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
went to a little house hard by, and begged for harbor and victuals
for a day. The mistress made him welcome. She saw he was from a far
country, and asked his name. Dissawar was his name; a poor name, said
the old wife, but Dissawar you shall not be, for I will help you. The
next day Roswall was sent to school with the dame’s son. He gave his
name as Dissawar again to the master; the master said he should want
neither meat nor teaching. Roswall had been a remarkable scholar at
home. Without doubt he astonished the master, but this is not said, for
the story has been abridged here and elsewhere. In about a month, the
steward of the king of Bealm, who had observed his beauty, courtesy,
and good parts, carried him to the court of Bealm, where Roswall made
himself a general favorite. The princess Lillian, only child of the
king of Bealm, chose him to be her chamberlain, fell in love with him,
and frankly offered him her heart, an offer which Roswall, professing
always to be of low degree, gratefully accepted.
At this juncture the king of Bealm sent messengers to Naples proposing
marriage between his daughter Lillian and the young prince who had
been commended to him. The king of Naples assented to the alliance,
and deputed lords and knights to represent him at the solemnity.
The king of Bealm proclaimed a joust for the three days immediately
preceding the wedding. Lillian’s heart was cold, for she loved none
but Dissawar. She told Dissawar that he must joust for his lady; but
he said that he had not been bred to such things, and would rather go
a-hunting. A-hunting he went, but before he got to work there came a
knight in white weed on a white steed, who enjoined him to take horse
and armor and go to the jousting, promising that he should find plenty
of venison when he came back. Roswall toomed many a saddle, turned the
steward’s heels upward, made his way back to the wood, in spite of the
king’s order that he should be stopped, resumed his hunting-gear, took
the venison, which, according to promise, was waiting for him, and
presented himself and it to his lady. The order is much the same on
the two succeeding days. A red knight equips Roswall for the joust on
the second day, a knight in gold on the third. The steward is, on each
occasion, put to shame, and in the last encounter two of his ribs are
broken.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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