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
is overturned in a storm, and the lady is drowned.
'Stalbroders Kvide' differs from 'Sønnens Sorg' only in this: that the
story is related to a comrade instead of father or mother.
'Bolde Hr. Nilaus' Løn,' which exists but in a single copy, has a
peculiar beginning. Sir Nilaus has served eight years in the king's
court without recompense. He has, however, gained the favor of the
king's daughter, who tells him that she is suffering much on his
account. If this be so, says Nilaus, I will quit the land with speed. He
is told to wait till she has spoken to her mother. She goes to her
mother and says: Sir Nilaus has served eight years, and had no reward;
he desires the best that it is in your power to give. The queen
exclaims, He shall never have my only daughter's hand! The young lady
immediately bids Nilaus saddle his horse while she collects her gold,
and from this point we have the story of Redselille.
#Dutch.# Willems, Oude vlaemsche Liederen, p. 482, No 231, 'De Ruiter en
Mooi Elsje;' Hoffmann v. Fallersleben, Niederländische Volkslieder, 2d
ed., p. 170, No 75: broadside of the date 1780.
A mother inquires into her daughter's condition, and learns that she is
going with child by a trooper (he is called both 'ruiter' and
'landsknecht'). The conversation is overheard by the other party, who
asks the girl whether she will ride with him or bide with her mother.
She chooses to go with him, and as they ride is overtaken with pains.
She asks whether there is not a house where she can rest. The soldier
builds her a hut of thistles, thorns, and high stakes, and hangs his
cloak over the aperture. She asks him to go away, and to come back when
he hears a cry: but the maid was dead ere she cried. The trooper laid
his head on a stone, and his heart brake with grief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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