4. wanting.
FOOTNOTES:
[180] The friar might also be borrowed from 'The Felon Sow and the Friars of Richmond,' but this piece does not appear to have been extensively known.
[19]
KING ORFEO
The Leisure Hour, February 14, 1880, No 1468: Folk-Lore from Unst, Shetland, by Mrs Saxby, p. 109.
Mr Edmondston, from whose memory this ballad was derived, notes that though stanzas are probably lost after the first which would give some account of the king in the east wooing the lady in the west, no such verses were sung to him. He had forgotten some stanzas after the fourth, of which the substance was that the lady was carried off by fairies; that the king went in quest of her, and one day saw a company passing along a hill-side, among whom he recognized his lost wife. The troop went to what seemed a great "ha-house," or castle, on the hillside. Stanzas after the eighth were also forgotten, the purport being that a messenger from behind the grey stane appeared and invited the king in.
We have here in traditional song the story of the justly admired mediæval romance of Orpheus, in which fairy-land supplants Tartarus, faithful love is rewarded, and Eurydice (Heurodis, Erodys, Eroudys) is retrieved. This tale has come down to us in three versions: [A], in the Auchinleck MS., dating from the beginning of the fourteenth century, Advocates Library, Edinburgh, printed in Laing's Select Remains of the Ancient Popular Poetry of Scotland, 'Orfeo and Heurodis,' No 3; B, Ashmole MS., 61, Bodleian Library, of the first half of the fifteenth century, printed in Halliwell's Illustrations of Fairy Mythology, 'Kyng Orfew,' p. 37; C, Harleian MS., 3810, British Museum, printed by Ritson, Metrical Romancëes, II, 248, 'Sir Orpheo.' At the end of the Auchinleck copy we are told that harpers in Britain heard this marvel, and made a lay thereof, which they called, after the king, 'Lay Orfeo.' The other two copies also, but in verses which are a repetition of the introduction to 'Lay le Freine,' call this a Breton lay.
The story is this ([A]). Orfeo was a king [and so good a harper never none was, B]. One day in May his queen went out to a garden with two maidens, and fell asleep under an "ympe" tree. When she waked she shrieked, tore her clothes, and acted very wildly. Her maidens ran to the palace and called for help, for the queen would go mad. Knights and ladies went to the queen, took her away, and put her to bed; but still the excitement continued. The king, in great affliction, besought her to tell him what was the matter, and what he could do. Alas! she said, I have loved thee as my life, and thou me, but now we must part. As she slept knights had come to her and had bidden her come speak with their king. Upon her refusal, the king himself came, with a company of knights and damsels, all on snow-white steeds, and made her ride on a palfrey by his side, and, after he had shown her his palace, brought her back and said: Look thou be under this ympe tree tomorrow, to go with us; and if thou makest us any let, we will take thee by force, wherever thou be. The next day Orfeo took the queen to the tree under guard of a thousand knights, all resolved to die before they would give her up: but she was spirited away right from the midst of them, no one knew whither.