Transcribed from the 1913 Thomas J. Wise pamphlet by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library, UK, for kindly supplying the images from which this transcription was made.
CHILD MAIDELVOLD
and other ballads
by
GEORGE BORROW
London:
printed for private circulation
1913
Copyright in the United States of America
by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for Clement Shorter.
CHILD MAIDELVOLD.
The fair Sidselil, of all maidens the flower,
With her mother the Queen sat at work in her bower.
So hard at the woof the fair Sidselil plies,
That out from her bosom, so white, the milk flies.
“Now hear thou, O Sidselil, child of my heart,
What causes the milk from thy bosom to start?”
“O that is not milk, my dear mother, I vow,
It is but the mead I was drinking just now.”