That bore the maid away.
16
The nuns they all sat silent,
Each to herself said she:
“God grant that His good angel
May come eftsoon for me!”
—The roses and the lilies all a-blowing.
XXVII
AAGE AND ELSE
This Ballad may be compared with our own “Sweet William and May Margaret,” “Sweet William’s Ghost,” and the conclusion of “Clerk Saunders.” The same theme gave rise to Ballads in Sweden, Brittany, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, and the Slav countries. (The idea of a dead lover’s return to his sweetheart is one so natural that we surely need not hark back for its Danish source to the classical Lay of Helge and Sigrun.) It inspires another fine Ballad, “Sir Morten of Fuglsang,” whose Burden was borrowed by Longfellow in his poetical version of Olaf Tryggvason’s Saga (Tales of a Wayside Inn).
The line in verse 6, “No cloak had he,” refers to the custom of smiting the door with a fold of the cloak. (In “Niels Ebbeson” I have substituted “sword,” as more intelligible to the English reader.)