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
would carry it away with him; but if its feathers were ruffled and
broken, he would have nothing to do with it. At this, Rimild broke into
a laugh, and cried, "Horn, 't is you, and your hawk has been safely
kept!"[162] She would go with him or kill herself. Horn saw that she had
spoken truth, but, to try her yet further, said he was indeed Horn, whom
she had loved, but he had come back with nothing: why should she follow
a poor wretch who could not give her a gown to her back? "Little do you
know me," was her reply. "I can bear what you bear, and there is no king
in the East for whom I would quit you."
'Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild,' with many diversities of its own as to
details, is more like the French than the English romance as to the
story, and, on the other hand, has one or two resemblances to the
ballads which they both lack. Rimnild's father, maddened by the traitor
Wikel's false information, beats her till she bleeds, and threatens to
slay Horn. Rimnild, expecting her lover to be at least exiled, assures
Horn that she will marry no other man for seven years. The king, who had
shut himself up till his first wrath was past, tells Horn, when he next
comes into his presence, that if he is found in the land on the morrow,
he shall be drawn with horses and hanged. Rimnild, at parting, gives him
a ring, with these words:
'Loke thou forsake it for no thing,
It schal ben our tokening;
The ston it is wele trewe.
When the ston wexeth wan,
Than chaungeth the thouȝt of thi leman,
Take than a newe;
When the ston wexeth rede,
Than have Y lorn mi maidenhed,
Oȝaines the untrewe.'
(Michel, st. 48.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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