Agneta ej smakte en endaste bit.
Young Akin, in A 43, is found in the wood, "tearing his yellow hair." The merman has golden hair in Danish A 16, Swedish D 2, 19, Norwegian A 17 (nothing very remarkable, certainly), and in Danish D 31 wrings his hands and is very unhappy, because Agnes refuses to return. It is much more important that in one of the Swedish copies of the merman ballad, Grundtvig, II, 661a, we find a trace of the 'christendom' which is made such an object in the Scottish ballads:
'Nay,' said the mother, 'now thou art mine,'
And christened her with water and with wine.
'The Maid and the Dwarf-King,' Danish E, is translated by Prior, III, 338; Swedish A by Stephens, Foreign Quarterly Review, XXV, 35; Swedish C by Keightley, Fairy Mythology, p. 103. 'Agnes and the Merman,' Danish A, C, by Prior, III, 332, 335; some copy of A by Borrow, p. 120; Øhlenschlæger's ballad by Buchanan, p. 76.
Scottish B is translated, after Allingham, by Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen, No 30; A 1-8, C 6-14, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, No 2; a compounded version by Roberts into German by Podhorszki, Acta Comparationis, etc., VIII, 69-73.
A.
Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 6; Motherwell's MS., p. 554.
1
Lady Margaret sits in her bower door,
Sewing at her silken seam;
She heard a note in Elmond's wood,
And wishd she there had been.
2
She loot the seam fa frae her side,
And the needle to her tae,
And she is on to Elmond's wood
As fast as she coud gae.