Frank Sidgwick

“ What is going on in hell? What is the value of my person? The answers to the first two of these are given simply in large numbers and Bernabò told to measure for himself if he does not believe them. The value of Bernabò’s person is estimated, as in our ballad, at one piece less than our Lord.
Another favourite question in these ballads is, Where is the centre of the earth? The answer is given by the man planting his staff and saying, ‘Here: prove it wrong if you can.’
In the Percy Folio version, the shepherd is the half-brother of the abbot. ”

“ The combing of hair seems to be a favourite method of expressing affection, not only in these ballads, but also in Scandinavian folklore. It is needless to take exception to the attribution either of hair to a worm, or of knees to a machrel: though we may note that in one version of Dives and Lazarus Dives ‘has a place prepared in hell to sit on a serpent’s knee.’ However, it is probable that a part of the ballad, now lost, stated that the machrel (whatever it may be) reassumed human shape ‘every Saturday at noon.’
THE LAILY WORM AND THE MACHREL OF THE SEA
1. ”

“ Superstition lurks amongst the mountains and in the corners of the earth. And, with one remarkable exception, all the best lyrical work in these ballads of the supernatural is to be found in the Scots. ”

“ But Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, better known as May xv Colvin, is the most startling of any, in its myriad ramifications and supposed origin.
IV
The ‘Fyttes of Mirth’ conclude the present volume. It may be as well to say here that I have placed under this head any ballad that tells of a successful issue and has a happy ending or mirthful climax.
The version I have given of that famous ballad The Lord of Learne (or, more commonly, Lorne) is most enchanting in its naïveté, and, when read aloud or recited, is exceedingly effective. ”

“ I consider myself fortunate to be enabled, by the kind service of my friend Mr. A. Francis Steuart, to print for the first time in a collection of ballads the version of the Grey Selchie of Shool Skerry given in the Appendix. It is a feather in the cap of any ballad-editor after Professor Child to discover a ballad that escaped his eye. ”

“ The origin of the miracle of the harvest is unknown, though in a Breton ballad it forms one of the class known as the miracles of the Virgin (cp. Brown Robyn’s Confession) . Swedish, Provençal, Catalan, Wendish, and Belgian folk-tales record similar legends.
It is much to be regretted that this ballad, which from internal evidence (e.g. the use of the word ‘renne,’ 1.2) is to be attributed to an early age, should have become so incoherent and corrupted by oral tradition. No manuscript or printed copy is known earlier than about 1750, when it occurs in broadside form. ”

“ The complete superstition hinted at in this ballad should perhaps be stated more fully. It is obvious that excessive mourning is fatal to the peace of the dead; but it is also to be noticed that it is almost equally fatal to the mourner. The mourner in The Unquiet Grave is refused the kiss demanded, as it will be fatal. Clerk Sanders, on the other hand, has lost—if ever it possessed—any trace of this doctrine. ”

“ The lady still denies her guilt, and accuses her maid ‘Catheren,’ but the bonfire refuses to consume the innocent Catheren. When the real culprit is put in, she burns like hoky-gren.
The discovery of a drowned body by candles is a recognised piece of folklore. Usually the candle is stuck in a loaf of bread or on a cork, and set afloat in 75 the river; sometimes a hole is cut in a loaf of bread and mercury poured in to weight it; even a chip of wood is used. The superstition still survives. ”

“ During the wedding feast the three Neapolitan lords appeared, but would not acknowledge the steward as their prince, and went in search of Roswall, who told the king of the steward’s treachery, and announced himself to be the victor of the jousts. The steward was hanged and Roswall married to Lillian.
Other romances and stories exist, with similar foundations, especially amongst the Slavic nations. But the best known is the Goose-girl (Die Gänse-magd) of the Grimms, where the sexes are reversed. A connection may be traced between the horse Falada’s head and the gelding of the ballad ”

“ From the present ballad it could hardly be gathered (except, perhaps, from stanza 11) that the old palmer represents Christ. This point is at once obvious in the Scandinavian and other ballads.
The extraordinary burden in the English ballad is one of the most elaborate in existence, and is quite as inexplicable as any.
The expression ‘to lead an ape in hell’ (14.2) occurs constantly in Elizabethan and later literature, always in connection with women who die, or expect to die, unmarried. ”

“ I will into some far country,
Where no man doth me know.’
12.
‘O stay, O stay, thou goodly youth!
She’s alive, she is not dead;
Here she standeth by thy side,
And is ready to be thy bride.’
13.
‘O farewell grief, and welcome joy,
Ten thousand times and more!
For now I have seen my own true love,
That I thought I should have seen no more.’
205
GLENLOGIE
The Text is from Sharpe’s Ballad Book (1823) . ”

“ The significance of 34.3, ‘Then throw me into well water,’ is lost in the present version, by the position of the line after the ‘burning gleed,’ as it seems the reciter regarded the well-water merely as a means of extinguishing the gleed. But the immersion in water has a meaning far deeper and more interesting than that. It is a widespread and ancient belief in folklore that immersion in water (or sometimes milk) is indispensable to the recovery of human shape, after existence in a supernatural shape, or vice versâ. ”

“ The Text was communicated to the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland by Captain F. W. L. Thomas, who took it down from the dictation of an old woman of Shetland.
The Story is concerned with the Finn-myth. The Finns live in the depths of the sea. ‘Their transfiguration into seals seems to be more a kind of deception they practise. For the males are described as most daring boatmen, with powerful sweep of the oar, who chase foreign vessels on the sea.... By means of a “skin” which they possess, the men and the women among them are able to change themselves into seals. ”

“ On the whole, the English ballad here printed (but not May Colvin) and the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian ballads, would seem to be the best preserved, on account of their retention of the primary notion, that the maid first charms the knight to sleep and then binds him. In May Colvin and many of the other European versions, the knight bids her strip off her gown; she asks him to turn away his face as she does so, and when he is not looking, she pushes him into the river or sea. ”

“ The Wife of Usher’s Well is from Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and however incomplete, may well stand alone.
The Story has a fairly close parallel in the well-known German ballad, ‘Das Schloss in Oesterreich’; and a ballad found both in Spain and Italy has resemblances to each. But in these two ballads, especially in The Wife of Usher’s Well, the interest lies rather in the impressiveness of the verses than in the story. ”

“ The early Scandinavian mythology told of a bridge over the river Giöll on the road to hell.
In Snorri’s Edda, when Hermôdhr went to seek the soul of Baldr, he was told by the keeper of the bridge, a maiden named Môdhgudhr, that the bridge rang beneath no feet save his. Similarly Vergil tells us that Charon’s boat (which is also a parallel to the Brig) was almost sunk by the weight of Æneas.
Whinny-moor is also found in Norse and German mythology. It has to be traversed by all departed souls on their way to the realms of Hel or Hela, the Goddess of Death. ”

“ Rehabilitation in human shape by means of a kiss is a common tale in the Scandinavian area; occasionally three kisses are necessary.
A similar ballad, now lost, but re-written by the contributor, from scraps of recitation by an old woman in Berwickshire, localises the story of the fire-drake (‘the laidly worm’) near Bamborough in Northumberland; and Kinloch said that the term ‘Childe o’ Wane’ was still applied by disconsolate damsels of Bamborough to any youth who champions them. However, Mr. R. W. Clark of Bamborough, who has kindly made inquiries for me, could find no survival of this use. ”

“ The passage of Whinny-moor or its equivalent is facilitated by Hell-shoon. These are obtained by the soul in various ways: the charitable gift of a pair of shoes during life assures the right to use them in crossing Whinny-moor; or a pair must be burned with the corpse, or during the wake. ”

“ The Story .—Doubtless few will recognise in this fragment an offshoot of the classical story of Orpheus and Eurydice. The ballad, however, cannot be said to be derived directly from the classical tale: rather it represents the débris of the mediæval romance of Orfeo and Heurodis, where the kingdom of Faëry (see 4.1) replaces Hades, and the tale is given a happy ending by the recovery of Eurydice (for whom the Lady Isabel is here the substitute) . The romance exists as Orfeo and Heurodis in the Auchinleck MS., of the fourteenth century, in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh ”

“ The myth of Hell-shoon (Norse, helsko) appears under various guises in many folklores. (See Appendix.)
Sir Walter Scott, in printing ‘sleete’ in 1.3, said: ‘The word sleet, in the chorus,1 seems to be corrupted from selt, or salt; a quantity of which, in compliance with a popular superstition, is frequently placed on the breast of a corpse.’ It is true that a superstition to this effect does exist: but ‘fleet’ is doubtless the right reading. Aubrey glosses it as ‘water’; but Murray has shown (New English Dictionary, s.v.) ”

“ As she rides home, she meets 156 Halewijn’s mother, and tells her he is dead. She is received back with great honour and affection in her father’s castle.
This is the best form of the story, but many others only a little less full are found in Flanders, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Germany (nearly thirty variants which fall into three main divisions found respectively in North-West, South, and North-East Germany) , Poland (where it is extraordinarily common) , Bohemia, Servia, France, North Italy, Spain, and Portugal; and a Magyar ballad bears a certain resemblance. ”

“ KING ORFEO
The Text was derived from Mr. Biot Edmondston’s memory of a ballad sung to him by an old man in Unst, Shetland. In the version sung, he notes, there were no stanzas to fill the obvious gap in the story after the first; but that after the fourth and the eighth stanzas, there had been certain verses which he had forgotten. In the first instance, these related that the lady had been carried off by fairies, and that the king, going in search of her, saw her one day among a company that passed into a castle on the hillside. ”

“ A poem, extant in five manuscripts (all printed by Murray as above) , of which the earliest was written about the middle of the fifteenth century, relates that 2 Thomas of Erceldoune his prophetic powers were given him by the Queen of Elfland, who bore him away to her country for some years, and then restored him to this world lest he should be chosen for the tribute paid to hell. So much is told in the first fytte, which corresponds roughly to our ballad. The rest of the poem consists of prophecies taught to him by the Queen. ”

“ More about this will be found under The Lyke-Wake Dirge, and in the Appendix at the end of this volume. Here it will suffice to quote Sir Walter Scott’s introduction:—
‘In this ballad the reader will find traces of a singular superstition, not yet altogether discredited in the wilder parts of Scotland. The lykewake, or watching a dead body, in itself a melancholy office, is rendered, in the idea of the assistants, more dismally awful, by the mysterious horrors of superstition. ”

“ The Story of this ballad but poorly represents the complete form of the story as exhibited in many German and other ballads, where alternate bargaining and riddling ensues between a man and a maid. This long series of ballads is akin to the still longer series in which the person upon whom an impossible task is imposed is considered to have got the mastery by retaliating with another impossible task.
The opening stanzas of this ballad correspond closely with those of Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight. ”

“ Patrick’s Purgatory is extremely interesting; but it is outside our present scope, and can best be studied in connection with the mythology of the Lyke-wake Dirge in Thomas Wright’s St. Patrick’s Purgatory (1844) . The popularity of the story is attested by accounts extant in some thirty-five Latin and English MSS. in the British Museum, in the Bodleian, at Cambridge, and at Edinburgh. Calderon wrote a drama round the myth, El Purgatorio de San Patricio; Robert Southey a ballad; and an early poem of George Wither’s, lost in MS., treated of the same subject. ”

“ The Text is the only one known, that printed by Buchan, Ballads of the North of Scotland, and copied into Motherwell’s MS.
The Story , relating as it does a miracle of the Virgin, is, perhaps, the only one we possess of a class which, in other lands, is so extensive. A similar Scandinavian ballad has a tragical termination, except in one version.
The casting of lots to discover the Jonah of a ship is a feature common to many literatures. ”

“ The remarkable likeness existing between the names of the knight in the many languages, e.g. Halewijn (Dutch) , Ulver, Olmar, Hollemen (Danish) , Olbert (German) , and Elf-knight in English, has caused some speculation as to a common origin. Professor Bugge has gone so far as to conjecture that the whole story is an offshoot of the tale of Judith and Holofernes, the latter name being the originals of the variants given above. While this hypothesis is perhaps too startling to be accepted without further evidence, it must be allowed that there are resemblances in the two stories ”