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
The marvellous power of the harp in #B# 2, #C# 1 is precisely
paralleled in the Scandinavian 'Harpans Kraft,' Arwidsson, No 149, II,
311-17; Afzelius, No 91, III, 144-47; Grundtvig, No 40, II, 65-68;
Landstad, No 51, p. 475; Íslenzk Fornkvæði, No 3, p. 18 f. In these the
fish is harped out of the water, the young from folk and from fee, the
bairn from its mother's womb, the water from the brook, the hind from
the wood, the horns from the hart's head, the bark from the tree, the
dead out of the mould, etc., etc. These effects are of the same nature
as those produced by the harp of Orpheus, and it is to be observed
that in the ballad of 'Harpans Kraft' the harper is a bridegroom
seeking (successfully) to recover his bride, who has been carried down
to the depths of the water by a merman. We have had something like
these effects in the 'Twa Brothers,' No 49, #B# 10, I, 439, where
Lady Margaret harps the small birds off the briers and her true love
out of the grave.[97] There is a fisherman in the Gesta Romanorum who
has a harp so sweet that all the fish in the water come to his hand:
Oesterley, No 85, p. 413, Madden, No 35, p. 116, No 8, p. 293. Equally
potent is pipe, flute, or song in many ballads of various nations; the
fish come up from below, the stars are stopped, the brook rises, the
pines vail their top, the deer stops in its leap, etc., the musician
being sometimes an elf, sometimes an inspired mortal: 'Hr. Tönne af
Alsö,' Grundtvig, No 34, II, 15, 19, Afzelius, No 7, I, 33, 128;
'Elvehöj,' Grundtvig, No 46, II, 107-109, Afzelius, No 95, III, 170,
Arwidsson, No 147, II, 301; Kudrun, ed. Bartsch, sts 379, 381, 388; the
Roumanian 'Salga,' 'Mihu Copilul,' 'Vidra,' Stanley, p. 29, Alecsandri,
pp 58, 66, 98 f, the same, Ballades et Chants populaires, pp 118, 168,
Murray, pp 44, 53 f, 83; 'El Poder del Canto,' Milá, Romancerillo, No
207, p. 165, Nigra, Rivista Contemporanea, XX, 78; 'Conde Arnaldos,'
Wolf and Hofmann, No 153, II, 80. For the soporific effect of such
music, as shown in #B# 5, #C# 2, there are parallels in 'Albred Lykke,'
who sings a ballad which sets everybody asleep but the young bride who
had been stolen from him, Kristensen, I, 281, No 105, sts 11, 12, II,
259 f, No 76, sts 13, 14; 'Den fortryllende Sang,' Grundtvig, No 243,
IV, 470, Danish #A# 12, 473, Swedish #G# 25, 26; 'El Rey marinero,'
Milá, No 201, p. 151, Briz, I, 117, IV, 15, V, 75; Campbell's West
Highland Tales, I, 291 f.
The oath by oak, ash, and thorn, #A# 18, is a relic or trait of high
antiquity. We have an oath by the thorn in 'Fair Janet,' #G# 13,
'Young Hunting,' #K# 26; by corn, grass sae green and corn, in 'Young
Hunting,' #A# 16, #D# 19, #G# 7. It is to be supposed that the tree,
thorn, corn, was touched while swearing, a sod taken up in the hand.
See Grimm's Rechtsalterthümer, 2d ed., p. 896 f, p. 117 f.
For drying the sword on the sleeve, #A# 22, see 'Little Musgrave and
Lady Barnard.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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