+The Text+ was derived from Mr. Biot Edmondston's memory of a ballad
sung to him by an old man in Unst, Shetland. In the version sung, he
notes, there were no stanzas to fill the obvious gap in the story after
the first; but that after the fourth and the eighth stanzas, there had
been certain verses which he had forgotten. In the first instance, these
related that the lady had been carried off by fairies, and that the
king, going in search of her, saw her one day among a company that
passed into a castle on the hillside. After the eighth stanza, the
ballad related that a messenger appeared behind the grey stone, and
invited the king in.
The refrain is a startling instance of phonetic tradition, the words
being repeated by rote long after the sense has been forgotten. It
appears that the two lines are Unst pronunciation of Danish, and that
they mean, respectively, 'Early green's the wood,' and 'Where the hart
goes yearly.'
In this connection, compare Arthur Edmondston's _A View of the Ancient
and Present State of the Zetland Islands_ (1809), vol. i. p. 142: 'The
island of Unst was its [pure Norse] last abode; and not more than thirty
years ago several individuals there could speak it fluently.' See also
Rev. Dr. Barry's _History of the Orkney Islands_ (1805), Appendix
No. X., pp. 484-490, a ballad of thirty-five quatrains in Norse as
spoken in the Orkneys, the subject of which is a contest between a King
of Norway and an Earl of Orkney, who had married the King's daughter, in
her father's absence, and without his consent.
+The Story.+--Doubtless few will recognise in this fragment an offshoot
of the classical story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The ballad, however,
cannot be said to be derived directly from the classical tale: rather it
represents the _débris_ of the mediæval romance of _Orfeo and Heurodis_,
where the kingdom of Faëry (see 4.1) replaces Hades, and the tale is
given a happy ending by the recovery of Eurydice (for whom the Lady
Isabel is here the substitute). The romance exists as _Orfeo and
Heurodis_ in the Auchinleck MS., of the fourteenth century, in the
Advocates' Library, Edinburgh; as _Kyng Orfew_ in Ashmole MS. 61, of the
fifteenth century; and as _Sir Orpheo_ in Harleian MS. 3810.