Children's songs -- United States; Games with music
In the year 1287, Folke Algotson, a high-born Swedish youth, carried
off to Norway (at that time the refuge of such boldness) Ingrid, a
daughter of the "law-man" or judge of East Gothland, who was betrothed
to a Danish noble. Popular ballads attached themselves to the
occurrence, which are still preserved. The substance of that version
of the story with which we are concerned is as follows: A youth loves
a maid, who returns his affection, but in his absence her friends have
"given" her to another. He rides to the wedding ceremony with a troop
of followers. The bride, seeing him approach, and wishing to test his
affection, calls on her maidens to "take off her gold crown, and coif
her in linen white." But the hero at once recognizes his love, mounts
with her on horseback, and flees to Norway.
We cannot believe the resemblance to be accidental, and look upon our
rhymes as a branch from the same ancient--but not historical--root.
No. 18.
_Little Harry Hughes and the Duke's Daughter._
The writer was not a little surprised to hear from a group of colored
children, in the streets of New York city (though in a more incoherent
form) the following ballad. He traced the song to a little girl living
in one of the cabins near Central Park, from whom he obtained this
version. The hut, rude as the habitation of a recent squatter on the
plains, was perched on a rock still projecting above the excavations
which had been made on either side, preparatory to the erection of the
conventional "brown-stone fronts" of a New York street. Rocks flung by
carelessly managed explosions flew over the roof, and clouds of dust
were blown by every wind into the unswept hovel. In this unlikely spot
lingered the relics of old English folk-song, amid all the stir of the
busiest of cities. The mother of the family had herself been born in
New York, of Irish parentage, but had learned from her own mother, and
handed down to her children, such legends of the past as the ballad
we cite. A pretty melody gave popularity to the verse, and so the
thirteenth-century tradition, extinct perhaps in its native soil, had
taken a new lease of existence as a song of negro children in New York.
Under the thin disguise of the heading will be recognized the ballad
of "Hugh of Lincoln and the Jew's Daughter," the occasion of which
is referred by Matthew Paris to the year 1255. Chaucer, in exquisite
verse, has made his Prioress recount the same story: how the child,
This gemme of chastitè, this emeraude,
And eek of martirdom the ruby bright,
has his throat cut by "false Jewes," and, cast into a pit, still sings
his chant in honor of
This welle of mercy, Christes moder sweet;
and, when discovered, cannot be buried in peace till the magic grain is
removed which "that blissful maiden fre" has laid under his tongue.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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