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.
ELLEN OF VILLENSKOV
AND OTHER BALLADS
by
GEORGE BORROW
London:
printed for private circulation
1913
ELLEN OF VILLENSKOV.
There lies a wold in Vester Haf,
There builds a boor his hold;
And thither he carries hawk and hound,
He’ll stay through winter’s cold.
He takes with him both hound and cock,
He means there long to stay;
The wild deer in the wood that are
For his arrival pay.
He hews the oak and poplar tall,
He fells the good beech tree;
Then fill’d was the laidly Trold with spite
That he should make so free.
He hews him posts, he hews him balks,
He early toils and late;
Out spake the Trolds within the hill:
“Who knocks at such a rate?”
Then up and spake the youngest Trold,
As emmet small to view:
“O here is come a Christian man,
But verily he shall rue.”