Don’t prick my heart any more;
For now I’ve got from the gallows-tree
I’ll never get there any more.’
[“I do not know any title to this song except ‘Hold up, hold up your hands so high!’ It was by that title that we called for it.”]
Julius Krohn has lately made an important contribution to our knowledge of this ballad in an article in Virittäjä, II, 36–50, translated into German under the title ‘Das Lied vom Mädchen welches erlöst werden soll,’ Helsingfors, 1891. Professor Estlander had previously discussed the ballad in Finsk Tidskrift, X, 1881 (which I have not yet seen), and had sought to show that it was of Finnish origin, a view which Krohn disputes and refutes. There are nearly fifty Finnish versions. The curse with which I ends, and which is noted as occurring in Swedish C (compare also the Sicilian ballad), is never wanting in the Finnish, and is found also in the Esthonian copies.
96. The Gay Goshawk.
P. 356 a, III, 517 a. Add: (18) ‘La Fille dans la Tour,’ Daymard, Vieux Chants p. rec. en Quercy, p. 174 ; (19) ‘La belle dans la Tour,’ Pas de Calais, communicated by M. G. Doncieux to Revue des Traditions populaires, VI, 603 ; (20) ‘Belle Idoine,’ Questionnaire de Folklore, publié par la Société du Folklore Wallon, p. 79.
M. Doucieux has attempted a reconstruction of the text in Mélusine, V, 265 ff. He cites M. Gaston Paris as having lately pointed out a striking similitude between the first half of the French popular ballad and that of a little romance of Bele Ydoine composed in the twelfth century by Audefrois le Bastars (Bartsch, Altfranzösische Romanzen und Pastourellen, p. 59, No 57). This resemblance has, I suppose, occasioned the title of ‘Belle Idoine’ to be given editorially to No 20 above, for the name does not occur in the ballad.
356 b, III, 517 a. Add: ‘Au Jardin des Olives,’ Guillon, p. 83, ‘Dessous le Rosier blanc,’ Daymard, p. 171 (Les trois Capitaines). A girl feigns death to avoid becoming a king’s mistress, ‘Hertig Henrik och Konungen,’ Lagus, Nyländska Folkvisor, I, 117, No 37.
363. E. The following is the MS. copy, “of some antiquity,” from which E was in part constructed. (Whether it be the original or a transcript cannot be determined, but Mr Macmath informs me that the paper on which it is written “seems about the oldest sheet in the volume.”) The text was freely handled. ‘Lord William’ does not occur in it, but the name is found in another version which follows this.