[39] The older literature is noted, with his usual fulness, by von der Hagen, Gesammtabenteuer, I, CXVI-XXI. See, also, Dunlop’s History of Fiction, ed. Wilson, II, 95 f. M. Gaston Paris has critically reviewed the whole matter, with an account of modern French imitations of the romance of the Châtelain de Couci, in Histoire Littéraire de la France, XXVIII, 352-90. See, also, his article in Romania, XII, 359 ff.
[40] See Percy’s Reliques, 1765, III, 154, and Ebsworth, Roxburghe Ballads, VI, 650. It is in many of the collections of black-letter broadsides besides the Roxburghe, as Pepys, Wood, Crawford, etc. Though perhaps absolutely the silliest ballad that ever was made, and very far from silly sooth, the broadside was traditionally propagated in Scotland without so much change as is usual in such cases: ‘There livd a knight in Jesuitmont.’ Scotch Ballads, Materials for Border Minstrelsy, No 22 e, Abbotsford, in the handwriting of William Laidlaw, derived from Jean Scott; ‘The Knight in Jesuite,’ Campbell MSS, II, 63; ‘There was a knight in Jessamay,’ Motherwell’s MS. p. 399, from Agnes Laird, of Kilbarchan. Percy’s ballad is translated by Bodmer, I, 167, and by Döring, p. 91. The tragedy is said to be localized at Radcliffe, Lancashire: Harland, Ballads and Songs of Lancashire, ed. 1879, p. 46, Roby’s Traditions of Lancashire, 1879, I, 107, both citing Dr Whitaker’s History of Whalley.
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THE EARL OF MAR’S DAUGHTER
‘The Earl of Mar’s Daughter,’ Buchan’s Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 49; Motherwell’s MS. p. 565.
The Earl of Mar’s daughter spies a dove on a tower, and promises him a golden cage if he will come to her. The dove lights on her head, and she takes him into her bower. When night comes, she sees a youth standing by her side. The youth explains that his mother, a queen versed in magic, had transformed him into a dove that he might charm maids. He is a dove by day, a man at night, and will live and die with her. In the course of seven years seven sons are born, all of whom are successively committed to the care of the queen their grandmother. After the twenty-third year a lord comes to court the lady. She refuses him: she will live alone with her bird. Her father swears that he will kill this bird, and Cow-me-doo prudently takes refuge with his mother, who welcomes home her ‘young son Florentine,’ and calls for dancers and minstrels. Cow-me-doo Florentine will have none of that; the situation is too serious. The morrow the mother of his seven sons is to be wedded; instead of merry-making, he desires to have twenty stout men turned into storks, his seven sons into swans, and himself into a goshawk. This feat is beyond his mother’s (quite limited) magic, but it is done by an old woman who has more skill. The birds fly to Earl Mar’s castle, where the wedding is going on. The storks seize some of the noble guests, the swans bind the bride’s best man to a tree, and in a twinkling the bride and her maidens are carried off by the birds. The Earl of Mar reconciles himself with his daughter.
There is a Scandinavian ballad which Grundtvig has treated as identical with this, but the two have little in common beyond the assumption of the bird-shape by the lover. They are, perhaps, on a par for barrenness and folly, but the former may claim some age and vogue, the Scottish ballad neither.
Danish. ‘Ridderen i Fugleham,’ Grundtvig, II, 226, No 68, A-C (C is translated by Prior, III, 206); ‘Herr Jon som Fugl,’ Kristensen, I, 161, No 59, X, 23, No 11, A, B. In Grundtvig’s A (MS. of the sixteenth century), the son of the king of England wooes a maid, sending her rich presents. Her mother says he shall never have her daughter, and this message his envoys take back to him. He is angry, and has a bird’s coat forged for him out of nine gold rings (but his behavior thereafter is altogether birdlike). He sits on the ridgepole of the maid’s bower and sings. The maid exclaims, Christ grant thou wert mine! thou shouldst drink naught but wine, and sleep in my arms. I would send thee to England, as a gift to my love. She sits down on the ground; the bird flies into her bosom. She takes the bird into her bower; he throws off his bird-coat, and is recognized. The maid begs him to do her no shame. ‘Not if you will go to England with me,’ he answers, takes her up, and wings his way thither. There he marries her, and gives her a crown and a queen’s name.
In Grundtvig B, the bird is a falcon. The maid will have no man that cannot fly. Master Hillebrand, son of the king of England, learns this fact, and has a bird’s coat made for him, enters the room where man had never been before, sleeps under white linen, and in the morning is a knight so braw. (Here the story ends.)
In C, the maid will have no man that cannot fly, and Master Hillebrand orders a bird’s coat to be made for him (what could be more mechanical!), flies into the maid’s bower, and passes the night on the pole on which she hangs her clothes. In the morning he begins to sing, flies to the bed, and plays with the maid’s hair. If you could shed your feathers, says the maid, I would have no other man. Keep your word, says the bird; give me your hand, and take my claw. She passes her word; he throws off his feathers, and stands before her a handsome man. By day, says the maid, he is to fly with the birds, by night to sleep in her bed. He perches so long on the clothes-pole that Ingerlille has a girl and a boy. When her father asks who is their father, she tells him the positive truth; she found them in a wood. When the bird comes back at night, she says that he must speak to her father; further concealment is impossible. Master Hillebrand asks the father to give him his daughter. The father is surprised that he should want a maid that has been beguiled; but if he will marry her she shall have a large dowry. The knight wants nothing but her.