Eleanor of Aquitaine was married to Henry II of England in 1152, a few weeks after her divorce from Louis VII of France, she being then about thirty and Henry nineteen years of age. “It is needless to observe,” says Percy, “that the following ballad is altogether fabulous; whatever gallantries Eleanor encouraged in the time of her first husband, none are imputed to her in that of her second.”

In Peele’s play of Edward I, 1593, the story of this ballad is transferred from Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine to Edward Longshanks and that model of women and wives, Eleanor of Castile, together with other slanders which might less ridiculously have been invented of Henry II’s Eleanor.[[144]] Edward’s brother Edmund plays the part of the Earl Marshall. The Queen dies; the King bewails his loss in terms of imbecile affection, and orders crosses to be reared at all the stages of the funeral convoy. Peele’s Works, ed. Dyce, I, 184 ff.

There are several sets of tales in which a husband takes a shrift-father’s place and hears his wife’s confession. 1. A fabliau “Du chevalier qui fist sa fame confesse,” Barbazan et Méon, III, 229; Montaiglon, Recueil Général, I, 178, No 16; Legrand, Fabliaux, etc., 1829, IV, 132, with circumstances added by Legrand. 2. Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, 1432, No 78; Scala Celi, 1480, fol. 49;[[145]] Mensa Philosophica, cited by Manni, Istoria del Decamerone, p. 476; Doni, Novelle, Lucca, 1852, Nov. xiii; Malespini, Ducento Novelle, No 92, Venice, 1609, I, 248; Kirchhof, Wendunmuth, No 245, Oesterley, II, 535; La Fontaine, “Le Mari Confesseur,” Contes, I, No 4. 3. Boccaccio, VII, 5.

In 1, 2, the husband discovers himself after the confession; in 3 he is recognized by the wife before she begins her shrift, which she frames to suit her purposes. In all these, the wife, on being reproached with the infidelity which she had revealed, tells the husband that she knew all the while that he was the confessor, and gives an ingenious turn to her apparently compromising disclosures which satisfies him of her innocence. All these tales have the cynical Oriental character, and, to a healthy taste, are far surpassed by the innocuous humor of the English ballad.

Oesterley, in his notes to Kirchhof, V, 103, cites a number of German story-books in which the tale may, in some form, be found; also Hans Sachs, 4, 3, 7b.[[146]] In Bandello, Parte Prima, No 9, a husband, not disguising himself, prevails upon a priest to let him overhear his wife’s confession, and afterwards kills her.

Svend Grundtvig informed me that he had six copies of an evidently recent (and very bad) translation of Percy’s ballad, taken down from recitation in different parts of Denmark. In one of these Queen Eleanor is exchanged for a Queen of Norway. Percy’s ballad is also translated by Bodmer, II, 40; Ursinus, p. 59; Talvj, Charakteristik, p. 513; Döring, p. 373; Knortz, L. u. R. Alt-Englands, No 51.

A

a. A broadside, London, Printed for C. Bates, at the Sun & Bible in Gilt-spur-street, near Pye-corner, Bagford Ballads, II, No 26, 1685? b. A broadside, Printed for C. Bates, in Pye-corner, Bagford Ballads, I, No 33, 1685? c. Another copy of b, reprinted in Utterson’s Little Book of Ballads, p. 22. d. A Collection of Old Ballads, 1723, I, 18.

1

Queen Elenor was a sick woman,