There was a youthful swain one day
Did ted the new mown grass;
There came a gay and lovely may
From out the nigh morass.
Clad in a dress of silk was she,
Green as the leaves which deck the tree,
Her head so winsomely to see
With bulrush plaited was.
That lass he wooed, his suit she heeds,
And married are the pair;
To bridal bed his wife he leads—
But what befell him there?
He found, fear-stricken and amaz’d,
That he a rough oak trunk embrac’d,
Instead of the enchanting waist
Of his mysterious fair.
Then straight abroad a voice he heard,
Which sang the window through;
These were the words the voice proffer’d
If my report be true:
“Come out to her whom thou didst wed!
Upon my mead thy couch is spread.”
From this he guessed with some elf maid
That he had had to do.