Icebell is icicle. By this means she was quit. In the version I have given I have altered this to suit the song for modern singing.
In "The Elfin Knight," Child's "British Ballads," No. 2, an elf appears to the damsel and sets her tasks. If she cannot accomplish these, she must accompany him to the elf world. Here we have a substitution of a fairy for a ghost.
In an Ulster Broadside in the British Museum (1162, k 5) we have a later substitution. A low-born gamekeeper gets a damsel of high degree into his power, and will not release her unless she can solve a series of riddles. This she does, and so makes her escape.
Of the Northumbrian ballad, "Lay the Bent to the Bonny Broom," Child, No. 1, there are two versions. In one given by Miss Mason, "Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs," a stranger comes to the door of a house where are three sisters, and demands that one shall follow him or answer a series of riddles. Then ensues a contest of wit, and the girl escapes the obligation of following the mysterious stranger. Who he is is not ascertained. In the other version it is different; he is a knight, and he offers to marry the girl who can solve his riddles. The youngest sister effects this, so he marries her. It is the same in the corresponding Cornish ballad of "Genefer Gentle and Rosemarie," originally given by Gilbert in his "Cornish Christmas Carols," 2nd ed., p. 65, and reprinted by Child.
To the same category belongs the song, "Go no more a-rushing, Maids, in May," that we have taken down from several singers, and which is given as well by Miss Mason, and by Chappell, i. p. 158, where the task is to solve riddles—
"I'll give you a chicken that has no bone,
I'll give you a cherry without a stone,
I'll give you a ring that has no rim,
I'll give you an oak that has no limb."
The solution is—
"When the chicken is in the egg it has no bone,
When the cherry is in bloom it has no stone,
When the ring is a-melting it has no rim,
When the oak is in the acorn it has no limb."
But the story about the setting of the puzzle has fallen away.
We did obtain a ballad in Cornwall about the ghost visiting the damsel and demanding that she should keep her engagement, but the metre was not the same as that of the "Lovers' Tasks."