(Dartmoor.)
‘Pray take it up in a bottomless sack,
And every leaf grows merry in time
And bear it to the mill on a butterfly’s back.
O thus you shall be a true lover of mine’
(Cornwall.)
4. Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight.
P. 26 b. Danish. ‘Kvindemorderen,’ two fragments; Kristensen, Folkeminder, XI, 62, No 33.
29-37, 486 a, IV, 441 a. FF. ‘Schön Hannchen,’ Frischbier und Sembrzycki, Hundert Ostpreussische Volkslieder, 1893, p. 35, No 22, from Angerburg, 51 vv. The ballad is of the third class. Hannchen walks in the wood, and Ulrich advances to meet her. The birds are all singing, and the maid asks why. ‘Every bird has its song,’ says Ulrich; ‘go you your gait.’ He takes her under a briar where there is a pretty damsel (who is quite superfluous). Hannchen lays her head in the damsel’s lap and begins to weep. The damsel asks whether her weeping is for her father’s gear, or because Ulrich is not good enough for her. It is not for her father’s gear, and Ulrich is good enough. ‘Is it, then,’ says the damsel or Ulrich, ‘for the stakes on which the eleven maidens are hanging? Rely upon it, you shall be the twelfth.’ She begs for three cries, which are addressed to God, her parents, and her brothers. The brothers hear, hasten to the wood, and encounter Ulrich, who pretends to know nothing of their sister. His shoes are red with blood. ‘Why not?’ says Ulrich, ‘I have shot a dove.’ They know who the dove is. Hannchen is borne to the churchyard, Ulrich is strung up on the gallows. No 23 of the same collection is X.
‘Die schöne Anna,’ Böckel, Deutsche Volkslieder aus Oberhessen, p. 86, No 103, ‘Als die wunderschöne Anna,’ Lewalter, Deutsche V. l. in Niederhessen gesammelt, 15 Heft, No 24, p. 51, and also No 25, are fragmentary pieces, varieties of DD, I, 486 a.