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 paradise promised Guldborg in all the old versions of 82[109]
disappears from the recited copies, except #K#, #M#. It certainly did
not originally belong to 'Ribold and Guldborg,' or to another Danish
ballad in which it occurs ('Den trofaste Jomfru,' Grundtvig, 249 #A#),
but rather to ballads like 'Kvindemorderen,' Grundtvig, 183 #A#, or
'Líti Kersti,' Landstad, 44, where a supernatural being, a demon or a
hillman, seeks to entice away a mortal maid. See No 4, p. 27. In 82 #L#,
#N#, #U#, #V#, #Y#, #Æ#, #Ø#, and Kristensen's copies, the lovers are
not encountered by anybody who reports their flight. Most of the later
versions, #K#, #L#, #M#, #N#, #P#, #U#, #V#, #Y#, #Æ#, #Ø#, and
Kristensen's three, make them halt in a wood, where Ribold goes to sleep
in Guldborg's lap, and is roused by her when she perceives that they are
pursued. So Norwegian #B#, Swedish #A#, #B#, #C#, and 'Hildebrand and
Hilde' #B#. #M#, #Q#, #R#, #S#, #T#, #Z#, have not a specific
prohibition of _dead-naming_, but even these enjoin silence. 83 #C# is
the only ballad in which there is a fight and no prohibition of either
kind, but it is clear from the course of the story that the stanza
containing the usual injunction has simply dropped out. #P# is
distinguished from all other forms of the story by the heroine's killing
herself before her dying lover reaches his house.
The four first copies of 'Hildebrand and Hilde,' as has been seen, have
the story of Ribold and Guldborg with some slight differences and some
abridgment. There is no elopement in #B#: the lovers are surprised in
the princess' bower. When Hilde has finished her tale, in #A#, the queen
declares that Hildebrand was her son. In #B# she interrupts the
narrative by announcing her discovery that Hildebrand was her brother.
#C# and #D# have nothing of the sort. There is no fight in #E-H#. #E#
has taken up the commonplace of the bower on the strand which was forced
by nine men.[110] Hildebrand is again the son of the queen, and, coming
in just as Hilde has expired, exclaims that he will have no other love,
sets his sword against a stone, and runs upon it. #H# has the same
catastrophe. #F# represents the father as simply showing great
indignation and cruelty on finding out that one of the guardian knights
had beguiled his daughter, and presently selling her for a new church
bell. The knight turns out here again to be the queen's son; the queen
says he shall betroth Hille, and Hille faints for joy. #G# agrees with
#B# as to the surprise in the bower. The knight's head is hewn off on
the spot. The queen gives Hilde her youngest son for a husband, and
Hilde avows that she is consoled. #I# agrees with #E# so far as it goes,
but is a short fragment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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