C - The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 5 (of 5) - 146

C

Miss M. H. Mason’s Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs, p. 46, ‘Giles Collin.’

Giles Collin he said to his mother one day,

Oh, mother, come bind up my head!

For tomorrow morning before it is day

I’m sure I shall be dead.

‘Oh, mother, oh, mother, if I should die,

And I am sure I shall,

I will not be buried in our churchyard,

But under Lady Alice’s wall.’

His mother she made him some water-gruel,

And stirred it up with a spoon;

Giles Collin he ate but one spoonful,

And died before it was noon.

Lady Alice was sitting in her window,

All dressed in her night-coif;

She saw as pretty a corpse go by

As ever she’d seen in her life.

‘What bear ye there, ye six tall men?

What bear ye on your shourn?’

‘We bear the body of Giles Collin,

Who was a true lover of yourn.’

‘Down with him, down with him, upon the grass,

The grass that grows so green;

For tomorrow morning before it is day

My body shall lie by him.’

Her mother she made her some plum-gruel,

With spices all of the best;

Lady Alice she ate but one spoonful,

And the doctor he ate up the rest.

Giles Collin was laid in the lower chancel,

Lady Alice all in the higher;

There grew up a rose from Lady Alice’s breast,

And from Giles Collin’s a briar.

And they grew, and they grew, to the very church-top,

Until they could grow no higher,

And twisted and twined in a true-lover’s knot,

Which made all the parish admire.

90. Jellon Grame.

P. 303 b, 513 b, III, 515 b, IV, 479 b. Precocious growth.

The French romance of Alexander. Albéric de Besançon: Alexander had more strength when three days old than other children of four months; he walked and ran better from his first year than any other child from its seventh. (The same, nearly, in Lamprecht, vv. 142-4: he throve better in three days than any other child of three months; 178-80, in his first year his strength and body waxed more than another’s in three.) MS. de l’Arsenal: the child grew in vitality and knowledge more in seven years than others do in a hundred. MS. de Venise: he grew more in body and knowledge in eight years than others in a hundred. P. Meyer, Alexandre le Grand, I, 5, v. 56 f., 6, v. 74 f., 27, v. 39 f., 240, v. 53 f. ‘Plus sot en x jors que i. autres en c:’ Michelant, p. 8, v. 20. A similar precocity is recorded of the Chinese Emperor Schimong: Gützlaff, Geschichte der Chinesen, hrsgg. v. Neumann, S. 19, cited by Weismann, Lamprecht’s Alexander, I, 432.

In the romance of Mélusine it is related how, after her disappearance in serpent-form, she was seen by the nurses to return at night and care for her two infant sons, who, according to the earliest version, the prose of Jehan d’Arras, grew more in a week than other children in a month: ed. Brunet, 1854, p. 361. The same in the French romance, l. 4347 f., the English metrical version, l. 4035-37, and in the German Volksbuch. (H. L. Koopman.)

Tom Hickathrift “was in length, when he was but ten years of age, about eight foot, and in thickness five foot, and his hand was like unto a shoulder of mutton, and in all parts from top to toe he was like a monster.” The History of Thomas Hickathrift, ed. by G. L. Gomme, Villon Society, 1885, p. 2. (G. L. K.)

305. B. The following, a variety of B, is from the papers of Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, “second collection,” p. 6.

Word has come to May Young Ro,

In her bower where she sat,

‘You’r bidden come to good green wood

And sew your love a shirt.’

‘I wonder much,’ said May Young Roe,

‘Such word is come to me;

Ther’s not a month throwout this year

But I have sewed him three.’

Then out it spake her mother,

And a wise word spoke she;

Said, Stay at home, my daughter,

They want to murder thee.

‘I will cast off my gloves, mother,

And hing them on a pin;

If I come never back again,

You’l mind on your daugh[t]er young.

‘Come here, my boy,’ she cried,

‘And bring my horse to me,

That I may ride to good green wood,

The flowers in it to see.’

When she was got to good green wood,

No further did she ride

Till up did start him Hind Henry,

Just at the ladie’s side.

‘O stop, O stop there, May,’ he cried,

‘O stop, I say to thee;

The boy who holds your bridle-reins

Shall see your body wea.’

Then out he drew a large long brand,

And struck it ower a str[ow],

And throw and throw that ladie’s side

He made the cold steel go.

Said, Take you that now, May Young Roe,

Just take you that from me,

Because you loved Brown Robin,

And never would love me.

The boy was in a dreadful fright,

And in great haste rode home,

Lamenting sadly all the way,

And made a piteous moan.

And when her mother heard his tale

She took the bed of care;

Her sister ran to good green wood,

A tearing of her hair.

There was small pity for that lady,

Where she was lying dead,

Compared with for the pretty babe,

Weltring among the blood.

‘I will take up this babe,’ she said,

‘And lull him on my sleeve;

Altho his father should wish me woe,

His mother was to me live.’

Now she has taken the boy up,

And she has brought him hame,

And she has called him Brown Robin,

It was his father’s name.

And she has nursed him carefuly,

And put him to the school,

And any who affronted him

He soon did make cry dule.

And it fell ance upon a time

It was a haly day,

And all the boys at that school

On it they got the play.

He hied him unto good green wood,

And leap from tree to tree,

And there did pull some hollin wands,

To play his own self we.

And aft he looked on a spot,

And at it marvelled sair,

That all the wood was clad with leaves,

And that one spot was bare.

And he said unto Hind Henry,

‘I wonder very sair

That all the wood is clad with leaves,

And this one spot is bare.’

‘You need not wonder, boy,’ he said,

‘You need not wonder none,

For it is just the very spot

I killed your mother on.’

The boy’s pulled out his daggar then,

And struck it ower a strow,

And even to Hind Henry’s heart

He made the cold steel go.

Says, Take you that, you vile Henry,

Just take you that from me,

For killing of my mother dear,

And she not harming thee.

91. Fair Mary of Wallington.

P. 314, IV, 480 a. D. 10³ in Kinloch MSS, V, 363, reads, I hear this babe now from her side; but in Mr Macmath’s transcript of Burton’s MS., No 2, I bear ... my side.

316. ‘The Lady of Livenston,’ from “The Old Lady’s Collection,” No 32.