make a vow
For seven long years, and keep it strong,
That if you'll wed no other woman,
O I will wed no other man.'
9
O she took him to her father's harbor,
And gave to him a ship of fame,
Saying, Farewell, farewell to you, Lord Bateman,
I fear I never shall see you again.
10
Now seven long years is gone and past,
And fourteen days, well known to me;
She packed up all her gay clothing,
And swore Lord Bateman she would go see.
11
O when she arrived at Lord Bateman's castle,
How boldly then she rang the bell!
'Who's there? who's there?' cries the proud young porter,
'O come unto me pray quickly tell.'
12
'O is this here Lord Bateman's castle,
And is his lordship here within?'
'O yes, O yes,' cries the proud young porter,
'He's just now taking his young bride in.'
13
'O bid him to send me a slice of bread,
And a bottle of the very best wine,
And not forgetting the fair young lady
As did release him when close confine.'
14
O away and away went this proud young porter,
O away and away and away went he,
Until he come to Lord Bateman's chamber,
When he went down on his bended knee.
15
'What news, what news, my proud young porter?
What news, what news? Come tell to me:'
'O there is the fairest young lady
As ever my two eyes did see.
16
'She has got rings on every finger,
And on one finger she has got three;
With as much gay gold about her middle
As would buy half Northumberlee.
17
'O she bids you to send her a slice of bread,
And a bottle of the very best wine,
And not forgetting the fair young lady
As did release you when close confine.'
18
Lord Bateman then in passion flew,
And broke his sword in splinters three,
Saying, I will give half of my father's land,
If so be as Sophia has crossed the sea.
19
Then up and spoke this young bride's mother,
Who never was heard to speak so free;
Saying, You'll not forget my only daughter,
If so be as Sophia has crossed the sea.
20
'O it's true I made a bride of your daughter,
But she's neither the better nor the worse for me;
She came to me with a horse and saddle,
But she may go home in a coach and three.'
21
Lord Bateman then prepared another marriage,
With both their hearts so full of glee,
Saying, I will roam no more to foreign countries,
Now that Sophia has crossed the sea.
M
Buchan's MSS, I, 18. J.H. Dixon, Scottish Traditional
Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 1.
| 1
| Young Bonwell was a squire's ae son,
| And a squire's ae son was he;
| He went abroad to a foreign
| land, To serve for meat and fee.
| 2
| He hadna been in that country
| A twalmonth and a day,
| Till he was cast in prison strong,
| For the sake of a lovely may.
| 3
| 'O if my father get word of this,
| At hame in his ain country,
| He'll send red gowd for my relief,
| And a bag o white money.
| 4
| 'O gin an earl woud borrow me,
| At his bridle I woud rin;
| Or gin a widow woud borrow me,
| I'd swear to be her son.
| 5
| 'Or gin a may woud borrow me,
| I'd wed her wi a ring,
| Infeft her wi the ha's and bowers
| O the bonny towers o Linne.'
| 6
| But it fell ance upon a day
| Dame Essels she thought lang,
| And she is to the jail-house door,
| To hear Young Bondwell's sang.
| 7
| 'Sing on, sing on, my bonny Bondwell,
| The sang ye sang just now:'
| 'I never sang the sang, lady,
| But I woud war 't on you.
| 8
| 'O gin my father get word o this,
| At hame in his ain country,
| He'll send red gowd for my relief,
| And a bag o white money.
| 9
| 'O gin an earl woud borrow me,
| At his bridle I woud rin;
| Or gin a widow would borrow me,
| I'd swear to be her son.
| 10
| 'Or gin a may woud borrow me,
| I woud wed her wi a ring,
| Infeft her wi the ha's and bowers
| O the bonny towers o Linne.'
| 11
| She's stole the keys o the jail-house door,
| Where under the bed they lay;
| She's opend to him the jail-house door,
| And set Young Bondwell free.
| 12
| She gae 'm a steed was swift in need,
| A saddle o royal ben,
| A hunder pund o pennies round,
| Bade him gae roav an spend.
| 13
| A couple o hounds o ae litter,
| And Cain they ca'd the one;
| Twa gay gos-hawks she gae likeways,
| To keep him onthought lang.
| 14
| When mony days were past and gane,
| Dame Essels thought fell lang,
| And she is to her lonely bower,
| To shorten her wi a sang.
| 15
| The sang had such a melody,
| It lulld her fast asleep;
| Up starts a woman, clad in green,
| And stood at her bed-feet.
| 16
| 'Win up, win up, Dame Essels,' she says,
| 'This day ye sleep ower lang;
| The morn is the squire's wedding day,
| In the bonny towers o Linne.
| 17
| 'Ye'll dress yoursell in the robes o green,
| Your maids in robes sae fair,
| And ye'll put girdles about their middles,
| Sae costly, rich and rare.
| 18
| 'Ye'll take your maries alang wi you,
| Till ye come to yon strand;
| There ye'll see a ship, wi sails all up,
| Come sailing to dry land.
| 19
| 'Ye'll take a wand into your hand,
| Ye'll stroke her round about,
| And ye'll take God your pilot to be,
| To drown ye'll take nae doubt.'
| 20
| Then up it raise her Dame Essels,
| Sought water to wash her hands,
| But aye the faster that she washd,
| The tears they trickling ran.
| 21
| Then in it came her father dear,
| And in the floor steps he:
| 'What ails Dame Essels, my daughter dear,
| Ye weep sae bitterlie?
| 22
| 'Want ye a small fish frae the flood,
| Or turtle frae the sea?
| Or is there man in a' my realm
| This day has offended thee?'
| 23
| 'I want nae small fish frae the flood,
| Nor turtle frae the sea;
| But Young Bondwell, your ain prisoner,
| This day has offended me.'
| 24
| Her father turnd him round about,
| A solemn oath sware he:
| 'If this be true ye tell me now
| High hanged he shall be.
| 25
| 'To-morrow morning he shall be
| Hung high upon a tree:'
| Dame Essels whisperd to hersel,
| 'Father, ye've made a lie.'
| 26
| She dressd hersel in robes o green,
| Her maids in robes sae fair,
| Wi gowden girdles round their middles,
| Sae costly, rich and rare.
| 27
| She's taen her mantle her about,
| A maiden in every hand;
| They saw a ship, wi sails a' up,
| Come sailing to dry land.
| 28
| She's taen a wand intill her hand,
| And stroked her round about,
| And she's taen God her pilot to be,
| To drown she took nae doubt.
| 29
| So they saild on, and further on,
| Till to the water o Tay;
| There they spied a bonny little boy,
| Was watering his steeds sae gay.
| 30
| 'What news, what news, my little boy,
| What news hae ye to me?
| Are there any weddings in this place,
| Or any gaun to be?'
| 31
| 'There is a wedding in this place,
| A wedding very soon;
| The morn's the young squire's wedding day,
| In the bonny towers of Linne.'
| 32
| O then she walked alang the way
| To see what coud be seen,
| And there she saw the proud porter,
| Drest in a mantle green.
| 33
| 'What news, what news, porter?' she said,
| 'What news hae ye to me?
| Are there any weddings in this place,
| Or any gaun to be?'
| 34
| 'There is a wedding in this place,
| A wedding very soon;
| The morn is Young Bondwell's wedding day,
| The bonny squire o Linne.'
| 35
| 'Gae to your master, porter,' she said,
| 'Gae ye right speedilie;
| Bid him come and speak wi a maid
| That wishes his face to see.'
| 36
| The porter's up to his master gane,
| Fell low down on his knee;
| 'Win up, win up, my porter,' he said,
| 'Why bow ye low to me?'
| 37
| 'I hae been porter at your yetts
| These thirty years and three,
| But fairer maids than's at them now
| My eyes did never see.
| 38
| 'The foremost she is drest in green,
| The rest in fine attire,
| Wi gowden girdles round their middles,
| Well worth a sheriff's hire.'
| 39
| Then out it speaks Bondwell's own bride,
| Was a' gowd to the chin;
| 'They canno be fairer thereout,' she says,
| 'Than we that are therein.'
| 40
| 'There is a difference, my dame,' he said,
| ''Tween that ladye's colour and yours;
| As much difference as you were a stock,
| She o the lily flowers.'
| 41
| Then out it speaks him Young Bondwell,
| An angry man was he:
| 'Cast up the yetts baith wide an braid,
| These ladies I may see.'
| 42
| Quickly up stairs Dame Essel's gane,
| Her maidens next her wi;
| Then said the bride, This lady's face
| Shows the porter's tauld nae lie.
| 43
| The lady unto Bondwell spake,
| These words pronounced she:
| O hearken, hearken, fause Bondwell,
| These words that I tell thee.
| 44
| Is this the way ye keep your vows
| That ye did make to me,
| When your feet were in iron fetters,
| Ae foot ye coudna flee?
| 45
| I stole the keys o the jail-house door
| Frae under the bed they lay,
| And opend up the jail-house door,
| Set you at liberty.
| 46
| Gae you a steed was swift in need,
| A saddle o royal ben,
| A hunder pund o pennies round,
| Bade you gae rove an spend.
| 47
| A couple o hounds o ae litter,
| Cain they ca'ed the ane,
| Twa gay gos-hawks as swift's eer flew,
| To keep you onthought lang.
| 48
| But since this day ye've broke your vow,
| For which ye're sair to blame,
| And since nae mair I'll get o you,
| O Cain, will ye gae hame?
| 49
| 'O Cain! O Cain!' the lady cried,
| And Cain did her ken;
| They baith flappd round the lady's knee,
| Like a couple o armed men.
| 50
| He's to his bride wi hat in hand,
| And haild her courteouslie:
| 'Sit down by me, my bonny Bondwell,
| What makes this courtesie?'
| 51
| 'An asking, asking, fair lady,
| An asking ye'll grant me;'
| 'Ask on, ask on, my bonny Bondwell,
| What may your askings be?'
| 52
| 'Five hundred pounds to you I'll gie,
| Of gowd an white monie,
| If ye'll wed John, my ain cousin;
| He looks as fair as me.'
| 53
| 'Keep well your monie, Bondwell,' she said,
| 'Nae monie I ask o thee;
| Your cousin John was my first love,
| My husband now he's be.'
| 54
| Bondwell was married at morning ear,
| John in the afternoon;
| Dame Essels is lady ower a' the bowers
| And the high towers o Linne.
N
#a.# Falkirk, printed by T. Johnston, 1815. #b.# Stirling,
M. Randall.
| 1
| In London was Young Bichen born,
| He longd strange lands to see;
| He set his foot on good ship-board,
| And he sailed over the sea.
| 2
| He had not been in a foreign land
| A day but only three,
| Till he was taken by a savage Moor,
| And they used him most cruelly.
| 3
| In every shoulder they put a pin,
| To every pin they put a tree;
| They made him draw the plow and cart,
| Like horse and oxen in his country.
| 4
| He had not servd the savage Moor
| A week, nay scarcely but only three,
| Till he has casten him in prison strong,
| Till he with hunger was like to die.
| 5
| It fell out once upon a day
| That Young Bichen he made his moan,
| As he lay bound in irons strong,
| In a dark and deep dungeon.
| 6
| 'An I were again in fair England,
| As many merry day I have been,
| Then I would curb my roving youth
| No more to see a strange land.
| 7
| 'O an I were free again now,
| And my feet well set on the sea,
| I would live in peace in my own country,
| And a foreign land I no more would see.'
| 8
| The savage Moor had but one daughter,
| I wot her name was Susan Py;
| She heard Young Bichen make his moan,
| At the prison-door as she past by.
| 9
| 'O have ye any lands,' she said,
| 'Or have you any money free,
| Or have you any revenues,
| To maintain a lady like me?'
| 10
| 'O I have land in fair England,
| And I have estates two or three,
| And likewise I have revenues,
| To maintain a lady like thee.'
| 11
| 'O will you promise, Young Bichen,' she says,
| 'And keep your vow faithful to me,
| That at the end of seven years
| In fair England you'll marry me?
| 12
| 'I'll steal the keys from my father dear,
| Tho he keeps them most secretly;
| I'll risk my life for to save thine,
| And set thee safe upon the sea.'
| 13
| She's stolen the keys from her father,
| From under the bed where they lay;
| She opened the prison strong
| And set Young Bichen at liberty.
| 14
| She's gone to her father's coffer,
| Where the gold was red and fair to see;
| She filled his pockets with good red gold,
| And she set him far upon the sea.
| 15
| 'O mind you well, Young Bichen,' she says,
| 'The vows and oaths you made to me;
| When you are come to your native land,
| O then remember Susan Py!'
| 16
| But when her father he came home
| He missd the keys there where they lay;
| He went into the prison strong,
| But he saw Young Bichen was away.
| 17
| 'Go bring your daughter, madam,' he says,
| 'And bring her here unto me;
| Altho I have no more but her,
| Tomorrow I'll gar hang her high.'
| 18
| The lady calld on the maiden fair
| To come to her most speedily;
| 'Go up the country, my child,' she says,
| 'Stay with my brother two years or three.
| 19
| 'I have a brother, he lives in the isles,
| He will keep thee most courteously
| And stay with him, my child,' she says,
| 'Till thy father's wrath be turnd from thee.'
| 20
| Now will we leave young Susan Py
| A while in her own country,
| And will return to Young Bichen,
| Who is safe arrived in fair England.
| 21
| He had not been in fair England
| Above years scarcely three,
| Till he has courted another maid,
| And so forgot his Susan Py.
| 22
| The youth being young and in his prime,
| Of Susan Py thought not upon,
| But his love was laid on another maid,
| And the marriage-day it did draw on.
| 23
| But eer the seven years were run,
| Susan Py she thought full long;
| She set her foot on good ship-board,
| And she has saild for fair England.
| 24
| On every finger she put a ring,
| On her mid-finger she put three;
| She filld her pockets with good red gold,
| And she has sailed oer the sea.
| 25
| She had not been in fair England
| A day, a day, but only three,
| Till she heard Young Bichen was a bridegroom,
| And the morrow to be the wedding-day.
| 26
| 'Since it is so,' said young Susan,
| 'That he has provd so false to me,
| I'll hie me to Young Bichen's gates,
| And see if he minds Susan Py.'
| 27
| She has gone up thro London town,
| Where many a lady she there did spy;
| There was not a lady in all London
| Young Susan that could outvie.
| 28
| She has calld upon a waiting-man,
| A waiting-man who stood near by:
| 'Convey me to Young Bichen's gates,
| And well rewarded shals thou be.'
| 29
| When she came to Young Bichen's gate
| She chapped loudly at the pin,
| Till down there came the proud porter;
| 'Who's there,' he says, 'that would be in?'
| 30
| 'Open the gates, porter,' she says,
| 'Open them to a lady gay,
| And tell your master, porter,' she says,
| 'To speak a word or two with me.'
| 31
| The porter he has opend the gates;
| His eyes were dazzled to see
| A lady dressd in gold and jewels;
| No page nor waiting-man had she.
| 32
| 'O pardon me, madam,' he cried,
| 'This day it is his wedding-day;
| He's up the stairs with his lovely bride,
| And a sight of him you cannot see.'
| 33
| She put her hand in her pocket,
| And therefrom took out guineas three,
| And gave to him, saying, Please, kind sir,
| Bring down your master straight to me.
| 34
| The porter up again has gone,
| And he fell low down on his knee,
| Saying, Master, you will please come down
| To a lady who wants you to see.
| 35
| A lady gay stands at your gates,
| The like of her I neer did see;
| She has more gold above her eye
| Nor would buy a baron's land to me.
| 36
| Out then spake the bride's mother,
| I'm sure an angry woman was she:
| 'You're impudent and insolent,
| For ye might excepted the bride and me.'
| 37
| 'Ye lie, ye lie, ye proud woman,
| I'm sure sae loud as I hear you lie;
| She has more gold on her body
| Than would buy the lands, the bride, and thee!'
| 38
| 'Go down, go down, porter,' he says,
| 'And tell the lady gay from me
| That I'm up-stairs wi my lovely bride,
| And a sight of her I cannot see.'
| 39
| The porter he goes down again,
| The lady waited patiently:
| 'My master's with his lovely bride,
| And he'll not win down my dame to see.'
| 40
| From off her finger she's taen a ring;
| 'Give that your master,' she says, 'from me,
| And tell him now, young man,' she says,
| 'To send down a cup of wine to me.'
| 41
| 'Here's a ring for you, master,' he says,
| 'On her mid-finger she has three,
| And you are desird, my lord,' he says,
| 'To send down a cup of wine with me.'
| 42
| He hit the table with his foot,
| He kepd it with his right knee:
| 'I'll wed my life and all my land
| That is Susan Py, come o'er the sea!'
| 43
| He has gone unto the stair-head,
| A step he took but barely three;
| He opend the gates most speedily,
| And Susan Py he there could see.
| 44
| 'Is this the way, Young Bichen,' she says,
| 'Is this the way you've guided me?
| I relieved you from prison strong,
| And ill have you rewarded me.
| 45
| 'O mind ye, Young Bichen,' she says,
| 'The vows and oaths that ye made to me,
| When ye lay bound in prison strong,
| In a deep dungeon of misery?'
| 46
| He took her by the milk-white hand,
| And led her into the palace fine;
| There was not a lady in all the palace
| But Susan Py did all outshine.
| 47
| The day concluded with joy and mirth,
| On every side there might you see;
| There was great joy in all England
| For the wedding-day of Susan Py.
* * * * *
#B.#
17^1. bids me.
22^{5, 6}. _Connected with 23 in MS._
22^6. send he.
#C. a.#
15^2. How y you.
#b.#
3^3. _omits_ house.
4^2. _omits_ foot.
7^1. _omits_ dear.
7^3. For she's ... of the prison.
7^4. And gane the dungeon within.
8^1. And when.
8^2. Wow but her heart was sair.
9^1. She's gotten.
11^1. thir twa.
13^2. I kenna.
13^4. kensnae.
14^1. fell out.
15^2. How y you.
16^1. till.
16^2. As fast as ye can gang.
16^3. tak three.
16^4. To haud ye unthocht lang.
18^1. Syne ye.
18^3. And bonny.
19^3. And I will.
20^2. As fast as she could gang.
20^3. she's taen.
20^4. To haud her unthocht lang.
22^3. And sae bonny did.
22^4. till.
24^3. And her mind misgae by.
24^4. That 't was.
25^2. markis three.
25^4. Bid your master.
27^4. did never.
29^1. and spak.
29^3. be fine.
29^4. as fine.
32^3. out of.
34^3. at the first.
35^2. gang.
36^4. Send her back a maid.
#D.#
_Written throughout without division into stanzas._
7. _A like repetition occurs again in the Skene MSS: see
No 36, p. 316._
10^{1, 2}. _One line in the MS. The metre, in several
places where it is incomplete, was doubtless made full by
repetition: see 19^{1, 3}._
14^1. _This line thus: (~an a Leash of guid gray hounds~).
The reciter evidently could remember only this point in
the stanza._
16, 17.
Whan she cam to Young Beachens gate
Is Young Beachen at hame
Or is he in this countrie
He is at hame is hearly (?) said
Him an sigh an says her Susie Pay
Has he quite forgotten me
19^{1, 3}. _Probably sung_, the stair, the stair; win up,
win up.
22^{3, 4}. _The latter half of the stanza must be supposed
to be addressed to ~Young Beachen~._
26^{1, 2}. He took her down to yon gouden green.
27^4. Sh's.
29^2. my name.
_After 29 a stanza belonging apparently to some other
ballad:_
Courtess kind, an generous mind,
An winna ye answer me?
An whan the hard their lady's word,
Well answered was she.
#E.#
_6^{4-6} was introduced, with other metrical passages,
into a long tale of '~Young Beichan and Susy Pye~,' which
Motherwell had heard related, and of which he gives a
specimen at p. xv. of his Introduction_: "Well, ye must
know that in the Moor's castle there was a massymore,
which is a dark dungeon for keeping prisoners. It was
twenty feet below the ground, and into this hole they
closed poor Beichan. There he stood, night and day, up to
his waist in puddle water; but night or day it was all one
to him, for no ae styme of light ever got in. So he lay
there a lang and weary while, and thinking on his heavy
weird, he made a murnfu sang to pass the time, and this
was the sang that he made, and grat when he sang it, for
he never thought of ever escaping from the massymore, or
of seeing his ain country again:
'My hounds they all run masterless,
My hawks they flee from tree to tree;
My youngest brother will heir my lands,
And fair England again I'll never see.
'Oh were I free as I hae been,
And my ship swimming once more on sea,
I'd turn my face to fair England,
And sail no more to a strange countrie.'
"Now the cruel Moor had a beautiful daughter, called Susy
Pye, who was accustomed to take a walk every morning in
her garden, and as she was walking ae day she heard the
sough o Beichan's sang, coming as it were from below the
ground," etc., etc.
#F.#
3^3. dungeon (donjon).
6^1. only lands.
6^2. only castles.
8^1. Oh.
10^3. ha she has gane in: _originally_ has she gane in.
13^2. _~Many~, with ~Seven~ written over: ~Seven~ in
14^2._
20. _After this stanza_: Then the porter gaed up the stair
and said.
25. _After this stanza_: Then Lord Beichan gat up, and was
in a great wrath, and said.
31. _~ae~: indistinct, but seems to have been ~one~
changed to ~ae~ or #a#._
#H.#
4^3. _~carts and wains~ for ~carts o wine~ of #A# 2^3, #B#
2^3. We have ~wine~ in #H# 4^3, #I# 3^3, and ~wine~ is in
all likelihood original._
_Christie, #I#, 31, abridges this version, making "~a few
slight alterations from the way he had heard it sung~:"
these, and one or two more._
2^4. wadna bend nor bow.
7^1. The Moor he had.
25^1. But Beichan courted.
#I.#
1^1. _~Bechin~ was pronounced ~Beekin~._
#K.#
1. _Before this, as gloss, or remnant of a preceding
stanza_: She came to a shepherd, and he replied.
2. _After this, in explanation_: She gave Lord Bechin a
slice of bread and a bottle of wine when she released him
from prison, hence the following.
3^1. to him.
4. _After this_: He had married another lady, not having
heard from his Sophia for seven long years.
#L.#
"This affecting legend is given ... precisely as I have
frequently heard it sung on Saturday nights, outside a
house of general refreshment (familiarly termed a
wine-vaults) at Battle-bridge. The singer is a young
gentleman who can scarcely have numbered nineteen
summers.... I have taken down the words from his own mouth
at different periods, and have been careful to preserve
his pronunciation." [_Attributed to Charles Dickens._] _As
there is no reason for indicating pronunciation here, in
this more than in other cases, the phonetic spelling is
replaced by common orthography. Forms of speech have,
however, been preserved, excepting two, with regard to
which I may have been too nice._
1^3. his-self.
5^2, 9^2. guv.
#M.#
10^3. _~in~ for ~wi~ (?): ~wi~ in 5^3._
12^2, 46^2. bend. _Possibly, however, understood to be
~bend==leather~, instead of ~ben==bane, bone~._
13^4, 47^4. on thought.
#N. a.#
Susan Py, or Young Bichens Garland. Shewing how he went to
a far country, and was taken by a savage Moor and cast
into prison, and delivered by the Moor's daughter, on
promise of marriage; and how he came to England, and was
going to be wedded to another bride; with the happy
arrival of Susan Py on the wedding day. Falkirk, Printed
by T. Johnston, 1815.
#b.#
3^4. his own.
4^2. A week, a week, but only.
7^3. own land.
7^4. And foreign lands no more.
11^1. young man.
13^2. he lay.
24^3. her trunks.
25^4. was the.
28^2. that stood hard by.
28^4. thou shalt.
29^2. She knocked.
31^4. waiting-maid.
32^2. For this is his.
34^1. up the stairs.
34^3. will you.
36^4. Ye might.
37^2. Sae loud as I hear ye lie.
39^4. And a sight of him you cannot see.
40^4. To bring.
42^3. I'll lay.
44^2. way that you've used me.
47^4. wedding of.
[403] Mr Macmath has ascertained that Mrs Brown was born in 1747. She
learned most of her ballads before she was twelve years old, or before
1759. 1783, or a little earlier, is the date when these copies were
taken down from her singing or recitation.
[404] The Borderer's Table Book, VII, 21. Dixon says, a little before,
that the Stirling broadside of 'Lord Bateman' varies but slightly from
the English printed by Hoggett, Durham, and Pitts, Catnach, and others,
London. This is not true of the Stirling broadside of 'Young Bichen:'
see #N b#. I did not notice, until too late, that I had not furnished
myself with the broadside 'Lord Bateman,' and have been obliged to turn
back the Cruikshank copy into ordinary orthography.
[405] We have this repetition in two other ballads of the Skene MSS
besides #D#; see p. 316 of this volume, sts 1-9; also in 'The Lord of
Learne,' Percy MS., Hales and Furnivall, I, 192 f, vv 269-304.
[406] "An old woman who died in Errol, Carse of Gowrie, about twenty
years ago, aged nearly ninety years, was wont invariably to sing this
ballad: 'Young Lundie was in Brechin born.' Lundie is an estate now
belonging to the Earl of Camperdoun, north from Dundee." A. Laing, note
to #G#. That is to say, the old woman's world was Forfarshire.
Mr Logan had heard in Scotland a version in which the hero was called
Lord Bangol: A Pedlar's Pack, p. 15.
[407] Cf. 'The Fair Flower of Northumberland,' #B# 2, #E# 2, pp 115 f.
[408] She does not get away without exciting the solicitude or wrath of
her father, #F#, #M#, #J#, #N#, and in the first two has to use
artifice.
[409] A point borrowed, it well may be, from 'Hind Horn,' #E# 5 f, #A#
10.
[410] So Torello's wife upsets the table, in Boccaccio's story: see p.
198. One of her Slavic kinswomen jumps over four tables and lights on a
fifth.
[411] In #C# 34, #M# 49, she is recognized by one of the hounds which
she had given him. So Bos, seigneur de Bénac, who breaks a ring with his
wife, goes to the East, and is prisoner among the Saracens seven years,
on coming back is recognized only by his greyhound: Magasin Pittoresque,
VI, 56 b. It is scarcely necessary to scent the Odyssey here.
[412] Ridiculously changed in #J# 6, #K# 6, #L# 20, to a coach _and_
three, reminding us of that master-stroke in Thackeray's ballad of
'Little Billee,' "a captain of a seventy-three." 'Little Billee,' by the
way, is really like an old ballad, fallen on evil days and evil tongues;
whereas the serious imitations of traditional ballads are not the least
like, and yet, in their way, are often not less ludicrous.
[413] In #M#, to make everything pleasant, Bondwell offers the bride
five hundred pounds to marry his cousin John. She says, Keep your money;
John was my first love. So Bondwell is married at early morn, and John
in the afternoon.
[414] Harleian MS. 2277, from which the life of Beket, in long couplets,
was printed by Mr W. H. Black for the Percy Society, in 1845. The story
of Gilbert Beket is contained in the first 150 vv. The style of this
composition entirely resembles that of Robert of Gloucester, and
portions of the life of Beket are identical with the Chronicle; whence
Mr Black plausibly argues that both are by the same hand. The account of
Beket's parentage is interpolated into Edward Grim's Life, in Cotton MS.
Vitellius, C, XII, from which it is printed by Robertson, Materials for
the History of Thomas Becket, II, 453 ff. It is found in Bromton's
Chronicle, Twysden, Scriptores X, columns 1052-55, and in the First
Quadrilogus, Paris, 1495, from which it is reprinted by Migne,
Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, CXC, cols 346 ff. The tale has been
accepted by many writers who would have been better historians for a
little reading of romances. Angustin Thierry sees in Thomas Beket a
Saxon contending in high place, for the interests and with the natural
hatred of his race, against Norman Henry, just as he finds in the yeoman
Robin Hood a leader of Saxon serfs engaged in irregular war with Norman
Richard. But both of St Thomas's parents were Norman; the father of
Rouen, the mother of Caen. The legend was introduced by Lawrence Wade,
following John of Exeter, into a metrical life of Beket of about the
year 1500: see the poem in Englische Studien, III, 417, edited by
Horstmann.
[415] Richard, the proud porter of the ballads, is perhaps most like
himself in #M# 32 ff.
[416] Neither her old name nor her Christian name is told us in this
legend. Gilbert Beket's wife was Matilda, according to most authorities,
but Roësa according to one: see Robertson, as above, IV, 81; Migne, cols
278 f. Fox has made Roësa into Rose, Acts and Monuments, I, 267, ed.
1641.
Gilbert and Rose (but Roësa is not Rose) recall to Hippeau, Vie de St
Thomas par Garnier de Pont Sainte Maxence, p. xxiii, Elie de Saint Gille
and Rosamonde, whose adventures have thus much resemblance with those of
Beket and of Bekie. Elie de Saint Gille, after performing astounding
feats of valor in fight with a horde of Saracens who have made a descent
on Brittany, is carried off to their land. The amiral Macabré requires
Elie to adore Mahomet; Elie refuses in the most insolent terms, and is
condemned to the gallows. He effects his escape, and finds himself
before Macabré's castle. Here, in another fight, he is desperately
wounded, but is restored by the skill of Rosamonde, the amiral's
daughter, who is Christian at heart, and loves the Frank. To save her
from being forced to marry the king of Bagdad, Elie fights as her
champion. In the end she is baptized, as a preparation for her union
with Elie, but he, having been present at the ceremony, is adjudged by
the archbishop to be gossip to her, and Elie and Rosamonde are otherwise
disposed of. So the French romance, but in the Norse, which, as Kölbing
maintains, is likely to preserve the original story here, there is no
such splitting of cumin, and hero and heroine are united.
[417] There is one in the Gesta Romanorum, cap. 5, Österley, p. 278, of
about the same age as the Beket legend. It is not particularly
important. A young man is captured by a pirate, and his father will not
send his ransom. The pirate's daughter often visits the captive, who
appeals to her to exert herself for his liberation. She promises to
effect his freedom if he will marry her. This he agrees to. She releases
him from his chains without her father's knowledge, and flies with him
to his native land.
[418] Nor Guarinos in the Spanish ballad, Duran, No 402, I, 265; Wolf
and Hofmann, Primavera, II, 321. Guarinos is very cruelly treated, but
it is his horse, not he, that has to draw carts. For the Sire de Créqui
see also Dinaux, Trouvères, III, 161 ff (Köhler).
[419] And in 'Der Herr von Falkenstein,' a variety of the story, Meier,
Deutsche Sagen aus Schwaben, p. 319, No 362. A Christian undergoes the
same hardship in Schöppner, Sagenbuch, III, 127, No 1076. For other
cases of the wonderful deliverance of captive knights, not previously
mentioned by me, see Hocker, in Wolf's Zeitschrift für deutsche
Mythologie, I, 306.
[420] A meisterlied of Alexander von Metz, of the second half of the
fifteenth century, Körner, Historische Volkslieder, p. 49; the ballad
'Der Graf von Rom,' or 'Der Graf im Pfluge,' Uhland, p. 784, No 299,
printed as early as 1493; De Historie van Florentina, Huysvrouwe van
Alexander van Mets, 1621, van den Bergh, De nederlandsche Volksromans,
p. 52. And see Goedeke, Deutsche Dichtung im Mittelalter, pp 569, 574;
Uhland, Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung, IV, 297-309; Danske
Viser, V, 67.
[421] Øster-kongens rige, Østerige, Østerland, Austrríki, understood by
Grundtvig as Garðaríki, the Scandinavian-Russian kingdom of the tenth
and eleventh centuries. Austrríki is used vaguely, but especially of the
east of Europe, Russia, Austria, sometimes including Turkey (Vigfusson).
[422] In Swedish #K#, as she pushes off from land, she exclaims:
'Gud Fader i Himmelens rike
Skall vara min styresman!'
Cf. #M# 28:
And she's tuen God her pilot to be.
[423] See 'The Red Bull of Norroway,' Chambers, Popular Rhymes of
Scotland, 1870, p. 99; 'Mestermø,' Asbjørnsen og Moe, No 46; 'Hass-Fru,'
Cavallius och Stephens, No 14; Powell, Icelandic Legends, Second Series,
p. 377; the Grimms, Nos 56, 113, 186, 193; Pentamerone, II, 7, III, 9;
Gonzenbach, Nos 14, 54, 55, and Köhler's note; Hahn, Griechische u.
Albanesische Märchen, No 54; Carleton, Traits and Stories of the Irish
Peasantry, 10th ed., I, 23; Campbell, West Highland Tales, I, 25, No 2,
and Köhler's notes in Orient u. Occident, II, 103-114, etc., etc.
[424] This passage leads the editors of Primavera to remark, II, 52,
that 'El Conde Sol' shows distinct traits of 'Le Chat Botté.' Similar
questions are asked in English #G#, the other Spanish versions, and the
Italian, and in nearly all the Greek ballads referred to on pp 199, 200;
always under the same circumstances, and to bring about the discovery
which gives the turn to the story. The questions in 'Le Chat Botté' are
introduced for an entirely different purpose, and cannot rationally
suggest a borrowing on either side. The hasty note would certainly have
been erased by the very distinguished editors upon a moment's
consideration.
[425] Puymaigre finds also some resemblance in his 'Petite Rosalie,' I,
74: see his note.
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS
1. Riddles Wisely Expounded.
P. 1 b. #A.# Add: Mündel, Elsässische Volkslieder, p. 27, No 24. Second
line from the bottom, for seven read ten.
2 a. Add: #H.# J. H. Schmitz, Sitten u. s. w. des Eifler Volkes, I, 159;
five pairs of riddles and no conclusion. (Köhler.) #I.# Alfred Müller,
Volkslieder aus dem Erzgebirge, p. 69; four pairs of riddles, and no
conclusion. #J.# Lemke, Volksthümliches in Ostpreussen, p. 152; seven
riddles guessed, "nun bin ich Deine Frau."
2 b. (The Russian riddle-ballad.) So a Kosak: "I give thee this riddle:
if thou guess it, thou shalt be mine; if thou guess it not, ill shall it
go with thee." The riddle, seven-fold, is guessed. Metlinskiy, Narodnyya
yuzhnorusskiya Pyesni, pp 363 f. Cf. Snegiref, Russkie prostonarodnye
Prazdniki, II, 101 f.
2 b, note. For Kaden substitute Casetti e Imbriani, C. p. delle
Provincie meridionali, I, 197 f. (Köhler.)
2. The Elfin Knight.
#P.# 6 b. #J.# Read: Central New York; and again in #J#, p. 19 a. Add:
#M.# Notes and Queries, 4th Series, III, 605.
7 a, note. Another ballad with a burden-stem is a version of
'Klosterrovet,' #C#, MSS of 1610, and later, communicated to me by Svend
Grundtvig.
7 b. Add: #O.# 'Ehestandsaussichten' [Norrenberg], Des Dülkener Fiedlers
Liederbuch, 1875, p. 88, No 99. (Köhler.)
8-12. Jagić, in Archiv für slavische Philologie, 'Aus dem
südslavischen Märchenschatz,' V, 47-50, adds five Slavic stories of the
wench whose ready wit helps her to a good marriage, and Köhler, in notes
to Jagić, pp 50 ff, cites, in addition to nearly all those which I
have mentioned, one Slavic, one German, five Italian, one French, one
Irish, one Norwegian, besides very numerous tales in which there is a
partial agreement. Wollner, in Leskien and Brugman's Litauische
Volkslieder und Märchen, p. 573, cites Slavic parallels to No 34, of
which the following, not previously noted, and no doubt others, are
apposite to this ballad: Afanasief, VI, 177, No 42, a, b; Trudy, II,
611-614, No 84, 614-616, No 85; Dragomanof, p. 347, No 29; Sadok Baracz,
p. 33; Kolberg, Lud, VIII, 206; Kulda, II, 68.
14 a, line 4. The Baba-Yaga, a malignant female spirit, has the ways of
the Rusalka and the Vila, and so the Wendish Pšezpolnica, the
'Mittagsfrau,' and the Serpolnica: Afanasief, II, 333; Veckenstedt,
Wendische Sagen, p. 107, No 14, p. 108 f, No 19, p. 109 f, No 4. The Red
Etin puts questions, too, in the Scottish tale, Chambers, Popular
Rhymes, 1870, p. 92. There is certainly no occasion to scruple about elf
or elf-knight. Line 16 f. The same in Snegiref, IV. 8.
14 b. For the legend of St Andrew, etc., see, further, Gering, Íslendzk
Æventyri, I, 95, No 24, 'Af biskupi ok puka,' and Köhler's references,
II, 80 f. (Köhler.)
15 a. #A, B.# Dr Davidson informs me that the introductory stanza, or
burden-stem, exists in the form:
Her plaidie awa, her plaidie awa,
The win blew the bonnie lassie's plaidie awa.
16 a. #C.# This version is in Kinloch MSS, VII, 163. _3 is wanting._
6.
Married ye sall never get nane
Till ye mak a shirt without a seam.
7.
And ye maun sew it seamless,
And ye maun do it wi needle, threedless.
10. _wanting._
12^1. I hae a bit o land to be corn.
_14 is wanting._
16. loof--glove.
17 _is wanting_.
3, 10, 14, 17, are evidently supplied from some form of #B#.
20.
M
Similar to #F-H#: Notes and Queries, 4th Series, III, 605,
communicated by W. F., Glasgow, from a manuscript
collection.
1
As I went up to the top o yon hill,
Every rose springs merry in' t' time
I met a fair maid, an her name it was Nell.
An she langed to be a true lover o mine
2
'Ye'll get to me a cambric sark,
An sew it all over without thread or needle.
Before that ye be, etc.
3
'Ye'll wash it doun in yonder well,
Where water neer ran an dew never fell.
4
'Ye'll bleach it doun by yonder green,
Where grass never grew an wind never blew.
5
'Ye'll dry it doun on yonder thorn,
That never bore blossom sin Adam was born.'
6
'Four questions ye have asked at me,
An as mony mair ye'll answer me.
7
'Ye'll get to me an acre o land
Atween the saut water an the sea sand.
8
'Ye'll plow it wi a ram's horn,
An sow it all over wi one peppercorn.
9
'Ye'll shear it wi a peacock's feather,
An bind it all up wi the sting o an adder.
10
'Ye'll stook it in yonder saut sea,
An bring the dry sheaves a' back to me.
11
'An when ye've done and finished your wark,
Ye'll come to me, an ye'se get your sark.'
An then shall ye be true lover o mine
3. The Fause Knight upon the Road.
#P.# 20 a. Add: #C.# 'The False Knight,' communicated by Mr Macmath, of
Edinburgh.
For the fool getting the last word of the princess, see, further,
Köhler, Germania, XIV, 271; Leskien u. Brugman, Litauische Volkslieder
u. Märchen, p. 469, No 33, and Wollner's note, p. 573.
21, note. I must retract the doubly hasty remark that the Shetland
belief that witches may be baffled by fliting with them is a modern
misunderstanding.
Mr George Lyman Kittredge has called my attention to Apollonius of
Tyana's encounter with an _empusa_ between the Caucasus and the Indus.
Knowing what the spectre was, Apollonius began to revile it, and told
his attendants to do the same, for that was the resource, in such cases,
against an attack. The empusa went off with a shriek. Philostratus's
Life of Apollonius, II, 4. Mr Kittredge referred me later to what is
said by Col. Yule (who also cites Philostratus), Marco Polo, I, 183,
that the wise, according to Mas'udi, revile ghúls, and the ghúls vanish.
Mr Kittredge also cites Luther's experience: how, when he could not be
rid of the Devil by the use of holy writ and serious words, "so hätte er
ihn oft mit spitzigen Worten und lächerlichen Possen vertrieben; ...
quia est superbus spiritus, et non potest ferre contemptum sui."
Tischreden, in Auswahl, Berlin, 1877, pp 152-154.
Sprites of the more respectable orders will quit the company of men if
scolded: Walter Mapes, De Nugis Curialium, ed. Wright, p. 81, Alpenburg,
Deutsche Alpensagen, p. 312, No 330. So Thetis, according to Sophocles,
left Peleus when he reviled her: Scholia in Apollonii Argonautica, IV,
816. (Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte, II, 60, 68.) 22.
C
Obtained by Mr Macmath from the recitation of his aunt,
Miss Jane Webster, formerly of Airds of Kells, Stewartry
of Kirkcudbright, Galloway, who learned it many years ago
from the wife of Peter McGuire, then cotman at Airds.
1
'O whare are ye gaun?'
Says the false knight upon the road:
'I am gaun to the schule,'
Says the wee boy, and still he stood.
2
'Wha's aught the sheep on yonder hill?'
'They are my papa's and mine.'
3
'How many of them's mine?'
'A' them that has blue tails.'
4
'I wish you were in yonder well:'
'And you were down in hell.'
4. Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight.
#P.# 22 b. #D.# Add: #d.# 'The historical ballad of May Culzean,' an
undated stall-copy.
26 b. Another Dutch version (Frisian), spirited, but with gaps, is given
by Dykstra and van der Meulen, In Doaze fol alde Snypsnaren, Frjentsjer,
1882, p. 118, 'Jan Alberts,' 66 vv. (Köhler.)
#D.# Jan Alberts sings a song, and those that hear it know it not. It is
heard by a king's daughter, who asks her mother's leave to go out for a
walk, and is told that it is all one where she goes or stays, if she
keeps her honor. Her father says the same, when she applies for his
leave. She goes to her bedroom and dresses herself finely, dons a gold
crown, puts her head out of the window, and cries, Now am I Jan Alberts'
bride. Jan Alberts takes her on his horse; they ride fast and long, with
nothing to eat or drink for three days. She then asks Jan why he gives
her nothing, and he answers that he shall ride to the high tree where
hang fourteen fair maids. Arrived there, he gives her the choice of
tree, sword, or water. She chooses the sword, bids him spare his coat,
for a pure maid's blood goes far, and before his coat is half off his
head lies behind him. The head cries, Behind the bush is a pot of
grease; smear my neck with it. She will not smear from a murderer's pot,
nor blow in a murderer's horn. She mounts his horse, and rides far and
long. Jan Alberts' mother comes to meet her, and asks after him. She
says he is not far off, and is sporting with fourteen maids. Had you
told me this before, I would have laid you in the water, says the
mother. The maid rides on till she comes to her father's gate. Then she
cries to her father to open, for his youngest daughter is without. The
father not bestirring himself, she swims the moat, and, the door not
being open, goes through the glass. The next day she dries her clothes.
30 a, 37 a. There is a Low German version of the first class, #A-F#, in
Spee, Volksthümliches vom Niederrhein, Köln, 1875, Zweites Heft, p. 3,
'Schöndili,' 50 vv. (Köhler.)
#AA.# Schöndili's parents died when she was a child. Schön-Albert,
knowing this, rides to her. She attires herself in silk, with a gold
crown on her hair, and he swings her on to his horse. They ride three
days and nights, with nothing to eat or drink. She asks whether it is
not meal-time; he replies that they are coming to a linden, where they
will eat and drink. Seven women are hanging on the tree. He gives her
the wale of tree, river, and sword. She chooses the sword; would be
loath to spot his coat; whips off his head before the coat is half off.
The head says there is a pipe in the saddle; she thinks no good can come
of playing a murderer's pipe. She meets first the father, then the
mother; they think that must be Schön-Albert's horse. That may be, she
says; I have not seen him since yesterday. She sets the pipe to her
mouth, when she reaches her father's gate, and the murderers come like
hares on the wind.
#BB.# Alfred Müller, Volkslieder aus dem Erzgebirge, p. 92, 'Schön
Ulrich' [und Trautendelein], 36 vv. (Köhler.) Like #T#, without the
song.
#CC.# A. Schlosser, Deutsche Volkslieder aus Steiermark, 1881, p. 338,
No 309, 'Der Ritter und die Maid.' (Köhler: not yet seen by me.)
#DD.# Curt Mündel, Elsässische Volkslieder, p. 12, No 10, a fragment of
fifteen verses. As Anna sits by the Rhine combing her hair, Heinrich
comes along on his horse, sees her weep, and asks why. It is not for
gold and not for goods, but because she is to die that day. Heinrich
draws his sword, runs her through, and rides home. He is asked why his
sword is red, and says he has killed two doves. They say the dove must
be Anna.
32 b. #H#, line 10. Read: umbrunnen.
39 a, line 1. Read: contributed by Hoffmann.
39 a, third paragraph. Kozlowski, Lud, p. 54, No 15, furnishes a second
and inferior but still important form of #A# (Masovian).
#A b.# Ligar (afterwards Jasia, Golo) bids Kasia take all she has. She
has already done this, and is ready to range the world with him.
Suddenly she asks, after they have been some time on their way, What is
that yonder so green? Jasia replies, Our house, to which we are going.
They go on further, and Kasia again inquires abruptly, What is that
yonder so white? "That is my eight wives, and you shall be the ninth:
you are to die, and will be the tenth." "Where is the gold, the maidens'
gold?" "In the linden, Kasia, in the linden; plenty of it." "Let me not
die so wretchedly; let me draw your sword for once." She drew the sword,
and with one stroke Jasia's head was off.
39 b. To the Polish versions are further to be added: #NN#, Piosnki
wieśniacze znad Dzwiny, p. 41, No 51; #OO#, Roger, p. 78, No 138;
#PP#, Roger, p. 69, No 125; #QQ#, ib., p. 79, No 140; #RR#, p. 81, No
142; #SS#, p. 79, No 139. The last three are imperfect, and #QQ#, #RR#,
have a beginning which belongs elsewhere. Jasia suggests to Kasia to get
the key of the new room from her mother by pretending headache, and bids
her take gold enough, #NN#, #OO#. They go off while her mother thinks
that Kasia is sleeping, #NN#, #OO#, #QQ#. They come to a wood, #NN#,
#PP# (which is corrupt here), #SS#; first or last, to a deep stream,
#NN#, #OO#, #QQ#, #SS#; it is red sea in #RR#, as in #J#. Jasia bids
Kasia return to her mother, #NN# (twice), #RR#; bids her take off her
rich clothes, #OO#, to which she answers that she has not come here for
that. John throws her into the water, #NN#, #OO#, #QQ#, #SS#, from a
bridge in the second and third. Her apron catches on a stake or post;
she begs John for help, and gets for answer, "I did not throw you in to
help you: you may go to the bottom," #OO#. She swims to a stake, to
which she clings, and John hews her in three, #QQ#. Fishermen draw out
the body, and carry it to the church, #NN#, #OO#. She apostrophizes her
hair in #QQ#, #SS#, as in #G#, #I#, #J#, and in the same absurd terms in
#QQ# as in #J#. John is pursued and cut to pieces in #OO#, _also_ broken
on the wheel. #PP# closely resembles German ballads of the third class.
Katie shouts three times: at her first cry the grass curls up; at the
second the river overflows; the third wakes her mother, who rouses her
sons, saying, Katie is calling in the wood. They find John with a bloody
sword; he says he has killed a dove. They answer, No dove, but our
sister, and maltreat him till he tells what he has done with his victim:
"I have hidden her under the yew-bush; now put me on the wheel."
39 b, line 13 of the middle paragraph. Read Piosnki for Piesni, and omit
the quotation marks in this and the line before.
40 b, line 2 (the girl's adding her hair to lengthen the cord). In the
tale of the Sea-horse, Schiefner, Awarische Texte, Memoirs of the St
Petersburg Academy, vol. XIX, No 6, p. 11 f, a sixty-ell rope being
required to rescue a prince from a well into which he had been thrown,
and no rope forthcoming, the daughter of a sea-king makes a rope of the
required length with her hair, and with this the prince is drawn out. Dr
Reinhold Köhler, who pointed out this incident to me, refers in his
notes to the texts, at p. vii f, to the song of Südäi Märgän, Radloff,
II, 627-31, where Südäi Märgän's wife, having to rescue her husband from
a pit, tries first his horse's tail, and finds it too short, then her
hair, which proves also a little short. A maid is then found whose hair
is a hundred fathoms long, and her hair being tied on to the horse's
tail, and horse, wife, and maid pulling together, the hero is drawn out.
For climbing up by a maid's hair, see, further, Köhler's note to
Gonzenbach, No 53, II, 236.
40 b, line 7. A message is sent to a father by a daughter in the same
way, in Chodzko, Les Chants historiques de l'Ukraine, p. 75; cf. p. 92,
of the same. Tristram sends messages to Isonde by linden shavings
inscribed with runes: Sir Tristrem, ed. Kölbing, p. 56, st. 187;
Tristrams Saga, cap. 54, p. 68, ed. Kölbing; Gottfried von Strassburg,
vv 14427-441.
40 b, line 36. For #G#, #I#, read #G#, #J#.
40, note [61]. In a Ruthenian ballad a girl who runs away from her
mother with a lover tells her brothers, who have come in search of her,
I did not leave home to go back again with you: Golovatsky, Part I, p.
77, No 32; Part III, I, p. 17, No 4, p. 18, No 5. So, "I have not
poisoned you to help you," Part I, p. 206, No 32, p. 207, No 33.
41 a, second paragraph. Golovatsky, at I, 116, No 29, has a ballad,
found elsewhere without the feature here to be noticed, in which a
Cossack, who is watering his horse while a maid is drawing water,
describes his home as a Wonderland, like John in Polish #Q#. "Come to
the Ukraine with the Cossacks," he says. "Our land is not like this:
with us the mountains are golden, the water is mead, the grass is silk;
with us the willows bear pears and the girls go in gold." She yields;
they go over one mountain and another, and when they have crossed the
third the Cossack lets his horse graze. The maid falls to weeping, and
asks the Cossack, Where are your golden mountains, where the water that
is mead, the grass that is silk? He answers, No girl of sense and reason
engages herself to a young Cossack. So in Zegota Pauli, P. l. ruskiego,
p. 29, No 26==Golovatsky, I, 117, No 30, where the maid rejoins to the
glowing description, I have ranged the world: golden mountains I never
saw; everywhere mountains are of stone, and everywhere rivers are of
water; very like the girl in Grundtvig, 82 #B#, st. 7; 183 #A# 6, #E# 5,
6.
41 b, last paragraph. Several Bohemian versions are to be added to the
single example cited from Waldau's Böhmische Granaten. This version,
which is presumed to have been taken down by Waldau himself, may be
distinguished as #A#. #B#, Sušil, Moravské Národní Písně, No 189,
p. 191, 'Vrah,' 'The Murderer,' is very like #A#. #C#, Sušil, p. 193.
#D#, Erben, Prostonárodni české Písně a Říkadla, p. 480, No 16,
'Zabité děvče,' 'The Murdered Maid.' #E#, p. 479, No 15, 'Zabitá
sestra,' 'The Murdered Sister.' #B# has a double set of names, beginning
with Black George,--not the Servian, but "king of Hungary,"--and ending
with Indriasch. The maid is once called Annie, otherwise Katie. At her
first call the grass becomes green; at the second the mountain bows; the
third the mother hears. #C# has marvels of its own. Anna entreats John
to allow her to call to her mother. "Call, call," he says, "you will not
reach her with your call; in this dark wood, even the birds will not
hear you." At her first call a pine-tree in the forest breaks; at the
second the river overflows; at the third her mother rises from the
grave. She calls to her sons to go to Anna's rescue, and _they_ rise
from their graves. The miscreant John confesses that he has buried their
sister in the wood. They strike off his head, and put a bat on the head,
with an inscription in gold letters, to inform people what his offence
has been. There is a gap after the seventh stanza of #D#, which leaves
the two following stanzas unintelligible by themselves: 8, Choose one of
the two, and trust nobody; 9, She made her choice, and shouted three
times towards the mountains. At the first cry the mountain became green;
at the second the mountain bowed backwards; the third the mother heard.
She sent her sons off; they found their neighbor John, who had cut off
their sister's head. The law-abiding, and therefore modern, young men
say that John shall go to prison and never come out alive. In #E# the
man, a young hunter, says, Call _five_ times; not even a wood-bird will
hear you. Nothing is said of the first call; the second is heard by the
younger brother, who tells the elder that their sister must be in
trouble. The hunter has a bloody rifle in his hand: how he is disposed
of we are not told. All these ballads but #C# begin with the maid
cutting grass, and all of them have the dove that is "no dove, but our
sister."
Fragments of this ballad are found, #F#, in Sušil, p. 112, No 113,
'Nevěsta nešt' astnice,' 'The Unhappy Bride;' #G#, p. 171, No 171,
'Zbojce,' 'The Murderer;' and there is a variation from #B# at p. 192,
note 3, which is worth remarking, #H#. #F#, sts 11-14: "Get together
what belongs to you; we will go to a foreign land;" and when they came
to the turf, "Look my head through."[426] Every hair she laid aside she
wet with a tear. And when they came into the dark of the wood he cut her
into nine [three] pieces. #G.# Katie meets John in a meadow; they sit
down on the grass. "Look my head through." She weeps, for she says there
is a black fate impending over her; "a black one for me, a red one for
thee." He gets angry, cuts off her head, and throws her into the river,
for which he is hanged. #H.# He sprang from his horse, robbed the maid,
and laughed. He set her on the grass, and bade her look his head
through. Every hair she examined she dropped a tear for. "Why do you
weep, Katie? Is it for your crants?" "I am _not_ weeping for my crants,
nor am I afraid of your sword. Let me call three times, that my father
and mother may hear." Compare German #H# 10, 11; #Q# 8-10, etc., etc.
42 a. These Ruthenian ballads belong with the other Slavic parallels to
No 4: #A#, Zegota Pauli, P. l. ruskiego, p. 21==Golovatsky, III, I, 149,
No 21; #B#, Golovatsky, III, I, 172, No 46. #A.# A man induces a girl to
go off with him in the night. They wander over one land and another, and
then feel need of rest. Why does your head ache? he asks of her. Are you
homesick? "My head does not ache; I am not homesick." He takes her by
the white sides and throws her into the deep Donau, saying, Swim with
the stream; we shall not live together. She swims over the yellow sand,
crying, Was I not fair, or was it my fate? and he dryly answers, Fair;
it was thy fate. In #B# it is a Jew's daughter that is wiled away. They
go in one wagon; another is laden with boxes [of valuables?] and
pillows, a third with gold pennies. She asks, Where is your house? Over
those hills, he answers. He takes her over a high bridge, and throws her
into the Donau, with, Swim, since you were not acquainted with our way,
our faith!
42 a. #A#, line 2. Read: Puymaigre.
43 a. #D.# Add: Poésies populaires de la France, IV, fol. 332, Chanson
de l'Aunis, Charente Inférieur; but even more of the story is lost.
44 a. A ballad in Casetti e Imbriani, C. p. delle Provincie meridionali,
II, 1, begins like 'La Contadina alla Fonte' (see p. 393 a), and ends
like 'La Monferrina Incontaminata.' Of the same class as the last is, I
suppose, Nannarelli, Studio comparativo sui Canti popolari di Arlena, p.
51, No 50 (Köhler), which I regret not yet to have seen.
45 a. Portuguese #C, D#, in Alvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo, Romanceiro do
Archipelago da Madeira, p. 57, 'Estoria do Bravo-Franco,' p. 60,
'Gallo-frango.'
47. A story from Neumünster about one Görtmicheel, a famous robber, in
Müllenhoff, p. 37, No 2, blends features of 'Hind Etin,' or 'The Maid
and the Dwarf-King,' No 41, with others found in the Magyar ballad, p.
45 f. A handsome wench, who had been lost seven years, suddenly
reappeared at the home of her parents. She said that she was not at
liberty to explain where she had been, but her mother induced her to
reveal this to a stone near the side-door, and taking up her station
behind the door heard all. She had been carried off by a robber; had
lived with him seven years, and borne him seven children. The robber,
who had otherwise treated her well, had refused to let her visit her
home, but finally had granted her this permission upon her promising to
say nothing about him. When the time arrived for her daughter to go
back, the mother gave her a bag of peas, which she was to drop one by
one along the way. She was kindly received, but presently the robber
thought there was something strange in her ways. He laid his head in her
lap, inviting her to perform the service so common in like cases. While
she was doing this, she could not but think how the robber had loved her
and how he was about to be betrayed by her, and her remorseful tears
dropped on his face. "So you have told of me!" cried the astute robber,
springing up. He cut off the children's heads and strung them on a
willow-twig before her eyes, and was now coming to her, when people
arrived, under the mother's conduct, who put a stop to his further
revenge, and took their own. See the note, Müllenhoff, p. 592 f.
57 a. #D.# Insert: #d.# A stall-copy lent me by Mrs Alexander Forbes,
Liberton, Edinburgh. (See p. 23, note §.)
62 b. Insert after #c#:
#d.#
1^{1,2}.
Have ye not heard of fause Sir John,
Wha livd in the west country?
_After 2 a stanza nearly as in #b.#_
5 _wanting._
6^1. But he's taen a charm frae aff his arm.
6^3. follow him.
7^2. five hundred.
7^3. the bravest horse.
8^1. So merrily.
8^4. Which is called Benan Bay.
9, 11, _wanting._
12^1. Cast aff, cast aff.
12^4. To sink.
13. _Nearly as in #b.#_
14.
'Cast aff thy coats and gay mantle,
And smock o Holland lawn,
For thei'r owre costly and owre guid
To rot in the sea san.'
15.
'Then turn thee round, I pray, Sir John,
See the leaf flee owre the tree,
For it never befitted a book-learned man
A naked lady to see.'
_Sir John being a Dominican friar, according to the historical preface._
16.
As fause Sir John did turn him round,
To see the leaf flee owre the [tree],
She grasped him in her arms sma,
And flung him in the sea.
17.
'Now lie ye there, ye wild Sir John,
Whar ye thought to lay me;
Ye wad hae drownd me as naked 's I was born,
But ye's get your claes frae me!'
18.
Her jewels, costly, rich and rare,
She straight puts on again;
She lightly springs upon her horse,
And leads his by the rein.
21^3. O that's a foundling.
22.
Then out and spake the green parrot,
He says, Fair May Culzean,
O what hae ye done wi yon brave knight?
23.
'Haud your tongue, my pretty parrot,
An I'se be kind to thee;
For where ye got ae handfu o groats,
My parrot shall get three.'
25.
'There came a cat into my cage,
Had nearly worried me,
And I was calling on May Culzean
To come and set me free.'
27 _wanting_.
28^3. Carleton sands.
29^2. Was dashed.
29^3. The golden ring.
5. Gil Brenton.
#P.# 62 a, last three lines. Read: said by Lockhart to be Miss Christian
Rutherford, his mother's half-sister.
66 b, lines 2, 3. Read: 37 #G#, 38 #A#, #D#, and other versions of both.
66 b, line 4. 'Bitte Mette,' Kristensen, Jyske Folkeminder, V, 57, No 7,
affords another version.
66 b, last line. For other cases of this substitution see Legrand,
Recueil de Contes populaires grecs, p. 257, 'La Princesse et sa
Nourrice;' Köhler, Romania, XI, 581-84, 'Le conte de la reine qui tua
son sénéchal;' Neh-Manzer, ou Les Neuf Loges, conte, traduit du persan
par M. Lescallier, Gènes, 1808, p. 55, 'Histoire du devin Afezzell.'
(Köhler.) The last I have not seen.
67 a, note [99], line 37. Read: a Scotch name.
84 b. The same artifice is tried, and succeeds, in a case of birth
delayed by a man's clasping his hands round his knees, in Asbjørnsen,
Norske Huldre-Eventyr, I, 20, 2d ed.
85 a, first paragraph. A story closely resembling Heywood's is told in
the Zimmerische Chronik, ed. Barack, IV, 262-64, 1882, of Heinrich von
Dierstein; Liebrecht in Germania XIV, 404. (Köhler.) As the author of
the chronicle remarks, the tale (Heywood's) is in the Malleus
Maleficarum (1620, I, 158 f).
85 a, third paragraph. Other cases resembling Gonzenbach, No 54, in
Pitré, Fiabe, Novelle, etc., I, 173, No 18; Comparetti, Novelline
popolari, No 33, p. 139. (Köhler.)
85, note. Add: (Köhler.)
85 b. Birth is sought to be maliciously impeded in Swabia by crooking
together the little fingers. Lammert, Volksmedizin in Bayern, etc., p.
165. (Köhler.)
7. Earl Brand.
#P.# 88. Add:
#G.# 'Gude Earl Brand and Auld Carle Hude,' the Paisley Magazine, 1828,
p. 321, communicated by W. Motherwell.
#H.# 'Auld Carle Hood, or, Earl Brand,' Campbell MSS, II, 32.
#I.# 'The Douglas Tragedy,' 'Lord Douglas' Tragedy,' from an old-looking
stall-copy, without place or date.
This ballad was, therefore, not first given to the world by Mr Robert
Bell, in 1857, but nearly thirty years earlier by Motherwell, in the
single volume of the Paisley Magazine, a now somewhat scarce book. I am
indebted for the information and for a transcript to Mr Murdoch, of
Glasgow, and for a second copy to Mr Macmath, of Edinburgh.
92 a. Add: #I.# 'Hildebrand,' Wigström, Folkdiktning, II, 13. #J.#
'Fröken Gyllenborg,' the same, p. 24.
96 a. Böðvar Bjarki, fighting with great effect as a huge bear for
Hrólfr Kraki, is obliged to return to his ordinary shape in consequence
of Hjalti, who misses the hero from the fight, mentioning his name: Saga
Hrólfs Kraka, c. 50, Fornaldar Sögur, I, 101 ff. In Hjálmtèrs ok Ölvers
Saga, c. 20, F. S. III, 506 f, Hörðr bids his comrades not call him by
name while he is fighting, in form of a sword-fish, with a walrus, else
he shall die. A prince, under the form of an ox, fighting with a
six-headed giant, loses much of his strength, and is nigh being
conquered, because a lad has, contrary to his prohibition, called him by
name. Asbjørnsen og Moe, Norske Folkeeventyr, 2d ed., p. 419. All these
are cited by Moe, in Nordisk Tidskrift, 1879, p. 286 f. Certain kindly
domestic spirits renounce relations with men, even matrimonial, if their
name becomes known: Mannhardt, Wald- und Feldkulte, I, 103.
97 b. Insert: #Spanish.# Milá, Romancerillo Catalan, 2d ed., No 206,
#D#, p. 164: olivera y oliverá, which, when grown tall, join.
#Servian.# Add: Karadshitch, I, 345, vv 225 ff, two pines, which
intertwine. In #I# 309, No 421, they plant a rose over the maid, a vine
over the man, which embrace as if they were Jani and Milenko. The ballad
has features of the Earl Brand class. (I, 239, No 341==Talvj, II, 85.)
#Russian.# Hilferding, Onezhskya Byliny, col. 154, No 31, laburnum (?)
over Basil, and cypress over Sophia, which intertwine; col. 696, No 134,
cypress and willow; col. 1242, No 285, willow and cypress.
Little Russian (Carpathian Russians in Hungary), Golovatsky, II, 710, No
13: John on one side of the church, Annie on the other; rosemary on his
grave, a lily on hers, growing so high as to meet over the church.
Annie's mother cuts them down. John speaks from the grave: Wicked
mother, thou wouldst not let us _live_ together; let us rest together.
Golovatsky, I, 186, No 8: a maple from the man's grave, white birch from
the woman's, which mingle their leaves.
#Slovenian.# Štúr, O národnich Písních a Pověstech Plemen
slovanských, p. 51: the lovers are buried east and west, a rose springs
from the man's grave, a lily from the maid's, which mingle their growth.
#Wend.# Add: Haupt and Schmaler, II, 310, No 81.
#Breton.# Add: Villemarqué, Barzaz Breiz, 'Le Seigneur Nann et La Fée,'
see p. 379, note §, of this volume.
98 a. #Armenian.# The ashes of two lovers who have been literally
consumed by a mutual passion are deposited by sympathetic hands in one
grave. Two rose bushes rise from the grave and seek to intertwine, but a
thorn interposes and makes the union forever impossible. (The thorn is
_creed_. The young man was a Tatar, and his religion had been an
insuperable obstacle in the eyes of the maid's father.) Baron von
Haxthausen, Transkaukasia, I, 315 f. (Köhler.)
A Middle High German poem from a MS. of the end of the 14th century,
printed in Haupt's Zeitschrift, VI, makes a vine rise from the common
grave of Pyramus and Thisbe and descend into it again: p. 517. (Köhler.)
J. Grimm notes several instances of this marvel (not from ballads),
Ueber Frauennamen aus Blumen, Kleinere Schriften, II, 379 f, note **.
104.
G
The Paisley Magazine, June 2, 1828, p. 321, communicated
by William Motherwell. "Sung to a long, drawling,
monotonous tune."
* * * * * * *
1
'Gude Earl Brand, I long to see
Faldee faldee fal deediddle a dee
All your grey hounds running over the lea.'
And the brave knights in the valley
2
'Gude lady fair, I have not a steed but one,
But you shall ride and I shall run.'
3
They're ower moss and they're ower mure,
And they saw neither rich nor pure.
4
Until that they came to auld Karl Hude;
He's aye for ill and never for gude.
5
'Gude Earl Brand, if ye love me,
Kill auld Karl Hude, and gar him die.'
6
'O fair ladie, we'll do better than sae:
Gie him a penny, and let him gae.'
7
'Gude Earl Brand, whare hae ye been,
Or whare hae ye stown this lady sheen?'
8
'She's not my lady, but my sick sister,
And she's been at the wells of Meen.'
9
'If she was sick, and very sair,
She wadna wear the red gold on her hair.
10
'Or if she were sick, and like to be dead,
She wadna wear the ribbons red.'
11
He cam till he cam to her father's gate,
And he has rappit furious thereat.
12
'Where is the lady o this hall?'
'She's out wi her maidens, playing at the ball.'
13
'If you'll get me fyfteen wale wight men,
Sae fast as I'll fetch her back again.'
14
She's lookit ower her left collar-bane:
'O gude Earl Brand, we baith are taen,'
15
'Light down, light down, and hold my steed;
Change never your cheer till ye see me dead.
16
'If they come on me man by man,
I'll be very laith for to be taen.
17
'But if they come on me one and all,
The sooner you will see me fall.'
18
O he has killd them all but one,
And wha was that but auld Karl Hude.
19
And he has come on him behind,
And put in him the deadly wound.
20
O he has set his lady on,
And he's come whistling all along.
21
'Gude Earl Brand, I see blood:'
'It's but the shade o my scarlet robe.'
22
They cam till they cam to the water aflood;
He's lighted down and he's wushen aff the blood.
23
His mother walks the floor alone:
'O yonder does come my poor son.
24
'He is both murderd and undone,
And all for the sake o an English loon.'
25
'Say not sae, my dearest mother,
Marry her on my eldest brother.'
26
She set her fit up to the wa,
Faldee faldee fal deediddle adee
She's fallen down dead amang them a'.
And the brave knights o the valley
H
Campbell MSS, II, 32.
1
Did you ever hear of good Earl Brand,
Aye lally an lilly lally
And the king's daughter of fair Scotland?
And the braw knights o Airly
2
She was scarce fifteen years of age
When she came to Earl Brand's bed.
Wi the braw knights o Airly
3
'O Earl Brand, I fain wad see
Our grey hounds run over the lea.'
Mang the braw bents o Airly
4
'O,' says Earl Brand, 'I've nae steads but one,
And you shall ride and I shall run.'
Oer the braw heights o Airly
5
'O,' says the lady, 'I hae three,
And ye shall hae yeer choice for me.'
Of the braw steeds o Airly
6
So they lap on, and on they rade,
Till they came to auld Carle Hood.
Oer the braw hills o Airly
7
Carl Hood's aye for ill, and he's no for good,
He's aye for ill, and he's no for good.
Mang the braw hills o Airly
8
'Where hae ye been hunting a' day,
And where have ye stolen this fair may?'
I' the braw nights sae airly
9
'She is my sick sister dear,
New comd home from another sister.'
I the braw nights sae early
10
'O,' says the lady, 'if ye love me,
Gie him a penny fee and let him gae.'
I the braw nights sae early
11
He's gane home to her father's bower,
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
12
'Where is the lady o this ha?'
'She's out wi the young maids, playing at the ba.'
I the braw nights so early
13
'No,' says another, 'she's riding oer the moor,
And a' to be Earl Brand's whore.'
I the braw nights so early
14
The king mounted fifteen weel armed men,
A' to get Earl Brand taen.
I the braw hills so early
15
The lady looked over her white horse mane:
'O Earl Brand, we will be taen.'
In the braw hills so early
16
He says, If they come one by one,
Ye'll no see me so soon taen.
In the braw hills so early
17
So they came every one but one,
And he has killd them a' but ane.
In the braw hills so early
18
And that one came behind his back,
And gave Earl Brand a deadly stroke.
In the braw hills of Airly
19
For as sair wounded as he was,
He lifted the lady on her horse.
In the braw nights so early
20
'O Earl Brand, I see thy heart's bluid!'
'It's but the shadow of my scarlet robe.'
I the braw nights so early
21
He came to his mother's home;
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
22
She looked out and cryd her son was gone,
And a' for the sake [of] an English loon.
. . . . . . .
23
'What will I do wi your lady fair?'
'Marry her to my eldest brother.'
The brawest knight i Airly
21^1. to her.
21^1, 22 _are written as one stanza_.
I
A stall-copy lent me by Mrs Alexander Forbes, Liberton,
Edinburgh.
1
'Rise up, rise up, Lord Douglas,' she said,
'And draw to your arms so bright;
Let it never be said a daughter of yours
Shall go with a lord or a knight.
2
'Rise up, rise up, my seven bold sons,
And draw to your armour so bright;
Let it never be said a sister of yours
Shall go with a lord or a knight.'
3
He looked over his left shoulder,
To see what he could see,
And there he spy'd her seven brethren bold,
And her father that lov'd her tenderly.
4
'Light down, light down, Lady Margret,' he said,
'And hold my steed in thy hand,
That I may go fight with your seven brethren bold,
And your father who's just at hand.'
5
O there she stood, and bitter she stood,
And never did shed a tear,
Till once she saw her seven brethren slain,
And her father she lovd so dear.
6
'Hold, hold your hand, William,' she said,
'For thy strokes are wondrous sore;
For sweethearts I may get many a one,
But a father I neer will get more.'
7
She took out a handkerchief of holland so fine
And wip'd her father's bloody wound,
Which ran more clear than the red wine,
And forked on the cold ground.
8
'O chuse you, chuse you, Margret,' he said,
'Whether you will go or bide!'
'I must go with you, Lord William,' she said,
'Since you've left me no other guide.'
9
He lifted her on a milk-white steed,
And himself on a dapple grey,
With a blue gilded horn hanging by his side,
And they slowly both rode away.
10
Away they rode, and better they rode,
Till they came to yonder sand,
Till once they came to yon river side,
And there they lighted down.
11
They lighted down to take a drink
Of the spring that ran so clear,
And there she spy'd his bonny heart's blood,
A running down the stream.
12
'Hold up, hold up, Lord William,' she says,
'For I fear that you are slain;'
''T is nought but the shade of my scarlet clothes,
That is sparkling down the stream.'
13
He lifted her on a milk-white steed,
And himself on a dapple grey,
With a blue gilded horn hanging by his side,
And slowly they rode away.
14
Ay they rode, and better they rode,
Till they came to his mother's bower;
Till once they came to his mother's bower,
And down they lighted there.
15
'O mother, mother, make my bed,
And make it saft and fine,
And lay my lady close at my back,
That I may sleep most sound.'
16
Lord William he died eer middle o the night,
Lady Margret long before the morrow;
Lord William he died for pure true love,
And Lady Margret died for sorrow.
17
Lord William was bury'd in Lady Mary's kirk,
The other in Saint Mary's quire;
Out of William's grave sprang a red rose,
And out of Margret's a briar.
18
And ay they grew, and ay they threw,
As they wad fain been near;
And by this you may ken right well
They were twa lovers dear.
105 b. #D.# 10. For Kinlock (twice) read Kinloch; and read I, 330.
The stanza cited is found in Kinloch MSS, VII, 95 and 255.
107 b. There is possibly a souvenir of Walter in Sušil, p. 105, No
107. A man and woman are riding on one horse in the mountains. He asks
her to sing. Her song is heard by robbers, who come, intending to kill
him and carry her off. He bids her go under a maple-tree, kills twelve,
and spares one, to carry the booty home.
#9. The Fair Flower of Northumberland.#
P. 111 a. #B b#, as prepared by Kinloch for printing, is found in
Kinloch MSS, VII, 105.
Add: #F.# 'The Fair Flower of Northumberland,' Gibb MS., No 8.
117.
F
Gibb MS., No 8: 'The Fair Flower o Northumberland,' from
Jeannie Stirling, a young girl, as learned from her
grandmother.
* * * * * * *
1
She stole the keys from her father's bed-head,
O but her love it was easy won!
She opened the gates, she opened them wide,
She let him out o the prison strong.
2
She went into her father's stable,
O but her love it was easy won!
She stole a steed that was both stout and strong,
To carry him hame frae Northumberland.
* * * * * * *
3
'I'll be cook in your kitchen,
Noo sure my love has been easy won!
I'll serve your own lady with hat an with hand,
For I daurna gae back to Northumberland.'
4
'I need nae cook in my kitchin,
O but your love it was easy won!
Ye'll serve not my lady with hat or with hand,
For ye maun gae back to Northumberland.'
5
When she gaed hame, how her father did ban!
'O but your love it was easy won!
A fair Scottish girl, not sixteen years old,
Was once the fair flower o Northumberland!'
10. The Twa Sisters.
Page 118 b. #K# is found in Kinloch MSS, VII, 256.
Add: #V.# 'Benorie,' Campbell MSS, II, 88.
#W.# 'Norham, down by Norham,' communicated by Mr Thomas Lugton, of
Kelso.
#X.# 'Binnorie,' Dr Joseph Robertson's Note-Book, January 1, 1830, p. 7,
one stanza.
#Y.# Communicated to Percy by Rev. P. Parsons, April 7, 1770.
119 a. Note [127], first line. Read: I, 315.
120 a, first paragraph. "A very rare but very stupid modern adaptation,
founded on the tradition as told in Småland, appeared in Götheborg,
1836, small 8vo, pp 32: Antiquiteter i Thorskinge. Fornminnet eller
Kummel-Runan, tolkande Systersveket Bröllopps-dagen." The author was C.
G. Lindblom, a Swedish priest. The first line is:
"En Näskonung bodde på Illvedens fjäll."
Professor George Stephens.
120 a. Note [129], lines 3, 4. Read: and in 14, 15, calls the drowned girl
"the bonnie miller's lass o Binorie," meaning the bonnie miller o
Binorie's lass.
124 a, last paragraph. A drowned girl grows up on the sea-strand as a
linden with nine branches: from the ninth her brother carves a harp.
"Sweet the tone," he says, as he plays. The mother calls out through her
tears, So sang my youngest daughter. G. Tillemann, in Livona, ein
historisch-poetisches Taschenbuch, Riga u. Dorpat, 1812, p. 187, Ueber
die Volkslieder der Letten. Dr R. Köhler points out to me a version of
this ballad given with a translation by Bishop Carl Chr. Ulmann in the
Dorpater Jahrbücher, II, 404, 1834, 'Die Lindenharfe,' and another by
Pastor Karl Ulmann in his Lettische Volkslieder, übertragen, 1874, p.
199, No 18, 'Das Lied von der Jüngsten.' In the former of these the
brother says, Sweet sounds my linden harp! The mother, weeping, It is
not the linden harp; it is thy sister's soul that has swum through the
water to us; it is the voice of my youngest daughter.
124 b, first paragraph. In Bohemian, 'Zakletá dcera,' 'The Daughter
Cursed,' Erben, 1864, p. 466 (with other references); Moravian,
Sušil, p. 143, No 146. Dr R. Köhler further refers to Peter,
Volksthümliches aus Österreichisch-Schlesien, I, 209, 'Die drei
Spielleute;' Meinert, p. 122, 'Die Erle;' Vernaleken, Alpensagen, p.
289, No 207, 'Der Ahornbaum.'
125 b. Add to the citations: 'Le Sifflet enchanté,' E. Cosquin, Contes
populaires lorrains, No 26, Romania, VI, 565, with annotations, pp 567
f; Köhler's Nachträge in Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie, II, 350
f; Engelien u. Lahn, Der Volksmund in der Mark Brandenburg, I, 105, 'Diä
3 Brüöder;' Sébillot, Littérature orale de la Haute-Bretagne, p. 220,
Les Trois Frères, p. 226, 'Le Sifflet qui parle.' (Köhler.)
132. #I.# 10^2. Read: for water.
#K.# Say: Kinloch MSS, VII, 256.
1^2. And I'll gie the hail o my father's land.
2. The first tune that the bonnie fiddle playd, 'Hang my sister Alison,'
it said.
3. 'I wad gie you.'
136 a. #R b.# Read: Lanarkshire.
V
Campbell MS., II, 88.
1
There dwelt twa sisters in a bower,
Benorie, O Benorie
The youngest o them was the fairest flower.
In the merry milldams o Benorie
2
There cam a wooer them to woo,
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
3
He's gien the eldest o them a broach and a real,
Because that she loved her sister weel.
At etc.
4
He's gien the eldest a gay penknife,
He loved the youngest as dear as his life.
At etc.
5
'O sister, O sister, will ye go oer yon glen,
And see my father's ships coming in?'
At etc.
6
'O sister dear, I darena gang,
Because I'm feard ye throw me in.'
The etc.
7
'O set your foot on yon sea stane,
And was yeer hands in the sea foam.'
At etc.
8
She set her foot on yon sea stane,
To wash her hands in the sea foam.
At etc.
9
. . . . . . .
But the eldest has thrown the youngest in.
The etc.
10
'O sister, O sister, lend me your hand,
And ye'se get William and a' his land.'
At etc.
11
The miller's daughter cam out clad in red,
Seeking water to bake her bread.
At etc.
12
'O father, O father, gae fish yeer mill-dam,
There's either a lady or a milk-[white] swan.'
In etc.
13
The miller cam out wi his lang cleek,
And he cleekit the lady out by the feet.
From the bonny milldam, etc.
14
Ye wadna kend her pretty feet,
The American leather was sae neat.
In etc.
15
Ye wadna kend her pretty legs,
The silken stockings were so neat tied.
In etc.
16
Ye wadna kend her pretty waist,
The silken stays were sae neatly laced.
In etc.
17
Ye wadna kend her pretty face,
It was sae prettily preend oer wi lace.
In etc.
18
Ye wadna kend her yellow hair,
It was sae besmeared wi dust and glar.
In etc.
19
By cam her father's fiddler fine,
And that lady's spirit spake to him.
From etc.
20
She bad him take three taits o her hair,
And make them three strings to his fiddle sae rare.
At etc.
21
'Take two of my fingers, sae lang and sae white,
And make them pins to your fiddle sae neat.'
At etc.
22
The ae first spring that the fiddle played
Was, Cursed be Sir John, my ain true-love.
At etc.
23
The next spring that the fiddle playd
Was, Burn burd Hellen, she threw me in.
The etc.
2, 3. _In the MS. thus_:
There came ...
Benorie ...
He's gien ...
At the merry ...
Because that ...
At the merry ...
8, 9. _In the MS. thus_:
She set ...
Benorie ...
To wash ...
At the ...
But the eldest ...
The bonny ...
_From 18 on, the burden is_
O Benorie, O Benorie.
W
Communicated by Mr Thomas Lugton, of Kelso, as sung by an
old cotter-woman fifty years ago; learned by her from her
grandfather.
1
Ther were three ladies playing at the ba,
Norham, down by Norham
And there cam a knight to view them a'.
By the bonnie mill-dams o Norham
2
He courted the aldest wi diamonds and rings,
But he loved the youngest abune a' things.
* * * * * * *
3
'Oh sister, oh sister, lend me your hand,
And pull my poor body unto dry land.
4
'Oh sister, oh sister, lend me your glove,
And you shall have my own true love!'
5
Oot cam the miller's daughter upon Tweed,
To carry in water to bake her bread.
6
'Oh father, oh father, there's a fish in your dam;
It either is a lady or a milk-white swan.'
7
Oot cam the miller's man upon Tweed,
And there he spied a lady lying dead.
8
He could not catch her by the waist,
For her silken stays they were tight laced.
9
But he did catch her by the hand,
And pulled her poor body unto dry land.
10
He took three taets o her bonnie yellow hair,
To make harp strings they were so rare.
11
The very first tune that the bonnie harp played
Was The aldest has cuisten the youngest away.
X
Dr Joseph Robertson's Note-Book, January 1, 1830, p. 7.
I see a lady in the dam,
Binnorie, oh Binnorie
She shenes as sweet as ony swan.
I the bonny milldams o Binnorie
Y
Communicated to Percy, April 7, 1770, and April 19, 1775,
by the Rev. P. Parsons, of Wye, near Ashford, Kent: "taken
down from the mouth of the spinning-wheel, if I may be
allowed the expression."
1
There was a king lived in the North Country,
Hey down down dery down
There was a king lived in the North Country,
And the bough it was bent to me
There was a king lived in the North Country,
And he had daughters one, two, three.
I'll prove true to my love,
If my love will prove true to me.
* * * * * * *
2
He gave the eldest a gay gold ring,
But he gave the younger a better thing.
3
He bought the younger a beaver hat;
The eldest she thought much of that.
4
'Oh sister, oh sister, let us go run,
To see the ships come sailing along!'
5
And when they got to the sea-side brim,
The eldest pushed the younger in.
6
'Oh sister, oh sister, lend me your hand,
I'll make you heir of my house and land.'
7
'I'll neither lend you my hand nor my glove,
Unless you grant me your true-love.'
8
Then down she sunk and away she swam,
Untill she came to the miller's mill-dam.
9
The miller's daughter sat at the mill-door,
As fair as never was seen before.
10
'Oh father, oh father, there swims a swan,
Or else the body of a dead woman.'
11
The miller he ran with his fishing hook,
To pull the fair maid out o the brook.
12
'Wee'll hang the miller upon the mill-gate,
For drowning of my sister Kate.'
139a. #K.# _~I wad give you~, is the beginning of a new stanza (as seen
above)._
141b. #S.# Read: 1^3. _MS._, Orless.
11. The Cruel Brother.
P. 141. #B, I.# Insert the title,'The Cruel Brother.'
Add: #L.# 'The King of Fairies,' Campbell MSS, II, 19.
#M.# 'The Roses grow sweet aye,' Campbell MSS, II, 26.
#N.# 'The Bride's Testamen,' Dr Joseph Robertson's Note-Book, January 1,
1830, one stanza.
142 b, second paragraph, lines 5, 6. Say: on the way kisses her arm,
neck, and mouth.
Add, as varieties of 'Rizzardo bello:'
#B.# 'Luggieri,' Contado aretino, communicated by Giulio Salvatori to
the Rassegna Settimanale, Rome, 1879, June 22, No 77, p. 485; reprinted
in Romania, XI, 391, note.
#C.# 'Rizzôl d'Amor,' Guerrini, Alcuni Canti p. romagnoli, p. 3, 1880.
#D.# 'La Canzóne de 'Nucénzie,' Pitré e Salomone-Marino, Archivio per
Tradizioni popolari, I, 213, 1882.
143. Slavic ballads resembling 'Graf Friedrich.'
Moravian, Sušil, 'Nešt'astna svatba,' 'The Unhappy Wedding,' No
89, c, d, pp 85 f. A bridegroom is bringing home his bride; his sword
slips from the sheath and wounds the bride in the side. He binds up the
wound, and begs her to hold out till she comes to the house. The bride
can eat nothing, and dies in the night. Her mother comes in the morning
with loads of cloth and feathers, is put off when she asks for her
daughter, reproaches the bridegroom for having killed her; he pleads his
innocence.
Servian. Karadshitch, I, 309, No 421, 'Jani and Milenko,' belongs to
this class, though mixed with portions of at least one other ballad
('Earl Brand'). Milenko wooes the fair Jani, and is favored by her
mother and by all her brothers but the youngest. This brother goes
hunting, and bids Jani open to nobody while he is away, but Milenko
carries her off on his horse. As they are riding over a green hill, a
branch of a tree catches in Jani's dress. Milenko attempts to cut the
branch off with his knife, but in so doing wounds Jani in the head. Jani
binds up the wound, and they go on, and presently meet the youngest
brother, who hails Milenko, asks where he got the fair maid, discovers
the maid to be his sister, but bids her Godspeed. On reaching his
mother's house, Milenko asks that a bed may be prepared for Jani, who is
in need of repose. Jani dies in the night, Milenko in the morning. They
are buried in one grave; a rose is planted over her, a grape-vine over
him, and these intertwine, "as it were Jani with Milenko."
143 b, after the first paragraph. A pallikar, who is bringing home his
bride, is detained on the way in consequence of his whole train leaving
him to go after a stag. The young man, who has never seen his bride's
face, reaches over his horse to give her a kiss; his knife disengages
itself and wounds her. She begs him to staunch the blood with his
handkerchief, praying only to live to see her bridegroom's house. This
wish is allowed her; she withdraws the handkerchief from the wound and
expires. Dozon, Chansons p. bulgares, 'Le baiser fatal,' p. 270, No 49.
143 b, sixth line of the third paragraph. Read: 'Lord Randal.'
144 a, line 4. 'Catarina de Lió;' in Milá, Romancerillo Catalan, 2d ed.,
No 307, p. 291, 'Trato feroz,' seven versions.
Line 15. Cf. Bladé, Poésies p. de la Gascogne, II, 51.
144 b, first paragraph. A mother, not liking her son's wife, puts before
him a glass of mead, and poison before the wife. God exchanges them, and
the son drinks the poison. The son makes his will. To his brother he
leaves four black horses, to his sister four cows and four calves, to
his wife a house. "And to me?" the mother asks. "To you that big stone
and the deep Danube, because you have poisoned me and parted me from my
beloved." Sušil,' Matka travička,' pp 154, 155, No 157, two
versions.
144 b, second paragraph. 'El testamento de Amelia,' No 220, p. 185, of
the second edition of Romancerillo Catalan, with readings of eleven
other copies, #A-F#, #A_{1}-F_{1}#. In #B_{1}# only have we an ill
bequest to the mother. After leaving her mother a rosary, upon the
mother's asking again, What for me? the dying lady says, I will leave
you my chopines, clogs, so that when you come downstairs they may break
your neck.
There are testaments in good will also in 'Elveskud,' Grundtvig, No 47,
IV, 836 ff, #L# 14, 15, #M# 17, #O# 17-19.
151.
L
Campbell MSS, II, 19.
1
There were three ladies playing at the ba,
With a hey and a lilly gay
When the King o Fairies rode by them a'.
And the roses they grow sweetlie
2
The foremost one was clad in blue;
He askd at her if she'd be his doo.
3
The second of them was clad in red;
He askd at her if she'd be his bride.
4
The next of them was clad in green;
He askd at her if she'd be his queen.
5
'Go you ask at my father then,
And you may ask at my mother then.
6
'You may ask at my sister Ann,
And not forget my brother John.'
7
'O I have askd at your father then,
And I have askd at your mother then.
8
'And I have askd at your sister Ann,
But I've quite forgot your brother John.'
9
Her father led her down the stair,
Her mother combd down her yellow hair.
10
Her sister Ann led her to the cross,
And her brother John set her on her horse.
11
'Now you are high and I am low,
Give me a kiss before ye go.'
12
She's lootit down to gie him a kiss,
He gave her a deep wound and didna miss.
13
And with a penknife as sharp as a dart,
And he has stabbit her to the heart.
14
'Ride up, ride up,' says the foremost man,
'I think our bride looks pale an wan.'
15
'Ride up, ride up,' says the middle man,
'I see her heart's blude trinkling down.'
16
'Ride on, ride,' says the Fairy King,
'She will be dead lang ere we win hame.'
17
'O I wish I was at yonder cross,
Where my brother John put me on my horse.
18
'I wish I was at yonder thorn,
I wad curse the day that ere I was born.
19
'I wish I was at yon green hill,
Then I wad sit and bleed my fill.'
20
'What will you leave your father then? '
'The milk-white steed that I ride on.'
21
'What will you leave your mother then?'
'My silver Bible and my golden fan.'
22
'What will ye leave your sister Ann?'
'My good lord, to be married on.'
23
'What will ye leave your sister Pegg?'
'The world wide to go and beg.'
24
'What will you leave your brother John? '
'The gallows-tree to hang him on.'
25
'What will you leave your brother's wife?'
'Grief and sorrow to end her life.'
_Burden in all but 1, 2, 13, ~lilly hey~; in 16, 17, 18, ~spring
sweetlie~; in 22, ~smell sweetlie~._
M
Campbell MSS, II, 26.
1
There was three ladies playing at the ba,
With a hay and a lilly gay
A gentleman cam amang them a'.
And the roses grow sweet aye
2
The first of them was clad in yellow,
And he askd at her gin she'd be his marrow.
3
The next o them was clad in green;
He askd at her gin she'd be his queen.
4
The last o them [was] clad in red;
He askd at her gin she'd be his bride.
5
'Have ye asked at my father dear?
Or have ye asked my mother dear?
6
'Have ye asked my sister Ann?
Or have ye asked my brother John?'
7
'I have asked yer father dear,
And I have asked yer mother dear.
8
'I have asked yer sister Ann,
But I've quite forgot your brother John.'
9
Her father dear led her thro them a',
Her mother dear led her thro the ha.
10
Her sister Ann led her thro the closs,
And her brother John stabbed her on her horse.
11
'Ride up, ride up,' says the foremost man,
'I think our bride looks pale and wan.'
12
'Ride up,' cries the bonny bridegroom,
'I think the bride be bleeding.'
13
'This is the bludy month of May,
Me and my horse bleeds night and day.
14
'O an I were at yon green hill,
I wad ly down and bleed a while.
15
'O gin I was at yon red cross,
I wad light down and corn my horse.
16
'O an I were at yon kirk-style,
I wad lye down and soon be weel.'
17
When she cam to yon green hill,
Then she lay down and bled a while.
18
And when she cam to yon red cross,
Then she lighted and corned her horse.
19
'What will ye leave your father dear?'
'My milk-white steed, which cost me dear.'
20
'What will ye leave your mother dear?'
'The bludy clothes that I do wear.'
21
'What will ye leave your sister Ann?'
'My silver bridle and my golden fan.'
22
'What will ye leave your brother John?'
'The gallows-tree to hang him on.'
23
'What will ye leave to your sister Pegg?'
'The wide world for to go and beg.'
24
When she came to yon kirk-style,
Then she lay down, and soon was weel.
15^1. green cross.
17^2. bleed.
N
Dr Joseph Robertson's Note-Book, January 1, 1830, No 4.
Then out bespak the foremost priest:
Wi a heigh ho and a lilly gay
I think she's bleedin at the breast.
The flowers they spring so sweetly
12. Lord Randal.
P. 151.
#B.# Add: Kinloch MSS, VII, 89.
#D.# Read: #a.# 'Lord Randal,' Minstrelsy, etc. #b.# 'Lord Rannal,'
Campbell MSS, II, 269.
#I.# Add: #h.# Communicated by Mr George M. Richardson. #i.#
Communicated by Mr George L. Kittredge.
#K. b.# Insert after Popular Rhymes: 1826, p. 295. Add: #d.# 'The
Crowdin Dou,' Kinloch MSS, I, 184.
Add: #P.# 'Lord Ronald, my son,' communicated by Mr Macmath, of
Edinburgh.
#Q.# 'Lord Randal,' Pitcairn's MSS, III, 19.
#R.# 'Little wee toorin dow,' Pitcairn's MSS, III, 13, from tradition.
153 a. I failed to mention, though I had duly noted them, three versions
of 'L'Avvelenato,' which are cited by Professor D'Ancona in his Poesia
popolare Italiana, pp 106 ff.
#D.# The Canon Lorenzo Panciatichi refers to the ballad in a 'Cicalata
in lode della Padella e della Frittura,' recited at the Crusca,
September 24, 1656, and in such manner as shows that it was well known.
He quotes the first question of the mother, "Dove andastù a cena," etc.
To this the son answered, he says, that he had been poisoned with a
roast eel: and the mother asking what the lady had cooked it in, the
reply was, In the oil pot.
#E.# A version obtained by D'Ancona from the singing of a young fellow
from near Pisa, of which the first four stanzas are given. Some verses
after these are lost, for the testament is said to supervene
immediately.
#F.# A version from Lecco, which has the title, derived from its burden,
'De lu cavalieri e figliu de re,' A. Trifone Nutricati Briganti, Intorno
ai Canti e Racconti popolari del Leccese p. 17. The first four stanzas
are cited, and it appears from these that the prince had cooked the eel
himself, and, appropriately, in a gold pan.
154 a, first paragraph. #F# is given by Meltzl, Acta Comparationis,
1880, columns 143 f, in another dialect.
154 b. #Magyar.# The original of this ballad, 'A megétett János,'
'Poisoned John' (as would appear, in the Szekler idiom), was discovered
by the Unitarian bishop Kriza, of Klausenburg, and was published by him
in J. Arany's 'Koszoru,' in 1864. It is more exactly translated by
Meltzl in the Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum, 1880, VII,
columns 30 f, the original immediately preceding. Aigner has omitted the
second stanza, and made the third into two, in his translation. The
Szekler has ten two-line stanzas, with the burden, Ah, my bowels are on
fire! Ah, make ready my bed! In the second stanza John says he has eaten
a four-footed crab; in the sixth he leaves his elder brother his yoke of
oxen; in the seventh he leaves his team of four horses to his younger
brother. Also translated in Ungarische Revue, 1883, p. 139, by G.
Heinrich.
#B#, another Szekler version, taken down by Meltzl from the mouth of a
girl, is in seven two-line stanzas, with the burden, Make my bed, sweet
mother! 'János,' Acta, cols 140 f, with a German translation. John has
been at his sister-in-law's, and had a stuffed chicken and a big cake.
At his elder sister's they gave him the back of the axe, bloody stripes.
He bequeaths to his elder sister remorse and sickness; to his
sister-in-law six oxen and his wagon; to his father illness and poverty;
to his mother kindness and beggary.
156 b, second paragraph. Polish: add Roger, p. 66, No 119. Add further:
Little Russian, Golovatsky, Part I, pp 206, 207, 209, Nos 32, 33, 35.
Masovian, Kozlowski, No 14, p. 52, p. 53. (Sacharof, IV,
7==Čelakovský, III, 108.)
157 a, second paragraph. Kaden translates Nannarelli, p. 52. (Köhler.)
157 b. Italian #A# is translated by Evelyn Carrington in The Antiquary,
III, 156 f. #D# also by Freiligrath, II, 226, ed. Stuttgart, 1877.
158 a. #B.# Found in Kinloch MSS, VII, 89. The sixth stanza is not
there, and was probably taken from Scott, #D#.
160 a. #D.# Read: #a.# Minstrelsy, etc. #b.# Campbell MSS, II, 269.
163 a. #I.# Add: #h.# By Mr George M. Richardson, as learned by a lady
in Southern New Hampshire, about fifty years ago, from an aged aunt.
#i.# By Mr George L. Kittredge, obtained from a lady in Exeter, N. H.
164 a. #K.# Insert under #b#, after Scotland: 1826, p. 295. Add: #d.#
Kinloch MSS, I, 184.
164 b. #K# 6^2. Read: head and his feet.
165.
P
Communicated by Mr Macmath, of Edinburgh, as derived from
his aunt, Miss Jane Webster, formerly of Airds of Kells,
now (January, 1883) of Dalry, Kirkcudbrightshire, who
learned it more than fifty years ago from Mary Williamson,
then a nurse-maid at Airds.
1
'Where hae ye been a' day, Lord Ronald, my son?
Where hae ye been a' day, my handsome young one?'
'I've been in the wood hunting; mother, make my bed soon,
For I am weary, weary hunting, and fain would lie doun.'
2
'O where did you dine, Lord Ronald, my son?
O where did you dine, my handsome young one?'
'I dined with my sweetheart; mother, make my bed soon,
For I am weary, weary hunting, and fain would lie doun.'
3
'What got you to dine on, Lord Ronald, my son?
What got you to dine on, my handsome young one?'
'I got eels boiled in water that in heather doth run,
And I am weary, weary hunting, and fain would lie doun.'
4
'What did she wi the broo o them, Lord Ronald, my son?
What did she wi the broo o them, my handsome young one?'
'She gave it to my hounds for to live upon,
And I am weary, weary hunting, and fain would lie doun.'
5
'Where are your hounds now, Lord Ronald, my son?
Where are your hounds now, my handsome young one?'
'They are a' swelled and bursted, and sae will I soon,
And I am weary, weary hunting, and fain would lie doun.'
6
'What will you leave your father, Lord Ronald, my son?
What will you leave your father, my handsome young one?'
'I'll leave him my lands for to live upon,
And I am weary, weary hunting, and fain would lie doun.'
7
'What will you leave your brother, Lord Ronald, my son?
What will you leave your brother, my handsome young one?'
'I'll leave him my gallant steed for to ride upon,
And I am weary, weary hunting, and fain would lie doun.'
8
'What will you leave your sister, Lord Ronald, my son?
What will you leave your sister, my handsome young one?'
'I'll leave her my gold watch for to look upon,
And I am weary, weary hunting, and fain would lie doun.'
9
'What will you leave your mother, Lord Ronald, my son?
What will you leave your mother, my handsome young one?'
'I'll leave her my Bible for to read upon,
And I am weary, weary hunting, and fain would lie doun.'
10
'What will you leave your sweetheart, Lord Ronald, my son?
What will you leave your sweetheart, my handsome young one?'
'I'll leave her the gallows-tree for to hang upon,
It was her that poisoned me;' and so he fell doun.
Q
Pitcairn's MSS, III, 19. "This was communicated to me by
my friend Patrick Robertson, Esq., Advocate,[427] who
heard it sung by an old lady in the North Country; and
though by no means enthusiastic about popular poetry, it
struck him so forcibly that he requested her to repeat it
slowly, so as he might write it down." Stanzas 2-5 "were
very much similar to the set in Scott's Minstrelsy," and
were not taken down.
1
'O whare hae ye been, Lord Randal, my son?
O whare hae ye been, my handsome young man?'
'Oer the peat moss mang the heather, mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm weary, weary hunting, and fain wad lie down.'
6
'What leave ye to your father, Lord Randal, my son?
What leave ye to your father, my handsome young man?'
'I leave my houses and land, mother, mak my bed soon,
For I'm weary, weary hunting, and fain wad lie down.'
7
'What leave ye to your brother, Lord Randal, my son?
What leave ye to your brother, my handsome young man?'
'O the guid milk-white steed that I rode upon,
For I'm weary, weary hunting, and fain wad lie down.'
8
'What leave ye to your true-love, Lord Randal, my son?
What leave ye to your true-love, my handsome young man?'
'O a high, high gallows, to hang her upon,
For I'm weary, weary hunting, and fain wad lie down.'
R
Pitcairn's MSS, III, 11. "From tradition: widow
Stevenson."
1
'Whare hae ye been a' day, my little wee toorin dow?'
'It's I've been at my grandmammy's; mak my bed, mammy, now.'
2
'And what did ye get frae your grandmammy, my little wee toorin dow?'
'It's I got a wee bit fishy to eat; mak my bed, mammy, now.'
3
'An what did ye do wi the banes o it, my little wee toorin dow?'
'I gied it to my black doggy to eat; mak my bed, mammy, now.'
4
'An what did your little black doggy do syne, my little wee toorin
dow?'
'He shot out his head, and his feet, and he died; as I do, mammy, now.'
S
Communicated to Percy by Rev. P. Parsons, of Wye, near
Ashford, Kent, April 19, 1775: taken down by a friend of
Mr Parsons "from the spinning-wheel, in Suffolk."
1
'Where have you been today, Randall, my son?
Where have you been today, my only man?'
'I have been a hunting, mother, make my bed soon,
For I'm sick at the heart, fain woud lie down.
Dear sister, hold my head, dear mother, make my bed,
I am sick at the heart, fain woud lie down.'
2
'What have you eat today, Randal, my son?
What have you eat today, my only man?'
'I have eat an eel; mother, make,' etc.
3
'What was the colour of it, Randal, my son?
What was the colour of it, my only man?'
'It was neither green, grey, blue nor black,
But speckled on the back; make,' etc.
4
'Who gave you eels today, Randal, my son?
Who gave you eels today, my only man?'
'My own sweetheart; mother, make,' etc.
5
'Where shall I make your bed, Randal, my son?
Where shall I make your bed, my only man?'
'In the churchyard; mother, make,' etc.
6
'What will you leave her then, Randall, my son?
What will you leave her then, my only man?'
'A halter to hang herself; make,' etc.
166 #a.# Insert after #C#:
#D. b.# _Disordered: #b# 1==#a# 1; #b# 2==#a# 4; #b# 3==#a# 5^{1,2} +
#a# 2^{3,4}; #b# 4==#a# 3; #a# 2^{1,2}, 5^{3,4}, are wanting._
#b.# 1^3, been at the hunting.
3^2. I fear ye've drunk poison.
3^3==#a# 2^3. I supd wi my auntie.
4^{1,2}==#a# 3^{1,2}. your supper.
_This copy may be an imperfect recollection of #a.#_
166 b.
#I. h.# _Four stanzas only, 1, 2, 6, 7._
1^2. my own little one.
1^4. at the heart ... and fain.
6^1. will you leave mother.
7^1. will you leave grandma.
7^3. a rope.
#k.# _Seven stanzas_.
1^3. to see grandmother.
1^4. sick at heart, and fain.
2^3. Stripëd eels fried.
3==#a# 6, #d# 5, #h# 3.
3^{1,2}. Your grandmother has poisoned you.
3^3. I know it, I know it.
4==#a# 6. 4^{1,2}. would you leave mother.
5==#a# 8, #b# 9, #h# 7.
5^{1,2}. would you leave sister.
5^3. A box full of jewels.
6==#a# 7; 7==#a# 8.
6^{1,2}. would you leave grandmother.
6^3. A rope for to hang her.
7^{1,2}. O where shall I make it.
#K.# _Add after #c#:_
#d.# 1^1, my bonnie wee crowdin, _and always_.
2^1. frae your stepmither.
2^2. She gied me a bonnie wee fish, it was baith black and blue.
5^1. my ain wee dog.
6^1. And whare is your ain wee dog.
6^2.
It laid down its wee headie and deed,
And sae maun I do nou.
#Q.# "The second, third, fourth, and fifth stanzas were very much
similar to the set Lord Ronald, in Scott's Border Minstrelsy, and as Mr
Robertson was hurried he did not take down the precise words." MS., p.
21.
_~Ronald~ is changed to ~Randal~ in 6, 7, but is left in 8._
#R.# _Written in four-line stanzas._
13. Edward.
P. 168 a, first paragraph. Add: Swedish #E#, Aminson, Bidrag till
Södermanlands Kulturhistoria, III, 37, eight stanzas. Nine stanzas of
Finnish #B# are translated by Schott, Acta Comparationis, 1878, IV, cols
132, 133. The murder here is for wife-seduction, a peculiar and
assuredly not original variation.
168 b. #B# is translated by Adolph von Marées, p. 27; by Graf von
Platen, II, 329, Stuttgart, 1847; after Herder into Magyar, by Dr Karl
von Szász.
14. Babylon; or, The Bonnie Banks o Fordie.
P. 172 a. #Swedish.# Professor George Stephens points me to two
localized prose outlines of the story, one from Småland, the other from
Skåne; 'Truls och hans barn,' in the Svenska Fornminnesföreningens
Tidskrift, II, 77 f.
15. Leesome Brand.
P. 179 #a.# Swedish. II. Add: #I#, 'Risa lill,' Wigström, Folkdiktning,
II, 28.
180 a, lines 25, 26. Read: #A#, #G#, #M#, #X#.
181 a. #German.# Add: #D#, 'Der Ritter und seine Geliebte,' Ditfurth,
Deutsche Volks- und Gesellschaftslieder des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, p.
14, No 13. (Köhler.)
181 b. #French.# #C.# A still more corrupted copy in Poésies populaires
de la France, III, fol. 143, 'La fausse morte.' #D.# Fol. 215 of the
same volume, a very pretty ballad from Périgord, which has lost most of
the characteristic incidents, but not the tragic conclusion.
182 b, first paragraph. A similar scene, ending happily, in I
Complementi della Chanson d'Huon de Bordeaux, pubblicati da A. Graf, pp
26 ff. (Köhler.)
183 b, stanzas 27, 28. Compare:
Modhreu lärde sonnenn sinn:
'Skiuter tu diur och skiuter tu råå;
'Skiuter tu diur och skiuter tu råå,
Then salige hindenn lätt tu gå!'
'Den förtrollade Jungfrun,' Arwidsson, II, 260, No 136, #A# I, 2.
17. Hind Horn.
P. 187. #F.# Insert the title 'Young Hyndhorn.'
#G.# Insert: Kinloch MSS, VII, 117.
192. Dr Davidson informs me that many years ago he heard a version of
'Hind Horn,' in four-line stanzas, in which, as in 'Horn et Rymenhild'
and 'Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild,' Horn took part in a joust at the
king's court,
An young Hind Horn was abune them a'.
He remembers further only these stanzas:
'O got ye this o the sea sailin,
Or got ye 't o the lan?
Or got ye 't o the bloody shores o Spain,
On a droont man's han?'
'I got na 't o the sea sailin,
I got na 't o the lan,
Nor yet upo the bloody shores o Spain,
On a droont man's han.'
193 b (2). Add: 'Herr Lovmand,' Kristensen, I, 136, No 52.
194. A corrupt fragment of a ballad, 'Der Bettler,' in Schröer's Ausflug
nach Gottschee, p. 210 f (Köhler), retains features like 'Hind Horn.'
The beggar comes to a wedding, and sits by the stove. The bride kindly
says, Nobody is thinking of the beggar, and hands him a glass of wine.
He says, Thanks, fair bride; thou wast my first wife. Upon this the
_bridegroom_ jumps over the table, crying, Bachelor I came, and bachelor
will go.
The Epirots and Albanians have a custom of betrothing or marrying,
commonly in early youth, and of then parting for a long period. A woman
was lately (1875) buried at Iannina who, as the archbishop boasted in
the funeral discourse, had preserved her fidelity to a husband who had
been separated from her thirty years. This unhappy usage has given rise
to a distinct class of songs. Dozon, Chansons populaires bulgares, p.
294, note.
195 b (5). The German popular rhymed tale of Henry the Lion is now known
to have been composed by the painter Heinrich Götting, Dresden, 1585.
Germania, XXVI, 453, No 527.
198 a, to first paragraph. For the marvellous transportation in these
stories, see a note by Liebrecht in Jahrbücher für rom. u. eng.
Literatur, III, 147. In the same, IV, 110, Liebrecht refers to the
legend of Hugh of Halton, recounted by Dugdale in his Antiquities of
Warwickshire, II, 646, ed. of 1730, and Monasticon Anglicanum, IV, 90 f,
ed. 1823 (and perhaps in Dugdale's Baronage of England, but I have not
found it there). Hugo is another Gerard: the two half-rings miraculously
unite. (Köhler.) See, also, Landau on Torello, 'Der Wunderritt,' Quellen
des Dekameron 1884, pp 193-218.
198 b, third paragraph. Other versions of 'Le Retour du Mari:' Fleury,
Littérature Orale de la Basse-Normandie, p. 268; E. Legrand, Romania, X,
374, also from Normandy.
A ballad of the nature of 'Le Retour du Mari' is very popular in Poland:
Kolberg, No 22, pp 224 ff, some dozen copies; Wojcicki, I, 287;
Wojcicki, II, 311==Kolberg's #c#; Lipinski, p. 159==Kolberg's i;
Konopka, p. 121, No 20; Kozłowski, No 5, p. 35, p. 36, two copies. In
Moravian, 'První milejší,' 'The First Love,' Sušil, No 135, p.
131. The general course of the story is that a young man has to go to
the war the day of his wedding or the day after. He commits his bride to
her mother, saying, Keep her for me seven years; and if I do not then
come back, give her to whom you please. He is gone seven years, and,
returning then, asks for his wife. She has just been given to another.
He asks for a fiddle [pipe], and says he will go to the wedding. They
advise him to stay away, for there will be a disturbance. No, he will
only stand at the door and play. The bride jumps over four tables, and
makes a courtesy to him on a fifth, welcomes him and dismisses the new
bridegroom.
199 a, end of the first paragraph. I forgot to mention the version of
Costantino, agreeing closely with Camarda's, in De Rada, Rapsodie d'un
poema albanese raccolte nelle colonie del Napoletano, pp 61-64.
200. A maid, parting from her lover for three years, divides her ring
with him. He forgets, and prepares to marry another woman. She comes to
the nuptials, and is not known. She throws the half ring into a cup,
drinks, and hands the cup to him. He sees the half ring, and joins it to
his own. This is my wife, he says. She delivered me from death. He
annuls his marriage, and espouses the right woman. Miklosisch, Ueber
die Mundarten der Zigeuner, IV, Märchen u. Lieder, 15th Tale, pp 52-55,
at the end of a story of the class referred to at p. 401 f. (Köhler.)
A personage appeared at Magdeburg in 1348 in the disguise of a pilgrim,
asked for a cup of wine from the archbishop's table, and, in drinking,
dropped into the cup from his mouth the seal ring of the margrave
Waldemar, supposed to have been long dead, but whom he confessed or
avowed himself to be. Klöden, Diplomatische Geschichte des für falsch
erklärten Markgrafen Waldemar, p. 189 f. (Köhler.)
A wife who long pursues her husband, lost to her through spells, drops a
ring into his broth at the feast for his second marriage, is recognized,
and they are happily reunited: The Tale of the Hoodie, Campbell, West
Highland Tales, I, 63-66.
In a pretty Portuguese ballad, which has numerous parallels in other
languages, a long-absent husband, after tormenting his wife by telling
her that she is a widow, legitimates himself by saying, Where is your
half of the ring which we parted? Here is mine: 'Bella Infanta,'
Almeida-Garrett, II, 11, 14, Braga, Cantos p. do Archipelago Açoriano,
p. 300; 'Dona Infanta,' 'Dona Catherina,' Braga, Romanceiro Geral, pp 3
f, 7.
See, further, for ring stories, Wesselofsky, Neue Beiträge zur
Geschichte der Salomonsage, in Archiv für Slavische Philologie, VI, 397
f; Hahn, Neugriechische Märchen, No 25.
The cases in which a simple ring is the means of recognition or
confirmation need, of course, not be multiplied.
200 a, line twenty-four. For Alesha read Alyosha.
205. #G.# In Kinloch MSS, VII, 117. After "from the recitation of my
niece, M. Kinnear, 23 August, 1826," is written in pencil "Christy
Smith," who may have been the person from whom Miss Kinnear derived the
ballad, or another reciter. Changes are made in pencil, some of which
are written over in ink, some not. The printed copy, as usual with
Kinloch, differs in some slight respects from the manuscript.
I
#a.# From the recitation of Miss Jane Webster, formerly of
Airds of Kells, now of Dalry, both in the Stewartry of
Kirkcudbright, December 12, 1882. #b.# From Miss Jessie
Jane Macmath and Miss Agnes Macmath, nieces of Miss
Webster, December 11, 1882: originally derived from an old
nurse. Communicated by Mr Macmath, of Edinburgh.
* * * * * * *
1
She gave him a gay gold ring,
Hey lillelu and how lo lan
But he gave her a far better thing.
With my hey down and a hey diddle downie
2
He gave her a silver wan,
With nine bright laverocks thereupon.
* * * * * * *
3
Young Hynd Horn is come to the lan,
There he met a beggar man.
4
'What news, what news do ye betide?'
'Na news but Jeanie's the prince's bride.'
5
'Wilt thou give me thy begging weed?
And I'll give thee my good grey steed.
6
'Wilt thou give me thy auld grey hair?
And I'll give ye mine that is thrice as fair.'
7
The beggar he got on for to ride,
But young Hynd Horn is bound for the bride.
8
First the news came to the ha,
Then to the room mang the gentles a'.
9
'There stands a beggar at our gate,
Asking a drink for young Hynd Horn's sake.'
10
'I'll ga through nine fires hot
To give him a drink for young Hynd Horn's sake.'
11
She gave him the drink, and he dropt in the ring;
The lady turned baith pale an wan.
12
'Oh got ye it by sea, or got ye it by lan?
Or got ye it off some dead man's han?'
13
'I got it not by sea, nor I got it not by lan,
But I got it off thy milk-white han.'
14
'I'll cast off my dress of red,
And I'll go with thee and beg my bread.
15
I'll cast off my dress of brown,
And follow you from city to town.
16
'I'll cast off my dress of green,
For I am not ashamed with you to be seen.'
17
'You need not cast off your dress of red,
For I can support thee on both wine and bread.
18
'You need not cast off your dress of brown,
For I can keep you a lady in any town.
19
'You need not cast off your dress of green,
For I can maintain you as gay as a queen.'
207 b. Add: #F#. 1^3, 7^1, 9^1, 13^2, Hyndhorn.
208. #I.# b. 1-3, 6, 8, 10, 14, 16-19, _wanting_.
_Burden_ 2: Wi my hey-dey an my hey deedle downie.
5^1. O gie to me your aul beggar weed.
11.
She gave him the cup, and he dropped in the ring:
O but she turned pale an wan!
_Between 11 and 12_:
O whaur got e that gay gold ring?
. . . . . . .
13^2. your ain fair han.
15.
O bring to me my dress o broun,
An I'll beg wi you frae toun tae toun.
216 a. Sir Orfeo has been lately edited by Dr Oscar Zielke: Sir Orfeo,
ein englisches Feenmärchen aus dem Mittelalter, mit Einleitung und
Anmerkungen, Breslau, 1880.
20. The Cruel Mother.
P. 218. #D. b.# Kinloch MSS, VII, 23. Insert again at p. 221.
#F. a.# Also in Motherwell's MS., p. 514. Insert again at p. 222.
#I. a.# Also in Motherwell's MS., p. 475. Insert again at p. 223.
Add: #N.# 'The Loch o the Loanie,' Campbell MSS, II, 264.
219 b. Add to the German versions of 'The Cruel Mother:' #M.# Pater
Amand Baumgarten, Aus der volksmässigen Ueberlieferung der Heimat: IX,
Geburt, Heirat, Tod, mit einem Anhang von Liedern, p. 140. ['Das
ausgesetzte Kind.'] #N.# A. Schlosser, Deutsche Volkslieder aus
Steiermark, p. 336, No 306, 'Der alte Halter und das Kind' (not yet seen
by me). (Köhler.)
220 a. A ballad of Slavic origin in Nesselmann's Littauische
Volkslieder, No 380, p. 322, resembles the German and Wendish versions
of 'The Cruel Mother,' with a touch of 'The Maid and the Palmer.' (G. L.
Kittredge.)
220 b, line 7. Read: Hausschatz.
225.
N
Campbell MSS, II, 264.
1
As I lookit oer my father's castle wa,
All alone and alone O
I saw two pretty babes playing at the ba.
Down by yon green-wood sidie
2
'O pretty babes, gin ye were mine,'
Hey the loch o the Loanie
'I would clead ye o the silk sae fine.'
Down by that green-wood sidie
3
'O sweet darlings, gin ye were mine,'
Hey the loch o the Loanie
'I would feed ye on the morning's milk.'
Down by that green-wood sidie
4
'O mither dear, when we were thine,'
By the loch o the Loanie
'Ye neither dressd us wi silk nor twine.'
Down by this green-wood sidie
5
'But ye tuke out your little pen-knife,'
By, etc.
'And there ye tuke yer little babes' life.'
Down by the, etc.
6
'O mither dear, when this ye had done,'
Alone by, etc.
'Ye unkirtled yersel, and ye wrapt us in 't.'
Down by the, etc.
7
'Neist ye houkit a hole fornent the seen.'
All alone and alone O
'And tearless ye stappit your little babes in'
Down by the, etc.
8
'But we are in the heavens high,'
And far frae the loch o the Loanie
'But ye hae the pains o hell to d[r]ie.'
Before ye leave the green-wood sidie
226 a. #C.# Cunningham, as Mr Macmath has reminded me, has made this
stanza a part of another ballad, in Cromek's Remains, p. 223.
231. #Catalan.# The Romancerillo Catalan, in the new edition, p. 10, No
12, 'Magdalena,' gives another version, with the variations of eight
more copies, that of the Observaciones being now #C#.
232. Add: #Italian.# Ive, Canti popolari istriani, p. 366, No 14, 'S.
Maria Maddalena.' Mary's father, dying, left her a castle of gold and
silver, from which one day she saw Jesus pass. She wept a fountain of
tears to wash his feet, and dried his feet with her tresses. Then she
asked for a penance. She wished to go into a cave without door or
windows, sleep on the bare ground, eat raw herbs, and drink a _little_
salt water; and this she did. In 'La Maddalena,' Guerrini, Alcuni C. p.
romagnoli, p. 7, there is no penance.
22. St Stephen and Herod.
P. 236 a. #Spanish.# Milá's new edition, Romancerillo Catalan, No 31,
'El romero acusado de robo,' pp 36-38, adds six copies, not differing in
anything important. In #C#, the youth, un estudiant, n'era ros com un
fil d'or, blanch com Santa Catarina.
I may note that Thomas Becket stands by his votaries when brought to the
gallows as effectually as St James. See Robertson, Materials, etc., I,
369, 471, 515, 524.
238. Note [195] should have been credited to R. Köhler.
238 b, second paragraph. Professor George Stephens informs me that the
miracle of the cock is depicted, among scenes from the life of Jesus, on
an _antependium_ of an altar, derived from an old church in Slesvig, and
now in the Danish Museum. Behind a large table sits a crowned woman, and
at her left stands a crowned man, who points to a dish from which a cock
has started up, with beak wide open. At the queen's right stands an old
woman, simply clad and leaning on a staff. This picture comes between
the Magi announcing Christ's Birth and the Massacre of the Innocents,
and the crowned figures are judged by Professor Stephens to be Herod and
Herodias. Who the old woman should be it is not easy to say, but there
can be no connection with St James. The work is assigned to the last
part of the fourteenth century.
239. Most of the literature on the topic of the restoration of the
roasted cock to life is collected by Dr R. Köhler and by Ferdinand Wolf,
in Jahrbücher für romanische u. englische Literatur, III, 58 ff, 67 f.
Dr Köhler now adds these notes: The miracle of St James, in Hermann von
Fritslar's Heiligenleben, Pfeiffer's Deutsche Mystiker des vierzehnten
Jahrhunderts, I, 168 f; Hahn, Das alte Passional (from the Golden
Legend), p. 223, v. 47-p. 225, v. 85; Lütolf, Sagen, Bräuche und
Legenden aus Lucern, u. s. w., p. 367, No 334; von Alpenburg, Deutsche
Alpensagen, p. 137, No 135; Sepp, Altbayerischer Sagenschatz, pp 652 ff,
656 f.
239 b. Three stone partridges on a buttress of a church at Mühlhausen
are thus accounted for. In the early days of the Reformation a couple of
orthodox divines, while waiting dinner, were discussing the prospect of
the infection spreading to their good city. One of them, growing warm,
declared that there was as much chance of that as of the three
partridges that were roasting in the kitchen taking flight from the
spit. Immediately there was heard a fluttering and a cooing in the
region of the kitchen, the three birds winged their way from the house,
and, lighting on the buttress of Mary Kirk, were instantly turned to
stone, and there they are. Thüringen und der Harz, mit ihren
Merkwürdigkeiten, u. s. w., VI, 20 f. (Köhler.)
240 a. The monk Andrius has the scene between Judas and his mother as in
Cursor Mundi, and attributes to Greek writers the opinion that the
roasted cock was the same that caused Peter's compunction. Mussafia,
Sulla legenda del legno della Croce, Sitz. Ber. der phil.-hist. Classe
der Wiener Akad., LXIII, 206, note. (Köhler.)
"About the year 1850 I was on a visit to the rector of Kilmeen, near
Clonakilty, in the county of Cork. My friend brought me to visit the
ruins of an old castle. Over the open fireplace, in the great hall there
was a stone, about two or three feet square, carved in the rudest
fashion, and evidently representing our Lord's sufferings. There were
the cross, the nails, the hammer, the scourge; but there was one piece
of sculpture which I could not understand. It was a sort of rude
semi-circle, the curve below and the diameter above, and at the junction
a figure intended to represent a bird. My friend asked me what it meant.
I confessed my ignorance. 'That,' said he, 'is the cock. The servants
were boiling him for supper, but when the moment came to convict the
_apostle_ he started up, perched on the side of the pot, and astonished
the assembly by his salutation of the morning.'" Notes and Queries, 5th
series, IX, 412 a. (Köhler.)
A heathen in West Gothland (Vestrogothia) had killed his herdsman,
Torsten, a Christian, and was reproached for it by Torsten's wife.
Pointing to an ox that had been slaughtered, the heathen answered: Tam
Torstenum tuum, quem sanctum et in cœlis vivere existimas, plane ita
vivum credo prout hunc bovem quem in frusta cædendum conspicis. Mirum
dictu, vix verba finiverat, cum e vestigio bos in pedes se erexit vivus,
stupore omnibus qui adstabant attonitis. Quare sacellum in loco eodem
erectum, multaque miracula, præsertim in pecorum curatione, patrata.
Ioannis Vastovii Vitis Aquilonia, sive Vitæ Sanctorum regni
Sveo-gothici, emend. et illustr. Er. Benzelius filius, Upsaliæ, 1708, p.
59. (Köhler.)
240 b. Man begegnet auf alten Holzschnitten einer Abbildung von Christi
Geburt, welche durch die dabei stehenden Thiere erklärt werden soll. Der
Hahn auf der Stange krähet da: _Christus natus est!_ der Ochse brüllt
mit überschnappender Stimme drein: _Ubi?_ und das Lammlein bläheret die
Antwort: _Bethlehem!_ Rochholz, Alemannisches Kinderlied und Kinderspiel
aus der Schweiz, p. 69 f. (Köhler.)
241 a. Wer sind die ersten Vorbothen Gottes? Der Hahn, weil er kräht,
"Christ ist geboren." Der Tauber, weil er ruft, "Wo?" Und der
Ziegenbock, weil er schreit, "Z' Bethlehem." Pater Amand Baumgarten, Aus
der volksmässigen Ueberlieferung der Heimat, I, Zur volksthümlichen
Naturkunde, p. 94. (Köhler.)
Hahn: Kikeriki! Gott der Herr lebt!
Ochs: Wo? Wo?
Geiss: Mäh! zu Bethlehem!
Simrock, Das deutsche Kinderbuch, 2d ed., p. 173, No 719; 3d ed., p.
192, No 787. (Köhler.)
Quando Christo nasceu disse o gallo: _Jesus-Christo e ná ... á ... á ...
do_ (nádo). J. Leite de Vasconcellos, Tradiçôes populares de Portugal,
p. 148, No 285 b.
242. Note. Add: W. Creizenach, Judas Ischarioth in Legende und Sage des
Mittelalters, in Paul and Braune's Beiträge, II, 177 ff.
25. Willie's Lyke-Wake.
P. 247 b. Add: #E.# 'Willie's Lyke-Wake.' #a.# Buchan's Ballads of the
North of Scotland, II, 51. #b.# Christie, Traditional Ballad Airs, I,
122.
249 b. #Swedish.# Add: #D.# Aminson, Bidrag till Södermanlands
Kulturhistoria, II, 18.
#French.# 'Le Soldat au Convent,' Victor Smith, Vielles Chansons
recueillies en Velay et en Forez, p. 24, No 21, or Romania, VII, 73;
Fleury, Littérature Orale de la Basse Normandie, p. 310, 'La
Religieuse;' Poésies populaires de la France, III, fol. 289, fol. 297. A
soldier who has been absent some years in the wars returns to find his
mistress in a convent; obtains permission to see her for a last time,
puts a ring on her finger, and then "falls dead." His love insists on
conducting his funeral; the lover returns to life and carries her off.
249 b. #A. Magyar#. The ballad of 'Handsome Tony' is also translated by
G. Heinrich, in Ungarische Revue, 1883, p. 155.
The same story, perverted to tragedy at the end, in Golovatsky, II, 710,
No 13, a ballad of the Carpathian Russians in Hungary.
250. Dr R. Köhler points out to me a German copy of #A#, #B#, #C#, which
I had overlooked, in Schröer, Ein Ausflug nach Gottschee, p. 266 ff,
'Hansel june.' The mother builds a mill and a church, and then the young
man feigns death, as before. But a very cheap tragic turn is given to
the conclusion when the young man springs up and kisses his love. She
falls dead with fright, and he declares that since she has died for him
he will die for her. So they are buried severally at one and the other
side of the church, and two lily stocks are planted, which embrace "like
two real married people;" or, a vine grows from one and a flower from
the other.
252. This is the other form referred to at p. 247 a.
E
#a.# Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 51.
#b.# Christie, Traditional Ballad Airs, I, 122.
1
'If my love loves me, she lets me not know,
That is a dowie chance;
I wish that I the same could do,
Tho my love were in France, France,
Tho my love were in France.
2
'O lang think I, and very lang,
And lang think I, I true;
But lang and langer will I think
Or my love o me rue.
3
'I will write a broad letter,
And write it sae perfite,
That an she winna o me rue,
I'll bid her come to my lyke.'
4
Then he has written a broad letter,
And seald it wi his hand,
And sent it on to his true love,
As fast as boy could gang.
5
When she looked the letter upon,
A light laugh then gae she;
But ere she read it to an end,
The tear blinded her ee.
6
'O saddle to me a steed, father,
O saddle to me a steed;
For word is come to me this night,
That my true love is dead.'
7
'The steeds are in the stable, daughter,
The keys are casten by;
Ye cannot won to-night, daughter,
To-morrow ye'se won away.'
8
She has cut aff her yellow locks,
A little aboon her ee,
And she is on to Willie's lyke,
As fast as gang could she.
9
As she gaed ower yon high hill head,
She saw a dowie light;
It was the candles at Willie's lyke,
And torches burning bright.
10
Three o Willie's eldest brothers
Were making for him a bier;
One half o it was gude red gowd,
The other siller clear.
11
Three o Willie's eldest sisters
Were making for him a sark;
The one half o it was cambric fine,
The other needle wark.
12
Out spake the youngest o his sisters,
As she stood on the fleer:
How happy would our brother been,
If ye'd been sooner here!
13
She lifted up the green covering,
And gae him kisses three;
Then he lookd up into her face,
The blythe blink in his ee.
14
O then he started to his feet,
And thus to her said he:
Fair Annie, since we're met again,
Parted nae mair we'se be.
#b.# "Given with some changes from the way the editor has heard it
sung."
2^2. I trow.
3^1. But I.
3^3. That gin.
7^3. the night.
28. Burd Ellen and Young Tamlane.
P. 256. This ballad is in Pitcairn's MSS, III, 49. It was from the
tradition of Mrs Gammel. The last word of the burden is Machey, not
May-hay, as in Maidment.
29. The Boy and the Mantle.
P. 270 b. If a girl takes a pot of boiling water off the fire, and the
pot ceases to boil, this is a sign of lost modesty. Lammert,
Volksmedizin und medizinischer Aberglaube in Bayern, u.s.w., p. 146.
30. King Arthur and King Cornwall.
P. 274. A Galien in verse has been found in the library of Sir Thomas
Phillipps, at Cheltenham. Romania, XII, 5.
31. The Marriage of Sir Gawain.
P. 292 b, last paragraph but one. Add: 'Gorvömb,' Arnason, II, 375,
Powell, Icelandic Legends, Second Series, 366, 'The Paunch.' Gorvömb, a
monstrous creature, in reward for great services, asks to have the
king's brother for husband, and in bed turns into a beautiful princess.
She had been suffering under the spells of a step-mother.
39. Tam Lin.
P. 335. Add: #J.# 'Young Tamlane,' Kinloch MSS, V, 391.
335 a. The stanzas introduced into #I a# were from "Mr Beattie of
Meikledale's Tamlane," as appears from a letter of Scott to Laidlaw,
January 21, 1803. (W. Macmath.)
336 b, third paragraph. Add: Aminson, Bidrag, etc., IV, 6, No 27.
Fourth paragraph, line 9. Read: in it which.
338 a. An old woman is rejuvenated by being burnt to bones, and the
bones being thrown into a tub of milk: Ralston, Russian Folk-Tales, p.
59, 'The Smith and the Demon;' Afanasief, Legendui, No 31, from Dahl's
manuscript collection.
356. The following is perhaps the version referred to by Dr Joseph
Robertson: see p. 335.
J
"A fragment of Young Tamlane," Kinloch MSS, V, 391. In Dr
John Hill Burton's handwriting, and perhaps from the
recitation of Mrs Robertson (Christian Leslie), mother of
Dr Joseph Robertson.
* * * * * * *
1
'The night, the night is Halloween,
Tomorrow's Hallowday,
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
2
'The night, the night is Halloween,
Our seely court maun ride,
Thro England and thro Ireland both,
And a' the warld wide.
* * * * * * *
3
'The firsten court that comes ye bye,
You'll lout, and let them gae;
The seconden court that comes you bye,
You'll hail them reverently.
4
'The thirden court that comes you by,
Sae weel's ye will me ken,
For some will be on a black, a black,
And some will be on a brown,
But I will be on a bluid-red steed,
And will ride neist the queen.
5
'The thirden court that comes you bye,
Sae weel's ye will me ken,
For I'll be on a bluid-red steed,
Wi three stars on his crown.
6
'Ye'll tak the horse head in yer hand,
And grip the bridle fast;
The Queen o Elfin will gie a cry,
"True Tamas is stown awa!"
7
'And I will grow in your twa hands
An adder and an eel;
But the grip ye get ye'll hold it fast,
I'll be father to yer chiel.
8
'I will wax in your twa hans
As hot as any coal;
But if you love me as you say,
You'll think of me and thole.
9
'O I will grow in your twa hands
An adder and a snake;
The grip ye get now hold it fast,
And I'll be your world's mait.
10
'O I'll gae in at your gown sleeve,
And out at your gown hem,
And I'll stand up before thee then
A freely naked man.
11
'O I'll gae in at your gown sleeve,
And out at your gown hem,
And I'll stand before you then,
But claithing I'll hae nane.
12
'Ye'll do you down to Carden's Ha,
And down to Carden's stream,
And there you'll see our seely court,
As they come riding hame.'
* * * * * * *
13
'It's nae wonder, my daughter Janet,
True Tammas ye thought on;
An he were a woman as he's a man,
My bedfellow he should be.'
* * * * *
1
The night, the night is Halloween,
Tomorrow's Hallowday, our seely court maun ride,
Thro England and thro Ireland both,
And a' the warld wide.
Cf. #A# 25, 26; #D# 16; #G# 30; #I# 33, 34.
8^4. think and of me thole.
41. Hind Etin.
P. 363, note. Compare, for style, the beginning of 'Hind Horn' #G#, #H#,
pp 205, 206.
43. The Broomfield Hill.
P. 393 a, first paragraph. In Gongu-Rólvs kvæði, Hammershaimb, Færöiske
Kvæder, No 16, p. 140, sts 99-105, Lindin remains a maid for two nights,
and loses the name the third, but the sleep-rune or thorn which should
explain this does not occur.
393 b, third paragraph. Add: 'Kurz gefasst,' Alfred Müller, Volkslieder
aus dem Erzgebirge, p. 90.
45. King John and the Bishop.
P. 410. Translated after Percy's Reliques also by von Marées, p. 7, No
2.
503 a, fifth paragraph (ring stories). Add: W. Freiherr von Tettau,
Ueber einige bis jetzt unbekannte Erfurter Drucke, u. s. w., Jahrbücher
der königlichen Akademie zu Erfurt, Neue Folge, Heft VI, S. 291, at the
end of an excellent article on Ritter Morgeners Wallfahrt. (Köhler.)
[426] "Cette action, si peu séante pour nous, est accomplie dans maint
conte grec, allemand, etc., par des jeunes filles sur leurs amants, sur
des dragons par les princesses qu'ils ont enlevées, et, même dans une
légende bulgare en vers, saint Georges reçoit le même service de la
demoiselle exposée au dragon, dont il va la délivrer." Dozon, Contes
albanais, p. 27, note. In the Bulgarian legend referred to, Bulgarski
narodni pěsni, by the brothers Miladinov, p. 31, the saint having
dozed off during the operation, the young maid sheds tears, and a
burning drop falls on the face of George, and wakes him. This recalls
the Magyar ballad, Molnár Anna, see p. 46. A Cretan legend of St George
has the same trait: Jeannaraki, p. 2, v. 41. Even a dead lover recalled
to the earth by his mistress, in ballads of the Lenore class, asks the
same service: Golovatsky, II, 708, No 12; Sušil, p. 111, No 112,
'Umrlec,' 'The Dead Man.'
[427] Afterwards a judge, with the name of Lord Robertson, but
universally known as Peter Robertson, celebrated for his wit and good
fellowship as well as his law, friend of Scott, Christopher North, and
Lockhart; "the Paper Lord, Lord Peter, who broke the laws of God, of
man, and metre." Mr Macmath's note.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes
This section lists changes that have been made to the text. Minor
changes to format and punctuation have not been listed.
Page xi, Contents: changed volume reference "I" to "II" under Additions
and Corrections to Ballad 11 "THE CRUEL BROTHER" (Additions and
Corrections: I, 496; II, 498; III, 499;...)
Page xi, Contents: deleted erroneous page reference "170," under
Additions and Corrections to Ballad 14 "BABYLON".
Page 4, version B, stanza 6: added missing close single quotation mark
(And what is sharper than a thorn?')
Page 16, stanza 20: added missing close single quotation mark (Let the
elphin knight do what he will.')
Page 18, version G, stanza 3: added missing close single quotation mark
(Which never bore blossom since Adam was born?')
Page 37: changed "Bokendorf" to "Bökendorf" (Reifferscheid, No 18, p.
36, from Bökendorf.)
Page 39, first paragraph: "cod by ffman" interpreted as "co[llecte]d by
[Ho]ffman".
Page 84: changed "Fornminnesforeningens" to "Fornminnesföreningens"
(Svenska Fornminnesföreningens Tidskrift)
Page 98: changed "Busching" to "Büsching" (Büsching u. von der Hagen,
Buch der Liebe, c. 60)
Page 99: changed comma to semi-colon (Wolff, Halle, I, 76; Hausschatz)
Page 102, stanza 11, line 2: removed trailing single quote mark ('I am
afraid ye are slain;)
Page 103, version E, stanza 2, line 2: added missing opening single
quote mark ('O hold my horse by the bonnie bridle rein,)
Page 138, note on version B: bracketed vertical alignment of words "it"
and "he" presented in line (in Plain Text versions) ("~he did it play,
{it/he} playd~;")
Page 188: "Hyn-horn" (hyphenated at line break) changed to "Hynhorn", in
But I'll give him a drink for Young Hynhorn's sake,' #B# 16,
but note that in version B, stanza 16, the name appears as two words
"Hyn Horn". that
Page 211, stanzas 19 and 39: a line of stars following the first line of
each stanza has been interpreted as a missing line and rendered as the
more usual line of dots.
Page 226: added missing closing quotation mark
"At this moment a hunter came-- ...
The cradle will rock alone.'"
Page 265, footnote [236]: added missing letter "c" (but no one can drink
s'il n'est preudom)
Page 318: changed ("gyff ... sayes,) to ('gyff ... sayes,') in ('gyff it
be als the storye sayes', v. 83)
Page 374: changed "Islenzk" to "Íslenzk" (These in Íslenzk fornkvæði, pp
4-10, ...)
Page 392: changed "esterley" to "Oesterley" (Iohannis de Alta Silva
Dolopathos, ed. Oesterley)
Page 400: changed "Čelakovsky" to "Čelakovský" (Čelakovský, p.
75, No 6, Wenzig, Slawische Volkslieder)
Page 425, footnote [390]: changed "he" to "the" (Where is the sky but
three spans broad?)
Pae 422, stanza 13: changed "a" to "a'" (and ye shall get them a'.)
Page 451, ballad version A: two stanzas were numbered 18; changed second
"18" to "19" and changed "19" to "20".
Page 488, footnote [426]: added missing closing quotation mark ("Cette
action, ... dont il va la délivrer.")
Page 487: substituted reference to footnote [61] for double dagger
symbol (40, note [61]. In a Ruthenian ballad ...)
Page 488: changed stanza number "18" to "16"
Page 489: changed "Hjalmters" to "Hjálmtèrs" (Hjálmtèrs ok Ölvers Saga)
16.
As fause Sir John did turn him round,
To see the leaf flee owre the [tree],
...
Page 489: substituted reference to footnote [99] for asterisk symbol
(67 a, note [99], line 37. Read: a Scotch name.)
Page 493: substituted reference to footnote [127] for asterisk symbol
(119 a. Note [127], ...)
Page 505: substituted reference to footnote [195] for double dagger
symbol (238. Note [195] should have been credited to ...)
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The English and Scottish Popular Ballads (Volume I of 5)" ***
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