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
#W# begins with a rivalry between Ulrich and Hanselein[51] for the hand
of Rautendelein (Rautendchen). Ulrich is successful. She packs up her
jewels, and he takes her to a wood, where she sees eleven maids hanging.
He assures her she shall presently be the twelfth. It is then they sit
down, and she leans her head on his breast and weeps, "because," as she
says, "I must die." His remark upon this, if there was any, is lost.
Hoffmann inserts a stanza from another Silesian copy, in which Ulrich
says, Rather than spare thy life, I will run an iron stake through thee.
She asks for three cries, and he says, Four, if you want. She prefers
four, and calls to her father, mother, sister, brother. The brother, as
he sits over the wine, hears the cry, and almost instantly Ulrich comes
in at the door. He pretends to have killed a dove; the brother knows
what dove, and hews off Ulrich's head, with a speech like that in #I#.
Still, as Rautendchen is brought to the grave, with toll of bells, so
Ulrich is mounted on the wheel, where ravens shriek over him.
#X.# Albrecht and Hänselein woo Alalein. She is promised to Albrecht,
but Hänsel gets her. He takes her to a green mead, spreads his mantle on
the grass, and she sits down. His lying in her lap and her discovery of
the awful tree are lost. She weeps, and he tells her she shall be "his
eleventh." Her cries are condensed into one stanza:
'Gott Vater, Sohn, Herr Jesu Christ,
Mein jüngster Bruder, wo Du bist!'
Her brother rides in the direction of the voice, and meets Hänselein in
the wood, who says Alalein is sitting with princes and counts. The
conclusion is as in #T#, #U#, #V#.
#Y# has Ansar Uleraich wooing a king's daughter, Annle, to the eighth
year. He takes her to a fir-wood, then to a fir, a stump of a tree, a
spring; in each case bidding her sit down. At the spring he asks her if
she wishes to be drowned, and, upon her saying no, cuts off her head.
He has not walked half a mile before he meets her brother. The brother
inquires where Ulrich has left his sister, and the reply is, "By the
green Rhine." The conclusion is as in #W#. Ulrich loses his head, and
the brother pronounces the imprecation which is found there and in
I.[52]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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