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
'Lady Jane,' Jamieson's Popular Ballads, II, 73, is a combination
of #B# and #E#, with a good many bad verses of Jamieson's own. A
version in Motherwell's MS., p. 477, "from the recitation of an old
maid-servant of Mr Alexander, of Southbar," was, as would be inferred
from a memorandum at the end of the transcript, derived from a printed
book, and is in fact an imperfect recollection of this compounded
ballad of Jamieson's.
Grundtvig has attempted a reconstitution of the ballad from versions
#A#, #B#, #D#, #E#, #F#, Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, V, 42.
Annie [Helen, #B#, Ellen, #G#, Jane, #E#] was stolen from home in her
childhood, #A# 15, #B# 23, #C# 31, #E# 9, #F# 25, #I# 38, #J# 50, 51,
by a knight from over sea, to whom she has borne seven sons, out of
wedlock. Her consort bids her prepare to welcome a bride, with whom
he shall get gowd and gear; with her he got none. But she must look
like a maid, comb down her yellow locks, braid her hair.[72] Annie
meekly assents, for love, she says, in #C# 12; in #I# 4, #J# 15, the
welcoming goes against her heart; in #F# 9 she is told that she is to
do it; in #H# 2 she says the welcome will have to come from him. Annie
receives the bride and her train and serves the tables, suppressing her
tears and drinking water to keep her cheek from paling. She passes for
servant or housekeeper, and in #I# 23, #J# 25, uses the word 'master,'
not to anger the bride; in #C# 17 she calls her lord brother, and the
knight calls her sister in #C# 18 and (inconsistently) in #J# 38. What
'n a lady's that? asks the bride, #E# 9, #J# 37, and what means all
these bonny boys that follow at her heel? #J# 37.
When the married pair have gone to their bed-chamber, Annie, in a room
near by, bewails her sad lot in song; to the harp or her virginals,
#E#, #F#, #J#, #I#. The bride hears the lament: it is that of a woman
who will go mad ere day, #B# 20, #C# 26, #J# 44, 48. The bride goes to
Fair Annie's chamber, #A#, #C#? to see what gars her greet, inquires
her parentage, and discovers that they are sisters; or learns this fact
from the song itself, #B#, #E#; or recognizes her sister's voice, #F#,
#I#, #J#. King Henry was their father, #B#, #F#, #I#; King Easter,
#C#;[73] the Earl of Wemyss, of Richmond, #A#, #E#. Queen Easter was
their mother, #F#; Queen Catherine, Elinor [Orvis], #B#, #I#. The
bride, who had come with many well-loaded ships, gives all or most of
them to her sister, #A#, #B#, #C#, #F#, #I#, and goes virgin home, #A#,
#B#, #F#, #I#, #J#; expecting, as #B#, #J# add, to encounter derision
for going away wife and coming back maid.
In #C# 27 the bride suspects that the woman who wails so madly is a
leman, and urges her husband to get up and pack her down the stairs,
though the woods were ne'er so wild. He refuses. A similar scene is
elsewhere put earlier, during the bridal entertainment, #I# 29, 30, #J#
40: see also #G# 2, 3, which are partly explained by these passages,
and partly by #J# 36.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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