'"I 've seen other days wi' you, Willie,
And so hae mony mae;
Ye would hae danced wi' me yoursel'
And let a' ithers gae"';
and, dancing, she drops dead.
Fasting, and fire, and sickness unto death were, however, tame ordeals compared with those which 'Burd Helen' came through, as they are described in the ballad Professor Child holds, not without reason, to have 'perhaps no superior' in our own or any other tongue. Patient Grizel, herself the incarnation in literary form of a type of woman's faithfulness and meek endurance of wrong that had floated long in mediæval tradition, might have shrunk from some of the cruel tasks which Lord Thomas—the 'Child Waters' of the favourite English variant—lays upon the mother of his unborn child—the woman whose self-surrender had been so complete that she has not the blessing of Holy Church and the support of wifely vows to comfort her in her hour of trial. All the summer day she runs by his bridle-rein until they come to the Water of Clyde, which 'Sweet Willie and May Margaret' also sought to ford on a similar errand:
'And he was never so courteous a knight,
As stand and bid her ride;
And she was never so poor a may,
As ask him for to bide.'
She stables his steed; she waits humbly at table as the little page-boy; she listens, her colour coming and going, to the mother's scorns and the young sister's naïve questions. But never, until the supreme moment of her distress, does she draw one sign of pity or relenting from her harsh lord. Then, indeed, love and remorse, as if they had been dammed back, break forth like a flood, that bursts the very door, and makes it 'in flinders flee.' And because
'The marriage and the kirkin'
Were baith held on ae day,'
our simple balladist bids us believe that the twain lived happily ever after.
The variations of this ancient tale, localised in nearly every European country, are innumerable; and Professor Veitch was disposed to trace them to the thirteenth century Tale of the Ash, by Marie of France. The 'Fair Annie' of another ballad on the theme seems to have borrowed both name and history directly from the 'Skiæn Annie' of Danish folk-poetry. Here the old love suffers the like indignity that was thrown upon the too-too submissive Griselda; she has to make ready the bridal bed for her supplanter and do other menial offices, until a happy chance reveals the fact that the newcomer is her sister. Yet neither from Fair Annie nor from Burd Helen comes word of reproach or complaint. The exceeding bitter thought is whispered only to the heart:
'"Lie still, my babe, lie still, my babe,
Lie still as lang 's ye may;
For your father rides on high horseback,
And cares na for us twae."'
And again,