“ The knight tells her to cry as much as she pleases, he knows no one will come; the wild birds will not hear, and the doves are hushed. She cries to father, mother, and brother. The brother, who is sitting over his wine at the inn, hears, saddles his best horse, rides furiously, and comes first to a spring filled with locks of maid's hair and red with maid's blood; then to a bush, where the knight (Rüdeli, Rudolph) is twisting his withe. ”

“ She comes to a lofty fir, and eleven maids hanging on it. She wrings her hands and tears her hair, and implores Ulinger to let her be hanged in her clothes as she is.
'Ask me not that, Fridburg,' he said;
'Ask me not that, thou good young maid;
Thy scarlet mantle and kirtle black
Will well become my young sister's back.'
Then she begs to be allowed three cries.
'So much I may allow thee well,
Thou art so deep within the dell;
So deep within the dell we lie,
No man can ever hear thy cry.'
She cries, "Help, Jesu!" ”

“ Horn called to her:
'Skink us with the first,
The beggars ben athirst.'
She laid down her horn and filled him a gallon bowl; but Horn would not drink of that. He said, mysteriously, "Thou thinkest I am a beggar, but I am a fisher, come far from the East, to fish at thy feast. My net lies near at hand, and hath full seven year. I am come to see if it has taken any fish.
'I am come to fish;
Drink to me from thy dish,
Drink to Horn from horn!'"
Rymenhild looked at him, a chill creeping over her heart. ”

“ We now fall into the track of A. Odilia dresses herself like a bride, and calls to the trooper to come and get her. They ride first to a high hill, where she asks to eat and drink, and then go on to a linden-tree, on which seven maids are hanging. The choice of three deaths is offered, the sword chosen, he is entreated to spare his coat, she seizes his sword and hews off his head. The false tongue suggests blowing the horn. Odilia thinks "much biding or blowing is not good." ”

“ Arrived there, he gives her the choice of tree, sword, or water. She chooses the sword, bids him spare his coat, for a pure maid's blood goes far, and before his coat is half off his head lies behind him. The head cries, Behind the bush is a pot of grease; smear my neck with it. She will not smear from a murderer's pot, nor blow in a murderer's horn. She mounts his horse, and rides far and long. ”

“ Spring is the most beautiful of things, the ground the strongest, autumn the richest. And the bailiff's daughter answers: The ground is fatter than fat, for out of it comes all that's fat, and this all goes back again; the moon has four quarters, and four quarters make a pound; heaven is only one day's journey, for we read in the Bible, "Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise." ”

“ While Hunding's men are making search, a mysterious blind man, surnamed the bale-wise, or evil-witted (Blindr inn bölvísi) , calls out, Sharp are the eyes of Hagal's maid; it is no churl's blood that stands at the mill; the stones are riving, the meal-trough is springing; a hard lot has befallen a war-king when a chieftain must grind strange barley; fitter for that hand is the sword-hilt than the mill-handle. ”

“ His name was Garadue, and he had a wife, mout leal, who was a fairy for beauty, and surpassed by none but the queen. Garadue looked at her. She did not change color. "Drink," she said; "indeed, you are at fault to hesitate." She would never have husband but him: for a woman should be a dove, and accept no second mate. Garadue was naturally very much pleased: he sprang to his feet, took the horn, and, crying Wassail! to the king, drank out every drop. Arthur presented him with Cirencester, and, for his wife's sake, with the horn, which was exhibited there on great days. ”

“ On reaching Constantinople they have ample reason to be impressed with the magnificence of the place. Passing twenty thousand knights, who are playing at chess and tables, dressed in pall and ermine, with fur cloaks training at their feet, and three thousand damsels in equally sumptuous attire, who are disporting with their lovers, they come to the king, who is at that moment taking his day at the plough, not on foot, goad in hand, but seated most splendidly in a chair drawn by mules, and holding a gold wand, the plough all gold, too ”

“ Our English ballad affords no other positive trace of external interference with the hero's will than the far-fetched allegation in C that the choice before him was to accept a duke's daughter or forfeit his lands. The explanation of his inconstancy in H, N, that young men ever were fickle found, is vulgar, and also insufficient, for Beichan returns to his old love per saltum, like one from whose eyes scales have fallen and from whose back a weight has been taken, not tamely, like a facile youth that has swerved. ”

“ On coming within sight of Edinburgh, the faithless knight bids her choose whether she will be his paramour or go back: he has wife and children. She begs him to draw his sword and end her shame: he takes her horse away, and leaves her. ”

“ I have taken to myself my true love that I lent thee so long; implying that Sir Peter had been detained by Circean arts, by a sleepy drench of óminnis öl, or ale of forgetfulness, Icelandic M 14, which, in the light of the other ballads, is to be understood literally, and not figuratively. The feature of a man being made, by magical or other means, to forget a first love who had done and suffered much for him, and being suddenly restored to consciousness and his original predilection, is of the commonest occurrence in traditional tales. ”

“ What blooms without any flower? She answers, Stones grow without a root; water runs without any object; the fern blooms without any flower. These answers seem satisfactory, as riddles go, but the ballad concludes (with an injustice due to corruption?) , "The girl did not guess the riddles: the rusalka tickled her to death." (Wojcicki, Pieśni, I, 205.) A rakshas (ogre) says he will spare a man's life if he can answer four questions, and shall devour him if he cannot. What is cruel? What is most to the advantage of a householder? What is love? What best accomplishes difficult things? ”

“ Arthur offered his two books, for Dame Ragnell had told him to save himself by any of those answers if he could. "Nay, nay, king," said Gromer, "thou art but a dead man." "Abide, Sir Gromer, I have an answer shall make all sure. Women desire sovereignty." "She that told thee that was my sister, Dame Ragnell; I pray I may see her burn on a fire." And so they parted.
Dame Ragnell was waiting for Arthur, too, and would hear of nothing but immediate fulfillment of her bargain. She followed the king to his court, and required him to produce Gawain instantly, who came and plighted his troth. ”

“ The romance of Dolopathos, a variety of the Seven Wise Masters, written about 1185, considerably before the earliest date which has hitherto been proposed for the compilation of the Gesta, has this story, with variations, of which only these require to be noted. The lady has herself been a student in magic. She is wooed of many; all comers are received, and pay a hundred marks; any one who accomplishes his will may wed her the next day. An enchanted feather of a screech-owl, laid under the pillow, makes all who enter the bed fall asleep at once, and many have been baffled by this charm. ”

“ Nearly all the Danish and Swedish versions, and a good number of the Norwegian, interpose an affecting scene between the death of the hero and that of his bride and his mother. The bride, on her way to Olaf's house, and on her arrival, is disconcerted and alarmed by several ominous proceedings or circumstances. She hears bells tolling; sees people weeping; sees men come and go, but not the bridegroom. She is put off for a time with false explanations, but in the end discovers the awful fact. Such a passage occurs in the oldest Danish copy, which is also the oldest known copy of the ballad. ”

“ It is a thing made much of in most of the Norse ballads that the younger sister is fair and the older dark; the younger is bright as the sun, as white as ermine or as milk, the elder black as soot, black as the earth, Icelandic A, Swedish A, B, G, Danish A, D, etc.; and this difference is often made the ground for very unhandsome taunts, which qualify our compassion for the younger; such as Wash all day, and you will be no whiter than God made you, Wash as white as you please, you will never get a lover, Färöe A, B, Norwegian A, C, etc. ”

“ No detail of language or tradition or archæology was to him a mere lifeless fact; it was transmuted into something vital, and became a part of that universal humanity which always moved him wherever he found it, whether in the pages of a mediæval [Pg xxx] chronicle, or in the stammering accents of a late and vulgarly distorted ballad, or in the faces of the street boys who begged roses from his garden. No man ever felt a keener interest in his kind, and no scholar ever brought this interest into more vivifying contact with the technicalities of his special studies. ”

“ A little Greek ballad, 'The Taking of Constantinople,' only seven lines long, relates a miracle entirely like that of the cock, which was operated for the conviction of incredulity. A nun, frying fish, hears a voice from above, saying, Cease your frying, the city will fall into the hands of the Turks. "When the fish fly out of the pan alive," she says, "then shall the Turks take the city." The fish fly out of the pan alive, and the Turkish admiraud comes riding into the city. ”

“ At the table they saw the queen and the princess, a beautiful blonde, of whom Oliver became at once enamored. After a most royal repast, the king conducted Charles and the twelve to a bed-chamber, in which there were thirteen beds. It is doubtful whether modern luxury can vie with the appointments in any respect, and certain that we are hopelessly behind in one, for this room was lighted by a carbuncle. But, again, there was one luxury which Hugo did not allow them, and this was privacy, even so much privacy as thirteen can have. ”

“ The knight proposes to the bird that she shall come and pass the winter in his bower, and go back to the wood in the summer: this, the nightingale says, the step-mother had forbidden, as long as she wore feathers. The knight seizes the bird by the foot, takes her home to his bower, and fastens the windows and doors. She turns to all the marvellous beasts one ever heard of,—to a lion, a bear, a variety of small snakes, and at last to a loathsome lind-worm. The knight makes a sufficient incision for blood to come, and a maid stands on the floor as fair as a flower. ”

“ If it is a virgin, a delicious melody is presently heard from a syrinx, the doors open of themselves, and the woman comes out crowned with pine leaves; if not a virgin, a wail is heard, and the woman is never seen again. ”

“ Constant association with the spirit of the folk did its part in maintaining, under the stress of unremitting study and research, that freshness and buoyancy of mind which was the wonder of all who met Professor Child for the first time, and the perpetual delight of his friends and associates. ”

“ G. Katie meets John in a meadow; they sit down on the grass. "Look my head through." She weeps, for she says there is a black fate impending over her; "a black one for me, a red one for thee." He gets angry, cuts off her head, and throws her into the river, for which he is hanged. H. He sprang from his horse, robbed the maid, and laughed. ”

“ In the village of Davshina, in the Yaroslav government, the bridegroom's best man presents himself at the bride's house on the wedding-day, and finding a man, called the bride-seller, sitting by the bride, asks him to surrender the bride and vacate his place. "Fair and softly," answers the seller; "you will not get the bride for nothing; make us a bid, if you will. And how will you trade? will you pay in riddles or in gold?" If the best man is prepared for the emergency, as we must suppose he always would be, he answers, I will pay in riddles. ”

“ He turned his horse, and rode home a shattered man. His mother was at the gate: "Why comest thou home so sad?" "Dear mother, take my horse; dear brother, fetch a priest," "Say not so, Oluf; many a sick man does not die. To whom do you give your betrothed?" "Rise, my seven brothers, and ride to meet my young bride."
As the bride's train came near the town, they heard the bells going. "Why is this?" she asked, her heart already heavy with pain; "I know of no one having been sick." They told her it was a custom there to receive a bride so. ”

“ Alsól and a brother and sister are all transformed by a stepmother, a handsome woman, much, younger than her husband. Alsól's heavy weird is to be a nondescript monster with a horse's tail, hoofs, and mane, white eyes, big mouth, and huge hands, and never to be released from the spell till a king's son shall consent to kiss her. One night when Hjálmtèr had landed on a woody island, and it had fallen to him to keep watch, he heard a great din and crashing in the woods, so that the oaks trembled. ”

“ Gunther, king of Worms, learns that a knight and lady, with a richly-laden horse, have passed the Rhine, and sets out in pursuit, with twelve of his best fighting men, resolved to capture the treasure. The fugitives, after a very long ride, make a halt in a forest, and Walter goes to sleep with his head on Hildegunde's knees. The lady meanwhile keeps watch, and rouses her lover when she perceives by the dust they raise that horsemen are approaching. ”

“ After this promenade there was mass, at which Turpin officiated, and then a grand dinner. Hugo once more proffered all his treasures to Charles, but Charles would not take a denier. "We must be going," he said. The French mounted their mules, and went off in high spirits. Very happy was Charles to have conquered such a king without a battle. Charles went directly to St Denis, and performed his devotions. The nail and the crown he deposited on the altar, distributed the other relics over the kingdom, and for the love of the sepulchre he gave up his anger against the queen. ”

“ When she asks the reason, no one can answer, or she is told that a woman, a fair knight, is dead, A, C, H. Now she asks, Where is Oluf, who should have come to meet me, should have been here to receive me? Danish K, O, S, U, D, E, I, T, etc. They conduct the bride into the hall and seat her on the bride bench; knights come and go; they pour out mead and wine. "Where is Oluf," she asks again; the mother replies, as best she can, that Oluf is gone to the wood, Danish B, H, Norwegian A, D, Swedish H, etc. "Does he then care more for that than for his bride?" ”

“ It was my wish not to begin to print The English and Scottish Popular Ballads until this unrestricted title should be justified by my having at command every valuable copy of every known ballad. A continuous effort to accomplish this object has been making for some nine or ten years, and many have joined in it. By correspondence, and by an extensive diffusion of printed circulars, I have tried to stimulate collection from tradition in Scotland, Canada, and the United States, and no becoming means has been left unemployed to obtain possession of unsunned treasures locked up in writing. ”

“ Both the French fabliau and the English ballad give to the mantle the power of detecting the woman that has once done amiss, a de rien messerré. We naturally suppose that we understand what is meant. The trial in the fabliau is so conducted as to confirm our original conception of the nature of the inquest, and so it is, in the case of Arthur's queen, Kay's lady, and the old knight's wife, in the ballad. But when we come to the charmingly pretty passage about Cradock's wife, what are we to think? Is the mantle in a teasing mood, or is it exhibiting its real quality? ”

“ More important still is it that the hero of the English ballad goes home and forgets the woman he has left in a foreign land, instead of going away from home and forgetting the love he has left there. ”

“ In the three or four decades preceding Mr Child's residence in Europe, Germanic philology (in the wider sense) had passed from the stage of "romantic" dilettantism into the condition of a well-organized and strenuous scientific discipline, but the freshness and vivacity of the first half of the century had not vanished. Scholars, however severe, looked through the form and strove to comprehend the spirit. The ideals of erudition and of a large humanity were not even suspected of incompatibility. The imagination was still invoked as the guide and illuminator of learning. ”