48. THE LOVERS' TASKS. This very curious song belongs, as I was told, in Cornwall, to a sort of play that was wont to be performed in farmhouses at Christmas. One performer, a male, left the room, and entered again singing the first part. A girl, seated on a chair, responded with the second part. The story was this. She had been engaged to a young man who died. His ghost returned to claim her. She demurred to this, and he said that he would waive his claim if she could perform a series of tasks he set her. To this she responded that he must, in the first place, accomplish a set of impossible tasks she would set him. Thus was he baffled. "In all stories of this kind," says Professor Child, "the person upon whom a task is imposed stands acquitted if another of no less difficulty is devised which must be performed first." This ballad and dramatic scene corresponds with that in "Cold blows the wind" (No. 6). There, in the original, the ghost desires to draw the girl underground, when she is seated on his grave. She objects, and he sets her a task-- "Go fetch me a light from dungeon deep, Wring water from a stone, And likewise milk from a maiden's breast, That never babe had none." She answers the requirement-- "She stroke a light from out a flint, An icebell squeezed she, And likewise milk from a Johnnis' wort, And so she did all three." Icebell is icicle. By this means she was quit. In the version I have given I have altered this to suit the song for modern singing. In "The Elfin Knight," Child's "British Ballads," No. 2, an elf appears to the damsel and sets her tasks. If she cannot accomplish these, she must accompany him to the elf world. Here we have a substitution of a fairy for a ghost. In an Ulster Broadside in the British Museum (1162, k 5) we have a later substitution. A low-born gamekeeper gets a damsel of high degree into his power, and will not release her unless she can solve a series of riddles. This she does, and so makes her escape. Of the Northumbrian ballad, "Lay the Bent to the Bonny Broom," Child, No. 1, there are two versions. In one given by Miss Mason, "Nursery Rhymes and Country Songs," a stranger comes to the door of a house where are three sisters, and demands that one shall follow him or answer a series of riddles. Then ensues a contest of wit, and the girl escapes the obligation of following the mysterious stranger. Who he is is not ascertained. In the other version it is different; he is a knight, and he offers to marry the girl who can solve his riddles. The youngest sister effects this, so he marries her. It is the same in the corresponding Cornish ballad of "Genefer Gentle and Rosemarie," originally given by Gilbert in his "Cornish Christmas Carols," 2nd ed., p. 65, and reprinted by Child.