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
#D.# 'En revenant de la jolie Rochelle,' twelve two-line stanzas,
Gagnon, Chansons populaires du Canada, p. 155. A cavalier meets three
fair maids, mounts the fairest behind him, and rides a hundred leagues
without speaking to her, at the end of which she asks to drink. He takes
her to a spring, but when there she does not care to drink. The rest of
the ballad is pointless, and shows that the original story has been
completely forgotten.
#E.# 'Belle, allons nous épromener,' from the Lyonnais, 28 vv,
Champfleury, Chansons des Provinces, p. 172, is like #C#, but still more
defective. The pair go to walk by "la mer courante." There is no order
for the lady to strip: on the contrary, she cries, Déshabillez-moi,
déchaussez-moi! and, while the man is drawing off her shoe, "la belle
avance un coup de pied, le beau galant tombe dans l'eau."
#F.# 'Allons, mie, nous promener,' 32 vv, Poésies populaires de la
France, MS., III, fol. 84, No 16, is like #C#. The lady asks the man to
pull off her shoes before he kills her. The man clutches a branch; the
woman cuts it away.
#G.# 'Le Traître Noyé,' Chants pop. du Velay et du Forez, Romania, X,
199, is like #E#, #F#.
#H.# 'La Fillette et le Chevalier,' Victor Smith, Chants pop. du Velay
et du Forez, Romania, X, 198, resembles the common Polish ballad. Pierre
rouses his love early in the morning, to take a ride with him. He mounts
her on his horse, and when they come to a lonesome wood bids her alight,
for it is the last of her days. He plunges his sword into her heart, and
throws her into a river. Her father and mother come searching for her,
and are informed of her fate by a shepherdess, who had witnessed the
murder. The youngest of her three brothers plunges into the water,
exclaiming, Who threw you in? An angel descends, and tells him it was
her lover. A less romantic version, described in a note, treats of a
valet who is tired of an amour with a servant-girl. He is judicially
condemned to be hanged _or_ burned.
'La Fille de Saint-Martin de l'Ile,' Bujeaud, II, 226, has the
conclusion of the third class of German ballads. A mother incites her
son to make away with his wife. He carries her off on his horse to a
wheat-field [wood], and kills her with sword and dagger. Returning, he
meets his wife's brother, who asks why his shoes are covered with blood.
He says he has been killing rabbits. The brother replies, I see by your
paleness that you have been killing my sister. So Gérard de Nerval, Les
Filles du Feu, Œuvres Com., V, 134, and La Bohème galante (1866), p.
79: 'Rosine,' Chants pop. du Velay, etc., Romania, X, 197.
The ballad is known over all #North Italy#, and always nearly in one
shape.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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