"Tak hame, tak hame your daughter dear;
A blessing gang her wi';
For I maun marry my Burd Isbel,
That's come o'er the sea to me."140
"Is this the custome o' your house,
Or the fashion o' your land,
To marry a maid in a May morning,
Send her back a maid at e'en?"
[3]. Court o' France. "And first, here to omit the programe of him and his mother, named Rose, whom Polyd. Virgilius falsely nameth to be a Saracen, when indeed she came out of the parts bordering neere to Normandy." Fox, Acts and Monuments, cited by Motherwell, p. xvi.
HYND HORN.
Those metrical romances, which in the chivalrous ages, constituted the most refined pastime of a rude nobility, are known in many cases to have been adapted for the entertainment of humbler hearers, by abridgment in the form of ballads. Such was the case with the ancient gest of King Horn. Preserved in several MSS., both French and English, in something of its original proportions, an epitome of it has also descended to us through the mouths of the people.
An imperfect copy of the following piece was inserted by Cromek in his Select Scottish Songs, (London, 1810, vol. ii. p. 204-210.) Better editions have since been furnished by Kinloch, Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 138; [Motherwell], Minstrelsy, p. 95; and [Buchan], Ballads of the North of Scotland, ii. 268. Of these, we reprint the last two.
All the poems relating to Horn, in French and English, including the Scottish ballads above mentioned, are collected by Michel in a beautiful volume of the Bannatyne Club, Horn et Rimenhild, Paris, 1845.