Ballads, English -- England -- Texts; Ballads, Scots -- Scotland -- Texts
NOTE to p. 128, and p. 131, v. 75-80. Grundtvig, ii. 653, refers to a
B[oe]otian legend in Pausanias ix. 26, 5, for an instance of a similar
contrivance. The story goes, that one Menestratus, to save a friend who
was about to be exposed in due course to a dragon, made himself a brazen
breastplate, which had on every scale a hook with the point bent
upwards. Armed in this, he went voluntarily to meet the monster, and
destroyed him, though at the expense of his own life.
APPENDIX.
KEMPY KAYE.
From Sharpe's _Ballad Book_, p. 81.
There is a resemblance in two points between this ballad and the Danish
_Greve Genselin_ (Grundtvig, No. 16, translated by Jamieson,
_Illustrations_, p. 310). The characters in both are giants: the
smallest kemp that danced at Genselin's bridal was "fifteen ells to his
knee." Secondly, the bridal in the one ballad and the wooing in the
other are described in a style of extravagant parody; more gross in the
English, however, than in the Danish, where it is confined to the
bride's enormous appetite. This portion of _Greve Genselin_ occurs also
in _Tord af Havsgaard_ (Grundtvig, No. 1), which ballad is founded upon
the story of Thor's Hammer in the _Edda_.
Kempy Kaye's a wooing gane,
Far far ayont the sea,
An' he has met with an auld auld man,
His gudefather to be.
"Gae scrape yeersel, and gae scart yeersel, 5
And mak your bruchty face clean,[L7, 8]
For the wooers are to be here the nicht,
And yeer body's to be seen.
"What's the matter wi' you, my fair maiden,
You luk so pale and wan? 10
I'm sure you was once the fairest maiden
That ever the sun shined on."
Sae they scrapit her, and they scartit her,
Like the face of an assy pan,
And in cam Kempy Kaye himself, 15
A clever and tall young man.[L16-20]
His teeth they were like tether sticks,
His nose was three feet lang;
Between his shouthers was ells three,
Between his een a span. 20
"I'm coming to court your dochter dear,
An' some pairt of your gear:"
"An' by my sooth," quo' Bengoleer,
"She'll sair a man o' weir.
"My dochter she's a thrifty lass; 25
She span seven year to me;
An' if it war weil counted up,
Full ten wobs it would be."
He led his dochter by the han',
His dochter ben brought he; 30
"O is she not the fairest lass
That's in great Christendye?"
Ilka hair intil her head
Was like a heather cow,
And ilka louse aninder it 35
Was like a lintseed bow.[L36]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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