13
She took the youngest in her lap,
The next youngest by the hand,
Set all the rest of them her before,
As she learnt them to gang.
14
And she has left the wood with them,
And to the kirk has gane,
Where the gude priest them christened,
And gave her gude kirking.
[C]. Motherwell's copies exhibit five or six slight variations from Buchan.
FOOTNOTES:
[334] This reading, nuts, may have subsequently made its way into A instead of rose, which it would be more ballad-like for Margaret to be plucking, as the maid does in 'Tam Lin,' where also the passage A 3-6, B 2-4 occurs. Grimm suggests a parallel to Tam Lin in the dwarf Laurin, who does not allow trespassing in his rose-garden: Deutsche Mythologie, III, 130. But the resemblance seems not material, there being no woman in the case. The pretence of trespass in Tam Lin and Hind Etin is a simple commonplace, and we have it in some Slavic forms of No 4, as at p. 41.
[335] B is defective in the middle and the end. "The reciter, unfortunately, could not remember more of the ballad, although the story was strongly impressed on her memory. She related that the lady, after having been taken home by Hynde Etin, lived with him many years, and bore him seven sons, the eldest of whom, after the inquiries at his parents detailed in the ballad, determines to go in search of the earl, his grandfather. At his departure his mother instructs him how to proceed, giving him a ring to bribe the porter at her father's gate, and a silken vest, wrought by her own hand, to be worn in presence of her father. The son sets out, and arrives at the castle, where, by bribing the porter, he gets admission to the earl, who, struck with the resemblance of the youth to his lost daughter, and the similarity of the vest to one she had wrought for himself, examines the young man, from whom he discovers the fate of his daughter. He gladly receives his grandson, and goes to his daughter's residence, where he meets her and Hynde Etin, who is pardoned by the earl, through the intercession of his daughter." Kinloch, Ancient Scottish Ballads, p. 226 f.
[336] B, Landstad 44 (which has only this in common with the Scottish ballad, that a hill-man carries a maid to his cave), has much resemblance at the beginning to 'Kvindemorderen,' Grundtvig, No 183, our No 4. See Grundtvig's note ** at III, 810. This is only what might be looked for, since both ballads deal with abductions.
[337] It is not necessary, for purposes of the English ballad, to notice these mixed forms.
[338] In 'Nøkkens Svig,' C, Grundtvig, No 39, the merman consults with his mother, and then, as also in other copies of the ballad, transforms himself into a knight. See the translation by Prior, III, 269; Jamieson, Popular Ballads, I, 210; Lewis, Tales of Wonder, I, 60.