The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 1 (of 5)
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Title: The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 1 (of 5)
Editor: Francis James Child
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Transcriber's Notes
This book contains material in multiple languages, and numerous examples
of archaic, non-standard and dialect forms of English. Therefore no
attempts to standardize spelling would be appropriate. The only changes
to the text are to resolve typographical errors etc. which are listed at
the end of the book. Minor corrections to format or punctuation have
been made without comment.
This Plain Text version of the e-book includes unicode (UTF-8)
characters and diacritics which should appear in the following list:
ā macron
ă ĭ breve
ć ń ś ẃ acute accent
Č č ě Ř ř Š š ž caron/hacek
ȝ yogh
ł l with stroke (Polish etc.)
Œ œ oe-ligature
ş cedilla
† dagger or upright cross symbol
αβγδε Greek script
[a'] and ['s] denote editorial insertions of contracted forms, not
special characters: e.g. on page 299 [a'] is an editorial insertion of
"a'" (for "all"); on page 309 ['s] is an editorial insertion of "'s"
(for "has"?).
_underscore symbols_ represent italic typeface
~tilde symbols~ represent roman typeface within italics
ALL CAPS represent small caps typeface
#number signs# represent bold typeface
$dollar symbols$ represent gesperrt (s p a c e d o u t) text
^x or ^{x, y} represents superscript text
_x or _{xyz} represents subscript text
Bold mark-up is widely used to denote the distinctive font used by the
author for ballad version references.
Some sections of ballads are set in differently sized type and indicated
in the introductions. Usually this is smaller type, but in the case of
ballad 39, larger. These passages are indicated by means of further
indentation and side-lining (|) in the left margin. Ballad 53 versions M
and N are entirely in smaller type, but without explanation.
Footnotes have been numbered from [1] to [427] sequentially throughout
the whole volume, but are presented at the end of each ballad or section
to which they refer.
A line of 7 spaced dots indicates a missing line of poetry. A line of 7
spaced asterisks indicates missing poetry material of one or more
stanzas; this is distinct from a "thought break" or sub-section
separator of 5 widely spaced asterisks such as follow these notes.
* * * * *
THE ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH
POPULAR BALLADS
[Illustration]
THE
ENGLISH AND SCOTTISH
POPULAR BALLADS
EDITED BY
FRANCIS JAMES CHILD
IN FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME I
NEW YORK
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
This Dover edition, first published in 1965, is an
unabridged and unaltered republication of the work
originally published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, as
follows:
Vol. I--Part I, 1882; Part II, 1884
Vol. II--Part III, 1885; Part IV, 1886
Vol. III--Part V, 1888; Part VI, 1889
Vol. IV--Part VII, 1890; Part VIII, 1892
Vol. V--Part IX, 1894; Part X, 1898.
This edition also contains as an appendix to Part X an
essay by Walter Morris Hart entitled "Professor Child and
the Ballad," reprinted _in toto_ from Vol. XXI, No. 4,
1906 [New Series Vol. XIV, No. 4] of the _Publications of
the Modern Language Association of America_.
_Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 65-24347_
Manufactured in the United States of America
Dover Publications, Inc.
180 Varick Street
New York, N.Y. 10014
_To_
_FREDERICK J. FURNIVALL, ESQ._
_OF LONDON_
_MY DEAR FURNIVALL_:
_Without the Percy MS. no one would pretend to make a collection of the
English Ballads, and but for you that manuscript would still, I think,
be beyond reach of man, yet exposed to destructive chances. Through your
exertions and personal sacrifices, directly, the famous and precious
folio has been printed; and, indirectly, in consequence of the same, it
has been transferred to a place where it is safe, and open to
inspection. This is only one of a hundred reasons which I have for
asking you to accept the dedication of this book from_
_Your grateful friend and fellow-student_,
_F. J. CHILD._
_Cambridge, Mass., December 1, 1882._
ADVERTISEMENT TO PART I
NUMBERS 1-28
It was my wish not to begin to print The English and Scottish Popular
Ballads until this unrestricted title should be justified by my having
at command every valuable copy of every known ballad. A continuous
effort to accomplish this object has been making for some nine or ten
years, and many have joined in it. By correspondence, and by an
extensive diffusion of printed circulars, I have tried to stimulate
collection from tradition in Scotland, Canada, and the United States,
and no becoming means has been left unemployed to obtain possession of
unsunned treasures locked up in writing. The gathering from tradition
has been, as ought perhaps to have been foreseen at this late day,
meagre, and generally of indifferent quality. Materials in the hands of
former editors have, in some cases, been lost beyond recovery, and very
probably have lighted fires, like that large cantle of the Percy
manuscript, _maxime deflendus_! Access to several manuscript collections
has not yet been secured. But what is still lacking is believed to bear
no great proportion to what is in hand, and may soon come in, besides:
meanwhile, the uncertainties of the world forbid a longer delay to
publish so much as has been got together.
Of hitherto unused materials, much the most important is a large
collection of ballads made by Motherwell. For leave to take a copy of
this I am deeply indebted to the present possessor, Mr Malcolm Colquhoun
Thomson, of Glasgow, who even allowed the manuscript to be sent to
London, and to be retained several months, for my accommodation. Mr J.
Wylie Guild, of Glasgow, also permitted the use of a note-book of
Motherwell's which supplements the great manuscript, and this my
unwearied friend, Mr James Barclay Murdoch, to whose solicitation I owe
both, himself transcribed with the most scrupulous accuracy. No other
good office, asked or unasked, has Mr Murdoch spared.
Next in extent to the Motherwell collections come those of the late Mr
Kinloch. These he freely placed at my disposal, and Mr William Macmath,
of Edinburgh, made during Mr Kinloch's life an exquisite copy of the
larger part of them, enriched with notes from Mr Kinloch's papers, and
sent it to me across the water. After Mr Kinloch's death his collections
were acquired by Harvard College Library, still through the agency of Mr
Macmath, who has from the beginning rendered a highly valued assistance,
not less by his suggestions and communications than by his zealous
mediation.
No Scottish ballads are superior in kind to those recited in the last
century by Mrs Brown, of Falkland. Of these there are, or were, three
sets. One formerly owned by Robert Jamieson, the fullest of the three,
was lent me, to keep as long as I required, by my honored friend the
late Mr David Laing, who also secured for me copies of several ballads
of Mrs Brown which are found in an Abbotsford manuscript, and gave me a
transcript of the Glenriddell manuscript. The two others were written
down for William Tytler and Alexander Fraser Tytler respectively, the
former of these consisting of a portion of the Jamieson texts revised.
These having for some time been lost sight of, Miss Mary Fraser Tytler,
with a graciousness which I have reason to believe hereditary in the
name, made search for them, recovered the one which had been obtained by
Lord Woodhouselee, and copied it for me with her own hand. The same lady
furnished me with another collection which had been made by a member of
the family.
For later transcriptions from Scottish tradition I am indebted to Mr J.
F. Campbell of Islay, whose edition and rendering of the racy West
Highland Tales is marked by the rarest appreciation of the popular
genius; to Mrs A. F. Murison, formerly of Old Deer, who undertook a
quest for ballads in her native place on my behalf; to Mr Alexander
Laing, of Newburgh-upon-Tay; to Mr James Gibb, of Joppa, who has given
me a full score; to Mr David Louden, of Morham, Haddington; to the late
Dr John Hill Burton and Miss Ella Burton; to Dr Thomas Davidson.
The late Mr Robert White, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, allowed me to look
through his collections in 1873, and subsequently made me a copy of such
things as I needed, and his ready kindness has been continued by Mrs
Andrews, his sister, and by Miss Andrews, his niece, who has taken a
great deal of trouble on my account.
In the south of the mother-island my reliance has, of necessity, been
chiefly upon libraries. The British Museum possesses, besides early
copies of some of the older ballads, the Percy MS., Herd's MSS and
Buchan's, and the Roxburgh broadsides. The library of the University of
Cambridge affords one or two things of first-rate importance, and for
these I am beholden to the accomplished librarian, Mr Henry Bradshaw,
and to Professor Skeat. I have also to thank the Rev. F. Gunton, Dean,
and the other authorities of Magdalen College, Cambridge, for permitting
collations of Pepys ballads, most obligingly made for me by Mr Arthur S.
B. Miller. Many things were required from the Bodleian library, and
these were looked out for me, and scrupulously copied or collated, by Mr
George Parker.
Texts of traditional ballads have been communicated to me in America by
Mr W. W. Newell, of New York, who is soon to give us an interesting
collection of Children's Games traditional in America; by Dr Huntington,
Bishop of Central New York; Mr G. C. Mahon, of Ann Arbor, Michigan; Miss
Margaret Reburn, of New Albion, Iowa; Miss Perine, of Baltimore; Mrs
Augustus Lowell, Mrs L. F. Wesselhoeft, Mrs. Edward Atkinson, of Boston;
Mrs Cushing, of Cambridge; Miss Ellen Marston, of New Bedford; Mrs
Moncrieff, of London, Ontario.
Acknowledgments not well despatched in a phrase are due to many others
who have promoted my objects: to Mr Furnivall, for doing for me
everything which I could have done for myself had I lived in England; to
that master of old songs and music, Mr William Chappell, very specially;
to Mr J. Payne Collier; Mr Norval Clyne, of Aberdeen; Mr Alexander
Young, of Glasgow; Mr Arthur Laurenson, of Lerwick, Shetland; Mr J.
Burrell Curtis, of Edinburgh; Dr Vigfusson, of Oxford; Professor Edward
Arber, of Birmingham; the Rev. J. Percival, Mr Francis Fry, Mr J. F.
Nicholls, of Bristol; Professor George Stephens, of Copenhagen; Mr R.
Bergström, of the Royal Library, Stockholm; Mr W. R. S. Ralston, Mr
William Henry Husk, Miss Lucy Toulmin Smith, Mr A. F. Murison, of
London; Professor Sophocles; Mr W. G. Medlicott, of Longmeadow; to Mr M.
Heilprin, of New York, Mme de Maltchycé, of Boston, and Rabbi Dr Cohn,
for indispensable translations from Polish and Hungarian; to Mr James
Russell Lowell, Minister of the United States at London; to Professor
Charles Eliot Norton, for such "pains and benefits" as I could ask only
of a life-long friend.
In the editing of these ballads I have closely followed the plan of
Grundtvig's Old Popular Ballads of Denmark, a work which will be prized
highest by those who have used it most, and which leaves nothing to be
desired but its completion. The author is as much at home in English as
in Danish tradition, and whenever he takes up a ballad which is common
to both nations nothing remains to be done but to supply what has come
to light since the time of his writing. But besides the assistance which
I have derived from his book, I have enjoyed the advantage of Professor
Grundtvig's criticism and advice, and have received from him unprinted
Danish texts, and other aid in many ways.
Such further explanations as to the plan and conduct of the work as may
be desirable can be more conveniently given by and by. I may say here
that textual points which may seem to be neglected will be considered in
an intended Glossary, with which will be given a full account of
Sources, and such indexes of Titles and Matters as will make it easy to
find everything that the book may contain.
With renewed thanks to all helpers, and helpers' helpers, I would invoke
the largest coöperation for the correction of errors and the supplying
of deficiencies. To forestall a misunderstanding which has often
occurred, I beg to say that every traditional version of a popular
ballad is desired, no matter how many texts of the same may have been
printed already.
F. J. CHILD.
[DECEMBER, 1882.]
ADVERTISEMENT TO PART II
NUMBERS 29-53
I have again to express my obligations and my gratitude to many who have
aided in the collecting and editing of these Ballads.
To Sir Hugh Hume Campbell, for the use of two considerable manuscript
volumes of Scottish Ballads.
To Mr Allardyce, of Edinburgh, for a copy of the Skene Ballads, and for
a generous permission to print such as I required, in advance of a
possible publication on his part.
To Mr Mansfield, of Edinburgh, for the use of the Pitcairn manuscripts.
To Mrs Robertson, for the use of Note-Books of the late Dr Joseph
Robertson, and to Mr Murdoch, of Glasgow, Mr Lugton, of Kelso, Mrs
Alexander Forbes, of Edinburgh, and Messrs G. L. Kittredge and G. M.
Richardson, former students of Harvard College, for various
communications.
To Dr Reinhold Köhler's unrivalled knowledge of popular fiction, and his
equal liberality, I am indebted for valuable notes, which will be found
in the Additions at the end of this volume.
The help of my friend Dr Theodor Vetter has enabled me to explore
portions of the Slavic ballad-field which otherwise must have been
neglected.
Professors D. Silvan Evans, John Rhys, Paul Meyer, and T. Frederick
Crane have lent me a ready assistance in literary emergencies.
The interest and coöperation of Mr Furnivall and Mr Macmath have been
continued to me without stint or weariness.
It is impossible, while recalling and acknowledging acts of courtesy,
good will, and friendship, not to allude, with one word of deep personal
grief, to the irreparable loss which all who are concerned with the
study of popular tradition have experienced in the death of Svend
Grundtvig.
F. J. C.
JUNE, 1884.
CONTENTS
VOLUME I
BALLAD PAGE
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF PROFESSOR CHILD xvii
1. RIDDLES WISELY EXPOUNDED 1
(Additions and Corrections: I, 484; II, 495; III, 496;
IV, 439; V, 205, 283.)
2. THE ELFIN KNIGHT 6
(Additions and Corrections: I, 484; II, 495; III, 496;
IV, 439; V, 205, 284.)
3. THE FAUSE KNIGHT UPON THE ROAD 20
(Additions and Corrections: I, 485; II, 496; III, 496;
IV, 440.)
4. LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT 22
(Additions and Corrections: I, 485; II, 496; III, 496;
IV, 440; V, 206, 285.)
5. GIL BRENTON 62
(Additions and Corrections: I, 489; II, 498; III, 497;
IV, 442; V, 207, 285.)
6. WILLIE'S LADY 81
(Additions and Corrections: II, 498; III, 497; V, 207,
285.)
7. EARL BRAND 88
(Additions and Corrections: I, 489; II, 498; III, 497;
IV, 443; V, 207, 285.)
8. ERLINTON 106
(Additions and Corrections: III, 498; IV, 445.)
9. THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND 111
(Additions and Corrections: I, 493; II, 498; III, 499;
V, 207.)
10. THE TWA SISTERS 118
(Additions and Corrections: I, 493; II, 498; III, 499;
IV, 447; V, 208, 286.)
11. THE CRUEL BROTHER 141
(Additions and Corrections: I, 496; II, 498; III, 499;
IV, 449; V, 208, 286.)
12. LORD RANDAL 151
(Additions and Corrections: I, 498; II, 498; III, 499;
IV, 449; V, 208, 286.)
13. EDWARD 167
(Additions and Corrections: I, 501; II, 499; III, 499;
V, 209, 287.)
14. BABYLON; OR, THE BONNIE BANKS O FORDIE 170
(Additions and Corrections: I, 501; II, 499; III, 499;
IV, 450; V, 209, 287.)
15. LEESOME BRAND 177
(Additions and Corrections: I, 501; II, 499; III, 500;
IV, 450; V, 209, 287.)
16. SHEATH AND KNIFE 185
(Additions and Corrections: II, 499; III, 500; IV, 450;
V, 210.)
17. HIND HORN 187
(Additions and Corrections: I, 502; II, 499; III, 501;
IV, 450; V, 210, 287.)
18. SIR LIONEL 208
(Additions and Corrections: II, 500; IV, 451.)
19. KING ORFEO 215
(Additions and Corrections: II, 500; III, 502; IV, 451;
V, 211.)
20. THE CRUEL MOTHER 218
(Additions and Corrections: I, 504; II, 500; III, 502;
IV, 451; V, 211, 287.)
21. THE MAID AND THE PALMER (THE SAMARITAN WOMAN) 228
(Additions and Corrections: II, 501; III, 502; IV, 451;
V, 212, 288.)
22. ST. STEPHEN AND HEROD 233
(Additions and Corrections: I, 505; II, 501; III, 502;
IV, 451; V, 212, 288.)
23. JUDAS 242
(Additions and Corrections: V, 288.)
24. BONNIE ANNIE 244
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 452.)
25. WILLIE'S LYKE-WAKE 247
(Additions and Corrections: I, 506; II, 502; III, 503;
IV, 453; V, 212, 289.)
26. THE THREE RAVENS 253
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 454; V, 212.)
27. THE WHUMMIL BORE 255
(Additions and Corrections: V, 212.)
28. BURD ELLEN AND YOUNG TAMLANE 256
(Additions and Corrections: I, 507; III, 503.)
29. THE BOY AND THE MANTLE 257
(Additions and Corrections: I, 507; II, 502; III, 503;
IV, 454; V, 212, 289.)
30. KING ARTHUR AND KING CORNWALL 274
(Additions and Corrections: I, 507; II, 502; III, 503;
V, 289.)
31. THE MARRIAGE OF SIR GAWAIN 288
(Additions and Corrections: I, 507; II, 502; IV, 454;
V, 213, 289.)
32. KING HENRY 297
(Additions and Corrections: II, 502; IV, 454; V, 289.)
33. KEMPY KAY 300
(Additions and Corrections: V, 213, 289.)
34. KEMP OWYNE 306
(Additions and Corrections: II, 502; III, 504; IV, 454;
V, 213, 290.)
35. ALLISON GROSS 313
(Additions and Corrections: III, 504; V, 214.)
36. THE LAILY WORM AND THE MACHREL OF THE SEA 315
(Additions and Corrections: V, 214, 290.)
37. THOMAS RYMER 317
(Additions and Corrections: II, 505; III, 504; IV, 454,
290.)
38. THE WEE WEE MAN 329
39. TAM LIN 335
(Additions and Corrections: I, 507; II, 505; III, 504;
IV, 455; V, 215, 290.)
40. THE QUEEN OF ELFAN'S NOURICE 358
(Additions and Corrections: II, 505; III, 505; IV, 459;
V, 215, 290.)
41. HIND ETIN 360
(Additions and Corrections: I, 508; II, 506; III, 506;
IV, 459; V, 215.)
42. CLERK COLVILL 371
(Additions and Corrections: II, 506; III, 506; IV, 459;
V, 215, 290.)
43. THE BROOMFIELD HILL 390
(Additions and Corrections: I, 508; II, 506; III, 506;
IV, 459, 290.)
44. THE TWA MAGICIANS 399
(Additions and Corrections: II, 506; III, 506; IV, 459;
V, 216, 290.)
45. KING JOHN AND THE BISHOP 403
(Additions and Corrections: I, 508; II, 506; IV, 459;
V, 216, 291.)
46. CAPTAIN WEDDERBURN'S COURTSHIP 414
(Additions and Corrections: II, 507; III, 507; IV, 459;
V, 216, 291.)
47. PROUD LADY MARGARET 425
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 460; V, 291.)
48. YOUNG ANDREW 432
49. THE TWA BROTHERS 435
(Additions and Corrections: II, 507; III, 507; IV, 460;
V, 217, 291.)
50. THE BONNY HIND 444
(Additions and Corrections: V, 218.)
51. LIZIE WAN 447
52. THE KING'S DOCHTER LADY JEAN 450
53. YOUNG BEICHAN 454
(Additions and Corrections: II, 508; III, 507; IV, 460;
V, 218, 291.)
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 484
VOLUME II
54. THE CHERRY-TREE CAROL 1
(Additions and Corrections: II, 509; V, 220.)
55. THE CARNAL AND THE CRANE 7
(Additions and Corrections: II, 509; III, 507; IV. 462;
V, 220.)
56. DIVES AND LAZARUS 10
(Additions and Corrections: II, 510; III, 507; IV, 462;
V, 220, 292.)
57. BROWN ROBYN'S CONFESSION 13
(Additions and Corrections: II, 510; III, 508; IV, 462;
V, 220, 292.)
58. SIR PATRICK SPENS 17
(Additions and Corrections: II, 510; V, 220.)
59. SIR ALDINGAR 33
(Additions and Corrections: II, 510; III, 508; IV, 463;
V, 292.)
60. KING ESTMERE 49
(Additions and Corrections: II, 510; III, 508; IV, 463.)
61. SIR CAWLINE 56
(Additions and Corrections: II, 511; III, 508; IV, 463.)
62. FAIR ANNIE 63
(Additions and Corrections: II, 511; IV, 463; V, 220.)
63. CHILD WATERS 83
(Additions and Corrections: II, 511; III, 508; IV, 463;
V, 220.)
64. FAIR JANET 100
(Additions and Corrections: III, 508; IV, 464; V, 222,
292.)
65. LADY MAISRY 112
(Additions and Corrections: III, 508; IV, 466; V, 222,
292.)
66. LORD INGRAM AND CHIEL WYET 126
(Additions and Corrections: II, 511; III, 508; V, 223,
292.)
67. GLASGERION 136
(Additions and Corrections: II, 511; III, 509; IV, 468;
V, 293.)
68. YOUNG HUNTING 142
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; III, 509; IV, 468;
V, 223.)
69. CLERK SAUNDERS 156
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; III, 509; IV, 468;
V, 223, 293.)
70. WILLIE AND LADY MAISRY 167
71. THE BENT SAE BROWN 170
(Additions and Corrections: III, 509; IV, 469; V, 223.)
72. THE CLERKS'S TWA SONS O OWSENFORD 173
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; III, 509; IV, 469;
V, 293.)
73. LORD THOMAS AND FAIR ANNET 179
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; III, 509; IV, 469;
V, 223, 293.)
74. FAIR MARGARET AND SWEET WILLIAM 199
(Additions and Corrections: V, 224, 293.)
75. LORD LOVEL 204
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; III, 510; IV, 471;
V, 225, 294.)
76. THE LASS OF ROCH ROYAL 213
(Additions and Corrections: III, 510; IV, 471; V, 225,
294.)
77. SWEET WILLIAM'S GHOST 226
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; IV, 474; V, 225,
294.)
78. THE UNQUIET GRAVE 234
(Additions and Corrections: II, 512; III, 512; IV, 474;
V, 225, 294.)
79. THE WIFE OF USHER'S WELL 238
(Additions and Corrections: III, 513; V, 294.)
80. OLD ROBIN OF PORTINGALE 240
(Additions and Corrections: II, 513; III, 514; IV, 476;
V, 225, 295.)
81. LITTLE MUSGRAVE AND LADY BARNARD 242
(Additions and Corrections: II, 513; IV, 476; V, 225.)
82. THE BONNY BIRDY 260
83. CHILD MAURICE 263
(Additions and Corrections: III, 514; IV, 478.)
84. BONNY BARBARA ALLAN 276
(Additions and Corrections: III, 514.)
85. LADY ALICE 279
(Additions and Corrections: III, 514; V, 225.)
86. YOUNG BENJIE 281
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 478.)
87. PRINCE ROBERT 284
(Additions and Corrections: V, 295.)
88. YOUNG JOHNSTONE 288
89. FAUSE FOODRAGE 296
(Additions and Corrections: II, 513; III, 515; IV, 479.)
90. JELLON GRAME 302
(Additions and Corrections: II, 513; III, 515; IV, 479;
V, 226, 295.)
91. FAIR MARY OF WALLINGTON 309
(Additions and Corrections: II, 513; III, 515; IV, 479;
V, 227.)
92. BONNY BEE HOM 317
(Additions and Corrections: V, 229.)
93. LAMKIN 320
(Additions and Corrections: II, 513; III, 515; IV, 480;
V, 229, 295.)
94. YOUNG WATERS 342
(Additions and Corrections: III, 516.)
95. THE MAID FREED FROM THE GALLOWS 346
(Additions and Corrections: II, 514; III, 516; IV, 481;
V, 231, 296.)
96. THE GAY GOSHAWK 355
(Additions and Corrections: III, 517; IV, 482; V, 234,
296.)
97. BROWN ROBIN 368
98. BROWN ADAM 373
99. JOHNIE SCOT 377
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 486; V, 234.)
100. WILLIE O WINSBURY 398
(Additions and Corrections: II, 514; III, 517; IV, 491;
V, 296.)
101. WILLIE O DOUGLAS DALE 406
(Additions and Corrections: III, 517; V, 235.)
102. WILLIE AND EARL RICHARD'S DAUGHTER 412
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518.)
103. ROSE THE RED AND WHITE LILY 415
104. PRINCE HEATHEN 424
(Additions and Corrections: V, 296.)
105. THE BAILIFF'S DAUGHTER OF ISLINGTON 426
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518; V, 237.)
106. THE FAMOUS FLOWER OF SERVING-MEN 428
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518; IV, 492.)
107. WILL STEWART AND JOHN 432
(Additions and Corrections: V, 237.)
108. CHRISTOPHER WHITE 439
109. TOM POTTS 441
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518.)
110. THE KNIGHT AND SHEPHERD'S DAUGHTER 457
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 492; V, 237.)
111. CROW AND PIE 478
112. THE BAFFLED KNIGHT 479
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518; IV, 495; V, 239,
296.)
113. THE GREAT SILKIE OF SULE SKERRY 494
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518; IV, 495.)
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 495
VOLUME III
114. JOHNIE COCK 1
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 495.)
115. ROBYN AND GANDELEYN 12
116. ADAM BELL, CLIM OF THE CLOUGH, AND WILLIAM OF CLOUDESLY 14
(Additions and Corrections: III, 518; IV, 496; V, 297.)
117. A GEST OF ROBYN HODE 39
(Additions and Corrections: III, 519; IV, 496; V, 240,
297.)
118. ROBIN HOOD AND GUY OF GISBORNE 89
119. ROBIN HOOD AND THE MONK 94
120. ROBIN HOOD'S DEATH 102
(Additions and Corrections: V, 240, 297.)
121. ROBIN HOOD AND THE POTTER 108
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 497.)
122. ROBIN HOOD AND THE BUTCHER 115
123. ROBIN HOOD AND THE CURTAL FRIAR 120
(Additions and Corrections: V, 297.)
124. THE JOLLY PINDER OF WAKEFIELD 129
125. ROBIN HOOD AND LITTLE JOHN 133
(Additions and Corrections: V, 297.)
126. ROBIN HOOD AND THE TANNER 137
127. ROBIN HOOD AND THE TINKER 140
128. ROBIN HOOD NEWLY REVIVED 144
129. ROBIN HOOD AND THE PRINCE OF ARAGON 147
130. ROBIN HOOD AND THE SCOTCHMAN 150
131. ROBIN HOOD AND THE RANGER 152
132. THE BOLD PEDLAR AND ROBIN HOOD 154
(Additions and Corrections: V, 240.)
133. ROBIN HOOD AND THE BEGGAR, I 155
134. ROBIN HOOD AND THE BEGGAR, II 158
135. ROBIN HOOD AND THE SHEPHERD 165
136. ROBIN HOOD'S DELIGHT 168
137. ROBIN HOOD AND THE PEDLARS 170
138. ROBIN HOOD AND ALLEN A DALE 172
139. ROBIN HOOD'S PROGRESS TO NOTTINGHAM 175
140. ROBIN HOOD RESCUING THREE SQUIRES 177
141. ROBIN HOOD RESCUING WILL STUTLY 185
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 497.)
142. LITTLE JOHN A BEGGING 188
143. ROBIN HOOD AND THE BISHOP 191
144. ROBIN HOOD AND THE BISHOP OF HEREFORD 193
145. ROBIN HOOD AND QUEEN KATHERINE 196
146. ROBIN HOOD'S CHASE 205
147. ROBIN HOOD'S GOLDEN PRIZE 208
(Additions and Corrections: III, 519.)
148. THE NOBLE FISHERMAN, OR, ROBIN HOOD'S PREFERMENT 211
149. ROBIN HOOD'S BIRTH, BREEDING, VALOR AND MARRIAGE 214
150. ROBIN HOOD AND MAID MARIAN 218
(Additions and Corrections: III, 519.)
151. THE KING'S DISGUISE, AND FRIENDSHIP WITH ROBIN HOOD 220
152. ROBIN HOOD AND THE GOLDEN ARROW 223
(Additions and Corrections: V, 241.)
153. ROBIN HOOD AND THE VALIANT KNIGHT 225
154. A TRUE TALE OF ROBIN HOOD 227
155. SIR HUGH, OR, THE JEW'S DAUGHTER 233
(Additions and Corrections: III, 519; IV, 497; V, 241,
297.)
156. QUEEN ELEANOR'S CONFESSION 257
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 498; V, 241, 297.)
157. GUDE WALLACE 265
(Additions and Corrections: V, 242.)
158. HUGH SPENCER'S FEATS IN FRANCE 275
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 499; V, 243.)
159. DURHAM FIELD 282
(Additions and Corrections: V, 297.)
160. THE KNIGHT OF LIDDESDALE 288
161. THE BATTLE OF OTTERBURN 289
(Additions and Corrections: III, 520; IV, 499; V,
243, 297.)
162. THE HUNTING OF THE CHEVIOT 303
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 502; V, 244, 297.)
163. THE BATTLE OF HARLAW 316
(Additions and Corrections: V, 245.)
164. KING HENRY FIFTH'S CONQUEST OF FRANCE 320
(Additions and Corrections: V, 245.)
165. SIR JOHN BUTLER 327
166. THE ROSE OF ENGLAND 331
167. SIR ANDREW BARTON 334
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 502; V, 245.)
168. FLODDEN FIELD 351
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 507; V, 298.)
169. JOHNIE ARMSTRONG 362
(Additions and Corrections: III, 520; IV, 507; V,
298.)
170. THE DEATH OF QUEEN JANE 372
(Additions and Corrections: V, 245, 298.)
171. THOMAS CROMWELL 377
172. MUSSELBURGH FIELD 378
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 507.)
173. MARY HAMILTON 379
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 507; V, 246, 298.)
174. EARL BOTHWELL 399
(Additions and Corrections: V, 247.)
175. THE RISING IN THE NORTH 401
176. NORTHUMBERLAND BETRAYED BY DOUGLAS 408
(Additions and Corrections: V, 299.)
177. THE EARL OF WESTMORELAND 416
(Additions and Corrections: V, 299.)
178. CAPTAIN CAR, OR, EDOM O GORDON 423
(Additions and Corrections: III, 520; IV, 513; V,
247, 299.)
179. ROOKHOPE RYDE 439
180. KING JAMES AND BROWN 442
181. THE BONNY EARL OF MURRAY 447
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 515.)
182. THE LAIRD O LOGIE 449
(Additions and Corrections: III, 520; IV, 515; V,
299.)
183. WILLIE MACINTOSH 456
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 516.)
184. THE LADS OF WAMPHRAY 458
(Additions and Corrections: III, 520.)
185. DICK O THE COW 461
186. KINMONT WILLIE 469
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 516.)
187. JOCK O THE SIDE 475
188. ARCHIE O CAWFIELD 484
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 516.)
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 496
VOLUME IV
189. HOBIE NOBLE 1
190. JAMIE TELFER OF THE FAIR DODHEAD 4
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 518; V, 249, 300.)
191. HUGHIE GRAME 8
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 518; V, 300.)
192. THE LOCHMABEN HARPER 16
(Additions and Corrections: V, 300.)
193. THE DEATH OF PARCY REED 24
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 520.)
194. THE LAIRD OF WARISTON 28
195. LORD MAXWELL'S LAST GOODNIGHT 34
(Additions and Corrections: V, 251.)
196. THE FIRE OF FRENDRAUGHT 39
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 521; V, 251, 301.)
197. JAMES GRANT 49
(Additions and Corrections: V, 251.)
198. BONNY JOHN SETON 51
(Additions and Corrections: V, 251.)
199. THE BONNIE HOUSE O AIRLIE 54
(Additions and Corrections: V, 252.)
200. THE GYPSY LADDIE 61
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 522; V, 252, 301.)
201. BESSY BELL AND MARY GRAY 75
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 522; V, 253.)
202. THE BATTLE OF PHILIPHAUGH 77
203. THE BARON OF BRACKLEY 79
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 522; V, 253.)
204. JAMIE DOUGLAS 90
205. LOUDON HILL, OR, DRUMCLOG 105
206. BOTHWELL BRIDGE 108
207. LORD DELAMERE 110
208. LORD DERWENTWATER 115
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 522; V, 254.)
209. GEORDIE 123
210. BONNIE JAMES CAMPBELL 142
211. BEWICK AND GRAHAM 144
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 522.)
212. THE DUKE OF ATHOLE'S NURSE 150
213. SIR JAMES THE ROSE 155
214. THE BRAES O YARROW 160
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 522; V, 255.)
215. RARE WILLIE DROWNED IN YARROW, OR, THE WATER O GAMRIE 178
(Additions and Corrections: V, 256.)
216. THE MOTHER'S MALISON, OR, CLYDE'S WATER 185
(Additions and Corrections: V, 256, 301.)
217. THE BROOM OF COWDENKNOWS 191
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 523; V, 257.)
218. THE FALSE LOVER WON BACK 209
219. THE GARDENER 212
(Additions and Corrections: V, 258.)
220. THE BONNY LASS OF ANGLESEY 214
221. KATHARINE JAFFRAY 216
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 523; V, 260.)
222. BONNY BABY LIVINGSTON 231
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 523; V, 261.)
223. EPPIE MORRIE 239
(Additions and Corrections: V, 262.)
224. THE LADY OF ARNGOSK 241
225. ROB ROY 243
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 523; V, 262.)
226. LIZIE LINDSAY 255
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 524; V, 264.)
227. BONNY LIZIE BAILLIE 266
(Additions and Corrections: V, 265.)
228. GLASGOW PEGGIE 270
(Additions and Corrections: V, 266.)
229. EARL CRAWFORD 276
(Additions and Corrections: V, 301.)
230. THE SLAUGHTER OF THE LAIRD OF MELLERSTAIN 281
231. THE EARL OF ERROL 282
(Additions and Corrections: V, 267.)
232. RICHIE STORY 291
(Additions and Corrections: V, 270.)
233. ANDREW LAMMIE 300
234. CHARLIE MACPHERSON 308
(Additions and Corrections: V, 301.)
235. THE EARL OF ABOYNE 311
(Additions and Corrections: V, 270, 301.)
236. THE LAIRD O DRUM 322
(Additions and Corrections: V, 272.)
237. THE DUKE OF GORDON'S DAUGHTER 332
(Additions and Corrections: V, 273.)
238. GLENLOGIE, OR, JEAN O BETHELNIE 338
(Additions and Corrections: V, 273, 302.)
239. LORD SALTOUN AND AUCHANACHIE 347
(Additions and Corrections: V, 273.)
240. THE RANTIN LADDIE 351
(Additions and Corrections: V, 274.)
241. THE BARON O LEYS 355
(Additions and Corrections: V, 275.)
242. THE COBLE O CARGILL 358
243. JAMES HARRIS (THE DÆMON LOVER) 360
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 524.)
244. JAMES HATLEY 370
245. YOUNG ALLAN 375
(Additions and Corrections: V, 275.)
246. REDESDALE AND WISE WILLIAM 383
(Additions and Corrections: V, 276.)
247. LADY ELSPAT 387
248. THE GREY COCK, OR, SAW YOU MY FATHER? 389
(Additions and Corrections: V, 302.)
249. AULD MATRONS 391
250. HENRY MARTYN 393
(Additions and Corrections: V, 302.)
251. LANG JOHNNY MORE 396
(Additions and Corrections: IV, 524.)
252. THE KITCHIE-BOY 400
(Additions and Corrections: V, 277.)
253. THOMAS O YONDERDALE 409
254. LORD WILLIAM, OR, LORD LUNDY 411
255. WILLIE'S FATAL VISIT 415
256. ALISON AND WILLIE 416
257. BURD ISABEL AND EARL PATRICK 417
(Additions and Corrections: V, 278.)
258. BROUGHTY WA'S 423
259. LORD THOMAS STUART 425
(Additions and Corrections: V, 279.)
260. LORD THOMAS AND LADY MARGARET 426
261. LADY ISABEL 429
262. LORD LIVINGSTON 431
263. THE NEW-SLAIN KNIGHT 434
(Additions and Corrections: V, 279.)
264. THE WHITE FISHER 435
265. THE KNIGHT'S GHOST 437
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 439
VOLUME V
266. JOHN THOMSON AND THE TURK 1
(Additions and Corrections: V, 279.)
267. THE HEIR OF LINNE 11
268. THE TWA KNIGHTS 21
269. LADY DIAMOND 29
(Additions and Corrections: V, 303.)
270. THE EARL OF MAR'S DAUGHTER 38
271. THE LORD OF LORN AND THE FALSE STEWARD 42
(Additions and Corrections: V, 280.)
272. THE SUFFOLK MIRACLE 58
(Additions and Corrections: V, 303.)
273. KING EDWARD THE FOURTH AND A TANNER OF TAMWORTH 67
(Additions and Corrections: V, 303.)
274. OUR GOODMAN 88
(Additions and Corrections: V, 281, 303.)
275. GET UP AND BAR THE DOOR 96
(Additions and Corrections: V, 281, 304.)
276. THE FRIAR IN THE WELL 100
277. THE WIFE WRAPT IN WETHER'S SKIN 104
(Additions and Corrections: V, 304.)
278. THE FARMER'S CURST WIFE 107
(Additions and Corrections: V, 305.)
279. THE JOLLY BEGGAR 109
280. THE BEGGAR-LADDIE 116
(Additions and Corrections: V, 305.)
281. THE KEACH I THE CREEL 121
282. JOCK THE LEG AND THE MERRY MERCHANT 126
283. THE CRAFTY FARMER 128
284. JOHN DORY 131
285. THE GEORGE ALOE AND THE SWEEPSTAKE 133
286. THE SWEET TRINITY (THE GOLDEN VANITY) 135
(Additions and Corrections: V, 305.)
287. CAPTAIN WARD AND THE RAINBOW 143
(Additions and Corrections: V, 305.)
288. THE YOUNG EARL OF ESSEX'S VICTORY OVER THE EMPEROR OF
GERMANY 145
289. THE MERMAID 148
290. THE WYLIE WIFE OF THE HIE TOUN HIE 153
291. CHILD OWLET 156
(Additions and Corrections: V, 305.)
292. THE WEST-COUNTRY DAMOSEL'S COMPLAINT 157
293. JOHN OF HAZELGREEN 159
294. DUGALL QUIN 165
(Additions and Corrections: V, 305.)
295. THE BROWN GIRL 166
296. WALTER LESLY 168
297. EARL ROTHES 170
298. YOUNG PEGGY 171
299. TROOPER AND MAID 172
(Additions and Corrections: V, 306.)
300. BLANCHEFLOUR AND JELLYFLORICE 175
301. THE QUEEN OF SCOTLAND 176
302. YOUNG BEARWELL 178
303. THE HOLY NUNNERY 179
304. YOUNG RONALD 181
305. THE OUTLAW MURRAY 185
(Additions and Corrections: V, 307.)
FRAGMENTS 201
(Additions and Corrections: V, 307.)
ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS 205, 283
GLOSSARY 309
SOURCES OF THE TEXTS 397
INDEX OF PUBLISHED AIRS 405
BALLAD AIRS FROM MANUSCRIPT:
3. The Fause Knight upon the Road 411
9. The Fair Flower of Northumberland 411
10. The Twa Sisters 411
11. The Cruel Brother 412
12. Lord Randal 412
17. Hind Horn 413
20. The Cruel Mother 413
40. The Queen of Elfan's Nourice 413
42. Clerk Colvill 414
46. Captain Wedderburn's Courtship 414
47. Proud Lady Margaret 414
53. Young Beichan 415
58. Sir Patrick Spens 415
61. Sir Colin 415
63. Child Waters 415
68. Young Hunting 416
75. Lord Lovel 416
77. Sweet William's Ghost 416
84. Bonny Barbara Allan 416
89. Fause Foodrage 416
95. The Maid freed from the Gallows 417
97. Brown Robin 417
98. Brown Adam 417
99. Johnie Scot 418
100. Willie o Winsbury 418
106. The Famous Flower of Serving-Men 418
144. Johnie Cock 419
157. Gudo Wallace 419
161. The Battle of Otterburn 419
163. The Battle of Harlaw 419
164. King Henry Fifth's Conquest of France 420
169. Johnie Armstrong 420
173. Mary Hamilton 421
182. The Laird o Logie 421
222. Bonny Baby Livingston 421
226. Lizie Lindsay 421
228. Glasgow Peggie 422
235. The Earl of Aboyne 422
247. Lady Elspat 422
250. Andrew Bartin 423
256. Alison and Willie 423
258. Broughty Wa's 423
278. The Farmer's Curst Wife 423
281. The Keach i the Creel 424
286. The Sweet Trinity 424
299. Trooper and Maid 424
INDEX OF BALLAD TITLES 425
TITLES OF COLLECTIONS OF BALLADS, OR BOOKS CONTAINING BALLADS,
WHICH ARE VERY BRIEFLY CITED IN THIS WORK 455
INDEX OF MATTERS AND LITERATURE 469
BIBLIOGRAPHY 503
CORRECTIONS TO BE MADE IN THE PRINT 567
APPENDIX: PROFESSOR CHILD AND THE BALLAD 571
FRANCIS JAMES CHILD
Francis James Child was born in Boston on the first day of February,
1825. He was the third in a family of eight children. His father was a
sailmaker, "one of that class of intelligent and independent mechanics,"
writes Professor Norton, "which has had a large share in determining the
character of our democratic community, as of old the same class had in
Athens and in Florence." The boy attended the public schools, as a
matter of course; and, his parents having no thought of sending him to
college, he went, in due time, not to the Latin School, but to the
English High School of his native town. At that time the head master of
the Boston Latin School was Mr Epes Sargent Dixwell, who is still
living, at a ripe old age, one of the most respected citizens of
Cambridge. Mr Dixwell had a keen eye for scholarly possibilities in
boys, and, falling in with young Francis Child, was immediately struck
with his extraordinary mental ability. At his suggestion, the boy was
transferred to the Latin School, where he entered upon the regular
preparation for admission to Harvard College. His delight in his new
studies was unbounded, and the freshness of it never faded from his
memory. "He speedily caught up with the boys who had already made
considerable progress in Greek and Latin, and soon took the first place
here, as he had done in the schools which he had previously attended."
Mr Dixwell strongly advised his father to permit him to continue his
studies, and made arrangements by which his college expenses should be
provided for. The money Professor Child repaid, with interest, as soon
as his means allowed. His gratitude to Mr. Dixwell and the friendship
between them lasted through his life.
In 1842 Mr Child entered Harvard College. The intellectual condition of
the college at that time and the undergraduate career of Mr Child have
been admirably described by his classmate and lifelong friend, Professor
Norton, in a passage which must be quoted in full[1]:--
"Harvard was then still a comparatively small institution, with no
claims to the title of University; but she had her traditions of good
learning as an inspiration for the studious youth, and still better she
had teachers who were examples of devotion to intellectual pursuits, and
who cared for those ends the attainment of which makes life worth
living. Josiah Quincy was approaching the close of his term of service
as President of the College, and stood before the eyes of the students
as the type of a great public servant, embodying the spirit of
patriotism, of integrity, and of fidelity in the discharge of whatever
duty he might be called to perform. Among the Professors were Walker,
Felton, Peirce, Channing, Beck, and Longfellow, men of utmost variety of
temperament, but each an instructor who secured the respect no less than
the gratitude of his pupils.
"The class to which Child belonged numbered hardly over sixty. The
prescribed course of study which was then the rule brought all the
members of the class together in recitations and lectures, and every man
soon knew the relative standing of each of his fellows. Child at once
took the lead and kept it. His excellence was not confined to any one
special branch of study; he was equally superior in all. He was the best
in the classics, he was Peirce's favorite in mathematics, he wrote
better English than any of his classmates. His intellectual interests
were wider than theirs, he was a great reader, and his tastes in reading
were mature. He read for amusement as well as for learning, but he did
not waste his time or dissipate his mental energies over worthless or
pernicious books. He made good use of the social no less than of the
intellectual opportunities which college life affords, and became as
great a favorite with his classmates as he had been with his
schoolfellows.
"The close of his college course was marked by the exceptional
distinction of his being chosen by his classmates as their Orator, and
by his having the first part at Commencement as the highest scholar in
the class. His class oration was remarkable for its maturity of thought
and of style. Its manliness of spirit, its simple directness of
presentation of the true objects of life, and of the motives by which
the educated man, whatever might be his chosen career, should be
inspired, together with the serious and eloquent earnestness with which
it was delivered, gave to his discourse peculiar impressiveness and
effect."
Graduating with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1846, Mr Child
immediately entered the service of the college, in which he continued
till the day of his death. From 1846 to 1848 he was tutor in
mathematics. In 1848 he was transferred, at his own request, to a
tutorship in history and political economy, to which were annexed
certain duties of instruction in English. In 1849 he obtained leave of
absence for travel and study in Europe. He remained in Europe for about
two years, returning, late in 1851, to receive an appointment to the
Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory, then falling vacant by
the resignation of Professor Edward T. Channing.
The tutorships which Mr Child had held were not entirely in accordance
with his tastes, which had always led him in the direction of literary
and linguistic study. The faculty of the college was small, however, and
it was not always possible to assign an instructor to the department
that would have been most to his mind. But the governors of the
institution were glad to secure the services of so promising a scholar;
and Mr Child, whose preference for an academic career was decided, had
felt that it was wise to accept such positions as the college could
offer, leaving exacter adjustments to time and circumstances. Meantime
he had devoted his whole leisure to the pursuit of his favorite studies.
His first fruits were a volume entitled Four Old Plays[2] published in
1848, when he was but twenty-three years old. This was a remarkably
competent performance. The texts are edited with judgment and accuracy;
the introduction shows literary discrimination as well as sound
scholarship, and the glossary and brief notes are thoroughly good. There
are no signs of immaturity in the book, and it is still valued by
students of our early drama.
The leave of absence granted to Mr Child in 1849 came at a most
favorable moment. His health had suffered from close application to
work, and a change of climate had been advised by his physicians. His
intellectual and scholarly development, too, had reached that stage in
which foreign study and travel were certain to be most stimulating and
fruitful. He was amazingly apt, and two years of opportunity meant much
more to him than to most men. He returned to take up the duties of his
new office a trained and mature scholar, at home in the best methods and
traditions of German universities, yet with no sacrifice of his
individuality and intellectual independence.
While in Germany Mr Child studied at Berlin and Göttingen, giving his
time mostly to Germanic philology, then cultivated with extraordinary
vigor and success. The hour was singularly propitious. In the three or
four decades preceding Mr Child's residence in Europe, Germanic
philology (in the wider sense) had passed from the stage of "romantic"
dilettantism into the condition of a well-organized and strenuous
scientific discipline, but the freshness and vivacity of the first half
of the century had not vanished. Scholars, however severe, looked
through the form and strove to comprehend the spirit. The ideals of
erudition and of a large humanity were not even suspected of
incompatibility. The imagination was still invoked as the guide and
illuminator of learning. The bond between antiquity and mediævalism and
between the Middle Ages and our own century was never lost from sight.
It was certainly fortunate for American scholarship that at precisely
this juncture a young man of Mr Child's ardent love of learning, strong
individuality, and broad intellectual sympathies was brought into close
contact with all that was most quickening in German university life. He
attended lectures on classical antiquity and philosophy, as well as on
Germanic philology; but it was not so much by direct instruction that he
profited as by the inspiration which he derived from the spirit and the
ideals of foreign scholars, young and old. His own greatest contribution
to learning, The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, may even, in a
very real sense, be regarded as the fruit of these years in Germany.
Throughout his life he kept a picture of William and James Grimm on the
mantel over his study fireplace.
Mr Child wrote no "dissertation," and returned to Cambridge without
having attempted to secure a doctor's degree. Never eager for such
distinctions, he had been unwilling to subject himself to the
restrictions on his plan of study which candidacy for the doctorate
would have imposed. Three years after, however, in 1854, he was
surprised and gratified to receive from the University of Göttingen the
degree of Doctor of Philosophy, accompanied by a special tribute of
respect from that institution. Subsequently he received the degree of
LL. D. from Harvard (in 1884) and that of L. H. D. from Columbia (in
1887); but the Göttingen Ph. D., coming as it did at the outset of his
career, was in a high degree auspicious.
The Boylston Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory, to which, as has
been already mentioned, Mr Child succeeded on his return to America
toward the end of 1851, was no sinecure. In addition to academic
instruction of the ordinary kind, the duties of the chair included the
superintendence and criticism of a great quantity of written work, in
the nature of essays and set compositions prepared by students of all
degrees of ability. For twenty-five years Mr Child performed these
duties with characteristic punctuality and devotion, though with
increasing distaste for the drudgery which they involved. Meantime a
great change had come over Harvard: it had developed from a provincial
college into a national seminary of learning, and the introduction of
the "elective system"--corresponding to the "Lernfreiheit" of
Germany--had enabled it to become a university in the proper sense of
the word. One result of the important reform just referred to was the
establishment of a Professorship of English, entirely distinct from the
old chair of Rhetoric. This took place on May 8, 1876, and on the 20th
of the next month Mr Child was transferred to the new professorship. His
duties as an instructor were now thoroughly congenial, and he continued
to perform them with unabated vigor to the end. In the onerous details
of administrative and advisory work, inseparable, according to our
exacting American system, from the position of a university professor,
he was equally faithful and untiring. For thirty years he acted as
secretary of the Library Council, and in all that time he was absent
from but three meetings. As chairman of the Department of English and of
the Division of Modern Languages, and as a member of many important
committees, he was ever prodigal of time and effort. How steadily he
attended to the regular duties of the class-room, his pupils, for fifty
years, are the best witnesses. They, too, will best understand the
satisfaction he felt that, in the fiftieth year of his teaching, he was
not absent from a single lecture. No man was ever less a formalist; yet
the most formal of natures could not, in the strictest observance of
punctilio, have surpassed the regularity with which he discharged, as it
were spontaneously, the multifarious duties of his position.
Throughout his service as professor of rhetoric, Mr Child, hampered
though he was by the requirements of his laborious office, had pursued
with unquenchable ardor the study of the English language and
literature, particularly in their older forms, and in these subjects he
had become an authority of the first rank long before the establishment
of the English chair enabled him to arrange his university teaching in
accordance with his tastes. Soon after he returned from Germany he
undertook the general editorial supervision of a series of the 'British
Poets,' published at Boston in 1853 and several following years, and
extending to some hundred and fifty volumes. Out of this grew, in one
way or another, his three most important contributions to learning: his
edition of Spenser, his Observations on the Language of Chaucer and
Gower, and his English and Scottish Popular Ballads.
Mr Child's Spenser appeared in 1855.[3] Originally intended, as he says
in the preface, as little more than a reprint of the edition published
in 1839 under the superintendence of Mr George Hillard, the book grew
upon his hands until it had become something quite different from its
predecessor. Securing access to old copies of most of Spenser's poems,
Mr Child subjected the text to a careful revision, which left little to
be done in this regard. His Life of Spenser was far better than any
previous biography, and his notes, though brief, were marked by a
philological exactness to which former editions could not pretend.
Altogether, though meant for the general reader and therefore sparingly
annotated, Mr Child's volumes remain, after forty years, the best
edition of Spenser in existence.
The plan of the 'British Poets' originally contemplated an edition of
Chaucer, which Mr Child was to prepare. Becoming convinced, however,
that the time was not ripe for such a work, he abandoned this project,
and to the end of his life he never found time to resume it. Thomas
Wright's print of the Canterbury Tales[4] from the Harleian MS. 7334
had, however, put into his hands a reasonably faithful reproduction of
an old text, and he turned his attention to a minute study of Chaucer's
language. The outcome was the publication, in the Memoirs of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 1863, of the great treatise to
which Mr Child gave the modest title of Observations on the Language of
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. It is difficult, at the present day, to
imagine the state of Chaucer philology at the moment when this paper
appeared. Scarcely anything, we may say, was known of Chaucer's grammar
and metre in a sure and scientific way. Indeed, the difficulties to be
solved had not even been clearly formulated. Further, the accessible
mass of evidence on Anglo-Saxon and Middle English was, in comparison
with the stores now at the easy command of every tyro, almost
insignificant. Yet, in this brief treatise, Mr Child not only defined
the problems, but provided for most of them a solution which the
researches of younger scholars have only served to substantiate. He also
gave a perfect model of the method proper to such inquiries--a method
simple, laborious, and exact. The Observations were subsequently
rearranged and condensed, with Professor Child's permission, by Mr A. J.
Ellis for his work On Early English Pronunciation; but only those who
have studied them in their original form can appreciate their merit
fully. "It ought never to be forgotten," writes Professor Skeat, "that
the only full and almost complete solution of the question of the right
scansion of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is due to what Mr Ellis rightly
terms 'the wonderful industry, acuteness, and accuracy of Professor
Child.'" Had he produced nothing else, this work, with its pendant, the
Observations on Gower,[5] would have assured him a high place among
those very few scholars who have permanently settled important problems
of linguistic science.
Mr Child's crowning work, however, was the edition of the English and
Scottish Popular Ballads, which the reader now has before him. The
history of this is the history of more than half a lifetime.
The idea of the present work grew out of Mr Child's editorial labors on
the series of the 'British Poets,' already referred to. For this he
prepared a collection in eight small volumes (1857-58) called English
and Scottish Ballads.[6] This was marked by the beginnings of that
method of comparative study which is carried out to its ultimate issues
in the volumes of the present collection. The book circulated widely,
and was at once admitted to supersede all previous attempts in the same
field. To Mr Child, however, it was but the starting-point for further
researches. He soon formed the plan of a much more extensive collection
on an altogether different model. This was to include every obtainable
version of every extant English or Scottish ballad, with the fullest
possible discussion of related songs or stories in the "popular"
literature of all nations. To this enterprise he resolved, if need were,
to devote the rest of his life. His first care was to secure trustworthy
texts. In his earlier collection he had been forced to depend almost
entirely on printed books. No progress, he was convinced, could be made
till recourse could be had to manuscripts, and in particular to the
Percy MS. Accordingly he directed his most earnest efforts to securing
the publication of the entire contents of the famous folio. The Percy
MS. was at Ecton Hall, in the possession of the Bishop's descendants,
who would permit no one even to examine it. Two attempts were made by Dr
Furnivall, at Mr Child's instance, to induce the owners to allow the
manuscript to be printed,--one as early as 1860 or 1861, the other in
1864,--but without avail. A third attempt was more successful, and in
1867-68 the long-secluded folio was made the common property of scholars
in an edition prepared by Professor Hales and Dr Furnivall.[7]
The publication of the Percy MS. not only put a large amount of
trustworthy material at the disposal of Mr Child; it exposed the full
enormity of Bishop Percy's sins against popular tradition. Some shadow
of suspicion inevitably fell on all other ballad collections. It was
more than ever clear to Mr Child that he could not safely take anything
at second hand, and he determined not to print a line of his projected
work till he had exhausted every effort to get hold of whatever
manuscript material might be in existence. His efforts in this direction
continued through many years. A number of manuscripts were in private
hands; of some the whereabouts was not known; of others the existence
was not suspected. But Mr Child was untiring. He was cordially assisted
by various scholars, antiquaries, and private gentlemen, to whose
coöperation ample testimony is borne in the Advertisements prefixed to
the volumes in the present work. Some manuscripts were secured for the
Library of Harvard University--notably Bishop Percy's Papers, the
Kinloch MSS, and the Harris MS.,[8]--and of others careful copies were
made, which became the property of the same library. In all these
operations the indispensable good offices of Mr William Macmath, of
Edinburgh, deserve particular mention. For a long series of years his
services were always at Mr Child's disposal. His self-sacrifice and
generosity appear to have been equalled only by his perseverance and
wonderful accuracy. But for him the manuscript basis of The English and
Scottish Popular Ballads would have been far less strong than it is.
Gradually, then, the manuscript materials came in, until at last, in
1882, Mr Child felt justified in beginning to print. Other important
documents were, however, discovered or made accessible as time went on.
Especially noteworthy was the great find at Abbotsford (see the
Advertisement to Part VIII). In 1877 Dr David Laing procured, "not
without difficulty," leave to prepare for Mr Child a copy of the single
manuscript of ballads then known to remain in the library at Abbotsford.
This MS., entitled "Scottish Songs," was so inconsiderable, in
proportion to the accumulations which Sir Walter Scott had made in
preparing his Border Minstrelsy, that further search seemed to be
imperatively necessary. In 1890 permission to make such a search, and to
use the results, was given by the Honorable Mrs Maxwell-Scott. The
investigation, made by Mr Macmath, yielded a rich harvest of ballads,
which were utilized in Parts VII-IX. To dwell upon the details would be
endless. The reader may see a list of the manuscript sources at pp. 397
ff. of the fifth volume; and, if he will observe how scattered they
were, he will have no difficulty in believing that it required years,
labor, and much delicate negotiation to bring them all together. One
manuscript remained undiscoverable, William Tytler's Brown MS., but
there is no reason to believe that this contained anything of
consequence that is not otherwise known.[9]
Meanwhile, concurrently with the toil of amassing, collating, and
arranging texts, went on the far more arduous labor of comparative study
of the ballads of all nations; for, in accordance with Mr Child's plan
it was requisite to determine, in the fullest manner, the history and
foreign relations of every piece included in his collection. To this end
he devoted much time and unwearied diligence to forming, in the Library
of the University, a special collection of "Folk-lore," particularly of
ballads, romances, and _Märchen_. This priceless collection, the
formation of which must be looked on as one of Mr Child's most striking
services to the university, numbers some 7000 volumes. But these figures
by no means represent the richness of the Library in the departments
concerned, or the services of Mr Child in this particular. Mediæval
literature in all its phases was his province, and thousands of volumes
classified in other departments of the University Library bear testimony
to his vigilance in ordering books, and his astonishing bibliographical
knowledge. Very few books are cited in the present collection which are
not to be found on the shelves of this Library.
In addition, Mr Child made an effort to stimulate the collection of such
remains of the traditional ballad as still live on the lips of the
people in this country and in the British Islands. The harvest was, in
his opinion, rather scanty; yet, if all the versions thus recovered from
tradition were enumerated, the number would not be found inconsiderable.
Enough was done, at all events, to make it clear that little or nothing
of value remains to be recovered in this way.
To readers familiar with such studies, no comment is necessary, and to
those who are unfamiliar with them, no form of statement can convey even
a faint impression of the industry, the learning, the acumen, and the
literary skill which these processes required. In writing the history of
a single ballad, Mr Child was sometimes forced to examine hundreds of
books in perhaps a dozen different languages. But his industry was
unflagging, his sagacity was scarcely ever at fault, and his linguistic
and literary knowledge seemed to have no bounds. He spared no pains to
perfect his work in every detail, and his success was commensurate with
his efforts. In the Advertisement to the Ninth Part (1894), he was able
to report that the three hundred and five numbers of his collection
comprised the whole extant mass of this traditional material, with the
possible exception of a single ballad.[10]
In June, 1896, Mr Child concluded his fiftieth year of service as a
teacher in Harvard College. He was at this time hard at work on the
Tenth and final Part, which was to contain a glossary, various indexes,
a bibliography, and an elaborate introduction on the general subject.
For years he had allowed himself scarcely any respite from work, and, in
spite of the uncertain condition of his health,--or perhaps in
consequence of it,--he continued to work at high pressure throughout the
summer. At the end of August he discovered that he was seriously ill. He
died at Boston on the 11th day of September. He had finished his great
work except for the introduction and the general bibliography. The
bibliography was in preparation by another hand and has since been
completed. The introduction, however, no other scholar had the hardihood
to undertake. A few pages of manuscript,--the last thing written by his
pen,--almost illegible, were found among his papers to show that he had
actually begun the composition of this essay, and many sheets of
excerpts testified to the time he had spent in refreshing his memory as
to the opinions of his predecessors, but he had left no collectanea that
could be utilized in supplying the Introduction itself. He was
accustomed to carry much of his material in his memory till the moment
of composition arrived, and this habit accounts for the fact that there
are no jottings of opinions and no sketch of precisely what line of
argument he intended to take.
Mr Child's sudden death was felt as a bitter personal loss, not only by
an unusually large circle of attached friends in both hemispheres, but
by very many scholars who knew him through his works alone. He was one
of the few learned men to whom the old title of "Master" was justly due
and freely accorded. With astonishing erudition, which nothing seemed to
have escaped, he united an infectious enthusiasm and a power of lucid
and fruitful exposition that made him one of the greatest of teachers,
and a warmth and openness of heart that won the affection of all who
knew him. In most men, however complex their characters, one can
distinguish the qualities of the heart, in some degree, from the
qualities of the head. In Professor Child no such distinction was
possible, for all the elements of his many-sided nature were fused in
his marked and powerful individuality. In his case, the scholar and the
man cannot be separated. His life and his learning were one; his work
was the expression of himself.
As an investigator Professor Child was at once the inspiration and the
despair of his disciples. Nothing could surpass the scientific exactness
of his methods and the unwearied diligence with which he conducted his
researches. No possible source of information could elude him; no book
or manuscript was too voluminous or too unpromising for him to examine
on the chance of its containing some fact that might correct or
supplement his material, even in the minutest point. Yet these qualities
of enthusiastic accuracy and thoroughness, admirable as they undoubtedly
were, by no means dominated him. They were always at the command of the
higher qualities of his genius,--sagacity, acumen, and a kind of
sympathetic and imaginative power in which he stood almost alone among
recent scholars. No detail of language or tradition or archæology was to
him a mere lifeless fact; it was transmuted into something vital, and
became a part of that universal humanity which always moved him wherever
he found it, whether in the pages of a mediæval chronicle, or in the
stammering accents of a late and vulgarly distorted ballad, or in the
faces of the street boys who begged roses from his garden. No man ever
felt a keener interest in his kind, and no scholar ever brought this
interest into more vivifying contact with the technicalities of his
special studies. The exuberance of this large humanity pervades his
edition of the English and Scottish ballads. Even in his last years,
when the languor of uncertain health sometimes got the better, for a
season, of the spirit with which he commonly worked, some fresh bit of
genuine poetry in a ballad, some fine trait of pure nature in a stray
folk-tale, would, in an instant, bring back the full flush of that
enthusiasm which he must have felt when the possibilities of his
achievement first presented themselves to his mind in early manhood. For
such a nature there was no old age.
From this ready sympathy came that rare faculty--seldom possessed by
scholars--which made Professor Child peculiarly fit for his greatest
task. Few persons understand the difficulties of ballad investigation.
In no field of literature have the forger and the manipulator worked
with greater vigor and success. From Percy's day to our own it has been
thought an innocent device to publish a bit of one's own versifying, now
and then, as an "old ballad" or an "ancient song." Often, too, a late
stall-copy of a ballad, getting into oral circulation, has been
innocently furnished to collectors as traditional matter. Mere learning
will not guide an editor through these perplexities. What is needed is,
in addition, a complete understanding of the "popular" genius, a
sympathetic recognition of the traits that characterize oral literature
wherever and in whatever degree they exist. This faculty, which even the
folk has not retained, and which collectors living in ballad-singing and
tale-telling times have often failed to acquire, was vouchsafed by
nature herself to this sedentary scholar. In reality a kind of instinct,
it had been so cultivated by long and loving study of the traditional
literature of all nations that it had become wonderfully swift in its
operations and almost infallible. A forged or retouched piece could not
deceive him for a moment; he detected the slightest jar in the genuine
ballad tone. He speaks in one place of certain writers "who would have
been all the better historians for a little reading of romances." He was
himself the better interpreter of the poetry of art for this keen
sympathy with the poetry of nature.
Constant association with the spirit of the folk did its part in
maintaining, under the stress of unremitting study and research, that
freshness and buoyancy of mind which was the wonder of all who met
Professor Child for the first time, and the perpetual delight of his
friends and associates. It is impossible to describe the charm of his
familiar conversation. There was endless variety without effort. His
peculiar humor, taking shape in a thousand felicities of thought and
phrase that fell casually and as it were inevitably from his lips,
exhilarated without reaction or fatigue. His lightest words were full of
fruitful suggestion. Sudden strains of melancholy or high seriousness
were followed, in a moment, by flashes of gaiety almost boyish. And
pervading it all one felt the attraction of his personality and the
goodness of his heart.
Professor Child's humor was not only one of his most striking
characteristics as a man; it was of constant service to his scholarly
researches. Keenly alive to any incongruity in thought or fact, and the
least self-conscious of men, he scrutinized his own nascent theories
with the same humorous shrewdness with which he looked at the ideas of
others. It is impossible to think of him as the sponsor of some
hypotheses which men of equal eminence have advanced and defended with
passion; and, even if his goodness of nature had not prevented it, his
sense of the ridiculous would not have suffered him to engage in the
absurdities of philological polemics. In the interpretation of
literature, his humor stood him in good stead, keeping his native
sensibility under due control, so that it never degenerated into
sentimentalism. It made him a marvelous interpreter of Chaucer, whose
spirit he had caught to a degree attained by no other scholar or
critic.
To younger scholars Professor Child was an influence at once stimulating
and benignant. To confer with him was always to be stirred to greater
effort, but, at the same time, the serenity of his devotion to learning
chastened the petulance of immature ambition in others. The talk might
be quite concrete, even definitely practical,--it might deal with
indifferent matters; but, in some way, there was an irradiation of the
master's nature that dispelled all unworthy feelings. In the presence of
his noble modesty the bustle of self-assertion was quieted and the petty
spirit of pedantic wrangling could not assert itself. However severe his
criticism, there were no personalities in it. He could not be other than
outspoken,--concealment and shuffling were abhorrent to him,--yet such
was his kindliness that his frankest judgments never wounded; even his
reproofs left no sting. With his large charity was associated, as its
necessary complement in a strong character, a capacity for righteous
indignation. "He is almost the only man I know," said one in his
lifetime, "who _thinks no evil_." There could be no truer word. Yet when
he was confronted with injury or oppression, none could stand against
the anger of this just man. His unselfishness did not suffer him to see
offences against himself, but wrong done to another roused him in an
instant to protesting action.
Professor Child's publications, despite their magnitude and
importance, are no adequate measure either of his acquirements or of
his influence. He printed nothing about Shakspere, for example, yet he
was the peer of any Shaksperian, past or present, in knowledge and
interpretative power. As a Chaucer scholar he had no superior, in this
country or in Europe: his published work was confined, as we have
seen, to questions of language, but no one had a wider or closer
acquaintance with the whole subject. An edition of Chaucer from his
hand would have been priceless. His acquaintance with letters was not
confined to special authors or centuries. He was at home in modern
European literature and profoundly versed in that of the Middle Ages.
In his immediate territory,--English,--his knowledge, linguistic and
literary, covered all periods, and was alike exact and thorough. His
taste and judgment were exquisite, and he enlightened every subject
which he touched. As a writer, he was master of a singularly
felicitous style, full of individuality and charm. Had his time not
been occupied in other ways, he would have made the most delightful of
essayists.
Fortunately, Professor Child's courses of instruction in the
university--particularly those on Chaucer and Shakspere--gave him an
opportunity to impart to a constantly increasing circle of pupils the
choicest fruits of his life of thought and study. In his later years he
had the satisfaction to see grow up about him a school of young
specialists who can have no higher ambition than to be worthy of their
master. But his teaching was not limited to these,--it included all
sorts and conditions of college students; and none, not even the idle
and incompetent, could fail to catch something of his spirit. One thing
may be safely asserted: no university teacher was ever more beloved.
And with this may fitly close too slight a tribute to the memory of a
great scholar and a good man. Many things remain unsaid. His gracious
family life, his civic virtues, his patriotism, his bounty to the
poor,--all must be passed by with a bare mention, which yet will signify
much to those who knew him. In all ways he lived worthily, and he died
having attained worthy ends.
G. L. KITTREDGE.
[1] C. E. Norton, 'Francis James Child,' in the Proceedings of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences, XXXII, 334, 335; reprinted, with
some additions, in the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, VI, 161-169 (Boston,
1897). I have used this biographical sketch freely in my brief account
of Professor Child's boyhood.
[2] Four Old Plays | Three Interludes: Thersytes Jack Jugler | and
Heywoods Pardoner and Frere: | and Jocasta a Tragedy | by Gascoigne and
| Kinwelmarsh | with an | Introduction and Notes | Cambridge | George
Nichols | MDCCCXLVIII. The editor's name does not appear in the
title-page, but the Preface is signed with the initials F. J. C. Jocasta
was printed from Steevens's copy of the first edition of Garcoigne's
Posies, which had come into Mr Child's possession.
[3] The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser. The text carefully revised,
and illustrated with notes, original and selected, by Francis J. Child.
Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1855. 5 vols.
[4] The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer. A new text, with
illustrative notes. Edited by Thomas Wright. London, printed for the
Percy Society, 1847-51. 3 vols.
[5] The paper entitled Observations on the Language of Chaucer was laid
before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on June 3, 1862, and
was published in the Memoirs of the Academy, Vol. VIII, pt. ii, 445-502
(Boston, 1863). The second paper, entitled Observations on the Language
of Gower's Confessio Amantis, was laid before the Academy on January 9,
1866, and appeared in Memoirs, IX, ii, 265-315 (Boston, 1873). A few
copies of each paper were struck off separately, but these are now very
hard to find. Mr Ellis's rearrangement and amalgamation of the two
papers, which is by no means a good substitute for the papers
themselves, may be found in Part I of his Early English Pronunciation,
London, 1869, pp. 343-97.
[6] English and Scottish Ballads. Selected and edited by Francis James
Child. Boston, 1857-58.
[7] How inseparable were the services of Dr Furnivall and those of
Professor Child in securing this devoutly wished consummation may be
seen by comparing Dr Furnivall's Forewords (I, ix, x), in which he gives
much of the credit to Mr Child, with Mr Child's Dedication (in vol. I of
the present collection), in which he gives the credit to Dr Furnivall.
[8] Since Mr Child's death the important "Buchan original MS" has been
secured for the Child Memorial Library of the University,--a collection
endowed by friends and pupils of the dead master.
[9] See V, 397 b.
[10] This is 'Young Betrice,' No 5 in William Tytler's lost Brown MS.
(V, 397), which "may possibly be a version of 'Hugh Spencer's Feats in
France'" (see II, 377; III, 275).
1
RIDDLES WISELY EXPOUNDED
#A. a.# 'A Noble Riddle Wisely Expounded; or, The Maid's
Answer to the Knight's Three Questions,' 4to, Rawlinson,
566, fol. 193, Bodleian Library; Wood, E. 25, fol. 15,
Bod. Lib. #b.# Pepys, III, 19, No 17, Magdalen College,
Cambridge. #c.# Douce, II, fol. 168 b, Bod. Lib. #d.# 'A
Riddle Wittily Expounded,' Pills to Purge Melancholy, IV,
129, ed. 1719. "II, 129, ed. 1712."
#B.# 'The Three Sisters.' Some Ancient Christmas Carols
... together with two Ancient Ballads, etc. By Davies
Gilbert, 2d ed., p. 65.
#C.# 'The Unco Knicht's Wowing,' Motherwell's MS., p. 647.
#D.# Motherwell's MS., p. 142.
The four copies of #A# differ but very slightly: #a#, #b#, #c# are
broadsides, and #d# is evidently of that derivation, #a# and #b# are of
the 17th century. There is another broadside in the Euing collection,
formerly Halliwell's, No 253. The version in The Borderer's Table Book,
VII, 83, was compounded by Dixon from others previously printed.
Riddles, as is well known, play an important part in popular story, and
that from very remote times. No one needs to be reminded of Samson,
Œdipus, Apollonius of Tyre. Riddle-tales, which, if not so old as the
oldest of these, may be carried in all likelihood some centuries beyond
our era, still live in Asiatic and European tradition, and have their
representatives in popular ballads. The largest class of these tales is
that in which one party has to guess another's riddles, or two rivals
compete in giving or guessing, under penalty in either instance of
forfeiting life or some other heavy wager; an example of which is the
English ballad, modern in form, of 'King John and the Abbot of
Canterbury.' In a second class, a suitor can win a lady's hand only by
guessing riddles, as in our 'Captain Wedderburn's Courtship' and 'Proud
Lady Margaret.' There is sometimes a penalty of loss of life for the
unsuccessful, but not in these ballads. Thirdly, there is the tale
(perhaps an offshoot of an early form of the first) of The Clever Lass,
who wins a husband, and sometimes a crown, by guessing riddles, solving
difficult but practicable problems, or matching and evading
impossibilities; and of this class versions #A# and #B# of the present
ballad and #A-H# of the following are specimens.
Ballads like our 1, #A#, #B#, 2, #A-H#, are very common in #German#. Of
the former variety are the following:
#A.# 'Räthsellied,' Büsching, Wöchentliche Nachrichten, I, 65, from the
neighborhood of Stuttgart. The same, Erlach, III, 37; Wunderhorn, IV,
139; Liederhort, p. 338, No 153; Erk u. Irmer, H. 5, p. 32, No 29;
Mittler, No 1307 (omits the last stanza); Zuccalmaglio, II, 574, No 317
[with change in st. 11]. A knight meets a maid on the road, dismounts,
and says, "I will ask you a riddle; if you guess it, you shall be my
wife." She answers, "Your riddle shall soon be guessed; I will do my
best to be your wife;" guesses eight pairs of riddles, is taken up
behind him, and they ride off. #B.# 'Räthsel um Räthsel,' Wunderhorn,
II, 407 [429, 418]==Erlach, I, 439. Zuccalmaglio, II, 572, No 316,
rearranges, but adds nothing. Mittler, No 1306, inserts three stanzas
(7, 9, 10). This version begins: "Maid, I will give you some riddles,
and if you guess them will marry you." There are seven pairs, and, these
guessed, the man says, "I can't give you riddles; let's marry;" to
which she gives no coy assent: but this conclusion is said not to be
genuine (Liederhort, p. 341, note). #C.# 'Räthsellied,' Erk, Neue
Sammlung, Heft 3, p. 64, No 57, and Liederhort, 340, No 153^a two
Brandenburg versions, nearly agreeing, one with six, the other with
five, pairs of riddles. A proper conclusion not having been obtained,
the former was completed by the two last stanzas of #B#, which are
suspicious. #C# begins like #B#. #D.# 'Räthselfragen,' Peter,
Volksthümliches aus Österreichisch-Schlesien, I, 272, No 83. A knight
rides by where two maids are sitting, one of whom salutes him, the other
not. He says to the former, "I will put you three questions, and if you
can answer them will marry you." He asks three, then six more, then
three, and then two, and, all being answered, bids her, since she is so
witty, build a house on a needle's point, and put in as many windows as
there are stars in the sky; which she parries with, "When all streams
flow together, and all trees shall fruit, and all thorns bear roses,
then come for your answer." #E.# 'Räthsellied,' Tschischka u. Schottky,
Oesterreichische Volkslieder, 2d ed., p. 28, begins like #B#, #C#, has
only three pairs of riddles, and ends with the same task of building a
house on a needle's point. #F.# 'Räthsellied,' Hocker, Volkslieder von
der Mosel, in Wolf's Zeits. für deutsche Myth., I, 251, from Trier,
begins with the usual promise, has five pairs of riddles, and no
conclusion. #G.# 'Räthsel,' Ditfurth, Fränkische V. L., II, 110, No 146,
has the same beginning, six pairs of riddles, and no conclusion.
Some of the riddles occur in nearly all the versions, some in only one
or two, and there is now and then a variation also in the answers. Those
which are most frequent are:
Which is the maid without a tress? #A-D#, #G#.
And which is the tower without a crest? #A-D#, #F#, #G#.
(Maid-child in the cradle; tower of Babel.)
Which is the water without any sand? #A#, #B#, #C#, #F#, #G#.
And which is the king without any land? #A#, #B#, #C#, #F#, #G#.
(Water in the eyes; king in cards.)
Where is no dust in all the road? #A-G.#
Where is no leaf in all the wood? #A-G.#
(The milky way, or a river; a fir-wood.)
Which is the fire that never burnt? #A#, #C-G#.
And which is the sword without a point? #C-G.#
(A painted fire; a broken sword.)
Which is the house without a mouse? #C-G.#
Which is the beggar without a louse? #C-G.#
(A snail's house; a painted beggar.)[11]
A ballad translated in Ralston's Songs of the Russian People, p. 356,
from Buslaef's Historical Sketches of National Literature and Art, I,
31, resembles very closely German #A#. A merchant's son drives by a
garden where a girl is gathering flowers. He salutes her; she returns
her thanks. Then the ballad proceeds:
'Shall I ask thee riddles, beauteous maiden?
Six wise riddles shall I ask thee?'
'Ask them, ask them, merchant's son,
Prithee ask the six wise riddles.'
'Well then, maiden, what is higher than the forest?
Also, what is brighter than the light?
Also, maiden, what is thicker than the forest?
Also, maiden, what is there that's rootless?
Also, maiden, what is never silent?
Also, what is there past finding out?'
'I will answer, merchant's son, will answer,
All the six wise riddles will I answer.
Higher than the forest is the moon;
Brighter than the light the ruddy sun;
Thicker than the forest are the stars;
Rootless is, O merchant's son, a stone;
Never silent, merchant's son, the sea;
And God's will is past all finding out.'
'Thou hast guessed, O maiden fair, guessed rightly,
All the six wise riddles hast thou answered;
Therefore now to me shalt thou be wedded,
Therefore, maiden, shalt thou be the merchant's wife.'[12]
Among the Gaels, both Scotch and Irish, a ballad of the same description
is extremely well known. Apparently only the questions are preserved in
verse, and the connection with the story made by a prose comment. Of
these questions there is an Irish form, dated 1738, which purports to be
copied from a manuscript of the twelfth century. Fionn would marry no
lady whom he could pose. Graidhne, "daughter of the king of the fifth of
Ullin," answered everything he asked, and became his wife. Altogether
there are thirty-two questions in the several versions. Among them are:
What is blacker than the raven? (There is death.) What is whiter than
the snow? (There is the truth.) 'Fionn's Questions,' Campbell's Popular
Tales of the West Highlands, III, 36; 'Fionn's Conversation with
Ailbhe,'Heroic Gaelic Ballads, by the same, pp. 150, 151.
The familiar ballad-knight of #A#, #B# is converted in #C# into an "unco
knicht," who is the devil, a departure from the proper story which is
found also in #2 J#. The conclusion of #C#,
As soon as she the fiend did name,
He flew awa in a blazing flame,
reminds us of the behavior of trolls and nixes under like circumstances,
but here the naming amounts to a detection of the Unco Knicht's
quiddity, acts as an exorcism, and simply obliges the fiend to go off in
his real character. #D# belongs with #C#: it was given by the reciter as
a colloquy between the devil and a maiden.
The earlier affinities of this ballad can be better shown in connection
with No 2.
Translated, after #B# and #A#, in Grundtvig's Engelske og skotske
Folkeviser, p. 181: Herder, Volkslieder, I, 95, after #A d#.
A
#a.# Broadside in the Rawlinson collection, 4to, 566, fol. 193, Wood, E.
25, fol. 15. #b.# Pepys, III, 19, No 17. #c.# Douce, II, fol. 168 b.
#d.# Pills to Purge Melancholy, IV, 130, ed. 1719.
1
There was a lady of the North Country,
Lay the bent to the bonny broom
And she had lovely daughters three.
Fa la la la, fa la la la ra re
2
There was a knight of noble worth
Which also lived in the North.
3
The knight, of courage stout and brave,
A wife he did desire to have.
4
He knocked at the ladie's gate
One evening when it was late.
5
The eldest sister let him in,
And pin'd the door with a silver pin.
6
The second sister she made his bed,
And laid soft pillows under his head.
7
The youngest daughter that same night,
She went to bed to this young knight.
8
And in the morning, when it was day,
These words unto him she did say:
9
'Now you have had your will,' quoth she,
'I pray, sir knight, will you marry me?'
10
The young brave knight to her replyed,
'Thy suit, fair maid, shall not be deny'd.
11
'If thou canst answer me questions three,
This very day will I marry thee.'
12
'Kind sir, in love, O then,' quoth she,
'Tell me what your [three] questions be.'
13
'O what is longer than the way,
Or what is deeper than the sea?
14
'Or what is louder than the horn,
Or what is sharper than a thorn?
15
'Or what is greener than the grass,
Or what is worse then a woman was?'
16
'O love is longer than the way,
And hell is deeper than the sea.
17
'And thunder is louder than the horn,
And hunger is sharper than a thorn.
18
'And poyson is greener than the grass,
And the Devil is worse than woman was.'
19
When she these questions answered had,
The knight became exceeding glad.
20
And having [truly] try'd her wit,
He much commended her for it.
21
And after, as it is verifi'd,
He made of her his lovely bride.
22
So now, fair maidens all, adieu,
This song I dedicate to you.
23
I wish that you may constant prove
Vnto the man that you do love.
B
Gilbert's Christmas Carols, 2d ed., p. 65, from the
editor's recollection. West of England.
1
There were three sisters fair and bright,
Jennifer gentle and rosemaree
And they three loved one valiant knight.
As the dew flies over the mulberry tree
2
The eldest sister let him in,
And barred the door with a silver pin.
3
The second sister made his bed,
And placed soft pillows under his head.
4
The youngest sister, fair and bright,
Was resolved for to wed with this valiant knight.
5
'And if you can answer questions three,
O then, fair maid, I will marry with thee.
6
'What is louder than an horn,
And what is sharper than a thorn?'
7
'Thunder is louder than an horn,
And hunger is sharper than a thorn.'
8
'What is broader than the way,
And what is deeper than the sea?'
9
'Love is broader than the way,
And hell is deeper than the sea.'
* * * * * * *
10
. . . . . . .
'And now, fair maid, I will marry with thee.'
C
Motherwell's MS., p. 647. From the recitation of Mrs
Storie.
1
There was a knicht riding frae the east,
Sing the Cather banks, the bonnie brume
Wha had been wooing at monie a place.
And ye may beguile a young thing sune
2
He came unto a widow's door
And speird whare her three dochters were.
3
The auldest ane's to a washing gane,
The second's to a baking gane.
4
The youngest ane's to a wedding gane,
And it will be nicht or she be hame.
5
He sat him doun upon a stane,
Till thir three lasses came tripping hame.
6
The auldest ane's to the bed making,
And the second ane's to the sheet spreading.
7
The youngest ane was bauld and bricht,
And she was to lye with this unco knicht.
8
'Gin ye will answer me questions ten,
The morn ye sall be made my ain.
9
'O what is heigher nor the tree?
And what is deeper nor the sea?
10
'Or what is heavier nor the lead?
And what is better nor the breid?
11
'O what is whiter nor the milk?
Or what is safter nor the silk?
12
'Or what is sharper nor a thorn?
Or what is louder nor a horn?
13
'Or what is greener nor the grass?
Or what is waur nor a woman was?'
14
'O heaven is higher nor the tree,
And hell is deeper nor the sea.
15
'O sin is heavier nor the lead,
The blessing's better nor the bread.
16
'The snaw is whiter nor the milk,
And the down is safter nor the silk.
17
'Hunger is sharper nor a thorn,
And shame is louder nor a horn.
18
'The pies are greener nor the grass,
And Clootie's waur nor a woman was.'
19
As sune as she the fiend did name,
He flew awa in a blazing flame.
D
Motherwell's MS., p. 142.
1
'O what is higher than the trees?
Gar lay the bent to the bonny broom
And what is deeper than the seas?
And you may beguile a fair maid soon
2
'O what is whiter than the milk?
Or what is softer than the silk?
3
'O what is sharper than the thorn?
O what is louder than the horn?
4
'O what is longer than the way?
And what is colder than the clay?
5
'O what is greener than the grass?
And what is worse than woman was?'
6
'O heaven's higher than the trees,
And hell is deeper than the seas.
7
'And snow is whiter than the milk,
And love is softer than the silk.
8
'O hunger's sharper than the thorn,
And thunder's louder than the horn.
9
'O wind is longer than the way,
And death is colder than the clay.
10
'O poison's greener than the grass,
And the Devil's worse than eer woman was.'
* * * * *
#A. a.#
_Title._ A Noble Riddle wisely Expounded: or, The Maids answer
to the Knights Three Questions.
She with her excellent wit and civil carriage,
Won a young Knight to joyn with him in marriage;
This gallant couple now is man and wife,
And she with him doth lead a pleasant Life.
Tune of Lay the bent to the bonny broom.
+---------------+ +--------------+
| | | |
| WOODCUT OF | | WOODCUT OF |
| THE KNIGHT. | | THE MAID. |
| | | |
+---------------+ +--------------+
#c.# Knights questions. Wed a knight ... with her in
marriage.
#a.# Printed for F. Coles, T. Vere, I. Wright, and I. Clarke.
#b.# Printed for W. Thackeray, E.M. and A.M.
#c.# Licens'd according to Order. London. Printed by Tho.
Norris, at the L[o]oking glass on London-bridge. And sold by
J. Walter, in High Holborn.
_In Rawlinson and Wood the first seven lines are in Roman and
Italic type; the remainder being in black letter and Roman.
The Pepys copy has one line of the ballad in black letter
and one line in Roman type. The Douce edition is in Roman
and Italic._
#A.#
1^1, #c#, i' th' North: #d#, in the.
3^1. #c#, This knight.
5^1. #a#, #b#, #c#, #d#, The youngest sister.
7^1. #b#, #d#, The youngest that same. #c#, that very same.
7^2. #a#, with this young knight.
9^2. #d#, sir knight, you marry me.
_After 10, there is a wood-cut of the knight and the maid in
#a#; in #b# two cuts of the knight._
11^2. #c#, I'll marry. #d#, I will.
12^1. #c# _omits_ in love.
12^2. #b#, #c#, #d#, three questions.
14^1. #d#, a horn.
_After 15_: #a#, Here follows the Damosel's answer to the
Knight's Three Questions: #c#, The Damsel's Answers To The
Knight's Questions: #d#, The Damsel's Answer to the Three
Questions.
17, 18. #b#, #c#, #d#, thunder's, hunger's, poyson's, devil's.
18^2. #d#, the woman.
19^1. #c#, those.
20. #a#, #b# _omit_ truly.
21^1. #b#, #c#, #d#, as 't is.
#B.#
_The burden is printed by Gilbert, in the text, "~Jennifer
gentle and Rosemaree~." He appears to take ~Jennifer~ and
~Rosemaree~ to be names of the sisters. As printed under the
music, the burden runs,_
Juniper, Gentle and Rosemary.
_No doubt, ~juniper and rosemary~, simply, are meant; ~Gentle~
might possibly be for ~gentian~. In #2 H# the burden is,_
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme:
_curiously varied in #I# thus:_
Every rose grows merry wi thyme:
_and in #G#,_
Sober and grave grows merry in time.
#C.#
18. "_~Vergris~ in another set._" M.
#D.#
_MS. before st. 1, "~The Devil speaks~;" before st. 6, "~The
maiden speaks~."_
FOOTNOTES:
[11] #D# 4, What is green as clover? What is white as milk? comes near
to English #A# 15, #C# 13, #D# 5, What is greener than grass? #C# 11,
#D# 2, What is whiter than milk? We have again, What is greener than
grass? in 'Capt. Wedderburn's Courtship,' #A# 12; What is whiter than
snow? What is greener than clover? in 'Räthselfragen,' Firmenich,
Germaniens Völkerstimmen, III, 634; in 'Kranzsingen,' Erk's Liederhort,
p. 342, 3; 'Traugemundslied,' 11; 'Ein Spiel von den Freiheit,'
Fastnachtspiele aus dem 15n Jahrhundert, II, 555; Altdeutsche Wälder,
III, 138. So, What is whiter than a swan? in many of the versions of
Svend Vonved, Grundtvig, III, 786; IV, 742-3-7-8; Afzelius, II, 139,
etc.; and Sin is blacker than a sloe, or coal (cf. C 15, Sin is heavier
nor the lead), Grundtvig, I, 240, 247; IV, 748, 9; Afzelius, II, 139.
The road without dust and the tree without leaves are in 'Ein Spiel von
den Freiheit,' p. 557; and in Meier, Deutsche Kinderreime, p. 84, no
doubt a fragment of a ballad, as also the verses in Firmenich. The
question in German, #A# 4, Welches ist das trefflichste Holz? (die Rebe)
is in the Anglo-Saxon prose Salomon and Saturn: Kemble, Sal. and Sat.
188, No 40; 204; see also 287, 10. Riddle verses with little or no story
(sometimes fragments of ballads like #D#) are frequent. The
Traugemundslied, Uhland, I, 3, and the Spiel von den Freiheit,
Fastnachtspiele, II, 553, have only as much story as will serve as an
excuse for long strings of riddles. Shorter pieces of the kind are
(Italian) Kadeu, Italiens Wunderhern, p. 14; (Servian) 'The Maid and the
Fish,' Vuk, I, 196, No 285, Talvj, II, 176, Goetze, Serbische V. L., p.
75, Bowring, Servian Popular Poetry, p. 184; (Polish) Wojcicki, I, 203;
(Wendish) Haupt and Schmaler, I, 177, No 150, II, 69, No 74; (Russian)
Wenzig, Bibliothek Slav. Poesie, p. 174; (Esthonian) Neus, Ehstnische V.
L., 390 ff, and Fosterländskt Album, I, 13, Prior, Ancient Danish
Ballads, II, 341.
[12] 'Capt. Wedderburn's Courtship,' 12: What's higher than the tree?
(heaven). Wojcicki, Pieśni, I, 203, l. 11, 206, l. 3; What grows
without a root? (a stone).
2
THE ELFIN KNIGHT
#A.# 'A proper new ballad entituled The Wind hath blown my
Plaid away, or, A Discourse betwixt a young [Wo]man and
the Elphin Knight;' a broadside in black letter in the
Pepysian library, bound up at the end of a copy of Blind
Harry's 'Wallace,' Edin. 1673.
#B.# 'A proper new ballad entitled The Wind hath blawn my
Plaid awa,' etc. Webster, A Collection of Curious Old
Ballads, p. 3.
#C.# 'The Elfin Knicht,' Kinloch's Anc. Scott. Ballads, p.
145.
#D.# 'The Fairy Knight,' Buchan, II, 296.
#E.# Motherwell's MS., p. 492.
#F.# 'Lord John,' Kinloch MSS, I, 75.
#G.# 'The Cambrick Shirt,' Gammer Gorton's Garland, p. 3,
ed. 1810.
#H.# 'The Deil's Courtship,' Motherwell's MS., p. 92.
#I.# 'The Deil's Courting,' Motherwell's MS., p. 103.
#J.# Communicated by Rev. Dr Huntington, Bishop of Western
New York, as sung at Hadley, Mass.
#K.# Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England, p. 109, No
171, 6th ed.
#L.# Notes and Queries, 1st S., VII, 8.
Pinkerton gave the first information concerning #A#, in Ancient Scotish
Poems ... from the MS. collections of Sir Richard Maitland, etc., II,
496, and he there printed the first and last stanzas of the broadside.
Motherwell printed the whole in the appendix to his Minstrelsy, No I.
What stands as the last stanza in the broadside is now prefixed to the
ballad, as having been the original burden. It is the only example, so
far as I remember, which our ballads afford of a burden of this kind,
one that is of greater extent than the stanza with which it was sung,
though this kind of burden seems to have been common enough with old
songs and carols.[13]
The "old copy in black letter" used for #B# was close to #A#, if not
identical, and has the burden-stem at the end like #A#. 'The Jockey's
Lamentation,' Pills to Purge Melancholy, v, 317, has the burden,
'Tis oer the hills and far away [_thrice_],
The wind hath blown my plaid away.
The 'Bridal Sark,' Cromek's Remains of Nithsdale and Galloway Song, p.
108, and 'The Bridegroom Darg,' p. 113, are of modern manufacture and
impostures; at least, they seem to have imposed upon Cromek.
A like ballad is very common in German. A man would take, or keep, a
woman for his love or his wife [servant, in one case], if she would spin
brown silk from oaten straw. She will do this if he will make clothes
for her of the linden-leaf. Then she must bring him shears from the
middle of the Rhine. But first he must build her a bridge from a single
twig, etc., etc. To this effect, with some variations in the tasks set,
in #A#, 'Eitle Dinge,' Rhaw, Bicinia (1545), Uhland, I, 14, No 4 A,
Böhme, p. 376, No 293. #B.# 'Van ideln unmöglichen Dingen,' Neocorus
(† c. 1630), Chronik des Landes Ditmarschen, ed. Dahlmann, p.
180==Uhland, p. 15, No 4 B, Müllenhof, p. 473, Böhme, p. 376, No 294.
#C.# Wunderhorn, II, 410 [431]==Erlach, I, 441, slightly altered in
Kretzschmer [Zuccalmaglio], II, 620. #D.# 'Unmöglichkeiten,' Schmeller,
Die Mundarten Bayerns, p. 556. #E.# Schlesische Volkslieder, p. 115, No
93. #F.# 'Liebes-Neckerei,' Meier, Schwäbische V. L., p. 114, No 39.
#G.# 'Liebesspielereien,' Ditfurth, Fränkische V. L., II, 109, No 144.
#H.# 'Von eitel unmöglichen Dingen,' Erk's Liederhort, p. 337, No
152^b. #I.# 'Unmögliches Begehren,' V. L. aus Oesterreich, Deutsches
Museum, 1862, II, 806, No 16. #J.# 'Unmögliche Dinge,' Peter,
Volksthümliches aus Österreichisch-Schlesien, I, 270, No 82. In #K#,
'Wettgesang,' Meinert, p. 80, and #L#, Liederhort, p. 334, No 152, there
is a simple contest of wits between a youth and a maid, and in #M#, Erk,
Neue Sammlung, #H.# 2, No 11, p. 16, and #N#, 'Wunderbare Aufgaben,'
Pröhle, Weltliche u. geistliche Volkslieder, p. 36, No 22 B, the
wit-contest is added to the very insipid ballad of 'Gemalte Rosen.'
'Store Fordringar,' Kristensen, Jydske Folkeviser, I, 221, No 82, and
'Opsang,' Lindeman, Norske Fjeldmelodier, No 35 (Text Bilag, p. 6),
closely resemble German #M#, #N#. In the Stev, or alternate song, in
Landstad, p. 375, two singers vie one with another in propounding
impossible tasks.
A Wendish ballad, Haupt and Schmaler, I, 178, No 151, and a Slovak,
Čelakowsky, II, 68, No 12 (the latter translated by Wenzig, Slawische
Volkslieder, p. 86, Westslavischer Märchenschatz, p. 221, and Bibliothek
Slavischer Poesien, p. 126), have lost nearly all their story, and, like
German #K#, #L#, may be called mere wit-contests.
The Graidhne whom we have seen winning Fionn for husband by guessing his
riddles, p. 3, afterwards became enamored of Diarmaid, Fionn's nephew,
in consequence of her accidentally seeing a beauty spot on Diarmaid's
forehead. This had the power of infecting with love any woman whose eye
should light upon it: wherefore Diarmaid used to wear his cap well down.
Graidhne tried to make Diarmaid run away with her. But he said, "I will
not go with thee. I will not take thee in softness, and I will not take
thee in hardness; I will not take thee without, and I will not take thee
within; I will not take thee on horseback, and I will not take thee on
foot." Then he went and built himself a house where he thought he should
be out of her way. But Graidhne found him out. She took up a position
between the two sides of the door, on a buck goat, and called to him to
go with her. For, said she, "I am not without, I am not within; I am not
on foot, and I am not on a horse; and thou must go with me." After this
Diarmaid had no choice. 'Diarmaid and Grainne,' Tales of the West
Highlands, III, 39-49; 'How Fingal got Graine to be his wife, and she
went away with Diarmaid,' Heroic Gaelic Ballads, p. 153; 'The Death of
Diarmaid,' ib., p. 154. The last two were written down c. 1774.
In all stories of the kind, the person upon whom a task is imposed
stands acquitted, if another of no less difficulty is devised which must
be performed first. This preliminary may be something that is essential
for the execution of the other, as in the German ballads, or equally
well something that has no kind of relation to the original requisition,
as in the English ballads.
An early form of such a story is preserved in Gesta Romanorum, c. 64,
Oesterley, p. 374. It were much to be wished that search were made for a
better copy, for, as it stands, this tale is to be interpreted only by
the English ballad. The old English version, Madden, XLIII, p. 142, is
even worse mutilated than the Latin. A king, who was stronger, wiser,
and handsomer than any man, delayed, like the Marquis of Saluzzo, to
take a wife. His friends urged him to marry, and he replied to their
expostulations, "You know I am rich enough and powerful enough; find me
a maid who is good looking and sensible, and I will take her to wife,
though she be poor." A maid was found who was eminently good looking and
sensible, and of royal blood besides. The king wished to make trial of
her sagacity, and sent her a bit of linen three inches square, with a
promise to marry her if she would make him a shirt of this, of proper
length and width. The lady stipulated that the king should send her "a
vessel in which she could work," and she would make the shirt: "michi
vas concedat in quo operari potero, et camisiam satis longam ei
promitto." So the king sent "vas debitum et preciosum," the shirt was
made, and the king married her.[14] It may be doubted whether the
sagacious maid did not, in the unmutilated story, deal with the problem
as is done in a Transylvanian tale, Haltrich, Deutsche Volksmärchen,
u.s.w., No 45, p. 245, where the king requires the maid to make a shirt
and drawers of two threads. The maid, in this instance, sends the king a
couple of broomsticks, requiring that he should first make her a loom
and bobbin-wheel out of them.
The tale just cited, 'Der Burghüter und seine kluge Tochter,' is one of
several which have been obtained from tradition in this century, that
link the ballads of The Clever Lass with oriental stories of great age.
The material points are these. A king requires the people of a parish
to answer three questions, or he will be the destruction of them all:
What is the finest sound, the finest song, the finest stone? A poor
warder is instructed by his daughter to reply, the ring of bells, the
song of the angels, the philosopher's stone. "Right," says the king,
"but that never came out of your head. Confess who told you, or a
dungeon is your doom." The man owns that he has a clever daughter, who
had told him what to say. The king, to prove her sagacity further,
requires her to make a shirt and drawers of two threads, and she
responds in the manner just indicated. He next sends her by her father
an earthen pot with the bottom out, and tells her to sew in a bottom so
that no seam or stitch can be seen. She sends her father back with a
request that the king should first turn the pot inside out, for cobblers
always sew on the inside, not on the out. The king next demanded that
the girl should come to him, neither driving, nor walking, nor riding;
neither dressed nor naked; neither out of the road nor in the road; and
bring him something that was a gift and no gift. She put two wasps
between two plates, stripped, enveloped herself in a fishing net, put
her goat into the rut in the road, and, with one foot on the goat's
back, the other stepping along the rut, made her way to the king. There
she lifted up one of the plates, and the wasps flew away: so she had
brought the king a present and yet no present. The king thought he could
never find a shrewder woman, and married her.
Of the same tenor are a tale in Zingerle's Tyrolese Kinder u.
Hausmärchen, 'Was ist das Schönste, Stärkste und Reichste?' No 27, p.
162, and another in the Colshorns' Hanoverian Märchen u. Sagen, 'Die
kluge Dirne,' No 26, p. 79. Here a rich and a poor peasant [a farmer and
his bailiff] have a case in court, and wrangle till the magistrate, in
his weariness, says he will give them three questions, and whichever
answers right shall win. The questions in the former tale are: What is
the most beautiful, what the strongest, what the richest thing in the
world? In the other, What is fatter than fat? How heavy is the moon? How
far is it to heaven? The answers suggested by the poor peasant's
daughter are: Spring is the most beautiful of things, the ground the
strongest, autumn the richest. And the bailiff's daughter answers: The
ground is fatter than fat, for out of it comes all that's fat, and this
all goes back again; the moon has four quarters, and four quarters make
a pound; heaven is only one day's journey, for we read in the Bible,
"Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise." The judge sees that these
replies are beyond the wit of the respondents, and they own to having
been prompted by a daughter at home. The judge then says that if the
girl will come to him neither dressed nor naked, etc., he will marry
her; and so the shrewd wench becomes a magistrate's wife.
'Die kluge Bauerntochter,' in the Grimms' K. u. H. märchen, No 94, and
'Die kluge Hirtentochter,' in Pröhle's Märchen für die Jugend, No 49, p.
181, afford another variety of these tales. A peasant, against the
advice of his daughter, carries the king a golden mortar, as he had
found it, without any pestle. The king shuts him up in prison till he
shall produce the pestle [Grimms]. The man does nothing but cry, "Oh,
that I had listened to my daughter!" The king sends for him, and,
learning what the girl's counsel had been, says he will give her a
riddle, and if she can make it out will marry her. She must come to him
neither clothed nor naked, neither riding nor driving, etc. The girl
wraps herself in a fishing net [Grimms, in bark, Pröhle], satisfies the
other stipulations also, and becomes a queen.[15]
Another story of the kind, and very well preserved, is No 25 of Vuk's
Volksmärchen der Serben, 'Von dem Mädchen das an Weisheit den Kaiser
übertraf,' p. 157. A poor man had a wise daughter. An emperor gave him
thirty eggs, and said his daughter must hatch chickens from these, or it
would go hard with her. The girl perceived that the eggs had been
boiled. She boiled some beans, and told her father to be ploughing along
the road, and when the emperor came in sight, to sow them and cry, "God
grant my boiled beans may come up!" The emperor, hearing these
ejaculations, stopped, and said, "My poor fellow, how _can_ boiled beans
grow?" The father answered, according to instructions, "As well as
chickens can hatch from boiled eggs." Then the emperor gave the old man
a bundle of linen, and bade him make of it, on pain of death, sails and
everything else requisite for a ship. The girl gave her father a piece
of wood, and sent him back to the emperor with the message that she
would perform what he had ordered, if he would first make her a distaff,
spindle, and loom out of the wood. The emperor was astonished at the
girl's readiness, and gave the old man a glass, with which she was to
drain the sea. The girl dispatched her father to the emperor again with
a pound of tow, and asked him to stop the mouths of all the rivers that
flow into the sea; then she would drain it dry. Hereupon the emperor
ordered the girl herself before him, and put her the question, "What is
heard furthest?" "Please your Majesty," she answered, "thunder and
lies." The emperor then, clutching his beard, turned to his assembled
counsellors, and said, "Guess how much my beard is worth." One said so
much, another so much. But the girl said, "Nay, the emperor's beard is
worth three rains in summer." The emperor took her to wife.
With these traditional tales we may put the story of wise Petronelle and
Alphonso, king of Spain, told after a chronicle, with his usual
prolixity, by Gower, Confessio Amantis, Pauli, I, 145 ff. The king
valued himself highly for his wit, and was envious of a knight who
hitherto had answered all his questions. Determined to confound his
humbler rival, he devised three which he thought unanswerable, sent for
the knight, and gave him a fortnight to consider his replies, which
failing, he would lose his goods and head. The knight can make nothing
of these questions, which are, What is that which needs help least and
gets most? What is worth most and costs least? What costs most and is
worth least? The girl, who is but fourteen years old, observing her
father's heavy cheer, asks him the reason, and obtains his permission to
go to court with him and answer the questions. He was to say to the king
that he had deputed her to answer, to make trial of her wits. The answer
to the first question is the earth, and agrees in the details with the
solution of the query, What is fatter than fat? in the Tyrolese and the
Hanoverian tale. Humility is the answer to the second, and pride the
third answer. The king admires the young maid, and says he would marry
her if her father were noble; but she may ask a boon. She begs for her
father an earldom which had lately escheated; and, this granted, she
reminds the king of what he had said; her father is now noble. The king
marries her.
In all these seven tales a daughter gets her father out of trouble by
the exercise of a superior understanding, and marries an emperor, a
king, or at least far above her station. The Grimms' story has the
feature, not found in the others, that the father had been thrown into
prison. Still another variety of these stories, inferior, but preserving
essential traits, is given by Schleicher, Litauische Märchen, p. 3, 'Vom
schlauen Mädchen.'
A Turkish tale from South Siberia will take us a step further, 'Die
beiden Fürsten,' Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen
Stämme Süd-Sibiriens, I, 197. A prince had a feeble-minded son, for whom
he wished to get a wife. He found a girl gathering fire-wood with
others, and, on asking her questions, had reason to be pleased with her
superior discretion. He sent an ox to the girl's father, with a message
that on the third day he would pay him a visit, and if by that time he
had not made the ox drop a calf and give milk, he would lose his head.
The old man and his wife fell to weeping. The daughter bade them be of
good cheer, killed the ox, and gave it to her parents to eat. On the
third day she stationed herself on the road by which the prince would
come, and was gathering herbs. The prince asked what this was for. The
girl said, "Because my father is in the pangs of child-birth, and I am
going to spread these herbs under him." "Why," said the prince, "it is
not the way, that men should bear children." "But if a man can't bear
children," answered the girl, "how can an ox have a calf?" The prince
was pleased, but said nothing. He went away, and sent his messenger
again with three stones in a bag. He would come on the third day, and if
the stones were not then made into boots, the old man would lose his
head. On the third day the prince came, with all his grandees. The girl
was by the roadside, collecting sand in a bag. "What are you going to do
with that sand?" asked the prince. "Make thread," said she. "But who
ever made thread out of sand?" "And who ever made boots out of stones?"
she rejoined. The prince laughed in his sleeve, prepared a great
wedding, and married the girl to his son. Soon after, another prince
wrote him a letter, saying, "Do not let us be fighting and killing, but
let us guess riddles. If you guess all mine, I will be your subject; if
you fail, I will take all your having." They were a whole year at the
riddles. The other prince "knew three words more," and threw ours into a
deep dungeon. From the depths of this dungeon he contrived to send a
profoundly enigmatic dispatch to his daughter-in-law, who understood
everything, disguised herself as one of his friends, and proposed to the
victor to guess riddles again. The clever daughter-in-law "knew seven
words more" than he, took her father-in-law out of the dungeon, threw
his rival in, and had all the people and property of the vanquished
prince for her own.
This Siberian tale links securely those which precede it with a
remarkable group of stories, covering by representatives still extant,
or which may be shown to have existed, a large part of Asia and of
Europe. This group includes, besides a Wallachian and a Magyar tale from
recent popular tradition, one Sanskrit form; two Tibetan, derived from
Sanskrit; one Mongol, from Tibetan; three Arabic and one Persian, which
also had their source in Sanskrit; two Middle-Greek, derived from
Arabic, one of which is lost; and two old Russian, from lost
Middle-Greek versions.[16]
The gist of these narratives is that one king propounds tasks to
another; in the earlier ones, with the intent to discover whether his
brother monarch enjoys the aid of such counsellors as will make an
attack on him dangerous; in the later, with a demand that he shall
acquit himself satisfactorily, or suffer a forfeit: and the king is
delivered from a serious strait by the sagacity either of a minister
(whom he had ordered to be put to death, but who was still living in
prison, or at least seclusion) or of the daughter of his minister, who
came to her father's assistance. Which is the prior of these two last
inventions it would not be easy to say. These tasks are always such as
require ingenuity of one kind or another, whether in devising practical
experiments, in contriving subterfuges, in solving riddles, or even in
constructing compliments.[17]
One of the Tibetan tales, which, though dating from the beginning of
our era, will very easily be recognized in the Siberian tradition of
this century, is to this effect. King Rabssaldschal had a rich minister,
who desired a suitable wife for his youngest son. A Brahman, his trusty
friend, undertook to find one. In the course of his search, which
extended through many countries, the Brahman saw one day a company of
five hundred maidens, who were making garlands to offer to Buddha. One
of these attracted his notice by her behavior, and impressed him
favorably by replies to questions which he put.[18] The Brahman made
proposals to her father in behalf of the minister's son. These were
accepted, and the minister went with a great train to fetch home the
bride. On the way back his life was twice saved by taking her advice,
and when she was domiciliated, she so surpassed her sisters-in-law in
housekeeping talents and virtues that everything was put under her
direction. Discord arose between the king of the country she had left
and Rabssaldschal, under whom she was now living. The former wished to
make trial whether the latter had an able and keen-witted minister or
not, and sent him two mares, dam and filly, exactly alike in appearance,
with the demand that he should distinguish them. Neither king nor
counsellor could discern any difference; but when the minister's
daughter heard of their difficulty, she said, "Nothing is easier. Tie
the two together and put grass before them; the mother will push the
best before the foal." This was done; the king decided accordingly, and
the hostile ambassador owned that he was right. Soon after, the foreign
prince sent two snakes, of the same size and form, and demanded which
was male, which female. The king and his advisers were again in a
quandary. The minister resorted to his daughter-in-law. She said, "Lay
them both on cotton-wool: the female will lie quiet, the male not; for
it is of the feminine nature to love the soft and the comfortable, which
the masculine cannot tolerate." They followed these directions; the king
gave his verdict, the ambassador acquiesced, the minister received
splendid presents. For a final trial the unfriendly king sent a long
stick of wood, of equal thickness, with no knots or marks, and asked
which was the under and which the upper end. No one could say. The
minister referred the question to his daughter. She answered, "Put the
stick into water: the root end will sink a little, the upper end float."
The experiment was tried; the king said to the ambassador, "This is the
upper end, this the root end," to which he assented, and great presents
were again given to the minister. The adverse monarch was convinced that
his only safe course was peace and conciliation, and sent his ambassador
back once more with an offering of precious jewels and of amity for the
future. This termination was highly gratifying to Rabssaldschal, who
said to his minister, How could you see through all these things? The
minister said, It was not I, but my clever daughter-in-law. When the
king learned this, he raised the young woman to the rank of his younger
sister.
The wise daughter is not found in the Sanskrit tale,[19] which also
differs from the Buddhist versions in this: that in the Sanskrit the
minister had become an object of displeasure to the king, and in
consequence had long been lying in prison when the crisis occurred which
rendered him indispensable, a circumstance which is repeated in the tale
of The Wise Heykar (Arabian Nights, Breslau transl., XIII, 73 ff,
Cabinet des Fées, XXXIX, 266 ff) and in the Life of Æsop. But The Clever
Wench reappears in another tale in the same Sanskrit collection (with
that express title), and gives her aid to her father, a priest, who has
been threatened with banishment by his king if he does not clear up a
dark matter within five days. She may also be recognized in Moradbak, in
Von der Hagen's 1001 Tag, VIII, 199 ff, and even in the minister's wife
in the story of The Wise Heykar.
The tasks of discriminating dam and filly and the root end from the tip
end of a stick, which occur both in the Tibetan tales and the
Shukasaptati, are found again, with unimportant changes, in the
Wallachian popular story, and the Hungarian, which in general resemble
the Arabic. Some of those in the Arabian tale and in the Life of Æsop
are of the same nature as the wit-trials in the Servian and German
popular tales, the story in the Gesta Romanorum, and the German and
English ballads. The wise Heykar, e.g., is required to sew together a
burst mill-stone. He hands the king a pebble, requesting him first to
make an awl, a file, and scissors out of that. The king of Egypt tells
Æsop, the king of Babylon's champion sage, that when his mares hear the
stallions neigh in Babylon, they cast their foal. Æsop's slaves are told
to catch a cat, and are set to scourging it before the Egyptian public.
Great offense is given, on account of the sacred character of the
animal, and complaint is made to the king, who sends for Æsop in a rage.
Æsop says his king has suffered an injury from this cat, for the night
before the cat had killed a fine fighting-cock of his. "Fie, Æsop!" says
the king of Egypt; "how could the cat go from Egypt to Babylon in one
night?" "Why not," replies Æsop, "as well as mares in Egypt hear the
stallions neigh in Babylon and cast their foal?"
The tales in the Shukasaptati and in the Dsanglun represent the object
of the sending of the tasks to be to ascertain whether the king retains
the capable minister through whom he has acquired supremacy. According
to the Arabian tale, and those derived from it, tribute is to be paid by
the king whose riddles are guessed, or by him who fails to guess. This
form of story, though it is a secondary one, is yet by no means late, as
is shown by the anecdote in Plutarch, Septem Sapientum Convivium (6),
itself probably a fragment of such a story, in which the king of the
Æthiops gives a task to Amasis, king of Egypt, with a stake of many
towns and cities. This task is the favorite one of draining [drinking]
all the water in the sea, which we have had in the Servian tale (it also
is in the Life of Æsop), and Bias gives the customary advice for dealing
with it.[20]
From the number of these wise virgins should not be excluded the king's
daughter in the Gesta Romanorum who guesses rightly among the riddles of
the three caskets and marries the emperor's son, though Bassanio has
extinguished her just fame: Madden's Old English Versions, p. 238, No
66; Collier, Shakspere's Library, II, 102.
The first three or four stanzas of #A-E# form the beginning of 'Lady
Isabel and the Elf-Knight,' and are especially appropriate to that
ballad, but not to this. The two last stanzas of #A#, #B#, make no kind
of sense here, and these at least, probably the opening verses as well,
must belong to some other and lost ballad. An elf setting tasks, or even
giving riddles, is unknown, I believe, in Northern tradition, and in no
form of this story, except the English, is a preternatural personage of
any kind the hero. Still it is better to urge nothing more than that the
elf is an intruder in this particular ballad, for riddle-craft is
practised by a variety of preternatural beings: notoriously by Odin,
Thor, the giant Vafþrúðnir, and the dwarf Alwíss in the Edda, and again
by a German "berggeist" (Ey, Harzmärchenbuch, p. 64, 'Die verwünschte
Prinzessin'), a Greek dragon (Hahn, Griechisebe u. Albanesische
Märchen, II, 210), the Russian rusalka, the Servian vila,[21] the Indian
rakshas. For example: a rusalka (water-nymph) pursues a pretty girl, and
says, I will give you three riddles: if you guess them, I will let you
go home to your father; if you do not, I shall take you with me. What
grows without a root? What runs without any object? What blooms without
any flower? She answers, Stones grow without a root; water runs without
any object; the fern blooms without any flower. These answers seem
satisfactory, as riddles go, but the ballad concludes (with an injustice
due to corruption?), "The girl did not guess the riddles: the rusalka
tickled her to death." (Wojcicki, Pieśni, I, 205.) A rakshas (ogre)
says he will spare a man's life if he can answer four questions, and
shall devour him if he cannot. What is cruel? What is most to the
advantage of a householder? What is love? What best accomplishes
difficult things? These questions the man answers, and confirms his
answers by tales, and gains the rakshas' good will. (Jacob, Hindoo
Tales, or the Adventures of Ten Princes, a translation of the Sanskrit
Dasakumaracharitam, p. 260 ff.)
The auld man in #J# is simply the "unco knicht" of #1 C#, #D#, over
again. He has clearly displaced the elf-knight, for the elf's attributes
of hill-haunting and magical music remain, only they have been
transferred to the lady. That the devil should supplant the knight, unco
or familiar, is natural enough. He may come in as the substitute of the
elfin knight because the devil is the regular successor to any heathen
sprite, or as the embodiment of craft and duplicity, and to give us the
pleasure of seeing him outwitted. We find the devil giving riddles, as
they are called (tasks), in the Grimms' K. u. H. märchen, No 125 (see
also the note in vol. III); Pröhle's K. u. V. märchen, No 19;
Vernaleken, Oesterreichische K. u. H. märchen, No 37. He also appears as
a riddle-monger in one of the best stories in the Golden Legend. A
bishop, who was especially devoted to St Andrew, was tempted by Satan
under the semblance of a beautiful woman, and was all but lost, when a
loud knocking was heard at the door. A pilgrim demanded admittance. The
lady, being asked her pleasure about this, recommended that three
questions should be put to the stranger, to show whether he were fit to
appear in such presence. Two questions having been answered
unexceptionably, the fiend proposed a third, which was meant to be a
clincher: How far is it from earth to heaven? "Go back to him that sent
you," said the pilgrim (none other than St Andrew) to the messenger,
"and say that he himself knows best, for he measured the distance when
he fell." _Antiquus hostis de medio evanuit._ Much the same is related
in the legend of St Bartholomew, and, in a Slovenian ballad, of St
Ulrich, who interposes to save the Pope from espousing Satan in
disguise.[22]
#J#, #K#, #L#, have completely lost sight of the original story.
Translated, after #A#, #C#, and #D#, in Grundtvig's Engelske og skotske
Folkeviser, p. 251; R. Warrens, Schottische Lieder der Vorzeit, p. 8;
Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen Alt-Englands, No 54.
A
A broadside in black letter, "printed, I suppose," says
Pinkerton, "about 1670," bound up with five other pieces
at the end of a copy of Blind Harry's 'Wallace,' Edin.
1673, in the Pepysian Library.
My plaid awa, my plaid awa,
And ore the hill and far awa,
And far awa to Norrowa,
My plaid shall not be blown awa.
1
The elphin knight sits on yon hill,
Ba, ba, ba, lilli ba
He blaws his horn both lowd and shril.
The wind hath blown my plaid awa
2
He blowes it east, he blowes it west,
He blowes it where he lyketh best.
3
'I wish that horn were in my kist,
Yea, and the knight in my armes two.'
4
She had no sooner these words said,
When that the knight came to her bed.
5
'Thou art over young a maid,' quoth he,
'Married with me thou il wouldst be.'
6
'I have a sister younger than I,
And she was married yesterday.'
7
'Married with me if thou wouldst be,
A courtesie thou must do to me.
8
'For thou must shape a sark to me,
Without any cut or heme,' quoth he.
9
'Thou must shape it knife-and-sheerlesse,
And also sue it needle-threedlesse.'
10
'If that piece of courtesie I do to thee,
Another thou must do to me.
11
'I have an aiker of good ley-land,
Which lyeth low by yon sea-strand.
12
'For thou must eare it with thy horn,
So thou must sow it with thy corn.
13
'And bigg a cart of stone and lyme,
Robin Redbreast he must trail it hame.
14
'Thou must barn it in a mouse-holl,
And thrash it into thy shoes soll.
15
'And thou must winnow it in thy looff,
And also seck it in thy glove.
16
'For thou must bring it over the sea,
And thou must bring it dry home to me.
17
'When thou hast gotten thy turns well done,
Then come to me and get thy sark then.'
18
'I'l not quite my plaid for my life;
It haps my seven bairns and my wife.'
The wind shall not blow my plaid awa
19
'My maidenhead I'l then keep still,
Let the elphin knight do what he will.'
The wind's not blown my plaid awa
B
A Collection of Curious Old Ballads, etc., p. 3. Partly
from an old copy in black letter, and partly from the
recitation of an old lady.
My plaid awa, my plaid awa,
And owre the hills and far awa,
And far awa to Norrowa,
My plaid shall not be blawn awa.
1
The Elphin knight sits on yon hill,
Ba, ba, ba, lillie ba
He blaws his horn baith loud and shrill.
The wind hath blawn my plaid awa
2
He blaws it east, he blaws it west,
He blaws it where he liketh best.
3
'I wish that horn were in my kist,
Yea, and the knight in my arms niest.'
4
She had no sooner these words said,
Than the knight came to her bed.
5
'Thou art oer young a maid,' quoth he,
'Married with me that thou wouldst be.'
6
'I have a sister, younger than I,
And she was married yesterday.'
7
'Married with me if thou wouldst be,
A curtisie thou must do to me.
8
'It's ye maun mak a sark to me,
Without any cut or seam,' quoth he.
9
'And ye maun shape it, knife-, sheerless,
And also sew it needle-, threedless.'
10
'If that piece of courtisie I do to thee,
Another thou must do to me.
11
'I have an aiker of good ley land,
Which lyeth low by yon sea strand.
12
'It's ye maun till 't wi your touting horn,
And ye maun saw 't wi the pepper corn.
13
'And ye maun harrow 't wi a thorn,
And hae your wark done ere the morn.
14
'And ye maun shear it wi your knife,
And no lose a stack o 't for your life.
15
'And ye maun stack it in a mouse hole,
And ye maun thrash it in your shoe sole.
16
'And ye maun dight it in your loof,
And also sack it in your glove.
17
'And thou must bring it over the sea,
Fair and clean and dry to me.
18
'And when that ye have done your wark,
Come back to me, and ye'll get your sark.'
19
'I'll not quite my plaid for my life;
It haps my seven bairns and my wife.'
20
'My maidenhead I'll then keep still,
Let the elphin knight do what he will.'
C
Kinloch's A. S. Ballads, p. 145. From the recitation of M.
Kinnear, a native of Mearnsshire, 23 Aug., 1826.
1
There stands a knicht at the tap o yon hill,
Oure the hills and far awa
He has blawn his horn loud and shall.
The cauld wind's blawn my plaid awa
2
'If I had the horn that I hear blawn,
And the knicht that blaws that horn!'
3
She had na sooner thae words said,
Than the elfin knicht cam to her side.
4
'Are na ye oure young a may
Wi onie young man doun to lie?'
5
'I have a sister younger than I,
And she was married yesterday.'
6
'Married wi me ye sall neer be nane
Till ye mak to me a sark but a seam.
7
'And ye maun shape it knife-, sheer-less,
And ye maun sew it needle-, threed-less.
8
'And ye maun wash it in yon cistran,
Whare water never stood nor ran.
9
'And ye maun dry it on yon hawthorn,
Whare the sun neer shon sin man was born.'
10
'Gin that courtesie I do for thee,
Ye maun do this for me.
11
'Ye'll get an acre o gude red-land
Atween the saut sea and the sand.
12
'I want that land for to be corn,
And ye maun aer it wi your horn.
13
'And ye maun saw it without a seed,
And ye maun harrow it wi a threed.
14
'And ye maun shear it wi your knife,
And na tyne a pickle o't for your life.
15
'And ye maun moue it in yon mouse-hole
And ye maun thrash it in your shoe-sole.
16
'And ye maun fan it wi your luves,
And ye maun sack it in your gloves.
17
'And ye maun bring it oure the sea,
Fair and clean and dry to me.
18
'And whan that your wark is weill deen,
Yese get your sark without a seam.'
D
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 296.
1
The Elfin knight stands on yon hill,
Blaw, blaw, blaw winds, blaw
Blawing his horn loud and shrill.
And the wind has blawin my plaid awa
2
'If I had yon horn in my kist,
And the bonny laddie here that I luve best!
3
'I hae a sister eleven years auld,
And she to the young men's bed has made bauld.
4
'And I mysell am only nine,
And oh! sae fain, luve, as I woud be thine.'
5
'Ye maun make me a fine Holland sark,
Without ony stitching or needle wark.
6
'And ye maun wash it in yonder well,
Where the dew never wat, nor the rain ever fell.
7
'And ye maun dry it upon a thorn
That never budded sin Adam was born.'
8
'Now sin ye've askd some things o me,
It's right I ask as mony o thee.
9
'My father he askd me an acre o land,
Between the saut sea and the strand.
10
'And ye maun plow 't wi your blawing horn,
And ye maun saw 't wi pepper corn.
11
'And ye maun harrow 't wi a single tyne,
And ye maun shear 't wi a sheep's shank bane.
12
'And ye maun big it in the sea,
And bring the stathle dry to me.
13
'And ye maun barn 't in yon mouse hole,
And ye maun thrash 't in your shee sole.
14
'And ye maun sack it in your gluve,
And ye maun winno 't in your leuve.
15
'And ye maun dry 't without candle or coal,
And grind it without quirn or mill.
16
'Ye'll big a cart o stane and lime,
Gar Robin Redbreast trail it syne.
17
'When ye've dune, and finishd your wark,
Ye'll come to me, luve, and get your sark.'
E
Motherwell's MS., p. 492.
1
The Elfin Knight sits on yon hill,
Ba ba lilly ba
Blowing his horn loud and shill.
And the wind has blawn my plaid awa
2
'I love to hear that horn blaw;
I wish him [here] owns it and a'.'
3
That word it was no sooner spoken,
Than Elfin Knight in her arms was gotten.
4
'You must mak to me a sark,
Without threed, sheers or needle wark.'
F
Kinloch MSS, I, 75. From Mary Barr.
1
'Did ye ever travel twist Berwick and Lyne?
Sober and grave grows merry in time
There ye'll meet wi a handsome young dame,
Ance she was a true love o mine.
2
'Tell her to sew me a holland sark,
And sew it all without needle-wark:
And syne we'll be true lovers again.
3
'Tell her to wash it at yon spring-well,
Where neer wind blew, nor yet rain fell.
4
'Tell her to dry it on yon hawthorn,
That neer sprang up sin Adam was born.
5
'Tell her to iron it wi a hot iron,
And plait it a' in ae plait round.'
6
'Did ye ever travel twixt Berwick and Lyne?
There ye'll meet wi a handsome young man,
Ance he was a true lover o mine.
7
'Tell him to plough me an acre o land
Betwixt the sea-side hot and the sea-sand,
And syne we'll be true lovers again.
8
'Tell him to saw it wi ae peck o corn,
And harrow it a' wi ae harrow tine.
9
'Tell him to shear it wi ae hook-tooth,
And carry it hame just into his loof.
10
'Tell him to stack it in yon mouse-hole,
And thrash it a' just wi his shoe-sole.
11
'Tell him to dry it on yon ribless kiln,
And grind it a' in yon waterless miln.
12
Tell this young man, whan he's finished his wark,
He may come to me, and hese get his sark.'
G
Gammer Gurten's Garland, p. 3, ed. 1810.
1
'Can you make me a cambrick shirt,
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Without any seam or needle work?
And you shall be a true lover of mine
2
'Can you wash it in yonder well,
Where never sprung water nor rain ever fell?
3
'Can you dry it on yonder thorn,
Which never bore blossom since Adam was born?'
4
'Now you have askd me questions three,
I hope you'll answer as many for me.
5
'Can you find me an acre of land
Between the salt water and the sea sand?
6
'Can you plow it with a ram's horn,
And sow it all over with one pepper corn?
7
'Can you reap it with a sickle of leather,
And bind it up with a peacock's feather?
8
'When you have done, and finishd your work,
Then come to me for your cambrick shirt.'
H
Motherwell's MS., p. 92.
1
'Come, pretty Nelly, and sit thee down by me,
Every rose grows merry wi thyme
And I will ask thee questions three,
And then thou wilt be a true lover of mine.
2
'Thou must buy me a cambrick smock
Without any stitch of needlework.
3
'Thou must wash it in yonder strand,
Where wood never grew and water neer ran.
4
'Thou must dry it on yonder thorn,
Where the sun never shined on since Adam was formed.'
5
'Thou hast asked me questions three;
Sit down till I ask as many of thee.
6
'Thou must buy me an acre of land
Betwixt the salt water, love, and the sea-sand.
7
'Thou must plow it wi a ram's horn,
And sow it all over wi one pile o corn.
8
'Thou must shear it wi a strap o leather,
And tie it all up in a peacock feather.
9
'Thou must stack it in the sea,
And bring the stale o 't hame dry to me.
10
'When my love's done, and finished his work,
Let him come to me for his cambric smock.'
I
Motherwell's MS., p. 103. From the recitation of John
McWhinnie, collier, Newtown Green, Ayr.
1
A lady wonned on yonder hill,
Hee ba and balou ba
And she had musick at her will.
And the wind has blown my plaid awa
2
Up and cam an auld, auld man,
Wi his blue bonnet in his han.
3
'I will ask ye questions three;
Resolve them, or ye'll gang wi me.
4
'Ye maun mak to me a sark,
It maun be free o woman's wark.
5
'Ye maun shape it knife-sheerless,
And ye maun sew it needle-threedless.
6
'Ye maun wash it in yonder well,
Whare rain nor dew has ever fell.
7
'Ye maun dry it on yonder thorn,
Where leaf neer grew since man was born.'
8
'I will ask ye questions three;
Resolve them, or ye'll neer get me.
9
'I hae a rig o bonnie land
Atween the saut sea and the sand.
10
'Ye maun plow it wi ae horse bane,
And harrow it wi ae harrow pin.
11
'Ye maun shear 't wi a whang o leather,
And ye maun bind 't bot strap or tether.
12
'Ye maun stack it in the sea,
And bring the stale hame dry to me.
13
'Ye maun mak a cart o stane,
And yoke the wren and bring it hame.
14
'Ye maun thresh't atween your lufes,
And ye maun sack't atween your thies.'
15
'My curse on those wha learnëd thee;
This night I weend ye'd gane wi me.'
J
Communicated by Rev. F. D. Huntington, Bishop of Western
New York, as sung to him by his father in 1828, at Hadley,
Mass.; derived from a rough, roystering "character" in the
town.
1
Now you are a-going to Cape Ann,
Follomingkathellomeday
Remember me to the self-same man.
Ummatiddle, ummatiddle, ummatallyho, tallyho, follomingkathellomeday
2
Tell him to buy me an acre of land
Between the salt-water and the sea-sand.
3
Tell him to plough it with a ram's horn,
Tell him to sow it with one peppercorn.
4
Tell him to reap it with a penknife,
And tell him to cart it with two mice.
5
Tell him to cart it to yonder new barn
That never was built since Adam was born.
6
Tell him to thrash it with a goose quill,
Tell him to fan it with an egg-shell.
7
Tell the fool, when he's done his work,
To come to me, and he shall have his shirt.
K
Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England, 6th ed., p. 109, No
171.
1
My father left me three acres of land,
Sing ivy, sing ivy
My father left me three acres of land.
Sing holly, go whistle and ivy
2
I ploughed it with a ram's horn,
And sowed it all over with one pepper corn.
3
I harrowed it with a bramble bush,
And reaped it with my little penknife.
4
I got the mice to carry it to the barn,
And thrashed it with a goose's quill.
5
I got the cat to carry it to the mill;
The miller he swore he would have her paw,
And the cat she swore she would scratch his face.
#L#
Notes and Queries, 1st S., VII, 8. Signed D.
1
My father gave me an acre of land,
Sing ivy, sing ivy
My father gave me an acre of land.
Sing green bush, holly and ivy
2
I ploughd it with a ram's horn.
3
I harrowd it with a bramble.
4
I sowd it with a pepper corn.
5
I reapd it with my penknife.
6
I carried it to the mill upon the cat's back.
* * * * * * *
7
I made a cake for all the king's men.
* * * * *
#A.#
_The verses here prefaced to the ballad are appended to
the last stanza in the broadside._ _For_ Norrowa, _v. 3,
Pinkerton has_ To-morrow. 9^1, needle and sheerlesse.
#B.#
'A Proper New Ballad entitled The Wind hath blawn my Plaid
awa, or a Discourse between a Young Woman and the Elphin
Knight. To be sung with its own proper tune.'
"This ballad is printed partly from an old copy in black
letter, and partly from the recitation of an old lady,
which appears to be the Scottish version, and is here
chiefly adhered to."
#D.#
3^2. hae made.
9^1. askd _should perhaps be_ left, _or_ gave, _as in_
#K^1#, #L^1#.
#E.#
_Burden_^2, _in MS._, 1, blown her; 2, 3, blawn her; 4,
blawn my.
2^1, blow;
2^2, and a.
#H.#
1^1. He speaks, _in the margin of MS_.
_Burden_^1, _time in margin_.
5^1. Maid speaks, _in margin_.
#I.#
_Not divided regularly into stanzas in the MS._
4^2. needlewark _in margin_.
10^1. shin? _in margin_.
#L.#
_After_ 6: "Then follows some more which I forget, but I
think it ends thus."
[13] All that was required of the burden, Mr Chappell kindly writes me,
was to support the voice by harmonious notes under the melody; it was
not sung _after_ each half of the stanza, or after the stanza, and it
was heard separately only when the voices singing the air stopped. Even
the Danish ballads exhibit but a few cases of these "burden-stems," as
Grundwig calls them: see Danmarks Gamle Folkeviser, II, 221, B 1; 295, B
1; 393, A 1: III, 197, D; 470, A. Such burden-stems are, however, very
common in Icelandic ballads. They are, for the most part, of a different
metre from the ballad, and very often not of the same number of lines as
the ballad stanza. A _part_ of the burden stem would seem to be taken
for the refrain; as Íslenzk Fornkvæði, I, 30, of four verses, 1, 2, 4;
129, of two, the last half of the first and all the second; 194, of
four, the last; 225, of five, the last two; II, 52, of five, the second
and last two.
In later times the Danish stev-stamme was made to conform to the metre
of the ballad, and sung as the first stanza, the last line perhaps
forming the burden. Compare the stev-stamme, Grundwig, III, 470, with
the first stanza of the ballad at p. 475. If not so changed, says
Grundtvig, it dropped away. Lyngbye, at the end of his Færöiske Qvæder,
gives the music of a ballad which he had heard sung. The whole stem is
sung first, and then repeated as a burden at the end of every verse. The
modern way, judging by Berggreen, Folke-Sange og Melodier, 3d ed., I,
352, 358, is simply to sing the whole stem after each verse, and so says
Grundtvig, III, 200, D. The whole stem is appended to the last stanza
(where, as usual, the burden, which had been omitted after stanza 1, is
again expressed) in the Færöe ballad in Grundtvig, III, 199, exactly as
in our broadside, or in Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. iii. I
must avow myself to be very much in the dark as to the exact relation of
stem and burden.
[14] Grundtvig has noticed the resemblance of G.R. 64 and the
ballad.--Much of what follows is derived from the admirable Benfey's
papers, 'Die kluge Dirne, Die indischen Märchen von den klugen
Räthsellösern, und ihre Verbreitung über Asien und Europa,' Ausland,
1859, p. 457, 486, 511, 567, 589, in Nos 20, 21, 22, 24, 25.
[15] Ragnar Loðbrók (Saga, c. 4, Rafn, Fornaldar Sögur, I, 245), as
pointed out by the Grimms, notes to No 94, requires Kraka (Aslaug) to
come to him clothed and not clothed, fasting and not fasting, alone and
not without a companion. She puts on a fishing net, bites a leek, and
takes her dog with her. References for the very frequent occurrence of
this feature may be found in Oesterley's note to Gesta Romanorum, No
124, at p. 732.
[16] Benfey, Das Ausland, 1859, p. 459. The versions referred to are:
Shukasaptati (Seventy Tales of a Parrot), 47th and 48th night; the
Buddhist Kanjur, Vinaya, III, fol. 71-83, and Dsanglun, oder der Weise
u. der Thor, also from the Kanjur, translated by I.J. Schmidt, c. 23;
the Mongol translation of Dsanglun [see Popow, Mongolische
Chrestomathie, p. 19, Schiefner's preface to Radloff, I, xi, xii]; an
imperfect Singhalese version in Spence Hardy's Manual of Buddhism, p.
220, 'The History of Wisákhá;' 'Geschichte des weisen Heykar,' 1001
Nacht, Habicht, v. d. Hagen u. Schall, XIII, 71, ed. 1840; 'Histoire de
Sinkarib et de ses deux Visirs,' Cabinet des Fées, XXXIX, 266 (Persian);
two old Russian translations of Greek tales derived from Arabic, Pypin,
'in the Papers of the Second Division of the Imperial Acad. of Sciences,
St Petersburg, 1858, IV, 63-85;' Planudes, Life of Æsop; A. and A.
Schott, Walachische Mæhrchen, p. 125, No 9, 'Vom weissen und vom rothen
Kaiser;' Erdélyi, Népdalok és Mondák, III, 262, No 8, 'The Little Boy
with the Secret and his Little Sword.' To these is to be added,
'L'Histoire de Moradbak,' Caylus, Nouveaux Contes Orientaux, Œuvres
Badines, VII, 289 ff, Cabinet des Fées, XXV, 9-406 (from the Turkish?).
In the opinion of Benfey, it is in the highest degree likely, though not
demonstrable, that the Indian tale antedates our era by several
centuries. Ausland, p. 511; see also pp. 487, 459.
[17] Ingenuity is one of the six transcendental virtues of
Mahāyāna Buddhism. Schlagintweit, Buddhism in Tíbet, p. 36.
[18] The resemblance to the Siberian tale is here especially striking.
[19] The Shukasaptati, in the form in which we have them, are supposed
to date from about the 6th century, and are regarded as abridgments of
longer tales. The Vinaya probably took a permanent shape as early as the
beginning of the Christian era. As already remarked, there is scarcely a
doubt that the Indian story is some centuries older still.
[20] Amasis in return (8) puts some of the questions which we are apt to
think of as peculiarly mediæval: What is oldest? What is most beautiful,
biggest, wisest, strongest? etc. Two of these we have had in Zingerle's
story. They are answered in a commonplace way by the Æthiop, with more
refinement by Thales. Seven similar questions were propounded by David
to his sons, to determine who was worthiest to succeed him, and answered
by Solomon, according to an Arabian writer of the 14th century: Rosenöl,
I, 167. Amasis also sent a victim to Bias (2), and asked him to cut out
the best and worst of the flesh. Bias cut out the tongue. Here the two
anticipate the Anglo-Saxon Salomon and Saturn: "Tell me what is best and
worst among men." "I tell thee word is best and worst:" Kemble, p. 188,
No 37; Adrian and Ritheus, p. 204, No 43; and Bedæ Collectanea, p. 326.
This is made into a very long story in the Life of Æsop, 11. See other
examples in Knust, Mittheilungen aus dem Eskurial, p. 326 f, note b, and
Nachtrag, p. 647; Oesterley's Kirchhof, V, 94, note to 3, 129; and
Landsberger, Die Fabeln des Sophos, CX, ff. We may add that Plutarch's
question, Which was first, the bird or the egg? (Quæst. Conviv. l. 2, q.
3), comes up again in The Demaundes Joyous, No 41, Kemble's Salomon and
Saturn, p. 290.
[21] Afanasief, Poetic Views of the Slavonians about Nature, I, 25. The
poludnitsa seems to belong to the same class: Afanasief, III, 76;
Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 147.
[22] The legend of St Andrew in Legenda Aurea, Grässe, cap. II, 9, p. 19
ff; also in the Fornsvenskt Legendarium, I, 143 ff; Zambrini, Leggende
Inedite, II, 94 ff; Pitré, Canti pop. Siciliani, II, 232 ff: that of St
Bartholomew, Grässe, p. 545, cap. CXXIII, 5, and in a German Passional,
Mone's Anzeiger, 1839, VIII, col. 319 f: that of St Ulrich in Achazel
and Korytko, I, 76, 'Svéti Ureh,' translated by A. Grün, Volkslieder aus
Krain, p. 136 ff. The third question and answer are in all the same. St
Serf also has the credit of having baffled the devil by answering occult
questions in divinity: Wintown's Scottish Chronicle, I, 131, V, 1238 ff,
first pointed out by Motherwell, Minstrelsy, p. lxxiv, who besides cites
the legend of St Andrew.
3
THE FAUSE KNIGHT UPON THE ROAD
#A.# 'The Fause Knight upon the Road,' Motherwell's
Minstrelsy, Introduction, p. lxxiv.
#B.# 'The False Knight,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Appendix, Musick, p. xxiv.
This singular ballad is known only through Motherwell. The opening
stanza of a second version is given by the editor of the music, Mr.
Blaikie, in the Appendix to the Minstrelsy. The idea at the bottom of
the piece is that the devil will carry off the wee boy if he can nonplus
him. So, in certain humorous stories, a fool wins a princess by
dumfounding her: e.g., Halliwell's Popular Rhymes and Nursery-Tales, p.
32; Von der Hagen's Gesammtabenteuer, No 63, iii, 179; Asbjørnsen og
Moe, Norske Folkeeventyr, No 4. But here the boy always gets the last
word. (See further on, under 'Captain Wedderburn's Courtship.')
An extremely curious Swedish ballad of the same description, from the
Lappfiord, Finland, with the substitution of an old crone, possibly a
witch, and clearly no better than one of the wicked, for the false
knight, is given by Oskar Rancken in Några Prof af Folksång och Saga i
det svenska Österbotten, p. 25, No 10. It is a point in both that the
replicant is a wee boy (gossen, som liten var).
1
'Why are you driving over my field?' said the carlin:
'Because the way lies over it,' answered the boy, who was a little
fellow.
2
'I will cut [hew] your traces,' said etc.:
'Yes, you hew, and I'll build,' answered etc.
3
'I wish you were in the wild wood:'
'Yes, you in, and I outside.'
4
'I wish you were in the highest tree-top:'
'Yes, you up in the top, and I at the roots.'
5
'I wish you were in the wild sea:'
'Yes, you in the sea, and I in a boat.'
6
'I'll bore a hole in your boat:'
'Yes, you bore, and I'll plug.'
7
'I wish you were in hell:'
'Yes, you in, and I outside.'
8
'I wish you were in heaven:'
'Yes, I in, and you outside.'
Chambers, in his Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 66 of the new edition,
gives, without a word of explanation, a piece, 'Harpkin,' which seems to
have been of the same character, but now sounds only like a
"flyting."[23] The first stanza would lead us to expect that Harpkin is
to be a form of the Elfin Knight of the preceding ballad, but Fin is
seen to be the uncanny one of the two by the light of the other ballads.
Finn (Fin) is an ancestor of Woden, a dwarf in Völuspá 16 (19), and also
a trold (otherwise a giant), who is induced by a saint to build a
church: Thiele, Danske Folkesagn, I, 45, Grimm, Mythologie, p. 455. The
name is therefore diabolic by many antecedents.
HARPKIN.
1
Harpkin gaed up to the hill,
And blew his horn loud and shrill,
And by came Fin.
2
'What for stand you there?' quo Fin:
'Spying the weather,' quo Harpkin.
3
'What for had you your staff on your shouther?' quo Fin:
'To haud the cauld frae me,' quo Harpkin.
4
'Little cauld will that haud frae you,' quo Fin:
'As little will it win through me,' quo Harpkin.
5
'I came by your door,' quo Fin:
'It lay in your road,' quo Harpkin.
6
'Your dog barkit at me,' quo Fin:
'It's his use and custom,' quo Harpkin.
7
'I flang a stane at him,' quo Fin:
'I'd rather it had been a bane,' quo Harpkin.
8
'Your wife's lichter,' quo Fin:
'She'll clim the brae the brichter,' quo Harpkin.
9
'Of a braw lad bairn,' quo Fin:
'There'll be the mair men for the king's wars,' quo Harpkin.
10
'There's a strae at your beard,' quo Fin:
'I'd rather it had been a thrave,' quo Harpkin.
11
'The ox is eating at it,' quo Fin:
'If the ox were i the water,' quo Harpkin.
12
'And the water were frozen,' quo Fin:
'And the smith and his fore-hammer at it,' quo Harpkin.
13
'And the smith were dead,' quo Fin:
'And another in his stead,' quo Harpkin.
14
'Giff, gaff,' quo Fin:
'Your mou's fou o draff,' quo Harpkin.
The peit (peat) in st. 3, below, as I am informed by Dr Davidson, is the
wee boy's contribution to the school firing.
A
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Introduction, p. lxxiv. From
Galloway.
1
'O whare are ye gaun?'
Quo the fause knicht upon the road:
'I'm gaun to the scule,'
Quo the wee boy, and still he stude.
2
'What is that upon your back? ' quo etc.
'Atweel it is my bukes,' quo etc.
3
'What's that ye've got in your arm?'
'Atweel it is my peit.'
4
'Wha's aucht they sheep?'
'They are mine and my mither's.'
5
'How monie o them are mine?'
'A' they that hae blue tails.'
6
'I wiss ye were on yon tree:'
'And a gude ladder under me.'
7
'And the ladder for to break:'
'And you for to fa down.'
8
'I wiss ye were in yon sie:'
'And a gude bottom under me.'
9
'And the bottom for to break:'
'And ye to be drowned.'
B
Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xxiv, No xxxii.
'O whare are ye gaun?' quo the false knight,
And false, false was his rede:
'I'm gaun to the scule,' says the pretty little boy,
And still, still he stude.
[23] At the last moment I come upon this: "The only safeguard against
the malice of witches is 'to flight wi dem,' that is, draw them into a
controversy and scold them roundly:" (Mrs Saxby, in an interesting
contribution of folk-lore from Unst, Shetland, in The Leisure Hour, for
March 27, 1880, p. 199.) This view, which has apparently affected
'Harpkin,' is clearly a modern misunderstanding. Let no one trust to
scolding for foiling a witch, unless he "knows more words."
4
LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT
#A. a.# 'The Gowans sae gay,' Buchan's Ballads of the
North of Scotland, I, 22. #b.# 'Aye as the Gowans grow
gay,' Motherwell's MS., p. 563.
#B.# 'The Water o Wearie's Well.' #a.# Buchan's MSS, II,
fol. 80. #b.# Buchan's B. N. S., II, 201. #c.#
Motherwell's MS., p. 561. #d.# 'Wearie's Wells,' Harris
MS., No 19.
#C. a.# 'May Colven,' Herd's MSS, I, 166. #b.# 'May
Colvin,' Herd's Scottish Songs, 1776, I, 93. #c.# 'May
Colvin, or, False Sir John,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p.
67.
#D. a.# 'May Collin,' Sharpe's Ballad Book, No 17, p. 45.
#b.# 'Fause Sir John and May Colvin,' Buchan, B. N. S.,
II, 45. #c.# 'May Collean,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
Appendix, p. xxi.
#E.# 'The Outlandish Knight,' Dixon, Ancient Poems,
Ballads, etc., p. 74 == Bell, Ancient Poems, Ballads,
etc., p. 61.
#F.# 'The False Knight Outwitted,' Roxburgh Ballads,
British Museum, III, 449.
Of all ballads this has perhaps obtained the widest circulation. It is
nearly as well known to the southern as to the northern nations of
Europe. It has an extraordinary currency in Poland. The Germans, Low and
High, and the Scandinavians, preserve it, in a full and evidently
ancient form, even in the tradition of this generation. Among the Latin
nations it has, indeed, shrunk to very meagre proportions, and though
the best English forms are not without ancient and distinctive marks,
most of these have been eliminated, and the better ballads are very
brief.
#A# has but thirteen two-line stanzas. An elf-knight, by blowing his
horn, inspires Lady Isabel with love-longing. He appears on her first
breathing a wish for him, and induces her to ride with him to the
greenwood.[24] Arrived at the wood, he bids her alight, for she is come
to the place where she is to die. He had slain seven kings' daughters
there, and she should be the eighth. She persuades him to sit down, with
his head on her knee, lulls him asleep with a charm, binds him with his
own sword-belt, and stabs him with his own dagger, saying, If seven
kings' daughters you have slain, lie here a husband to them all.
#B#, in fourteen four-line stanzas, begins unintelligibly with a bird
coming out of a bush for water, and a king's daughter sighing, "Wae 's
this heart o mine." A personage not characterized, but evidently of the
same nature as the elf-knight in #A#, lulls everybody but this king's
daughter asleep with his harp,[25] then mounts her behind him, and rides
to a piece of water called Wearie's Well. He makes her wade in up to her
chin; then tells her that he has drowned seven kings' daughters here,
and she is to be the eighth. She asks him for one kiss before she dies,
and, as he bends over to give it, pitches him from his saddle into the
water, with the words, Since ye have drowned seven here, I'll make you
bridegroom to them all.[26]
#C# was first published by David Herd, in the second edition of his
Scottish Songs, 1776, and afterwards by Motherwell, "collated" with a
copy obtained from recitation. #D#,[27] #E#, #F# are all broadside or
stall copies, and in broadside style. #C#, #D#, #E#, #F# have nearly the
same story. False Sir John, a knight from the south country [west
country, north lands], entices May Colven, #C#, #D# [a king's daughter,
#C# 16, #E# 16; a knight's daughter, Polly, #F# 4, 9], to ride off with
him, employing, in #D#, a charm which he has stuck in her sleeve. At the
knight's suggestion, #E#, #F#, she takes a good sum of money with her,
#D#, #E#, #F#. They come to a lonely rocky place by the sea [river-side,
#F#], and the knight bids her alight: he has drowned seven ladies here
[eight #D#, six #E#, #F#], and she shall be the next. But first she is
to strip off her rich clothes, as being too good to rot in the sea. She
begs him to avert his eyes, for decency's sake, and, getting behind him,
throws him into the water. In #F# he is absurdly sent for a sickle, to
crop the nettles on the river brim, and is pushed in while thus
occupied. He cries for help, and makes fair promises, #C#, #E#, but the
maid rides away, with a bitter jest [on his steed, #D#, leading his
steed, #E#, #F#], and reaches her father's house before daybreak. The
groom inquires in #D# about the strange horse, and is told that it is a
found one. The parrot asks what she has been doing, and is silenced with
a bribe; and when the father demands why he was chatting so early, says
he was calling to his mistress to take away the cat. Here #C#, #E#, #F#
stop, but #D# goes on to relate that the maid at once tells her parents
what has happened, and that the father rides off at dawn, under her
conduct, to find Sir John. They carry off the corpse, which lay on the
sands below the rocks, and bury it, for fear of discovery.
There is in Hone's Table Book, III, 130, ed. 1841, a _rifacimento_ by
Dixon of the common English broadside in what passes for old-ballad
style. This has been repeated in Richardson's Borderer's Table Book, VI,
367; in Dixon's Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p.
101; and, with alterations, additions, and omissions, in Sheldon's
Minstrelsy of the English Border, p. 194.
Jamieson (1814) had never met with this ballad in Scotland, at least in
anything like a perfect state; but he says that a tale to the same
effect, intermixed with scraps of verse, was familiar to him when a boy,
and that he afterwards found it, "in much the same state, in the
Highlands, in Lochaber and Ardnamurchan." According to the tradition
reported by Jamieson, the murderer had seduced the younger sister of his
wife, and was seeking to prevent discovery, a difference in the story
which might lead us to doubt the accuracy of Jamieson's recollection.
(Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, p. 348.)
Stories like that of this ballad will inevitably be attached, and
perhaps more or less adapted, to localities where they become known. May
Collean, says Chambers, Scottish Ballads, p. 232, note, "finds locality
in that wild portion of the coast of Carrick (Ayrshire) which intervenes
betwixt Girvan and Ballantrae. Carlton Castle, about two miles to the
south of Girvan (a tall old ruin, situated on the brink of a bank which
overhangs the sea, and which gives title to Sir John Cathcart, Bart, of
Carlton), is affirmed by the country people, who still remember the
story with great freshness, to have been the residence of 'the fause Sir
John;' while a tall rocky eminence called Gamesloup, overhanging the sea
about two miles still further south, and over which the road passes in a
style terrible to all travellers, is pointed out as the place where he
was in the habit of drowning his wives, and where he was finally drowned
himself. The people, who look upon the ballad as a regular and proper
record of an unquestionable fact, farther affirm that May Collean was a
daughter of the family of Kennedy of Colzean," etc. Binyan's (Bunion)
Bay, in #D#, is, according to Buchan, the old name of the mouth of the
river Ugie.
Far better preserved than the English, and marked with very ancient and
impressive traits, is the Dutch ballad 'Halewijn,' which, not many years
ago, was extensively sung in Brabant and Flanders, and is still popular
as a broadside, both oral tradition and printed copies exhibiting
manifold variations. A version of this ballad (#A#) was communicated by
Willems to Mone's Anzeiger in 1836, col. 448 ff, thirty-eight two-line
stanzas, and afterwards appeared in Willems's Oude vlaemsche Liederen
(1848), No 49, p. 116, with some changes in the text and some various
readings. Uhland, I, 153, 74 D, gave the Anzeiger text, with one
correction. So Hoffmann, Niederländische Volkslieder, 2d ed., No 9, p.
39, but substituting for stanzas 19, 20 four stanzas from the margin of
O.v.L., and making other slighter changes. Baecker, Chants historiques
de la Flandre, No 9, p. 61, repeats Willems's second text, with one
careless omission and one transposition. Coussemaker, Chants populaires
des Flamands de France, No 45, p. 142, professes to give the text of
Oude vlaemsche Liederen, and does so nearly. Snellaert, Oude en nieuwe
Liedjes, 3d ed., 1864, No 55, p. 58, inserts seven stanzas in the place
of 33, 34 of O.v.L., and two after 35, making forty-five two- (or
three-) line stanzas instead of thirty-eight. These additions are also
found in an excessively corrupt form of the ballad (#B#), Hoffmann, No
10, p. 43, in which the stanzas have been uniformly extended to three
verses, to suit the air, which required the repetition of the second
line of the original stanza.
Heer Halewijn (#A#), like the English elf-knight, sang such a song that
those who heard it longed to be with him. A king's daughter asked her
father if she might go to Halewijn. No, he said; those who go that way
never come back [sixteen have lost their lives, #B#]. So said mother and
sister, but her brother's answer was, I care not where you go, so long
as you keep your honor. She dressed herself splendidly, took the best
horse from her father's stable, and rode to the wood, where she found
Halewijn waiting for her.[28] They then rode on further, till they came
to a gallows, on which many women were hanging. Halewijn says, Since you
are the fairest maid, choose your death [#B# 20 offers the choice
between hanging and the sword]. She calmly chooses the sword. "Only take
off your coat first, for a maid's blood spirts a great way, and it would
be a pity to spatter you." His head was off before his coat, but the
tongue still spake. This dialogue ensues:
'Go yonder into the corn,
And blow upon my horn,
That all my friends you may warn.'
'Into the corn I will not go,
And on your horn I will not blow:
A murderer's bidding I will not do.'
'Go yonder under the gallows-tree,
And fetch a pot of salve for me,
And rub my red neck lustily.'
'Under the gallows I will not go,
Nor will I rub your red neck, no,
A murderer's bidding I will not do.'
She takes the head by the hair and washes it in a spring, and rides back
through the wood. Half-way through she meets Halewijn's mother, who asks
after her son; and she tells her that he is gone hunting, that he will
never be seen again, that he is dead, and she has his head in her lap.
When she came to her father's gate, she blew the horn like any man.
And when the father heard the strain,
He was glad she had come back again.
Thereupon they held a feast,
The head was on the table placed.
Snellaert's copy and the modern three-line ballad have a meeting with
father, brother, sister, and mother successively. The maid's answer to
each of the first three is that Halewijn is amusing himself with sixteen
maids, or to that effect, but to the mother that he is dead, and she has
his head in her lap. The mother angrily replies, in #B#, that if she had
given this information earlier she would not have got so far on her way
home. The maid retorts, Wicked woman, you are lucky not to have been
served as your son; then rides, "like Judith wise," straight to her
father's palace, where she blows the horn blithely, and is received with
honor and love by the whole court.[29]
Another Flemish version (#C#) has been lately published under the title,
'Roland,' by which only, we are informed, is this particular form known
in Bruges and many parts of Flanders:[30] Chants populaires recueillis
à Bruges par Adolphe Lootens et J. M. E. Feys, No 37, p. 60, 183 vv, in
sixty-three stanzas, of two, three, four, or five lines. This text dates
from the last century, and is given with the most exact fidelity to
tradition. It agrees with #A# as to some main points, but differs not a
little as to others. The story sets out thus:
It was a bold Roland,
He loved a lass from England;
He wist not how to get her,
With reading or with writing,
With brawling or with fighting.
Roland has lost Halewyn's art of singing. Louise asks her father if she
may go to Roland, to the fair, as all her friends do. Her father
refuses: Roland is "een stoute kalant," a bad fellow that betrays pretty
maids; he stands with a drawn sword in his hand, and all his soldiers in
armor. The daughter says she has seen Roland more than once, and that
the tale about the drawn sword and soldiers is not true. This scene is
exactly repeated with mother and brother. Louise then tries her
shrift-father. He is easier, and does not care where she goes, provided
she keeps her honor and does not shame her parents. She tells father,
mother, and brother that she has leave from her confessor, makes her
toilet as in #A#, takes the finest horse in the stable, and rides to the
wood. There she successively meets Roland's father, mother, and brother,
each of whom asks her where she is going, and whether she has any right
to the crown she wears. To all she replies, Whether I have or not, be
off; I know you not. She does not encounter Roland in the wood, they do
not ride together, and there is no gallows-field. She enters Roland's
house, where he is lying abed. He bids her gather three rose-wreaths "at
his hands" and three at his feet; but when she approaches the foot of
the bed he rises, and offers her the choice to lose her honor or kneel
before the sword. She chooses the sword, advises him to spare his coat,
and, while he is taking it off, strikes off his head, all as in #A#. The
head speaks: Go under the gallows (of which we have heard nothing
hitherto), fetch a pot of salve, rub it on my wounds, and they shall
straight be well. She declines to follow a murderer's rede, or to learn
magic. The head bids her go under the blue stone and fetch a pot of
maidens-grease, which also will heal the wounds. This again she refuses
to do, in the same terms; then seizes the head by the hair, washes it in
a spring, and rides off with it through the wood, duly meeting Roland's
father, mother, and brother once more, all of whom challenge her, and to
all of whom she answers,
Roland your son is long ago dead;
God has his soul and I his head;
For in my lap here I have his head,
And with the blood my apron is red.
When she came back to the city the drums and the trumpets struck up.[31]
She stuck the head out of the window, and cried, "Now I am Roland's
bride!" She drew it in, and cried, "Now I am a heroine!"
#Danish.# Eleven versions of this ballad are known in Danish, seven of
which are given in Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, No 183, 'Kvindemorderen,'
#A-G#. Four more, #H-L#, are furnished by Kristensen, Jydske Folkeviser,
I, Nos 46, 47, 91; II, No 85. #A#, in forty-one two-line stanzas
(previously printed in Grundtvig's Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p.
233), is from a 16th century MS.; #B#, thirty stanzas, #C#,
twenty-four, #D#, thirty-seven, from MSS of the 17th century; #E#,
fifty-seven, from a broadside of the end of the 18th; #F#, thirty, from
one of the beginning of the 19th; and #G-L#, thirty-five, twenty-three,
thirty-one, twenty-six, thirty-eight stanzas, from recent oral
tradition.
The four older versions, and also #E#, open with some lines that occur
at the beginning of other ballads.[32] In #A# and #E#, and, we may add,
#G#, the maid is allured by the promise of being taken to a paradise
exempt from death and sorrow; #C#, #D#, #F# promise a train of handmaids
and splendid presents. All the versions agree very well as to the kernel
of the story. A false knight prevails upon a lady to elope with him, and
they ride to a wood [they simply meet in a wood, #H#, #K#]. He sets to
work digging a grave, which she says is too long for his [her] dog and
too narrow for his [her] horse [all but #F#, #H#]. She is told that the
grave is for her. He has taken away the life [and honor, #B#, #C#, #I#]
of eight maids, and she shall be the ninth. The eight maids become nine
kings' daughters in #E#, ten in #F#, nineteen in #G#, and in #E# and #F#
the hard choice is offered of death by sword, tree, or stream. In #A#,
#E#, #I#, #L# the knight bids the lady get her gold together before she
sets out with him, and in #D#, #H#, #K#, #L# he points out a little
knoll under which he keeps the gold of his previous victims. The maid
now induces the knight to lie down with his head in her lap, professing
a fond desire to render him the most homely of services[33] [not in #C#,
#G#, #I#, #K#]. He makes an express condition in #E#, #F#, #G#, #H#, #L#
that she shall not betray him in his sleep, and she calls Heaven to
witness that she will not. In #G# she sings him to sleep. He slept a
sleep that was not sweet. She binds him hand and foot, then cries, Wake
up! I will not betray you in sleep.[34] Eight you have killed; yourself
shall be the ninth. Entreaties and fair promises and pretences that he
had been in jest, and desire for shrift, are in vain. Woman-fashion she
drew his sword, but man-fashion she cut him down. She went home a maid.
#E#, #F#, #G#, however, do not end so simply. On her way home through
the wood [#E#], she comes upon a maid who is working gold, and who says,
The last time I saw that horse my brother rode it. She answers, Your
brother is dead, and will do no more murdering for gold; then turns her
horse, and sets the sister's bower on fire. Next she encounters seven
robbers on the heath, who recognize the horse as their master's, and are
informed of his death and of the end of his crimes. They ask about the
fire. She says it is an old pig-sty. She rides on, and they call to her
that she is losing her horse's gold shoe. But nothing can stop her; she
bids them pick it up and drink it in wine; and so comes home to her
father's. #F# has nothing of the sister; in place of seven robbers there
are nine of the robber's brothers, and the maid sets their house on
fire. #G# indulges in absurd extravagances: the heroine meets the
robber's sister with twelve fierce dogs, and then his twelve swains, and
cuts down both dogs and swains.
The names in the Danish ballads are, #A#, Ulver and Vænelil; #B#, Olmor,
or Oldemor, and Vindelraad; #C#, Hollemen and Vendelraad; #D#, Romor,
Reimord, or Reimvord, and the maid unnamed; #F#, Herr Peder and Liden
Kirsten; #H-L#, Ribold, Rigbold [#I#, Rimmelil] and Guldborg.
Four #Swedish# versions are known, all from tradition of this century.
#A#, 'Den Falske Riddaren,' twenty-three two-line stanzas, Arwidsson, 44
B, I, 301. #B#, 'Röfvaren Brun,' fifteen stanzas, Afzelius, 83, III, 97.
#C#, twenty-seven stanzas, Arwidsson, 44 A, I, 298. #D#, 'Röfvaren
Rymer,' sixteen stanzas, Afzelius, 82, III, 94. #A#, #B#, #D# have
resemblances, at the beginning, to the Ribold ballads, like the Danish
#A#, #B#, #E#, #G#, while the beginning of #C# is like the Danish #C#,
#D#, #F#. #A# has the grave-digging; there have been eight maids before;
the knight lays his head in the lady's lap for the same reason as in
most of the Danish ballads, and under the same assurance that he shall
not be betrayed in sleep; he is bound, and conscientiously waked before
his head is struck off; and the lady rides home to her father's. There
have been eight previous victims in #C#, and they king's daughters; in
#B#, eleven (maids); #D# says not how many, but, according to an
explanation of the woman that sang it, there were seven princesses. #C#,
#D#, like Danish #E#, #F#, #G#, make the maid encounter some of the
robber's family on the way home. By a misconception, as we perceive by
the Dutch ballad, she is represented as blowing the robber's horn. Seven
sisters come at the familiar sound to bury the murdered girl and share
the booty, but find that they have their brother to bury.
The woman has no name in any of the Swedish ballads. #A# calls the
robber "an outlandish man" (en man ifrån fremmande land), #B#, simple
Brun, #C#, a knight, and #D#, Riddaren Rymer, or Herr Rymer.
Of #Norwegian# versions, but two have been printed: #A#, 'Svein
Norðmann,' twenty two-line stanzas, Landstad, 69, p. 567; #B#,
'Rullemann og Hildeborg,' thirty stanzas, Landstad, 70, p. 571, both
from recent recitation. Bugge has communicated eight others to
Grundtvig. Both #A# and #B# have the paradise at the beginning, which is
found in Danish #A#, #E#, #G#, and Swedish #D#. In both the lady gets
her gold together while the swain is saddling his horse. They come to a
grave already dug, which in #B# is said to be made so very wide because
Rulleman has already laid nine maidens in it. The stanza in #A# which
should give the number is lost, but the reciter or singer put it at
seven or nine. The maid gets the robber into her power by the usual
artifice, with a slight variation in #B#. According to #A#, she rides
straight home to her father. #B#, like Danish #F#, has an encounter with
her false lover's [five] brothers. They ask, Where is Rullemann, thy
truelove? She answers, He is lying down, in the green mead, and bloody
is his bridal bed.
Of the unprinted versions obtained by Professor Bugge, two indicate that
the murderer's sleep was induced by a spell, as in English #A#. #F# 9
has,
Long time stood Gullbjör; to herself she thought,
May none of my _runes_ avail me ought?
And #H# 18, as also a variant to #B# 20, says it was a rune-slumber that
came over him. Only #G#, #H#, #I#, #K# give the number of the murdered
women: in #G#, #H#, eight, in #I#, nine, in #K#, five.
The names are, in #A#, Svein Norðmann and Guðbjörg; #B#, Rulleman and
Hildeborg [or Signe]; #C#, #D#, #E#, #F#, Svein Nórmann and Gullbjör
[Gunnbjör]; #G#, Rullemann and Kjersti; #H#, Rullball and Signelill;
#I#, Alemarken and Valerós; #K#, Rulemann and a fair maid.
Such information as has transpired concerning #Icelandic# versions of
this ballad is furnished by Grundtvig, IV, 4. The Icelandic form, though
curtailed and much injured, has shown tenacity enough to preserve itself
in a series of closely agreeing copies from the 17th century down. The
eldest, from a manuscript of 1665, runs thus:
1
Ása went along the street, she heard a sweet sound.
2
Ása went into the house, she saw the villain bound.
3
'Little Ása, loose me! I will not beguile thee.'
4
'I dare not loose thee, I know not whether thou'lt beguile me.'
5
'God almighty take note who deceives the other!'
6
She loosed the bands from his hand, the fetter from his foot.
7
'Nine lands have I visited, ten women I've beguiled;
8
'Thou art now the eleventh, I'll not let thee slip.'
A copy, from the beginning of the 18th century, has, in stanza 2, "Ása
went into the _wood_," a recent copy, "over the fields;" and stanza 3,
in the former, with but slight differences in all the modern copies,
reads,
'Welcome art thou, Ása maid! thou wilt mean to loose me.'
Some recent copies (there is one in Berggreen, Danske Folkesange, 2d
ed., I, 162) allow the maid to escape, adding,
9
'Wait for me a little space, whilst I go into the green wood.'
10
He waited for her a long time, but she never came back to him.
11
Ása took her white steed, of all women she rode most.
12
Ása went into a holy cell, never did she harm to man.
This is certainly one of the most important of the #German# ballads, and
additions are constantly making to a large number of known versions.
Excepting two broadsides of about 1560, and two copies from recitation
printed in 1778, all these, twenty-six in number, have been obtained
from tradition since 1800.[35] They are as follows: #A a#, 'Gert
Olbert,' 'Die Mörners Sang,' in Low German, as written down by William
Grimm, in the early years of this century, 61 vv, Reifferscheid, p. 161,
II. #A b#, "from the Münster region," communicated to Uhland by the
Baroness Annette von Droste-Hüllshof, 46 vv, Uhland, I, 151, No 74 C;
repeated in Mittler, No 79. #A c#, a fragment from the same source as
the preceding, and written down at the beginning of this century, 35 vv,
Reifferscheid, p. 161, I. #B#, 'Es wollt sich ein Markgraf ausreiten,'
from Bökendorf, Westphalia, as taken down by W. Grimm, in 1813, 41 vv,
Reifferscheid, p. 116. #C a#, 'Die Gerettete,' "from the Lower Rhine,"
twenty-six two-line stanzas, Zuccalmaglio, No 28, p. 66; Mittler, No 85.
#C b#, eleven two-line stanzas, Montanus (==Zuccalmaglio) Die deutschen
Volksfeste, p. 45. #D#, 'Von einem wackern Mägdlein, Odilia geheissen,'
etc., from the Rhine, 34 vv [Longard], No 24, p. 48. #E#, 'Schondilie,'
Menzenberg and Breitbach, 59 vv, Simrock, No 7, p. 19; Mittler, No 86.
#F#, 'Jungfrau Linnich,' communicated by Zuccalmaglio as from the Rhine
region, Berg and Mark, fourteen two-line stanzas, Erlach, IV, 598, and
Kretzschmer (nearly), No 92, p. 164; Mittler, No 87. #G a#, 'Ulinger,'
120 vv, Nuremberg broadside "of about 1555" (Böhme) in Wunderhorn, ed.
1857, IV, 101, Böhme, No 13^a, p. 56. #G b c#, Basel broadsides, "of
about 1570" (Böhme), and of 1605, in Uhland, No 74 A, I, 141; Mittler,
No 77. #H#, 'Adelger,' 120 vv, an Augsburg broadside, "of about 1560"
(Böhme), Uhland, No 74 B, I, 146; Böhme, No 13^b, p. 58; Mittler, No
76. #I#, 'Der Brautmörder,' in the dialect of the Kuhländchen (Northeast
Moravia and Austrian Silesia), 87 vv, Meinert, p. 61; Mittler, No 80.
#J#, 'Annele,' Swabian, from Hirrlingen and Obernau, 80 vv, Meier,
Schwäbische V. L., No 168, p. 298. #K#, another Swabian version, from
Hirrlingen, Immenried, and many other localities, 80 vv, Scherer,
Jungbrunnen, No 5 B, p. 25. #L a#, from the Swabian-Würtemberg border,
81 VV, Birlinger, Schwäbisch-Augsburgisches Wörterbuch, p. 458. #L b#,
[Birlinger], Schwäbische V. L., p. 159, from Immenried, nearly word for
word the same. #M#, 'Der falsche Sänger,' 40 vv, Meier, No 167, p. 296.
#N#, 'Es reitets ein Ritter durch Haber und Klee,' 43 vv, a fifth
Swabian version, from Hirrlingen, Meier, p. 302. #O#, 'Alte Ballade die
in Entlebuch noch gesungen wird,' twenty-three double stanzas, in the
local dialect, Schweizerblätter von Henne und Reithard, 1833, II^R
Jahrgang, 210-12. #P#, 'Das Guggibader-Lied,' twenty-one treble stanzas
(23?), in the Aargau dialect, Rochholz, Schweizersagen aus dem Aargau,
#I# 24. #Q#, 'Es sitzt gut Ritter auf und ritt,' a copy taken down in
1815 by J. Grimm, from the recitation of a lady who had heard it as a
child in German Bohemia, 74 vv, Reifferscheid, p. 162. #R#, 'Bie wrüe
işt auv der ritterşmàn, 'in the dialect of Gottschee, Carniola,
86 vv, Schröer, Sitzungsberichte der Wiener Ak., phil-hist. Cl, LX, 462.
#S#, 'Das Lied von dem falschen Rittersmann,' 60 vv, from Styria,
Rosegger and Heuberger, Volkslieder aus Steiermark, No 19, p. 17. #T#,
'Ulrich und Ännchen,'[36] 49 vv, Herder's Volkslieder, 1778, I, 79;
Mittler, No 78. #U#, 'Schön Ulrich und Roth-Aennchen,' 46 vv, in
Taschenbuch für Dichter und Dichterfreunde, Abth. viii, 126, 1778, from
Upper Lusatia (slightly altered by the contributor, Meissner); Mittler,
No 84. A copy from Kapsdorf, in Hoffmann and Richter's Schlesische V.
L., No 13,
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