[78], mould. N. C. G.
LADY MAISRY.
This ballad, said to be very popular in Scotland, was taken down from recitation by Jamieson, and is extracted from his collection, vol. i. p. 73. A different copy, from Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 234, is given in the Appendix. Another, styled Young Prince James, may be seen in Buchan's Ballads, vol. i. 103. Bonnie Susie Cleland, Motherwell, p. 221, is still another version.
In Lady Maisry we seem to have the English form of a tragic story which, starting from Denmark, has spread over almost all the north of Europe, that of King Waldemar and his Sister. Grundtvig's collection gives seven copies of the Danish ballad upon this subject (Kong Valdemar og hans Söster, No. 126), the oldest from a manuscript of the beginning of the 17th century. Five Icelandic versions are known, one Norse, one Faroish, five Swedish (four of them in Arwidsson, No. 53, Liten Kerstin och Fru Sofia), and several in German, as Graf Hans von Holstein und seine Schwester Annchristine, Erk, Liederhort, p. 155;
Der Grausame Bruder, Erk, p. 153, and Hoffmann, Schlesische Volkslieder, No. 27; Der Grobe Bruder, Wunderhorn, ii. 272; Der Pfalzgraf am Rhein, id. i. 259, etc.; also a fragment in Wendish. The relationship of the English ballad to the rest of the cycle can perhaps be easiest shown by comparison with the simplified and corrupted German versions.
The story appears to be founded on facts which occurred during the reign and in the family of the Danish king, Waldemar the First, sometime between 1157 and 1167. Waldemar is described as being, with all his greatness, of a relentless and cruel disposition (in ira pertinax; in suos tantum plus justo crudelior). Tradition, however, has imputed to him a brutal ferocity beyond belief. In the ballad before us, Lady Maisry suffers for her weakness by being burned at the stake, but in the Danish, Swedish, and German ballads, the king's sister is beaten to death with leathern whips, by her brother's own hand.
"Er schlug sie so sehre, er schlug sie so lang,
Bis Lung und Leber aus dem Leib ihr sprang!"
The Icelandic and Faroe ballads have nothing of this horrible ferocity, but contain a story which is much nearer to probability, if not to historical truth. While King Waldemar is absent on an expedition against the Wends, his sister Kristín is drawn into a liaison with her second-cousin, the result of which is the birth of two children. Sofía, the Queen, maliciously makes the state of things known to the king the moment he returns (which is on the very day of Kristín's lying in, according to the Danish ballad), but he will not believe the story,—all the more because the accused parties are within prohibited degrees of
consanguinity. Kristín is summoned to come instantly to her brother, and obeys the message, though she is weak with childbirth, and knows that the journey will cost her her life. She goes to the court on horseback (in the Danish ballads falling from the saddle once or twice on the way), and on her arrival is put to various tests to ascertain her condition, concluding with a long dance with the king, to which, having held out for a considerable time, she at last succumbs, and falls dead in her brother's arms.