For naething cou'd the companie do,
Nor naething cou'd they say;
But they saw a flock o' pretty birds
160 That took their bride away.
When that Earl Mar he came to know
Where his dochter did stay,
He sign'd a bond o' unity,
And visits now they pay.
YOUNG AKIN.
Mr. Kinloch printed a fragment of this ballad under the title of Hynde Etin. (See [Appendix].) The story was afterwards given complete by Buchan, (Ballads of the North of Scotland, i. 6,) as here follows. Buchan had previously communicated to Motherwell a modernized version of the same tale, in which the Etin is changed to a Groom. (See post.)
This ancient ballad has suffered severely in the course of its transmission to our times. Still there can be no doubt that it was originally the same as The Maid and the Dwarf King, which is still sung in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and the Faroe Islands. Numerous copies of the Scandinavian ballad have been given to the world: seven Danish versions, more or less complete, four Norse, nine Swedish, one Faroish, and some other fragments (Grundtvig, ii. 37, and note, p. 655). One of the Swedish ballads (Bergkonungen, Afzelius, No. 35) is translated in Keightley's Fairy Mythology, 103, under the title of Proud Margaret. Closely related is Agnete og Havmanden, Grundtvig, ii. 48, 656, which is found in several forms in German (e.g. Die schöne Hannele in Hoffmann von Fallersleben's Schlesische Volkslieder, No. 1), and two in Slavic.
Lady Margaret sits in her bower door,
Sewing at her silken seam;
She heard a note in Elmond's-wood,
And wish'd she there had been.