And the King he led her from the hold
—But a Frankish mile away—
The Wends come up to the castle.
XXVI
SIR KAREL’S LYKE-WAKE
This sixteenth-century Ballad has a Scots parallel in “Willie’s Wake,” and versions of the same story are found in Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Galicia; but whether it travelled from south to north, or vice versa, cannot be determined. Little Kirsten’s self-betrayal in owning her love for the supposedly dead man is peculiar to the Northern form. The wistful, delicate humour, moreover, of the two concluding verses, seems to me characteristically Danish—their author, a literary ancestor of Hans Andersen.
1
It was young Sir Karel
His mother’s rede did pray,
If he should to the cloister ride
And bear his love away.