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
Professor Bugge reports a Norwegian tale, Grundtvig, III, 878, which
resembles the ballad at the beginning. There were in a family two
daughters and a son. One sister was wasteful, the other saving. The
second complained of the first to her parents, and was killed and buried
by the other. Foliage covered the grave, so that it could not be seen,
but on the trees under which the body lay, there grew "strings." These
the brother cut off and adapted to his fiddle, and when he played, the
fiddle said, My sister is killed. The father, having heard the fiddle's
revelation, brought his daughter to confess her act.
There is a series of tales which represent a king, or other personage,
as being afflicted with a severe malady, and as promising that whichever
of his children, commonly three sons, should bring him something
necessary for his cure or comfort should be his heir: (1) 'La Flor del
Lililá,' Fernan Caballero, Lágrimas, cap. 4; (2) 'La caña del riu de
arenas,' Milá, Observaciones sobre la poesia popular, p. 178, No 3; (3)
'Es kommt doch einmal an den Tag,' Müllenhof, Sagen, u. s. w., p. 495,
No 49; (4) 'Vom singenden Dudelsack,' Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Märchen,
I, 329, No 51. Or the inheritance is promised to whichever of the
children finds something lost, or rich and rare, a griffin's feather, a
golden branch, a flower: (5) 'Die Greifenfeder,' Schneller, Märchen und
Sagen aus Wälschtirol, p. 143, No 51; (6) 'La Flanuto,' Bladé, Contes et
proverbes populaires recueillis en Armagnac, p. 3, No 1; (7)
Wackernagel, in Haupt's Zeitschrift, III, 35, No 3, == 'Das
Todtebeindli,' Colshorn, C. u. Th., Märchen u. Sagen, p. 193, No 71, ==
Sutermeister, Kinder-u.-Hausmärchen aus der Schweiz, p. 119, No 39. Or a
king promises his daughter to the man who shall capture a dangerous wild
beast, and the exploit is undertaken by three brothers [or two]: (8)
'Der singende Knochen,' Grimms, K. u. H. märchen, I, 149, No 28 (1857);
(9) 'Die drei Brüder,' Curtze, Volksüberlieferungen aus dem Fürstenthum
Waldeck, p. 53, No 11; (10) 'Der Rohrstengel,' Haltrich, Deutsche
Volksmärchen aus dem Sachsenlande, u. s. w., p. 225, No 42. With these
we may group, though divergent in some respects, (11) 'Der goldene
Apfel,' Toeppen, Aberglauben aus Masuren, p. 139.[142] In all these
tales the youngest child is successful, and is killed, out of envy, by
the eldest or by the two elder. [There are only two children in (6),
(7), (8); in (4) the second is innocent, as in the Polish tale.] Reeds
grow over the spot where the body is buried (1), (2), (10), (11), or an
elder bush (3), out of which a herdsman makes a pipe or flute; or a
white bone is found by a herdsman, and he makes a pipe or horn of it
(5-9); or a bag-pipe is made of the bones and skin of the murdered youth
(4). The instrument, whenever it is played, attests the murder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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