The friar in E 13, 41, may be a corruption of Ryalas, or some like name, as the first line of the burden of E, 'Wind well, Lion, good hunter,' seems to be a perversion of 'Wind well thy horn, good hunter,' in C, D.[180] This part of the burden, especially as it occurs in A, is found, nearly, in a fragment of a song of the time of Henry VIII, given by Mr Chappell in his Popular Music of the Olden Time, I, 58, as copied from "MSS Reg., Append. 58."
'Blow thy horne, hunter,
Cum, blow thy horne on hye!
In yonder wode there lyeth a doo,
In fayth she woll not dye.
Cum, blow thy horne, hunter,
Cum, blow thy horne, joly hunter!'
A terrible swine is a somewhat favorite figure in romantic tales. A worthy peer of the boar of Sydon is killed by King Arthur in 'The Avowynge of King Arthur,' etc., Robson, Three Early English Metrical Romances (see st. xii). But both of these, and even the Erymanthian, must lower their bristles before the boar in 'Kilhwch and Olwen,' Mabinogion, Part iv, pp. 309-16. Compared with any of these, the "felon sow" presented by Ralph Rokeby to the friars of Richmond (Evans, Old Ballads, II, 270, ed. 1810, Scott, Appendix to Rokeby, note M) is a tame villatic pig: the old mettle is bred out.
Professor Grundtvig has communicated to me a curious Danish ballad of this class, 'Limgrises Vise,' from a manuscript of the latter part of the 16th century. A very intractable damsel, after rejecting a multitude of aspirants, at last marries, with the boast that her progeny shall be fairer than Christ in heaven. She has a litter of nine pups, a pig, and a boy. The pig grows to be a monster, and a scourge to the whole region.
He drank up the water from dike and from dam,
And ate up, besides, both goose, gris and lamb.
The beast is at last disposed of by baiting him with the nine congenerate dogs, who jump down his throat, rend liver and lights, and find their death there, too. This ballad smacks of the broadside, and is assigned to the 16th century. A fragment of a Swedish swine-ballad, in the popular tone, is given by Dybeck, Runa, 1845, p. 23; another, very similar, in Axelson's Vesterdalarne, p. 179, 'Koloregris,' and Professor Sophus Bugge has recovered some Norwegian verses. The Danish story of the monstrous birth of the pig has become localized: the Liimfiord is related to have been made by the grubbing of the Limgris: Thiele, Danmarks Folkesagn, II. 19, two forms.
There can hardly be anything but the name in common between the Lionel of this ballad and Lancelot's cousin-german.
A.
Percy MS., p. 32, Hales and Furnivall, I, 75.