The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 1 (of 5)
General
The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 1 (of 5)
Ballads, English -- England -- Texts; Ballads, Scots -- Scotland -- Texts
'Der Ulinger hat eylff Jungfrawen gehangen,
Die zwölfft hat er gefangen.'[87]
This corresponds with the passage in Judith's song (xvi, 6), $Dixit se$
... infantes meos $dare$ in prædam et $virgenes in captivitatem$: but it
is reasonable to suppose that the ballad follows some version of the
Bible words that varied much from the original.
The incident of the maid's lousing and tousing her betrayer's hair,
while he lies with his head in her lap, may have come from Judith
seizing Holofernes by the hair before she kills him, but the story of
Samson and Delilah may have had influence here.
According to many German versions, the murderer grants the maid three
cries before she dies. She invokes Jesus, Mary, and her brother. Or she
utters three sighs, the first to God the Father, the second to Jesus,
the third to her brother. These cries or sighs seem to take the place of
Judith's prayer, Confirma me, Domine Deus Israel (xiii, 7), and it may
also be well to remember that Holofernes granted Judith, on her request,
permission to go out in the night to pray.
The Dutch, Low-German, Scandinavian, and other versions agree in making
the woman kill the knight with his own sword, as in Judith. The Dutch
and Low-German [also Danish #F#, Swedish #A#] have preserved an original
trait in making the maid hew off the murderer's head. English and French
versions dispose of the knight differently: the maid pushes him into sea
or river. Perhaps, in some older form of the story, after the head was
cut off, the _trunk_ was pushed into the water: cf. Judith xiii, 10:
Abscidit caput ejus et ... evolvit corpus ejus truncum. The words
apprehendit comam capitis ejus (xiii, 9) have their parallel in Dutch
#A#, 33: "Zy nam het hoofd al by het haer." The Dutch ballad makes the
maid carry the head with her.
"Singing and ringing" she rode through the wood: Judith sings a song of
praise to the Lord after her return home.
In English #C-F#, May Colven comes home before dawn, as Judith does. The
Dutch #A# says, When to her father's gate she came, she blew the horn
like a man. Compare Judith xiii, 13: Et dixit Judith a longe custodibus
murorum, Aperite portas!
The Dutch text goes on to say that when the father heard the horn he was
delighted at his daughter's return: and Judith v, 14, Et factum est, cum
audissent viri vocem ejus, vocaverunt presbyteros civitatis.
The conclusion of Dutch #A# is that there was a banquet held, and the
head was set on the table. So Judith causes Holofernes' head to be hung
up on the city wall, and after the enemy have been driven off, the Jews
hold a feast.
The Icelandic version, though elsewhere much mutilated, has a concluding
stanza which certainly belongs to the ballad:
Ása went into a holy cell,
Never did she harm to man.
This agrees with the view taken of the heroine of the ballad as a saint,
and with the Bible account that Judith lived a chaste widow after her
husband's demise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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