B is the same story told of a margrave and Fair Annie, but some important early stanzas are lost, and the final ones have suffered injury; for the ballad ends with this conceit, "She put the horn to her mouth, and blew the margrave quite out of her heart." Here, by a transference exceedingly common in tradition, it is the man, and not the maid, that "would ride in velvet and silk and red gold."
C a has the names Odilia and Hilsinger, a trooper (reiter). Odilia was early left an orphan, and as she grew up "she grew into the trooper's bosom." He offered her seven pounds of gold to be his, and "she thought seven pounds of gold a good thing." We now fall into the track of A. Odilia dresses herself like a bride, and calls to the trooper to come and get her. They ride first to a high hill, where she asks to eat and drink, and then go on to a linden-tree, on which seven maids are hanging. The choice of three deaths is offered, the sword chosen, he is entreated to spare his coat, she seizes his sword and hews off his head. The false tongue suggests blowing the horn. Odilia thinks "much biding or blowing is not good." She rides away, and presently meets the trooper's "little foot-page" (bot), who fancies she has Hilsinger's horse and sword. "He sleeps," she says, "with seven maids, and thought I was to be the eighth." This copy concludes with a manifestly spurious stanza. C b agrees with C a for ten stanzas, as to the matter, and so far seems to be C a improved by Zuccalmaglio, with such substitutions as a princely castle for "seven pounds of gold." The last stanza (11),
Und als die Sternlein am Himmel klar,
Ottilia die achte der Todten war,
was, no doubt, suggested by the last of F, another of Zuccalmaglio's versions, and, if genuine, would belong to a ballad of the third class.
D has the name Odilia for the maid, but the knight, or trooper, has become expressly a robber (ritter, reiter, räuber). They ride to a green heath, where there is a cool spring. Odilia asks for and gets a draught of water, and is told that at the linden-tree there will be eating and drinking for them. And when they come to the linden, there hang six, seven maids! All proceeds as before. The talking head is lost. Odilia meets the robber's mother, and makes the usual reply.[37]
E resembles C closely. Odilia becomes Schondilg (Schön Odilie), Räuber returns to Ritter, or Reiter, and the servant-maid bribe of seven pounds of gold rises to ten tons.[38] Schondilg's toilet, preparatory to going off (6-8), is described with a minuteness that we find only in the Dutch ballad (12-16). After this, there is no important variation. She meets the trooper's three brothers, and makes the same replies to them as to the mother in D.
F. The personages here are Linnich (i.e., Nellie) and a knight from England. The first twelve stanzas do not diverge from C, D, E. In stanza 13 we find the knight directing the lady to strip off her silk gown and gold necklace, as in the English C, D, E; but certainly this inversion of the procedure which obtains in German C, D, E is an accident arising from confused recollection. The 14th and last stanza similarly misunderstands the maid's feigned anxiety about the knight's fine coat, and brings the ballad to a false close, resembling the termination of those of the third class, still more those of certain mixed forms to be spoken of presently.
(II.) The second series, G-S, has three or four traits that are not found in the foregoing ballads. G, which, as well as H, was in print more than two hundred years before any other copy is known to have been taken down, begins, like the Dutch Halewijn, with a knight (Ulinger) singing so sweetly that a maid (Fridburg) is filled with desire to go off with him. He promises to teach her his art. This magical song is wanting only in R, of class II, and the promise to teach it only in Q, R. She attires herself splendidly; he swings her on to his horse behind him, and they ride to a wood. When they came to the wood there was no one there but a white dove on a hazel-bush, that sang, Listen, Fridburg: Ulinger has hanged eleven[39] maids; the twelfth is in his clutches. Fridburg asked what the dove was saying. Ulinger replied, It takes me for another; it lies in its red bill; and rode on till it suited him to alight. He spread his cloak on the grass, and asked her to sit down:
Er sprach sie solt ihm lausen,
Sein gelbes Haar zerzausen.[40]
Looking up into her eyes, he saw tears, and asked why she was weeping. Was it for her sorry husband? Not for her sorry husband, she said. But here some stanzas, which belong to another ballad,[41] have crept in, and she is, with no reason, made to ride further on. She comes to a lofty fir, and eleven maids hanging on it. She wrings her hands and tears her hair, and implores Ulinger to let her be hanged in her clothes as she is.