certainly a more primitive conception than that she should depend upon
her brother, and the priority of this arrangement of the plot is
supported, if not independently proved, by the concurrence, as to this
point, of so many copies among so many nations, as also by the
accordance of various popular tales. The second German form must
therefore, so far forth, be regarded as a modification of the first.
Among the several devices, again, which the woman employs in order to
get the murderer into her power, the original would seem to be her
inducing him to lay his head in her lap, which gives her the opportunity
(by the use of charms or runes, in English #A#, Danish #G#, Norwegian
#F#, #H#, and one form of #B#) to put him into a deep sleep. The success
of this trick no doubt implies considerable simplicity on the part of
the victim of it; not more, however, than is elsewhere witnessed in
preternatural beings, whose wits are frequently represented as no match
for human shrewdness. Some of the Scandinavian ballads are not liable to
the full force of this objection, whatever that may be, for they make
the knight express a suspicion of treachery, and the lady solemnly
asseverate that she will not kill [fool, beguile] him in his sleep. And
so, when he is fast bound, she cries out, Wake up, for I will not kill
thee _in thy sleep_! This last circumstance is wanting in hardly any of
the Scandinavian ballads, whereas the previous compact is found only in
Danish #E#, #F#, #G#, #H#, #L#, Swedish #A#, Norwegian #A#, and the
Icelandic ballad. Not occurring in any of the older Danish copies, it
may be that the compact is an after-thought, and was inserted to
qualify the improbability. But the lady's equivocation is quite of a
piece with Memering's oath in 'Ravengaard and Memering,' Grundtvig, No
13, and King Dietrich's in the Dietrichsaga, Unger, c. 222, p. 206.[74]
English #A# and all the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian ballads employ
the stratagem of lulling the man to sleep, but these are not the only
ballads in which the man lays his head in the woman's lap. This trait is
observed in nearly all German ballads of the second and third class, in
_all_ the well-preserved ones, and also in the Magyar ballad. With
regard to the German ballads, however, it is purposeless (for it does
not advance the action of the drama in the least), and must be regarded
as a relic of an earlier form.[75] English #B-F# and all the French
ballads dispose of the traitor by a watery death. The scene is shifted
from a wood to a sea-coast, pool, or river bank, perhaps to suit the
locality to which the ballad had wandered. In English #B#, where,
apparently under the influence of other ballads,[76] the lady is forced
to wade into water up to her chin, the knight is pushed off his horse
when bending over to give a last kiss for which he had been asked; in
English #C-F# and French #A#, #B#, the man is induced to turn his face
to save the woman's modesty; in French #C-E# he is made to pull off her
stockings or shoes, and then, while off his guard, pitched into a sea or
river. This expedient is sufficiently trivial; but still more so, and
grazing on the farcical, is that which is made use of in the Dutch
ballad and those of the German first class, the woman's persuading the
man to take off his fine coat lest it should be spattered with her
blood, and cutting off his head with his own sword while he is thus
occupied. The Spanish and Portuguese ballads make the lady borrow the
knight's knife to remove some of the trimming of her dress, and in the
Italian she borrows his sword to cut a bough to shade her horse; for in
Italian the halt in the wood is completely forgotten, and the last half
of the action takes place on horseback. All these contrivances plainly
have less claim to be regarded as primary than that of binding the
murderer after he has been put to sleep.
The knight in English #A# is called an Elf, and as such is furnished
with an enchanting horn, which is replaced by a harp of similar
properties in #B#, where, however, the male personage has neither name
nor any kind of designation. The elf-horn of English #A# is again
represented by the seductive song of the Dutch ballad and of German
#G-R# and #Z#. Though the lady is not lured away in the Scandinavian
ballads by irresistible music,[77] Danish #A#, #E#, Norwegian #A#, #B#,
and Swedish #D# present to her the prospect of being taken to an
elf-land, or elysium, and there are traces of this in Danish #G# and #D#
also, and in Polish #Q#. The tongue that talks after the head is off, in
the Dutch ballad and in German #A#, #B#, #C#, #E#, is another mark of an
unearthly being. Halewyn, Ulver, Gert Olbert, like the English knight,
are clearly supernatural, though of a nondescript type. The elf in
English #A# is not to be interpreted too strictly, for the specific elf
is not of a sanguinary turn, as these so conspicuously are. He is
comparatively innocuous, like the hill-man Young Akin, in another
English ballad, who likewise entices away a woman by magical music, but
only to make her his wife. But the elf-knight and the rest seem to
delight in bloodshed for its own sake; for, as Grundtvig has pointed
out, there is no other apparent motive for murder in English #A#, #B#,
the Norwegian ballads, Danish #A#, Swedish #A#, #B#, or German
#A-E#.[78] This is true again, for one reason or another, of others of
the German ballads, of the French, of most of the Italian, and of the
Hungarian ballads.
The nearest approach to the Elf-knight, Halewyn, etc., is perhaps
Quintalin, in the saga of Samson the Fair. He was son of the miller
Galin. Nobody knew who his mother was, but many were of the mind that
Galin might have had him of a "goddess," an elf or troll woman, who
lived under the mill force. He was a thief, and lay in the woods; was
versed in many knave's tricks, and had also acquired agreeable arts. He
was a great master of the harp, and would decoy women into the woods
with his playing, keep them as long as he liked, and send them home
pregnant to their fathers or husbands. A king's daughter, Valentina, is
drawn on by his music deep into the woods, but is rescued by a friendly
power. Some parts of her dress and ornaments, which she had laid off in
her rapid following up of the harping, are afterwards found, with a
great quantity of precious things, in the subaqueous cave of Quintalin's
mother, who is a complete counterpart to Grendel's, and was probably
borrowed from Beówulf.[79] This demi-elf Quintalin is a tame personage
by the side of Grendel or of Halewyn. Halewyn does not devour his
victims, like Grendel: Quintalin does not even murder his. He allures
women with his music to make them serve his lust. We may infer that he
would plunder them, for he is a notorious thief. Even two of the oldest
Danish ballads, #B#, #C#, and again Danish #I# and Swedish #C#, make the
treacherous knight as lecherous as bloody, and so with German #J#, #K#,
#L#, #O#, #P#, #Q#, #R#, #S#, and Italian #A#, #B#, #C#, #E#, #F#. This
trait is wanting in Danish #D#, where, though traces of the originally
demonic nature of the knight remain, the muckle gold of the maids
already appears as the motive for the murders. In the later Danish
#E-H#, #K#, #L#, and Swedish #C#, #D#, the original elf or demon has
sunk to a remorseless robber, generally with brothers, sisters, or
underlings for accomplices.[80] This is preëminently his character in
English #C-F#, in nearly all the forty Polish ballads, and in the two
principal ballads of the German second class, #G#, #H#, though English
#D#, German #H#, and Polish #Q# retain a trace of the supernatural: the
first in the charm by means of which the knight compels the maid to quit
her parents, the second in the bloody spring, and the last in the golden
mountains. There is nothing that unequivocally marks the robber in the
other German ballads of the second class and in those of the third. The
question 'Weinst du um deines Vaters Gut?' in #I-L#, #O-S#, #T-W#, is
hardly decisive, and only in #W# and #Z# is it expressly said that the
maid had taken valuable things with her (as in Swedish #D#, Norwegian
#A#, #B#, English #D-F#). #J-L#, #O-S#, give us to understand that the
lady had lost her honor,[81] but in all the rest, except the anomalous
#Z#, the motive for murder is insufficient.[82]
The woman in these ballads is for the most part nameless, or bears a
stock name to which no importance can be attached. Not so with the names
of the knight. Most of these are peculiar, and the Northern ones,
though superficially of some variety, have yet likeness enough to tempt
one to seek for a common original. Grundtvig, with considerable
diffidence, suggests Oldemor as a possible ground-form. He conceives
that the #R# of some of the Scandinavian names may be a relic of a
foregoing Herr. The initial #H# would easily come or go. Given such a
name as Hollemen (Danish #C#), we might expect it to give place to
Halewyn, which is both a family and a local name in Flanders, if the
ballad should pass into the Low Countries from Denmark, a derivation
that Grundtvig is far from asserting. So Ulinger, a local appellation,
might be substituted for the Ulver of Danish #A#. Grundtvig, it must be
borne in mind, declines to be responsible for the historical correctness
of this genealogy, and would be still less willing to undertake an
explanation of the name Oldemor.
In place of Oldemor, Professor Sophus Bugge, in a recent article, marked
by his characteristic sharp-sightedness and ingenuity, has proposed
Hollevern, Holevern, or Olevern as the base-form of all the Northern
names for the bloody knight, and he finds in this name a main support
for the entirely novel and somewhat startling hypothesis that the ballad
we are dealing with is a wild shoot from the story of Judith and
Holofernes.[83] His argument, given as briefly as possible, is as
follows.
That the Bible story was generally known in the Middle Ages no one would
question. It was treated in a literary way by an Anglo-Saxon poet, who
was acquainted with the scriptural narrative, and in a popular way by
poets who had no direct acquaintance with the original.[84] The source
of the story in the ballad must in any case be a tradition many times
removed from the biblical story; that much should be changed, much
dropped, and much added is only what would be expected.
Beginning the comparison with 'Judith' with this caution, it is first
submitted that Holofernes can be recognized in most of the Scandinavian
and German names of the knight. The v of the proposed base-form is
preserved in Ulver, Halewyn, and probably in the English Elf-knight. It
is easy to explain a v's passing over to g, as in Ulinger, Adelger, and
especially under the influence of the very common names in -ger. Again,
v might easily become b, as in Olbert, or m, as in Hollemen, Olmor; and
the initial R of Rulleman, Romor, etc., may have been carried over from
a prefixed Herr.[85]
The original name of the heroine has been lost, and yet it is to be
noticed that Gert Olbert's mother, in German #A#, is called Fru Jutte.
The heroine in this same ballad is named Helena (Linnich in #F#); in
others (German #C#, #D#, #E#), Odilia. These are names of saints, and
this circumstance may tend to show that the woman in the ballad was
originally conceived of as rather a saint than a secular character,
though in the course of time the story has so changed that the devout
widow who sought out her country's enemy in his own camp has been
transformed into a young maid who is enticed from home by a treacherous
suitor.
It is an original trait in the ballad that the murderer, as is expressly
said in many copies, is from a foreign land. According to an English
version (#E#), he comes from the north, as Holofernes does, "venit Assur
ex montibus ab aquilone" (Jud. xvi, 5).
The germ of this outlandish knight's bloodthirstiness is found in the
truculent part that Holofernes plays in the Bible, his threats and
devastations. That the false suitor appears without companions is in
keeping with the ballad style of representation; yet we might find
suggestions of the Assyrian's army in the swains, the brothers, the
stable-boy, whom the maid falls in with on her way home.
The splendid promises made in many of the ballads might have been
developed from the passage where Holofernes, whose bed is described as
wrought with purple, gold, and precious stones, says to Judith, Thou
shalt be great in the house of Nebuchadnezzar, and thy name shall be
named in all the earth (xi, 21).
In many forms of the ballad, especially the Dutch and the German, the
maid adorns herself splendidly, as Judith does: she even wears some sort
of crown in Dutch #A# 16, German #D# 8, as Judith does in x, 3, xvi, 10
(mitram).
In the English #D#, #E#, #F#, the oldest Danish, #A#, and the Polish
versions, the maid, like Judith, leaves her home in the night.
The Piedmontese casté, Italian #E# 1 [there is a castle in nearly all
the Italian ballads, and also in Dutch #B#], may remind us of
Holofernes' castra.
The knight's carrying off the maid, lifting her on to his horse in many
copies, may well come from a misunderstanding of elevaverunt in Judith
x, 20: Et cum in faciem ejus intendisset, adoravit eum, prosternens se
super terram. Et elevaverunt eam servi Holofernis, jubente domino
suo.[86]
In German #A# Gert Olbert and Helena are said to ride three days and
nights, and in Danish #D# the ride is for three days; and we may
remember that Judith killed Holofernes the fourth day after her arrival
in his camp.
The place in which the pair alight is, according to German #G# 20, a
deep dale, and this agrees with the site of Holofernes' camp in the
valley of Bethulia. There is a spring or stream in many of the ballads,
and also a spring in the camp, in which Judith bathes (xii, 7).
Most forms of the ballad make the knight, after the halt, inform the
maid that she is to die, as many maids have before her in the same
place; e.g., German #G# 7:
'Der Ulinger hat eylff Jungfrawen gehangen,
Die zwölfft hat er gefangen.'[87]
This corresponds with the passage in Judith's song (xvi, 6), $Dixit se$
... infantes meos $dare$ in prædam et $virgenes in captivitatem$: but it
is reasonable to suppose that the ballad follows some version of the
Bible words that varied much from the original.
The incident of the maid's lousing and tousing her betrayer's hair,
while he lies with his head in her lap, may have come from Judith
seizing Holofernes by the hair before she kills him, but the story of
Samson and Delilah may have had influence here.
According to many German versions, the murderer grants the maid three
cries before she dies. She invokes Jesus, Mary, and her brother. Or she
utters three sighs, the first to God the Father, the second to Jesus,
the third to her brother. These cries or sighs seem to take the place of
Judith's prayer, Confirma me, Domine Deus Israel (xiii, 7), and it may
also be well to remember that Holofernes granted Judith, on her request,
permission to go out in the night to pray.
The Dutch, Low-German, Scandinavian, and other versions agree in making
the woman kill the knight with his own sword, as in Judith. The Dutch
and Low-German [also Danish #F#, Swedish #A#] have preserved an original
trait in making the maid hew off the murderer's head. English and French
versions dispose of the knight differently: the maid pushes him into sea
or river. Perhaps, in some older form of the story, after the head was
cut off, the _trunk_ was pushed into the water: cf. Judith xiii, 10:
Abscidit caput ejus et ... evolvit corpus ejus truncum. The words
apprehendit comam capitis ejus (xiii, 9) have their parallel in Dutch
#A#, 33: "Zy nam het hoofd al by het haer." The Dutch ballad makes the
maid carry the head with her.
"Singing and ringing" she rode through the wood: Judith sings a song of
praise to the Lord after her return home.
In English #C-F#, May Colven comes home before dawn, as Judith does. The
Dutch #A# says, When to her father's gate she came, she blew the horn
like a man. Compare Judith xiii, 13: Et dixit Judith a longe custodibus
murorum, Aperite portas!
The Dutch text goes on to say that when the father heard the horn he was
delighted at his daughter's return: and Judith v, 14, Et factum est, cum
audissent viri vocem ejus, vocaverunt presbyteros civitatis.
The conclusion of Dutch #A# is that there was a banquet held, and the
head was set on the table. So Judith causes Holofernes' head to be hung
up on the city wall, and after the enemy have been driven off, the Jews
hold a feast.
The Icelandic version, though elsewhere much mutilated, has a concluding
stanza which certainly belongs to the ballad:
Ása went into a holy cell,
Never did she harm to man.
This agrees with the view taken of the heroine of the ballad as a saint,
and with the Bible account that Judith lived a chaste widow after her
husband's demise.
Danish #D# is unique in one point. The robber has shown the maid a
little knoll, in which the "much gold" of the women he has murdered
lies. When she has killed him, the maid says, "_I_ shall have the much
gold," and takes as much as she can carry off. Compare with this
Holofernes putting Judith into his treasury (xii, 1),[88] her carrying
off the conopœum (xiii, 10), and her receiving from the people all
Holofernes' gold, silver, clothes, jewels, and furniture, as her share
of the plunder of the Assyrian camp (xv, 14). It is, perhaps, a
perversion of this circumstance that the robber in German #G#, #H#, is
refused permission to keep his costly clothes.
English #D# seems also to have preserved a portion of the primitive
story, when it makes the maid tell her parents in the morning all that
has happened, whereupon they go with her to the sea-shore to find the
robber's body. The foundation for this is surely the Bible account that
Judith makes known her act to the elders of the city, and that the Jews
go out in the morning and fall on the enemy's camp, in which Holofernes'
body is lying. In Swedish #C# the robber's sisters mourn over his body,
and in Judith xiv, 18 the Assyrians break out into loud cries when they
learn of Holofernes' death.
In all this it is simply contended that the story of Judith is the
remote source of the ballad, and it is conceded that many of the
correspondences which have been cited may be accidental. Neither the
Latin text of Judith nor any other written treatment of the story of
Judith is supposed to have been known to the author of the ballad. The
knowledge of its biblical origin being lost, the story would develop
itself in its own way, according to the fashion of oral tradition. And
so the pious widow into whose hands God gave over his enemies is
converted into a fair maid who is enticed by a false knight into a wood,
and who kills him in defence of her own life.
A similar transformation can be shown elsewhere in popular poetry. The
little Katie of certain northern ballads (see Grundtvig, No 101) is a
maid among other maids who prefers death to dishonor; but was originally
Saint Catherine, daughter of the king of Egypt, who suffered martyrdom
for the faith under the Emperor Maxentius. All the versions of the
Halewyn ballad which we possess, even the purest, may be far removed
from the primitive, both as to story and as to metrical form. New
features would be taken up, and old ones would disappear. One copy has
preserved genuine particulars, which another has lost, but Dutch
tradition has kept the capital features best of all.[89]
Professor Bugge's argument has been given with an approach to fulness
out of a desire to do entire justice to the distinguished author's case,
though most of the correspondences adduced by him fail to produce any
effect upon my mind.
The case is materially strengthened by the Dutch text #C# ('Roland'),
which was not accessible at the time Bugge's paper was written. The name
Roland is not so close to Holofern as Halewyn, but is still within the
range of conceivable metamorphosis. The points of coincidence between
Dutch #C# and the story of Judith are these: The woman, first making an
elaborate toilet,[90] goes out to seek the man, who is spoken of as
surrounded with soldiers; she is challenged on the way; finds Roland
lying on his bed, which he proposes she shall share (or lose her
life);[91] she cuts off his head, which, after her return home, she
exposes from her window.[92]
If this was the original form of the Dutch ballad, and the Dutch ballad
is the source from which all the other ballads have come, by processes
of dropping, taking up, and transforming, then we may feel compelled to
admit that this ballad might be a wild shoot from the story of Judith.
Any one who bears in mind the strange changes which stories undergo will
hesitate to pronounce this impossible. What poor Ophelia says of us
human creatures is even truer of ballads: "We know what we are, but know
not what we may be."
But when we consider how much would have to be dropped, how much to be
taken up, and how much to be transformed, before the Hebrew "gest" could
be converted into the European ballad, we naturally look for a less
difficult hypothesis. It is a supposition attended with less difficulty
that an independent European tradition existed of a half-human,
half-demonic being, who possessed an irresistible power of decoying away
young maids, and was wont to kill them after he got them into his hands,
but who at last found one who was more than his match, and lost his own
life through her craft and courage. A modification of this story is
afforded by the large class of Bluebeard tales. The Quintalin story
seems to be another variety, with a substitution of lust for
bloodthirst. The Dutch ballad may have been _affected_ by some lost
ballad of Holofern, and may have taken up some of its features, at least
that of carrying home Halewyn's [Roland's] head, which is found in no
other version.[93]
#A a# is translated by Grundtvig in Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No
37, p. 230: #B b# in the same, No 36, p. 227: #C a#, #b#, #D a#, #b#,
blended, No 35, p. 221. #A#, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische V. L. der
Vorzeit, No 1, p. 1: Gerhard, p. 15. #C b#, by Rosa Warrens, No 34, p.
148: Wolf, Halle der Völker, I, 38, Hausschatz, 225. #C#, #D#, etc., as
in Allingham, p. 244, by Knortz, Lied. u. Rom. Alt-Englands, No 4, p.
14.
A
#a.# Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 22.
#b.# Motherwell's MS., p. 563.
1
Fair lady Isabel sits in her bower sewing,
Aye as the gowans grow gay
There she heard an elf-knight blawing his horn.
The first morning in May
2
'If I had yon horn that I hear blawing,
And yon elf-knight to sleep in my bosom.'
3
This maiden had scarcely these words spoken,
Till in at her window the elf-knight has luppen.
4
'It's a very strange matter, fair maiden,' said he,
'I canna blaw my horn but ye call on me.
5
'But will ye go to yon greenwood side?
If ye canna gang, I will cause you to ride.'
6
He leapt on a horse, and she on another,
And they rode on to the greenwood together.
7
'Light down, light down, lady Isabel,' said he,
'We are come to the place where ye are to die.'
8
'Hae mercy, hae mercy, kind sir, on me,
Till ance my dear father and mother I see.'
9
'Seven king's-daughters here hae I slain,
And ye shall be the eight o them.'
10
'O sit down a while, lay your head on my knee,
That we may hae some rest before that I die.'
11
She stroakd him sae fast, the nearer he did creep,
Wi a sma charm she lulld him fast asleep.
12
Wi his ain sword-belt sae fast as she ban him,
Wi his ain dag-durk sae sair as she dang him.
13
'If seven king's-daughters here ye hae slain,
Lye ye here, a husband to them a'.'
B
#a.# Buchan's MSS, II, fol. 80. #b.# Buchan's Ballads of
the North of Scotland, II, 201. c. Motherwell's MS., p.
561. #d.# Harris MS., No 19.
1
There came a bird out o a bush,
On water for to dine,
An sighing sair, says the king's daughter,
'O wae 's this heart o mine!'
2
He 's taen a harp into his hand,
He 's harped them all asleep,
Except it was the king's daughter,
Who one wink couldna get.
3
He 's luppen on his berry-brown steed,
Taen 'er on behind himsell,
Then baith rede down to that water
That they ca Wearie's Well.
4
'Wide in, wide in, my lady fair,
No harm shall thee befall;
Oft times I've watered my steed
Wi the waters o Wearie's Well.'
5
The first step that she stepped in,
She stepped to the knee;
And sighend says this lady fair,
'This water 's nae for me.'
6
'Wide in, wide in, my lady fair,
No harm shall thee befall;
Oft times I've watered my steed
Wi the water o Wearie's Well.'
7
The next step that she stepped in,
She stepped to the middle;
'O,' sighend says this lady fair,
I 've wat my gowden girdle.'
8
'Wide in, wide in, my lady fair,
No harm shall thee befall;
Oft times have I watered my steed
Wi the water o Wearie's Well.'
9
The next step that she stepped in,
She stepped to the chin;
'O,' sighend says this lady fair,
'They sud gar twa loves twin.'
10
'Seven king's-daughters I 've drownd there,
In the water o Wearie's Well,
And I'll make you the eight o them,
And ring the common bell.'
11
'Since I am standing here,' she says,
'This dowie death to die,
One kiss o your comely mouth
I'm sure wad comfort me.'
12
He louted him oer his saddle bow,
To kiss her cheek and chin;
She 's taen him in her arms twa,
An thrown him headlong in.
13
'Since seven king's daughters ye 've drowned there,
In the water o Wearie's Well,
I'll make you bridegroom to them a',
An ring the bell mysell.'
14
And aye she warsled, and aye she swam,
And she swam to dry lan;
She thanked God most cheerfully
The dangers she oercame.
C
#a.# Herd's MSS, I, 166. #b.# Herd's Ancient and Modern
Scottish Songs, 1776, I, 93. #c.# Motherwell's Minstrelsy,
p. 67, == #b# "collated with a copy obtained from
recitation."
1
False Sir John a wooing came
To a maid of beauty fair;
May Colven was this lady's name,
Her father's only heir.