“They fought for a day, they fought for two,
And so on the third they were fain to do;
But, ere the fourth day the night had reached,
The Brute dead on the earth he stretched—
Look out, look out, Svend Vonved!”
In a lighter vein there is the ballad of “The Deceived Merman,” which had appeared with some of the other poems in the Monthly Magazine while Borrow was engaged with Phillips. In the Magazine it began:
“Fair Agnes left her mother’s door.”
The first revision occurred prior to the collection of the ballads in book-form, when it began:
“Fair Agnes lone on the sea-shore stood,
Then rose a Merman from out the flood:“‘Now, Agnes, hear what I say to thee—
Wilt thou my leman consent to be?’“‘O, freely that will I become
If thou but take me beneath the foam.’”
The third couplet is altered in the manuscript revision to read thus:
“‘Oh, yes, forsooth that will I be
If thou’lt take me to the bottom of the sea.’”
The merman did, and there was a family. But Agnes, having obtained permission to go back and visit her mother, came under religious influences, stayed overlong, and was finally deaf to all the requests of her amphibious spouse that she should return to her deserted family, proving unmaternal enough even to disregard an appeal ad misericordiam on behalf of the youngest of the merbabies. [336]
The “Ballads” have some interest, but, with the exception of “Svend Vonved,” they have small merit, and it is not surprising that the public took so little notice of them that the second edition was never required. Borrow made much better play with his Danish legends and his heroes of the North in his later prose books, where they take their proper place as the material of soufflés or as flavouring in a tasty mélange.