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
5-6. _"Two stanzas are here omitted, in which Lord William
offers her the choice of returning to her mother, or of
accompanying him; and the ballad concludes with this [the
6th] stanza, which is twice repeated in singing."
Motherwell's preface._
#F.#
3^4. _MS._ merrymen.
6^2. of one palfray.
_7, 8 are written in one stanza. Half a page, or about
nine stanzas, is gone after st. 11._
[107] 'Erlinton,' though not existing in a two-line stanza, follows
immediately after 'Earl Brand.' The copy of 'The Douglas Tragedy' in
Smith's Scottish Minstrel, III, 86, is merely Scott's, with changes to
facilitate singing.
[108] #B*#, III, 853, a fragment of five stanzas, has been dropped by
Grundtvig from No 82, and assigned to No 249. See #D. g. F#. IV, 494.
[109] Though the paradise has not been transmitted in any known copy of
'Earl Brand,' it appears very distinctly in the opening stanza of
'Leesome Brand' #A#. This last has several stanzas towards the close
(33-35) which seem to belong to 'Earl Brand,' and perhaps derived these,
the "unco land," and even its name, by the familiar process of
intermixture of traditions.
[110] See No 5, pp. 64, 65, 66.
[111] Compare vv 49-56, "Wilt thou ride to them, or wilt thou fight with
them, or wilt thou stand by thy love, sword in hand?" "I will not ride
to them, I will not fight with them [i. e., begin the fight], but I will
stand by my love, sword in hand," with Norwegian #A#, 29, 30: "Shall we
ride to the wood, or shall we bide like men?" "We will not ride to the
wood, but we will bide like men." And also with Danish #Æ#, sts 14, 15.
[112] The chief branches, besides the Helgi lay and Walter, are the saga
in Snorri's Edda, Skáldskaparmal, § 50; that in Saxo Grammaticus,
Stephanius, ed. 1644, pp. 88-90; Sörla þáttr, in Fornaldar Sögur, I, 391
ff; the Shetland ballad printed in Low's Tour through the Islands of
Orkney and Shetland, 108 ff, and in Barry's History of the Orkney
Islands, 2d ed., 489 ff, and paraphrased in Hibbert's Description of the
Shetland Islands, 561 ff; the Thidrik saga, §§ 233-239, Unger; Gudrun,
v-viii. The names of father, daughter, and lover in these are: (1)
Hügni, ----, Högni, Högin-, Högni, ----, [Artus], Hagen; (2) [Sigrún],
Hilde-gunde, Hildr, Hilda, Hildr, Hildina, Hildr, Hilde; (3) Helgi,
[Walter], Hedin, Hithin-, Hedin, ----, [Herburt], Hetel. Hagan, in
'Waltharius,' may be said to take the place of the father, who is
wanting; and this is in a measure true also of Hedin, Helgi's
half-brother, in the lay of Helgi Hiörvard's son. See the excellent
discussion of the saga by Klee, Zur Hildesage, Leipzig, 1873.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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