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THE

ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH

POPULAR BALLADS

EDITED BY

FRANCIS JAMES CHILD

PART I

BOSTON

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

NEW YORK: 11 EAST SEVENTEENTH STREET

2Dlje ftite rtftoe press, CambriDge

LONDON : HENRY STEVENS, 4 TRAFALGAR SQUARE

The Riverside Press, Cambridge:
Printed by H. 0. Iloughton and Company.

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 mamtscript would still, I think, be beyond
reach of man, yet exposed to destructive chances. Through your exertions and
personal sacrifices, directly, the famous and precioiis 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. y. CHILD.

Cambridge, Mass., December /, 1882.

IT was my wish not to begin to print The Eng
lish and Scottish Popular Ballads until this unre
stricted title should be justified by my having at
command every valuable copy of every known bal
lad. 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 Scot
land, Canada, and the United States, and no becom
ing means has been left unemployed to obtain pos
session 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. Ma
terials 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 deftendus ! 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 im
portant 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 Mal
colm Colquhoun Thomson, of Glasgow, who even
allowed the manuscript to be sent to London, and
to be retained several months, for my accommoda
tion. Mr J. Wylie Guild, of Glasgow, also per
mitted the use of a note-book of Motherwell's which
supplements the great manuscript, and this my un
wearied 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 Mac-
math, of Edinburgh, made during Mr Kinloch's life
an exquisite copy of the larger part of them, en
riched 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 Col
lege Library, still through the agency of Mr Mac-
math, 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 Falk
land. 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 re
quired, 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 Ab-
botsford 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 con
sisting 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 Magdalene College, Cam
bridge, for permitting collations of Pepys ballads,
most obligingly made for me by Mr Arthur S. B.
Miller. Many things were required from the Bod
leian library, and these were looked out for me,
and scrupulously copied or collated, by Mr George
Parker.

Texts of traditional ballads have been communi
cated 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 Amer
ica; 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 Bos
ton ; Mrs Gushing, of Cambridge ; Miss Ellen Mars-
ton, of New Bedford ; Mrs Moncrieff, of London,
Ontario.

Acknowledgments not well despatched in a phrase
are due to many others who have promoted my ob
jects : 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 Lauren-

son, of Lerwick, Shetland ; Mr J. Burrell Curtis, of
Edinburgh ; Dr Vigfusson, of Oxford ; Professor
Edward Arber, of Birmingham ; the Rev. J. Per-
cival, Mr Francis Fry, Mr J. F. Nicholls, of Bris
tol ; Professor George Stephens, of Copenhagen ;
Mr R. Bergstrom, of the Royal Library, Stock
holm ; Mr W. R. S. Ralston, Mr William Henry
Husk, Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith, Mr A. F. Muri-
son, of London ; Professor Sophocles ; Mr W. G.
Medlicott, of Longmeadow ; to Mr M. Heilprin, of
New York, Mme de Maltchyce, of Boston, and
Rabbi Dr Cohn, for indispensable translations from
Polish and Hungarian ; to Mr James Russell Low
ell, 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 fol
lowed 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 tra
dition, and whenever he takes up a ballad which is
common to both nations nothing remains to be dont
but to supply what has come to light since the tim
of his writing. But besides the assistance whic'.i I
have derived from his book, I have enjoyer7 the
advantage of Professor Grundtvig's criticisn and
advice, and have received from him unprintf • I Dan
ish texts, and other aid in many ways.

Such further explanations as to the plar and con
duct 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 cooperation for
the correction of errors and the supplying of de
ficiencies. To forestall a misunderstanding which
has often occurred, I beg to say that every tra
ditional version of a popular ballad is desired, no
matter how many texts of the same may have been
printed already.

F. J. CHILD.

CONTENTS

PAGB

1. REDDLES WISELY EXPOUNDED 1

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT 6

3. THE FAUSE KNIGHT UPON THE ROAD 20

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT 22

5. GIL BRENTON 62

6. WILLIE'S LADY 81

7. EARL BRAND « 88

8. ERLINTON x. 106

9. THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND Ill

10. THE TWA SISTERS . . ..:•'. . . 118

11. THE CRUEL BROTHER 141

12. LORD RANDAL 151

13. EDWARD . 167

14. BABYLON ; OR, THE BONNIE BANKS o FORDEE 170

15. LEESOME BRAND 177

16. SHEATH AND KNIFE . . . . 185

17. HIND HORN '187

18. SIR LIONEL . 208

19. KING ORFEO 215

20. THE CRUEL MOTHER 218

21. THE MAID AND THE PALMER (THE SAMARITAN WOMAN) 228

22. ST. STEPHEN AND HEROD 233

23. JUDAS 242

24. BONNIE ANNIE 244

25. WILLIE'S LYKE-WAKE 247

26. THE THREE RAVENS . . . .253

27. THE WHUMMIL BORE 255

28. BURD ELLEN AND YOUNG TAMLANE . 256

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, in, 19,
No 17, Magdalen College, Cambridge, c. Douce,
ii, fol. 168 b, Bod. Lib. d. ' A Riddle Wittily Ex
pounded,' 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 slight
ly : 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 impor
tant part in popular story, and that from very
remote times. No one needs to be reminded
of Samson, CEdipus, Apollonius of Tyre. Rid
dle-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 repre
sentatives 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 (per
haps an offshoot of an early form of the first)

of The Clever Lass, who wins a husband, and
sometimes a crown, by guessing riddles, solv
ing difficult but practicable problems, or match
ing 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. ' Rathsellied,' Biisching, Wochentliche
Nachrichten, I, 65, from the neighborhood of
Stuttgart. The same, Erlach, in, 37 ; Wun-
derhorn, IV, 139 ; Liederhort, p. 338, No 153 ;
Erk u. Inner, H. 5, p. 32, No 29 ; Mittler, No
1307 (omits the last stanza) ; Zuccalmaglio,
n, 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 rid
dles, is taken up behind him, and they ride
off. B. ' Rathsel urn Rathsel,' Wunderhorn,
n, 407 [429, 418] = Erlach, I, 439. Zuccal
maglio, n, 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

1. RIDDLES WISELY EXPOUNDED

which she gives no coy assent : but this con
clusion is said not to be genuine (Liederhort,
p. 341, note). C. 'Rathsellied,' Evk, Neue
Sammlung, Heft 3, p. 64, No 57, and Lieder
hort, 340, No 153a, two Brandenburg ver
sions, nearly agreeing, one with six, the other
with five, pairs of riddles. A proper conclu
sion not having been obtained, the former was
completed by the two last stanzas of B, which
are suspicious. C begins like B. D. ' Rath-
selfragen,' Peter, Volksthiimliches aus Oster-
reichisch-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 par
ries with, " When all streams flow together,
and all trees shall fruit, and all thorns bear
roses, then come for your answer." E. ' Rath
sellied,' Tschischka u. Schottky, Oesterreich-
ische 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. * Rathsellied,' Hocker, Volkslieder
von der Mosel, in Wolf's Zeits. fiir deutsche
Myth., I, 251, from Trier, begins with the
usual promise, has five pairs of riddles, and
no conclusion. G. ' Rathsel,' Ditfurth, Frank-
ische V. L., II, 110, No 146, has the same be
ginning, 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 an
swers. 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.)*

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 pro
ceeds :

' 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 for
est?
Also, what is brighter than the light ?

* 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. Wedder-
burn's Courtship,' A 12 ; What is whiter than snow ? What
is greener than clover ? in ' Rathselfragen,' Firmenich, Ger-
maniens Volkerstimmen, in, 634 ; in ' Kranzsingen,' E_rkjs
Liederhort. p. 342, 3; ' Traugemundslied,' 11; ' Ein Spiel
von den Freiheit,' Fastnachtspiele aus dem 1 5n jTahrhun-
dert, 11, 555; Altdeutsche Walder, in, 138. So, What is
whiter than a swan ? in many of the versions of Svend
Vonved, Grundtvig, in, 786; iv, 742-3-7-8 ; Afzelius, n,
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, 11, 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 Trauge-
rrmndslied, Uhland, i, 3, and the Spiel von den Freiheit,
Fastnachtspiele, n, 553, have only as much story as will
serve as an excuse for long strings of riddles. Shorter pieces
of the kind are (Italian) Kaden, Italiens Wunderhern, p. 14;
(Servian) 'The Maid and the Fish,' Vuk, i, 196, No 285,
Talvj, n, 176, Goetze, Serbische V. L., p. 75, Bowring, Ser
vian Popular Poetry, p. 184; (Polish) Wojcicki, i, 203;
(Wendish) Haupt and Schmaler, i, 177, No 150, n, 69, No
74; (Russian) Wenzig, Bibliothek Slav. Poesie, p. 174; (Es-
thonian) Neus, Ehstnische V. L., 390 ff, and Fosterlandskt
Album, i, 13, Prior, Ancient Danish Ballads, n, 341.

1. RIDDLES WISELY EXPOUNDED

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, 0 merchant's son, a stone ;
Never silent, merchant's son, the sea ;
And God's will is past all finding out.'
' Thou hast guessed, 0 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.' *

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, in, 36 ; ' Fionn's Con
versation with Ailbhe,' Heroic Gaelic Ballads,
by the same, pp. 150, 151.

The familiar ballad-knight of A, B is con
verted 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 charac
ter. 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 : Her
der, Volkslieder, I, 95,. after A d.

a. Broadside in the Rawlinson collection, 4to, 566, fol.
193, Wood, E. 25, fol. 15. b. Pepys, in, 19, No ]7. c.
Douce, ii, fol. 168 b. d. Pills to Purge Melancholy, iv,
130, ed. 1719.

1 THEKE 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.

* ' Capt. "Wedderburn's Courtship,' 12 : What 'a higher
than the tree ? (heaven). Wojcicki, Pies'ni, i, 203, 1. 11, 206,
1. 3 ; What grows without a root ? (a stone).

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.

1. RIDDLES WISELY EXPOUNDED

11 ' If thou canst answer me questions three,
This very day will I marry thee.'

12 ' Kind sir, in love, 0 then,' quoth she,

' Tell me what your [three] questions he.'

13 ' 0 what is longer th%n 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 ' 0 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 hecame 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 hride.

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.

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.'

' And now, fair maid, I will marry with thee.'

Motherwell's MS., p. 647. From the recitation of Mrs
Storie.

1 THERE was a knicht riding frae the east,

Sing the Gather 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.

1. RIDDLES WISELY EXPOUNDED

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 sail be made my ain.

9 ' 0 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 ?

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 ' 0 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.'

11 ' 0 what is whiter nor the milk ?
Or what is safter nor the silk ?

19 As sune as she the fiend did name,
He flew awa in a blazing flame.

12 ' Or what is sharper nor a thorn ?
Or what is louder nor a horn ?

Motherwell'a MS., p. 142.

1 ' 0 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 ?

5 ' 0 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 ' 0 hunger 's sharper than the thorn,
And thunder 's louder than the horn.

3 ' 0 what is sharper than the thorn ?
0 what is louder than the horn ?

4 ' 0 what is longer than the way ?
And what is colder than the clay ?

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 Kiddle 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 mar
riage ;

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
THE KNIGHT.

WOODCUT OF
THE MAID.

c. Knights questions. Wed a knight
with her in marriage.

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

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 remain
der 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. I1, c, i' th' North : d, in the.

31. c, This knight.

51. a, b, c, d, The youngest sister.

71. b, d, The youngest that same, c, that
very same.

72. a, with this young knight.
92. 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.

II2. C, I '11 marry, d, I will.

121. c omits in love. 122. b, c, d, three
questions.

141. d, a horn.

After 15 : a, Here follows the Damosels an
swer 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, poy-

son 's, devil 's.
182. d, the woman.
191. c, those.
20. a, b omit truly.
211. b, c, d, as 't is.

B. The burden is printed by Gilbert, in the text,

" Jennifer gentle and Rosemaree." He ap
pears 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."

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 broad
side 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,' Kiuloch's Anc. Scott. Ballads,
p. 145.

D. ' The Fairy Knight,' Buchan, n, 296.

E. Motherwell's MS., p. 492.

F. « Lord John,' Kinloch MSS, I, 75.

G. « The Cambrick Shirt,' Gammer Gurton's Garland,
p. 3, ed. 1810.

H. « The Deil's Courtship,' Motherwell's MS., p. 92.
I. ' The Deil's Courting,' MotherweU's MS.,' p. 103.

J. Communicated by Rev. Dr Huntirigton, Bishop of
Western New York, as sung at Had'ley, Mass.

K. Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England, p. 109, No
171, 6th ed.

L. Notes and Queries, 1st S., vu, 8.

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

PlNKEKTON gave the first information con
cerning A, in Ancient Scotish Poems . . .
from the MS. collections of Sir Richard Mait-
land, etc., II, 496, and he there printed the
first and last stanzas of the broadside. Moth-
erwell 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.*

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 Jock
ey's Lamentation,' Pills to Purge Melancholy,
V, 317, has the burden,

'T is 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 mod
ern 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 va
riations in the tasks set, in A, ' Eitle Dinge,'
Rhaw, Bicinia (1545), Uhland, I, 14, No 4
A, Bohme, p. 376, No 293. B. ' Van ideln
unmoglichen Dingen,' Neocorus (f c. 1630),
Chronik des Landes Ditmarschen, ed. Dahl-
mann, p. 180 = Uhland, p. 15, No 4 B, Miil-
lenhof, p. 473, Bohme, p. 376, No 294. C.
Wunderhorn, n, 410 [431] = Erlach, i, 441,
slightly altered in Kretzschmer [Zuccalrna-
glio], II, 620. D. ' Unmoglichkeiten,' Schmel-
ler, Die Mundarten Bayerns, p. 556. E. Schle-
sische Volkslieder, p. 115, No 93. P. ' Liebes-
Neckerei,' Meier, Schwabische V. L., p. 114,
No 39. G. ' Liebesspielereien,' Ditfurth,
Frankische V. L., II, 109, No 144. H. ' Von
eitel unmoglichen Dingen,' Erk's Liederhort,
p. 337, No 152b. L ' Unmogliches Begehr-
en,' V. L. aus Oesterreich, Deutsches Mu
seum, 1862, n, 806, No 16. X ' Unmog-
liche Dinge,' Peter, Volksthiimliches aus
Osterreichisch-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,'
Prohle, 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

* All that was required of the burden, Mr Chappell kindly
rites me, was to support the voice by harmonious notes
under the melody ; it was not sung after each half of the
aza, or after the stanza, and it was heard separately only
rhen the voices singing the air stopped. Even the Danish
illads exhibit but a few cases of these " burden-stems," as
Jrundtvig calls them: see Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser,
221, B 1 ; 295, B 1 ; 393, A 1 : in, 197, D; 470, A.
Such burden-stems are, however, very common in Icelandic
llads. They are, for the most part, of a different metre
the ballad, and very often not of the same number of
ies as the ballad stanza. A part of the burden stem would
seem to be taken for the refrain ; as Islenzk FornkvasSi, i,
30, of four verses, 1, 2, 4; 129, of two, the last half of the
first and all the second; 194, ef four, the last; 225, of five,
ie last two ; n, 52, of five, the second and last two.
In later times the Danish stev-stamme was made to con

form to the metre of the ballad, and sung as the first stanza,
the last line perhaps forming the burden. Compare the stev-
stamme, Grundtvig, in, 470, with the first stanza of the bal
lad at p. 475. If not so changed, says Grundtvig, it dropped
away. Lyngbye, at the end of his Fseroiske Qvasder, 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 Melodicr, 3d ed., i, 352, 358, is simply to sing
the whole stem after each verse, and so says Grundtvig, in,
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 Faroe ballad in Grundt
vig, in, 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 bur
den.

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

M, N. In the Stev, or alternate song, in
Landstad, p. 375, two singers vie one with an
other in propounding impossible tasks.

A Wendish ballad, Haupt and Schmaler, I,
178, No 151, and a Slovak, Celakowsky, n,
68, No 12 (the latter translated by Wenzig,
Slawische Volkslieder, p. 86, Westslavischer
Marchenschatz, p. 221, and Bibliothek Sla-
vischer 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 acci
dentally 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 Diar
maid run away with her. But he said, "I will
not go with thee. I will not take thee in soft
ness, 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 posi
tion 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, in,
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 ex-

* Grundtvig has noticed the resemblance of G. R. 64 and
the ballad. — Much of what follows is derived from the ad
mirable Benfey's papers, ' Die klnge Dirne, Die indischen

ecution of the other, as in the German bal
lads, 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,
XLIU, 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 1 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 : " rnichi
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.* It may be
doubted whether the sagacious maid did not,
in the unmutilated story, deal with the prob
lem as is done in a Transylvanian tale, Halt-
rich, Deutsche Volksmarchen, 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 Burghiiter 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

Marchen von den klugen Rathsellosern, nnd ihre Vcrbreitung
iiber Asien und Europa,' Ausland, 1859, p. 457, 486, 511, 567,
589, in Nos 20, 21, 22, 24, 25.

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

material points are these. A king requires
the people of a parish to answer three ques
tions, 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 sa
gacity 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 cob
blers 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,
•md married her.
Of the same tenor are a tale in Zingerle's

Tyrolese Kinder u. Hausmarchen, ' Was ist
das Schonste, Starkste und Reichste?' No.
27, p. 162, and another in the Colshorns'
Hanoverian Marchen u. Sagen, ' Die kluge
Dime,' 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
ris weariness, says he will give them three

* Kagnar LoSbrok (Saga, c. 4, Rafn, Fomaldar Sogur, i,
245), as pointed out by the Grimms, notes to No 94, re
quires Kraka (Aslaug) to come to him clothed and not
clothed, fasting and not fasting, alone and not without a
2

questions, and whichever answers right shall
win. The questions in the former tale are :
What is the most beautiful, what the strong
est, 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, " To
day shalt thou be with me in Paradise." The
judge sees that these replies are beyond the
wit of the respondents, and they own to' hav
ing 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. marchen, No 94, and ' Die kluge
Hirtentochter,' in Prohle's Marchen fur 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 mor
tar, 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 fish
ing-net [Grimms, in bark, Prohle], satisfies the
other stipulations also, and becomes a queen.*

Another story of the kind, and very well
preserved, is No 25 of Vuk's Volksmiirchen
der Serben, ' Von dem Madchen das an Weis-
heit den Kaiser iibertraf,' p. 157. A poor

companion. She puts on a fishing-net, bites a leek, and
takes her dog with her. References for the very frequent oc
currence of this feature may be found in Oesterley's note to
Gesta Romanorum, No 124, at- p. 732.

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

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 per
form 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. Here
upon the emperor ordered the girl herself be
fore him, and put her the question, " What
is heard furthest ? " " Please your Majesty,"
she answered, " thunder and lies." The em
peror 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, " Jfray,
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 hither
to 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 an
swer, 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 su
perior 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 Marchen,
p. 3, ' Vom schlauen Madchen.'

A Turkish tale from South Siberia will
take us a step further, ' Die beiden Fiirsten,'
Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der tiirk-
ischen Stamme Siid-Sibiriens, I, 197. A
prince had a feeble-minded son, for whom he
wished to get a wife. He found a girl gath
ering 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 daugh
ter bade them be of good cheer, killed the ox,
and gave it to her parents to eat. On the

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

third day she stationed herself on the road
by which the prince would come, and was gath
ering 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, an
other 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 dun
geon. From the depths of this dungeon he
contrived to send a profoundly enigmatic dis
patch 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

* "Benfey, Das Ausland, 1859, p. 459. The versions re
ferred to are: Shukasaptati (Seventy Tales of a Parrot),
47th and 48th night ; the Buddhist Kanjur, Vinaya, in, 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 Chres-
tomathie, 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 Wisakha;" Geschichte
des weisen Heykar,' 1001 Nacht, Habicht, v. d. Hagen u.
Schall, xin, 71, ed. 1840; ' Histoire de Sinkarib et de ses
deux Visirs,' Cabinet des Fees, xxxix, 266 (Persian) ; two
old Russian translations of Greek tales derived from Arabic,
Pypin, ' in the Papers of the Second Division of the Im-

" knew seven words more " than he, took her
father-in-law out of the tlungeon, 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 in
cludes, 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 Rus
sian, from lost Middle-Greek versions.*

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 re
quire ingenuity of one kind or another, whether
in devising practical experiments, in contriv
ing subterfuges, in solving riddles, or even in
constructing compliments.f

One of the Tibetan tales, which, though

perial Acad. of Sciences, St Petersburg, 1858, iv, 63-85;'
Planudes, Life of JEsop ; A. and A. Schott, Walachische
Msehrchen, p. 125, No 9, ' Vom weissen und vom rothen
Kaiser; ' Erde'lyi, Nepdalok e's Mondak, in, 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, CEuvres Badines, vn, 289 ff, Cabinet des
Fees, xxv, 9-406 (from the Turkish ?). In the opinion of
Benfey, it is in the highest degree likely, though not demon
strable, that the Indian tale antedates our era by several
centuries. Ausland, p. 511 ; see also pp. 487, 459.

t Ingenuity is one of the six transcendental virtues of
Mahayana Buddhism. Schlagintweit, Buddhism in Tibet,
p. 36."

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

dating from the beginning of our era, will
very easily be recognized in the Siberian tra
dition of this century, is to this effect. King
Rabssaldschal had a rich minister, who de
sired a suitable wife for his youngest son. A
Brahman, his trusty friend, undertook to find
one. In the course of his search, which ex
tended through many countries, the Brah
man 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.* The
Brahman made proposals to her father in
behalf of the minister's son. These were ac- .
cepted, 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 vir
tues that everything was put under her direc
tion. 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 ap
pearance, with the demand that he should dis
tinguish 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 to
gether 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 min
ister 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 com
fortable, which the masculine cannot tolerate."

* The resemblance to the Siberian tale is here especially
striking.

t The Shukasaptati, in the form in which we have them,
are supposed to date from about the 6th century, and are

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 con
ciliation, 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 San
skrit tale,f which also differs from the Bud
dhist 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 Hey-
kar (Arabian Nights, Breslau transl., xni,
73 ff , Cabinet des Fe"es, xxxix, 266 ff) and
in the Life of JEsop. 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 Morad-
bak, in Von der Hagen's 1001 Tag, vni,
199 ff, and even in the minister's wife in the
story of The Wise Heykar.

regarded as abridgments of longer tales. The Vinaya prob
ably 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.

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

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 Shukasapfcati, are found again, with un
important 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 JEsop 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 Eng
lish ballads. The wise Heykar, e. g., is re
quired 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 JEsop, the king of
Babylon's champion sage, that when his mares
hear the stallions neigh in Babylon, they cast
their foal. JEsop'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 JEsop in a rage. ./Esop 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, JEsop ! " says the king of Egypt;
" how could the cat go from Egypt to Babylon
in one night ? " " Why not," replies JEsop,
" 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 rid
dles are guessed, or by him who fails to guess.

* Amasis in return (8) puts some of the questions which
we are apt to think of as peculiarly mediaeval : What is old
est ? What is most beautiful, biggest, wisest, strongest ? etc.
Two of these we have had in Zingerle's story. They are an
swered in a commonplace way by the ^Ethiop, with more re
finement 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 : Rosenol, i, 167. Ama
sis 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 Sat-

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 JEthiops
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 ./Esop),
and Bias gives the customary advice for deal
ing with it.*

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, n, 102.

The first three or four stanzas of A-B 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 Eng
lish, 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 par
ticular ballad, for riddle-craft is practised by
a variety of preternatural beings : notoriously
by Odin, Thor, the giant VafyruSnir, and the
dwarf Alwiss in the Edda, and again by a
German " berggeist " (Ey, Harzmarchenbuch,
p. 64, ' Die verwiinschte Prinzessin'), a Greek

urn : " 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 Bedse Collectanea,
p. 326. This is made into a very long story in the Life
of JEaop, 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 Lands-
berger, Die Fabeln des Sophos, ex, ff. We may add that
Plutarch's question, Which was first, the bird or the
egg ? (Quffist. Conviv. 1. 2, q. 3), comes up again in The De-
maundes Joyous, No 41, Kemble's Salomon and Saturn,
p. 290.

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

dragon (Hahn, Griechische u. Albanesische
Marchen, n, 210), the Russian rusalka, the
Servian vila,* the Indian rakshas. For exam
ple : 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 with
out a root ; water runs without any object ; the
fern blooms without any flower. These an
swers seem satisfactory, as riddles go, but the
ballad concludes (with an injustice due to cor
ruption?), "The girl did not guess the rid
dles: the rusalka tickled her to death." (Woj-
cicki, Piesni, 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 advan
tage of a householder ? What is love ? What
best accomplishes difficult things ? These ques
tions the man answers, and confirms his an
swers by tales, and gains the rakshas' "good
will. (Jacob, Hindoo Tales, or the Adven
tures of Ten Princes, a translation of the San
skrit 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 giv
ing riddles, as they are called (tasks), in the
Grimms' K. u. H. marchen, No 125 (see also
the note in vol. in) ; Prohle's K. u. V. mar
chen, No 19 ; Vernaleken, Oesterreichische K.
u. H. marchen, No 37. He also appears as
a riddle-monger in one of the best stories in
the Golden Legend. A bishop, who was es
pecially 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 an
swered 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 oth
er than St Andrew) to the messenger, " and
say that he himself knows best, for he meas
ured the distance when he fell." Antiquus hos-
tis de medio evanuit. Much the same is re
lated in the legend of St Bartholomew, and,
in a Slovenian ballad, of St Ulrich, who inter
poses to save the Pope from espousing Satan
in disguise. f

J, K, L, have completely lost sight of the
original story.

Translated, after A, C, and D, in Grundt-
vig's Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 251 ;
R. Warrens, Schottische Lieder der Vorzeit, p.
8 ; Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen Alt-Englands,
No 54.

* Afanasief, Poetic Views of the Slavonians about Na
ture, i, 25. The poludnitsa seems to belong to the same
class : Afanasief, HI, 76 ; Kalston, Songs of the Russian
People, p. 147.

t The legend of St Andrew in Legenda Aurea, Grasse,
cap. n, 9, p. 19 ff; also in the Fornsvenskt Legendarium,
I, 143 if ; Zambrini, Leggende Inedite, u, 94 ff; Pitre,
Canti pop. Siciliani, n, 232 ff: that of St Bartholomew,
Grasse, p. 545, cap. cxxm, 5, and in a German Passional,

Mone's Anzeiger, 1839, vni, col. 319 f : that of St Ulrich in
Achazel and Korytko, i, 76, ' Sve'ti Ureh,' translated by A.
Griin, 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. Ixxiv, who
besides cites the legend of St Andrew.

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

A 9 « Thou must shape it knife-and-sheerlesse,

A broadside in black letter, " printed, I suppose/' says And also sue it; needle-threedlesse.'

Pinkerton, " about 1670," bound up with five other pieces at

the end of a copy of Blind Harry's ' Wallace,' Edin. 1673, in 10 ' If that piece of courtesie I do to thee,
the Pepysian Library. Another thou must do to me.

MY plaid awa, my plaid awa,
And ore the hill and far awa,
And far awa to Norrowa,
My plaid shall not be hlown 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.

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 soil.

15 ' And thou must winnow it in thy looff,
And also seek 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 '1 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 '1 then keep still,
Let the elphin knight do what he will/

The wind 's not blown my plaid awa

A Collection of Curious Old Ballads, etc., p. 3. Partly
from an old copy in black letter, and partly from the recita
tion 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.'

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

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 '11 get your sark.'

19 ' I '11 not quite my plaid for my life ;
It haps my seven bairns and my wife.'

20 ' My maidenhead I '11 then keep still,
Let the elphin knight do what he will.

Ktnloch'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 shill.
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 cure 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 sail 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 '11 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.'

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, 11, 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
braid.

4 ' And I mysell am only nine,

And oh ! sae fain, luve, as I woud be thine.'

5 ' Ye maim 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 '11 big a cart o stane and lime,
Gar Kobin Redbreast trail it syne.

17 ' When ye 've dune, and finishd your wark,
Ye '11 come to me, luve, and get your sark.'

MotherwelFs 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.'

Kinloch MSS, i, 75. From Mary Barr.

1 ' DID ye ever travel twixt Berwick and Lyne ?

Sober and grave grows merry in time
There ye '11 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 '11 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 '11 meet wi a handsome young man,

Ance he was a true lover o mine.

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

7 ' Tell him to plough me an acre o land
Betwixt the sea-side bot and the sea-sand,

And syne we '11 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.'

Gammer Gurton'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 '11 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.'

MotherwelPs 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.' •

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.

2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT

3 ' I will ask ye questions three ;
Resolve them, or ye '11 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 '11 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 learned thee ;
This night I weend ye 'd gane wi me.'

Communicated by Eev. 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, tal-
lyho, 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.

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.

3. THE PAUSE KNIGHT UPON THE ROAD

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 prefixed to the ballad are ap
pended to the last stanza in the broadside.
For Norrowa, v. 3, Pinkerton has To-morrow.
91, 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 Scot
tish version, and is here chiefly adhered to."
D. 32. hae made.

91. askd should perhaps be left, or gave, as in

K1, L1.
E. Burden2, in MS., 1, blown her ; 2, 3, blawn

her; 4, blawn my.

21, blow ; 22, and a.
H. I1. He speaks, in the margin of MS.

Burden1, time in margin.

51. Maid speaks, in margin.
I. Not divided regularly into stanzas in the MS.

42. needlewark in margin.

101. shin ? in margin.
L. After 6 : " Then follows some more which I

forget, but I think it ends thus."

THE FAUSE KNIGHT UPON THE ROAD

A. ' The Fause Knight upon the Road,' Motherwell's
Minstrelsy, Introduction, p. Ixxiv.

B. « The False Knight,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Ap
pendix, 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 non
plus 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 Gesammtaben-
teuer, No 63, m, 179; Asbj0rnsen 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 Nagra Prof af Folksang och Saga
i det svenska Osterbotten, p. 25, No 10. It is
a point in both that the replicant is a wee
boy (gossen, som liten var).

3. THE FAUSE KNIGHT UPON THE ROAD

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 '11 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 '11 bore a hole in your boat : '
' Yes, you bore, and I '11 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 Scot
land, p. 66 of the new edition, gives, without
a word of explanation, a piece, ' Harpkin,'
which seems to have been of the same char
acter, but now sounds only like a " fly ting." *
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 Voluspa 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 ante
cedents.

HARPKIN.

1 HARPKEST gaed up to the hill,
And blew his horn loud and shrill,
And by came Fin.

* At the last moment I come upon this : " The only safe
guard against the malice of witches is ' to flight wi dem,'
that is, draw them into a controversy and scold them round
ly : " (Mrs Saxby, in an interesting contribution of folk-lore
from Unst, Shetland, in The Leisure Hour, for March 27,

2 ' What for stand you there ? ' quo Fin :
' Spying the weather,' quo Harpkin.

3 ' What for had you your staff on your shou-

ther ? ' quo Fin :
1 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 Harp-
kin.

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 :

1 She '11 clim the brae the brichter,' quo Harp-
kin.

9 ' Of a braw lad bairn,' quo Fin :

' There '11 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 Harp-
kin.

11 ' The ox is eating at it,' quo Fin :

1 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 ' Gift, gaff,' quo Fin :

' Your mou 's fou o draff,' quo Harpkin.

The peit (peat) in st. 3, below, as I am in
formed by Dr Davidson, is the wee boy's con
tribution to the school firing.

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

Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Introduction, p. Ixxiv. From
Galloway.

1 ' 0 WHARE are ye gaun ? '

Quo the fause knicht upon the road :
' I 'm gaun to the scule,'

Quo the wee hoy, and still he stude.

2 ' What is that upon your hack ? ' 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 hlue tails.'

6 ' I wiss ye were on yon tree : '
'And a gude ladder under me.'

7 ' And the ladder for to break : '
4 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/

Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xxiv, No xxxii.

' O WHAKE 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.

LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

A. a. ' The Gowans sae gay,' Buchan's Ballads of the D. a. ' May Collin,' Sharpe's Ballad Book, No 1 7, p.
North of Scotland, i, 22. b. ' Aye as the Gowans 45. b. ' Fause Sir John and May Colvin,' Buchan,
grow gay,' Motherwell's MS., p. 563. B. N. S., n, 45. c. 'May Collean,' Motherwell's

Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xxi.

B. ' The Water o Wearie's Well.' a. Buchan's MSS,

n, fol. 80. b. Buchan's B. N. S., n, 201. c. Moth- E. ' The Outlandish Knight,' Dixon, Ancient Poems,

erwell's MS., p. 561. d. 'Wearie's Wells,' Harris Ballads, etc., p. 74 = Bell, Ancient Poems, Ballads,

MS., No 19. etc., p. 61.

C. a. 'May Colven,' Herd's MSS, i, 166. b. 'May F. ' The False Knight Outwitted,' Roxburgh Ballads,
Colvin,' Herd's Scottish Songs, 1776, i, 93. c. ' May British Museum, in, 449.

Colvin, or, False Sir John,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
p. 67.

OF all ballads this has perhaps obtained the Scandinavians, preserve it, in a full and evi-

widest circulation. It is nearly as well known den tly ancient form, even in the tradition of

to the southern as to the northern nations of this generation. Among the Latin nations it

Europe. It has an extraordinary currency in has, indeed, shrunk to very meagre proportions,

Poland. The Germans, Low and High, and the and though the best English forms are not

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

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.* Ar
rived 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' daugh
ters you have slain, lie here a husband to them
all.

B, in fourteen four-line stanzas, begins unin
telligibly 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 charac
terized, but evidently of the same nature as the
elf-knight in A, lulls everybody but this king's
daughter asleep with his harp,f 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

* ' The Elfin Knight ' begins very much like A, but per
haps has borrowed its opening stanzas from this ballad. See
page 13.

t The second stanza, which describes the harping, occurs
again in ' Glenkindie ' (st. 6).

J Perhaps the change from wood, A, to water, B-F, was
made under the influence of some Merman ballad, or by ad
mixture with such a ballad ; e. g., ' N0kkens Svig,' Grundt-
vig, 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 her
self by some artifice, not, of course, such as is employed in B-
P, but like that in A, or otherwise. Maid Heiemo, in Land-
stad, 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 noth
ing to shock credibility in the story.

Aytoun, Ballads of Scotland, i, 219, 2d ed., hastily pro
nounces 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

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.J

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,§ E, P 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 coun
try [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 sug
gestion, 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 J , and the
knight bids her alight : he has drowned seven
ladies here [eight D, six E, FJ, 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 de
cency'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.

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 tra
dition) 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.

§ " This ballad appears modern, from a great many ex
pressions, 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. Ixx, n. 24, says that
he had seen a stall ballad as early as 1 749, entitled ' The
Western Tragedy,' which perfectly agreed with Sharpe's
copy. But in his Note-Book, p. 5 (about 1826-7), Mother-
well 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."

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

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, B, 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, B, 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, m, 130,
ed. 1841, a rifacimento by Dixon of the com
mon English broadside in what passes for old-
ballad style. This has been repeated in Rich
ardson's Borderer's Table Book, vi, 367 ; in
Dixon's Scottish Traditional Versions of An
cient Ballads, p. 101 ; and, with alterations,
additions, and omissions, in Sheldon's Min
strelsy 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 Ardna-
murchan." "According to the tradition re
ported 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 North
ern Antiquities, p. 348.)

Stories like that of this ballad will inevi
tably be attached, and perhaps more or less
adapted, to localities where they become
known. May Collean, says Chambers, Scot
tish Ballads, p. 232, note, " finds locality in
that wild portion of the coast of Carrick (Ayr
shire) which intervenes betwixt Girvan and
Ballantrae. Carlton Castle, about two miles
to the south of Girvan (a tall old ruin, situ

ated 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 resi
dence of ' the fause Sir John ; ' while a tall
rocky eminence called Gamesloup, overhang
ing the sea about two miles still further south,
and over which the road passes in a style ter-
jible 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 bal
lad as a regular and proper record of an un
questionable fact, farther affirm that May Col-
lean 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 Bra
bant and Flanders, and is still popular as a
broadside, both oral tradition and printed cop
ies exhibiting manifold variations. A version
of this ballad (A) was communicated by Wil-
lems to Mone's Anzeiger in 1836, col. 448 ff,
thirty-eight two-line stanzas, and afterwards
appeared in Willems's Oude vlaemsche Lie-
deren (1848), No 49, p. 116, with some changes
in the text and some various readings. Uh-
land, I, 153, 74 D, gave the Anzeiger text,
. with one correction. So Hoffmann, Nieder-
landische 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 pop-
ulaires 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

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

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 fa
ther's stable, and rode to the wood, where she
found Halewijn waiting for her.* They then
rode on further, till they came to a gallows,
on which many women were hanging. Hale
wijn says, Since you are the fairest maid,
choose your death [B 20 offers the choice be
tween 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.'

* According to the variation given by Willems, and
3opted 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 bid
ding 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.

t J. W. "Wolf, Deutsche Marchen u. Sagen, No 29, p. 143,
gives the story according to B, apparently from a ballad like

' 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 Hale
wijn'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 Hale
wijn 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.f

Another Flemish version (C) has been late
ly published under the title, ' Roland,' by
which only, we are informed, is this particular
form known in Bruges and many parts of

Snellaert's. So Luise v. Ploennies, Reiseerinnerungen aus
Belgien, p. 38.

Halewyn makes his appearance again in the Flemish bal
lad, ' Halewyn en het kleyne Kind/ Coussemaker, No 46, p.
149 ; Poesies 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 succes
sively 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).

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

Flanders : * Chants populaires recueillis a
Bruges par Adolphe Lootens et J. M. E. Feys,
No 37, p. CO, 183 w, 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 con
fessor, 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 re
plies, 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

* " La chanson de Halewyn, telle a pen pres que la donnent
"Willems, Snellaert et de Coussemaker, se vend encore sur
le marche de Bruges. Quoiqu'elle porte pour titre Halewyn,
jamais notre piece n'a etc connue ici sous ce nom. Le nom
de Halewijn, Alewijn ou Alwin . . . est reserve an heros de
la piece suivante " [Mi Adel en Hir Alewijn]. Lootens et
Feys, p. 66. " U est a regretter que Willems et de Cous
semaker n'aient pas juge a propos de donner cette piece telle
que le peuple 1'a conserve'e ; on serait sans aucun doute en
possession de variantes remarquables, et les lacunes qui ex-

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 fa
ther, 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.f 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, ' Kvin-
demorderen,' A-G. Four more, H-L, are fur
nished by Kristensen, Jydske Folkeviser, I,
Nos 46, 47, 91 ; II, No 85. A, in forty-one
two-line stanzas (previously printed in Grundt-
vig's'Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 233),
is from a 16th century MS. ; B, thirty stanzas,

istent dans notre version n'eussent pas manque" d'etre com
ble'es. II est bon d'insister sur la remarque faite a la suite
de la chanson, qu'a Bruges et dans beaucoup de localite's de
la Flandre, elle n'est connue que sous le titre de Roland.
Ajoutons que notre texte appartient au dernier siecle." L.
et F., 295.

t 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.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

C, twenty-four, D, thirty-seven, from MSS of
the 17th century ; E, fifty-seven, from a broad
side of the end of the 18th ; P, 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 B, open
with some lines that occur at the beginning of
other ballads.* In A and B, 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 sim
ply 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 of
fered 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, profess
ing a fond desire to render him the most
homely of services f [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

sleep that was not sweet. She binds him
land and foot, then cries, Wake up ! I will
lot betray you in sleep. $ Eight you have

* E. g., the wonderland in A 2-6, and the strict watch
tept over the lady in 7-10 are repeated in ' Ribold og Guld-
arg,' Grundtvig, 82, B 2-7, 8-11, and in 'Den trofaste Jom-
i,' ib. 249, A 3-6, 7-10. The watching in A, B, C and
tie proffered gifts of C, D, F are found in ' Nakkens Svig,'
irundtvig, 39, A, B, 12-18. The disguise in A 11-14, the
est in the wood with the knight's head in the lady's lap, A
16, 27, B 11, 21, D 14, 24, B 11, 21, etc., recur in Kibold,

killed ; yourself shall be the ninth. En
treaties 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 rob
bers there are nine of the robber's brothers,
and the maid sets their house on fire. G in
dulges 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,
TJlver and Vsenelil ; B, Olmor, or Oldemor,
and Vindelraad ; C, Hollemen and Vendel-
raad ; 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, Ar-
widsson, 44 B, I, 301. B, ' Rofvaren Brun,'
fifteen stanzas, Afzelius, 83, in, 97. C, twen-

B 12-14, L 9, 10, M 19, 20, N 11, 13, P 12, 13. These re
semblances, naturally, are not limited to the Danish copies.

t So the princess in Asbjornsen og Moe, N. Folkeeventyr,
p. 153. Cf. Campbell's Tales of the West Highlands, in,
209 ; iv, 282, 283.

t The binding and waking, with these words, are found
also in a made-up text of ' Frsendehaevn,' Grundtvig, No 4,
C 51-53, but certainly borrowed from some copy of 'Kvinde-
morderen.'

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

ty-seven stanzas, Arwidsson, 44 A, I, 298. D,
' Rofvaren Rymer,' sixteen stanzas, Afzelius,
82, in, 94. A, B, D have resemblances, at
the beginning, to the Ribold ballads, like the
Danish A, B, B, 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 fa
ther's. There have been eight previous victims
in C, and they king's daughters ; in B, eleven
(maids) ; D says not how many, but, accord
ing to an explanation of the woman that sang
it, there were seven princesses. C, D, like
Danish B, 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 Swe-
'dish ballads. A calls the robber " an outland
ish man " (en man if ran 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 NorSmann,' twenty two-
line stanzas, Landstad, 69, p. 567 ; B, ' Rulle-
mann 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 be
ginning, which is found in Danish A, B, 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 maid
ens 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 arti
fice, 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 Pro
fessor Bugge, two indicate that the murderer's
sleep was induced by a spell, as in English A.
F 9 has,

Long time stood Gullbjb'r ; 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 NorSmann and
GuSbjorg ; B, Rulleman and Hildeborg [or
Signe] ; C, D, E, F, Svein N6rmann and Gull
bjb'r [Gunnbjor] ; G, Rullemann and Kjersti ;
H, Rullball and Signelill ; I, Alemarken and
Valer6s ; K, Rulemann and a fair maid.

Such information as has transpired concern
ing Icelandic versions of this ballad is fur
nished 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 Asa went along the street, she heard a sweet

sound.

2 Asa went into the house, she saw the villain

bound.

3 ' Little Asa, loose me ! I will not beguile thee.'

4 ' I dare not loose thee, I know not whether

thou 'It 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 ;

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

8 ' Thou art now the eleventh, I '11 not let thee

slip.'

A copy, from the beginning of the 18th
century, has, in stanza 2, "Asa went into the
wood" a recent copy, " over the fields ; " and
stanza 3, in the former, with but slight dif
ferences in all the modern copies, reads,

1 Welcome art thou, Asa 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 Asa took her white steed, of all women she rode

most.

12 Asa 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 con
stantly 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.*
They are as follows : A a, ' Gert Olbert,' ' Die
Morners Sang,' in Low German, as written
down by William Grimm, in the early years
of this century, 61 vv, Reifferscheid, p. 161, n.
A b, " from the Miinster region," communi
cated to Uhland by the Baroness Annette von
Droste-Hiillshof, 46 vv, Uhland, I, 151, No
74 C; repeated in Mittler, No 79. A c, a
fragment from the same source as the preced
ing, and written down at the beginning of this
century, 35 vv, Reifferscheid, p. 161, I. B, ' Es
wollt sich ein Markgraf ausreiten,1 from Bok-
endorf, 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

* All the German versions appear to have been originally
in the two-line stanza.

28, p. 66 ; Mittler, No 85. C b, eleven two-
line stanzas, Montanus (== Zuccalmaglio) Die
deutschen Volksfeste, p. 45. D, ' Von einem
wackern Magdlein, 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.
P, ' Jungfrau Linnich,' communicated by Zuc
calmaglio 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, Nu
remberg broadside " of about 1555 " (Bohme)
in Wunderhorn, ed. 1857, IV, 101, Bohme,
No loa, p. 56. G b c, Basel broadsides, " of
about 1570 " (Bohme), and of 1605, in Uh
land, No 74 A, i, 141 ; Mittler, No 77. H,
4 Adelger,' 120 vv, an Augsburg broadside, " of
about 1560 " (Bohme), Uhland, No 74 B, i,
146 ; Bohrae, No 13b, p. 58 ; Mittler, No 76.
I, « Der Brautmb'rder,' in the dialect of the
Kuhlandchen (Northeast Moravia and Aus
trian Silesia), 87 vv, Meinert, p. 61 ; Mittler,
No 80. J, ' Annele,' Swabian, from Hirrlin-
gen and Obernau, 80 vv, Meier, Schwabische
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-Wiir-
temberg border, 81 vv, Birlinger, Schwabisch-
Angsburgisches Worterbuch, p. 458. L b,
[Birlinger], Schwabische V. L., p. 159, from
Immenried, nearly word for word the same.
M, ' Der falsche Sanger,' 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 Eutlebuch noch gesungen wird,' twenty-
three double stanzas, in the local dialect,
Schweizerblatter von Henne und Reithard,
1833, nr Jahrgang, 210-12. P, 'Das Gug-
gibader-Lied,' twenty-one treble stanzas (23 ?),
in the Aargau dialect, Rochholz, Schweizer-
sagen 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
wriie i^t auv der rittersman,' in the dialect of

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

Gottschee, Carniola, 86 vv, Schroer, Sitzungs-
berichte 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,
4 Ulrich und Annchen,' * 49 w, Herder's Volks
lieder, 1778,1, 79; Mittler, No 78. U,'Schon
Ulrich und Roth-Aennchen,' 46 vv, in Tasch-
enbuch fiir 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,
4 Schb'n-Aennelein,' 54 w, from the eastern
part of Brandenburg, Erk u. Inner, 6th Heft,
p. 64, No 56 (stanzas 4-8 from the preceding).
"W, ' Schb'n Ullerich und Hanselein,' twenty-
nine two-line stanzas, from the neighborhood
of Breslau, in Grater's Idunna und Hermode,
No 35, Aug. 29, 1812, following p. 140. The
same in Schlesische V. L., No 12, p. 23, ' Schb'n
Ulrich u. Rautendelein,' with a stanza (12)
inserted ; and Mittler, No 81. X, ' Der Al-
brecht u. der Hanselein,' 42 TV, from Natan-
gen, East Prussia, in Neue preussische Pro-
vinzial-Blatter, 2d series, in, 158, No 8. Y,
4 Ulrich u. Annie,' nineteen two-line stanzas,
a second Kuhlandchen version, Meinert, p. 66 ;
Mittler, No 83. Z a, 4 Von einem frechen
Rauber, 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 ver
bal 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 ver
sions A-F (6), and coming nearest to English
and Dutch tradition, has been found along
the lower half of the Rhine and in Westpha
lia, or in Northwest Germany; the second,
including G-S (13), is met with in Swabia,
Switzerland, Bohemia, Moravia, Styria, Car-

* The copies with this title in Simrock, No 6, p. 1 5, and
in Scherer's Jungbrunnen, No 5 A, and his Deutsche V. L.,
1851, p. 349, are compounded from various texts.

niola, or in South Germany ; the third, T-Z
(7), in East Prussia, the eastern part of Bran
denburg 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 com
pany 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 in
jury ; 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

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

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 her
self 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 blow
ing the horn. Odilia thinks " much biding
or blowing is not good." She rides away, and
presently meets the trooper's "little foot-page "
(hot), 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 mani
festly 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 Mar,
Ottilia die achte der Todten war,

was, no doubt, suggested by the last of P, an
other of Zuccalmaglio's versions, and, if genu
ine, 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, rauber). 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.*

* 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.

E resembles C closely. ' Odilia becomes
Schondilg (Schon Odilie), Rauber returns to
Ritter, or Reiter, and the servant-maid bribe
of seven pounds of gold rises to ten tons.f
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, B.
In stanza 13 we find the knight directing the
lady to strip off her silk gown and gold neck
lace, 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, resem
bling 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, be
gins, 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

t 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.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

has hanged eleven * 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.f

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 be
long to another ballad, $ 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.

* The number eleven is remarkably constant in the Ger
man 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, Dan
ish F, have ten ; German A, B, Danish E, Norwegian I,
have nine ; German C, D, seven ; Danish G has nineteen.

' 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 impor
tant 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'a version of
what the bird had said. The important fea
ture 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 be
gins to weep, Adelger asks whether her tears
are for her father's land, or because she dis
likes 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, 0 empress mine,

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.

t This stroke of realism fails only in M, N, R, of this
second class.

J Apparently to a Ribold ballad, of which no other trace
has been found in German. See further on in this volume.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

Adelger 's killed his eleven before,
Thou 'It be the twelfth, of that be sure.' *

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 Adel-
ger's mother, and the brother says that Adel-
ger's are to go to his shield-bearer. The un
happy maid cries but twice, to the Virgin and
to her brother. When surprised by the broth
er, Adelger feigns to be twisting a withe for
his falcon.

I begins, like G, H, with the knight's se
ductive song. Instead of the dove directly
warning the maid, it upbraids the man :
" Whither now, thou Ollegehr ? f 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.' $

In J, again, the knight comes riding through

* 13 ' Ach du schone junkfraw fein,
Du pfalzgravin, du kaiserin !
Der Adelger hat sich vor ailf getodt,
Du wirst die zwolft, 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.

t Nimmersatt (All-begehrend) as interpreted by Meinert,
not Adelger.

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.

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 § 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 criea are for her fa
ther, 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 re
turns her devout thanks. ||

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 :

§ 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 occa
sion to regard the dove here as a Waldminne ( Vilmar, Hand-
biichlein fur Freunde des deutschen Volkslieds, p. 57). Cf.
the nightingale (and two nightingales) in the Danish ' Red-
selille og Medelvold : ' see ' Leesome Brand,' further on in
this volume.

|| This ballad has become, in Tubingen, 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-
Keime, No 439.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

' Wir wollen ein wenig weiter vonvarts faren,
Bis zu einem kiihlen Waldbrunnen,
Der ist mit Blut iiberronnen.' *

L 26-28, 17-19.

The three cries are for father, mother,
brother. In K the brother fights with " Ul-
rich " two hours and a half before he can mas
ter 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 bankelsanger,
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 straight
way 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.f

N is as short as M, and, like it, has no
names, but has all the principal points : the

* 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 sim
plicity of ballads. Another Swabian copy, Meier, p. 301,
note, strophe 6, has :

' Wir miissen zu selbigem Bronnen
Wo Wasser und Blut heraus ronnen.'

t The last verses are these, and not very much worse than
the rest :

Mein Bruder ist ein Jagersmann,
Der alle Thierlein schiessen kann ;
Er hatt' ein zweischneidiges Schwerte,
Und stach es dem Falschen ins Herze.

Ihr Madchen alle insgemein,
Lasst euch doch diess zur Warnung sein,
Und geht doch mit keinem so falschen
In einen so finsteren Walde.

fascinating song, the dove on the bush, eleven
maids in the fir, the three cries, and the res
cue 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 4

O is a fairly well-preserved ballad, resem
bling G-J as to the course of the story. An-
neli, 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 iiberrunnen ; " 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 011 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 re-

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.

J 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.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

touched, 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,

'T is 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 furious
ly, 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 (Riideli,
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 pre
sents 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 re

move the maid's anxiety, says, " Let it talk ;
it does not know me ; I am no such murder
er." 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 fa
ther's land, and enjoins her to stay at home
and spin silk. There are no names.

There is one feature entirely peculiar to B.
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 com
mon 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 per
haps could not do better : " Fear not : there is
in these parts a spring that runs blood and
water." This spring is misplaced, for it oc
curs 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 B 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 ;*
then calmly leads his sister home, with the
warning against knights.

* What will those who are so troubled about cork-heeled
shoon in ' Sir Patrick Spens ' say to the fire-arms in L, N,
S?

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

(III.) T, the first of the third series, has
marked signs of deterioration. Ulrich does
not enchant Annchen by his song, arid prom
ise to teach it to her ; he offers to teach her
" bird-song." They walk out together, appar
ently, 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. Ul-
rich'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 fa
ther, 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. Scho'n Ulrich and Roth
Annchen 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 Schb'n-Heinrich and Schbn-Annelein, and
in the "sighs" returning to cries, which in
voke God, father, and brother.

W begins with a rivalry between Ulrich

and Hanselein * 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, " be
cause," as she says, " I must die." His re
mark upon this, if there was any, is lost. Hoff
mann 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 Hanselein woo Alalein.
She is promised to Albrecht, but Hansel 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, Heir Jesu Christ,
Mein jiingster Bruder, wo Du bist !/

Her brother rides in the direction of the voice,
and meets Hanselein 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, Annie, 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

* A variety of W, cited in Schlesische Volkslieder, p. 26,
has,

' Ach Ulbrich, Ulbrich, Halsemann, Halsemann,
Lass du niich 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
unverstandlicher Vorname des Hitters Uleraich " in Y (Mei-
nert), would equally well yield Hanslein. Might not Halse
mann possibly be an equivalent of Halsherr ?

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

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
inL*

Z, which takes us back from Eastern 'Ger
many 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 valua
bles, 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 al
lowed three cries, — to God, her parents, her
youngest brother. The youngest brother de
mands of Ulrich where he has left his sister.
" Look in my pocket, and you shall find four
teen 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 dis
tinction 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 con
stant, or nearly so, in each class. In I, A-P,
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, ser
vant, who interrogate her [except P, which,
as just said, is a fragment]. Class II has sev

eral marks of its own. All the thirteen bal
lads [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,f or more than one ; in all but the
much-abridged M, N, the knight spreads his
cloak on the grass, they sit down, and, ex
cepting 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, n, 100, No 21 (1778), and since
reprinted, under the titles, ' Liebe ohne Stand,'
' Der Ritter und die Konigstochter,' etc., but
never with absolute fidelity, in Wunderhorn
(1819), I, 37S(=Erlach, n, 120), Kretzsch-
mer, 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 Wun
derhorn (1857), I, 39. Independent versions
are given by Mittler, No 90, p. 83, from Ober-
hessen ; Prohle, Weltliche u. geistliche Volks-
lieder, No 5, p. 10, from the Harz ; Reiffer-
scheid, No 18, p. 36, from Bokendorf. Erk
refers to still another copy, five stanzas longer

* And in ' Der Mutter Fluch,' Meinert, p. 246, a ballad
with which Y agrees in the first two and last four stanzas.

t There is a dove in Z, but Z, as has been said, presents
traits of all three classes.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

than Nicolai's, from Hesse-Darmstadt, Neue
Saramlung, 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 fa$on, his usual re
quest. The king's daughter sheds many tears,
and he asks why. " Had I followed my fa
ther'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 par
ticularly noticed. .

' Stolz Sieburg,' Simrock, No 8, p. 21, from
the Rhine, Mittler, No 88, is another and some
what more rational form of the same stoiy.
To the question whether she is weeping for
Gut, Muth, Ehre, the king's daughter answers :

' Ich wein um meine Ehre,

Ich wollt gem 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 re
solves to hang himself.*

A Dutch version of this ballad, Le Jeune,
No 92, p. 292 ; Willems, No 72, p. 186 ; Hoff
mann, 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

* ' Da lyge, feyns Lybchen, unndt fawle,
Meyn jungk Herze muss trawren.'

Nicolai, w 35, 36,

' Da liege, du Hauptchen, und f aide,
Kein Renter wird dir nachtrauern.'

Simrock, vv 35, 36,

are evidently derived from the apostrophe to the murder
er's head in I, "W, Y.

Stolz Syburg is the hero of a very different ballad, from
the Mlinster 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

son, will marry you to-morrow." " I would
rather lose my head than be your wife," re
plies 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 com
bined with that of the beautiful ballad, ' Was-
sermanns Braut.' f (1.) In a Transylvanian
ballad, ' Brautmb'rder,' Schuster, Siebenbiir-
gisch-sachsische Volkslieder, p. 57, No 54 A,
38 vv, with variations, and p. 59, B, a fragment
of 10 vv ; (A in a translation, Bohme, 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 ' Was-
sermanns 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 inter
polated in W, stanza 12.

(2.) A Silesian copy of ' Wassermanns

story, may have been taken up by the Rhine ballad, though
it has contributed nothing more. Margaret, a king's daugh
ter, 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.

t ' Wassermans Braut,' Meinert, p. 77 ; ' Die ungliickliche
Braut,' Hoffmann u. Richter, Schlesische V. L., p. 6, No. 2 ;
' Konigs Tochterlein,' Erk u. Inner, vi, 6, No 4 ; ' Der Was-
sermann,' Erk's Liederhort, p. 50, No 17. ('Die Nixen-
braut,' " Norddeutschland," Zuccalmaglio, p. 192, No 92,
seems to be Meinert's copy written over.)

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

Braut,' cod by ffman contributed to Deutsches
Museum, 1852, n, 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 Ul-
rich ballad W, the conclusion being that the
sister is drowned before the brother comes to
her aid.*

* Nun schiirz dich, Gredlein,' " Forster's
Frische Liedlein, No 66," Bohme, No 53, Uh-
land, No 256 A, which is of the date 1549, and
therefore older than the Nuremberg and Augs
burg 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 ' Miillertucke '
have also adopted verses from Ulinger, es
pecially that in Meier's Schwabische Volks-
lieder, No 233, p. 403.

A form of ballad resembling English C-F,
but with some important differences, is ex
traordinarily 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,
Piesni ludu Polskiego w Galicyi, p. 90, No 5,
and Kolberg, Piesni 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

* The remarkable Norwegian ballad of the ' Wassermanns
Braut ' 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 meS sjave seg :
Tru mine sma knivar 'ki hjelper meg? '

and Norwegian F, stanza 9, cited by Grundtvig, iv, 4,

Lengji sto Gullbjor, ho tenkte mas seg :
' Kami inkje mi' runinne hjelpe meg ? '

t Kolberg's b, h, k, v, x, bb, cc, hh, kk, 11, nn, xx,

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 man
ner 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 fol
lows, 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, Waclaw z Oleska, p. 483, 2, Kolberg, p :
L*, Kozlowski, Lud, p. 33, No iv : M, Woj-
cicki, i, 234, Kolberg, r : N, Wojcicki, i, 82,
Kolberg, s : O, Kolberg, d : P, ib. f : Q, pp :
B, Wojcicki, i, 78, Kolberg, e : S, Kolberg,
1 : T, ib. n : U, Pauli, Pjesni ludu Polskiego
w Galicyi, p. 92, No 6, Kolberg, q : V, Kol
berg, y : W, Wojcicki, n, 298, " J. Lipinski,
Piesni ludu Wielkopolskiego, p. 34," Kol
berg, ee ; X, Kolberg, a : Y, ib. z : Z, aa :
AA, qq : BB, w ; CC, ddd : DD, m : BE, c :
FF, o : GG, 11 : 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.!

The story of the larger part of these bal
lads, conveyed as briefly as possible, is this :
John, who is watering horses, urges Cather
ine,^: who is drawing water, to elope with him.
He bids her take silver and gold enough, that
the horse may have something to carry. Cath
erine says her mother will not allow her to
enter the new chamber. Tell her that you
have a headache, says John, and she will con
sent. Catherine feigns a headache, is put into

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, n, 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.

t Anne in R, LL, and Kolberg's h : Mary in L IT, H :
Ursula, N : both Catherine and Alice, AA. John is found
in all but N, where there is a nameless seigneur.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

the new chamber, and absconds with John
while her mother is asleep.* 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, FP, silk stock
ings, 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. Cather
ine 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, B, 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," f B, C, F, P, U, V, W, X, Z,
EE, II. Catherine is drawn ashore in a fish
erman'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

* They are expressly said to go off in a carriage in I, O,
Q, T, BB, DD, FP. 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 re
fuse to stir.

t One version of ' The Two Sisters,' Q, has the same
answer :

1 1 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

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 fisher
men 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.J Not so in the more vigorous

of the kind occurs three times in X, four times in B, five
times in F ; 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.
} L, L*, M, N, as already said, confuse the two catas
trophes. John says, in N, " Do you see that broad river *
I will measure its depth by throwing you in." We may as
sume 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 con
clusion of M is absurd, but need not be particularized. G-

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

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, I/.
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 *) comes
from a distant country, or from over the bor
der, 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," re
minding us of the wonderland in Danish A,
B, 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 your
self into the river, or go home to your mother ?
So H, and R nearly. f She prefers death to
returning. Previous victims are mentioned in

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.

* N 1, " A lord came riding from his estate to a neigh
bor."

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.J

Other Slavic forms of this ballad resem
ble more or less the third German class. A
Wendish version from Upper Lusatia, Haupt
and Schmaler, Part I, No 1, p. 27, makes Hil-
ziuka (Lizzie) go out before dawn to cut grass.
Holdrask 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. Holdrask, 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 Hol
drask comes up to them. Then follows the
dialogue about the bloody sword and the dove.
When asked where he has left Hilzicka, "Hol
drask is silent. The elder brother seizes him,
the younger dispatches him with his sword.

Very similar is a Bohemian ballad, trans
lated in Waldau's Bohmische Granaten, n,
25. § 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

t The place is high above the water in R 10, 11, as in
English D 9, 29, C 4.

J 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.

§ 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.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

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
culling 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 bal
lad. The brothers hewed the murderer into
fragments.

A Servian ballad has fainter but unmistak
able 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., n, 172, by
Kapper, Gesange der Serben, II, 318. Mara
is warned by her mother not to dance with
Thomas. She disobeys. Thomas, while danc
ing, 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.*

French. This ballad is well known in
France, and is generally found in a form re
sembling 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-P).
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

* A few silly verses follow in the original, in which
Thomas treats what he had said as a jest. These are prop
erly rejected by Talvj as a spurious appendage,
t ' De achte de soil Helena sin,
De achte de most he solwer sin.'

German A b 13.

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 re
versed). " 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." f
" Reach me your hand ; I wall marry you Sun-
day."

" Marry, marry a fish, Renauld,
The fourteen women down below."

B. * De Dion et de la Fille du Roi,' from
Auvergne, Ampere, Instructions, etc., 40 vv,
p. 40, stanzas 15-24, the first fourteen consti
tuting another ballad. :j: 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' Jeanrieton,' 32 w,

J Another version of this double ballad, but much cor
rupted in the second part, was known to Gerard de Nerval.
See Les Filles du Feu, CEuvres completes, v, 132.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

from Poitou and Aunis,. Bujeaud, n, 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 be
fore 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 bal
lad is pointless, and shows that the original
story has been completely forgotten.

E. ' Belle, allons nous dpromener,' from the
Lyonnais, 28 vv, Champfleury, Chansons des
Provinces, p. 172, is like C, but still more de
fective. The pair go to walk by "la mer
courante." There is no order for the lady
to strip : on the contrary, she cries, De'sha-
billez-moi, ddchaussez-moi ! and, while the
man is drawing off her shoe, " la belle avance
un coup de pied, le beau galant tombe dans
1'eau."

P. ' Allons, mie, nous promener,' 32 vv,
Poesies populaires de la France, MS., in, 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 Traitre Noye*,' Chants pop. du Ve-
lay et du Forez, Romania, X, 199, is like E, P.

H. 4La Fillette et le Chevalier,' Victor
Smith, Chants pop. du Velay et du Forez,
Romania, x, 198, resembles the common Pol
ish 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 lone
some 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 in

formed of her fate by a shepherdess, who had
witnessed the murder. The youngest of her
three brothers plunges into the water, ex
claiming, Who threw you in ? An angel de
scends, 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 ser
vant-girl. He is judicially condemned to be
hanged or burned.

* La Fille de Saint-Martin de 1'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 kill
ing my sister. So Gerard de Nerval, Les Filles
du Feu, CEuvres Com., v, 134, and La Boheme
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, Ber-
noni, 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 re
quests 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 de
nies, but afterwards says she must go to Rome
to confess a great sin. There she obtains
prompt absolution.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

B. ' La Figlia del Conte,' Adolf Wolf, Volks-
lieder 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 con
fesses to her brother what she has done.

C. Righi, Canti popolari veronesi, 58 vv, No
94*, p. 30. The count's son marries Mam-
presa, 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 Contempo-
ranea, 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 losf 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.

P. ' La Inglese,' 40 vv, Ferraro, Canti po
polari 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,' Fer
raro, 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 improp
erly grouped with them : e. g., ' La Fille des
Sables,' Bujeaud, n, 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.* 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 sug
gests that his sword would cut it. She plunges
the sword into her heart. So ' Du Beau Ma-
rinier,' Beaurepaire, p. 57 f, and Poesies pop-
ulaires de la France, MS., m, fol. 59, No
4 ; ' L'Epe*e Liberatrice,' V. Smith, Chansons
du Velay, etc., Romania, vil, 69, nearly ;
also ' II Corsaro,' Nigra, Rivista Contempo-
ranea, xxiv, p. 86 ff. In ' La Monferrina In-
contaminata,' 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 rx, 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 sin
gle form, the earliest printed in any language,
preceding, by a few years, even the German
broadsides G, H.

' Romance de Rico Franco,' 36 vv, " Cancio-
nero de Romances, s. a., fol. 191 : Cane, de
Rom., ed. de 1550, fol. 202 : ed. de 1555, fol.
296 ; " Wolf and Hofmann, Primavera, No
119, n, 22 : Duran, No 296, i, 160 : Grimm,
p. 252 : Depping and Galiano, 1844, n, 167 :
Ochoa, p. 7. The king's huntsmen got no
game, and lost the falcons. They betook thein-

* So far there is agreement in 'La Fille du Prince,' Pay
maigre, No 32, p. 106 ; Poesies pop. de la France, MS., m,
fol. 133.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

selves 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 correspond
ing Portuguese ballad. The lady wept. Rico
Franco comforted her thus : If you are weep
ing 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 broth
ers.

A Portuguese ballad has recently been ob
tained 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 frag
ment of 18 vv ; Braga, Cantos populares do
Archipelago aQoriano, No 48, p. 316, No 49,
p. 317: Hartung's Romanceiro, n, 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 mid
dle of the mountain ridge on which Dona Inez
lived, the knight stopped to rest, and she be
gan to weep. From this point Portuguese A,
and B so far as it is preserved, agree very
nearly with the Spanish.*

Certain Breton ballads have points of con
tact with the Halewyn-Ulinger class, but, like
the French and Italian ballads mentioned on
the preceding page, have more important di
vergences, and especially the characteristic dis
tinction that the woman kills herself to pre
serve her honor. 1. ' Jeanne Le Roux,' Luzel,

* The Asturian romance communicated in two copies by
Amador de los Rios to Jahrbuch fur rom. u. eng. Literatur,
Hi, 285, No 2, and the Portuguese ' Romance de Romei-
rinha,' Braga, Romanceiro, No 9, p. 24, ' A Romeira,' Al-
meida-Garrett, in, 11, are not parallels, though they have
been cited as such.

t Magyar Nepkolte'si Gyiijtemeny. Uj Folyam, szerkesz-

I, 324 ff, in two versions ; Poesies pop. de la
France, MS., in, fol. 182. The sieur La
Tremblaie attempts the abduction of Jeanne
from the church immediately after her mar
riage 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 car
ried 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 Gue*odet, 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 chateau
is broken in by Kerninon, foster-brother of
the victim, who forces Coatredrez to fight,
and runs him through. 3. ' Rozmelchon,' Lu
zel, I, 308 ff, in three versions, and, 4, 'La Fil-
leule de du Guesclin,' Villemarque', Barzaz-
Breiz, 6th ed., 212 ff, are very like 2. The
wicked Rozmelchon is burned in his chateau
in Luzel's first copy ; the other two do not
bring him to punishment. Villemarqu^'s vil
lain 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 seign
eurs in ferocity. The young girl throws her
self into the water.

Magyar. Five versions from recent tradi
tions, all of them interesting, are given in
Arany and Gyulai's collection of Hungarian
popular poetry, ' Molnar Anna,' I, 137 ff,
Nos l-5.f — A, p. 141, No 3. A man, name
less here, but called in the other versions

tik ^s kiadjak Arany Laszld es Gyulai Pal. 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 (B), at p. 120, ' Molnar Anna,' in each case
obscuring or omitting one or two traits which are impor
tant for a comparative view.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

Martin Ajg6, or Martin Sajg6, 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 Ajg6 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 Mar
tin'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 Ajg<5, she says : why
did you lure me from home? C, p. 144,'
No 4. Martin Sajg6 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 scab
bard. D, p. 146, No 5. Here reappears the

very important feature of the wonderland :
" Come, let us go, Anna Miller, a long jour
ney into the wilderness, to a place that flows
with milk and honey." Anna insists, as be
fore, 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 essen
tially with the others. Martin Ajg6 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, main
tains 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,' Schroter, Fin-
nische Runen, p. 114, 115; l Kojosen Poika,'
Lonnrot, 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. Nat
urally 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 inter
spersed 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 porten
tous 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, natu-

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

ralized 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 Volksthiimliches aus
Schwaben, I, 368, No 592, and Germania, 1st
Sen, v, 372.)

The story of the German ballad P has at
tached itself to localities in the neighborhood
of Weissenbach, Aargau, and is told with mod
ifications 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,' Prb'hle,
Marchen fur die Jugend, No 32, p. 136, which
comes from the western Harz, or from some
place further north, on the line between Kyff-
haiiser and Hamburg, is, roughly speaking,
only ' Gert Olbert ' turned into prose, with a
verse or two remaining. ' Der betrogene Be-
triiger,' from Miihlbach, Miiller's Siebenburg-
ische Sagen, No 418, p. 309, has for its hero
a handsome young man, addicted to women,
who obtains from the devil the power of mak
ing 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 de-
The brother of a twelfth substituted

sire.

: 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 En-
gelske 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 Dan-
marks 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 dif
ferent character, and the doves serve a differ
ent purpose. The tale is a variety of ' Fitch-
ers 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 ' Blue
beard' becomes, or remains, a preternatural
being (a hill-man) further north, as in Grundt
vig'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 im
possible to expound. ' Bluebeard,' * La Barbe
Bleue,' Perrault, Histoires ou Contes du temps
passe", 1697, p. 57 (LefSvre), has a special re
semblance to the German ballads of the second
class in the four calls to sister Anne, which
represent the cries to father, mother, and broth
er, 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 cov
ered by this ballad, we observe that the frame
work 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, Por
tuguese, and Magyar. The woman delivers

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

herself from death by some artifice,* and re
taliates upon the man the destruction he had
intended for her. The second form of the Ger
man ballad attributes the deliverance of the
woman to her brother, and also the punish
ment 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 other
wise less like the German. The Servian bal
lad, a slight thing at best, is still less like, but
ranks with the third German class. The old
est 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 mur
derer.

It is quite beyond question that the third
class of German ballad is a derivation from
the second.f Of the versions T-Z, Z alone has
preserved clear traits of the marvellous. A
king's daughter is enticed from home by Ul-
rich'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 Ann-
chen 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 Annchen's house, in the first stanza

* 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.

t I accept and repeat Grundtvig's views as to the relation

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 com
mon 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 de
pend 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 sev
eral 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 vic
tim of it; not more, however, than is else
where witnessed in preternatural beings, whose
wits are frequently represented as ho match for
human shrewdness. Some of the Scandina
vian ballads are not liable to the full force of
this objection, whatever that may be, for they
make the knight express a suspicion of treach
ery, 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, where
as the previous compact is found only in Dan
ish E, P, G, H, L, Swedish A, Norwegian A,
and the Icelandic ballad. Not occurring in
any of the older Danish copies, it may be that

of the three forms of the story. And with regard to the his
tory 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.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

the compact is an after-thought, and was in
serted to qualify the improbability. But the
lady's equivocation is quite of a piece with
Memering's oath in ' Ravengaard and Memer-
ing,' Grundtvig, No 13, and King Dietrich's
in the Dietrichsaga, linger, c. 222, p. 206.*

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 purpose
less (for it does not advance the action of the
drama in the least), and must be regarded as
a relic of an earlier forin.f English B-P and
all the French ballads dispose of the traitor
by a watery death. Thejscene js_shifted from
a wood to a sea-cpastj pool, or river bank, per
haps to suit the locality to which the ballad
had wandered. In English B, where, appar
ently under the influence of other ballads, $ 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 bal
lad 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 Span
ish and Portuguese ballads make the lady bor-

* 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.

t Magyar A is entirely peculiar. Apparently the man
7

row 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 re
garded 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 kindToT
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 nmsic,§
Danish A, B, 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 Pol
ish Q. The tongue that talks after the head
is off, in the Dutch ballad and in German A,
B, C, B, 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 compar
atively 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 bal
lads, Danish A, Swedish A, B, or • German

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.

t ' Child Waters,' ' The Fair Flower of Northumberland.'
§ 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 de
scribed as such.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

A-E.* 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 mas
ter of the harp, and would decoy women into
the woods with his playing, keep them as
long as he liked, and send them home preg
nant 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 Be6wulf.f
This demi-elf Quintalin is a tame personage
by the side of Grendel or of Halewyn. Hale
wyn does not devour his victims, like Grendel :
Quintalin does not even murder his. He al
lures women with his music to make them serve
his lust. We may infer that he would plun
der 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

* 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 Dan
ish editor observes, has no longer any significancy in the Ger
man ballads, because in all of them the previous victims are
said to have been hanged.

t The saga in Bjorner's Nordiska Kampadater, c. 5-7.

J Danish B, 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 ; ' Eibold og Guldborg,' No 82, C 13, E 14, etc. ; ' Redse-

treacherous knight as lecherous as bloody, and
so with German J, K, L, O, P, Q, R, S, and
Italian A, B, C, B, P. This trait is wanting
in Danish D, where, though traces of the
originally demonic nature of the knight re
main, the muckle gold of the maids already
appears as the motive for the murders. In the
later Danish B-H, K, L, and Swedish Q, D,
the original elf or demon has sunk to a re
morseless robber, generally with brothers, sis
ters, or underlings for accomplices.^ This
is preeminently 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, Ger
man 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 rob
ber 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 Swed
ish D, Norwegian A, B, English D-F). J-L,
O-S, give us to understand that the lady had
lost her honor,§ but in all the rest, except the
anomalous Z, the motive for murder is insuffi
cient. ||

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

lille og Medelvold,' No 271, A 21, B 20 ; 272, Bilag 3,,st. 8 ;
270, 18, etc.

§ So perhaps a Polish ballad in Wojcicki, i, 38, akin to
the other John and Katie ballads.

|| 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 Jahrbiicher, 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 tra
dition in the Aargau. So far as this cycle of ballads is con
cerned, 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.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

peculiar, and the Northern ones, though su
perficially of some variety, have yet likeness
enough to tempt one to seek for a common
original. Grundtvig, with considerable diffi
dence, suggests Oldemor as a possible ground-
form. He conceives that the R of some of the
Scandinavian names may be a relic of a fore
going Herr. The initial H would easily come
or go. Given such a name as Hollemen (Dan
ish 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 der
ivation that Grundtvig is far from asserting.
So Ulinger, a local appellation, might be sub
stituted for the Ulver of Danish A. Grundt
vig, 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 Ol
demor.

In place of Oldemor, Professor Sophus
Bugge, in a recent article, marked by his char
acteristic 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.* His argu
ment, 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.f The source of the story in the
ballad must in any case be a tradition many

* Det philologisk-historiske Samfunds Mindeskrift i Air
ledning af dets femogtyveaarige Virksomhed, 1854-79, Bi-
drag til den nordiske Balladedigtnings Historic, p. 75 ff.

t Bugge cites the Old German Judith, Miillenhoff u.
Scherer, Denkmaler, 2d ed., No 37, p. 105, to show how the
Bible story became modified under a popular treatment.

J Holef'ern 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 ap
pellation, is found in two other Dutch ballads, one of which

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, Ro-
mor, etc., may have been carried over from a
prefixed Herr.J

The original name of the heroine has been
lost, and yet it is to be noticed that Gert Ol-
bert's mother, in German A, is called Fru
Jutte.

The heroine in this same ballad is named
Helena (Linnich in P) ; 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 con
ceived of as rather a saint than a secular char
acter, 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 Eng
lish 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 blood-

(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, Rulle-
mann, Reimvord might have sprung from or have been sug
gested by Holofern, under the influence of familiar termina
tions, but it may be remarked that Hildebrand, Ravengaard,
Valdemar, Rosmer, if they had occurred in any version,
would have occasioned no greater difficulty.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

thirstiness is found in the truculent part that
Holofernes plays in the Bible, his threats and
devastations. Tfeat 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 de
scribed 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 her
self 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 (mit-
ram).

In the English D, B, F, the oldest Danish,
A, and the Polish versions, the maid, like
Judith, leaves her home in the night.

The Piedmontese caste", Italian B 1 [there
is a castle in nearly all the Italian ballads, and
also in Dutch B], may remind us of Hole-
femes' 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 inten-
disset, adoravit eum, prosternens se super ter-
ram. Et elevaverunt earn servi Holofernis,
jubente domino suo.*

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, ac
cording 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

* 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.

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 zwolfft hat er gefangen.' f

This corresponds with the passage in Judith's
song (xvi, 6), Dixit se . . . infantes meos
d a r e in prsedam etvirgenes incaptiv-
i t a t e m : 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 tous-
ing 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 . Ju
dith xiii, 10: Abscidit caput ejus et . . . evol-
vit corpus ejus truncum. The words appre-
hendit comam capitis ejus (xiii, 9) have their

t It should be observed that these words are from the
dove's warning.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

parallel in Dutch A, 33 : " Zy nam bet 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, vo-
caverunt 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 :

Asa went into a holy cell,
Never did she harm to man.

This agrees with the view taken of the hero
ine 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 rob
ber has shown the maid a little knoll, in which
the " much gold " of the women he has mur
dered lies. When she has killed him, the
maid says, " /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),* her carrying off the cono-
poaum (xiii, 10), and her receiving from the
people all Holofernes' gold, silver, clothes,
jewels, and furniture, as her share of the plun
der of the Assyrian camp (xv, 14). It is,

perhaps, a perversion of this circumstance that
the robber in German G, H, is refused per
mission 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 enemv'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 Ju
dith 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, ac
cording 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 else
where in popular poetry. The little Katie of
certain northern ballads (see Grundtvig, No
101) is a maid among other maids who pre
fers 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 ver
sions of the Halewyn ballad which we possess,
even the purest, may be far removed from
the primitive, both as to story and as to met
rical form. New features would be taken up,
and old ones would disappear. One copy has

* Simply because he had no other apartment at his dis
position. Shall we add, the Polish mother putting her

daughter into the " new room," in which she kept her valu
ables '!

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

preserved genuine particulars, which another
has lost, but Dutch tradition has kept the
capital features best of all.*

Professor Bugge's argument has been given
with an approach to fulness out of a desire
to do entire justice to the distinguished au
thor's case, though most of the correspondences
adduced by him fail to produce any effect upon
ray mind.

The case is materially strengthened by the
Dutch text C (' Roland'), which was not ac
cessible at the time Bugge's paper was writ-
ten. The name Roland is not so close to Hol-
ofern 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,f 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) ; J she cuts off his head,
which, after her return home, she exposes from
her window.§

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 trans
forming, 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
inind the strange changes which stories un
dergo will hesitate to pronounce this impossi-

* Bugge holds that the ballad was derived by the Scandi
navians 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.

t 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,
in, 148, Arwidsson, No 150, 11, 320, Wigstrom, Folkdiktning,
No 2, p. 11, Landstad, No 55, p. 494 : ' Guldsmedens Dat-
ter,' Grundtvig, No. 245, iv, 481 ff, Wigstrom, ib., No 18, p.
37, Landstad, No 43, p. 437 : Torkilds Riim, Lyngbye, Faer-
0iske Qvseder, 534, 535, Afzelius, in, 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.

ble. 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 He
brew " gest " could be converted into the
European ballad, we naturally look for a less
difficult hypothesis. It is a supposition at
tended with less difficulty that an indepen
dent 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" Quin-
talin 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 carry
ing home Halewyn's [Roland's] head, which
is found in no other version. ||

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

| 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 ja-
cebat in lecto" (xiii, 4), in " Roland die op zijn bedde lag,"
C39.

§ 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 Beowulf, and from Beowulf to
' Sir Andrew Barton.'

|| Dutch B, which, as before said, has been completely re
written, 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.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

34, p. 148 : Wolf, Halle der Volker, I, 38, ham, p. 244, by Knortz, Lied. u. Rom. Alt-
Hausschatz, 225. C, D, etc., as in Ailing- Englands, No 4, p. 14.

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 l 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'.'

a. Buchan's MSS, n, fol. 80. b. Buchan's Ballads of
the North of Scotland, n, 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,
1 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 ;
' 0,' sighend says this lady fair,
I 've wat my gowden girdle.'

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

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 '11 make you the eight o them,
And ring the common hell.'

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 how,

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 Ian ;
She thanked God most cheerfully
The dangers she oercame.

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 ' 0 turn you about, 0 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 '11 drown ;
I '11 take you home to your father's bower,
And set you down safe and sound.'

11 ' No help, no help, 0 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.

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

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 ' 0 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.'

a. Sharpe's Ballad Book (1823), No 17, p. 45. b. Bu-
chan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, n, 45. c. Mother-
well'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 '11 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,
8

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.'

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

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 ' 0 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 '11 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.

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. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

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 wall 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

astray,
That you have tarried so long away.'

you

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.'

Roxbnrghe Ballads, m, 449.

1 ' Go fetch me some of your father's gold,

And some of your mother's fee,
And I '11 carry you into the north land,
And there I '11 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, 0 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.'

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

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 hrim,
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 Forbes1 s ' Cantus,' Aber
deen, 1682, 3d ed., has, as pointed out by
Motherwell, Minstrelsy, p. Ix, nearly the same
burden : The gowans are gay, The first morn
ing 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.
32. Then in. 81. kind sir, said she.
102. That we may some rest before I die.
II1. the near. 132. to them ilk ane.

1 is given by Motherwell, Minstrelsy, p. Ix,
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 man
uscript very slightly, except in spelling.

43, 68. Aft times hae I.

58. And sighing sair says. 7s, 93. And sigh
ing says.

142. Till she swam. 14s. Then thanked. 14*.
she 'd.

c. Like A b, derived by Motherwell from Buchan.

41, 61, 81. wade in, wade in.
143. And thanked.

Dixon, Scottish Traditional Versions of An
cient Ballads, p. 63, printing B from the man
uscript, makes one or two trivial changes.

d is only this fragment.

43 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 '11 wade nae farer in.'

10s ' Sax king's dochters I hae drowned,
An the seventh you sail be.'

4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT

13 ' Lie you there, you fause young man,
Where you thought to Ifty me.'

C b. The printed copy follows the manuscript with
only very trifling variations : Colvin for Col-
ven ; 131, up then spak ; 164, ere day ; 172, al
most worried.

c. 21>2. he 's courted. 28. 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.

31 She 's gane down to her father's stable,
8 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.

58,4 < por jt >g seven king's daughters I have

drowned here,

And the eighth I '11 out make with
thee.'

61>2 ' Cast off, cast off your silks so fine,
And lay them on a stone.'

71'2'8 ' Cast off, cast off your holland smock,

And lay it on this stone,
For it 's too fine.' . .

9M She 's twined her arms about his waist,
And thrown him into

101'2 ' O hold a grip of me, May Colvin,
For fear that I should '

3 father's gates * and safely I '11 set you
down.

t
11 ' O lie you there, thou false Sir John,

0 lie you there,' said she,
' For you lie not in a caulder bed
Than the ane you intended for me.'

128. father's gates. 4. At the breaking of the
day.

13*. 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?'

158'4 'Your cage will be made of the beaten

gold,
And the spakes of ivorie.'

171'2 ' It was a cat cam . . .

I thought 't would have ' . . .

D a. 21. Colin.

b. Buchan's copy makes many slight changes

which are not noticed here.
I2, 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.'

32. Hae towers, towns twenty three.
72. five hunder. 78, The best an steed.
88. fatal end. 84. Binyan's Bay.
122. rich and rare. 12*. 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.'

4 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*. Before her. 144. to toss. 188. her steed.

238. What hast thou made o fause.

283. Charlestown sands. Sharpe thinks Car-

5. GIL BRENTON

line 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. MotherwelV s one stanza is :

0 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. 32. of the. 172. But so.

GIL BRENTON

A. a. 'Gil Brenton,' Jamieson Brown MS., fol. 34. E. Elizabeth Cochrane's song-book, No 112.
b. ' Chil Brenton,' William Tytler Brown MS., No 3.

P. a. ' Lord Brangwill,' MotherwelPs MSS, p. 219.

B. ' Cospatrick,' Scott's Minstrelsy, ii, 117 (1802). b. 'Lord Bengwill,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Ap

pendix, p. xvi.

C. 'We were sisters, we were seven,' Cromek's Re
mains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p. 207. G. 'Bothwell,' Herd's Ancient and Modern Scots

D. 'Lord Dingwall,' Buchan's Ballads of the North
of Scotland, i, 204.

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 Jaraieson-Brown MS., is one of twenty bal
lads 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 Cent
ury, vn, 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 num
ber 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 re
touched almost everywhere, both the ground
work 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

5. GIL BRENTON

century. E is one of the few ballads in Eliz
abeth Cochrane's song-book, and probably of
the first half of the last century. G, the ear
liest 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 edi
torial 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

• * In his note-book, p. 1 1 7, 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 re
pairing 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 taknvng
He gave his lemman thare a ryng,

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, P, 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 P, G, green gloves, a
ring, and three locks [plaits] of hair. Only
the ring reinains 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 substitu
tion of the maiden sister for the real bride
constitutes a prominent feature of the tale." *
(Minstrelsy, Introduction, Ixix 21 and xc.)

Scott remarks that Cospatrickf "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, n, 217; B, 19
two-line stanzas, n, 59; C, 19 two-line stan
zas, n, 56 : No 33, I, 175-182 of Bergstrom's
edition. Besides these, there are two frag
ments in Cavallius and Stephens's unprinted
collection: D, 6 stanzas; E, 7 stanzas, the
latter printed in Grundtvig, V, 307.$ All

And bad hyr that scho suld kepe that wele,
And hald for hys luve that jwele."

CronyJcil, Book VI, ch. xviii, 57-90.

t Scott says : " Cospatrick, Comes Patricius ; " but Coa-
(Gos-)patrick is apparently Servant of Patrick, like Gil-pat-
rick (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.

J A fragment in Rancken's ' Nagra Prof af Folksang/ p.
14 f, belongs not to 'Riddar Olle/ as there said, but to

5. GIL BRENTON

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 com
pletely, 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 some
thing which made him change his tune. He
was an old drunken fellow, and no one need
mind what he sang. After five days of drink
ing, they took the bride to her chamber, not
without force. Ingalilla 1aore 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 ? ' *

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 em
broidered 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

' Herr Aster och Froken Sissa,' though the burden is ' Rid-
dar Olof.' Other verses, at p. 16, might belong to either.
'Riddar Ola,' E. Wigstrom's Folkdiktning, p. 37, No 18,
belongs with the Danish ' Guldsmedens Datter,' Grundtvig,
No 245.
* The inquiry seems to refer to the morning gift. " Die

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 circum
stance, but has lost both the substitution of
the waiting-woman for the bride and the mag
ical coverlet. D has also lost these important
features of the original story ; B has retained
them.

Danish. ' Brud ikke M0,' Grundtvig, No
274, v, 304. There are two old versions
(more properly only one, so close is the agree
ment), 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 sev
enteenth century. B is the well-known ' In-
gefred og Gudrune,' or ' Herr Samsings Nat-
tergale,' Syv, iv, No 62, Danske Viser, No
194, translated in Jamieson's Illustrations, p.
340, and by Prior, in, 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 : S01verlad and
Vendelrod [Ingefred and Gudrune] were sit
ting together, and Vendelrod wept sorely. S01-
verlad 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 S01verlad
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 nightin
gales that could tell him. whether he had mar
ried a maid or no. The sisters turned aside

Morgengabe ist ein Geschenk dcs Mannes als Zeichen der
Liebe (in signura amoris), fur (lie Uebergabe der vollen
Schonheit (in honore pulchritudinis) und der Jungfraulich-
keit (pretium virginitatis)." Weiuhold, Die deutschen Frauen
in dem Mittelalter, S. 270.

5. GIL BRENTON

and changed clothes, but could not change
cheeks ! S01verlad was conducted to Sam-
sing'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. Sam-
sing 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 S01verlad and Vendelrod, there is
a considerable number of Danish ballads char
acterized by the feature that a bride is not a
maid, and most or all of these have similari
ties to ' Gil Brenton.' * Hr. Find og Vendel
rod,' Grundtvig, No 275, has even the talking
blanket (sometimes misunderstood to be a
bed-board^). In this piece there is no substi
tution. 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 ad
venture, — 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,
9

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 ' Brad 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 uncom
fortable, 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, P ; 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 Aster och Froken 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, Ar-
widsson, No 132 ; the saddle and gifts in Ice
landic 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 ha
bitually sad, and is pressed by her lover to ac
count for this. She endeavors to put him off
with fictitious reasons, but finally nerves her
self to tell the truth : she was walking by her
self 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

5. GIL BRENTON

the 16th century), is ' Riddar Lage och Stolts
Elensborg,' Arwidsson, No 56.

' Iver Hr. Jons0n,' 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 trou
ble. Eight men had broken into her bower
on the strand, and the ninth deprived her of
her honor. Iver Hr. Jons0n, with as little
delay, confesses that he was the culprit, and
makes prompt arrangements for the wedding.

There is another series of ballads, repre
sented 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' L0n,' Grundt
vig, 270, « Redselille og Medelvold,' Grundt
vig, 271 C, D, B, I, K, L, M, P, Q, V, Y, and
the Norwegian versions, A, D, B, F, of * S0n-
nens Sorg,' Grundtvig, 272, Bilag 1, 4, 5, 6.*
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 bal
lads besides those belonging to the groups
here spoken of : as ' Hildebrand og Hilde,' E,
I, Grundtvig, No 83, and Norwegian A, m, 857 ;
4 Guldsmedens Datter,' Grundtvig, 245, and
its Swedish counterpart at p. 481 of the pref
ace to the same, and in Eva Wigstrom's Folk-
diktning, p. 37, No 18 ; * Liden Kirstins Dans,'
Grundtvig, 263 (translated by Prior, 112),
and Norwegian B, C, Bilag 2, 3 ; * Jomfruens
Harpeslaet,' Grundtvig, 265 (translated by
Jamieson, ' Illustrations,' p. 382, Prior, 123,
Buchanan, p. 6), and Swedish D, Bilag 2,

* And again, " Is it the saddle, your horse, or your true-
love ? " almost exactly as in our B, E, F, Grundtvig, 40 C,

Swedish A, Afzelius, 81. So Landstad, 42,
45 ; Arwidsson, 141 ; Grundtvig, 37 G ; 38 A,
D ; Kristensen, I, No 95, n, No 28 A, C.

A very pretty Norwegian tale has for the
talisman a stepping-stone at the side of the
bed : Asbj0rnsen og Moe, No 29, ' Vesle Aase
Gaasepige,' Dasent, 2d ed., p. 478. An Eng
lish prince had pictures taken of all the hand
somest 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 fin
ger, 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

E, F, Afzelius, 91, Landstad, 45, 52. So the Scottish ballad,
' The Cruel Brother,' B 15 f.

5. GIL BRENTON

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. Grundt
vig truly remarks that a borrowing by the ro
mance 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 ro
mance in respect to this passage. A similar
artifice is employed in the ballad of ' Torkild
Triindeson,' Danske Viser, 200 (translated by
Prior, 100) ; Afzelius, n, 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 ; ' Wil
lie's Lady ; ' one version of ' Young Beichan ; '
two of ' The Knight and Shepherd's Daugh
ter ; ' and also in the English ballad of ' King
Arthur and the King of Cornwall,' here under
the slightly disfigured name of Burlow Beanie.*
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 asso
ciated in a passage cited by Grimm from
Voet : " De illis quos nostrates appellant beeld-
wit et blinde belien, a quibus nocturna visa
videri atque ex iis arcana revelari putant." f
Though the etymology of these words is not
unencumbered with difficulty, bit seems to

* The auld belly-blind man in ' Earl Richard,' 44s, 45*,
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.

t Gisbertus Voetius, De Miraculis, Disput., n, 1018. Cited

point to a just and kindly-tempered being.
Bilvis, in the seventh book of Saxo Grammat-
icus, is an aged counsellor whose bent is to
make peace, while his brother Bb'lvfs, a blind
man, is a strife-breeder and mischief-maker. J
The same opposition of Bil and Bol apparently
occurs in the Edda, Grfmnismal, 474, where
Bil-eygr and Bol-eygr (Bal-eygr) are appel
latives of Odin, which may signify mild-eyed
and evil-eyed. Bb'lvis is found again in the
Hr6mund's saga, under the description of
' Blind the Bad,' and ' the Carl Blind whose
name was Bavfs.' But much of this saga is
taken from the story of Helgi Hundingslayer ;
and Blind the Bad in the saga is only Sae-
mund's Blindr inn bolvfsi, — 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
(Bblverkr), who will presently be seen in the
ballad of ' Earl Brand ' masking as Old Carl
Hood, " aye for ill and never for good." Orig
inally and properly, perhaps, only tne bad
member of this" mythical pair is blind; but it
would not be at all strange that later tradi
tion, 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 ; Uhlaud, Zur Ge-
schichte der Dichtung u. Sage, in, 132 ff, vn,
229 ; Schmeller, Bayerisches Worterbuch, n,
1037 ff, ed. 1877 ; Van den Bergh, Woorden-
boek 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 informa
tion of such a street.

D is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og
skotske Folkeviser, No 40, p. 262.

also by Schmeller, Bayerisches Worterbuch, from J. Pr»-
torius's Alectryomantia, p. 3.

t Merlin, in Layamon, v. 17130 ff (as pointed out by
Grundtvig, i, 274), says that his mind is balewise, " mi gasst
is baeliwis," and that he is not disposed to gladness, mirth,
or good words.

5. GIL BKENTON

a. Jamieson-Brown MS., No 16, fol. 34. b. William Tyt-
ler's Brown MS., No 3. From the recitation of Mrs Brown
of Falkland, 1783, Aberdeenshire.

1 GEL BREISTTON 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 ' 0 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 '11 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 ' 0 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 Ian.

5. GIL BRENTON

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 '11 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 ' 0 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 '11 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 sue the king's son a sark.

45 ' 0 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-kniff e,
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 ' 0 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 Ian,
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.'

5. GIL BKENTON

71 ' 0 son, keep still your father's Ian ;
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.'

Scott's Minstrelsy, 11, 117, ed. 1802. Ed. 1830, in, 263.
Partly from the recitation of Miss Christian Eutherford.

1 COSPATBICK 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 0 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.

6. GIL BRENTON

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 ' 0 stay, my son, into this ha,

And sport ye wi your merrymen a' ;

30 ' And I will to the secret hour,

To see how it fares wi your paramour.'

31 The carline she was stark and sture ;
She aff the hinges dang the dure.

32 ' 0 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 ' 0 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 ' 0 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 sail 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.'

3. GIL BBKHTQar

WK were sisters, we were serwu

We wm* the fairest under heaven.

2 AnJ it was a* oar seven JUJM wark
To sew oar father's seven sarks.

3 And whan oar seven years wark wae
We hud it oat opo the green.

4 We eoost the lottks as amang.

• Wha wad to the greenwood gang.

5 To pa the Hry bat and the rose,
To strew witha7 our asters' bowers.

6 . . Iwas

8 Therelmeta

ehUde-

9 ffighncoled ii 1'jj ami fcajh mini
He bore him fike a king's son.

10 An was I weeL or was I wae.
He keepit me a' the simmer day.

12 He gae to me a gay gold ring,
And bade me keep it

13 He gae to me a eattie knife.

:: ^ BBJ lifr :

14 Tfaee
Fcrfnrwe

* * * *

15 Xert there came dnppes three.

16 r 1 ii •• i ft • 1 nil, m I imili a • I ••,

IT They came toom and fight to •*
Bat hearie weak they waie fra*

18 They were fa o
Thar were fa of

.' - ^ ~. .

•M

19 My dm

a* by the sea.

Bat I gaed by the grenewode tree.

20 An I sighed and made great maae,
As thro the greaewode we rade oar

21 An I ay siehed an wiped my ee.
That eer the Mnnde I did see.

22 *Is there water in roar glove,

Or win into yoar she*?
Of r] am I oer low a foot pay
To rin by yoo. ladle?'

23 • O there *s nae water in my glove.

Nor win into my shoe :
Bat I am maning for my mither

Wha "s far awa frae me."
*****

24 • Gin ye be a maiden fair.
Meikle gnde ye will get there.

25 • If ye be a maiden bat.
Memle aenew win ye gat.

26 * For seven king's daughters he hath wedded.
Bat never wi ane o them has bedded.

27 -He

Ans

fc • 1 1^

' He sets their backs
An seads theam back

29 • Bat be ye maiden or be ye naae,
To the gowdea chair ye draw right

30 • Bat be ye lemaa or be ye
Sat mm dbvm tffl ye be hi

31 Was she maiden or was she nane^
To the gowdca chair she drew right

32 "~i In !!••• ii i 11

aw*

5. GIL BKKMOJI

33 Oat dien spake die lord's mother;
Says, • This is not a maiden fair.

34 • In that chair nae leal m^j*~
Eer sits down tffl diey be bidden.'

35 The Bfflie Blin

As he stood by die fair ladie.

36 *' The bonnie may is tired wi riding.
Gaord her sit down ere she

*****

37 Bat on her waiting-maid she ea'd :

• Fair ladie. what 's yoor wifl wi me ? '
* O ye maon gie yere maidenheid
This night to an onco lord for me.'

38 ' I hae been east. I hae been west.

I hae been far beyond die sea.
Bat ay. by grenewode or by bower,
I hae keeph my Tirginitie. .

39 ' But wffl it for my ladie plead.

1 11 gie "t this night to an unco lord.'
*****

40 When bells were rung an vespers
An men in sleep were locked

41 Chflde Branton and the waiting-maid
Into die 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 comehe weids-'

* * * *

44 • Now tefl to me. ye Bfflie Blin.

If ::.:- :.\i: .l^r^r : r ^ lr.il •••Ink1

45 • I wat she is as leal a wight
As the moon shines on in a si

46 4 I wat she is as leal a may

As the son shines on in a simmer day.

47 • Bat your bonnie bride 's in her bower.
Dreeing the mither's trying hoar.'

48 Then oat o his bridal bed he sprang,
An into his mither's bower he ran.

This is nae a maiden fair.

50 • The maiden I took to my bride
Has a bairn

51 'The maiden I took to Mf

And to tibe wa the door

53 She stapt at neither bolt nor

Tffl to that ladie's bed she w:

54 Says. • Ladie fair, sae meek a

is die farther o yere child r '

55 ' O midier dear.' said diat ladie.
-Ieammfaflpfla»idic.

57 • And it was a' oar seren JOBS wark
To sew ovr fadier's seren sarks.

58 • And whan our seren year? wa
We laid it out mpom dv green.

59 - We coost the lottaes vs anang
Wha wad to die grecvwode gai

60 - To pu the IDT bat aa the
To

hard*

tt 'Hi 111 Hi jy JiiT buTd] gae.

63 -There I

64 -Wi
He

h hi

65 *And was I weel or was I wae.
He keepit me a' d» sinoaer day.

66 •

: ::

He keepit me a* dw

5. GIL BRENTON

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 '11 believe nae me,
Break up the coffer, an there ye '11 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 baud 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 ' 0 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.

Buchan's Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scot
land, 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 Arid 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.

5. GIL BRENTON

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 '11 tell,
And o them a' I '11 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 s,ent 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 waef u 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 ' 0 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 'U let me know,

48 ' Ye will tell to me this thing :
What did you wi my wedding-ring ? '

5. GIL BRENTON

49 ' Mother dear, I '11 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 '11 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.

Elizabeth Cochrane's Song-Book, p. 146, No 112.

1 LORD BEJTWALL 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.'

5. GIL BRENTON"

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 hower.

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 BenwalTs sirname and his name.

31 It was written on the child's right hand

That he should be heir of Lord BenwalTs land.

32 ' Canst cloath my lady in the silk,
And feed my young son with the milk.'

a. Motherwell's MS., p. 219. From the recitation of Mrs
Thomson, February, 1825. b. Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Ap
pendix, 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.

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,

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.

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 ? '

5. GIL BRENTON

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 '11 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 '11 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.

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 '11 bring thy coffer to thy knee.'

32 ' I went through moss and I went through 48 Aye she coost, and aye she flang,

mure,
Thinking to get some lily flouir.

' 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 ;

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, 0 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.'

5. GIL BRENTON

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.

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 ' 0 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 mail*.'

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 ? '

5. GIL BRENTON

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 ' 0 row my lady in sattin and silk,
And wash my son in the morning milk.'

Kinlocli 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 gar.g.

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 contin
uously, and two of these double lines numbered
as one stanza.

191, 231, 692, 712, perhaps gate, gates in MS.
541, 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 trans
ferred from Herd, but only the last without
change.

C. The stanzas are not divided in Cromek. Be
tween 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.

6. WILLIE'S LADY

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.

0 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,

1 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 sur
passes his usual mawkishness in 83.
E is written in four-line stanzas.

19. mother, in the margin,

20. lady, in the margin.

F. a. 72. MS. Till [Still?].

72 and 8, 17 and 181, 201 and 21, 231 and 24,
32 and 33'2, 501 and 51, are respectively
written as a stanza in the MS.

121, 411. Motherwell conjectures

Would I wait, or would I away.
13 *, 421. Motherwell conjectures
Would I away, or would I wait.

142, 432. MS. green sleeves : but see 511, and

also B 221, G 242, 282.
292, above you do not know 't is written know

not who till, apparently a conjecture ofMoth-

erweWs.
302, sometimes recited

Till owre the bed this lady he Hang.
531. 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.

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 manu
script of fifteen ballads furnished William Tyt-
ler by Mrs Brown in 1783, and having been
written down a little later than b may be re
garded as a revised copy. This manuscript,
as remarked under No 5, is not now in the
11

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.

6. WILLIE'S LADY

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 " an
cient 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, n, 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 collec
tion, 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 substi
tutes 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 mat
ter 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 in
troduces here four stanzas narrating the ex
ecution of the Billy Blind's injunctions, and
ending,

And notic'd well what she did say,

whereby we are prepared for the witch's ex
clamations.*

Danish versions of this ballad are numerous :
A-I, 'Hustru og Mands Moder' [' Fostermoder,'
'Stifmoder'], Grundtvig, No 84, n, 404 ff:
J-T, ' Hustru og Mands Moder,' Kristensen,
II, 111 ff, No 35 : U-X, ' Barselkvinden,' Kris-

* The Jamieson-Brown copy contains seventy-eight
verses ; Scott's and the Tytler copy, eighty-eight. Dr An
derson's, Nichols's Illustrations, vn, 176, counts seventy -six
instead of eighty-eight ; but, judging by the description which
Anderson has given of the Alexander-Fraser-Tytler-Brown

tensen, I, 201 ff, No 74 : Y, ' Hustru og Sleg-
fred,' Grundtvig, No 85, n, 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 tra
dition. 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 chil
dren. (There is but one of these in N, R,
Kristensen's B, I, n, 116, 122, and in the oldest
Swedish ballad, as in the Scottish : but chil
dren 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, n, 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 (else
where Mettelille, Kirstin, Tidelil, Ingerlil),
and gave her in charge to his mother, a for
midable witch, and, as appears from F, vio
lently 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 tliine.'

The forty weeks had passed, and Ellen be
gan 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,f wrapped it in linen, and exhib
ited it to her mother, who, supposing that her

MS., at p. 179, he is not exact. Still, so large a discrepancy
is hard to explain.

t The sister does this in F-I and S : in O, P, the husband
" has " it done.

6. WILLIE'S LADY

arts had been baffled, burst out into exclama
tions 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 reel rowan, which nothing can be
witch ! The chest was instantly taken away,
and Ellen's bed moved .to the place it had
occupied ; and no sopner 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 suf
fering, asks to be taken back to her maiden
home. Her husband's mother raises objec
tions : 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, n, 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 '11 avenge our dear mother dead.' *

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 fa
ther'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

* Grundtvig, 84 D, B; Kristensen, i, No 74 A, B, C ;
n, No 35 A, B, C.

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, Kris
tensen, n, 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 pews 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 hun
dred flinders (flentsteene).

This ballad, in the mixed form of O, P
(Kristensen, n, 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 vil
lage, 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, in, 858, No 84 b.)

Three Swedish versions of the ballad have
been printed. A, B, from tradition of this

6. WILLIE'S LADY

century, are given by Arwidsson, n, 252 ff,
' Liten Kerstins Fortrollning,' No 134. These
resemble the Danish ballads of the second
class closely. Liten Kerstin goes to her moth
er'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 grand
mother 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
Fornminnesforeningens 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 ar
tifice 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, m, 858 f, No
84 c, by Professor Sophus Bugge. The only
place which was unaffected by a spell was
where Signelfti'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

* Eadem amatoris sui uxorem, quod in earn dicacule pro-
brum dixerat, jam in sarcina praegnationis, obsaepto utero
et repigrato fetu, perpetua praegnatione damnavit, et, ut

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, II. xix,
119, says only that Hera stopped the delivery
of Alcmene and kept back Ilithyia. Anto
ninus Liberalis, in the second century of our
era, in one of his abstracts from the Meta
morphoses 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 imme
diately 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 al
tar 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. Bottiger's Kleine Schriften, I, 76 ff.

Apuleius, in his Metamorphoses, mentions
a case of suspended childbirth, which, curiously
enough, had lasted eight years,* as in the Dan-

cuncti numerant, jam octo annorum onere misella ilia velut
elephantum paritura distenditur. i, 9.

6. WILLIE'S LADY

ish and Swedish ballads. The witch is a mis
tress of her victim's husband, as in Grundtvig,
85, and as in a story cited by Scott from Hey-
wood's « Hierarchy of the Blessed Angels,' p.
474. " There is a curious tale about a Count of
Westeravia [Vestravia, in diocesi Argentora-
tensi], 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 mis
tress, she maliciously asked him about the in
crease of his family. The count, conceiving
some suspicion from her manner, craftily an
swered 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 cent
ury. 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, n, 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.* In all these examples the spell is
finally broken by telling the witch a piece of
false news, which causes her to forget herself

* 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,

and take away her hands. (Sicilianische Mar
ch en aus dem Volksmund gesammelt, Leip-
zig, 1870.) _

We find in a Roumanian tale, contributed
to Das Ausland for 1857, p. 1029, by F. Obert,
and epitomized by Grundtvig, in, 859, No
84 d, a wife condemned by her offended hus
band to go with child till he lays his hand
upon her. It is twenty years before she ob
tains grace, and the son whom she then bears
immediately slays his father. A Wallachian
form of this story (Walachische Marchen von
Arthur u. Albert Schott, No 23) omits the re
venge by the new-born child, and ends hap
pily.

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 mar
riage ceremony or at the approach of partu
rition 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 be
fore 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 Scot
land, v, 83.) So among the Laps and Nor
wegians, 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 Statis
tical 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.

during the birth of Athene from the head of Zens. Welcker,
Kleine Schriften, m, 191, note 12.

6. WILLIE'S LADY

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 he.

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 '11 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 '11 never wed,
Another may I '11 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 ' 0 her young bairn she '11 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 ['11] never wed,
Another may I ['11] 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 '11 never wed,
Another may I '11 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.'

6. WILLIE'S LADY

34 ' Oh wha has loosed the nine witch knots
That was amo that ladle's locks ?

35 ' And wha has taen out the kaims of care
That hangs amo that ladle's hair ?

36 ' And wha 's taen down the bush o woodhine
That hang atween her bower and mine ?

37 ' And wha has killd the master kid
That ran beneath that ladle's bed ?

38 ' And wha has loosed her left-foot shee,
And lotten that ladie lighter be ? '

39 0 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.
412. hung (?) beneath : but see 362.
Scott's principal variations are :
121. Yet gae ye.
141. For he is silver shod.

15. At every tuft of that horse main

There 's a golden chess and a bell to ring.

211. Yet gae ye. 2. o rankest kind.

22s. It 's a' red gowd to.

241. This gudely gift sail be.

261. For she.

282. my days.

301. Yet gae ye. 2. there do buy.

311. Do shape. 2. you '11 put.

321. And bid her your boy's christening to.

331. a little away. 2. To notice weel what she

may saye.

352. That were amang.
382. And let.
391. Syne Willie.
402. That were into.

411, 421, 431. And he.

41 2. Hung atween her hour and the witch car-
line.

442. a bonny son.

b. Divided in Jamiesorfs MS. into stanzas of four

verses, two verses being written in one line:
but Jamiesoris 8 = a 14-16.
I1. Sweet Willy 's taen.

5-11, wanting. Instead of the cup, the girdle

occurs here : = & 21-28.
121. He did him till. 2. wilest kin.
131. An said, My lady.
141,2. he is.

162. An lat her be lighter o her young bairn.
181. go to clay,
a 211 = b 51. Now to his mither he has gane.

2. kin.
a 221 = b 61. He say[s] my lady. 2. It 's a'

red.

a 231 = b 71. at ilka. 2. Kings,
a 241 = b 81. gift sail be your ain. 2. lat her

. . . o her.
a 29 = b 22. Then out it spake the belly Win ;

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 cbristnen ;

For dear 's the boy he 's been to you : Then no
tice 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.

7. EARL BRAND

a 352 = b 332. hang amo.

36. wanting in b.

372. aneath.

392 = b 362. hang amo his.

401. kemb o care. 2. his lady's.

41. wanting in b.

422 = b 382. ran aneath his.

44. wanting in b.

b 222 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.

EARL BRAND

A. a. b. ' Earl Bran,' Mr Robert White's papers. C. ' Lord Douglas,' Motherwell's MS., p. 502.
c. ' The Brave Earl Brand and the King of England's

Daughter,' Bell, Ancient Poems, etc., p. 122. d. D. 'Lady Margaret,' Kinloch MSS, i, 327.
Fragmentary verses remembered by Mr R. White's

sister. B. ' The Douglas Tragedy,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy,

p. 180.

B. ' The Douglas Tragedy,' Scott's Minstrelsy, in, 246,

ed. 1803. 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 Trag
edy,' B ; half a dozen stanzas of another ver
sion of the same in Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
B ; so much of Percy's ' Child of Elle ' as was
genuine, which, upon the printing of his man
uscript, turned out to be one fifth, F ; and
two versions of Erlinton, A, C.* What
now can be added is but little : two tran
scripts 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 Moth
erwell's manuscript, C ; a fourth from Kin-
loch's manuscripts, D ; and another of ' Er-

* '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, in, 86, is
merely Scott's, with changes to facilitate singing.

linton,' 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 hun
dred 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 ' (n, 347 ff,
nineteen ; 675 ff, four ; in, 849 ff, four : f

t B*, in, 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.

7. EARL BRAND

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
(n, 393 ff , seven : 680 f, one ; in, 857, one, a
fragment). Three more Danish versions of
' Ribold og Guldborg ' are furnished by Kris-
tensen, Gamle jydske Folkeviser, I, No 37, n,
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-P, 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 ' Ri
bold and Guldborg,' A-F, are all from manu
scripts, and all of a pure traditional char
acter, 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 Dan
ish print or manuscript, but which neverthe
less are found in Norwegian and Swedish reci
tations, and, what is more striking, in Ice
landic tradition of two hundred years' stand
ing.

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 dis
guised her in his cloak and armor, B, B, 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,
12

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 re
assures 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,

7. EARL BRAND

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 in
stant 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 ' Hil
debrand and Hilde,' or forms transitional be
tween 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 morn
ing is found dead. Singularly enough, the
name of the hero in Q, R, S, T, is also an in
termediate 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 Ice
landic copies, and Swedish D, have either Ri
bold 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 Kris-
tensen, 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* disappears from the re-

* 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 be-

cited copies, except K, M. It certainly did
not originally belong to ' Ribold and Guld
borg,' or to another Danish ballad in which it
occurs (' Den trofaste Jomfru,' Grundtvig, 249
A), but rather to ballads like ' Kvindemorde-
ren,' Grundtvig, 183 A, or ' Liti Kersti,' Land-
stad, 44, where a supernatural being, a demon
or a hillman, seeks to entice away a mor
tal maid. See No 4, p. 27. In 82 L, N, U,
V, Y, JE, 0, and Kristensen's copies, the lov
ers are not encountered by anybody who re
ports their flight. Most of the later versions,
K, L, M, N, P, U, V, Y, uE, 0, and Kris
tensen'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, Swed
ish A, B, C, and ' Hildebrand and Hilde ' B.
M, Q, R, S, T, Z, have not a specific prohi
bition 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 in
junction has simply dropped out. P is distin
guished 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 dif
ferences and some abridgment. There is no
elopement in B: the lovers are surprised in
the princess' bower. When Hilde has fin
ished 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. B has taken up the commonplace
of the bower on the strand which was forced
by nine men.f 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

long to ' Earl Brand,' and perhaps derived these, the " unco
land," and even its name, by the familiar process of inter
mixture of traditions.

t See No 5, pp. 64, 65, 66.

7. EARL BRAND

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, ' Kibbalds kvaeSi,' \ slenzk FornkvaeSi,
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 GuHbrun " 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 Gullbrun. She offers her cloak to him
not to tell her father, but the pilgrim goes
straight to the king, and says, Thy daugh
ter 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. Gullbrun 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 broth
er'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 1 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 in
stant Ribbald received many wounds. He
wiped his bloody sword, saying, This is what
you deserve, Gullbrun, 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 Gullbrun said, Never will I be
given to two brothers. Soon after Ribbald
gave up the ghost. There was more mourn
ing 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 begin
ning, C starting at the same point as our
' Douglas Tragedy.' The king pursues Rib-
bald by water. Gullbrun (B) stands in a
tower and sees him land. Ribbald gives Gull
brun to his brother, as in A : she lives in sor
row, and dies a maid.

Norwegian. (' Ribold and Guldborg.') A,
' Rikeball og stolt GtiSbjorg,' Landstad, 33 ;

B, ' Veneros og stolt Olleber,' Landstad, 34 ;

C, D, B, F, in part described and cited, with
six other copies, Grundtvig, in, 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 ver
sions, even to the extent of the paradise. B
has been greatly injured. Upon the lady's
warning Veneros of the approach of her fa
ther, 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 firm
ness 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 Lil
le br6r, in Landstad, 23), and by way of con
clusion hews the false Pal greive, who had re
ported his elopement to Olleber's father, into
as many pieces. He then takes Olleber 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, ill, 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 Guld
borg ' are : A, ' Hillebrand,' Afzelius, No 2 ;
B, * Herr Redebold,' and C, * Kung Vallemo,'

7. EARL BRAND

Afzelius, No 80; new ed., No 2, i, 2, 3; D,
' Ribbolt,' Arwidsson, No 78 ; E, ' Herr Rede-
bold ' F, 'Herting Liljebrand,' and G, 'Herr
Balder,' in Cavallius and Stephens' manu
script collection ; H, ' Kung Walmon,' E.
Wigstrb'm'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 cent
ury, 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 Giotha by night : they slumber sweet,
but wake in blood. She binds up his wounds
with rich kerchiefs. He rides home to his fa
ther'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
Giotha-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 Giotha-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,
m, 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 bal
lads, and especially of ' Earl Brand,' with the
Scandinavian (such as Grundtvig has made,
III, 855 f) shows an unusual and very inter
esting 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 Elle
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, in, 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.' Some
thing very similar is met with in ' Leesome
Brand,' and is not much in place there. For
4 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 Pal 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 Nor
wegian 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 Pal 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 re
ply, " 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,

7. EARL BRAND

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 some
thing like sts 14, 15 : " Why has he such silk-
braided hair ? " On finding themselves dis
covered, the lovers, in the Scandinavian bal
lad, 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 '11 gie him a pound." St. 17 is fairly par
alleled by Danish S, 18, 19 : " Where is Guld
borg, 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 Olleberyou can find."
The announcement in st. 19 is made in al
most all the Scandinavian ballads, in words
equivalent to " Ribold is off with thy daugh
ter," and then follows the arming for the pur
suit. 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 Norwe
gian A.

The scene of the fight is better preserved
in the Scottish ballads than in ' Earl Brand,'
though none of these have the cardinal inci
dent 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, B, I, JB, 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
4 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 fa
ther's death is the impulse in Danish 82 I, N,
O, Q, R, S, Y, Z, ^3, 0, A*, C*, D*, E*, Swed
ish 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 exclama
tion. 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 re
turn to your mother ? " which we find in Eng
lish B, C, D, is met with also in many Dan
ish versions, 82 B, H, K, L, M, N, P, U, Z,
1E>, 0, 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, X, JE3,
0, 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 ver
sions, Icelandic A, B, C, Norwegian C, D, E,
Swedish C. He declares her a maiden true in
1 Earl Brand,' A c 33, and affirms the same
with more particularity in Danish 82 B, C,
E, F, G, M, 0, 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
4 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.

7. EARL BRAND

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.* 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' Co-
ronei, 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 Hunding-
slayer, in Ssemund's Edda, and ' Waltharius,'
the beautiful poem of Ekkehard, are most like
the ballads.f Leaving ' Waltharius ' till we
come to 'Erlinton,' we may notice that Sigrun,
in the Helgi lay, though promised by her father

* 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 Jove,
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 Si, sts 14, 15.

t The chief branches, besides the Helgi lay and Walter,
are the saga in Snorri's Edda, Skaldskaparmal, § 50 ; that in
Saxo Grammaticus, Stephanius, ed. 1644, pp. 88-90; Sorla
f>attr, in Fornaldar Sogur, i, 39 Iff; 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 Descrip
tion 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 ) Hogni, — , Hogni, Hogin-, Hogni,
— , [Artus], Hagen ; (2) [Sigrun], Hilde-gunde, Hildr, Hilda,
Hildr, Hildina, Hildr, Hilde; (3) Helgi, [Walter], Hedin,
Hithin-, Hedin, — , [Herburt], Hetel. Hagan, in 'Waltha-

to another man, Hodbrodd, 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 affec
tion, and bade her not care for the displeasure
of her relatives. A great battle ensued be
tween Helgi and the sons of Granmar, who were
aided by Sigrun'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 ground
work 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 Hiorvard'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 Hun
dingslayer. Helgi Hiorvard's son, while his
life-blood is ebbing, expresses himself in al
most 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.J

rius,' may be said to take the place of the father, who is want
ing; and this is in a measure true also of Hedin, Helgi's half-
brother, in the lay of Helgi Hiorvard'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, n, 178, 226, No 74 (Helmer) ; D,
E. Wigstrom, 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 Hil
dina in the Shetland ballad. Danish ' Herr Hjaelm,' Grundt-
vig, Danske Folkeminder, 1861, p. 81, agrees with the Swed
ish, except that there are only three brothers.

} HelgakviSa HjorvarSssonar, 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.

7. EARL BRAND

There is also a passage in the earlier his
tory of Helgi Hundingslayer of which traces
appear to be preserved in ballads, and be
fore all in the English ballad 'Earl Brand,'
A. Hunding and Helgi's family were at feud.
Helgi introduced himself into IJunding's court
as a spy, and when he was retiring sent word
to Hunding's son that he had been there dis
guised 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 Hun-
ding's men are making search, a mysterious
blind man, surnamed the bale- wise, or evil-
witted (Blindr inn bolvisi), calls out, Sharp
are the eyes of Hagal's maid ; it is no churl's
blood that stands a.t 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. Ha
gal pretends that the fierce-eyed maid is a
virago whom Helgi had taken captive, and in
the end Helgi escapes. This malicious person
age reappears in the HrSmund saga as " Blind
the Bad " and " the Carl Blind, surnamed Ba-
vfs," 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 daugh
ter, 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 SiShottr or Deep-
hood of Saemund, who in the saga of Half and
his champions is called simple Hood, as here,
and expressly said to be Odin.* Odin, though

* Hottr, er 6o"inn var reyndar, Hood, who was Odin really,
Fornaldar Sogur, n, p. 25. Klee observes, p. 10 f, that
Hogni [Hagen] is the evil genius of the Hildesage. Some
times 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 Pal greive," in two other Norwegian ballads and one

not a thoroughly malignant divinity, had his
dark side, and one of his titles in Ssemund's
Edda is Bolverkr, 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. f

The disastrous effects of "naming" in a
great emergency appear in other northern tra
ditions, though not so frequently as one would
expect. A diverting Swedish saga, which has
been much quoted, relates how St. Olof bar
gained 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 build
ing 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 hun-

O '

dred pieces, all flint stones. (Iduna, Part 3,
p. 60 f, note. Other forms of the same story
in Afzelius, Sago-Hafder, 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 se
lected 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 pes
tilent beast, and the nix " disappeared in red

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 Nilssdn of some Norwegian
copies), who bears the name Hiluge, interpreted with great
probability by Conrad Hofmann (Munich Sitzungsberichte,
1867, ii, 209, note), Illhugi, der Bossinnige, evil-minded
(Icelandic illhugaSr, illuSigr.)

t Inimicitias Othinus serit, Saxo, p. 142, ed. 1644. See
Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, i, 120, note 2, in, 56, new ed.,
for Odin's bad points, though some of Grimm's interpreta
tions might now be objected to.

7. EARL BRAND

blood." (Faye, as above, p. 49, note.) A nix
is baffled in the same way in a Feeroe 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 opera
tion of his peculiar fury, loses his strength,
and can no longer wield the weapon he was
fighting with, upon Griss's crying out, " Klaufi,
Klaufi, be not so mad ! " (Svarfdaela Saga, p.
147, and again p. 156 f.) So the blood-thirst
of the avenger's sword in the magnificent
Danish ballad ' Hasvnersvasrdet ' 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 pos
sibly prevent their ever doing so. (Kristni
Saga, ed. 1773, p. 149. R. T. King, in Notes
and Queries, 2d Ser., n, 506.) Grundtvig re
marks that this belief is akin to what is re
lated in Fafnismal (prose interpolation after
st. 1), that Sigurd concealed his name by rea
son 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., n, 340.)

The beautiful fancy of plants springing from
the graves of star-crossed lovers, and signify
ing 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 fre
quently 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 with
out kirk wall and one in the choir, however
separated, the vines or trees seek one another
out, and mingle their branches or their fo
liage :

" 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 fol
lowing :

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 lin
den grows from each, the trees meet over the
church roof. So E. Wigstrom, 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 cov
ers 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, i, 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, n, No 60, two lilies, interlocking
over church wall and ridge. 61 B, C (= Af
zelius, 19), separate graves ; B, a lily from
each grave ; C, a flower from each breast.

O 77

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 Lied-
erhort, 26 ; Hoffmann u. Richter, 4 : the lov
ers are buried together, and there grow from

7. EARL BRAND

their grave (1) three pinks, (2) three lilies,
(3) two lilies. Wunderhorn, 1857, 1, 53, Mit-
tler, No 91 : the maid is buried in the church
yard, the knight under the gallows. A lily
grows from his grave, with an inscription, Beid
waren beisammen im Himmel. Ditfurth, n,
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.

4 Graf Friedrich,' Uhland, 122, Wunder
horn, n, 293, Mittler, 103, Erk's Lieder-
hort, 15 a : Graf Friedrich's bride is by ac
cident mortally wounded while he is bring
ing 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 war bei Gott geblieben. He is then
buried with his bride, the transfer being at
tended 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 Wunder
horn, n, p. 251, = Mittler, 128, ' Alle bei
Gott die sich lieben ; ' Mittler, 130 ; Ditfurth,
n, 4, 9 ; Scherer, Jungbrunnen, 9 A, 25 ; Po-
gatschnigg und Hermann, 1458. Three lilies
from a maid's grave : * Die schwazbraune
Hexe ' (' Es blies ein Jager '), Nicolai, I, 8 ;
Wunderhorn, I, 36 ; Grater's Bragur, I, 280 ;
Uhland, 103; Liederhort, 9; Simrock, 93;
Fiedler, p. 158 ; Ditfurth, u, 33, 34 ; Reiffer-
scheid, 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 Nino,'
Almeida-Garrett, ni, No 18, at p. 21 ; Braga,
Rom. Geral., No 14, at p. 38, = Hartung, i,
217 : 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, ni, No 20, at p. 38 : a sombre clump
of pines over the knight, reeds from the prin
cess's grave, which, though cut down, shoot
again, and are heard sighing in the night.
Braga, Archip. Asor., ' Filha 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 fol
low the cutting down. So also Almeida-Gar
rett, No 6, i, 167.

Roumanian. Alecsandri, 7, Stanley, p. 16,
' Ring and Handkerchief,' translated by Stan
ley, p. 193, Murray, p. 56 : a fir and a vine,
which meet over the church.

French. Beaurepaire, Poe'sie pop. en Nor-
mandie, 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, ni, 135 ; Chasiotis, p. 103, No 22 :
a cypress from ^the man's grave, a reed from
the maid's (or from a common tomb) ; re
versed in Passow, Nos 418, 470, and Schmidt,
Griechische Marchen, 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, n, p.
85 : a fir and a rose ; the rose twines round
the fir.

Wend. Haupt and Schmaler, V. L. der
Wenden, n, No 48: a maid, who kills her
self on account of the death of her lover, or
ders 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, Ap-
pendice al saggio di grammatologia comparata,
' Angelina,' p. 112, the same ; but inappropri-

7. EARL BRAND

ately, 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 Volksdicbtungen, 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 ppern of Anme'd
Xani, died 1652-3 : two rose bushes spring
from their graves and interlock. Bulletin de
la classe des sciences historiques, etc., de Facad.
impe"r. des sciences de St. P£t., 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 fundamen
tal conception is not less a favorite with an
cient Greek than with mediaeval 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

* Et de la tombe de monseigneur Tristan yssoit une ronce
belle et verte et bien feuilleue, qui alloit par dessus la cha-
pelle, et descendoit le bout de la ronce sur la tombe de la
royne Yseult, et entroit dedans. La virent lea gens du pays

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 ro
mance, 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.*

Eilhart von Oberge, vv. 9509-21 (ed. Lich-
tenstein, Quelleij u. Forschungen, xix, 429)
and the German prose romance (Busching u.
von der Hagen, Buch der Liebe, c. 60), Ul-
rich von Thiirheim, 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 Hein
rich, 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 lov
ers to be buried in the same grave, and order
ing them to be buried on opposite sides of the
church. Trees spring from their bodies and
meet over the church roof. (Islenzk Forn-
kveeSi, 23 A, B, C, D ; Saga af Tristram ok
Isond, Brynjulfson, p. 199 ; Tristrams Saga ok
Isondar, Kb'lbing, p. 112). The later Titurel
imitates the conclusion of Tristan. (Der jiin-
gere 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. Ixiii, No 29, and p. 239 ; Ma-
rien-legenden (Stuttgart, 1846), No xi and
p. 269. A rose springs from the grave and

et la eompterent au roy Marc. Le roy la fist couper par
troys foys, et quant il I'avoit le jour fait couper, le lendemain
estoit aussi belle cfcrnme avoit aultre fois este. Fol. cxxiv,
as cited by Braga, Rom. Ger., p. 185.

7. EARL BRAND

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 Gesammt-
abenteuer, Ixxiii. 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, Ixxxviii ;
Libro de Exenplos, Romania, 1878, p. 509, 43,
44 ; etc., 'etc.

No one can fail to be reminded of the pur
ple, lily-shaped flower, inscribed with the
mournful AI A I, 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," haec nominis, ilia • querellae.
(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 Kohler's supplement, p. 479 ff ;
Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, n, 689 f, and
ni, 246.

" The ballad of the ' Douglas Tragedy,' "
says Scott, " is one of the few to which pop
ular 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 an

cient 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 as
certained, to her entire satisfaction, by Anne
Krabbe in 1605-6, and are given again in Re-
sen's Atlas Danicus, 1677. See Grundtvig,
n, 342 f.

B, Scott's ' Douglas Tragedy,' is translated
by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folke-
viser, No 11 ; Afzelius, in, 86 ; Schubart, p.
159 ; Talvj, p. 565 ; Wolff, Halle, I, 76, Haus-
schatz, p. 201 ; Rosa Warrens, No 23 ; Ger
hard, p. 28 ; Lo£ve Veimars, p. 292.

' Ribold og Guldborg,' Danish B, is translated
by Buchanan, p. 16 (loosely) ; G by Jamie-
son, Illustrations, p. 317, and Prior, n, 400 ;
T by Prior, n, 407 ; Swedish A, For. Quart.
Rev., xxv, 41. ' Hildebrand og Hilde,' Dan
ish A, B, F, H, by Prior, n, 411-20.

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 Eng
land.
All i the night sae early

2 She was scarcely fifteen years of age
Till sae boldly she came to his bedside.

3 ' 0 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.

100

7. EARL BRAND

8 ' Earl Bran, if ye love me,

Seize this old carl, and gar him die.' «

9 ' 0 lady fair, it wad be sair,

To slay an old man that has grey hair.

10 ' 0 lady fair, I '11 no do sae ;

I '11 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 :
' 0 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 ' 0 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.'

Scott's Minstrelsy, in, 246, ed. 1803; in, 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.

7. EARL BRAND

101

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 ' 0 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 0 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, 0 chuse, Lady Margret,' he said,

' O whether will ye gang or bide ? '
' I '11 gang, I '11 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 0 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,

' 0 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.

Motherwell's MS., p.
Notman.

502. From the recitation of Mrs

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,

102

7. EARL BRAND

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 '11 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,
1 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 '11 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.

Kinloch MSS, i, 327.

1 ' SLEEPST thou or wakst thou, Lord Montgom-

erie,

Sleepst thou or wakst thou, I say ?
Rise up, make a match for your eldest daugh
ter,
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.

7. EARL BRA.ND

103

5 ' Hold thy hand, sweet William,' she says,

' Thy blows are wondrous sore ;
Sweethearts I may have many a one,
But a father I '11 never have more.'

6 0 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,

4 Two chooses I '11 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 '11 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.

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 ' 0 hold my horse, Lady Margret,' he said,

O hold my horse by the bonnie bridle rein,
Till I fight your father and seven bold breth
ren,
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 ' 0 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.

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 ;

104

7. EARL BRAND

I did not care for your 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 your father
And all that long him to ! '

5 He leaned ore his saddle bow

To kisse this lady good ;
The teares thai went them two hetweene
Were blend water and blood.

6 He sett himselfe on one good steed,

This lady on a palfray,
And sett his litle home 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, Sir lohn the knight,

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 yowr father and your brether
Doe play vs at this crosse.

11 ' But light now downe, my owne trew loue,

And meeklye hold my steede, •

Whilest your father [and your seuen brether]
bold

A. a, b. Obtained from recitation " many years
ago" wrote Mr White in 1873, by James Tel-
fer, 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 mar
gin 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 0) the
life o the one, the randy.

I1, c. Brand, and always in C. I2, a. daugh
ters, b. He 's courted.
21. c. years that tide ; that tide is written

over of age in a. 22. c. When sae.
42. c. But thou.
52. b. best o these, c. best of tho. of tho

is written over o them a in a.
62. b, c. have met.

71. c. Till at last they met. 72. c. He 's aye for
ill and never.

81. b. O Earl Bran. c. Now Earl Brand. Now

in the margin of a. 82. b, c. Slay this.
92. b. man that wears, c. carl that wears, carl

. . wears written over man . . has in a.
10. b. O lady fair, I '11 no do that,

I '11 pay him penny, let him be jobbing

at.
c. My own lady fair, I '11 not do that,

I '11 pay him his fee
II2. 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 Winches
ter.
c. For she is, I trow, my sick sister,

Whom I have been bringing fra Win
chester.
141. c. nigh to dead. 2. b, c. What makes her

wear.
151. c. If she 's been. 2. b, c. What makes her

wear the gold sae high.

161. c. When came the carl to the lady's yett.
2. b. rapped at. c. He rudely, rudely rapped
thereat.

172. b. maids playen. C. a playing, d. She 's
out with the fair maids playing at the ball.

7. EARL BRAND

105

181. b. mistkane ( ?) : 2. b, c. Ye may count.
b2. young Earl.

19. c. I met her far beyond the lea

With the young Earl Brand, his leman

to he :
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 fif
teen,
And they 're ridden after them bi-

dene.
211. b, c. The lady looket [looked] over

[owre] her left shoulder then.
221. b, c. If they come on me one by one,
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.
231. b. all in all. d. all and all.

2. d. Then you will see me the sooner fall.
242. 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.
271. c. river Doune : 2. b. And he lighted
down. c. And there they lighted to wash
his wound.
282. b. It 's but the glent.

c. It 's nothing but the glent and my scar
let hood.

291. c. yett.

292. b. Sae ruddly as he rappet at.

c. So faint and feebly he rapped thereat.
301. b. O my son 's slain and cut down.

c. O my son 's slain, he is falling to swoon.
14

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 '11 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 Beau

mont and Fletcher's l Knight of the Burning
Pestle' (1611), Dyce, n, 172, but may belong
to some other ballad, as ' The Knight and Shep
herd'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.

84. ware. 181. Marie. 204. flang'd.

C. 128. MS. scad.

D. 10. The following stanza, superscribed " Mrs
Lindores, Kelso," was found among Mr Kin-
lock's papers, and was inserted at I, 331, of
the Kinlock MSS. It may be a first recollec
tion 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 return
ing 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.
P. 34. MS. merrymen.
62. of one palfray.

7, 8 are written in one stanza. Half a page,
or about nine stanzas, is gone after st. 11.

106

8. ERLINTON

8
ERLINTON

A. « Erlinton,' Scott's Minstrelsy, in, 235, ed. 1803.

B. « True Tamraas,' Mr R. White's papers.

C. ' Robin Hood and the Tanner's Daughter,' Gutch's
Robin Hood, n, 345.

* ERLINTON ' (A) first appeared in the Min
strelsy 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 connec- •
tions 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, ex
pressly built to confine her in, is very likely a
reminiscence or a displacement of the tower
in which Hilde is shut up, after her elope
ment, 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 ' Erlin
ton ' ballads have a fortunate conclusion, which
also does not seem forced, as it does in Arwids-
son, 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 Aqui-
tania which is not found in ' Earl Brand.'
This story requires to be given in brief on ac
count 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. Gun-
ther, 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 approach
ing. Gunther sends one of his knights with a
message demanding the surrender of the treas
ure. 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

8. ERLINTON

107

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 * is put on
a horse and conducted home by Hagen, while
Walter and Hildegunde continue their jour
ney 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 ut
most 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 Hun
gary. She often looks backwards, fearing pur
suit. 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.

Scott's Minstrelsy, in, 235, ed. 1803 ; ed. 1833, n, 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 ' 0 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 '11 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 cr<

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,

* 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, Verhaltniss der
polnischen Sage von Walgierz Wdaly zu den deutschen
Sagen von W. v. Aquitanien, p. 8 ff.

108

8. ERLINTON

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 '11 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.

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.'

MS. of Kobert 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 0 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 '11 be there an sune the morn, love,
It 's a' for my true love's sake.

5 ' On my right hand I '11 have a glove, love,

An on my left ane I '11 have nane ;
I '11 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.'

8. ERLINTON

109

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 '11 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 '11 rather lose my life sae dear.

13 ' But if ye '11 be men to your manhood,

As that I will be unto mine,

I '11 fight ye every ane man by man,
Till the last drop's blude I hae be slain.

14 ' 0 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.'

Gutch's Robin Hood, u, 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 ' 0 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 ;
He 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 He 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.

110

8. ERLINTON

13 Each had a good sword by his side,

And furiouslie they rode
To where. they Rohin Hood espied,
That with the maiden stood.

14 ' Flee hence, flee henoe, 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 ;
' He 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 He 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 ;
He 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 f oote 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. 42. Ed. 1833 has or kens.

B. I2. If A I2 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

9. THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND

111

papers, with the title ' Sir Thamas,' which
I have no doubt has been " revised," whether
by Telfer, or by Mr White himself, it is im
possible to say. The principal variations
are here given, that others may be satisfied.
I2, wed her mang his ain kin. I4, this fair.
28. Till up cam Thamas her only true love.
3*. O tirl nae langer at the pin. 38. I wadna

for a hundred pounds, love. 34. can I.
48. fu soon. 44. And by oursels we twa can

talk.
51'2. I '11 hae a glove on my right hand, love,

And on my left I shall hae nane.
6s"4. Beyond an hour, or scarcely twa,

When up rode Thamas, her only true love,
And he has tane her frae mang them a'.
71. He kissed her sisters, a' the six, love. 78.
his winsome true love. 74. That they might
walk.

81. didna walk.

8M. Beyond two hours, or barely three,
Till up cam seven * stalwart outlaws,
The bauldest fellows that ane could see.

* " The original ballad had fifteen. Seven would do as
well, and the latter number would seem more nearly to re
semble the truth."

98. We '11 take your life, for this lady fair, sir.
101. My lady 's fair, I like her weel, sir.
II2*8. And he spak still mair furiously ;

1 Flee, or we '11 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 '11 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 '11 fight ye a', come man by man then,
Till the last drop o my bloud I tine.'
142. my bridled steed. 148. 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. I1. Robinhood, and so always.

31. After this : Finis, T. Fleming.

9
THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND

A. a. Deloney's ' Jack of Newbury,' reprint of 1859, C. ' The Betrayed Lady.' a. Buchan's MSS, n, 166.
p. 61. b. ' The Ungrateful Knight and the Fair b. Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, n,
Flower of Northumberland,' Ritson's Ancient Songs, 208.

1790, p. 169.

D. Motherwell's MS., p. 102.

B. a. Kinloch MSS, v, 49. b. ' The Provost's Doch-

ter,' Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 131. E. < The Flower of Northumberland,' Mr Robert White's

papers.

THE earliest copy of this ballad is intro
duced as ' The Maidens' Song,' f 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,$

t " Two of them singing the dittie," says Deloney, " and
all the rest bearing the burden."

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 Rit-
son having used some other edition of De
loney. Ritson's text is used in The Border-

t The earliest edition now known to exist is of 16l9.

112

9. THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND

er's Table Book, VI, 25, and was taken thence
into Sheldon's Minstrelsy of the English Bor
der, with some arbitrary alterations. The
ballad was formerly popular in Scotland. Kin-
loch 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 unfortu
nately 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 u 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 fa
ther. 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,
B. 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 re
peated 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, rv, 494, nine copies, A-I, the first
three from 16th or 17th century manuscripts,
the others from tradition of this century, as are

* 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.

t By mistake, most probably. But in one of the Polish
ballads, cited a little further on, Q (Kolberg, P. 1. Pol-

also the following : K-M, ' Den Fredl0se,' Kris-
tensen, n, 191, No 57 : Swedish, ' De sju Gull-
bergen,' A, Afzelius, No 79, in, 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.* 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 moun
tains, Swed. A, perhaps, by mistake of bergen
for bor^ar.f She gets her gold together while
he is saddling his horse, Dan. A, C, D, P, 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, P,
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.$ 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 penni
less, 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 re
plies, Then I will be your servant. He con^
tinues 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. §

skiego, 5 pp), the maid is told, " lu my country the moun
tains are golden, the mountains are of gold."
t So 'Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight,' D 11 :

' Is this your bowers and lofty towers ? '

§ There is a similarity, which is perhaps not accidental,
between these Scandinavian ballads and 'Child Waters.'

9. THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND

113

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.*

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 Sy-
burg,' Reiffenberg, No 16, p. 32, No 17, p. 34,
from the Lower Rhine and Miinster ; made
over, in Kretzschmer, I, 187, No 106. Hein

rich, 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, Schot-
tische Lieder der Vorzeit, No 31, p. 137.

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 Northumber
land.

2 Then was he cast in prison strong,
Where he could not walke nor lie along,

Even by the goode Earle of Northumber
land.

3 And as in sorrow thus he lay,

The Earle's sweete daughter walkt that way,
And she the faire flower of Northumber
land.

4 And passing by, like an angell bright,
The prisoner had of her a sight,

And she the faire flower of Northumber
land.

Child Waters makes Ellen swim a piece of water, shows her
his hall — " of red gold shines the tower " — where the fair
est lady is his paramour, subjects her to menial services, and
finally, her patience withstanding all trials, marries her.
* They pass the water in Q only, and that in a boat.
15

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 Northumber
land.'

7 i 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 Northumber
land.'

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.

She is thrown in from a bridge in V, W, the bridge of Cra
cow in C : cf. Scotland bridge, D 2 of this ballad. By a
curious accident, it is at a wayside crucifix that the man be
gins 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.

114

9. THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND

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 Scot
land.

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 Northumber
land.

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 Northumber
land.'

22 The lady prickt her wanton steed,
And over the river sworn with speede,

And she the faire flower of Northumber
land.

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,
lie 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.

9. THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND.

115

a. Kinloch MSS, v, 49, in the handwriting of J. Beattie.
b. Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 134, from the reci
tation 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 Northumber
land.

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 0 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 0 when they came to the Scottish moor,

A may's love whiles is easy won
' Get off o my horsey 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,

0 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 0 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 Northumber
land.

13 ' O daughter, 0 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 havebeguild,
But she 's still the fair flower of Northum
berland.

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 Northum
berland.'

a. Buchan's MSS, 11, 166.
North of Scotland, n, 208.

b. Buchau's Ballads of the

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 '11 steal the keys, let me gae free :
I '11 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.'

116

9. THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND

4 He swore by him that was crownd with

thorn,
That he never had a wife since the day he was

horn,
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 '11 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 '11 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.'

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 Northumber
land.'

3 ' 0 take me by the body so meek,
And throw me in the water so deep,

For I daurna gae back to Northumberland.'

4 ' I '11 no take thee by the body so meek,
Nor throw thee in the water so deep ;

Thou may go thy ways back to Northumber
land.'

5 ' Take me by the body so small,
And throw me in yon bonny mill-dam,

For I daurna gae back to Northumberland.'

" Written down from memory by Robert Hutton, Shep
herd, 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 '11 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.

9. THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND

117

5 She led him into her father's stahle,

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 Northumber
land.'

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 be
guiled,

And ye 're aye welcome back to Northum
berland.

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 Northum
berland.'

A. a. 2. HalliwelVs Deloney, in the first line of
the burden, has leape over, but not elsewhere.

92. in the. 252. Where,
b. 32. walks. 3*. she is.
51. aloud.
138. omits sad.
15s. the knight.
162. forth did.
24s. The fairest.
271. thou shalt.
322. knight.

352. never were.

B. b. 22. this prison.

48. omits that was.
6s. ye brazen-fac'd.
II8. He hired.
128. fell at his feet.

131. omits so.

141. mother on her sae gentlie smild, etc.

C. a. 82. Her bade. 88. return him.
b. 51. into.

132. at fifteen.

118 10. THE TWA SISTERS

D. 2. Thus in Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appen- E. " The Flower of Northumberland. Written

dix, p. xv : down from memory by Robert Hutton, Shep-

When they came to Scotland brig, perd, Peel, Liddesdale, and sent by James

O my dear, my love that she wan ! Telf or to his friend Robert White, Newcastle

' Light off, ye hure, from my black steed, on Tyne. 20 copies printed." Mr White's

And hie ye awa to Northumberland.' note.

10
THE TWA SISTERS

A. a. ' The Miller and the King's Daughter,' broadside K. ' Binnorie,' Kinloch's papers,
of 1656, Notes and Queries, 1st S., v, 591. b. Wit

Restor'd, 1658, " p. 51," in the reprint of 1817, p. 153. L. a. ' The Miller's Melody,' Notes and Queries, 1st S.,

c. ' The Miller and the Kino's Daughters,' Wit and v, 316. b. ' The Drowned Lady,' The Scouring of

Drollery, ed. 1682, p. 87. d. 'The Miller and the the White Horse, p. 161.

King's Daughter,' Jamieson's Popular Ballads, i,

315. M. ' Binorie, O an Binorie,' Murison MS., p. 79.

B. a. ' The Twa Sisters,' Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. N. < Binnorie,' [Pinkertou's] Scottish Tragic Ballads,
39. b. ' The Cruel Sister,' Wm. Tytler's Brown p. 72.

MS., No 15. c. 'The Cruel Sister,' Abbotsford MS.,

"Scottish Songs," fol. 21. d. 'The Twa Sisters,' O. ' The Bonny Bows o London.' a. Buchan's Ballads
Jamieson's Popular Ballads, i, 48. of the North of Scotland, n, 128. b. Christie's Tra

ditional Ballad Airs, i, 42.

C. ' The Cruel Sister,' Scott's Minstrelsy, n, 143

(1802). P. a. ' The Twa Sisters,' Motherwell's MS., p. 245. b.

' The Swan swims bonnie O,' Motherwell's Minstrel-

D. * The Bonnie Milldams of Binnorie,' Kinloch MSS, sy, Appendix, p. xx.
n, 49.

Q. ' The Twa Sisters,' communicated by J. F. Camp-

E. ' The Twa Sisters,' Sharpe's Ballad Book, No x, p. bell, Esq.
30.

R. a. ' The Three Sisters,' Notes and Q., 1st S., vi,

P. ' The Bonny Bows o London,' Motherwell's MS., 102. b. ' Bodown,' communicated by J. F. Camp-

p. 383. bell, Esq. c. ' The Barkshire Tragedy,' The Scour

ing of the White Horse, p. 158.
G. Motherwell's MS., p. 104.

S. Kinloch MSS, vi, 89.
H. Motherwell's MS., p. 147.

T. ' Sister, dear Sister,' Allingham's Ballad Book, p.
I. ' Bonnie Milldams o Binnorie,' Kinloch MSS, v, 425. xxxiii.

J. ' The Miller's Melody,' Notes and Queries, 4th S., U. From Long Island, N. Y., communicated by Mr W.
v, 23. W. Newell.

THIS is one of the very few old ballads some old nurse, who sang them to the young
which are not extinct as tradition in the Brit- ladies." * It has been found in England, Scot-
ish Isles. Even drawing-room versions are „ „ , ^ , f ., w f TT^MOT,

* Campbell s Popular Talcs of the West Highlands, iv,

spoken of as current, " generally traced to 126, 1862.

10. THE TWA SISTERS

119

land, Wales, and Ireland, and was very early
in print. Dr Rimbaulfc possessed and pub
lished a broadside of the date 1656 * (A a),
and the same copy is included in the miscel
lany 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 attrib
uted. If the ballad were ever in Smith's hands,
he might possibly have inserted the three bur
lesque 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 bal
lad, and this is repeated in Dryden's Miscel
lany, 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 coup
lets, 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, f Jamie-
son followed, four years after, with a tolera
bly faithful, though not, as he says, verbatim,
publication of his copy of Mrs Brown's ballad,
somewhat marred, too, by acknowledged in
terpolations. This text of Mrs Brown's is
now correctly given, with the whole or frag
ments of eleven others, hitherto unpublished.

The ballad is as popular with the Scandi
navians as with their Saxon cousins. Grundfc-
vig, ' Den talende Strengeleg,' No 95, gives
nine Danish versions and one stanza of a tenth ;
seven, A-B, in n, 507 ff, the remainder, H-K,

* Jamieson, in his Popular Ballads, n, 315, prints the bal
lad, with five inconsiderable variations from the broadside,
as from Musarum Deliciae, 2d edition, 1656. The careful
reprint of this book, and of the same edition, in " Facetiae,"
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 " Facetiae." Still it is hardly credible that
Jamiesou has blundered, and we may suppose that copies,
ostensibly of the same edition, varied as to contents, a thing
common enough with old books.

t Cunningham has re-written Scott's version, Songs of
Scotland, u, 109, 'The Two Fair Sisters.' He says, "I

in in, 875 ff. One more, L, is added by Kris-
tensen, No 96, I, 253. Of these, only E had
been previously printed. All are from tra
dition of this century.

There are two Icelandic versions, A from
the 17th, B from the 19th, century, printed
in Islenzk FornkvseSi, No 13, ' Horpu kvseSi.'

Of twelve Norwegian versions, A, by Moe,
" is printed in Norske Universitets og Skole-
Annaler for 1850, p. 287," and in Moe's Sam-
lede Skrifter, n, 118, ' Dae bur ein Mann hser
utmae Aa ; ' B, by Lindeman,- Annaler, as be
fore, "p. 496," and in his Norske Fjeldmelodier,
vol. I, Tekst-Bilag, p. 4, No 14, ' Dei tvse Sys-
ta ; ' C, by Landstad, ' Dei tvo systar,' No 53,
p. 480 ; D-L are described by Professor Bugge
in Grundtvig, in, 877 f ; M " is printed in II-
lustreret Nyhedsblads Nytaarsgave for 1860,
p. 77, Christiania."

Four Faroe versions are known : A, ' Horpu-
rima,'."in Svabo's MS., No 16, I, 291," incor
rectly printed by Afzelius, I, 86, and accu
rately, from a copy furnished by Grundtvig,
in Bergstrom's edition of Afzelius, n, 69 ; B,
a compound of two versions taken down by
Pastor Lyngbye and by Pastor Schroter, in
Nyeste Skilderie af Kj0benhavn, 1821, col.
997 ff ; C, a transcript from recitation by Ham-
mershaimb (Grundtvig) ; D, *' in Fugloyjar-
b6k, No 31."

Swedish versions are : A, ' Den underbara
Harpan,' Afzelius, No 17, I, 81, new ed., No
16, i, I, 72 : B, ' De tva Systrarne,' Afzelius,
No 69, in, 16, new ed., No 16, 2, i, 74 : C,

D, E, imprinted copies in Cavallius and Ste-
phens's collection : F, ' De tva Systrarne,' Ar-
widsson, No 99, n, 139 : G, ' Systermordet,'

E. Wigstrom, Skanska Visor, p. 4, and the
same, Folkdiktning, etc., No 7, p. 19 : H,

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 0

120

10. THE TWA SISTERS

Rancken, Nagra Prof af Folksang, No 3, p.
10. Afzelius, moreover, gives variations from
four other copies which he had collected, in,
20 if, 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, Bergstrom's Afzelius, II, 79.

There is a remarkable agreement between
the Norse and English ballads till we ap
proach 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 Swed
ish 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,* 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, Faroe A, B, Nor
wegian 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 ane fair."

The scene of action is a seashore in Ice
landic and Faroe 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

* 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."

t 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.

drowned in navigable water being discovered
floating down a mill-stream. f B c has "the
deep mill-dam ; " C " the river- strand," per
haps one of Scott's changes ; M, " the dams ; "
L, O, P, R b c, a river, Tweed mill-clam,
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 Eng
lish A-E, G, H, I, O, Q, to see their father's
ships come in ; in Icelandic B to wash their
silks ; J 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, Faroe A, B. Malice pre
pense is attributed to the elder in Swedish B,
F, Norwegian C, Danish B, F, G : but in Fa
roe A, B, Norwegian A, B, and perhaps some
other cases, a previous evil intent is not cer
tain, 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, B-H, M, O, Q, Icelandic A, B, Faroe 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 Faroe " 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 ex
cept L.

Swedish A, G, and Rancken's versions (or

J 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, Faroe 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.

10. THE TWA SISTERS

121

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 discorered,
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 bal
lads 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 Faroe versions and Norwegian
M by two " pilgrims ; " * in Danish A-F, L,
aud Swedish C by two musicians, Danish H,
Swedish A, G, one. Danish G, which is cor
rupted 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,f 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 Eng
lish it is done by the miller, A ; by a harper,
B, C, G, L b (the Icing'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 herds
man, 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

* There are, besides the two fishermen, in Norwegian A,
two " twaddere," i. e., landloupers, possibly (Bugge) a cor
ruption of the word rendered pilgrims, Faroe vallarar, Swed
ish 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 al
lowed to be harmless vagrants, but scarcely better, seeing
that they are ranked with " staff-carls " in Norges Gamle
Love, cited by Cleasby and Vigf usson at ' vallari.'

t A harp in the Icelandic and Norwegian ballads, Faroe
A, B, C, Swedish A, B, D, G, H ; a harp in English B,
16

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, succes
sively 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, Nor
wegian 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, Eng
lish L a ; a harp-frame from the arms, Nor
wegian B, Faroe A ; a fiddle-frame from the
skull, Swedish C, or from the back-bone, Eng
lish L b ; a plectrum from the arm, Faroe B ;
strings from the veins, English A ; a bridge
from the nose, English A, L a ; "h0rp0nota"
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 bri
dal, and a man from another village, who un
dertakes 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 fid
dle to be taken to a wedding, which chances
to be that of the elder sister with the drowned
girl's betrothed.:): Unfortunately, many of the

C, G, J. A harp is not named in any of the Danish ver
sions, 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.

J Some of the unprinted Norwegian ballads are not com
pletely described, but a departure from the rule of the major
part would probably have been alluded to.

122

10. THE TWA SISTERS

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.* 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. Correspond
ing to this are three enunciations of the in
strument in English A, B, C, Icelandic A,
Faroe A,f B, Swedish A, B, C, B, Gr, H,
Danish A, D, F, I. These are reduced to
two in Icelandic B, Danish B, C, H, L, Swed
ish 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 in
creased 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, J D, F, K, O, and
we may add P, it expresses a desire for ven
geance : Hang my sister, D, F, K ; Ye '11
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 bet
ter forms of the Norse, reveal the awful se
cret, directly or indirectly, and, in the latter
case, sometimes note the effect on the bride.
Thus, in Icelandic B, the first string sounds,

* 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.

t The fourth string is said to speak in Faroe A 30, but
no utterance is recorded, and this is likely to be a mistake.

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. Faroe 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 Faroe 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, Gr, 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 B 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.

In many of the versions, and in this, after the strings have
spoken individually, they unite in a powerful but inarticu
late concord.

t I has lost the terminal stanzas.

10. THE TWA SISTERS

123

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 bride
groom 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, near
ly, 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 him
self a drunken fool (the passage is borrowed
from another ballad) : still in L, though suc
cessful for the nonce, she comes to the stake
and wheel some months after. In H the fid
dler dashes the instrument against a stone,
seemingly to earn his bribe, but this trait be
longs 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 ex
plains that she had been pushed into the wa
ter, " 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 hand
some wedding follows.

Swedish C and nearly all the Norwegian

* Not M, and apparently not D, which ends :

When he kissed the harp upon the mouth, his heart broke.

t So the traitor John pushes away Catherine's hands in

ballads* 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, B) 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, emas
culates 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.f 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 sil
ver 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 '11 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 daugh
ter, 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 in
forms him of the murder, and he makes search
for the body. This is a wide departure from
the original story, and plainly a modern per
version. Another variation, entirely wanting

' 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.

124

1O. THE TWA SISTERS

in ancient authority, appears in B, 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 ! J . The miller takes
the reward, and pushes the girl in again, for
which he is hanged.*

Q has a burden partly Gaelic,

.... ohone and aree (alack and O Lord),
On the banks of tlhe Banna (White Kiver),
ohone and aree,

which may raise a question whether the Scotch
burden Binnorie (pronounced Binnorie, as well
as Binnorie) is corrupted from it, or the cor
ruption 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 Ro-
senplanter's Beitrage 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 some
what confused) a harp is made. The harp is
taken to the hall by the murdered girl's broth
er, and responds to his playing with tones of
sorrow like those of the bride who leaves fa
ther and mother for the house of a husband.f

* The miller begins to lose character in H :
14 He dragged her out unto the shore,

And stripped her of all she wore,
t Neus also refers to an Esthonian saga of Rogutaja's

A Slovak ballad often translated (Talvj,
Historical View, etc., p. 392; Wenzig's Sla-
wische Volkslieder, p. 110, Westslawischer
Marchenschatz, 273, and Bibliothek Slavischer
Poesien, p. 134 ; Lewestam, Polnische Volk-
sagen und Marchen, 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 conies 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. Kur-
schat, 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 rose
bud, 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, n, 15
(Lewestam, p. 105), Kolberg, Piesni ludu

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-po-
etisches Taschenbuch, 1812, p. 187.

10. THE TWA SISTERS

125

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 gather
ing 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 mur
deress 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, in, 878, which resembles the bal
lad at the beginning. There were in a fam
ily two daughters and a son. One sister was
wasteful, the other saving. The second com
plained of the first to her parents, and was
killed and buried by the other. Foliage cov
ered 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 revela
tion, 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 Lilila,' Fernan Caballero,
Lagrimas, cap. 4 ; (2) ' La cana del riu de
arenas,' Mila, Observaciones sobre la poesia
popular, p. 178, No 3 ; (3) ' Es kommt doch
einmal an den Tag,' Miillenhof, Sagen, u. s.
w., p. 495, No 49 ; (4) ' Vom singenden Du-
delsack,' Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Marchen,
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 Greifen-
feder,' Schneller, Marchen und Sagen aus
Walschtirol, p. 143, No 51 ; (6) ' La Flauuto,'
Blade", Contes et proverbes populaires re-
cueillis en Armagnac, p. 3, No 1 ; (7) Wack-
ernagel, in Haupt's Zeitschrift, in, 35, No
3, = « Das Todtebeindli,' Colshorn, C. u.
Th., Marchen u. Sagen, p. 193, No 71, = Su-
termeister, Kinder-u.-Hausmarchen 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 un
dertaken by three brothers [or two] : (8)
' Der singende Knochen,' Grimms, K. u. H.
marchen, I, 149, No 28 (1857); (9) 'Die
drei Briider,' Curtze, Volksiiberlieferungen
aus dem Furstenthum Waldeck, p. 53, No
11 ; (10) 'Der Rohrstengel,' Haltrich, Deutsche
Volksmarchen 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.* In all these tales the young
est 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

* All these are cited in K6 bier's note, Gonzenbach, n,
235.

126

10. THE TWA SISTERS

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 instru
ment, whenever it is played, attests the mur
der.

Among the tales of the South African Bech-
uana, there is one of a younger brother, who
has been killed by an older, immediately ap
pearing as a bird, and announcing what has oc
curred. 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. Ill, 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. Jour
nal Asiatique, 1851, 4th Series, vol. 18, p.
523.

Danish A, B 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, m, 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 Ay-
toun's compounded version, by R. Warrens,
Schottische V. L. der Vorzeit, p. 65 ; Ailing-
ham's version by Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen
Alt-Englands, p. 180.

A. a. Broadside "printed for Francis Grove, 1656," re
printed in Notes and Queries, 1st S., v, 591. b. Wit Re-
stor'd, 1658, "p. 51," p. 153 of the reprint of 1817. C. Wit
and Drollery, ed. 1682, p. 87, = Dry den'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 ' 0 sister, 0 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 bis 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 tbe second string,

' 0 yonder sitts my mother the queen.'

16 And then bespake the strings all three,

' 0 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.'

10. THE TWA SISTERS

13 ' 0 sister, sister, save my life,

An I swear Ise never be nae man's wife.'

a. Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. 39. b. Wm. Ty tier's Brown
MS., No 15. c. Abbotsford MS., " Scottish Songs," fol. 21. 14 * oul fa the han that I should tacke,

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 Ian.'

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 ' 0 sister, sister, tak my han,

An Ise mack you heir to a' my Ian.

12 ' O sister, sister, tak my middle,

An yes get my goud and my gouden girdle.

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.'

128

10. THE TWA SISTERS

Scott's Minstrelsy, 1802, u, 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 hour ;

Binnorie, 0 Binnorie
There came a knight to be their wooer.
By the honny 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 ' 0 sister, sister, reach your hand,
And ye shall be heir of half my land.'

10 ' 0 sister, I '11 not reach my hand,
And I '11 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

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 ' 0 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 ! '

10. THE TWA SISTERS

129

Kinloch's MSS, n, 49. From the recitation of Mrs Johii-
ston, 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,

t 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 '11 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 '11 na tak your glove,
For I '11 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.

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 ' 0 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 ' 0 father, father, in our mill-dam

There 's either a lady, or a milk-white swan.'

130

10. THE TWA SISTERS

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.

Motherwell's MS., p. 383. From the recitation of Agnes
Lyle, Kilbarchan, 27th July, 1825.

1 THERE was two ladies livd in a hower,

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 '11 view the bonny bows o Lon
don.

4 ' Thou '11 set thy foot whare I set mine,
Thou '11 set thy foot upon this stane.'

5 ' I '11 set my foot where thou sets thine : '
The old sister dang the youngest in,

At, etc.

6 ' 0 sister dear, come tak my hand,
Take my life safe to dry land,'

At, etc.

7 l It 's neer by my hand thy hand sail come in,
It 's neer by my hand thy hand sail 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.

10. THE TWA SISTERS

131

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 ' 0 sister, sister, gang down to yon sand,
And see your father's ships coming to dry

land.'

3 0 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 ' 0 sister, sister, tak me by the hand,
And ye '11 get a' my father's land.

7 ' O sister, sister, tak me by the gluve,
An ye '11 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 ' 0 father, 0 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.

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, 0 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 '11 make you lady of all my land.'

8 ' 0 I '11 not lend to you my hand,
But I '11 be lady of your land.'

9 ' 0 sister, sister, give me your glove,
And I '11 make you lady of my true love.'

10 ' It 's I '11 not lend to you my glove,
But I '11 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 ' 0 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.

132

10. THE TWA SISTERS

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 ' 0 God bless my father the king,

And I wish the same to my mother the queen.

19 ' My sister Jane she tumbled me in,

Kinloch MSS, v, 425. From the recitation of M. Kin-
near, 23d August, 1 826.

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

6 As they walked up the linn,
The eldest dang the youngest in.

7 ' O sister, sister, tak my hand,

And ye '11 hae Lud John and aw his land.'

8 With a silver wand she pushd her in,

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

9 ' 0 sister, sister, tak my glove,
And ye sail 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.'

Notes and Queries, 4th S., v, 23, from the north of Ire
land.

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.

Mr G. R. Kinloch's papers, Kinloch MSS, n, 59. From
Mrs Lindores.

1 ' 0 SISTER, sister, gie me your hand,
Binnorie and Binnorie

And I '11 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,

1 At the bonnie mill-dams of Binnorie.'

10. THE TWA SISTERS

133

a. From oral tradition, Notes and Queries, 1st S., v, 316.
b. The Scouring of the White Horse, p. 161. From North
Wales.

1 0 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 0 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.

Taken down from recitation at Old Deir, 1876, by Mrs
A. F. Murison. MS., p. 79.

• 1 THEBE lived twa sisters in yonder ha,

Bindrie O an Bindrie
They hadna but ae lad atween them twa,
He 's the bonnie miller lad o Binorie.

2 It fell oot upon a day,

The auldest ane to the youngest did say,
At the bonnie mill-dams o Bindrie,

3 ' 0 sister, 0 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

Ian?
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 Ian,
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 ' 0 father, 0 father, ye will fish your dams,
An ye '11 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.

134

10. THE TWA SISTERS

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.

[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 sail hae my silver fan.

11 ' 0 sister, sister, tak my middle,
And ye sail 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 hot 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.

a. Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, n, 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.'

10. THE TWA SISTERS

135

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 '11 take a lock o my yellow hair,

Ye '11 make a string to your fiddle there.

15 ' Ye '11 take a lith o my little finger bane,
And ye '11 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 firstahd spring the fiddle did play,

Said, ' Ye '11 drown my sister, as she 's dune
me.'

a. Motherwell's MS., p. 245. b. MotherwelPs 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 0

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 ' 0 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 '11 mak you heir of a' my land.'

8 ' O sister, O sister, I '11 no take your hand,
And I '11 be heir of a' your land.'

9 ' O sister, 0 sister, O tak my thumb,
And I '11 give you my true-love John.'

10 ' O sister, 0 sister, I '11 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 '11 tell him to burn my sister Jean.

18 ' When you go to my father's gate,

You '11 play a spring for fair Ellen's sake.

19 ' You '11 tak three links of my yellow hair,
And play a spring for evennair.'

136

10. THE TWA SISTERS

Copied Oct. 26, 1861, by J. F. Campbell, Esq., from a col
lection 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 ' 0 sister, 0 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 ' 0 sister, 0 sister, come reach me your hand,
And ye shall hae all our father's land.

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 ' 0 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 Ian.

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,
1 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.
8 ' 0 sister, 0 sister, come reach me your glove,

And you shall hae William to be your true 19 ' Carry him a lock of my yallow hair,
love.' To bind his heart for evermair.'

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.
1 The Scouring of the White Horse/ p. 158, from Berk
shire, 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 '11 be true to my love, and my love '11 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 '11 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.

10. THE TWA SISTERS

137

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 '11 give to thee this gay gold chain,

If you '11 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 your
self.

Kinloch MSS, vi, 89, in Kinloch's hand.

' O FATHER, father, swims a swan,'

This story I '11 vent to thee

' O father, father, swims a swan,

Unless it be some dead woman.'

I '11 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.

AUingham'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

Communicated by Mr W. W. Newell, as repeated by an
ignorant woman in her dotage, who learned it at Hunting-
ton, 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 '11 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. I1, went a-playing.
Burden*, a downe-o.
c. I1, went a-playing.

Burden l< *. With a hey down, down, a down,
down-a.

42. Till oat-meal and salt grow both on a

tree.

61. ran hastily down the clift.
6a. And up he took her without any life.
132. Moll Symns.

138

10. THE TWA SISTERS

14l, 151. Then he bespake.
172. And let him go i the devil's name.
d. I1, went a-playing. I2, ships sailing in.
21. into.
32. me up on.
62. withouten life.

B. a. 26, 27, 28. An it has been written in as a
conjectural emendation by Jamieson, he did it

play, [• playd ; and it is adopted by Jamie-
he )

son 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,
vn, 178.

o. 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 Tyt
ler-Brown copy of '•The Cruel Sister ' (Nichols,
Illus. Lit. Hist., vn, 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 com
bination 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.

21. brooch and ring. 22. abune a' thing.

31. wooed . . . with glove and knife.

32. looed the second.
52. she well nigh brist.
7. wanting.

82. led her to the deep mill-dam.

92. Her cruel sister pushd her in.

II2. And Ise mak ye.

12. wanting.

141. Shame fa the hand that I shall tak.

151. gowden hair. 152. gar . . . maiden

ever mair.
16. wanting.
171. Then out and cam. 172. swimming

down.

181. O father, haste and draw.
191. his dam. 192. And then. (?)
Instead 0/20-22 :

They raisd her wi meikle dule and care,
Pale was her cheek and green was her hair.

241. that corpse upon.

252. he 's strung.

261, 271, 281, for tune, line, if the copy be
right.

271. The next. 281. The last. 282. fause
Ellen.

" Note by Ritson. ' The fragment of a very
different copy of this ballad has been com
municated to J. R. by a friend at Dub
lin.' " \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 sub
joined. Jamieson adds that he had received
another copy from MrsArrott 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 sub
stitute the " Binnorie " burden, " the most com
mon and popular," says Scott, for the one given
by Mrs Brown, with which Mrs Arrott's
agreed. It may be added that Jamieson' s in
terpolations 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 rnanu*-
script.

I1, sisters livd.

22. aboon.

32. he loved.

42. and sair envied.

51. Intill her bower she coudna.

52. maistly brast.
II2. mak ye.
142. me o.

161. omits an.

162. came to the mouth o yon mill-dam.
182. There 's.

202. that was.
222. that were.
261. it did.
271. it playd seen.
281. thirden tune that it.
A copy in Motherwell's MS., p. 239, is de
rived from Jamieson's printed edition. It
omits the interpolated stanzas, and makes a
few very slight changes.

10. THE TWA SISTERS

139

C. Scott's account of his edition is as folloivs (iit
143, later ed., in, 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 his
torian of the Irish bards. Mr Walker, at
the same time, favored the editor with the
following note : ' I am indebted to my de
parted 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 :

" ' 0 sister, sister, reach thy hand !

Hey ho, my Nanny, O
And you shall be heir of all my land.

While the swan swims bonny, 0 ' '

Out of this stanza, or the corresponding
one in Mrs Brown's copy, Scott seems to
have made his 9, 10.

" My mother used to sing this song." Sharpe's
BaUad Book, ed. of 1880, note, p. 129.
22. An wooer.

21. strand, with sand written above : sand in 31.
I2, var. in MS. There was a knicht and he

loved them bath.

7. The following stanza was subsequently writ
ten on an opposite blank page, — perhaps de
rived from D 8 :

F.
G.
I.

Foul fa the hand that I wad take,
To twin me and my warld's make.

102. a was, perhaps, meant to be expunged,

but is only a little blotted.
II2. 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).

Found among Mr Kinloch's papers by Mr
Macmath, and inserted by him as a note on
p. 59, vol. n, of Kinloch's MSS. The order
of the stanzas is there, wrongly, inverted.
I2, var. I wad give you.

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 sur
vivor of those who had enjoyed the privilege
of listening to her ballads. We may, there
fore, 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 ' mil
ler chanced to come by,' and took it out of
the water 'to make a melody e.' " 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 0 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 melody.

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,
0 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 ?

140

10. THE TWA SISTERS

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 'B 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 An
cient Scottish Poems, p. cxxxi, that " Binnorie
is one half from tradition, one half by the ed
itor." 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 sail 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 dnle 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 '11 main for the, my Isabel deir,

Full mony a dreiry day, bot 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, n, 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.' "

I2, hae courted.

b. Mr Christie has "epitomized" Buchan's
copy (omitting stanzas 9-12), with these few
slight alterations from the singing of a Banff-
shire woman, who died in 1860, at the age of
nearly eighty :
Burden : It 's hey, etc.
22. And he courted the eldest wi mony other

thing.

31. But it fell.
52. 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 0

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 coun-

tree,

Bo down

And he had daughters one, two, three.
And I '11 be true unto my love, if he '11
be true unto me

(The burden is given as Bo down, bo down,
etc., in Popular Tales of the West High
lands, 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.

41. The sisters they walkt by the river brim.
62. my true love.

11. THE CRUEL BROTHER

141

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
hrook.

II1. O miller, I'll give you guineas ten,

12. The miller he took her guineas ten,
And then he popt her in again.

131. . . . behind his back gate,
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 '11 be true to my love.
If my love '11 be true to me.

S.
T.

2, 3. wanting.

41. As thay wur walking by the river's brim.

51. pray gee me thy hand.

71. 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.

II1. O miller, I '11 gee thee guineas ten.
12a. pushed the fair maid in again.
Between 12 and 13 o 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 coun
tree,
And they calls it the Barkshire Tragedee.

la. MS. Or less (?).

" Sung to a peculiar and beautiful air." Al-
lingham, p. xxxiii.

THE CRUEL BROTHER

A. « [The] Cruel Brother, or the Bride's Testament.' F. ' The Three Knights,' Gilbert's Ancient Christmas
a. Alex. Fraser Tytler's Brown MS. b. Jamieson's Carols, 2d ed., p. 68.

Popular Ballads, I, 66.

G. « Fine Flowers of the Valley.' a. Herd's MSS, i,

B. The Kinloch MSS, I, 21. 41. b. Herd's Scottish Songs, 1776, i, 88.

C. 'Ther waur three ladies,' Harris MS., p. lib. H. Fragment appended to G.

D. a. Notes and Queries, 1st S., vi, 53. b. 2d S.. v, I. The Kinloch MSS, i, 27.
171.

J. As current in County Meath, Ireland, about 1860.

E. Notes and .Queries, 4th S., v, 105.

K. Notes and Queries, 4th S., iv, 517.

142

11. THE CRUEL BROTHER

A a was obtained directly from Mrs Brown
of Falkland, in 1800, by Alexander Fraser
Tytler. Jamieson says that he gives b ver
batim 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, per
haps, the most popular of- all the Scottish bal
lads, being commonly recited and sung even at
the present day." The copy which he gives,
I, 232, was "taken down fiom recitation,"
but is nevertheless a compound of G and A b,
with a few unimportant variations, proceed
ing, no doubt, from imperfect recollection.*
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 P. 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, n, 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

* 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.

knights in P because there is only one lady.
In K this is a part of the general depravation
of the ballad.

' Rizzardo bello,' Wolf, Volkslieder aus Ve-
netien, 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 bis 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 be
tween two knives than be wife of two broth
ers." This ballad was obtained from a peas
ant 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 un
pardonable. Other cases which show the im
portance of this preliminary, and the some
times fatal consequences of omitting it, are :
' Hr. Peder og Mettelille,' Grundtvig, No 78,
II, 325, sts 4, 6 ; ' Jomfruen i Skoven,' Danske
Viser, m, 99, st. 15 ; ' Jomfru Ellensborg og
Hr. Olof,' ib., m, 316, st. 16 ; ' Iver Lang og
hans S0ster,' ib., iv, 87, st. 116 ; ' Herr Helmer
Blaa,' ib., iv, 251, st. 8 ; ' Jomfru Giselmaar,'
ib., iv, 309, st. 13. See Prior's Ancient Dan
ish Ballads, m, 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 dis-

11. THE CEUEL BROTHER

143

tressed ; 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, learn
ing 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 miracu
lous 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 some
what numerous, and there is a general agree
ment 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 fur
1808, p. 19 ; " Uhland, No 122, p. 277 ; Mit-
tler, No 108 ; Wunderhorn, II, 293 (1857) ;
Erk's Liederhort, No 15% p. 42 ; Bohme, No
79, p. 166: also, in Wunderhorn, 1808, II,
289, with omission of five stanzas and with
many changes ; Simrock, No 11, p. 28, omit
ting four stanzas and with changes ; as writ
ten down by Goethe for Herder, Diintzer u.
Herder, Briefe Goethes, u. s. w., Aus Herder's
Nachlass, I, 167, with the omission of eight
stanzas and with some variations. C, Wun
derhorn (1857), n, 299, from the Schwarz-
wald, = Erlach, iv, 291, Mittler, No 113.
D, Taschenbuch fur Dichter, u. s. w., Theil
Vin, 122, from Upper Lusatia, = Erlach, in,
448, Talvj, Charakteristik, p. 421. B, from
the Kuhlandchen, 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 fur 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, n, 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 repre
sents to her father that she had cut herself
with her brother's sword. This considerate-
ness 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 Faroe ballads.

The peculiar testament made by the bride
in ' The Cruel Brother,' by which she be
queaths 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 Haevn,'
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.
* M0en paa Baalet,' Grundtvig, No 109 A, 18-
21, 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 S0s-
ter,' Grundtvig, No 126, ni, 97, has a testa
ment in A-B and I ; in I, 14-19 (ni, 912),
Liden Kirsten bequeaths her knife, with the
same imprecation, to the queen, who, in the
other copies, is her unrelenting foe : so Lil-
lelin to Herr Adelbrand, Danske Viser, m,
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, n, 404, has
a testament in A, B, D, H, and in the ' last

144

11. THE CRUEL BROTHER

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 Li6,' Briz y
Candi, Cansons de la Terra, I, 209, has been
beaten by her mother-in-law while in a deli
cate 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 fa
ther'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, Podsies 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 Aqoriano, p. 225, No 15, p. 227,
No 16 ; Almeida-Garrett, in, 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 re
turn on horseback, though she has just borne a
son. The consequences are what might be ex
pected, 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 Lowenburg ' (B), Simrock,
p. 65, No 27; 'Hans Steutlinger' (C), Wun-

derhorn, n, 168 (1857), all one story, have a
bitterly sarcastic testament. A lady insti
gates 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 tes
tator's death ; as in ' El testamento de Amelia '
(who has been poisoned by her mother), Mila,
Observaciones, p. 103, No 5, Briz y Salt6, Can-
sons de la Terra, n, 197 (two copies) ; ' Her-
ren Bald,' Afzelius, I, 76, No 16 (new ed. I, 59,
No 15) ; a Swedish form of ' Frillens Hsevn,'
Grundtvig, IV, 203 ; « Rene*e le Glaz ' and ' Er-
voanik 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,
JE, Kristensen, n, No 84 B ; ' Pontplancoat,'
Luzel, I, 383, 391. And, again, there are par
odies 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 Bjonnen,' ' Reven og Nils fiskar,'
Landstad, Nos 85, 86, p. 637, 639 : and the rob
in, • Robin's Tesment,' Buchan, I, 273, Herd's
MSS, i, 154, and Scottish Songs (1776), n,
166, Chambers' Popular Rhymes, p. 38,
" new edition." ,

Translated in Grundtvig's Engelske og
skotske Folkeviser, No 33, p. 212, P, with
use of A and G b ; Aytoun's copy, with omis
sions, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volks-
lieder der Vorzeit, No 17, p. 80 ; after Al-
lingham and others, by Knortz, Lieder und
Romanzen Alt-Englands, No 5, p. 16.

11. THE CRUEL BROTHER

145

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 '11 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 ' 0 lead me gently up yon hill,

And I '11 there sit down, and make my will.'

21 ' 0 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 ? '
f 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.

146

11. THE CRUEL BROTHER

Kinloch's MSS, i, 21, from Mary Barr, May, 1827, Clydes
dale.

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 hride.

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.

11. THE CRUEL BROTHER

147

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.'

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.

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.

148

11. THE CRUEL BROTHER

Gilbert's Ancient Christmas Carols, 2d ed., p. 68, as re
membered 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.'

a. Herd's MSS, i, 41. b. Herd's Scottish Songs, 1776,
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 :
' 0 lady fair, will you be my queen ? '

4 The third of them was clad in yellow :

1 0 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. THE CRUEL BROTHER

149

1 1 ' 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 hreath a while.

16 ' 0 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.'

14 ' O lead me over to yon stair,

For there I '11 ly and bleed ne mair.'

19 ' What will you leave your brother John's

wife?'

' Grief and sorrow to end her life.'
15 ' 0 what will you leave your father dear ? '

' That milk-white steed that brought me here.' 20 ' What will ye leave your brother John's

bairns ? '
' The world wide for them to range.'

Herd's MSS..I, 44, n, 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.'

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 :

' 0,' says he, ' ye maun be my bride.'

3 The next o them was clad in green :

* 0,' 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 '11 let me be.'

6 Her father led her doun the stair,
Her mither at her back did bear.

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 bride

groom ;

* 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 ' 0 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.'

7 Her sister Jess led her out the closs,
Her brother John set her on the horse.

16 * What will ye leave to your sister Jess ? '
' The bonnie lad that I loe best.'

150

11. THE CRUEL BROTHER

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.'

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 0
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.'

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 «poke 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.

12. LORD RANDAL

151

A. b. 62. oer young.

102. spear at.
172. the bonny.
191. said.

231. And what will ye.
251. This fair lady. 2. And a mass.
Variations of Aytouris copy, sts. 9-13, 16, 17,
20-24 : II1 omits And ; 121, 131 omit dear ;
132 omits And ; 161, through half for half
thro ; 172 omits For, bonny ; 212, pearlin/or
silken ; 22 l omits And ; 222, My silken
gown that stands its lane ; 232, shirt for
cloaths ; 241, And what ; 242, 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. 91. For on the road.

Gr. a. 1. Burden*. The red, green, etc. : after
wards, Wi the red, etc.

22. MS. also, He askt of me if I 'd be his
bride.

32. MS. also, He askt of me if I 'd be his
queen.

42. MS. also, He askt me if I'd be his mar
row.

152. MS. also, The gold and silver that I have
here.

162. MS. also, The silken garment.

172. MS. also, My satine hat.

202, MS. also, The world wide, let them go
beg.

b. 72. the mother.

b. 141. into yon stair.

Variations of Aytoun's copy, sts. 1-8, 14, 15,
18, 19 from Herd, 1776 : I1, three sisters ;
22, 32, 42 omit fair ; 51, O ye maun ; 61, And
ye ; 71, 0 I have ; 81, And I have ask'd your
sister ; 8a, your brother ; 142, Give me a
kiss ; 152, When wi his knife.

H. " I have heard this song, to a very good tune
not in any collection, with the above varia
tions — the chorus, of the whole as in the
above two verses." Herd's note in his MSS.

12
LORD KANDAL

A. From a manuscript copy, probably of the beginning
of this century.

of New Bedford, d. By a lady of Cambridge, e, f, g.
By ladies of Boston.

B. ' Lord Donald,' Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, J. ' The Bonnie Wee Croodlin Dow,' Motherwell's
p. 110. MS., p. 238.

C. Motherwell's MS., p. 69.

D. Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1803, in, 292.

B. 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.

O. ' The Croodlin Doo.' From a manuscript belong-

I. ' Tiranti, my Son.' a. Communicated by a lady of ing to the Fraser,-Ty,tlei; family.
Boston, b. By an aunt of the same. c. By a lady

K. a. « The Croodlin Doo,' Chambers, Scottish Bal
lads, p. 324. b. ' The Wee Croodlen Doo,' Cham
bers, 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,
n, 179.

M. ' The Croodin Doo,' Chambers, Popular Rhymes,
1870, p. 51.

N. Kinloch MSS, V, 347.

152

12. LORD RANDAL

THE title ' Lord Randal ' is selected for this
ballad because that name occurs in one of the
better versions, and because it has become fa
miliar 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. P
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 fol
lowing 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. Eliza
beth 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, TTT,
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. Cun
ningham'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 beauti
fied edition of Scott's ballad, and has its bur
den accordingly ; but there is, besides this, no
internal evidence against the second, and none
against the third.

* Opera nuova, nella quale si contiene ana incatenatura
di piu villanelle ed altre cose ridiculose. . . . Data in luce
per me Camillo, detto il Bianchino, cieco Florentine. Flie-

' O where have you been, Lord Ronald, my son ?
0 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.'

' 0 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.'

' 0 what got your bloodhounds, Lord Ronald, my
son?

0 what got your bloodhounds, my bandsome young

man?'
' They lapt the broo, mother, so make my bed soon,

1 am wearied with hunting, and fain would lie

down.'

A pot-pourri or quodlibet, reprinted in
Wolff's Egeria, p. 53, from a Veronese broad
side 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 :

" lo vo' finire con questa d'un amante
Tradito dalV amata.
Oh che 1'e si garbata
A cantarla in ischiera :
' Dov' andastu iersera,
Figliuol mio ricco, savio e gentile ?
Dov' andastu iersera ' ? " *

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,

gendes 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.

12. LORD RANDAL

153

[To 'Lord Randal,' p. 152f.]
I have unaccountably failed to mention
(though I had made note of them) three ver
sions of ' L'Avvelenato ' which are cited by
Professor D'Ancona in his Poesia popolare
italiana, p. 106 ff.

D. The Canon Lorenzo Panciatichi refers
to the ballad in a ' Cicalata in lode della Pa-
della 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 an-
dastu 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.

B. 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 testa
ment is said to supervene immediately.

P. 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 Lec-
cese, 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.

[To 'The Cruel Brother/ p. 142.]

I will take the opportunity to remark that
Nigra has just republished in Romania XI,
391, ' Luggieri,' a version, from Arezzo, of
< Rizzardo bello,' previously printed by Giulio
Salvatori in the Rassegna Settimanale, No.
77, Rome, June 22, 1879. Nigra treats • Lug
gieri ' as a variety of ' Jean Renaud.' To me
it seems an independent ballad.

as in A the bequest to his false love, in
stead 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,

* It begins :

" Dove si sta jersira,

Figliuol mio caro, Jiorito e gentil f

Dove si sta jersira ? "
" Son sta dalla mia dama;

Signora Mama, mio core sta mat !

Son sta dalla mia dama ;

Ohime ! ctiio moro, ohime ! "

t E. g. (B) :

1 " E dove xestu sta gieri sera,
Figlio mio rico, sapio e gentil?
20

burg. A child has been at her mother's sis
ter'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,

E dove xestu sta gieri sera,
Gentil mio cavalier? "

2 " E mi so' stato da la mia bela;
Signora madre, el mio cuor sta mal !
E mi so' stato da la mia bela;

Oh Dio, che moro, ohime ! "

3 " E cossa t'ala dato da 9ena,
Figlio mio? " etc.

4 "E la m'a dato 'n'anguila rostita;
Signora madre," etc.

152

12. LORD RANDAL

museum. ±ne iasu two stanzas are a poor
modern invention.

* Opera nuova, nella quale si contiene una incatenatura
di piu villanelle ed altre cose ridiculose. . . . Data in luce
per me Camillo, detto il Bianchino, cieco Florentine. Flie-

A cantarla in ischiera :

' Dov' andastu iersera,

Figliuol mio ricco, savio e gentile ?

Dov' andastu iersera ' ? " *

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), Lin,

gendes 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.

12. LOBD RANDAL

153

668, is of seventeen stanzas, of seven short
lines, all of which repeat but two : the 8th
and 10th stanzas are imperfect.* 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'anda 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 th rough-
out, f 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, in
stead 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,

* It begins :

" Dove si sta jersira,

Figliuol mio caro,jiorito e gentil?

Dove si sta jersira 1 "
" Sou sta dalla mia dama;

Signora Mama, mio core sta mal !

Son sta dalla mia dama ;

Ohime I ch'io moro, ohime ! "

t E. g. (B) :

1 " E dove xestu sta gieri sera,
Figlio mio rico, sapio e gentil ?
20

show the same resemblances and differences
as the English.

A, B, ' Schlangenkb'chin,' eight stanzas of
six lines, four of which are burden, A, Lieder-
hort, p. 6, No 2a, 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 Schlang-
enkochin,' first published in 1802, in Maria's
(Clemens Brentano's) romance Godwi, II, 113,
afterward in the Wunderhorn, 1, 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 gar
den ; 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 Biickeburg, Lippe-Schaum-
burg. A child has been at her mother's sis
ter'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,

E dove xestu sta gieri sera,
Gentil mio cavalier? "

2 " E mi so' stato da la mia bela;
Signora madre, el mio cuor sta mal !
E mi so' stato da la mia bela;

Oh Dio, che moro, ohime ! "

3 " E cossa t'ala dato da 9ena,
Figlio mio?" etc.

4 "E la m'a dato 'n'anguila rostita;
Signora madre," etc.

154

12. LORD RANDAL

* Kind, wo bist du denn henne west ? ' Reiffen-
berg, p. 8, No 4, from Bokendorf, 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,
Siebenbiirgisch-sachsische V. L., p. 62, No
58, from Miihlbach. 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 Eng
lish C. C-P are like J-O, ' The Croodlin Doo.'

Dutch. « Isabella,' Snellaert, p. 73, No 67,
seven four-line stanzas, the first and fourth
lines repeated in each. Isabel has been sew
ing 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,
in, 13, No 68 ; ed. Bergstrom, 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, Ar-
widsson, n, 90, No 88, nine five-line stanzas,
two lines burden. In the first stanza, evidently
corrupt, the girl says she has been at her broth
er'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. Grundt-

vig, as obtained for the first time from tra
dition 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, 2e Auflage, p.
127, in nine six-line stanzas, four being a bur
den. 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 fur
niture, to his sister-in-law everlasting damna
tion, 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 tes
tament. 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, ac
cording 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, B, 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,

12. LOED RANDAL

155

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 Eng
lish J, K c, L, M, N, O, and in four of these,
J, K c, M, O, the child has a mammie,* 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, EL 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,f 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, con
cur 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 char
acteristic 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,

* Grundtvig notices this absurdity, Eng. og skotske
F. v, p. 286, note **.

t " The nurse or nursery maid who sung these verses (to
a very plaintive air) always informed the juvenile audience

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 tfris is ad
dressed 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. Eng
lish 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 accord
ingly, " 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

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 Mu
seum, Laing-Stenhouse, iv, 364*.

156

12. LORD RANDAL

what to me, my son ? " asks the mother. A
broad mill-stone and the deep Moldau is the
bequest to her. Waldau, Bb'hmische Granaten,
n, 109, cited by Reifferscheid, p. 137 f.

The Catalan ballad seems to have been sof
tened at the end. Here again a mother hates
her daughter-in-law. She comes to the sick
woman, " com qui no 'n sabes 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. Mila, Observaciones, p. 103 f,
No 5, two versions : Briz y Salt6, n, 197 f,
two also, the first nearly the same as Mila'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 instiga
tion of a lover, to rid herself of her husband
by pounding a serpent, or its head, in a mor
tar, and mixing the juice with his wine [in
one version simply killing the snake and put
ting it in a cask] : Nigra, Canzoni del Pie-
monti, in Rivista Contemporanea, xn, 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* ; Fer-
raro, C. p. monferrini, p. 1, No 1 ; Bernoni, C.
p. veneziani, Puntata V, No 1. In three of Ni-
gra's versions and in Ferraro's the drink is of
fered 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 bal
lad, a mother who attempts to destroy her sons
[step-sons] with a brewage of this descrip
tion is obliged to drink first, and bursts with
the poison: ' Eiturbyrlunar kvaeSi,' Islenzk

Fornkv., n, 79, No 43 A ; < Fru Gundela,'
Arwidsson, n, 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 traviuka,' Erben,
P. n. w Cechach, 1842, I, 9, No 2, Prostona-
rodni cesk6 P., 1864, p. 477, No 13 ; Swoboda,
Sbirka c. n. P., p. 19 ; German translations by
Swoboda, by Wenzig, W. s. Marchenschatz,
p. 263, I. v. Diiringsfeld, Bohmische Rosen, p.
176, etc.v Moravian : Susil, p. 167, No 168.
Slovak, Celakowsky, Slowanske n. P., m,
76. Polish: Kolberg, P. L. p., 1, 115, No 8,
some twenty versions ; Wojcicki, P. L. bialo-
chrobatow, etc., I, 71, 73, 232, 289 ; Pauli, P.
L. polskiego, p. 81, 82 : Konopka, P. L. kra-
kowskiego, p. 125. Servian :. Vuk, I, 215,
No 302, translated by Talvj, n, 192, and by
Kapper, Gesange der Serben, II, 177. Rus
sian : Celakowsky, as above, in, 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 pound
ing 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 ver
sions, 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. " To. Ka/ca TreOepiKa,"
Passow, p. 335, No 456, nearly = Zambelios,
p. 753, No 41 ; Passow, p. 337, No 457 ; Tom-
rnaseo, Canti popolari, in, 135 ; Jeannaraki,

12. LORD RANDAL

157

p. 127, No 130 * ; Chasiotis (Epirote), p. 51,

No 40, " 'H fiovpyapo7rov\a. Kal rj KttKrj ireGepd ; "
p. 108, No 22, "'O Atovus KOI f) KaKrj ireOepd."
(Liebrecht, Volkskunde, p. 214.)

An Italian mother-in-law undertakes to poi
son 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 rup
ture — 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 es
pecially, and shall while the abbey standeth.
The king was anon full evil at ease, and com
manded 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 com
manded 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." Min
strelsy, Hi, 287 f. The same story in Eulo-
gium Historiarum, ed. Haydon, nr, 109 f.

B and K o 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 ; Doen-
niges, p. 79 ; Gerhardt, p. 83 : Knortz, L. u.
R. Alt-Englands, p. 174. K a by Fiedler,
Geschichte der volksthiimlichen schottischen
Liederdichtung, II, 268. German C is trans
lated by Jamieson, Illustrations, p. 320 : Swed
ish A by W. and«M. Howitt, Literature and
Romance of Northern Europe, I, 265.

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 ' 0 WHERE ha you been, Lord Randal, my

son?

And where ha you been, my handsome young
man? '

1 1 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? '

* 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 Pas-
sow, No 457.

158

12. LORD RANDAL

' 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

m|an ?'
' 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 Ran

dal, 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 Ran

dal, 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 Ran

dal, my son ?

What d' ye leave to your brother, my hand
some 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 Ran
dal, my son ?

What d' ye leave to your true-love, my hand
some 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.'

Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 110. From Mrs
Comie, Aberdeen.

1 ' 0 WHAKE 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 Don
ald, my son ?

What wad ye hae for your supper, my jollie
young man ? '

12. LORD RANDAL

159

' 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 Don

ald, my son ?
What did ye get for your supper, my jollie

young man ? '
' A dish of sma fishes ; mither mak my hed

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 ' 0 I fear ye are poisond, Lord Donald, my

son !
O I fear ye are poisond, my jollie young

man ! '
' 0 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 Don

ald my son ?
What will ye leave to your father, my jollie

young man ? '
1 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.'

Motherwell's MS., p. 69. From the recitation of Marga
ret Bain, in the parish of Blackford, Perthshire.

1 ' WHAT 's become of your hounds, King Hen-

rie, my son ?

What 's become of your hounds, my pretty lit
tle 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?'

160

12. LORD RANDAL

' 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 there
in ; 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 poi
soned me and my hounds all ; mother,
make my bed soon,

Oh I 'm sick to the heart, and I fain wald lie
down.'

Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, 1803, m, 292.

1 ' 0 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 Ran

dal, my son ?

What became of your bloodhounds, my hand
some young man ? '

' 0 they swelld and they died ; mother, make
my bed soon,

For I 'm weary wi hunting, and fain wald lie
down.'

5 ' 0 I fear ye are poisond, Lord Randal, my

son !
0 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.'

12. LORD RANDAL

161

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 heen, Lairde Rowlande,

my son ? '
' I 've been in the wild woods ; mither, mak my

bed soon,
For I 'm weary wi hunting, and f aine 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 Row

lande, my son ?

What 's become of your warden, Lairde Row
lande, 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 ? '
1 They swelled and they died ; mither, mak my

bed soon,
For I 'm weary wi hunting, and faine would lie

down.'

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 Ron
ald, my son ?

What got ye frae your sweetheart, Lord Ron
ald, my son ? '

' I hae got deadly poison ; mother, make my
bed soon,

For life is a burden that soon I '11 lay down.'

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.'

162

12. LORD RANDAL

Taken down by me, February, 1881, from the recitation of
Ellen Healy, as repeated to her by a young girl at " Lacka-
bairn," 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 com
fort 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 ! '
' 0 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 com
fort and joy ? '

I 1 '11 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 com
fort and joy ? '

' I '11 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 com
fort and joy ? '

' I '11 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 '11 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 com
fort and joy ? '

' I '11 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 com
fort 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 '11 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 '11 take a long

sleep.'

12. LORD RANDAL

163

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 bal
lad of her mother about 1800. b. By a daughter of Eliza
beth Foster, as learned about 1820. c. By Miss Ellen Mars-
ton, 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 Bos
ton, f. By Mrs Edward Atkinson, of Boston, learned of
Mrs A. Lowell, in girlhood, g. By Mrs A. Lowell, as de
rived from a friend.

1 ' 0 WHEKE have you been, Tiranti, my son ?

0 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 ?'

1 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 streaked and striped ; mother,

make my bed soon,
For I 'm sick to my heart, and I 'm faint to

lie down.'

5 ' What '11 you give to your father, Tiranti, my

son?

What '11 you give to your father, my sweet lit
tle 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 '11 you give to your mother, Tiranti, my

son?
What '11 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 '11 you give to your grandmother, Ti

ranti, my son ?
What '11 you give to your grandmother, my

sweet little one ? '
1 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 '11 you have your bed made, Tiranti,

my son ?
Where '11 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.'

Motherwell's MS., p. 238. From the recitation of Miss
Maxwell, of Brediland.

1 ' O WHABE hae ye been a' day, my bonhie wee

croodlin dow ?

0 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 ' 0 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. mam
mie, now! ' [Twice.]

164

12. LORD RANDAL

3 ' 0 whare gat she the wee fishie, my bonnie

wee croodlin dow ? '

' In a dub before the door ; oh mak my bed,
mammie, now

f »

4 ' What did ye wi the wee fishie, my bonnie wee

croodlin dow ? '

1 1 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 ' 0 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 ! '

a. Chambers' Scottish Ballads, p. 324. b. Chambers'
Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1842, p. 53. c. The Sten-
house-Laing ed. of Johnson's Museum, iv, 364*, communi
cated by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe.

1 ' O WHAUR hae ye been a' the day, my little

wee croodlin doo ? '

' 0 I 've been at my grandmother's ; mak my
bed, mammie, now ! '

2 ' 0 what gat ye at your grandmother's, my lit

tle wee croodlin doo ? '

' I got a bonnie wee fishie ; mak my bed, mam
mie, now ! '

3 ' 0 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 ; 0 mak my bed,
mammie, now !

1»

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 ! ' .

Buchan's MSS, n, 322 ; Ballads of the North of Scotland,
n, 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
v 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?'

12. LORD RANDAL

165

8 ' She gaed me hemlock stocks ; make my bed, 9 They made his hed, laid him down, poor Wil-

lay me down ; lie doo, Willie doo ;

Made in the brewing pot ; die shall I now ! ' He turnd his face to the wa ; he 'a dead now !

Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1870, p. 51. " Mrs Lock-
bar t'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 ; ' 0 make,
etc.

5 ' What did she do with the banes o't ? ' .
' She gae them to the little dog.'

6 ' 0 what became o the little dog ? '

' O it shot out its feet and died ; ' 0 make, etc.

Kinloch's MSS, v, 347. In Dr John Hill Burton's hand.

1 ' FAKE hae ye been a' day, a' day, a' day,
Fare hae ye been a' day, my little wee croud-

lin 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 ! '

From a manuscript collection, copied out in 1840 or 1850,
by a granddaughter of Alexander Fraser-Tytler, p. 67.

1 ' 0 WHERE hae ye been a' the day, my wee wee

croodlin doo doo ?
0 where hae ye been a' the day, my bonnie

wee croodlin doo ? '
' 0 I hae been to my step-mammie's ; mak my

bed, mammy, noo, noo,
Mak my bed, mammy, noo ! '

2 ' 0 what did yere step-mammie gie to you ? '

etc.
' She gied to me a wee wee fish,' etc.

3 ' [0] 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 ! '

166

12. LORD RANDAL

C. 42. your father, King Henry, my son.

I. a. I4, 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.
y. B. 8 stands 5 in the MS. copy, but is the
last stanza in all others which have it.

b. 21. for your dinner.
After 2 follows :

Who cooked you the eels, Tiranti, my son ?

etc.
0 't was my grandmother ; mother, make my

bed soon, etc.

b 5 = a 3 : *. Where did she get the eels ? etc.

8. By the side of the haystack, etc.

b 6 = a 7 : 7 = a 8 : 8 = a 5. 84. and die to

lie down,
a 6 is wanting in b.

c. I4, at my heart (and always).

21. O what did she give you ? etc. 8. Striped
eels fried, etc.

3 = a 4. \ O how did they look ? etc.

8. Ringed, streaked, and speckled, etc.

4 = a 3. *. O where did they come from ?
51. 0 what will you give your father, my

son ?

2. O what will you give him ?

3. A coach and six horses.

61. O what will you give your mother, my

son ? as in 5.

s. All my gold and my silver.
71. O what will you give your granny ? as

in 5.

81. 0 where '11, 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. I1, etc. Tyrante.

8. 0 I 've been to my uncle's, etc.
*. and fain wad lie doun.
2s. eels and fresh butter.

3 = a 4. 8. black striped with yellow.

4 = a 7. l. What '11 ye will to your mither ?

3. My gold and my silver.

5 = a 6. 1. What '11 ye will to your father ?

8. My coach and my horses.

6 = a 8. \ What '11 you will to your uncle ?
3, 5 of a are wanting.

e. I4. For I 'm sick at heart, and faint [fain]

to lie down.

3 = a 7. l. What will you leave your moth
er ?

*. A box full of jewels.
41. What will you leave your sister?
8. A box of fine clothing.

5 = a 8. 3. A rope to hang her with.

6 = a 5. *. Where shall 1 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.
I4, fain to lie down. f3 = e4:f4 = e3.

g. I4. For I 'm sick at the heart, and I faint

to lie down.

21. What did you get at your grandmoth
er's ?
8. I got eels stewed in butter.

3 = a 8. \ What will you leave ....
41. What will you leave to your brother ?

8. A full suit of mourning.
. 5 = a 7. J. leave to your mother.

8. A carriage and fine horses.
6 = a5.

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.

61. the little doggie. 2. as I do, mammie,

noo.

c. I1, my bonnie wee crooden doo : and al
ways.

2. at my step-mither's.
2. And what did scho gie you to eat . . .

Scho gied to me a wee fishie ....
31. 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.

13. EDWARD

167

13
EDWARD

A. a. MotherwelPs MS., p. 139. b. Motherwell's Min- B. Percy's Reliques, 1765, i, 53. Communicated by
strelsy, p. 339. From recitation. 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 be
lieve " that his lordship made a few slight ver
bal 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." * Dalrymple, at least,
would not be likely to change a Scotch for an
English name. The Bishop might doubtless
prefer Edward to Wat, or Jopk, or even Da-
vie. 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 an
tique spelling f in Percy's copy has given rise
to vague suspicions concerning the authen
ticity 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,

* An eager " Englishman " might turn Motherwell's ob
jection to the name into an argument for ' Edward ' being an
" English " ballad.

t 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,
jour. The quh would serve a purpose, if understood as in
dicating that the aspirate was not to be dropped, as it often
is in English why. The z is the successor of }, and was

the later traditional copy to prove the other
genuine. 'Edward' is not only unimpeach
able, but has ever been regarded as one of
the noblest and most sterling specimens of
the popular ballad.

Motherwell seems to incline to regard ' Ed
ward ' rather as a detached portion of a ballad
than as complete in itself. " The verses of
which it consists," he says, " generally con
clude the ballad of ' The Twa Brothers,' and
also some versions of ' Lizie Wan : ' " Min
strelsy, LXVII, 12. The Finnish parallel
which Motherwell refers to, might have con
vinced 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 conclu
sion 4 More or less of ' Edward ' will be found
in four versions of ' The Twa Brothers ' and
two of ' Lizie Wan,' further on in this vol
ume.

This ballad has been familiarly known to
have an exact counterpart in Swedish. There
are four versions, differing only as to length :
' Sven i Rosengard,' A, Afzelius, No 67, ill,
4, eleven two-line stanzas, with three more

meant to be pronounced y, as z is, or was, pronounced in
gaberlunzie and other Scottish words. See Dr J. A. H. Mur
ray'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.

\ 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 trans
lation of ' Edward ' given from memory.

168

13. EDWARD

lines of burden ; B, in, 3, six stanzas (Berg-
strom's ed., No 54, 1,2); C, Arwidsson, No
87 A, n, 83, eighteen stanzas ; D, No 87 B,
II, 86, sixteen stanzas. The same in Danish :
A, Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folke-
viser, p. 175, nine stanzas ; B, Boisen, Nye
og gamle Viser, 10th ed., No 95, p. 185,
4 Brodermordet.' And in Finnish, probably
derived from the Swedish, but with traits of
its own: A, Schroter's Finnische Runen, p.
124, * Werinen Pojka,' The Bloodstained Son,
fifteen two-line stanzas, with two lines of re
frain; 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 ? " * [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 varia
tions), When crows are white. And that will
be ? When swans are black. And that ?
When stones float. And that ? When feath
ers sink, etc. This last feature, stupidly ex
aggerated in some copies, and even approach
ing burlesque, is one of the commonplaces of
ballad poetry, and may or may not have been,

* 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.

t These have perhaps been adapted to the stanza of ' The

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 Swed
ish 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 re
frains ; that is, the story advances in these at
that rate. A 4, 7 (= C) are entirely irregu
lar, substituting narrative or descriptive cir
cumstances for the last line of the refrain,
and so far forth departing from primitive sim-
plicity.f The stanza in B embraces always
a question and a reply, but for what is re
frain in other forms of the ballad we have
epical matter in many cases./,>A 1, 2, sub
stantially, = B 1 ; A 3, 4 ="B 2 ; A 5, 6 =
B3; 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 Volker, I, 22,' and Haus-
schatz, p. 223. B, in Afzelius, in, 10 ; " often
in Danish," Grundtvig ; by Herder, Volkslie-
der, n, 207 ; by Doring, 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.$

Twa Brothers,' with some versions of which, as already re
marked, the present ballad is blended.

I 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.

13. EDWARD

169

a. Motherwell's MS., p. 139. From Mrs King, Kilbar-
chan. 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 '11 set my foot in a bottomless ship,

Mother lady, mother lady :
I '11 set my foot in a bottomless ship,
And ye '11 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 '11 never see mair o me.'

11 ' What wilt thou leave to thy old son,

Son Davie, son Davie ? '
' I '11 leave him the weary world to wander up

and down,
And he '11 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 '11 never get mair o me.'

Percy's Keliques, 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 ? '
' 0 I hae killed my hauke sae guid,

Mither, mither,
0 I hae killed my hauke sae guid,

And I had nae mair bot hee 0.'

2 ' Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid,

Edward, Edward,

Your haukis bluid was nevir sae reid,
My deir son I tell thee O.'
22

; 0 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 f adif 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 ?

170

14. BABYLON; OR, THE BONNIE BANKS O FORDIE

And whatten penance will ye drie for that?

My deir son, now tell me O.'
' He set my feit in yonder boat,

Mither, mither,
He set my feit in yonder boat,

And He fare ovir the sea 0.'

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 0 ? '
' He let thame stand tul they doun fa,

Mither, mither,
lie 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 0.'
1 The curse of hell frae me sail ye beir,
Mither, mither,
The curse of hell frae me sail ye beir,

Sic counseils ye gave to me O.'

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,
A<nd a penny wad hae bought the tree.'

A. b. 1*. tell to me 0. And so every fourth line. B. Initial qufor w and zfor y have been changed

74. That would never hae been a tree 0. throughout to w and y.

104. And she '11 never get mair frae me O. 67. let.

II8. The weary warld to wander up and
down.

BABYLON; OR, THE BONNIE BANKS O FORDIE

A. a, b. 'Babylon; or, The Bonnie Banks o Fordie,' C. Motherwell's MS., p. 172.
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 88. c. The same, Ap
pendix, p. xxii, No xxvi. D. Motherwell's MS., p. 174.

B. a. Herd's MSS, i, 38, n, 76. b. ' The Banishd E. ' Duke of Perth's Three Daughters/ Kinloch's An-
Man,' The Scots Magazine, October, 1803, p. 699, cient Scottish Ballads, p. 212.

evidently derived from Herd.

14. BABYLON; OE, THE BONNIE BANKS O FOEDIE

171

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, suc
cessively, D, B) to gather flowers (A, B, B).
A banished man (outlyer bold, D, London
lord, B) 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 s*he 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 de
fective 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 33 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 h.is
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 D0ttre,' Danske Viser,

in, 392,^ No 164, there reprinted from Sand-
vig, Beskrivelse over 0en M0en, 1776 : B,
' Herr Thors B0rn,' 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 mat
ins, 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 four
teen years ; and the first crime they had com
mitted 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

172

14. BABYLON; OR, THE BONNIE BANKS O FORDIE

give blood for blood," spread their cloaks on
the floor, and let their blood run.

Swedish. 'Pehr Tyrsons Dottrar i
Wange.' A, Arwidsson, n, 413, No 166. B,
Afzelius, ni, 193, No 98 : ed. Bergstrom, I,
380, No 84, i. C, Afzelius, ill, 197 : ed. Berg
strom, I, 382, No 84, 2, as old as the last half
of the seventeenth century. D, Afzelius, m,
202 : ed. Bergstrom, i, 384, No 84, 3. E, " C.
J. Wesson, De paroecia Kama (an academical
dissertation), Upsala, 1836," Arwidsson, as
above, who mentions another unprinted copy
in the Royal Library.

A. Herr Tores' 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 Tores. 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 Tores! 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

* 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

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 ex
piation, and it shall be called Kerna (B, C).

Faroe. ' Torkilds Riim, eller St. Catha-
rinae Vise,' Lyngbye, Fser0iske Qvaeder, £-||.
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 daugh
ters 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 sad
dle 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 (vadla
rar *), then two, then one, and the last asked
her whether she would pass the night with
bun (vera qvoldar 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 [af
terwards] 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.

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.

14. BABYLON; OR, THE BONNIE BANKS O FORDIE

173

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 Islenzk
FornkvseSi, I, 108 ff, No 15, ' Vallara kvaeSi.'

The story is nearly the same as in the Faroe
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, B ; a horseman or knight, D.
He greets them : " Why will ye not speak ?
Are ye come of elves, or of kings them
selves ? " 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, B]. The mur
derer 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 hang
ing like a dog, D] . A miraculous light burned
over the place where the maids had been
buried, A 16, C 27, D 24, B 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 (l,
159), " lie about six miles to the east of Dun-
keld." 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 Linkoping (Afzelius),
has been popularly supposed to derive its name
from a Catharina, Karin, or Kama, killed by
her own brother, a wood-robber, near its site.
See Afzelius, ed. Bergstrom, II, 329 ff : Danske
Viser, in, 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,
m, 252.

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 '11 not be a rank robber's wife,
But I '11 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.

174

14. BABYLON; OR, THE BONNIE BANKS O FORDIE

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 '11 not be a rank robber's wife,

But I '11 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 '11 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 '11 kill thee.'

15 ' What 's thy brother's name ? come tell to

me.'
' My brother's name is Baby Lon.'

16 ' 0 sister, sister, what have I done !
O have I done this ill to thee !

17 ' 0 since I 've done this evil deed,
Good sail never be seen o me.'

18 He 's taken out his wee pen-knife,

And he 's twyned himsel o his ain sweet life.

a. Herd's MSS. i, 38, n, 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 '11 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 '11 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.'

*****

9 ' I '11 rather consent to lose my life
Before 1 11 be a banished lord's wife.'

14. BABYLON; OR, THE BONNIE BANKS O FORDIE 175

Motherwell's MS., p. 172. From J. Goldie, March, 1825.

1 THERE were three sisters on a road, 10 ' It 's lean your head upon my staff,'

Gilly flower gentle rosemary And with his pen-knife he has cutted it aff.

And there they met a banished lord.

And the dew it hings over the mulberry tree 11 He flang her in amang the broom,

Saying, ' Lie ye there till another ane come.'

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 '11 rather consent to lose my life
Before I '11 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 ' 0 will ye consent to lose your life,
Or will ye be a banished lord's wife ? '

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 ' 0 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.'

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 ' 0 kind sir, if I hae 't at my will,

I '11 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 '11 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.

176

14. BABYLON; OR, THE BONNIE BANKS O FORDIE

13 He wiped his knife along the dew ;

But the more he wiped, the redder it grew.

18 ' Pray, what may thy three brethren he,
That I durst na mak so hold with thee ? '

14 The youngest of them she 's to the wood gane, 19 ' The eldest o them is a minister hred,

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.'

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.

Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 212. From Mearns-
shire.

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 '11 be called a robber's wife,

I '11 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 '11 be called a robber's wife,

I '11 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 '11 be called a robber's wife,

I '11 rather be stickit wi your bloody knife,
For pu'in,' etc.

15. LEESOME BRAND

177

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 reci
tation, 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.

22. MS. Quhen. 41, 42, 52, 121, 122, 132, 142.
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.

I1, three sisters. 22. up there started.
7-11 and 122 are not written out in the MS.

" Repeat as to the second sister, mutatis mu
tandis." Motherwell.

9-13 are not written out in the MS. " Same
as 1st sister." Motherwell.

142. bring her.

15, 16 are not written out. " Same as 1st and
2d sisters, but this additional, viz'." M.

222. longe, or large ?

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 remark
ably 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 Bubhan'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

178

15. LEESOME BRAND

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 frame
work.

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 ' Lee-
some Brand ' closely resembles stanza 2 of
* Earl Brand,' A.* 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 Dan
ish 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 Hincl,' 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

* And also stanza 3 of Buchan's ' Fairy Knight,' ' The
Elfin Knight/ D, p. 17 of this volume, which runs :

nevertheless shoots the hind, though not mor
tally, 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 re
stored 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 4 Leesome Brand ' may, in some way not
now explicable, have come from this. The
confounding of ' Leesome Brand ' with a bal
lad of the ' Bonny Hind ' class would be par
alleled in Danish, for in ' Redselille og Me-
delvold' 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 bring
ing 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 de
scription 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 corrup
tion.

The ballad which ' Leesome Brand ' repre
sents is preserved among the Scandinavian
races under four forms.

Danish. I. ' Bolde Hr. Nilaus' Lb'n,' a

I hae a sister eleven years auld,

And she to the young men's bed has made bauld.

15. LEESOME BRAND

179

single copy from a manuscript of the begin
ning 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 twen
ty-five printed, by Grundtvig, most of them
recently obtained from tradition, and the old
est a broadside of about the year 1770 :
Grundtvig, v, 234, No 271. III. ' Sonnens
Sorg,' Grundtvig, V, 289, No 272, two ver
sions only : A from the middle of the 16th
century; B three hundred years later, pre
viously printed in Berggreen's Danske Folke-
sange, I, No 83 (3d ed.). IV. * Stalbroders
Kvide,' Grundtvig, V, 301, No 273, two ver
sions : A from the beginning of the 17th cen
tury, B from about 1570.

Swedish. II. A, broadside of 1776, re
printed in Grundtvig, No 271, V, 281, Bilag
1, and in Jamieson's Illustrations, p. 373 ff,
with a translation. B, ' Herr Redevall,' Af-
zelius, H, 189, No 58, new ed. No 51. C,
' Krist' Lilla och Herr Tideman,' Arwidsson,
I, 352, No 54 A. D, E, F, G, from Caval-
lius and Stephens' manuscript collection, first
printed by Grundtvig, No 271, v, 282 ff, Bilag
2-5. H, 'Rosa lilla,' Eva Wigstrom, Folk-
visor fran Skane, 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 frag
ment, 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-P, first printed by Grundt
vig, No 272, v, 297 ff, Bilag 1-6.

Icelandic. III. ' Sonar harmur,' Islenzk
FornkvseSi, 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 Me

delvold,' 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 explana
tion. 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 lov
er'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 to
gether while he saddles his horse. They ride
away, with [or without] precautions against
discovery, and come to a wood. Four Nor
wegian versions, A, B, C, G, and also two Ice
landic versions, A, B, of ' S0nnens Sorg,' in
terpose 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 ex
clamations 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 ren
der such service as a man may ; but she re
plies 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.

180

15. LEESOME BRAND

(This in nearly all the Danish ballads, and
many of the others. But in four of the Nor
wegian versions of 4 S0nnens 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, re
place 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, ac
cording 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 chil
dren 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 P, it is expressly mentioned
that the children are alive, and in Q, B, S, T,
U, six copies of V, and Y, and also in ' Bolde
Hr. Nilaus' L0n,' and in ' Sonnens Sorg,' Dan
ish A, Norwegian A, C, IX, 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 im
portant variations in the very numerous ver
sions of ' Redselille and Medelvold,' nor need
we be detained long by the other three Scan

dinavian forms of the ballad. ' S0nnens 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 Medel
vold,' 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 ' re
appears in these, and also in Icelandic A, B ;
• it is overturned in a storm, and the lady is
drowned.

' Stalbroders Kvide ' differs from ' S0nnens
Sorg ' only in this : that the story is related
to a comrade instead of father or mother.

' Bolde Hr. Nilaus' L0n,' 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 ac
count. 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

15. LEESOME BRAND

181

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 Lieder-
en, p. 482, No 231, ' De Ruiter en Mooi Elsje ; '
Hoffmann v. Fallersleben, Niederlandische
Volkslieder, 2d ed., p. 170, No 75 : broadside
of the date 1780.

A mother inquires into her daughter's con
dition, 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 re
jected 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,
Westfalische Volkslieder, p. 106, ' Ach Wun-
der iiber Wunder,' from Bokendorf : 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 overheai'd saying a
prayer for their father and dead mother, by a
person who announces herself as their mater
nal grandmother ! After this it is not sur
prising 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 grand
mother repents her curse, makes her peace
with the boys, and builds a convent.

French. Bujeaud, Chants et Chansons pop-
ulaires des provinces de 1'Ouest, A, 1, 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 ab
sence 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 metier." 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 re
frain : " 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

182

15. LEESOME BRAND

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 ' S0nnens 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 Bal
lads, n, 61, ' Burd Helen,' of Buchan, ilr 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 at
tacked by the dragon Schadesam. She was now
in the third day of her travail. Wolfdietrich,
having first wrapped her in his cloak, offersthis
help, requesting her to tear a strifi 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, Alt-
danische Heldenlieder, p. 508 ; Holtzmann,
Der grosse Wolfdietrich, st. 1587-1611 ; Ame-
lung u. Jiinicke,* Ortnit u. die Wolfdietriche,
n, 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, z'6., p. 373.

a. Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, i, 38. b.
MotherwelPs 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.

* Who suggests, u, xlv, somewhat oddly, that the pas
sage may have been taken from Revelation, xii, 2 f, 13 f.

15. LEESOME BRAND

183

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 '11 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,

0 dear, how happy I woud be ! '

23 ' My love, we 're far f rae ony town,
There is nae midwife to be foun.

24 ' But if ye '11 be content wi me,

1 '11 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 '11 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 yqung 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 ' 0 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.

184

16. LEESOME BRAND

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 '11 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.

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 '11 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 '11 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 '11 buy thee a sheath and a knife therein.'

15 ' A' the ships eer sailed the 'sea

Neer '11 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.'

b. I2, he came to. 8. For wind .... and

cock never.
44. bed wi him.
52. His lady's.
222. would I be.
291. deer and doe.
302. And then on his lady he did mind.

311. to greenwood tree.

331. the castle wa.

341. Go, minstrels.

431. lady I 've loved.

44s. draps Saint Paul's. 4. That has.

452. little wee son.

B. 21. Will you.

16. SHEATH AND KNIFE

185

16
SHEATH AND KNIFE

A. a. Motherwell's MS., p. 286. b. ' The broom blooms C. ' The broom blooms bonie,' Johnson's Museum, No
bonnie and says it is fair,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, 461.

p. 189.

D. Notes and Queries, First Series, v, 345, one stanza.

B. Sharpe's Ballad Book, ed. by D. Laing, p. 159.

THE three stanzas of this ballad which are
found in the Musical Museum (C) were fur
nished, it is said, by Burns. It was first
printed in full (A b) in Motherwell's Min
strelsy. 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 remem
bered 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 1 '11 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. Folke-
viser, No 49, p. 308 ; Wolff's Halle der Volker,
1,64.

a. Motherwell's MS., p. 286. From the recitation of Mrs
King, Kilbarchan Parish, February 9, 1825. b. ' The broom
hlooms 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 '11 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 '11 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 '11 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 '11 never, etc.

7 And when he came to his father's court hall,
There was music and minstrels and dancing

and all.
But they '11 never, etc.

186

16. SHEATH AND KNIFE

8 ' 0 Willie, 0 Willie, what makes thee in pain ? ' 10 ' There is ships o my father's sailing on the
' I have lost a sheath and knife that I '11 never sea,

But sic a sheath and a knife they can never

see again.
For we '11 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.'

bring to me.'
Now we '11 never, etc.

Sharpe's Ballad Book, ed. by D. Lairig, 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,

0 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.'

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

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.

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 '11 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 varia
tions :

I1. It is talked, it is talked ; a variation found
in the MS.

31. O when . . . loud, loud cry.

32. an arrow frae thy bow.
41. cauld and dead.

51. loud, loud cry.

61. has houkit.

62. babie.

71. came hame.

72. dancing mang them a' : this variation also
in the MS.

91, 101. There are.

B. " I have heard the ' Broom blooms bonnie ' sung
by our poor old nursery-maid as often as I have

17. HIND HORN

187

teeth in my head, but after cudgelling my
memory I can make no more than the follow
ing stanzas." Scott, Sharpens 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. « Hynd Horn,' Motherwell's MS., p. 91.

B. ' Young Hyndhorn/ Motherwell's MS., p. 418. xF. Lowran Castle, or the Wild Boar of Curridoo: with

other Tales. By R. Trotter, Dumfries, 1822.

C. a. ' Young Hyn Horn,' Motherwell's Note-Book, p.

42. b. Motherwell's MS., p. 413. G. ' Hynde Horn,' Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads,

p. 135.

D. ' Young Hynhorn,' Cromek's Select Scotish Songs,

ii, 204. H. ' Hynd Horn,' Buchan's Ballads of the North of

Scotland, 11, 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 in
serted in " Lowran Castle, or the Wild Boar
of Curridoo : with other Tales," etc., by Rob
ert Trotter, Dumfries, 1822 *(P). A com
plete copy was first given in Kinloch's Ancient
Scottish Ballads, 1827 (G) ; another, described
by the editor as made up from Cromek's frag
ment and two copies from recitation, in Moth
erwell's Minstrelsy, p. 36, f later in the same
year ; and a third, closely resembling Kin
loch's, in Buchan's Ballads of the North of
Scotland, in 1828 (H). Three versions com
plete, 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

* This I should have missed but for the kindness of Mr
W. Macmath.

t 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

bore], B 1, P 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. P 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

B. 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 B. Motherwell alters his texts slightly, now
and then.

188

17. 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,*
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 Ian,
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 Ian,
But I gat it out of your own han.' D 14.

1 1 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 '11 gie it at your wedding.'

The bride, who had said,

G 29, 30.

' I '11 go through nine fires so hot,
But I '11 give him a drink for Young Hyn-
horn's sake,' B 16,

is no less ready now :

' I '11 tak the red gowd frae my head,
And follow you and beg my bread.

' I '11 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 '11 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. Lum-
by, Early English Text Society, 1866 ; and in
editions founded on Lumby's text, by Matz-
ner, Altenglische Sprachproben, p. 270 ff,
and later by Wissmann, Quellen u. Forsch-
ungen, No 45. (2.) By Horstmann, Archiv
fiir das Studium der neueren Sprachen, 1872,
L, 39 ff. (3.) By Ritson, A. E. Metrical Ro-
mancees, 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
Romancees, in, 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 rid
ing, 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,

* C 16, 17 are corrupted, and also F 19, 23, G 21 ; all three
in a way which allows of easy emendation. Hymen [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.

17. HIND HORN

189

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 for
tune 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 con
ceal his apprehension that trouble was brew
ing. 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, land
ing, met two princes, who invited him to take
service with their father. The king, Thurs-
ton, 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 Thurs
ton, 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 wed
ding was to be in a few days. Rymenhild
despatched messengers to every land, but Horn
heard nothing, till one day, when he was going
put 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 Ailinar'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 mar
ried, 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

190

17. HIND HORN

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 fish
ing 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. Ry
menhild could bear no more. She threw her
self 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 in
dulge themselves fully.

Horn sprang out of hall,

And let bis sclavin fall, (1246)

and went to summon his knights. Rymen
hild 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, de
nied 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 Rymen
hild 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 mar
ried 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 no
tice 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 him
self 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 sap-

17. HIND HORN

191

phire, wearing which faithfully he need not
fear death by water nor fire, battle nor tour
ney (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 Brit
tany with a large force. He leaves his men
in a woody place, and goes out alone on horse
back 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 ex
change for sclavin, staff and scrip, forces his
way into the city, and is admitted to the ban
quet 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 ypur 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 part
ing, 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 ! " *
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 ro-

* 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. Modnn thinks him a fool. (3984-4057,
and nearly the same in 'Horn Childe and Maiden Ri
mild,' 77-79). This is part of a story in the Gesta Roma-
norum, of a soldier who loved the emperor's daughter, and
went to the holy land for seven years, after a mutual ex
change 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 cer
tain 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; Grasse, u, 159;
Madden, p. 32 ; Swan, i, p. Ixv. A similar story in Camp
bell's Tales of the West Highlands, i, 281, ' Baillie Lun-
nain.' (Simrock, Deutsche Marchen, 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, Kohler, Mussafia, G. Paris).
' Horn et Rimenhild,' it will be observed, has both riddles,
and that of the net is introduced under circumstances en
tirely like those in the Gesta Romanorum. The French
romance is certainly independent of the English in this pas
sage.

192

17. HIND HORN

mance as to the story, and, on the other hand,
has one or two resemblances to the ballads
which they both lack. Rimnild's father, mad
dened 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 thou^t of thi leman,

Take than a newe ;
When the ston wexeth rede,
Than have Y lorn mi maidenhed,

O^aines 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 an
other 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 Rim
nild. 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 an
other drink (something is wrong here, for noth
ing 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 per
iwinkle 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 wood-
side.

' When al this folk is gon to play,
He and Y schal steal oway,
Bituene the day and the ni}t.' (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 brou^t hir to his bedde. (94)

That the lay or gest of King Horn is a far
more primitive poem than the French ro
mance, 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.* There is,
on the other hand, no sufficient reason for sup
posing that the English lay is the source of
the other two poems. Nor do the special ap
proximations 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 discolora
tion 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 brou^t 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)

* See the excellent studies of King Horn by Wissmann,
in Quellen und Forschungen, No 16, and Anglia; iv, 342 ff.

17. HIND HORN

193

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 ac
cepted, there would remain the question of
priority. It is often assumed, without a mis
giving, that oral tradition must needs be
younger than anything 'that was committed
to writing some centuries ago ; but this re
quires in each case to be made out ; there is
certainly no antecedent probability of that
kind.*

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,
m, 151. Of this there are two traditional
versions : A from a manuscript of the six
teenth century, B from one of the seventeenth.
They agree in story. In A, Tor asks S01-
ffuermord how long she will wait for him.
Nine years, she answers, if she can do so with
out angering her friends. He will be satisfied
with eight. Eight have passed : a family coun
cil 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 sea
ward. 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

* A, B, and E, which had not been printed at the time of
his writing, will convince Professor Slimming, whose valua
ble review in Englische Studien, i, 351 ff, supplements, and in
the matter of derivation, I think, rectifies, Wissmann's Un-
tersuchnngen, that the king's daughter in the ballads was
faithful to Horn, and that they were marrying her against
25

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, No
body but Salffuermord, 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 toothless quean.'

She wins the next game, takes up the parable,
and says

1 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 cele
brated.

(2.) The other ballad is ' Herr Lovmand
og Herr Thor,' Syv, iv, No 68, Danske Viser,
IV, 180, No 199, translated by Prior, n, 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

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.

194

17. HIND HORN

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 th'e sixteenth cen
tury, Arwidsson, I, 165, No 24; B, from a
manuscript, i'6., p. 168 ; C, from oral tra
dition, p. 171 ; D, ' Lageman och hans Brud,'
Eva Wigstrb'm, Folkdiktning samlad och
upptecknad i Skane, p. 29, No 12 ; E, ' Stolt
Ingrid,' Folkvisor fran Skane, upptecknade
af E. Wigstrom, in Hazelius, Ur de nordiska
Folkens Lif, p. 121, No 3 ; P, * Deielill och
Lageman,' Fagerlund, Anteckningar om Korpo
och Houtskars 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 peace
able arrangement.

Certain points in the story of Horn — the
long absence, the sudden return, the appear
ance 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

* See the ample introduction to ' Henrik af Brunsvig,' in
Grundtvig, No 114, n, 608 ff.

t It appears that these half rings are often dug up.
"Neuere Ausgrabungen haben vielfach auf seiche Ring-
stiicke gef tihrt, die, als Zeichen unverbruchlicher Treue, einst

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 tjan ; 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.*

(1.) The latest of these, a Swedish bal
lad, 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 pil
grim. 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,| and the two,
when thrown upon a table, run together and
make one ring.

mit dem Geliebten gebrochen, ja wie der Augenschein be-
weist, entzwei geschnitten, und so ins Grab mitgenommen
wurden, zum Zeichen dass die Liebe iiber den Tod hinaus
daure." Rochholz, Schweizersagen aus dem Aargau, n,
116.

17. HIND HORN

195

(2.) The Danish ballad* (Grundtvig, No
114, B, from a 17th century manuscript), re
lates 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 her
mit, who told him that his wife was to be mar
ried 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 mar
ried 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 orig
inally 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, vm, 359, and
Hoffmann's Niederlandische 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 des
perate plight in a wilderness, is taken off by
a ship ; by providential direction, no doubt,

* Translated, with introduction of verses from A, by
Prior, Ancient Danish Ballads, n, 71.

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,
Denkmaeler 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 nat
urally 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
woden 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
Biisching's Volkssagen, Marchen und Le-
genden, p. 213 ff, and (modernized) by Sim-

196

17. HIND HORN

rock in the first volume of Die deutschen
Volksbiicher. 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 be
fore. 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 hus
band 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, Bohme,
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 IviiMviiP.* (8.) A Meister-
singerlied 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, n, 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 ro
mance not being extant, we do not know the
conclusion, but a variation as to the use made
of the ring is probable.f

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, Sitzungsbe-
richte der phil.-hist. Classe der Wiener Akad-
emie, xxix, 83 ff, the ring at p. 92 ; xxxn,
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. Bohme, 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. Bohme,
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 ad
judged to the Graf von Biterne in considera
tion of his having, as he pretended, slain the
dragon. The cup is returned to the empress,
the ring identified, the pretension refuted, and

* I have not seen this, and depend upon others here.

t Godeke, ' Reinfrit 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 fin
ished) 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 awak
ened by a cock's crowing : ' Die Hahnkrahe bei Breslau,' in
Kern's Schlesische Sagen-Chronik, p. 151. There is a varia
tion of this last, without the deception by means of the ring,
in Goedsche's Schlesischer Sagenschatz, p. 37, No 16.

17. HIND HORN

197

Liebgart given to Ortnit's avenger. Wolf-
dietrich B, ed. Janicke, I, 280 ft, 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 fa
ther, lands below Constantinople, at a woody
and hilly place, and assumes a pilgrim's dis
guise. 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 con
trives 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 zwoelften
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
Ca?sarius of Heisterbach in his Dialogus
Miraculorum, of the first quarter of the 13th
century. Gerard, a soldier living in Holen-
bach (" 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 pro
tracted. 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

* There are marked correspondences between Boccaccio's
story and the veritable history of Henry the Lion as given
by Bartsch, Herzog Ernst, cxxvif: e. g., the presents of

arms, and bade good-by to the new bride
groom. Ed. Strange, II, 131.

A tradition closely resembling this has been
found in Switzerland, Gerard and St Thomas
being exchanged for Wernhart von Strattlin-
gen 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 es
caped 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 splen
did hospitality a few months before, when the
soldan was travelling through Italy in dis
guise. Saladin's return for this courtesy was
so magnificent as almost to put Lombardy out
of Torello's head,* and besides he trusted that
his wife had been informed of his safety by a
letter which he had sent. This was not so, how
ever, and the death of another Torello was re
ported 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

clothes by the empress (transferred to Torello's wife), and
the handsome behavior of two soldans, here attributed to
Saladin.

198

17. HIND HORN

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 hus
band, and, upsetting the table in her ecstasy,
threw herself into Torello's arms.

Tales of this description still maintain them
selves in popular tradition. 'Der Ring ehe-
licher Treue,' Gottschalk, Deutsche Volksmar-
chen, n, 135, relates how Kuno von Falken-
stein, 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 bride
groom hands him a cap ; he drops in his half
ring, and passes the cup to the bride. The
two halves join of themselves.* Other exam
ples, not without variations and deficiencies, in
details, are afforded by ' Der getheilte Trau-
ring,' Schmitz, Sagen u. Legenden des Eifler
Volkes, p. 82 ;< Bodman,' Uhland, in Pfeif-
fer's Germania, IV, 73-76 ; ' Graf Hubert von
Kalw,' Meier, Deutsche Sagen, u. a. w., aus
Schwaben, p. 332, No 369, Grimms, Deutsche
Sagen, No 524 ; ' Der Barenhauter,' Grimms,
K. u. H. marchen, No 101 ; ' Berthold von
Neuhaus,' in Kern's Schlesische Sagen-Chro-
nik, p. 93.

* Without the conclusion, also in Binder's Schwabische
Volkssagen, n, 173. These Volksmarchen, by the way, are
" erzahlt " by Gottschalk. It is not made quite so clear as
could be wished, whether they are merely re-told.

t 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 wed-

A story of the same kind is interwoven
with an exceedingly impressive adventure re
lated of Richard Sans-Peur in Les Chroniques
de Normandie, Rouen, 1487, chap. Ivii, cited
in Michel, Chronique des Dues 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.
Ame'lie 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 Uni-
versel for August 26, 1853, tells of a Sire de
Crdqui, who, going beyond seas with his sov
ereign, breaks his ring and gives half to his
young wife ; is gone ten years, and made cap
tive by the Turks, who condemn him to death
on account of his adhesion to Christ ; and is
transported to his chateau on the eve of the
day of his doom. This very day his wife is to
take another husband, sorely against her will.
Cre'qui 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 nup
tials. The campaign lasts seven years, and
the day of his return his wife is about to re
marry. 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.f

The same hard fortune is that of Costan-
tino, a young Albanian, who is called to the

ding, or the day after: Puymaigre, p. 11, Champfleury,
Chansons des Provinces, p. 77. The conclusion to Sir Tris-
trem, which Scott supplied, " abridged from the French met
rical 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 Tris-

17. HIND HORN

199

service of his king three days after his mar
riage. 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 mar
rying. The king orders him to take the swift
est 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.*
Camarda, Appendice al Saggio di Grammato-
logia, 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 prob
ability the original catastrophe. ' 'Ai/ayvwpwr-
/AOS,' Chasiotis, Popular Songs of Epirus, p. 88,
No 27, comes nearer the common story than
other versions-! 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 ! " $ 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 ta
ble." 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 be
gone, 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 ; NeoeAX^uci 'Avo^c/cra, I, 85, No 19.
More frequently he is a galley slave: Zam-
belios, p. 678, No 103 = Passow, No 448;
Tommaseo, ill, 152 = Passow, No 449 ; Sa-

kellarios, KvTrpia/cct, in, 37, No 13 :

a, i, 86, No 20 ; Jeannaraki,
d, p. 203, No 265. His bad dream [a
letter from home] makes him heave a sigh
which shakes the prison, or stops [splits] the

trera's envoy, and is transferred to Ysonde by Scott. The
passage has been cited as ancient and genuine.

* 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.

t I was guided to nearly all these Greek ballads by Pro
fessor Liebrecht's notes, Zur Volkskunde, p. 207.

t This high-mettled horse is a capital figure in most ot
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 circum
stances, from Passau to Aachen between morn and eve,
('Karl der Grosse,' from Enenkels Weltbuch, c. 1250, in
von der Hagen's Gesammtabenteuer, n, 619 ff); or the
black in the poem and tale of Thedel von Walmoden.

200

17. HIND HORN

galley.* In Tommaseo, in, 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, ' CH 'ApTrayi?,' " peut-Stre la plus distingue*e
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 Vladi
mir, 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] re
veals to his master what is going on, and car
ries him home with marvellous speed. Do
brynya 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 op
posite Nastasya, drops his ring in a cup, and
asks her to drink to him. She finds the ring in

* 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, Toramaseo, p.
152, and Neo. 'Ai>d\. No. 20. Compare Brunswick, in
Wyssenhere, and Moringer.

t 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 inter
poses. 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,

the bottom, falls at his feet and implores par
don. f Wollner, Volksepik der Grossrussen,
p. 122 f ; Rambaud, La Russie Epique, p. 86 f.

We have the ring employed somewhat after
the fashion of these western tales in Soma-
deva's story of Vidushaka. The Vidyudharl
Bbadra, having to part for a while with Vi
dushaka, for whom she had conceived a pas
sion, gives him her ring. Subsequently, Vi
dushaka obliges a rakshas whom he has subdued
to convey him to the foot of a mountain on
which Bhadra had taken refuge. Many beau
tiful girls come to fetch water in golden pitch
ers from a lake, and, on inquiring, Vidushaka
finds that the water is for Bhadra. One of
the girls asks him to lift her pitcher on to her
shoulder, and while doing this he drops into
the pitcher Bhadra's ring. When the water
is poured on Bhadra's hands, the ring falls
out. Bhadra asks her maids if they have -seen
a stranger. They say they have seen a mor
tal, and that he had helped one of them with
her pitcher. They are ordered to go for the
youth at once, for he is Bhadra's consort. :£

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 de
sirable 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 sub
mitted, 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-Horn,' Jamieson's Popular Bal
lads, 1, 187, and Buchan's Ballads of the North
of Scotland, I, 169.

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 ob
ject 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 pro
voked at being reported dead. Wolf and Hofmann, Pri-
mavera y Flor de Komances, n, 129, No 164.

t Katha Sarit Sagara (of the early part of the 12th cen
tury), 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.

17. HIND HORN

201

' 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 Hand
kerchief,' 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, Poesii
pop. ale Romanilor, p. 20, No 7; Stanley,
Rouman Anthology, p. 16, p. 193. In Gon-
zenbach's Sicilianische Marchen, 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- His-
torien- u. Legendenschatz, I, 37, No 16. So in
some copies of ' Lamkin,' the lord has a fore
boding that some ill has happened to his lady
from the rings on his fingers bursting in twain :
Motherwell, p. 291, st. 23 ; Finlay, n, 47, st.
30.*

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. 1. der Vorzeit, p. 161,
No 37, after Buchan (H) ; by Knortz, L. u.
R. Alt-Englands, p. 184, No 52, after Ailing-
ham.

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.

* The ring given Horn by Rymenhild, in ' King Horn/
579 ff ( Wissmann), and in the French romance, 2056 ff, pro
tects 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. Ivii.
Eglamore's ring, Percy MS., n, 363, st. 51, will preserve his
life on water or land. A ring given Wolfdietrich by the
26

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;
1 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.

empress, D vui, st. 42, ed. Janicke, 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 In
dian ring which Reinfrit receives from his wife before he de
parts for the crusade, 15,066 ff, has no equal, after all ; for,
besides doing as much as the best of these, it imparts per
petual 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 ?

202

17. HIND HORN

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 '11 lend you my scarlet cloak.

12 ' Will you lend me your beggar's rung ?
And I '11 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 '11 cast off my gowns of brown,
And beg wi you frae town to town.

21 ' O I '11 cast off my gowns of red,
And I '11 beg wi you to win my bread.'

22 ' Ye needna cast off your gowns of brown,
For I '11 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.

Motherwell's MS., p. 418. From the singing of a servant-
girl at Ilalkhead.

1 I NEVER saw my love before,

With a hey lillelu and a ho lo Ian
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 Ian.'

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 '11 give to thee my scarlet cloak.

11 ' Wilt thou give to me thy begging staff ?
And I '11 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.

17. HIND HORN

203

15 ' There stands an auld man at the king's gate ;
He asketh a drink for young Hyn Horn's sake.'

16 ' I '11 go thro nine fires so hot,

But I '11 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 '11 cast off my gowns of brown,
And I '11 follow thee from town to town.

21 ' I '11 cast off my gowns of red,

And along with thee I '11 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.

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
j >

10 ' If this be true you tell to me,
You must niffer clothes with me.

H < You '11 gie me your cloutit coat,
I '11 gie you my fine velvet coat.

12 < You '11 gie me your cloutit pock,

I 'U gie you my purse ; it '11 be no joke.'

13 ' Perhaps there['s] nothing in it, not one baw-

bee ; '

< Yes, there 's gold and silver both,' said he.

14 < You '11 gie me your bags of bread,
And I '11 gie you my milk-white steed.'

15 When they had niffered all, he said,

< You maun learn me how I '11 beg.'

16 ' When you come before the gate,

You '11 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.

204

17. HIND HORN

19 She gave him a drink with her own hand ;
He loot the ring drop in the can.

20 ' Got ye this hy 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.

Cromek's Select Scotish Songs, n, 204.

1 NEAR Edinburgh was a young son born,

Hey lilelu an a how low Ian
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 Ian,
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 Ian ? '

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 '11 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 Ian ?
Or gat ye 't aff a dead man's han ? '

14 ' I gat na 't by sea, I gat na 't by Ian,
But I gat it out of your own han.'

*****

15 'Go take away my bridal gown,

For I '11 follow him frae town to town.'

16 ' Ye need na leave your bridal gown,
For I '11 make ye ladie o' mony a town.'

Motherwell's MS., p. 91. From the recitation of Mrs
Wilson.

*****
1 HTND 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 bon-
nie

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.

17. HIND HORN

205

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.'

Lowran Castle, or the Wild Boar of Cnrridoo: with
other Tales. By Eobert 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 Ian
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 '11 give you my gold-laced hat.

12 ' Will ye give me your begging weed ?
And I '11 give you my good grey steed.'

13 The beggar has got on to ride,

But Young Hynd Horn 's bound for the bride.

* # * # #

Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 135. " From the
recitation of my niece, M. Kinnear, 23 Aug*, 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 '11 lend me your begging weed,
And I '11 gie you my riding steed.'

206

17. HIND HORN

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 '11 draw your bent bow nigh until.

18 ' Whan ye come to yonder town,

Ye '11 let your bent bow low fall down.

19 'Ye '11 seek meat for St Peter, ask for St

Paul,
And seek for the sake of Hynde Horn all.

20 ' But tak ye f rae 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 '11 gie it at your wedding.'

31 ' I '11 tak the scales o gowd frae my head,
I '11 follow you, and beg my bread.

32 ' I '11 tak the scales of gowd frae my hair,
I '11 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.

Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, n, 268.

1 ' Horo HORN fair, and Hynd Horn free,

0 where were you born, in what countrie ? '

2 ' In gude greenwood, there I was born,
And all my Eorbears me beforn.

3 ' 0 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,
'T was 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 '11 know I am a lover true :

8 ' But when the ring turns pale and wan,
Ye '11 know I love another man.'

9 He hoist up sails, and awa saild he,
And saild into a far countrie.

17. HIND HORN

207

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 '11 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,
Nane 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 redr 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 ' 0 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 '11 gie 't you on your wedding day.'

31 ' I '11 take the red gowd frae my head,
And follow you, and beg my bread.

32 ' I '11 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. I2, 81, 142, 152, 162, 242. Hindhorn.

B. The burden is given in Motherwell, Appendix,
p. xviii, thus :

With a hey lilloo and a how lo Ian

And the birk and the brume blooms bonnie.

D.
122, 132. Hyndhorn. 152, 162, 242. Hynhorn. E.

C. a. 52. to see. 52, 72. Hynhorn. 232. H. horn.

II1. clouted.
II1, 141. give.

142. white milk. b. milk-white.

162. hymen's, b. highman's.

221. can.
b. 52, 72, 232. Hynhorn.

71. little wee.

131. there 's.
I2, 32, II2. Hynhorn.
The second line of the burden stands after st. 2

in MS.

21. The MS reading may be sheeped.

21, 62. Hyndhorn.

208

18. SIR LIONEL

G. After my niece, M. Kinnear, etc., stands in pen
cil 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.

18
SIR LIONEL.

A. ' Sir Lionell,' Percy MS., p. 32, Hales and Furni- Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of Eng-
vall, I, 75. land, p. 124.

B. ' Isaac-a-Bell and Hugh the Graeme,' Christie, Tra- D. Allies, as above, p. 118.
ditional Ballad Airs, i, 110.

E. a. 'The Old Man and his Three Sons,' Bell, as

C. a. ' The Jovial Hunter of Bromsgrove,' Allies, The above, p. 250. b. Mr Robert White's papers.
British, Roman and Saxon Antiquities and Folk-Lore .

of Worcestershire, 2d ed.,p. 116. b. Bell's Ancient 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 Broms-
grove, Home the Hunter, and Robin Hood.
No intimation as to the source of his copy,
C b, is given by Bell, i. e., Dixon. Appar
ently 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 quar
ters), 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, B]. 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 re
fuses 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 se
curity for his return, A. At the end of this
time the knight comes back sound and well,

18. SIR LIONEL

209

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 re
venge 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 sit
ting 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, n, 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 se
vere 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 Sy don'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,

1 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 Ar
tois 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 Ar
tois. The colloquy with the giant in B is also,
perhaps, suggested by one which had previous
ly 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 ro
mance 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), Lio
nel's father, recalls Sir Eger, and Hugh the
Graeme in B is of course the Grahame or
Grime of the romance, the Hugh being de
rived 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 B I3, 41, 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.* 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., Ap
pend. 58."

' Blow thy home, hunter,

Cum, blow thy home on hye !

In yonder wode there lyeth a doo,
In fayth she woll not dye.

Cum, blow thy home, hunter,

Cum, blow thy borne, joly hunter ! '

A terrible swine is a somewhat favorite fig
ure in romantic tales. A worthy peer of the
boar of Sydon is killed by King Arthur in
4 The Avowynge of King Arthur,' etc., Rob-
son, Three Early English Metrical Romances
(see st. xii). But both of these, and even the
Erymanthian, must lower their bristles before

* 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.

210

18. SIR LIONEL

the boar in ' Kilhwch and Olwen,' Mabino-
gion, 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, n, 270, ed. 1810, Scott,
Appendix to Rokeby, note M) is a tame vil-
latic pig : the old mettle is bred out.

Professor Grundtvig has communicated to
me a curious Danish ballad of this class, * Lim-
grises Vise,' from a manuscript of the latter
part of the 16th century. A very intractable
damsel, after rejecting a multitude of aspi
rants, 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 sim
ilar, in Axelson's Vesterdalarne, p. 179, ' Kol-
oregris,' and Professor Sophus Bugge has re
covered 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 Lim-
gris : Thiele, Danmarks Folkesagn, n. 19, two
forms.

There can hardly be anything but the name
in common between the Lionel of this ballad
and Lancelot's cousin-german.

Percy MS., p. 32, Hales and Furnivall, i, 75.

1 SIB EGBABELL had sonnes three,

Blow thy home, good hunter
Sir Lyonell was one of these.
As I am a gentle hunter

2 Sir 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 Sir Broninge was mad a knight.

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 that 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 your friends dwellings is.'

13 ' Downe,' shee said, ' in yonder towne,
There dwells my freinds of great renowne.'

14 Says, ' Lady, He ryde into yonder towne
And see wether yowr 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 ' Sir Egrabell,' he said, ' my father was ;
He neuer left lady in such a case ;

18. SIR LIONEL

211

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 command
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 Sir Lyonefl 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 he in the next towne told
How deare thy buffett it was sold ;

26 ' And it shold haue beene in the next towne

said
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 LyoneZl 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 home.

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 your 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 that I must liue,'

*****

Christie, Traditional Ballad Airs, i, 110. From the sing
ing 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 '11 horse and armour to me provide,
That through Tore wood I may safely ride.'

When the, etc.

212

18. SIR LIONEL

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 '11 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.

a. Allies, The British, Eoman, 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 Ilyalas.
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 ' 0 what dost thou mean, fair lady ? ' said he ;

' 0 the wild boar has killed my lord and his

men thirty.'
As thou beest, etc.

4 ' 0 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.

18. SIB LIONEL

213

8 ' 0 what dost thou want of me ? ' the wild boar

said he ;
' 0 I think in my heart I can do enough for

thee.'
For I am, etc.

9 Then they fought four hours in a long sum

mer's day,

Till the wild boar fain would have gotten away.
From Sir Ryalas, etc.

10 Then Sir Eyalas 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.

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 0 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 hen 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

ty,

That was killed by, etc.

214

18. SIR LIONEL

a. Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry
of England, edited by Robert Bell, p. 250. b. Mr Eobert
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 ? '

1 1 '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.

Allies, Antiquities of Worcestershire, p. 120.

1 SIB RACKABELLO had three sons,

Wind well your, horn, brave hunter

Sir Ryalash was one of these.
And he was a jovial hunter

A. 31. MS. And as the.
62. MS. had bee.

II1. MS. I wilt.

121. MS. miste.

162. MS. awaw.

•171. MS. vnbethought . . . while.

19. Between 19 and 20 half a page of the

MS. is wanting.
201. a[fter] : MS. blotted.
361. 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. 31, 42, 72. D. 21, 32, 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 '11 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, sep
arated above, are put together.
b. I1. Old Sir Robert. I2, was Sir Ryalas.
22. Till in a tree-top.
31. dost thee. 32. The wild boar 's killed my

lord and has thirty men gored.
Burden*. And thou beest.
41. for to see.

51. As in Allies (see above), except full in

his den.

52. then heard him full in his den.

19. KING ORFEO

215

61. As in Allies (see above), but 62 supplied

by Sell.
72. Thrashed down the trees as he ramped

him along.

81. 'Oh, what dost thee want of me, wild
boar.'

Burden?, the jovial.
91. summer. 92. have got him.
102. cut the boar's head off quite.
II2. Oh, my pretty spotted pig thou hast slew.

Burden*, for thou beest.
121. I demand them of thee.
131. dost ask.
141. long locks. 142. to tear him through.

Burden*. Though he was.
into twain,
the knight he doth lie. 162. And the

wild boar's head is pictured thereby.
5, 6. In Allies thus :

152
161

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 sepa
rated from the first line of 5.

82, 9. In Allies' copy thus :

vn 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

CIO.
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.

B. b. " Fragment 'found on the fly-leaf of an old

book." Mr H. White's papers.
I2, one of these three. I8, wide countrie.

Burden2. He was.
21. was in woods. 28. With a bloody river

running near she.
31. He said, ' Fair lady what are you doing

there ? ' 38. killed my lord.
4. wanting.

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 sub
stance 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.

216

19. KING ORFEO

We have here in traditional song the story
of the justly admired mediaeval romance of
Orpheus, in which fairy-land supplants Tar
tarus, faithful love is rewarded, and Eury-
dice (Heurodis, Erodys, Eroudys) is retrieved.
This tale has come down to us in three ver
sions : A, in the Auchinleck MS., dating from
the beginning of the fourteenth century, Ad
vocates Library, Edinburgh, printed in Laing's
Select Remains of the Ancient Popular Poe
try 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,
1 Kyng Orfew,' p. 37 ; C, Harleian MS., 3810,
British Museum, printed by Ritson, Metrical
Romancees, n, 248, ' Sir Orpheo.' At the end
of the Auchinleck copy we are told that harp
ers 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 intro
duction 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 un
der 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 they king. Upon her re
fusal, the king himself came, with a company
of knights and damsels, all on snow-white
steeds, and made her ride on a palfrey by hrs
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 ne\!£r
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 be
seech thee give me the lady that sleepeth un
der the ympe tree." " Nay," quoth the king,

19. KING ORFEO

217

" 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." u Take her, then, and be blithe of
her," said the king.

Orfeo now turned homewards, but first pre
sented himself to the steward alone, and in
beggar's clothes, as a harper from heathen
dom, 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 arle grbn (Early green 's the wood).

The sense of the other line is not so obvious.
Professor Grundtvig has suggested to me,

Hvor hjorten ban gar arlig (Where the hart goes
yearly).

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 DEK lived a king inta da aste,

Scowan iirla grttn
Der lived a lady in da wast.
Whar giorten han grim 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 dol 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 dol 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 god 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 dol 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 god gabber reel,
Dat meicht ha made a sick hert hale.

14 ' Noo tell to us what ye will hae :
What sail 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.

218

20. THE CRUEL MOTHER

THE CRUEL MOTHER.

A. Herd's MSS, i, 132, n, 191. Herd's Ancient and
Modern Scottish Songs, 1776, n, 237.

B. a. ' Fine Flowers in the Valley,' Johnson's Mu
seum, p. 331. b. Scott's Minstrelsy, in, 259 (1803).

C. ' The Cruel Mother,' MotherwelPs 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, n, 98.
b. Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, n, 222.

G. Notes and Queries, 1st S., vin, 358.

H. « The Cruel Mother,' Motherwell's MS., p. 402.

I. ' The Minister's Daughter of New York.' a. Bu
chan's MSS, n, 111. b. Buchan's Ballads of the
North of Scotland, n, 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 Min
strel, 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, B,
F, H. In I the children are buried alive, as

* All the genuine ones. ' Lady Anne/ in Scott's Min
strelsy, in, 259, 1803, is on the face of it a modern composi
tion, with extensive variations, on the theme of the popular

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.*

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 remarka
ble ballad-quest in Jutland, recovered two ver
sions which approach surprisingly near to
Scottish tradition, and especially to B : Jydske
Folkeviser, I, 329, No 121 A, B, ' Barnemor-
dersken.' Two other Danish versions have
been obtained since then, but have not been
published. A and B are much the same, and

ballad. It is here given in an Appendix, with a companion
piece from Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway
Song.

20. THE CRUEL MOTHER

219

a close translation of A will not take much
more space than would be required for a suffi
cient abstract.

Little Kirsten took with her the bower-women five,
And with them she went to the wood helive.

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.'

' Te 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 gen
eral character than in the details. A, * Hol-
lisches Recht,' Wunderhorn, n, 202, ed. of
1808, n, 205, ed. 1857. Mittler, No 489, p.
383, seems to be this regulated and filled out.
B, Erlach, ' Die Rabenmutter,' iv, 148 ; re
peated, with the addition of one stanza, by
Zuccalmaglio, p. 203, No 97. C, « Die Kinds-
mb'rderinn,' Meinert, p. 164, from the Kuh-
landchen ; turned into current German, Erk's
Liederhort, p. 144, No 41C. D, Simrock, p.
87, No 37% from the Aargau. E, ' Das falsche
Mutterherz,' Erk u. Irmer, Heft 5, No 7, and
* Die Kindesmorderin,' Erk's Liederhort, p.
140, No 41, Brandenburg. P, Liederhort, p.
142, No 41% Silesia. G, Liederhort, p. 143,
41b, from the Rhein, very near to B. H, Hoff
mann u. Richter, No 31, p. 54, and I, No 32,
p. 57, Silesia. J, Ditfurtb, Frankische V. 1.,
n, 12, No 13. K, « Die Rabenmutter,' Peter,
Volksthumliches aus Osterreichisch-Schlesien,
I, 210, No 21. L, « Der Teufel u. die Miil-
lerstochter,' Prohle, Weltliche u. geistliche V.
1., p. 15, No 9, Hanoverian Harz. Repeti
tions and compounded copies are not noticed.

The story is nearly this in all. A herds
man, 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 wear
ing 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

220

20. THE CRUEL MOTHER

if this is true, and, upon the word, Satan ap
pears and takes her off ; in B, G, J, with words
like these :

1 Komm her, komm her, meine schonste Braut,
Dein Sessel ist dir in der Holle gebaut.' J 9.

A Wendish version, ' Der Hollentanz,' 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 Volker, I, 11, and Hauschatz, p. 223 ; Al-
lingham's version (nearly B a) by Knortz, L.
u. R. Alt-Englands, p. 178, No 48.

Herd's MSS,'i, 132, u, 191 : Ancient and Modem Scot
tish Songs, 1776, n, 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 ' 0 look not sae sweet, my bonie babe,
Gin ye smyle sae, ye '11 smyle me dead.'

a. Johnson's Museum, p. 331. b. Scott's Minstrelsy,
1803, in, 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 '11 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 ' 0 mother dear, when I was thine,
You did na prove to me sae kind.'

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.

20. THE CRUEL MOTHER

221

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 ' 0 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 '11 enter step by step.'

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 sabel-
line!'

9 ' O mother dear, when we were thine,

We neither wore the silks nor the sabel-
line.

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.'

a. Motherwell's MS., p. 390. b. MotherwelPs Note-
Book, p. 33. From the recitation of Agnes Lyle, Kilbar-
chan, 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.

222

20. THE CRUEL MOTHER

9 ' 0 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 these 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.'

a. Buchan's MSS, u, 98. b. Buchan's Ballads of the
North of Scotland, n, 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 '11 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 '11 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 ' 0 bonny babies, gin ye were mine,
I 'd cleathe you in the silks sae fine.'

12 1 0 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.

20. THE CRUEL MOTHER

223

Notes and Queries, 1st S., vni, 358. From Warwick
shire, 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.

Motherwell's MS., p. 402. From Agnes Laird, Kilbar-
chan, 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 ' 0 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 '11 ne'er come nigh.

17 ' O mother dear, but hell is deep ;
'T will cause thee bitterlie to weep.'

a. Buchan's MS., n, 111. b. Buchan's Ballads of the
North of Scotland, n, 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.

224

20. THE CRUEL MOTHER

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 ' 0 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 ' 0 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 '11 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.'

a. Harris MS., fol. 10, "Mrs Harris and others." b. Frag
ment communicated by Dr T. Davidson.

1 SHE leant her back against a thorn,

Hey for the Rose o' Malindie 0
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 ' 0 bonnie boys, waur ye but mine,

I wald feed ye wi flour-bread an wine.'

5 ' O f ause mother, whan we waur thine,
Ye didna feed us wi flour-bread an wine.'

6 ' 0 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 sail be seven years bird on the tree,
Ye sail be seven years fish i the sea.

10 * Ye sail 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 ph for gudesake, keep me frae hell ! '

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.'

20. THE CRUEL MOTHER

225

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.'

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 '11 ring the bell,
And see sic sights as ye darna tell.'

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 0

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.

42. MSS and ed. 1776 have ze . . . ze '11.

b. " A fragment [of 5 stanzas] containing the
following verses, which I have often heard
sung in my childhood." Scott, in. 259. No
burden is given.
I1. She set her back against, i2. young son

born.
21. O smile nae sae.

3, 4, wanting.

51. An when that lady went. 52. She spied a
naked boy.

61. O bonnie boy, an ye. 62. I 'd cleed ye in
the silks.

72. 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

20. THE CRUEL MOTHER

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.' I.

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. 62. I was.

b. Kinloch makes slight changes in his printed

copy, as usual.
41. until a brier.
51. out she 's tane.

62. She seemd the lealest maiden amang.
81. 0 an thae.

E. I1, II1. Lurk may be a corruption of York,

which is written in pencil (by way of sug ges-
tion?) in the MSS.

a. 161. on your.

b. 41, 14l. upon a thorn.

52. twind wanting. 61. sattins wanting.

13, 14, 15, 16, 17 are not written out in the

note-book.

181. the heavens. J*

192. but there is none.
P. a. 9 stands last but one in the MS.
142. Here,
b. 42. has her.
72. sweet is omitted.
Printed as from the MS. in Dixon's Scottish

Traditional Versions, etc., p. 46. Diocon

has changed baby to babies in 4, 5, 6, 8,

and indulges in other variations.
H. The ballad had been heard with two differ
ent burdens ; besides the one given in the text,
this:

Three and three, and three by three L.

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.

a, b. 141, 161. fool, i. e. fowl spelt phonetically.

a. 31. greenwoods

b. 22. it did.

82. with white.
II2. wear'd.
132. maun die.

c. " Epitomized " from Buchan, n, 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 Chris
tie, p. 106.

Burden, It 's hey with the rose, etc.
71. As a lady was looking. 72. She spied twa.
II2. Nor wore we a.

122. What sort of pain for you I must drie.
132. What sort of pain for us you must drie.
142. 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.
a. 91. 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.

Burden1. Hey i the rose o Mylindsay O.

I1, until a thorn. I2. An syne her twa bon-

nie boys was born.
31. As she leukit oer her father's. 32. bonnie

boys.

41. an ye were mine. 42. bread.
62. claithe ye in.

8 looks like an interpolation, and very probably
the ballad was docked at the beginning in or
der to suit the parlor better.

20. THE CRUEL MOTHER

227

APPENDIX

LADY ANNE

" This ballad was communicated to me by Mr
Kirkpatrick Sharpe of Hoddom, who mentions hav
ing 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, m, 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 re
written 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

sing,
'T was the pleasant May-day tide.

did

2 But fair Lady Anne on Sir William calld,

With the tear grit in her ee,

' O though thou 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 "T is 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 ' 'T is I wad dead 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 1 '

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 at ween 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.

228

21. THE MAID AND THE PALMER

.. Percy MS., p. 461. ' Lillumwham,' Hales and Fur- B. Sharpe's Ballad Book, ed. Laing, p. 157.
nivall, IV, 96.

THE only English copy of this ballad that
approaches completeness is furnished by the
Percy manuscript, A. Sir Walter Scott re
membered, 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 Mag-
dalena,' is a broadside of about 1700, existing
in two identical editions : Grundtvig, No 98,
II, 530 ; B, ib., was written down in the Faroe
isles in 1848, by Hammershaimb ; C was ob
tained from recitation by Kristensen in Jut
land in 1869, Jydske Folkeviser, I, 197, No
72, ' Synderinden.'

A Faroe 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 com
pleted, but only two more stanzas printed,
Grundtvig, in, 889 ; C, Bugge, p. 91. D, B
are reported, but only a stanza or two printed,
Grundtvig, m, 889 f ; F, printed 890 f , and
G, as obtained by Lindeman, 891 : all these,
D-Q, communicated by Bugge. C, and one
or two others, are rather Danish than Nor
wegian.

This is, according to Afzelius, one of the
commonest of Swedish ballads. These ver
sions are known : A, " a broadside of 1798
and 1802," Grundtvig, n, 531, Bergstrom's
Afzelius, I, 335 ; B, ' Magdalena,' Atterbom's
Poetisk Kalender for 1816, p. 20 ; C, Afze
lius, u, 229 ; D, Arwidsson, I, 377, No 60 ; B,
Dybeck's Svenska Visor, Hafte 2, No 6, only
two stanzas; F, G, "in Wiede's collection, in

the Swedish Historical and Antiquarian Acad
emy ; " H, " in Cavallius and Stephens' col
lection, where also A, F, G are found ; " I,
Maximilian Axelson's Vesterdalarne, p. 171 ;
J, ' Jungfru Adelin,' E. Wigstrom's Folkdikt-
ning, No 38, p. 76 ; K, * Jungfru Maja,' Al
bum utgifvet af Nylandingar, 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 recov
ered (Grundtvig, in, 891, note d).

Finnish, ' Mataleenan vesimatka,' Kantele-
tar, ed. 1864, p. 240.

The story of the woman of Samaria, John,
iv, is in all these blended with mediaeval tradi
tions concerning Mary Magdalen, who is as
sumed 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 writ
ers, while most of the Greeks distinguish the
three (Butler, ' Lives of the Saints,' vn, 290,
note). It was reserved for ballads, as Grundt
vig remarks, to confound the Magdalen with
the Samaritan woman.

The traditional Mary Magdalen was a beau
tiful 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 preach
ing of Jesus, converted to a passionate re
pentance and devotedness. In the course of
the persecution of the church at Jerusalem,
when Stephen was slain and the Christians

21. THE MATD AND THE PALMER

229

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 bishop
rics, 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 se
cluded 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, Graesse, c. 96.) It is the
practical Martha that performs real austeri
ties, and those which are ascribed to her cor
respond 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 * silves-
tribus corpusculum sustentans potius quam re-
ficiens, victitavit .... Extensis solo ramis
arboreis aut viteis, lapide pro cei'vicali capiti
superposito subjecto, .... incumbebat." (Vin
cent 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 ves-

•/

sel to serve him with. He replies that if she
were pure, he would drink from her hands.
She protests innocence with oaths, but is si-

* The Magdalen's food is to be dry apple in Danish B 9.
t 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.'

lenced 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 ; Faroe ; 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 ex
pired, 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] .f 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 Faroe ballad ;
fifteen in Danish B ; and six weeks in Danish

C, It is to range the field in Danish A, Swed
ish F ; to walk the snows barefoot in the Faroe
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 Dan
ish 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

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.'

230

21. THE MAID AND THE PALMER

Son is exchanged for the Father in Swed
ish D.

Stanzas 4, 5 of Swedish A, G, approach sin
gularly 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, hut 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 prob
ably borrowed from ' The Cruel Mother.'

The seven years' penance of the Scandina
vian ballads is multiplied three times in Eng
lish A, and four times in B and in those ver
sions of ' The Cruel Mother ' which have been
affected by the present ballad (2O, I, J, K ;
L is defective). What is more important, the
penance in the English ballads is completely
different in kind, consisting not in exagger
ated austerities, but partly, at least, in trans
migration or metensomatosis : seven years to
be a fish, 2O, 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, 2O, I, K;
seven years down in hell, 2O, J ; seven years
to " ring the bell and see sic sights as ye darna
tell, 2O, L ; " " other seven to lead an ape
in hell," A, a burlesque variation of the por-
tership.

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 de
mands 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 mean
est 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 Kindesmorderin,'
ib., n, 149, No 197, begins like A. As the
maid proceeds to the church, nine graves open
before her, and nine souls follow her into tke
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, communi
cated to the Zeitschrift des bohmischen Mu
seums, 1842, p. 401, by A. W. Sembera, as
sung by the " mahrisch sprechenden Slawen "
in Prussian Silesia ; the first seven stanzas
translated in Haupt u. Schmaler, n, 314, note
to No 197. The Lord God goes out one Sun
day 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)

21. THE MAID AND THE PALMER

231

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, Poesies 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 a midi.'

B is nearly the same legend in Provencal :
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, Poesies populaires de la Gascogne, Blade",
1881, p. 339, ' La pauvre Madeleine,' seven
teen 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, Blade", as before, p. 183, ' Marie-Made
leine,' six stanzas of five short lines. Mary is
sent to the mountains for seven years' pen
ance; 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 con
version : Mila, Observaciones, p. 128, No 27,
4 Santa Magdalena,' and Briz y Salt6, Can-
sons de la Terra, n, 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.

232

21. THE MAID AND THE PALMER

She wished to confess. He imposed the pen
ance of seven years on a mountain, " eating
herbs and fennels, eating bitter herbs." Mag
dalen turned homewards after the seven years,
and found on the way a spring, where she
washed her hands, with a sigh over their dis
figurement. She heard a voice that said, Mag
dalen, thou hast sinned. She asked for new
penance, and was sent back to the mountain

for seven years more. At the end of this sec
ond term she died, and was borne to the skies
with every honor from the Virgin, saints, and
angels.

Danish A is translated by Prior, IT, 25, No
44 : Swedish C by William and Mary Howitt,
Literature and Romance of Northern Europe,
I, 282.

Percy MS., p. 461. Furnivall, IT, 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 therm ? '

5 Sayes, ' 1 have neither cupp nor cann,
To giue an old palmer drinke therin.'

6 ' But an thy lemman came from Roome,
Cupps and canns thou wold fund 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 that 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 donl,
Then thoust come a mayden home.'

A Ballad Book, by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, edited by
David Laing, p. 157 f, vn ; 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 '11 be porter of hell,
And then I '11 take you to mysell.'

*****

3 ' Weel may I be a' the other three,
But porter of hell I never will be.'

And I, etc.

22. ST STEPHEN AND HEROD

233

A. 21. White shee washee & white. 22. White.
91. They were.

101. on won. 102. 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 imper
fectly 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]."

22
ST STEPHEN AND HEROD

Sloane MS., 2593, fol. 22 b; British Museum.

THE manuscript which preserves this de
lightful 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 re
peated ; 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 cur
rent, of ' The Carnal and the Crane,' Sandys,
p. 152, in %onj unction with other legends and
in this order : the Nativity, the Wise Men's
passage with Herod, the Massacre of the In
nocents, the Flight into Egypt, Herod and
the Sower.

The legend of Stephen and Herod occurs,
and is even still living, in Scandinavian tradi
tion, combined, as* in English, with others re
lating to the infancy of Jesus.

Danish. ' Jesusbarnet, Stefan og Herodes : '
A, Grundtvig, No 96, n, 525. First printed

* Everriculum fermenti veteris, sen residuse in Danico
orbe cum paganism! turn papismi reliquiae in apricum pro
late. " Rogata anus num vera esse crederet quse canebat,
30

in Erik Pontoppidan's little book on the rel-
iques of Paganism and Papistry among the
Danish People, 1736, p. 70, as taken down
from the singing of an old beggar-woman be
fore the author's door.* 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 '11 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 ;

respondit : Me ilia in dubium vocaturam aTerruncet Deus ! "
Grundtvig, n, 518.

234

22. ST STEPHEN AND HEROD.

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 lat
ter 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, in, 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, n, 128, 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 re
semblance with the copy sung by the old beg
gar-woman more than a hundred and thirty
years before is often close.

A Faroe version,] ' Rudisar visa,' was com
municated 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 announce
ment. Herod orders his eyes to be put out :

* " Staffans-skede, lusus, vel, ut rectius dicam, licentia
pueroruta ngrestium, qui in Festo S. Stephani, equis vecti
per villas discurrunt, et cerevisiam in lagenis, ad hoc ipsum
praeparatis, mendicando ostiatim colliguut : " a dissertation,
Upsala, 1734, cited by Bergstrom in his edition of Afzelius,
n, 358, note 28. Skede is gallop, or run, Icelandic skeiS
(Bergstrom), Norwegian skeid, skjei. Many copies of the
Staffansvisa have been collected : see Bergstrom'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 Houtskars
Socknar, p. 39 ff. Something very similar was known in
Holstein : see Schiitze, Holsteinsches Idioticon, in, 200, as

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 Bethle
hem, 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.* 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

quoted by Grundtvig, 11, 521, note **. From Chambers' Book
of Days, n, 763 f, it appears that a custom, called a Stephen-
ing, was still existing at the beginning of this century, of
the inhabitants of the parish of Dray ton 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 Khymes of Scotland, p.
168 f, gives a song closely resembling the Staff acsvisa, which
was sung before every house on New Year's eve, in Deer-
ness, Orkney, with the same object of stimulating hospital-
itv. Similar practices are known in the Scottish Highlands :
see Campbell, Tales of the West Highlands, in, 19, and
Chambers, at p. 167 of the Popular Rhymes,

22. ST STEPHEN AND HEROD

235

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, in, 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 oc
curs 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, in,
882 f, and in Bergstrom's Afzelius, n, 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 marvel
lous 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 fore
going, have been recovered by Professor
Bugge, and are given by Grundtvig, m, 883.

St Stephen's appearance as a stable-groom,
expressly in the Swedish carol and by impli
cation in the Danish ballads, is to be ex
plained by his being the patron of horses
among the northern nations.* 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 dur
ing 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.f 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

* 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 Ste
phen is a great patron of horses. The misappropriation of
the glories of the protomartyr is somewhat transparent.

t Grundtvig, whom I chiefly follow here, n, 521-24. In

a note on page 521, supplemented at m, 883 e, Grundtvig
has collected much interesting evidence of December 26 being
the great Horse Day. J. W. Wolf, cited by Grundtvig, n,
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." Beitrage
zur deutschen Mythologie, i, 124.

236

22. ST STEPHEN AND HEROD

in Scandinavia, Germany, and England in the
earlier history of these regions. It was sug
gested as long ago as the middle of the six
teenth century by the Archbishop Olaus Mag
nus, 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 con
nected with St Stephen's day are a continua
tion, 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.*

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 Pau-
vres en Forez et en Velay, collected by M.
Victor Smith, Romania, n, 473 ff. Three pil
grims, 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 serablavo-z-un ange)
is repelled by him, and in revenge puts a sil
ver 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 1'aile ; C, trois fois il a chante", trois
fois 1'a battu 1'aile. The boy is taken down
and the maid hanged.

Spanish. A, Mild, Observaciones sobre la
Poesia Popular, p. 106, No 7, ' El Romero ; '

* Jean Baptiste Thiers, Traite 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
f£te de S. Estienne qu'fc tout autre jour." This may be one

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 sustain
ing his feet, the Virgin his head. He directs
his mother to go to the alcalde (Mild), 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, Hoff
mann, p. 26 ; Uhland, p. 803, No 303 ; Wil-
lems, 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 pil
grims good and true. The girl puts the cup i
in the father's sack. The son offers himself
in his father's place, and is hanged. The fa-
ther finds that St Jarnes 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, Noni

of the practices which Thiers had learned of from his read
ing (see Liebrecht's preface, p. xviif), but might also have
migrated from the east or uprth into France. Superstitions,
like new fashions, are always sure of a hospitable reception,
even though they impose a servitude.

22. ST STEPHEN AND HEROD

237

28.9, ' Der gehenkte Schenkwirth.' There are
two pilgrims, father and son. The host him
self puts his gold key into the boy's basket.
The boy is hanged : the father bids him hang
1 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,' Lu-
zel, 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 hav
ing 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,' Villemarque",
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 execu-

* From a copy of this collection the story is given in Acta
Sanctorum, vi Julii, p. 50, § 202 ff.

t Vincent, as pointed out by Professor George Stephens,
knew of the miracle of the cock, and tells it at 1. 25, c. 64,
on the authority of Pietro Damiani. Two Bolognese dining
together, one of them carved a cock and dressed it with pep
per 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, crew, and
threw the sauce all over the blasphemous pair, whereby they
were smitten with leprosy.

t So, naturally, the Fornsvenskt Legendarium, i, 170,
and the Catalan Recull de Eximplis e Miracles, etc., Barce
lona, 1880, i, 298.

§ 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

tioner reports to the seneschal. " Burn her,"
says the seneschal. " Though in fire up to her
breast," says the executioner, " she is laugh
ing 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 navel
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,* has but two pilgrims, Ger- I
mans, father and son. On their way to Com
postella they pass a night in an inn at Tou- ,
louse. The host, having an eye -to the forfeit
ure 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.f With Vincent agree the
author of the Golden Legend, following Cal
lixtus, Graesse, 2d ed., p. 426, c. 99 (94),
§5,$ and Csesarius 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 mira
cle there. § He has three pilgrims, like the
French and Spanish ballads, and the roast
fowl flying from the spit to convince a doubt
ing official, like the Dutch and Wendish bal
lads.

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 cer
tainly from no source so trustworthy as the chronicle of Tur-
pin. 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.

238

22. ST STEPHEN AND HEROD

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,*
some hours east of Burgos. Roig, the Valen-
cian 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 Cone, ells, 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 Espana, 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 Com
postella, 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 al
ways full, and Marineo speaks as an eye-wit
ness. (Edition of 1539, fol. xliii.) Dr Andrew
Borde gives nearly the same account as Ma
rineo, in the First Book of the Introduction
of Knowledge, 1544, p. 202 ff, ed. Furnivall.t

Early in the sixteenth century the subject
was treated in at least two miracle-plays, for
which it is very well adapted : Un miracolo

* See ' La grande Chanson des Pelerins de Saint-Jacques,'
in Socard, Noels et Cantiques, etc., p. 76, last stanza, p. 80,
third stanza, p. 89, fifth stanza ; the last = Romancero de
Champagne, i, 165, stanza 5.

t Southey follows Marineo in his Christmas Tale of " The
Pilgrim to Compostella."

J " Audi eine deutsche Jesuitenkomodie, Peregrinus Com-
postellanus, Innsbruck, 1624, behandelt diesen Stoff. F. Lie-
brecht, in Serapeum, 1864, S. 235."

§ Vasari, v, 184, Milan, 1809 ; Crowe and Cavalcaselle,
in, 124, n, 566 ff, ed. 1866 ; Mrs Jameson's Sacred and
Legendary Art, i, 241, ed. 1857. Professor N. H0yen indi-

di tre Pellegrini, printed at Florence^ early in
the sixteenth century, D'Ancona, Sacre Rap-
presentazioni, in, 465 ; Ludus Sancti Jacobi,
fragment de mystere provencale, Camille Ar-
naud, 1858.$

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 cen
tury, by Palmezzano in S. Biagio di S. Giro-
lamo at Forli, 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. §

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. ||
More than this, this author claims for this
saint, who, saving reverence, is decidedly mi-
norum gentium, the merit and glory of deliv
ering 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,

cated to Grundtvig the picture of Pietro Antonio, and d'An-
cona refers to Pisanello's.

|| 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 : Grasse, Sagen-
schatz des Koriigreichs 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.

22. ST STEPHEN AND HEROD

239

the freeing of the captives, recounted in Acta
Sanctorum, vi Julii, p. 47, § 190 f, and the
saving the life of the young pilgrim.*

The restoration of a roasted fowl to life is
also narrated in Acta Sanctorum, I Septem-
bris, p. 529, § 289, as occurring early in the
eleventh century (the date assigned to the
story of the pilgrims), at the table of St Ste
phen, 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 per
sisted. 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 bal- J
lads. 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 presant
N'en est plumeus com il estoit devant,
Et se redrece a la perche en cantant.'

vv 11621-23.

And what he exacts is performed for his con
viction, f Nevertheless, as we shall now see,
the true epoch of the event is not the Na
tivity, 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 Gos
pel 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

* For Luis de la Vega, see Acta Sanctorum, in 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 VVendish ballad can
hardly be expected to celebrate St James, and refers the jus
tification 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 corned endum
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 mis-
sioner, 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 med
dle 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. After
wards 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. Church
ill's Collection of Voyages and Travels, 1704, 1, 682, Pinker-
ton's Collection, xvi, 229.

t La Chevalerie Ogier de Danemarche, par Raimbert de
Paris, Poeme da xii siecle, etc., n, 485, vv 11606-627.

240

22. ST STEPHEN AND HEROD

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 straight
way made a noose of the rope and hanged
himself.*

The Cursor Mundi gives its own turn to
this relation, with the intent to blacken Judas
a little more.f 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 Ju
das, " 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 bis lord

And proved to him untrue.

A still different version existed among the
Copts, who had their copies of the apocryphal

* The gospel of Nicodemus was introduced into the
French and the Italian romance of Perceforest, but unfortu
nately this "narratio ab inepto Grseculo pessime interpo-
lata " (Thilo) seems to be lacking.

t Cursor Mundi, a Northumbrian poem of the 14th cen
tury, in four versions, ed. by R. Morris, p. 912 f, vv 15961-
998. This passage was kindly pointed out to me by Profes
sor George Stephens.

{ Relation d'un Voyage fait au Levant par Monsieur De

'writings, and among them the gospel of Nico
demus.

The Copts say, according to The'venot,
" 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." $

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 :
* CHEISTUS 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 bag
pipes ; 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 Ohristus natus est, Christ is
born. The raven asked Quando, When ? The
crow replied, Sac 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.

The'venot, Paris, 1665, i, 502. Cited by Thilo, p. xxxvii,
and by Victor Smith, Romania, n, 474, who adds : " Parmi
les manuscrits rapportes d'Ethiopie par M. d'Abbadie, il se
trouve un volume dont le titre a pour equivalent, Actes de la
passion. Un chapitre de ce volume, intitule Le livre du coq,
developpe la le'gende indiquee par The'venot. Catalogue
raisonne des manuscrits ethiopiens, appartenant a M. A. T.
d'Ahbadie, in 4°, imp. impe'riale, Paris, 1859."

22. ST STEPHEN AND HEROD

241

So in Vieux Noels fran£ais, in Les Noels
Bressans, etc., par Philibert Le Due, p. 145.

Joie des Bestes
a la nouvelle de la naissance du Sauveur.

Comme les Bestes autrefois
Parloient mieux latin que fran9ois,
Le Coq, de loin voyant le faict,
S'e'cria : Christus natus est ;
Le Boeaf, d'un air tout ebaubi,
Demande : Ubi, ubi, ubi ?
La Chevre, se torchant le groin,
Respond que c'est a Bethleem ;
Maistre Baudet, curiosus
De Taller voir, dit : JSamus ;
Et, droit sur ses pattes, le Veau
Beugle deux fois : Volo, volo*

And again, in Italian, Bolza, Canzoni popo-
lari comasche, p. 654, No 30 :

H Gallo. & nato Gesu !

II Bue. In dova?

La Pecora. Betlem ! Betlem !

L'Asino. Andem ! Andem ! Andem !

A little Greek ballad, ' The Taking of Con
stantinople,' 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, Volks-
kunde, p. 179.)

With Herod's questions and Stephen's an
swers in stanzas 5-8, we may compare a pas
sage in some of the Greek ballads cited under
No 17, p. 199.

2«Aa/3e, Travcis; (TK\d(3e, Su/ros; fir] TO if/iapl crov Xciirct;

<rou

Lakkyt ]>e ey)>er mete or drynk ?

fLvu), ju-^re SH^U, p-rjre I/'W/AI [/cpao-lv] p.ov Xeiirct.

Lakit me neyper mete ne drynk.

Jeannaraki, p. 203, No 265 :
Sakellarios, p. 37, No 13.

pdya, <rov

/MOV

Lakkyt J>e eyper gold or fe,
Or ony ryche wede ?
QVTC Tretvti), cure Sn/'w, oure pdya p.ov
Miyre 7T€ira>, p-rfrf. Sti/'w, fi^re >cat pov^a
Lakyt me neyper gold ne fe,
Ne non ryche wede.

Tommaseo, m, 154 ; Passow, p. 330, No 449 :
Tommaseo, m, 152 ; Zambelios, p. 678, No
103 ; Passow, No 448.

A Danish translation of the English bal
lad 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.ZVT Steuene was a clerk in kyng Herowdes

halle,

And seruyd him of bred and clop, as euery
kyng befalle.

2 Steuyw out of kechone caw, wyth boris hed on

honde ;

He saw a sterre was fayr and bry^t ouer Bed-
lem sto/ide.

* " Ce couplet se debite en imitant successivement le chant
du coq, le mugisaement du bceuf, le cri de la chevre, le

3 He kyst adoun J>e boris hed and went in to

J>e halle :

* I forsak ]?e, kyng Herowdes, and ]>i werkes
aUe.

4 ' I forsak fe, kyng Herowdes, and ]ri werkes

aUe;

f)er is a chyld in Bedlera born is beter J>an
we alle.'

5 * Quat eylyt pe, Steuene ? (\uat is pe befalle ?

braiment de 1'ane, et le beuglement du veau." Bolza makes
a similar explanation with regard to the Italian colloquy.

242

23. JUDAS

Lakkyt pe eyper mete or drynk in kyng Her-
owdes halle ? '

6 ' Lakit me neyper mete ne drynk in kyng Her-

owdes halle ;

per is a chyld in Bedlewi born is beter paw. we
alle.'

7 Quat eylyt pe, Steuyn ? art pu wod, or pu

gywnyst to brede ?

Lakkyt pe eyper gold or fe, or ony ryche
wede ? '

8 ' Lakyt me neyper gold ne f e, ne now. ryche

wede ;

per is a chyld in Bedlewi born xal helpyw vs
at our nede.'

9 'pat is al so sop, Steuyn, al so sop, iwys,
As pis capoim crowe xal pat lyp here in myn
'dysh.'

10 pat word was not so sone seyd, pat word in

pat halle,

pe capouw crew Cristus natws est ! among pe
lordes alle.

11 Rysyt vp, myw turmeTitowres, be to and al be

on,

And ledyt Steuy/i out of pis town, and sto/tyt
hyra wyth ston ! '

12 Tokyw he Steuene, and stonyd hym in the

way,
And perfore is his euyrz- on Crystes owyn day.

I2, 51. be falle.
31. a douw. 32, 41. for sak.
52. There is room only for the h at the end of
the line.

91. also . . . also
102. a mong.

. I wys. 92. dych.

JUDAS

MS. B. 14, 39, of the thirteenth century, library of Trinity College, Cambridge, as printed in Wright & Halli-

well's Reliquiae Antiquae, 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 domes
tic history,* 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 ac
customed to take tithes of all moneys that
came into his hands, and that he considered
he had lost thirty pence on the precious oint
ment which had not been sold for three hun
dred pence, and took this way of indemnify
ing himself.

A Wendish ballad, Haupt und Schmaler, I,
276, No 284, has the following story. Jesus
besought hospitality for himself and his disci
ples of a poor widow. She could give a lodg-

* Legenda Aurea, Grasse, 2d ed., p. 184 ff; Mone's An- Poems and Lives of Saints, p. 107 ff; Douhet, Dictionnaire
zeiger, vn, col. 532 f, and du Me'ril, Poesies populaires lat- des Legendes, col. 714 ff ; Das alte Passional, ed. K. A. Hahn,
ines du Moyen Age, p. 326 ff; Furnivall, Early English p. 312 ff ; Backstrom, Svenska Folkbocker, n, 198 ff; etc.

23. JUDAS

243

ing, 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 gaining, under a tub, and they chal
lenged 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 chil
dren of Israel did value ; " had been coined by
Abraham's father for Ninus, and been given
by Terah to his son ; had passed through va
rious hands to the Ishmaelites, had been paid
by them as the price of Joseph, and been re
paid 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 Solo
mon'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.*

It is much to be regretted that the manu
script 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 here up othi rugge.

3 ' Thou comest f er ithe brode stret, f er ithe

brode strete ;

Summe of thine tunesmen ther thou meiht
imete.'

Imette wid is soster, the swikele wimon.

* See Fabricius, Codex Pseudepigraphus Veteris Testa
ment!, ii, 79 ; Godfrey of Viterbo (who derives his informa
tion from a lost writing of the apostle Bartholomew) in his

5 ' Judas, thou were wrthe me stende the wid

ston,
For the false prophete that tou bile vest 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.

Pantheon, Pistorius, German, Script., ed. Struve, n, 243,
or E. du Me'ril, Poe'sies pop. latines du Moyen Age, p. 321 ;
Genesi de Scriptura, Biblioteca Catalana, p. 20, etc.

244

24. BONNIE ANNIE

9 He drou hymselve bi the cop, that al it lavede 13 In him com ur lord Crist gon, as is postles

seten at mete :
'.Wou sitte ye, postles, ant wi nule ye ete?

a blode ;

The Jewes out of Jurselem awenden he were
wode.

14 [' Wou sitte ye, postles, ant wi nule ye ete ?]
10 Foret hym com the riche Jeu that heihte Pi- Ic am ibouht ant isold today for oure mete.'

latus :
Wolte sulle thi loverd, that hette Jesus ? '

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.'

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 Reliquice Antiques.

32. meist.
101. heiste.

II1. eiste. II2. bitaiste.
142. i-boust.
161. miste.

171. cnistes. 172. 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 substitu
tion I follow Matzner's Altenglische Sprachpro-
ben, i, 114.

BONNIE ANNIE

A. 'Bonnie Annie,' Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Bal- B. 'The High Banks o Yarrow,' Motherwell's MS.,
lads, p. 123. 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 ab

sence of women (B 6, 7, A 9, 10 ; compare No
15, 21-26). The sailors say there is some
body on board who is marked for death, or fly
ing 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 judg
ment of God. Annie, conscious only of her
own guilt, asks to be thrown overboard. Her

24. BONNIE ANNIE

245

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, un
der 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 ; *
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.f

Translated in Grundtvig's Engelske og
skotske Folkeviser, p. 199, No 31.

Kinloch's Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 123.

1 THERE was a rich lord, and he lived in Forf ar,
He had a fair lady, and one only dochter.

2 O she was fair, 0 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 '11 steal your father's gowd, and your

mother's money,
And I '11 mak ye a lady in Ireland bonnie.'

5 She 's stown her father's gowd, and her moth

er's money,

But she was never a lady in Ireland bonnie.
*****

6 ' There 's fey f owk in our ship, she winna sail

for me,

There 's fey fowk in our ship, she winna sail
for me.'

* Jonah is asleep below. This trait we find in several
Norse ballads : see ' Brown Robyn's Confession.'

t A singular episode in the life of Saint Mary Magdalen
in the Golden Legend, Grasse, 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

7 They 've casten black bullets twice six and

forty,

And ae the black bullet fell on bonnie An
nie.

8 ' Ye '11 tak me in your arms twa, lo, lift me

cannie,

Throw me out owre board, your ain dear An
nie.'

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 '11 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 can

nie,
But all I can do, she winna sail for me.

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. Furni-
vall.

246 24. BONNIE ANNIE

13 ' Ye '11 tak her in your arms twa, lo, lift her 15 As the ship sailed, bonnie Annie she swam,

cannie, And she was at Ireland as soon as them.

And throw her out owre board, your ain dear

Annie.' 16 He made his love a coffin of the gowd sae yel

low,

14 He has tane her in his arms twa, lo, lifted her And buried his bonnie love doun in a sea val-

cannie, ley.

He has thrown her out owre board, his ain dear
Annie.

B 8 ' Gae wash your hands in the cauld spring

water,

MotherwelTs MS., p. 652. From the singing of a boy. , , ,,

Henry French, Ayr. And ^ them on a towel a S^ili m s^er.

1 DOWN in Dumbarton there wonnd a rich mer- 9 ' And tak me by the middle, and lift me up

chant, saftlie,

Down in Dumbarton there wond a rich mer- And throw me ower shipboard, baith me and

chant, my babie.'
And he had nae family but ae only dochter.

Sing fal lal de deedle, fal lal de deedle lair, 10 He took her by the middle, and lifted her

0 a day saftly,

And threw her ower shipboard, baith her and

2 There cam a rich squire, intending to woo her babie.

her,

He wooed her until he had got her wi babie. 11 Sometimes she did sink, sometimes she did

float it,

3 ' Oh what shall I do ! oh what shall come o Until that she cam to the high banks o Yarrow.

me!

Baith father and mither will think naething o 12 < 0 captain tak gowd, 0 sailors tak money,

me.' And launch out your sma boat till I sail for my

• honey.'

4 ' Gae up to your father, bring down gowd and

money, 13 ' How can I tak gowd, how can I tak money ?

And I '11 take ye ower to a braw Irish la- My ship 's on a sand bank, she winna sail for

die.' me.'

5 She gade to her father, brought down gowd 14 The captain took gowd, the sailors took money,

and money, And they launchd out their sma boat till he

And she 's awa ower to a braw Irish ladle. sailed for his honey.

6 She hadna sailed far till the young thing cried 15 ' Mak my love a coffin o the gowd sae yellow,

' Women ! ' Whar the wood it is dear, and the planks they

' What women can do, my dear, I '11 do for are narrow,

you.' And bury my love on the high banks o Yar
row.'
. 7 ' 0 haud your tongue, foolish man, dinna talk

vainly, 16 They made her a coffin o the gowd sae yellow,

For ye never kent what a woman driet for And buried her deep on the high banks o Yar-

you. row.

25. WILLIE'S LYKE-WAKE

247

A. Printed by Kinloch in four-line stanzas.
161. 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 !

WILLIE'S LYKE-WAKE

A. ' Willie, Willie,' Kinloch's MSS, i, 53.

C. Motherwell's MS., p. 187.

B. a. ' Blue Flowers and Yellow,' Buchan's Ballads of D. ' Amang the blue flowers and yellow,' Motherwell's
the North of Scotland, i, 185. b. ' The Blue Flow- Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xix, No xvn, one stanza,
ers and the Yellow,' Christie, Traditional Ballad
Airs, i, 120.

THIS piece was first printed by Buchan, in
1828, and all the copies which have been re
covered are of about that date. The device
of a lover's feigning death as a means of win
ning a shy mistress enjoys a considerable pop
ularity in European ballads. Even more fa
vorite is a ballad in which the woman adopts
this expedient, in order to escape from the con
trol 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 four
teen manuscripts, some of them of the 16th
century, and is still living in tradition. Five
versions, as yet un printed, A-E, have been
furnished me by the editor of the Ballads of
Denmark.

A, from a manuscript of the sixteenth cen
tury. 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

248

25. WILLIE'S LYKE-WAKE

identical with b, ' Den forstilte Vaagestue,'
Levninger, Part n, 1784, p. 34, No 7.* This
version gives us some rather unnecessary pre
vious history. Karl has sued for Ingerlille
three years, and had an ill answer. He fol
lows 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, J have, and
can get no good answer. If you will give
me your troth, we can see to that best our
selves. " 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, f
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 cen
tury. 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 origi
nally 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 !

* But a has two stanzas more : the first a stev-stamme,
or lyrical introduction (see p. 7), the other, 31, nearly a rep
etition of Sandvig's 29.

t After the page has bidden Ingerlille to the wake, we are
told, a 27, 28, b 26, 27 : all the convent hells were going,

Karl sprang from the bier, took Ellin, and
made for the door. The nuns, who stood read
ing 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 lit
tle Kirstin out of the convent, and receives
the same counsel. A page is sent to the con
vent, and asks who will come to the wake
now Herr Karl is dead ? Little Kirstin, with
out 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 '11 drink my mead and wine,
All with my Kirstin dear.

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 hb'jeloft to see her father and mother. The
two stanzas quoted signify nothing in this version.

25. WILLIE'S LYKE-WAKE

249

' 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.'

P, another copy from recent tradition, was
published in 1875, in Kristensen's Jyske
Folkeviser, n, 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 dis
cipline. 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 in
vention, and that C is a blending of two dif
ferent 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 Ni-
laus, how to get his true love out of the clois
ter. 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 Lsesning i blandede ^Emner (or
Hesperus), m, 151, 1822 (Bergstrb'm).

' Hertugen af Skage,' Danske Viser, n, 191,
No 88, has this slight agreement with the fore
going 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 com
monest ballads in Sweden, and is often rep
resented as a drama by young people in coun
try places. A a, ' Herr Carl, eller Klosterrof-
vet,' Afzelius, I, 179, No 26, new ed. No 24 ;
b, Afzelius, Sago-Hafder, ed. 1851, IV, 106.
B. Atterbom, Poetisk Kalender for 1816, p.
63, ' Det lefvande Liket.' C. Rancken, Nagra
Prof af Folksang, o. s. v., p. 13, No 4. These
differ but slightly from Danish D, B. 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!

i '

Bergstrb'm, new Afzelius, n, 131, refers to
another version in Gyllenmars' 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 Islenzk FornkvaeSi, n, 59, No 40,
4 Marteins kviSa.' 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. (Bergstrom, as above.)

There is a very gay and pretty south-Eu
ropean 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, ' Palbeli Szdp Antal ; ' translated by

250

25. WILLIE'S LYKE-WAKE

Aigner, Ungarische Volksdichtungen, p. 80,
* Schbn Anton.' Handsome Tony tells his
mother that he shall die for Helen. The
mother says, Not vet. I will build a mar-

»/ * •/

vellous 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 hand
some 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 mon-
ferrini, p. 59, No 40, « II Genovese.' The
Genoese, not obtaining the beautiful daughter
of a rich merchant on demand, plants a gar
den. 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 pesni ilirske,
p. 93, ' Cudna bolezen ' (' Strange Sickness ') ;
translated by Anastasius Griiri, 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. John-
stone, ' The Robbery of the Nunnery, or,
The Abbess Outwitted,' Copenhagen, 1786
(Danske Viser, IV, 366) ; by Prior, m, 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.

Kinloch's MSS, i, 53, from the recitation of Mary Barr,
Lesmahagow, aged upwards of seventy. May, 1827.

1 « WILLIE, Willie, I '11 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.

25. WILLIE'S LYKE-WAKE

251

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 ' 0 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 ' 0 father, 0 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 '11 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 « 0 Willie, 0 Willie, let me alane this nicht,
0 let me alane till we're wedded richt.'

16 ' Ye cam unto me baith sae meek and mild,
But I '11 mak ye gae hame a wedded wife wi

child.'

a. Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, i, 185. b.
Christie, Traditional Ballad Airs, i, 120.

1 ' 0 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 ' 0 Willie, my son, I '11 learn you a wile,
How this fair maid ye may beguile.

4 ' Ye '11 gie the principal bellman a groat,
And ye 11 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 '11 gang to yon lyke-wake ae single hour.'

8 ' Ye must take with you your ain blither

John;
It 's not meet for maidens to venture alone.'

9 ' I '11 not take with me my brither John,
But I '11 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 '0 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.

252

25. WILLIE'S LYKE-WAKE

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.'

MotherwelTs 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 yel
low

2 ' 0 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,

1 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 con
voy.'

MotherwelTs Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xix, Noxvu.

' O JOHNTE, 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 r adopted, are certainly of
the most trifling.

I2. I am. 21. Is she. 71. And she.
161. Ye 've come. 162. And ye.

17. Evidently by Christie :

1 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 sec
ond stanza, but are given in the third in the
order of the first.
31, 51. MS. belling great.
II2. you come.

26. THE THREE RAVENS

253

26
THE THREE RAYENS

a. Melismata. Musicall Phansies. Fitting the Court,
Cittie, and Countrey Humours. London, 1611, No
20.* [T. Ravenscroft.]

b. ' The Three Ravens,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Appendix, p. xviii, No xn.

a was printed from Melismata, by Ritson,
in his Ancient Songs, 1790, p. 155. Mr. Chap-
pell 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." Mother well, Min
strelsy, Introduction, p. Ixxvii, 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 Scot
land."

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, in, 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, in, 239, ed. 1803,
communicated by C. K. Sharpe, as written down from tra
dition by a lady. b. Albyn's Anthology, n, 27, 1818, " from
the singing of Mr Thomas Shortreed, of Jedburgh, as sung
and recited by his mother." c. Chambers's Scottish Bal
lads, p. 283, partly from recitation and partly from the Bor
der Minstrelsy, d. Fraser-Tytler MS., p. 70.

* Misprinted 22.

1 As I was walking all alane,

I heard twa corbies making a mane ;

The tane unto the t'other say,

4 Where sail 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 '11 sit on his white hause-bane,
And I '11 pike out his bonny blue een ;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair

We '11 theek our nest when it grows bare.

5 ' Mony a one for him makes mane,
But nane sail ken where he is gane ;
Oer his white banes, when they are bare,
The wind sail 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. 1. der Vorzeit, p. 198 ; Wolff, Halle der
Volker, 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, n,
462, xxiv.

254

20. THE THREE RAVENS

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 breakef ast take ? '

3 ' Downe in yonder greene field,

There lies a knight slain vnder his shield.

4 ' His hounds they lie downe at his f eete,
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.

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.

21. Whare but by yon new fa' en birk.

3. We '11 sit upon his bonny breast-bane,
And we'll pick out his bonny gray

een;
We '11 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 '11 flee high aboon them a',
And sing a sang for summer's sake.

O. 1. As I gaed doun by yon hous-en,

Twa corbies there were sittand their

lane.

21. O down beside yon new-faun birk.
31. His horse. 32. His hounds to bring the

wild deer hame.

4. 0 we '11 sit on his bonnie breist-bane,
And we'll pyke out his bonnie grey
een.

d. I1, walking forth. I2, the ither. I8, we twa

dine.

32. wild bird.
52. naebody kens.
58. when we 've laid them bare. 54. win

may blaw.

27. THE WHUMMIL BORE.

255

THE WHUMMIL BORE

a. Motherwell's MS., p. 191. b. Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xvi, No in.

THIS ballad, if it ever were one, seems not commonplace in English and elsewhere : e. g.,
to have been met with, or at least to have « The Squire of Low Degree : '
been thought worth notice, by anybody but
Motherwell. As already observed in the
preface to 4 Hind Horn,' stanza 2 seems to
have slipped into that ballad, in consequence

He served the kyng, her father dere,
Fully the tyme of seven yere. w 5, 6.

of the resemblance of stanza 1 to F 2, H 3 of
* Hind Horn.' This first stanza is, however, a

He loved her more then seven yere,

Yet was he of her love never the nere. w 17, 18.

Ritson, Met. Eom. in, 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,
Lilluin 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. 22. Variation : And she was washing in a pond. b. Burden : Fa, fa, falilly

62. Variation : Ye might have tied me with a With my glimpy, glimpy,

strae. eedle,

Lillum too a tee too a tally.

256

28. BUBD ELLEN AND YOUNG TAMLANE

BURD ELLEN AND YOUNG TAMLANE

Maidment's North Countrie Garland, 1824, p. 21. Com- her childhood,"
municated by R. Pitcairn, " from the recitation of a date,
female relative, who had heard it frequently sung in

about sixty years before the above

MOTHEKWELL 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 tra
ditionally current (1827). Still 1 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 Tam-
lane, or with the story of any other ballad.

1 BUBD 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

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.

r
H

<PI

)

. .

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Full text of "The English and Scottish popular ballads"

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