FOOTNOTES:
[403] Mr Macmath has ascertained that Mrs Brown was born in 1747. She learned most of her ballads before she was twelve years old, or before 1759. 1783, or a little earlier, is the date when these copies were taken down from her singing or recitation.
[404] The Borderer's Table Book, VII, 21. Dixon says, a little before, that the Stirling broadside of 'Lord Bateman' varies but slightly from the English printed by Hoggett, Durham, and Pitts, Catnach, and others, London. This is not true of the Stirling broadside of 'Young Bichen:' see N b. I did not notice, until too late, that I had not furnished myself with the broadside 'Lord Bateman,' and have been obliged to turn back the Cruikshank copy into ordinary orthography.
[405] We have this repetition in two other ballads of the Skene MSS besides D; see p. 316 of this volume, sts 1-9; also in 'The Lord of Learne,' Percy MS., Hales and Furnivall, I, 192 f, vv 269-304.
[406] "An old woman who died in Errol, Carse of Gowrie, about twenty years ago, aged nearly ninety years, was wont invariably to sing this ballad: 'Young Lundie was in Brechin born.' Lundie is an estate now belonging to the Earl of Camperdoun, north from Dundee." A. Laing, note to G. That is to say, the old woman's world was Forfarshire.
Mr Logan had heard in Scotland a version in which the hero was called Lord Bangol: A Pedlar's Pack, p. 15.
[407] Cf. 'The Fair Flower of Northumberland,' B 2, E 2, pp 115 f.
[408] She does not get away without exciting the solicitude or wrath of her father, F, M, J, N, and in the first two has to use artifice.
[409] A point borrowed, it well may be, from 'Hind Horn,' E 5 f, A 10.
[410] So Torello's wife upsets the table, in Boccaccio's story: see p. 198. One of her Slavic kinswomen jumps over four tables and lights on a fifth.
[411] In C 34, M 49, she is recognized by one of the hounds which she had given him. So Bos, seigneur de Bénac, who breaks a ring with his wife, goes to the East, and is prisoner among the Saracens seven years, on coming back is recognized only by his greyhound: Magasin Pittoresque, VI, 56 b. It is scarcely necessary to scent the Odyssey here.
[412] Ridiculously changed in J 6, K 6, L 20, to a coach and three, reminding us of that master-stroke in Thackeray's ballad of 'Little Billee,' "a captain of a seventy-three." 'Little Billee,' by the way, is really like an old ballad, fallen on evil days and evil tongues; whereas the serious imitations of traditional ballads are not the least like, and yet, in their way, are often not less ludicrous.
[413] In M, to make everything pleasant, Bondwell offers the bride five hundred pounds to marry his cousin John. She says, Keep your money; John was my first love. So Bondwell is married at early morn, and John in the afternoon.
[414] Harleian MS. 2277, from which the life of Beket, in long couplets, was printed by Mr W. H. Black for the Percy Society, in 1845. The story of Gilbert Beket is contained in the first 150 vv. The style of this composition entirely resembles that of Robert of Gloucester, and portions of the life of Beket are identical with the Chronicle; whence Mr Black plausibly argues that both are by the same hand. The account of Beket's parentage is interpolated into Edward Grim's Life, in Cotton MS. Vitellius, C, XII, from which it is printed by Robertson, Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, II, 453 ff. It is found in Bromton's Chronicle, Twysden, Scriptores X, columns 1052-55, and in the First Quadrilogus, Paris, 1495, from which it is reprinted by Migne, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, CXC, cols 346 ff. The tale has been accepted by many writers who would have been better historians for a little reading of romances. Angustin Thierry sees in Thomas Beket a Saxon contending in high place, for the interests and with the natural hatred of his race, against Norman Henry, just as he finds in the yeoman Robin Hood a leader of Saxon serfs engaged in irregular war with Norman Richard. But both of St Thomas's parents were Norman; the father of Rouen, the mother of Caen. The legend was introduced by Lawrence Wade, following John of Exeter, into a metrical life of Beket of about the year 1500: see the poem in Englische Studien, III, 417, edited by Horstmann.
[415] Richard, the proud porter of the ballads, is perhaps most like himself in M 32 ff.
[416] Neither her old name nor her Christian name is told us in this legend. Gilbert Beket's wife was Matilda, according to most authorities, but Roësa according to one: see Robertson, as above, IV, 81; Migne, cols 278 f. Fox has made Roësa into Rose, Acts and Monuments, I, 267, ed. 1641.
Gilbert and Rose (but Roësa is not Rose) recall to Hippeau, Vie de St Thomas par Garnier de Pont Sainte Maxence, p. xxiii, Elie de Saint Gille and Rosamonde, whose adventures have thus much resemblance with those of Beket and of Bekie. Elie de Saint Gille, after performing astounding feats of valor in fight with a horde of Saracens who have made a descent on Brittany, is carried off to their land. The amiral Macabré requires Elie to adore Mahomet; Elie refuses in the most insolent terms, and is condemned to the gallows. He effects his escape, and finds himself before Macabré's castle. Here, in another fight, he is desperately wounded, but is restored by the skill of Rosamonde, the amiral's daughter, who is Christian at heart, and loves the Frank. To save her from being forced to marry the king of Bagdad, Elie fights as her champion. In the end she is baptized, as a preparation for her union with Elie, but he, having been present at the ceremony, is adjudged by the archbishop to be gossip to her, and Elie and Rosamonde are otherwise disposed of. So the French romance, but in the Norse, which, as Kölbing maintains, is likely to preserve the original story here, there is no such splitting of cumin, and hero and heroine are united.
[417] There is one in the Gesta Romanorum, cap. 5, Österley, p. 278, of about the same age as the Beket legend. It is not particularly important. A young man is captured by a pirate, and his father will not send his ransom. The pirate's daughter often visits the captive, who appeals to her to exert herself for his liberation. She promises to effect his freedom if he will marry her. This he agrees to. She releases him from his chains without her father's knowledge, and flies with him to his native land.
[418] Nor Guarinos in the Spanish ballad, Duran, No 402, I, 265; Wolf and Hofmann, Primavera, II, 321. Guarinos is very cruelly treated, but it is his horse, not he, that has to draw carts. For the Sire de Créqui see also Dinaux, Trouvères, III, 161 ff (Köhler).
[419] And in 'Der Herr von Falkenstein,' a variety of the story, Meier, Deutsche Sagen aus Schwaben, p. 319, No 362. A Christian undergoes the same hardship in Schöppner, Sagenbuch, III, 127, No 1076. For other cases of the wonderful deliverance of captive knights, not previously mentioned by me, see Hocker, in Wolf's Zeitschrift für deutsche Mythologie, I, 306.
[420] A meisterlied of Alexander von Metz, of the second half of the fifteenth century, Körner, Historische Volkslieder, p. 49; the ballad 'Der Graf von Rom,' or 'Der Graf im Pfluge,' Uhland, p. 784, No 299, printed as early as 1493; De Historie van Florentina, Huysvrouwe van Alexander van Mets, 1621, van den Bergh, De nederlandsche Volksromans, p. 52. And see Goedeke, Deutsche Dichtung im Mittelalter, pp 569, 574; Uhland, Schriften zur Geschichte der Dichtung, IV, 297-309; Danske Viser, V, 67.
[421] Øster-kongens rige, Østerige, Østerland, Austrríki, understood by Grundtvig as Garðaríki, the Scandinavian-Russian kingdom of the tenth and eleventh centuries. Austrríki is used vaguely, but especially of the east of Europe, Russia, Austria, sometimes including Turkey (Vigfusson).
[422] In Swedish K, as she pushes off from land, she exclaims:
'Gud Fader i Himmelens rike
Skall vara min styresman!'
Cf. M 28:
And she's tuen God her pilot to be.
[423] See 'The Red Bull of Norroway,' Chambers, Popular Rhymes of Scotland, 1870, p. 99; 'Mestermø,' Asbjørnsen og Moe, No 46; 'Hass-Fru,' Cavallius och Stephens, No 14; Powell, Icelandic Legends, Second Series, p. 377; the Grimms, Nos 56, 113, 186, 193; Pentamerone, II, 7, III, 9; Gonzenbach, Nos 14, 54, 55, and Köhler's note; Hahn, Griechische u. Albanesische Märchen, No 54; Carleton, Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, 10th ed., I, 23; Campbell, West Highland Tales, I, 25, No 2, and Köhler's notes in Orient u. Occident, II, 103-114, etc., etc.
[424] This passage leads the editors of Primavera to remark, II, 52, that 'El Conde Sol' shows distinct traits of 'Le Chat Botté.' Similar questions are asked in English G, the other Spanish versions, and the Italian, and in nearly all the Greek ballads referred to on pp 199, 200; always under the same circumstances, and to bring about the discovery which gives the turn to the story. The questions in 'Le Chat Botté' are introduced for an entirely different purpose, and cannot rationally suggest a borrowing on either side. The hasty note would certainly have been erased by the very distinguished editors upon a moment's consideration.
[425] Puymaigre finds also some resemblance in his 'Petite Rosalie,' I, 74: see his note.
[ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS]
1. Riddles Wisely Expounded.
P. [1] b. A. Add: Mündel, Elsässische Volkslieder, p. 27, No 24. Second line from the bottom, for seven read ten.
[2] a. Add: H. J. H. Schmitz, Sitten u. s. w. des Eifler Volkes, I, 159; five pairs of riddles and no conclusion. (Köhler.) I. Alfred Müller, Volkslieder aus dem Erzgebirge, p. 69; four pairs of riddles, and no conclusion. J. Lemke, Volksthümliches in Ostpreussen, p. 152; seven riddles guessed, "nun bin ich Deine Frau."
[2] b. (The Russian riddle-ballad.) So a Kosak: "I give thee this riddle: if thou guess it, thou shalt be mine; if thou guess it not, ill shall it go with thee." The riddle, seven-fold, is guessed. Metlinskiy, Narodnyya yuzhnorusskiya Pyesni, pp 363 f. Cf. Snegiref, Russkie prostonarodnye Prazdniki, II, 101 f.
[2] b, [note]. For Kaden substitute Casetti e Imbriani, C. p. delle Provincie meridionali, I, 197 f. (Köhler.)
2. The Elfin Knight.
P. [6] b. J. Read: Central New York; and again in J, p. 19 a. Add: M. Notes and Queries, 4th Series, III, 605.
[7] a, note. Another ballad with a burden-stem is a version of 'Klosterrovet,' C, MSS of 1610, and later, communicated to me by Svend Grundtvig.
[7] b. Add: O. 'Ehestandsaussichten' [Norrenberg], Des Dülkener Fiedlers Liederbuch, 1875, p. 88, No 99. (Köhler.)
[8]-[12]. Jagić, in Archiv für slavische Philologie, 'Aus dem südslavischen Märchenschatz,' V, 47-50, adds five Slavic stories of the wench whose ready wit helps her to a good marriage, and Köhler, in notes to Jagić, pp 50 ff, cites, in addition to nearly all those which I have mentioned, one Slavic, one German, five Italian, one French, one Irish, one Norwegian, besides very numerous tales in which there is a partial agreement. Wollner, in Leskien and Brugman's Litauische Volkslieder und Märchen, p. 573, cites Slavic parallels to No 34, of which the following, not previously noted, and no doubt others, are apposite to this ballad: Afanasief, VI, 177, No 42, a, b; Trudy, II, 611-614, No 84, 614-616, No 85; Dragomanof, p. 347, No 29; Sadok Baracz, p. 33; Kolberg, Lud, VIII, 206; Kulda, II, 68.
[14] a, line 4. The Baba-Yaga, a malignant female spirit, has the ways of the Rusalka and the Vila, and so the Wendish Pšezpolnica, the 'Mittagsfrau,' and the Serpolnica: Afanasief, II, 333; Veckenstedt, Wendische Sagen, p. 107, No 14, p. 108 f, No 19, p. 109 f, No 4. The Red Etin puts questions, too, in the Scottish tale, Chambers, Popular Rhymes, 1870, p. 92. There is certainly no occasion to scruple about elf or elf-knight. Line 16 f. The same in Snegiref, IV. 8.
[14] b. For the legend of St Andrew, etc., see, further, Gering, Íslendzk Æventyri, I, 95, No 24, 'Af biskupi ok puka,' and Köhler's references, II, 80 f. (Köhler.)
[15] a. A, B. Dr Davidson informs me that the introductory stanza, or burden-stem, exists in the form:
Her plaidie awa, her plaidie awa,
The win blew the bonnie lassie's plaidie awa.
[16] a. C. This version is in Kinloch MSS, VII, 163. 3 is wanting.
6.
Married ye sall never get nane
Till ye mak a shirt without a seam.
7.
And ye maun sew it seamless,
And ye maun do it wi needle, threedless.
10. wanting.
121. I hae a bit o land to be corn.
14 is wanting.
16. loof—glove.
17 is wanting.
3, 10, 14, 17, are evidently supplied from some form of B.
[20].