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
'If your three slay our one.
Let all this land be your own;
If our one oercomes your three,
All this land then ours shall be.'
Horn scorned to fight on such terms; he alone would undertake three of
the hounds; and so he did. In the course of a hard fight it came out
that these were the very heathen that had slain King Murry. Horn looked
on his ring and thought on Rymenhild, then fell on his foes. Not a man
of them escaped; but King Thurston lost many men in the fight, among
them his two sons. Having now no heir, he offered Horn his daughter
Reynild and the succession. Horn replied that he had not earned such a
reward yet. He would serve the king further; and when he asked for his
daughter, he hoped the king would not refuse her.
Seven years Horn stayed with King Thurston, and to Rymenhild neither
sent nor went. A sorry time it was for her, and worst at the end, for
King Modi of Reynis asked her in marriage, and her father consented. The
wedding was to be in a few days. Rymenhild despatched messengers to
every land, but Horn heard nothing, till one day, when he was going out
to shoot, he encountered one of these, and learned how things stood. He
sent word to his love not to be troubled; he would be there betimes.
But, alas, the messenger was drowned on his way back, and Rymenhild,
peering out of her door for a ray of hope, saw his body washed up by the
waves. Horn now made a clean breast to Thurston, and asked for help.
This was generously accorded, and Horn set sail for Westerness. He
arrived not too early on the day of the wedding,--"ne might he come no
later!"--left his men in a wood, and set off for Ailmar's court alone.
He met a palmer, and asked his news. The palmer had come from a bridal;
a wedding of maid Rymenhild, who wept and would not be married, because
she had a husband, though he was out of the land. Horn changed clothes
with the palmer, put on the sclavin, took scrip and staff, blackened his
skin and twisted his lip, and presented himself at the king's gate. The
porter would not let him in; Horn kicked open the wicket, threw the
porter over the bridge, made his way into the hall, and sat down in the
beggars' row. Rymenhild was weeping as if she were out of her wits, but
after meat she rose to give all the knights and squires drink from a
horn which she bare: such was the custom. Horn called to her:
'Skink us with the first,
The beggars ben athirst.'
She laid down her horn and filled him a gallon bowl; but Horn would not
drink of that. He said, mysteriously, "Thou thinkest I am a beggar, but
I am a fisher, come far from the East, to fish at thy feast. My net lies
near at hand, and hath full seven year. I am come to see if it has taken
any fish.
'I am come to fish;
Drink to me from thy dish,
Drink to Horn from horn!'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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