'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.