There is a marriage in yonder hall,
Has lasted thirty days and three,
The bridegroom winna bed the bride,
For the sake o’ one that’s owre the sea.
In this Scottish version, by the way, occurs—
Up spoke the young bride’s mother,
Who never was heard to speak so free,
wrongly attributed to Mr. Thackeray’s own pen.
The incident of the magical oblivion which comes over the bridegroom occurs in Scandinavian versions of ‘Lord Bateman’ from manuscripts of the sixteenth century.* Finally, the religious difficulty in several Scottish versions is got over by the conversion and baptism of Sophia, who had professed the creed of Islam. That all these problems in ‘Lord Bateman’ are left unsolved is, then, the result of decay. The modern vulgar English version of the pot-house minstrel (known as ‘The Tripe Skewer,’ according to the author of the Introduction to Cruikshank’s version) has forgotten, has been heedless of, and has dropped the ancient universal elements of folk-tale and folk-song.
*Child, ii. 459-461.
These graces, it is true, are not too conspicuous even in the oldest and best versions of ‘Lord Bateman.’ Choosing at random, however, we find a Scots version open thus:
In the lands where Lord Beichan was born,
Among the stately steps o’ stane,
He wore the goud at his left shoulder,
But to the Holy Land he’s gane.
That is not in the tone of the ditty sung by the Tripe Skewer. Again, in his prison,
He made na his moan to a stock,
He made na it to a stone,
But it was to the Queen of Heaven
That he made his moan.