[4]
LADY ISABEL AND THE ELF-KNIGHT
[A]. a. 'The Gowans sae gay,' Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 22. b. 'Aye as the Gowans grow gay,' Motherwell's MS., p. 563.
[B]. 'The Water o Wearie's Well.' a. Buchan's MSS, II, fol. 80. b. Buchan's B. N. S., II, 201. c. Motherwell's MS., p. 561. d. 'Wearie's Wells,' Harris MS., No 19.
[C]. a. 'May Colven,' Herd's MSS, I, 166. b. 'May Colvin,' Herd's Scottish Songs, 1776, I, 93. c. 'May Colvin, or, False Sir John,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 67.
[D]. a. 'May Collin,' Sharpe's Ballad Book, No 17, p. 45. b. 'Fause Sir John and May Colvin,' Buchan, B. N. S., II, 45. c. 'May Collean,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, Appendix, p. xxi.
[E]. 'The Outlandish Knight,' Dixon, Ancient Poems, Ballads, etc., p. 74 == Bell, Ancient Poems, Ballads, etc., p. 61.
[F]. 'The False Knight Outwitted,' Roxburgh Ballads, British Museum, III, 449.
Of all ballads this has perhaps obtained the widest circulation. It is nearly as well known to the southern as to the northern nations of Europe. It has an extraordinary currency in Poland. The Germans, Low and High, and the Scandinavians, preserve it, in a full and evidently ancient form, even in the tradition of this generation. Among the Latin nations it has, indeed, shrunk to very meagre proportions, and though the best English forms are not without ancient and distinctive marks, most of these have been eliminated, and the better ballads are very brief.
A has but thirteen two-line stanzas. An elf-knight, by blowing his horn, inspires Lady Isabel with love-longing. He appears on her first breathing a wish for him, and induces her to ride with him to the greenwood.[24] Arrived at the wood, he bids her alight, for she is come to the place where she is to die. He had slain seven kings' daughters there, and she should be the eighth. She persuades him to sit down, with his head on her knee, lulls him asleep with a charm, binds him with his own sword-belt, and stabs him with his own dagger, saying, If seven kings' daughters you have slain, lie here a husband to them all.