THE QUEEN OF ELFAN’S NOURICE
The Text.—As printed in Sharpe’s Ballad Book, from the Skene MS. (No. 8). It is fragmentary—regrettably so, especially as stanzas 10-12 belong to Thomas Rymer.
The Story is the well-known one of the abduction of a young mother to be the Queen of Elfland’s nurse. Fairies, elves, water-sprites, and nisses or brownies, have constantly required mortal assistance in the nursing of fairy children. Gervase of Tilbury himself saw a woman stolen away for this purpose, as she was washing clothes in the Rhone.
The genuineness of this ballad, deficient as it is, is best proved by its lyrical nature, which, as Child says, ‘forces you to chant, and will not be read.’
‘Elfan,’ of course, is Elfland; ‘nourice,’ a nurse.