Child Maidelvold, and Other Ballads

Transcribed from the 1913 Thomas J. Wise pamphlet by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library, UK, for kindly supplying the images from which this transcription was made.
by GEORGE BORROW
London: printed for private circulation 1913
Copyright in the United States of America by Houghton , Mifflin & Co. for Clement Shorter .
The fair Sidselil, of all maidens the flower, With her mother the Queen sat at work in her bower.
So hard at the woof the fair Sidselil plies, That out from her bosom, so white, the milk flies.
“Now hear thou, O Sidselil, child of my heart, What causes the milk from thy bosom to start?”
“O that is not milk, my dear mother, I vow, It is but the mead I was drinking just now.”
“Unlike are the two, most unlike to the sight, The one it is brown, and the other is white.”
“I see it is best that the truth be declared, The handsome Child Maidelvold me has ensnared.”
“And if it be truth what thou now hast declared, And handsome Child Maidelvold thee has ensnared,
“Aloft on the gallows I’ll hang him, I trow, And burn thee to ashes the gallows below.”