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
The case is materially strengthened by the Dutch text #C# ('Roland'),
which was not accessible at the time Bugge's paper was written. The name
Roland is not so close to Holofern as Halewyn, but is still within the
range of conceivable metamorphosis. The points of coincidence between
Dutch #C# and the story of Judith are these: The woman, first making an
elaborate toilet,[90] goes out to seek the man, who is spoken of as
surrounded with soldiers; she is challenged on the way; finds Roland
lying on his bed, which he proposes she shall share (or lose her
life);[91] she cuts off his head, which, after her return home, she
exposes from her window.[92]
If this was the original form of the Dutch ballad, and the Dutch ballad
is the source from which all the other ballads have come, by processes
of dropping, taking up, and transforming, then we may feel compelled to
admit that this ballad might be a wild shoot from the story of Judith.
Any one who bears in mind the strange changes which stories undergo will
hesitate to pronounce this impossible. What poor Ophelia says of us
human creatures is even truer of ballads: "We know what we are, but know
not what we may be."
But when we consider how much would have to be dropped, how much to be
taken up, and how much to be transformed, before the Hebrew "gest" could
be converted into the European ballad, we naturally look for a less
difficult hypothesis. It is a supposition attended with less difficulty
that an independent European tradition existed of a half-human,
half-demonic being, who possessed an irresistible power of decoying away
young maids, and was wont to kill them after he got them into his hands,
but who at last found one who was more than his match, and lost his own
life through her craft and courage. A modification of this story is
afforded by the large class of Bluebeard tales. The Quintalin story
seems to be another variety, with a substitution of lust for
bloodthirst. The Dutch ballad may have been _affected_ by some lost
ballad of Holofern, and may have taken up some of its features, at least
that of carrying home Halewyn's [Roland's] head, which is found in no
other version.[93]
#A a# is translated by Grundtvig in Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No
37, p. 230: #B b# in the same, No 36, p. 227: #C a#, #b#, #D a#, #b#,
blended, No 35, p. 221. #A#, by Rosa Warrens, Schottische V. L. der
Vorzeit, No 1, p. 1: Gerhard, p. 15. #C b#, by Rosa Warrens, No 34, p.
148: Wolf, Halle der Völker, I, 38, Hausschatz, 225. #C#, #D#, etc., as
in Allingham, p. 244, by Knortz, Lied. u. Rom. Alt-Englands, No 4, p.
14.
A
#a.# Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, I, 22.
#b.# Motherwell's MS., p. 563.
1
Fair lady Isabel sits in her bower sewing,
Aye as the gowans grow gay
There she heard an elf-knight blawing his horn.
The first morning in May
2
'If I had yon horn that I hear blawing,
And yon elf-knight to sleep in my bosom.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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