'Jellon Grame,' and particularly versions B, C, D, may be regarded as a counterpart to '[Fause Foodrage],' and especially to versions B, C, of that ballad. In 'Fause Foodrage,' [B], [C], and 'Jellon Grame,' B, C, D, a woman has two lovers. The one who is preferred is killed by the other in 'Fause Foodrage;' in 'Jellon Grame' the woman herself is killed by the lover she has rejected. This kind of interchange is familiar in ballads. In both 'Fause Foodrage' and 'Jellon Grame' the son of the woman, before he comes to manhood, takes vengeance on the murderer.
'Jellon Grame,' as well as 'Fause Foodrage,' has certainly suffered very much in transmission. It is interesting to find an ancient and original trait preserved even in so extremely corrupted a version as C of the present ballad, a circumstance very far from unexampled. In stanza 18 we read that the child who is to avenge his mother "grew as big in ae year auld as some boys woud in three," and we have a faint trace of the same extraordinary thriving in B 15: "Of all the youths was at that school none could with him compare." So in one of the Scandinavian ballads akin to 'Fause Foodrage,' and more remotely to 'Jellon Grame,' the corresponding child grows more in two months than other boys in eight years:
Mei voks unge Ingelbrett
í dei maanar tvaa
hell híne smaabonni
vokse paa aatte aar.
Bugge, Norske Folkeviser, No 23, st. 17, p. 113.
This is a commonplace: so again Bugge, No 5, sts 7, 8, p. 23. Compare Robert le Diable, and Sir Gowther.
In B 14 we are told that the boy was called by his father's name (C 17 is corrupted). This is a point in the corresponding Scandinavian ballads: Danske Viser, No 126, st. 21, No 127, st. 34; Levninger, No 12, st. 26, No 13, st. 18; Íslenzk fornkvæði, No 28, st. 33b; Bugge, No 23, st. 16; Kristensen, I, No 97, sts 7, 11, No 111, st. 9.
A b is translated by Schubart, p. 69; by Arndt, Blütenlese, p. 234.
A
a. A. Fraser Tytler's Brown MS., No 4. b. Scott's Minstrelsy, II, 20, 1802.