5
'I wish you were in the wild sea:'
'Yes, you in the sea, and I in a boat.'
6
'I'll bore a hole in your boat:'
'Yes, you bore, and I'll plug.'
7
'I wish you were in hell:'
'Yes, you in, and I outside.'
8
'I wish you were in heaven:'
'Yes, I in, and you outside.'
Chambers, in his Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 66 of the new edition, gives, without a word of explanation, a piece, 'Harpkin,' which seems to have been of the same character, but now sounds only like a "flyting."[23] The first stanza would lead us to expect that Harpkin is to be a form of the Elfin Knight of the preceding ballad, but Fin is seen to be the uncanny one of the two by the light of the other ballads. Finn (Fin) is an ancestor of Woden, a dwarf in Völuspá 16 (19), and also a trold (otherwise a giant), who is induced by a saint to build a church: Thiele, Danske Folkesagn, I, 45, Grimm, Mythologie, p. 455. The name is therefore diabolic by many antecedents.
HARPKIN.
1
Harpkin gaed up to the hill,
And blew his horn loud and shrill,
And by came Fin.
2
'What for stand you there?' quo Fin:
'Spying the weather,' quo Harpkin.
3
'What for had you your staff on your shouther?' quo Fin:
'To haud the cauld frae me,' quo Harpkin.
4
'Little cauld will that haud frae you,' quo Fin:
'As little will it win through me,' quo Harpkin.