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
#P#, the other Swiss ballad, has been retouched, and more than
retouched in places, by a modern pen. Still the substance of the story,
and, on the whole, the popular tone, is preserved. Fair Anneli, in the
miller's house, hears the knight singing as he rides through the rushes,
and runs down-stairs and calls to him: she would go off with him if she
could sing like that, and her clothes are fit for any young lady. The
knight promises that he will teach her his song if she will go with him,
and bids her put these fine clothes on. They ride to the wood. A dove
calls from the hazel, "He will betray thee." Anneli asks what the dove
is saying, and is answered much as in #J# and #O#, that it is talking
about its frost-bitten feet and claws. The knight tears through the
wood, to the great peril of Anneli's gown and limbs, and when he has
come to the right place, spreads his cloak on the grass, and makes the
usual request. She weeps when she sees eleven maids in the fir-tree, and
receives the customary consolation:
'Weep not too sore, my Anneli,
'Tis true thou art doomed the twelfth to be;
Up to the highest tip must thou go,
And a margravine be to all below;
Must be an empress over the rest,
And hang the highest of all as the best.'
The request to be allowed three cries is lost. The knight tells her to
cry as much as she pleases, he knows no one will come; the wild birds
will not hear, and the doves are hushed. She cries to father, mother,
and brother. The brother, who is sitting over his wine at the inn,
hears, saddles his best horse, rides furiously, and comes first to a
spring filled with locks of maid's hair and red with maid's blood; then
to a bush, where the knight (Rüdeli, Rudolph) is twisting his withe. He
bids his sister be silent, for the withe is not for her; the villain is
twisting it for his own neck, and shall be dragged at the tail of his
horse.
#Q# resembles the Swabian ballads, and presents only these variations
from the regular story. The dove adds to the warning, "Fair maid, be not
beguiled," what we find nowhere else, "Yonder I see a cool spring,
around which blood is running." The knight, to remove the maid's
anxiety, says, "Let it talk; it does not know me; I am no such
murderer." The end is excessively feeble. When the brother, a hunter as
before, reaches his sister, "a robber runs away," and then the brother
takes her by the hand, conducts her to her father's land, and enjoins
her to stay at home and spin silk. There are no names.
There is one feature entirely peculiar to #R#. The knight carries off
the maid, as before, but when they come to the hazel bush there are
eleven doves that sing this "new song:"
'Be not beguiled, maiden,
The knight is beguiling thee:
'We are eleven already,
Thou shalt be the twelfth.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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