The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 2 (of 5)
General
The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 2 (of 5)
Ballads, English -- England -- Texts; Ballads, Scots -- Scotland -- Texts
[94] These citations, which might easily be extended, are many of them
repeated from Grimm's Rechtsalterthümer, pp. 168-70 of the second
edition. Sir Walter Scott has pointed out that on the occasion of
the marriage of Maria of Burgundy with the Archduke Maximilian, in
1477, the marriage being by proxy, Ludwig, Pfalzgraf of Vendelz, the
bridegroom's representative, was formally bedded with the bride, a
naked sword being laid between them. Scott also refers to a play called
The Jovial Crew, acted in 1641, in which one of the characters, to
enrage another, proposes to be his proxy, marry his love for him, and
lay a naked cudgel betwixt them: Sir Tristrem, p. 439, ed. 1833. In an
Italian ballad the sword is reduced to a straw: Wolf, Volkslieder aus
Venetien, No 95, Bolza, No 56, Ferraro, C. p. monferrini, No 76. In the
Spanish and Portuguese romances of 'Gerineldo,' the sultan or king,
having found the page asleep with the infanta, lays his sword between
the two and retires: Duran, Nos 320, 321; Hardung, I, 101.
[95] Some of the Norse examples were derived from notes of Grundtvig,
three others from Liebrecht. Grundtvig cites an ordinance of Frederic
II of Denmark, dated 1586, to this effect: Whereas a custom has come
in of having a dance during a wedding-repast, which dance those that
sit behind the tables are asked to as well as others, and therefore
are obliged to step on the tables, on which the victuals are still
standing, and whereas this, indecorous of itself, might even prove
dangerous to women-folk, and others, who should attempt to jump over
the tables, now therefore dancing during meal-time is forbidden
until dishes and tables shall have been cleared away: IV, 754. The
table-jumping above is mostly done under great excitement, and at
weddings, in order that the right parties may come together; but nimble
young men in England seem to have taken this short way to their places
habitually in old times. Liebrecht cites this curious passage from the
Jests of Scogin, Hazlitt's Shakespeare Jest-Books, II, 105: "Scogin
did mark the fashions of the court, and among all other things he did
mark how men did leap over the table in the king's hall to sit down
at dinner and supper, which is not used now." The first edition of
Scogin's Jests is of 1565.
67
GLASGERION
#A.# 'Glasgerion,' Percy MS., p. 94; Hales and Furnivall,
I, 248.
#B.# 'Glenkindie,' Jamieson's Popular Ballads, I, 93.
#C.# Kinloch MSS, III, 139.
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