The short section of Ballads of Sacred Origin contains all that we
possess in England--notice that only two have Scottish variants, even
fragmentary--and somewhat more than can be classified as ballads with
strictness. Yet I would fain have added other of our 'masterless'
carols, which to-day seem to survive chiefly in the West of England.
One of their best lovers, Mr. Quiller-Couch, has complained that, after
promising himself to include a representative selection of carols in his
anthology, he was chagrined to discover that they lost their quaint
delicacy when placed among other more artificial lyrics. Perhaps they
would have been more at home set amongst these ballads; but I have
excluded them with the less regret in remembering that they stand well
alone in the collections of Sylvester, Sandys, Husk; in the reprints of
Thomas Wright; and, in more recent years, in the selections of Mr. A. H.
Bullen and Canon Beeching.
_The Maid and the Palmer_ would appear to be the only ballad of Christ's
wanderings on the earth that we possess, just as _Brown Robyn's
Confession_ is the only one of the miracles of the Virgin. One may
guess, however, that others have descended rapidly into nursery rhymes,
as in the case of one, noted in J. O. Halliwell's collection, which, in
its absence, may be called _The Owl, or the Baker's Daughter_. For
Ophelia knew that they said the owl was the baker's daughter. And the
story of her metamorphosis is exactly paralleled by the Norse story of
_Gertrude's Bird_, translated by Dasent.
Gertrude was an old woman with a red mutch on her head, who was kneading
dough, when Christ came wandering by, and asked for a small bannock.
Gertrude took a niggardly pinch of dough, and began to roll it into a
bannock; but as she rolled, it grew, until she put it aside as too
large to give away, and took a still smaller pinch. This also grew
miraculously, and was put aside. The same thing happened a third time,
till she said, 'I cannot roll you a small bannock.' Then Christ said,
'For your selfishness, you shall become a bird, and seek your food
'twixt bark and bole.' Gertrude at once became a bird, and flew up
into a tree with a screech. And to this day the great woodpecker of
Scandinavia is called 'Gertrude's Bird,' and has a red head.