The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 5 (of 5)
General
The English and Scottish popular ballads, volume 5 (of 5)
Ballads, English -- England -- Texts; Ballads, Scots -- Scotland -- Texts
Adelin is in the garden, making a rose chaplet for Fröjdenborg, who,
seeing her from his window, goes to her and expresses the wish that
she were his love. Adelin begs him not to talk so; she fears that her
father may overhear. False maid-servants tell the king that Fröjdenborg
is decoying his daughter; the king orders him to be put in chains and
shut up in the dark tower. There he stays fifteen years. Adelin goes
to the garden to make Fröjdenborg a garland again. The king sees from
his window what she is about, orders her into his presence (he has not
cared to see her for fifteen years), and angrily demands what she has
been doing in the garden. She says that she has been making a rose
garland for Fröjdenborg. ‘Not forgotten him yet?’ ‘No; nor should I,
if I lived a hundred years.’ ‘Then I will put a stop to this love.’
Fröjdenborg is taken out of the tower; his hair and beard are gray,
but he declares that the fifteen years have seemed to him only a few
days. They bind Fröjdenborg to a tree, and kill him as boors slaughter
cattle. They lay him on a board, and gut (slit) him as boors gut (slit)
a fish. The false maids take his heart and dress the lady a dainty
dish. She has a misgiving, and asks what she has eaten. They tell her
it is her lover’s heart; then, she says, it shall be my last meal. She
asks for drink: she will drink to Fröjdenborg, she will drink herself
dead. Her heart breaks; word is carried to her father; God a mercy! he
cries, I have betrayed my only child. The two are buried in one grave,
from which springs a linden; the linden grows over the church ridge;
one leaf enfolds the other.
=Danish.= ‘Hertug Frydenborg,’ in about forty copies from recent
tradition and a broadside of the eighteenth century, but not found in
old manuscripts: Olrik, Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, V, II, 216, No 305,
=H-A=, and Kristensen, XI, 117, No 46. Of these, =E i=, obtained in
1809, had been printed by Nyerup og Rasmussen, Udvalg af danske Viser,
II, 238, No 71. Others are in Kristensen’s Skattegraveren, I, 33, No
113, III, 148, Nos 835-38, and in Kristensen’s Jyske Folkeminder, II,
207, No 61 =A-D= (‘Ridderens Hjærte’), and X, 213, 385, 360, No 52
=A-E=, No 94 =B=.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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