+The Text.+--As printed in Sharpe's Ballad Book, from the Skene MS.
(No. 8). It is fragmentary--regrettably so, especially as stanzas 10-12
belong to _Thomas Rymer_.
+The Story+ is the well-known one of the abduction of a young mother to
be the Queen of Elfland's nurse. Fairies, elves, water-sprites, and
nisses or brownies, have constantly required mortal assistance in the
nursing of fairy children. Gervase of Tilbury himself saw a woman stolen
away for this purpose, as she was washing clothes in the Rhone.
The genuineness of this ballad, deficient as it is, is best proved by
its lyrical nature, which, as Child says, 'forces you to chant, and will
not be read.'
'Elfan,' of course, is Elfland; 'nourice,' a nurse.