[B]. 'Clerk Colvill, or, The Mermaid,' Herd's Ancient and Modern Scots Songs, 1769, p. 302.
[C]. W. F. in Notes and Queries, Fourth Series, VIII, 510, from the recitation of a lady in Forfarshire.
Although, as has been already said, William Tytler's Brown manuscript is now not to be found, a copy of two of its fifteen ballads has been preserved in the Fraser Tytler family, and 'Clerk Colvill,' A ('Clark Colven') is one of the two.[345] This ballad is not in Jamieson's Brown manuscript. Rewritten by Lewis, A was published in Tales of Wonder, 1801, II, 445, No 56. B, 1769, is the earliest printed English copy, but a corresponding Danish ballad antedates its publication by seventy-five years. Of C, W. F., who communicated it to Notes and Queries, says: "I have reason to believe that it is originally from the same source as that from which Scott, and especially Jamieson, derived many of their best ballads." This source should be no other than Mrs Brown, who certainly may have known two versions of Clerk Colvill; but C is markedly different from A. An Abbotsford manuscript, entitled "Scottish Songs," has, at fol. 3, a version which appears to have been made up from Lewis's copy, its original, A, and Herd's, B.
All the English versions are deplorably imperfect, and C is corrupted, besides. The story which they afford is this. Clerk Colvill, newly married as we may infer, is solemnly entreated by his gay lady never to go near a well-fared may who haunts a certain spring or water. It is clear that before his marriage he had been in the habit of resorting to this mermaid, as she is afterwards called, and equally clear, from the impatient answer which he renders his dame, that he means to visit her again. His coming is hailed with pleasure by the mermaid, who, in the course of their interview, does something which gives him a strange pain in the head,—a pain only increased by a prescription which she pretends will cure it, and, as she then exultingly tells him, sure to grow worse until he is dead. He draws his sword on her, but she merrily springs into the water. He mounts his horse, rides home tristful, alights heavily, and bids his mother make his bed, for all is over with him.
C is at the beginning blended with verses which belong to 'Willie and May Margaret,' Jamieson, I, 135 (from Mrs Brown's recitation), or 'The Drowned Lovers,' Buchan, I, 140. In this ballad a mother adjures her son not to go wooing, under pain of her curse. He goes, nevertheless, and is drowned. It is obvious, without remark, that the band and belt in C 1 do not suit the mother; neither does the phrase 'love Colin' in the second stanza.[346] C 9-11 afford an important variation from the other versions. The mermaid appears at the foot of the young man's bed, and offers him a choice between dying then and living with her in the water. (See the Norwegian ballads at p. 377.)
Clerk Colvill is not, as his representative is or may be in other ballads, the guiltless and guileless object of the love or envy of a water-sprite or elf. His relations with the mermaid began before his marriage with his gay lady, and his death is the natural penalty of his desertion of the water-nymph; for no point is better established than the fatal consequences of inconstancy in such connections.[347] His history, were it fully told, would closely resemble that of the Knight of Staufenberg, as narrated in a German poem of about the year 1300.[348]
The already very distinguished chevalier, Peter Diemringer, of Staufenberg (in the Ortenau, Baden, four leagues from Strassburg), when riding to mass one Whitsunday, saw a lady of surpassing beauty, dressed with equal magnificence, sitting on a rock by the wayside. He became instantaneously enamored, and, greeting the lady in terms expressive of his admiration, received no discouraging reply. The lady rose; the knight sprang from his horse, took a hand which she offered, helped her from the rock, and they sat down on the grass. The knight asked how she came to be there alone. The lady replied that she had been waiting for him: ever since he could bestride a horse she had been devoted to him; she had been his help and protection in tourneys and fights, in all climes and regions, though he had never seen her. The knight wished he might ever be hers. He could have his wish, she said, and never know trouble or sickness, on one condition, and that was that he never should marry: if he did this, he would die in three days. He vowed to be hers as long as he lived; they exchanged kisses, and then she bade him mount his horse and go to mass. After the benediction he was to return home, and when he was alone in his chamber, and wished for her, she would come, and so always; that privilege God had given her: "swâ ich wil, dâ bin ich." They had their meeting when he returned from church: he redoubled his vows, she promised him all good things, and the bounties which he received from her overflowed upon all his friends and comrades.
The knight now undertook a chivalrous tour, to see such parts of the world as he had not visited before. Wherever he went, the fair lady had only to be wished for and she was by him: there was no bound to her love or her gifts. Upon his return he was beset by relatives and friends, and urged to marry. He put them off with excuses: he was too young to sacrifice his freedom, and what not. They returned to the charge before long, and set a wise man of his kindred at him to beg a boon of him. "Anything," he said, "but marrying: rather cut me into strips than that." Having silenced his advisers by this reply, he went to his closet and wished for his lady. She was full of sympathy, and thought it might make his position a little easier if he should tell his officious friends something of the real case, how he had a wife who attended him wherever he went and was the source of all his prosperity; but he must not let them persuade him, or what she had predicted would surely come to pass.
At this time a king was to be chosen at Frankfurt, and all the nobility flocked thither, and among them Staufenberg, with a splendid train. He, as usual, was first in all tourneys, and made himself remarked for his liberal gifts and his generous consideration of youthful antagonists: his praise was in everybody's mouth. The king sent for him, and offered him an orphan niece of eighteen, with a rich dowry. The knight excused himself as unworthy of such a match. The king said his niece must accept such a husband as he pleased to give, and many swore that Staufenberg was a fool. Bishops, who were there in plenty, asked him if he had a wife already. Staufenberg availed himself of the leave which had been given him, and told his whole story, not omitting that he was sure to die in three days if he married. "Let me see the woman," said one of the bishops. "She lets nobody see her but me," answered Staufenberg. "Then it is a devil," said another of the clergy, "and your soul is lost forever." Staufenberg yielded, and said he would do the king's will. He was betrothed that very hour, and set out for Ortenau, where he had appointed the celebration of the nuptials. When night came he wished for the invisible lady. She appeared, and told him with all gentleness that he must prepare for the fate of which she had forewarned him, a fate seemingly inevitable, and not the consequence of her resentment. At the wedding feast she would display her foot in sight of all the guests: when he saw that, let him send for the priest. The knight thought of what the clergy had said, and that this might be a cheat of the devil. The bride was brought to Staufenberg, the feast was held, but at the very beginning of it a foot whiter than ivory was seen through the ceiling. Staufenberg tore his hair and cried, Friends, ye have ruined yourselves and me! He begged his bride and all who had come with her to the wedding to stay for his funeral, ordered a bed to be prepared for him and a priest to be sent for. He asked his brothers to give his bride all that he had promised her. But she said no; his friends should rather have all that she had brought; she would have no other husband, and since she had been the cause of his death she would go into a cloister, where no eye should see her: which she did after she had returned to her own country.
A superscription to the old poem denominates Staufenberg's amphibious consort a mer-fey, sea-fairy; but that description is not to be strictly interpreted, no more than mer-fey, or fata morgana, is in some other romantic tales. There is nothing of the water-sprite in her, nor is she spoken of by any such name in the poem itself. The local legends of sixty years ago,[349] and perhaps still, make her to have been a proper water-nymph. She is first met with by the young knight near a spring or a brook, and it is in a piece of water that he finds his death, and that on the evening of his wedding day.