A and B, corrupted fragments though they be, retain clear traces of the ancient form of the story, and of the English variety of that form. Under the bridge of the Rella [Diamantina] a woman is washing clothes, gh' è 'na lavandera. A knight passes, B, and apparently accosts the laundress. She moves into the water, and the knight after her; the knight embraces her, A. Dowy rade he hame, el va a cà tüto mojà, A. In B (passing over some verses which have intruded) he has many knife-stabs, and his horse many also.[362] He asks his mother to put him to bed and his horse into the stable, and gives directions about his funeral.
All of the story which precedes the hero's return home is either omitted, D, F, J, K, L, or abridged to a single stanza: ven da la cassa lo re Rinald, ven da la cassa, l'è tüt ferì, C; ven da la guerra re Rinaldo, ven da la guerra, l'è tüt ferì, I, E, H; save that G, which like C makes him to have been hunting (and to have been bitten by a mad dog), adds that, while he was hunting, his wife had given birth to a boy. M has an entirely false beginning: Count Cagnolino was disposed to marry, but wished to be secure about his wife's previous life. He had a marble statue in his garden which moved its eyes when any girl that had gone astray presented herself before it. The daughter of Captain Tartaglia having been declined, for reason, and another young woman espoused, Tartaglia killed the count while they were hunting.
The wounded man, already feeling the approach of death, F, G, L, asks that his bed may be made; he shall die before the morrow, D, F, J; let not his wife know, F, G. The wife asks why the men-servants, coachmen, are weeping, and is told that they have drowned [lost] some of the horses, C-J, M [have burned the king's carriage, K]. We will get others when the king comes, she answers, C, D, H [when I get up, F, as in Breton A]. Why are the maids weeping? The maids have lost sheets or towels in washing, F, I, K; have scorched the shirts in ironing, C, D, H. When the king comes, he will buy or bring better, C, D, H [when I get up, F, as in Breton A]. Why are the priests chanting? For a great feast to-morrow, F. Why are the carpenters at work? They are making a cradle for your boy, C-E, H-K. Why do the bells ring? A great lord is dead; in honor of somebody or something; C, E-L. Why does not Anzolin come to see me? He has gone a-hunting, G, L. What dress shall I put on to go to church? [When I get up I shall put on red, F, I.] You in black and I in gray, as in our country is the way, C-F, H, I [H moda a Paris, by corruption of dël pais]; I white, you gray, J; you will look well in black, M; put on red, or put on white, or put on black for custom's sake, G.
The children in the street say, That is the wife of the lord who was buried, or the people look at the lady in a marked way, C, J, G, M; and why is this? For the last time the mother-in-law puts off the question. At the church, under the family bench, there is a grave new made, and now it has to be said that the husband is buried there, C-K, M.
A conclusion is wanting in half of the ballads, and what there is is corrupted in others. The widow commends her boy to her husband's mother, G, M, and says she will die with her dear one, D, E, J, M. In C, as in French V, she wishes to speak to her husband. If the dead ever spake to the quick, she would speak once to her dear Lüis; if the quick ever spake to the dead, she would speak once to her dear husband. In G she bids the grave unlock, that she may come into the arms of her beloved, and then bids it close, that in his arms she may stay: cf. French Y, Q, X, R, AA.
The story of the Italian ballad, under the title of 'Il Conte Angiolino,' was given in epitome by Luigi Carrer, in his Prose e Poesie, Venice, 1838, IV, 81 f, before any copy had been published (omitted in later editions). According to Carrer's version, the lady, hearing bells, and seeing from her windows the church lighted up as for some office, extracts the fact from her mother-in-law on the spot, and then, going to the church and seeing her husband's tomb, prays that it would open and receive her.
A fragment of an Italian ballad given by Nigra, Romania, XI, 396, No 8, describes three card players, quarrelling over their game, as passing from words to knives, and from knives to pistols, and one of the party, the king of Spain, as being wounded in the fray. He rides home with a depressed air, and asks his mother to make his bed, for he shall be dead at midnight and his horse at dawn. There is a confusion of two stories here, as will be seen from Spanish ballads which are to be spoken of. Both stories are mixed with the original adventure of the mermaid in 'Il Cavaliere della bella spada,' already referred to as B. In this last the knight has a hundred and fifty stabs, and his horse ninety.[363]
Nigra has added to the valuable and beautiful ballads furnished to Romania, XI, a tale (p. 398) from the province of Turin, which preserves the earlier portion of the Breton story. A hunter comes upon a beautiful woman under a rock. She requires him to marry her, and is told by the hunter that he is already married. The beautiful woman, who is of course a fairy, presents the hunter with a box for his wife, which he is not to open. This box contains an explosive girdle, intended to be her death; and the hunter's curiosity impelling him to examine the gift, he is so much injured by a detonation which follows that he can just drag himself home to die.
Spanish. This ballad is very common in Catalonia, and has been found in Asturias. Since it is also known in Portugal, we may presume that it might be recovered in other parts of the peninsula. A. 'La bona viuda,' Briz, Cansons de la Terra, III, 155, 32 verses. B. 'La Viuda,' 33 verses, Milá y Fontanals, Romancerillo Catalan, 2d ed., p. 155, No 204. C-I. Ib. p. 156 f. J. Ib. p. 157 f, No 204, 36 verses. K. 'Romance de Doña Ana,' Asturias, the argument only, Amador de los Rios, Historia Critica de la Literatura Española, VII, 446, being No 30 of that author's unpublished collection.
The name of the husband is Don Joan de Sevilla, D, Don Joan, F, Don Olalbo, I, Don Francisco, J, Don Pedro, K. His wife, a princess, A, G, has given birth to a child, or is on the eve of so doing. The gentleman is away from home, or is about to leave home on a pilgrimage of a year and a day, A, G; has gone to war, D; to a hunt, I, K. He dies just as he returns home or is leaving home, or away from home, in other versions, but in K comes back in a dying condition, and begs that his state may be concealed from his wife. The lady, hearing a commotion in the house, and asking the cause, is told that it is the noisy mirth of the servants, A-D. There is music, chanting, tolling of bells; and this is said to be for a great person who has died, B, D, A. In B, D, the wife asks, Can it be for my husband? In J the mother-in-law explains her own sorrowful demeanor as occasioned by the death of an uncle, and we are informed that the burial was without bells, in order that the new mother might not hear. In J only do we have the question, Where is my husband? He has been summoned to court, says the mother-in-law, where, as a favorite, he will stay a year and ten days. When should the young mother go to mass? Peasants go after a fortnight, tradesfolk after forty days, etc.; she, as a great lady, will wait a year and a day, A, D, I, a year, B, a year and ten days, J. What dress should she wear, silk, gold tissue, silver? etc. Black would become her best, A, J, K. [Doña Ana, in K, like the lady in Italian G, resists the suggestion of mourning, as proper only for a widow, and appears in a costume de Pascua florida: in some other copies also she seems to wear a gay dress.] The people, the children, point to her, and say, There is the widow, and her mother-in-law parries the inquiry why she is the object of remark; but the truth is avowed when they see a grave digging, and the wife asks for whom it is, A. In J the lady sees a monument in the church, hung with black, reads her husband's name, and swoons. B, C make the mother's explanation follow upon the children's talk. In K the announcement is made first by a shepherd, then confirmed by gaping spectators and by a rejected lover. The widow commends her child to its grandmother, and says she will go to her husband in heaven, A-D; dies on the spot, K; Don Francisco dies in March, Doña Ana in May, J.