The request to be allowed three cries is lost. The knight tells her to cry as much as she pleases, he knows no one will come; the wild birds will not hear, and the doves are hushed. She cries to father, mother, and brother. The brother, who is sitting over his wine at the inn, hears, saddles his best horse, rides furiously, and comes first to a spring filled with locks of maid's hair and red with maid's blood; then to a bush, where the knight (Rüdeli, Rudolph) is twisting his withe. He bids his sister be silent, for the withe is not for her; the villain is twisting it for his own neck, and shall be dragged at the tail of his horse.
Q resembles the Swabian ballads, and presents only these variations from the regular story. The dove adds to the warning, "Fair maid, be not beguiled," what we find nowhere else, "Yonder I see a cool spring, around which blood is running." The knight, to remove the maid's anxiety, says, "Let it talk; it does not know me; I am no such murderer." The end is excessively feeble. When the brother, a hunter as before, reaches his sister, "a robber runs away," and then the brother takes her by the hand, conducts her to her father's land, and enjoins her to stay at home and spin silk. There are no names.
There is one feature entirely peculiar to R. The knight carries off the maid, as before, but when they come to the hazel bush there are eleven doves that sing this "new song:"
'Be not beguiled, maiden,
The knight is beguiling thee:
'We are eleven already,
Thou shalt be the twelfth.'
The eleven doves are of course the spirits of the eleven preceding victims. The maid's inquiry as to what they mean is lost. The knight's evasion is not ingenious, but more likely to allay suspicion than simply saying, "I am no such murderer." He says, "Fear not: the doves are singing a song that is common in these parts." When they come to the spring "where blood and water are running," and the maid asks what strange spring is this, the knight answers in the same way, and perhaps could not do better: "Fear not: there is in these parts a spring that runs blood and water." This spring is misplaced, for it occurs before they enter the wood. The last scene in the ballad is incomplete, and goes no further than the brother's exclamation when he comes in upon the knight: "Stop, young knight! Spare my sister's life." The parties in R are nameless.
So again in S, which also has neither the knight's enchanting song nor the bloody spring. There are two doves, as in J, stanza 4. The cries are addressed to mother, father, brother, as in N, and, as in N, again, the brother cocks his gun, and shoots the knight down;[50] then calmly leads his sister home, with the warning against knights.
(III.) T, the first of the third series, has marked signs of deterioration. Ulrich does not enchant Ännchen by his song, and promise to teach it to her; he offers to teach her "bird-song." They walk out together, apparently, and come to a hazel, with no dove; neither is there any spring. Annie sits down on the grass; Ulrich lays his head in her lap; she weeps, and he asks why. It is for eleven maids in the fir-tree, as so often before. Ulrich's style has become much tamer:
'Ah, Annie, Annie, dear to me,
How soon shalt thou the twelfth one be!'