Ellen of Villenskov, 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
There lies a wold in Vester Haf, There builds a boor his hold; And thither he carries hawk and hound, He’ll stay through winter’s cold.
He takes with him both hound and cock, He means there long to stay; The wild deer in the wood that are For his arrival pay.
He hews the oak and poplar tall, He fells the good beech tree; Then fill’d was the laidly Trold with spite That he should make so free.
He hews him posts, he hews him balks, He early toils and late; Out spake the Trolds within the hill: “Who knocks at such a rate?”
Then up and spake the youngest Trold, As emmet small to view: “O here is come a Christian man, But verily he shall rue.”
Upstood the smallest of the Trolds, And round he roll’d his eyes: “O we will hie to the yeoman’s house, And o’er him hold assize.
“He hews away our sheltering wood, Meanwhile shall we be tame? No! I from him his wife will take, And make him suffer shame.”
All the Trolds in the hill that were Wild for the fray upbound; They hie away to the yeoman’s house, Their tails all curling round.
Seven and a hundred were the Trolds, Their laidliness was great; To the yeoman’s house they’ll go as guests, With him to drink and eat.