Apparently at some remote period a maiden who was pledged to a man was held to belong to him after he was dead, and to be obliged to follow her lover into the world of spirits, unless she could evade the obligation by some clever contrivance. When this idea fell away, either an elf was substituted or a man of low birth, or else the whole story was dropped; or, again, it was so altered that a knight was put in the place of the ghost, and it became the privilege of the shrewd girl who could answer the riddles to be taken as his wife.
The setting of hard tasks occurs in German folk-tales, as in "Rumpelstiltskin," where the girl has to spin straw into gold.
In the "Gesta Romanorum," ed. Osterley, p. 374, one of the most popular collections of stories in the Middle Ages, is a corrupt reminiscence of the tale. A king delayed to take a wife till he could find one sagacious enough to make him a shirt without seam out of a scrap of linen three inches square. She retorts that she will do this when he sends her a vessel in which she can do the work. Jacques de Voragine wrote his "Golden Legend" in or about 1260. In that he tells this tale. A bishop was about to succumb to the blandishments of the devil in female form, when a pilgrim arrived. Either the damsel or the palmer must leave, and which it should be was to be determined by the solution of riddles. The pilgrim solved two. Then the fiend in female form asked: "How far is it from heaven to earth?" "That you know best, for you fell the whole distance," replied the palmer, and the fiend vanished. Then the pilgrim revealed himself as St. Andrew, to whom the bishop had a special devotion.
The classic tale of Œdipus and the Sphinx will be remembered in connection with delivery from death by solving riddles. In Norse mythology we have the contest in conundrums between Odin and the giant Vafthrudnir. The Rabbis tell of the Queen of Sheba proving Solomon with hard questions, which are riddles.
The historians of Tyre, as Josephus informs us, recorded that an interchange of riddles went on constantly between Solomon and Hiram, each being under an engagement to pay a forfeit of money for every riddle that he could not solve. Solomon got the best of Hiram, till Hiram set a Tyrian boy to work, who both solved the riddles of Solomon, and set others which Solomon could not answer. We have a later version of this story in the ballad of King John and the Abbot of Canterbury, who, unable to solve the king's riddles, set his cowherd to do this, and he accomplished it successfully.
We took down the ballad and air from Philip Symonds of Jacobstow, Cornwall, also from John Hext, Two Bridges, and from James Dyer of Mawgan. The burden, "And every grove rings with a merry antine," is curious; antine is antienne—anthem. In "Gammer Gurton's Garland," 1783, the burden is "Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme." In one of Motherwell's MSS. it stands, "Every rose grows merry wi' thyme." These are attempts made to give sense where the meaning of the original word was lost.
In Folk-Song Journal, vol. i. p. 83, is a version from Sussex: "Sing Ivy, Sing Ivy."
[49.] Lullaby. Noted by me from recollection, as sung by a nurse, Anne Bickle of Bratton Clovelly, about 1842. James Olver of Launceston also knew the tune. The words I have re-composed to the best of my ability.
[50.] The Gipsy Countess. The melody of the [first part] from James Parsons, that of the [second] from John Woodrich. Versions also from Peter Cheriton, shoemaker, Oakford, near Tiverton; William Setter and George Kerswell, Two Bridges, Dartmoor. Robert Browning composed on this theme his poem, "The Flight of the Duchess," having heard a beggar woman sing the ballad. Mrs. Gibbons told me she heard the whole ballad sung by her nurse in Cornwall, about 1830.
The Scottish version of the ballad is that of "Johnny Faa," in Allan Ramsay's "Tea-Table Miscellany," 1724, from which it passed into all collections of Scottish songs. Allan Ramsay's version turns on a story—utterly unhistorical—that Lady Jean Hamilton, married to the grim Covenanter, John, Earl of Cassilis, fell in love with, and eloped with, Sir John Faa of Dunbar, who came to the castle disguised as a gipsy along with some others. She was pursued, and Faa and his companions were hung. No such an event took place. The Scotch are wont to take an old ballad, give it local habitation and name, and so make it out to be purely Scottish. My impression is that this was an old English ballad dealt with by Ramsay. It may have been so adapted for political purposes, as a libel on Lady Cassilis, who was the mother of Bishop Burnet's wife. An Irish form of the ballad in the British Museum (1162, k 6). For a full account of the "Johnny Faa" ballad, see Child's "English and Scottish Ballads," No. 200. He is of opinion that the English ballad is taken from the Scottish. I think the reverse is the case. Parsons sang right through without division of parts. I have made the division, so as to allow of the use of both airs; but actually the second is a modern corruption of the first, and is interesting as showing how completely a melody may undergo transformation. Mr. Sharp has given a Somersetshire version of the ballad in his "Folk Songs from Somerset," No. 9.