The Scandinavian ballad agrees in many particulars with the conclusion of the second lay of Helgi Hundingsbani in the older Edda. Helgi, having been slain by Sigrún's brother, is bitterly bewailed by Sigrún. He quits his barrow to come to her. Sigrún will kiss him, but his hair is thick with hoar-frost, he is drenched in blood, and how is this? These are the grim tears that Sigrún has shed, every one of which falls on his breast. Sigrún says she will sleep in his arms as though he were alive, and goes into the barrow with him. The end of the story is lost; according to a prose tradition which professes to supply the close, Sigrún soon died of grief. The source of the later ballads is perceptible here.
In the English ballad the dead lover returns of his own motion, simply to ask back his troth; in the Scandinavian, his betrothed grieves him out of his grave, "hon sörjer sin fästeman ur graf," and the object of his visit is to admonish her to restrain her tears, which prevent his happy repose. A fragmentary story with this turn, which perhaps may even have been a variety of 'Sweet William's Ghost,' will be found in the ballad which follows this.
In a somewhat popular German ballad, 'Der todte Freier,' a dead man comes to the window of his betrothed in the night and calls her. She does not recognize him; says he smells of the ground. He has been eight years in the ground, and that may be. He bids her summon father, mother, and friends, for her bridegroom has come. She is decked as for her wedding; at the first sound of the bell makes her will or receives the sacrament, and dies at the second.[132]
A young man goes to the grave of his betrothed and asks his love-tokens back; she refers him to her mother, and tells him she will join him in a year: Haupt u. Schmaler, I, 88, No 55. This returning of gifts by the dead is not an infrequent phenomenon: Čelakowský, i, 4, No 2=Wenzig, Slawische Volkslieder, p. 57, and III, 16, No 6; Beaurepaire, p. 53, Le Héricher, Lit. pop. de Normandie, p. 160 f; Briz y Candi, I, 140, Milá, Observaciones, p. 155, No 50, Milá, Romancerillo, pp 320-22, No 337, D, E, A11, B11.
A is translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 34, No 4; by Herder, Book III, No 8; Bodmer, II, 36; Wackernagel, Altdeutsche Blätter, I, 189; Döring, p. 391; Knortz, Lieder u. Romanzen Alt-Englands, p. 86, No 23; von Marées, p. 24. C by Grundtvig, p. 319, No 90; Wolff, Halle der Völker, I, 30, Hausschatz, p. 205; Knortz, as above, p. 179, No 49. A compound of D, C, A, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, p. 53, No 12.
A
Ramsay's Tea Table Miscellany, "4th volume, 1740;" here from the London edition of 1763, p. 324.
1 There came a ghost to Margret's door,
With many a grievous groan,
And ay he tirled at the pin,
But answer made she none.
2 'Is that my father Philip,
Or is't my brother John?
Or is't my true-love, Willy,
From Scotland new come home?'