B. 'De Dion et de la Fille du Roi,' from Auvergne, Ampère, Instructions, etc., 40 vv, p. 40, stanzas 15-24, the first fourteen constituting another ballad.[68] The pair went five or six leagues without exchanging a word; only the fair one said, I am so hungry I could eat my fist. Eat it, replied Dion, for you never again will eat bread. Then they went five or six leagues in silence, save that she said, I am so thirsty I could drink my blood. "Drink it, for you never will drink wine. Over there is a pond in which fifteen ladies have had a bath, have drowned themselves, and you will make sixteen." Arrived at the pond, he orders her to take off her clothes. She tells him to put his sword under his feet, his cloak before his face, and turn to the pond; and, when he has done so, pushes him in. Here are my keys! he cries. "I don't want them; I will find locksmiths." "What will your friends say?" "I will tell them I did by you as you would have done by me."
C. 'Veux-tu venir, bell' Jeanneton,' 32 vv, from Poitou and Aunís, Bujeaud, II, 232. When they reach the water, the fair one asks for a drink. The man says, incoherently enough, Before drinking of this white wine I mean to drink your blood. The stanza that should tell how many have been drowned before is lost. Jeanneton, having been ordered to strip, pushes the "beau galant" into the sea, while, at her request, he is pulling off her stockings. He catches at a branch; she cuts it off, and will not hear to his entreaties.
D. 'En revenant de la jolie Rochelle,' twelve two-line stanzas, Gagnon, Chansons populaires du Canada, p. 155. A cavalier meets three fair maids, mounts the fairest behind him, and rides a hundred leagues without speaking to her, at the end of which she asks to drink. He takes her to a spring, but when there she does not care to drink. The rest of the ballad is pointless, and shows that the original story has been completely forgotten.
E. 'Belle, allons nous épromener,' from the Lyonnais, 28 vv, Champfleury, Chansons des Provinces, p. 172, is like C, but still more defective. The pair go to walk by "la mer courante." There is no order for the lady to strip: on the contrary, she cries, Déshabillez-moi, déchaussez-moi! and, while the man is drawing off her shoe, "la belle avance un coup de pied, le beau galant tombe dans l'eau."
F. 'Allons, mie, nous promener,' 32 vv, Poésies populaires de la France, MS., III, fol. 84, No 16, is like C. The lady asks the man to pull off her shoes before he kills her. The man clutches a branch; the woman cuts it away.
G. 'Le Traître Noyé,' Chants pop. du Velay et du Forez, Romania, X, 199, is like E, F.
H. 'La Fillette et le Chevalier,' Victor Smith, Chants pop. du Velay et du Forez, Romania, X, 198, resembles the common Polish ballad. Pierre rouses his love early in the morning, to take a ride with him. He mounts her on his horse, and when they come to a lonesome wood bids her alight, for it is the last of her days. He plunges his sword into her heart, and throws her into a river. Her father and mother come searching for her, and are informed of her fate by a shepherdess, who had witnessed the murder. The youngest of her three brothers plunges into the water, exclaiming, Who threw you in? An angel descends, and tells him it was her lover. A less romantic version, described in a note, treats of a valet who is tired of an amour with a servant-girl. He is judicially condemned to be hanged or burned.
'La Fille de Saint-Martin de l'Ile,' Bujeaud, II, 226, has the conclusion of the third class of German ballads. A mother incites her son to make away with his wife. He carries her off on his horse to a wheat-field [wood], and kills her with sword and dagger. Returning, he meets his wife's brother, who asks why his shoes are covered with blood. He says he has been killing rabbits. The brother replies, I see by your paleness that you have been killing my sister. So Gérard de Nerval, Les Filles du Feu, Œuvres Com., V, 134, and La Bohème galante (1866), p. 79: 'Rosine,' Chants pop. du Velay, etc., Romania, X, 197.
The ballad is known over all North Italy, and always nearly in one shape.
A. 'Monchisa,' sixty-four short verses, Bernoni, Canti popolari veneziani, Puntata v, No 2. A count's son asks Monchesa, a knight's daughter, in marriage in the evening, espouses her in the morning, and immediately carries her off. When they are "half-way," she heaves a sigh, which she says is for father and mother, whom she shall no more see. The count points out his castle; he has taken thirty-six maids there, robbed them of their honor, and cut off their heads. "So will I do with you when we are there." The lady says no word till she is asked why she is silent; then requests the count to lend her his sword; she wishes to cut a branch to shade her horse. The moment she gets the sword in her hand, she plunges it into his heart; then throws the body into a ditch. On her way back, she meets her brother, whom she tells that she is looking after the assassins who have killed her husband. He fears it was she; this she denies, but afterwards says she must go to Rome to confess a great sin. There she obtains prompt absolution.
B. 'La Figlia del Conte,' Adolf Wolf, Volkslieder aus Venetien, No 73, a, 34 vv, b, 48 vv. Here it is the daughter of a count that marries Malpreso, the son of a knight. He takes her to France immediately. She goes sixty miles (b) without speaking. She confesses to her brother what she has done.
C. Righi, Canti popolari veronesi, 58 vv, No 94*, p. 30. The count's son marries Mampresa, a knight's daughter. For thirty-six miles she does not speak; after five more she sighs. She denies to her brother having killed her husband, but still says she must go to the pope to confess an old sin; then owns what she has done.
D. 'La Monferrina,' 48 vv, Nigra, Canzoni popolari del Piemonte, in Rivista Contemporanea, XXIV, 76. The lady is a Monferrina, daughter of a knight. After the marriage they travel fifty miles without speaking to one another. Fifty-two Monferrine have lost their heads; the bridegroom does not say why. She goes to the Pope to confess.
E. 'La Vendicatrice,' an incomplete copy from Alexandria, 18 vv only, Marcoaldi, Canti popolari, No 12, p. 166, like D, as far as it goes. Thirty-three have been beheaded before.
F. 'La Inglese,' 40 vv, Ferraro, Canti popolari di Ferrara, Cento e Pontelagoscuro, No 2, p. 14. The count's son marries an English girl, daughter of a knight. She never speaks for more than three hundred miles; after two hundred more she sighs. She denies having killed her husband; has not a heart of that kind.
G. 'La Liberatrice,' 24 vv, Ferraro, Canti popolari monferrini, No 3, p. 4. Gianfleisa is the lady's name. When invited to go off, she says, If you wish me to go, lend me a horse. Not a word is spoken for five hundred miles. The man (Gilardu) points out his castle, and says that no one he has taken there has ever come back. Gianfleisa goes home without meeting anybody.
'Laura,' Ferraro, C. p. di Pontelagoscuro, Rivista di Filologia romanza, II, 197, and C. p. di Ferrara, etc., p. 86, is a mixture of this ballad with another. Cf. 'La Maledetta,' Ferraro, C. p. monferrini, No 27, p. 35.
Several other French and Italian ballads have common points with Renauld, Monchisa, etc., and for this have sometimes been improperly grouped with them: e.g., 'La Fille des Sables,' Bujeaud, II, 177 ff. A girl sitting by the water-side hears a sailor sing, and asks him to teach her the song. He says, Come aboard, and I will. He pushes off, and by and by she begins to weep.[69] She says, My father is calling me to supper. "You will sup with me." "My mother is calling me to bed." "You will sleep with me." They go a hundred leagues, and not a word said, and at last reach his father's castle. When she is undressing, her lace gets into a knot. He suggests that his sword would cut it. She plunges the sword into her heart. So 'Du Beau Marinier,' Beaurepaire, p. 57 f, and Poésies populaires de la France, MS., III, fol. 59, No 4; 'L'Épée Libératrice,' V. Smith, Chansons du Velay, etc., Romania, VII, 69, nearly; also 'Il Corsaro,' Nigra, Rivista Coutemporanea, XXIV, p. 86 ff. In 'La Monferrina Incontaminata,' Ferraro, C. p. m., No 2, p. 3, a French knight invites a girl to go off with him, and mounts her behind him. They ride five hundred miles without speaking, then reach an inn, after which the story is the same. So Bernoni, Puntata IX, No 2. 'La Fille du Patissier,' Paymaigre, No 30, p. 93, has the same conclusion. All these, except 'La Fille des Sables,' make the girl ask for the sword herself, and in all it is herself that she kills.
The Spanish preserves this ballad in a single form, the earliest printed in any language, preceding, by a few years, even the German broadsides G, H.
'Romance de Rico Franco,' 36 vv, "Cancionero de Romances, s. a., fol. 191: Canc. de Rom., ed. de 1550, fol. 202: ed. de 1555, fol. 296;" Wolf and Hofmann, Primavera, No 119, II, 22: Duran, No 296, I, 160: Grimm, p. 252: Depping and Galiano, 1844, II, 167: Ochoa, p. 7. The king's huntsmen got no game, and lost the falcons. They betook themselves to the castle of Maynes, where was a beautiful damsel, sought by seven counts and three kings. Rico Franco of Aragon carried her off by force. Nothing is said of a rest in a wood, or elsewhere; but that something has dropped out here is shown by the corresponding Portuguese ballad. The lady wept. Rico Franco comforted her thus: If you are weeping for father and mother, you shall never see them more; and if for your brothers, I have killed them all three. I am not weeping for them, she said, but because I know not what my fate is to be. Lend me your knife to cut the fringes from my mantle, for they are no longer fit to wear. This Rico Franco did, and the damsel thrust the knife into his breast. Thus she avenged father, mother, and brothers.
A Portuguese ballad has recently been obtained from tradition in the island of St. George, Azores, which resembles the Spanish closely, but is even curter: A, 'Romance de Dom Franco,' 30 vv; B, 'Dona Inez,' a fragment of 18 vv; Braga, Cantos populares do Archipelago açoriano, No 48, p. 316, No 49, p. 317: Hartung's Romanceiro, II, 61, 63. Dona Inez was so precious in the eyes of her parents that they gave her neither to duke nor marquis. A knight who was passing [the Duke of Turkey, B] took a fancy to her, and stole her away. When they came to the middle of the mountain ridge on which Dona Inez lived, the knight stopped to rest, and she began to weep. From this point Portuguese A, and B so far as it is preserved, agree very nearly with the Spanish.[70]
Certain Breton ballads have points of contact with the Halewyn-Ulinger class, but, like the French and Italian ballads mentioned on the preceding page, have more important divergences, and especially the characteristic distinction that the woman kills herself to preserve her honor. 1. 'Jeanne Le Roux,' Luzel, I, 324 ff, in two versions; Poésies pop. de la France, MS., III, fol. 182. The sieur La Tremblaie attempts the abduction of Jeanne from the church immediately after her marriage ceremony. As he is about to compel her to get up on the crupper of his horse, she asks for a knife to cut her bridal girdle, which had been drawn too tight. He gives her the choice of three, and she stabs herself in the heart. La Tremblaie remarks, I have carried off eighteen young brides, and Jeanne is the nineteenth, words evidently taken from the mouth of a Halewyn, and not belonging here. 2. Le Marquis de Coatredrez, Luzel, I, 336 ff, meets a young girl on the road, going to the pardon of Guéodet, and forces her on to his horse. On the way and at his house she vainly implores help. He takes her to the garden to gather flowers. She asks for his knife to shorten the stems, and kills herself. Early in the morning the door of the château is broken in by Kerninon, foster-brother of the victim, who forces Coatredrez to fight, and runs him through. 3. 'Rozmelchon,' Luzel, I, 308 ff, in three versions, and, 4, 'La Filleule de du Guesclin,' Villemarqué, Barzaz-Breiz, 6th ed., 212 ff, are very like 2. The wicked Rozmelchon is burned in his château in Luzel's first copy; the other two do not bring him to punishment. Villemarqué's villain is an Englishman, and has his head cloven by du Guesclin. 5. 'Marivonnic,' Luzel, I, 350 ff, a pretty young girl, is carried off by an English vessel, the captain of which shows himself not a whit behind the feudal seigneurs in ferocity. The young girl throws herself into the water.
Magyar. Five versions from recent traditions, all of them interesting, are given in Arany and Gyulai's collection of Hungarian popular poetry, 'Molnár Anna,' I, 137 ff, Nos 1-5.[71]—A, p. 141, No 3. A man, nameless here, but called in the other versions Martin Ajgó, or Martin Sajgó, invites Anna Miller to go off with him. She refuses; she has a young child and a kind husband. "Come," he says; "I have six palaces, and will put you in the seventh," and persists so long that he prevails at last. They went a long way, till they came to the middle of a green wood. He asked her to sit down in the shade of a branchy tree (so all); he would lie in her lap, and she was to look into his head (a point found in all the copies). But look not up into the tree, he said. He went to sleep (so B, D); she looked up into the tree, and saw six fair maids hanging there (so all but E). She thought to herself, He will make me the seventh! (also B, D). A tear fell on the face of the "brave sir," and waked him. You have looked up into the tree, he said. "No, but three orphans passed, and I thought of my child." He bade her go up into the tree. She was not used to go first, she said. He led the way. She seized the opportunity, tore his sword from its sheath (so C), and hewed off his head. She then wrapped herself in his cloak, sprang upon his horse, and returned home, where (in all the copies, as in this) she effected a reconcilement with her husband. B, p. 138, No 2, agrees closely with the foregoing. Martin Ajgó calls to Anna Miller to come with him a long way into the wilderness (so D, E). He boasts of no palaces in this version. He calls Anna a long time, tempts her a long time, drags her on to his horse, and carries her off. The scene under the tree is repeated. Anna pretends (so D, E) that the tear which drops on Martin's face is dew from the tree, and he retorts, How can it be dew from the tree, when the time is high noon? His sword falls out of its sheath as he is mounting the tree, and he asks her to hand it to him. She throws it up (so E), and it cuts his throat in two. Rightly served, Martin Ajgó, she says: why did you lure me from home? C, p. 144, No 4. Martin Sajgó tells Anna Miller that he has six stone castles, and is building a seventh. It is not said that he goes to sleep. As in A, Anna pulls his sword from the scabbard. D, p. 146, No 5. Here reappears the very important feature of the wonderland: "Come, let us go, Anna Miller, a long journey into the wilderness, to a place that flows with milk and honey." Anna insists, as before, that Martin shall go up the tree first. He puts down his sword; she seizes it, and strikes off his head with one blow. E, p. 137, No 1, is somewhat defective, but agrees essentially with the others. Martin Ajgó calls Anna; she will not come; he carries her off. He lets his sword fall as he is climbing, and asks Anna to hand it up to him. She throws it up, as in B, and it cuts his back in two.
Neus, in his Ehstnische Volkslieder, maintains the affinity of 'Kallewisohnes Tod,' No 2, p. 5, with the Ulinger ballads, and even of his Holepi with the Dutch Halewyn. The resemblance is of the most distant, and what there is must be regarded as casual. The same of the Finnish 'Kojoins Sohn,' Schröter, Finnische Runen, p. 114, 115; 'Kojosen Poika,' Lönnrot, Kanteletar, p. 279.
In places where a ballad has once been known, the story will often be remembered after the verses have been wholly or partly forgotten, and the ballad will be resolved into a prose tale, retaining, perhaps, some scraps of verse, and not infrequently taking up new matter, or blending with other traditions. Naturally enough, a ballad and an equivalent tale sometimes exist side by side. It has already been mentioned that Jamieson, who had not found this ballad in Scotland, had often come upon the story in the form of a tale interspersed with verse. Birlinger at one time (1860) had not been able to obtain the ballad in the Swabian Oberland (where it has since been found in several forms), but only a story agreeing essentially with the second class of German ballads. According to this tradition, a robber, who was at the same time a portentous magician, enticed the twelve daughters of a miller, one after another, into a wood, and hanged eleven of them on a tree, but was arrested by a hunter, the brother of the twelve, before he could dispatch the last, and was handed over to justice. The object of the murders was to obtain blood for magical purposes. This story had, so to speak, naturalized itself in the locality, and the place where the robber's house had been and that where the tree had stood were pointed out. The hunter-brother was by some conceived of as the Wild Huntsman, and came to the rescue through the air with a fearful baying of dogs. (Birlinger in Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, I, 368, No 592, and Germania, 1st Ser., V, 372.)
The story of the German ballad P has attached itself to localities in the neighborhood of Weissenbach, Aargau, and is told with modifications that connect it with the history of the Guggi-, or Schongauer-, bad. A rich man by lewd living had become a leper. The devil put it into his head that he could be cured by bathing in the blood of twelve [seven] pure maidens. He seized eleven at a swoop, while they were on their way to church, and hanged them, and the next day enticed away a miller's daughter, who was delivered from death as in the ballad. A medicinal spring rose near the fatal tree. (Rochholz, I, 22.) No pure version of this ballad has been obtained in the Harz region, though a mixed form has already been spoken of; but 'Der Reiter in Seiden,' Pröhle, Märchen für die Jugend, No 32, p. 136, which comes from the western Harz, or from some place further north, on the line between Kyffhaüser and Hamburg, is, roughly speaking, only 'Gert Olbert' turned into prose, with a verse or two remaining. 'Der betrogene Betrüger,' from Mühlbach, Müller's Siebenbürgische Sagen, No 418, p. 309, has for its hero a handsome young man, addicted to women, who obtains from the devil the power of making them follow his piping, on the terms that every twelfth soul is to be the devil's share. He had taken eleven to a wood, and hanged them on a tree after he had satisfied his desire. The brother of a twelfth substituted himself for his sister, dressed in her clothes, snatched the rope from the miscreant, and ran him up on the nearest bough; upon which a voice was heard in the wind, that cried The twelfth soul is mine. Grundtvig, in his Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, p. 249, gives his recollections of a story that he had heard in his youth which has a catastrophe resembling that of English C-F. A charcoal burner had a way of taking up women beside him on his wagon, and driving them into a wood, where he forced them to take off their clothes, then killed them, and sunk them with heavy stones in a deep moss. At last a girl whom he had carried off in this way got the advantage of him by inducing him to turn away while she was undressing, and then pushing him into the moss. Something similar is found in the conclusion of a robber story in Grundtvig's Danske Folkeminder, 1861, No 30, p. 108, and in a modern Danish ballad cited in Danmarks gamle Folkeviser, IV, 24, note.**
Another Transylvanian tale, Schuster, p. 433, has a fountain, a thirsty bride, and doves (two or three) that sing to her, traits which have perhaps been derived from some Ulinger ballad; but the fountain is of an entirely different character, and the doves serve a different purpose. The tale is a variety of 'Fitchers Vogel,' Grimms, No 46, and belongs to the class of stories to which 'Bluebeard,' from its extensive popularity, has given name. The magician of 'Fitcher's Vogel' and of 'Bluebeard' becomes, or remains, a preternatural being (a hill-man) further north, as in Grundtvig's Gamle danske Minder, 1857, No 312, p. 182. There is a manifest affinity between these three species of tales and our ballad (also between the German and Danish tales and the Scandinavian ballad of 'Rosmer'), but the precise nature of this affinity it is impossible to expound. 'Bluebeard,' 'La Barbe Bleue,' Perrault, Histoires ou Contes du temps passé, 1697, p. 57 (Lefèvre), has a special resemblance to the German ballads of the second class in the four calls to sister Anne, which represent the cries to father, mother, and brother, and agrees with these ballads as to the means by which the death of the malefactor is brought about.
Looking back now over the whole field covered by this ballad, we observe that the framework of the story is essentially the same in English, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian; in the first class of the German ballads; in Polish A; in French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Magyar. The woman delivers herself from death by some artifice,[72] and retaliates upon the man the destruction he had intended for her. The second form of the German ballad attributes the deliverance of the woman to her brother, and also the punishment of the murderer. The third form of the German ballad makes the woman lose her life, and her murderer, for the most part, to suffer the penalty of the law, though in some cases the brother takes immediate vengeance. Polish B-K may be ranked with the second German class, and O-CC still better with the third; but the brother appears in only a few of these, and, when he appears, counts for nothing. The Wendish and the Bohemian ballad have the incident of fraternal vengeance, though otherwise less like the German. The Servian ballad, a slight thing at best, is still less like, but ranks with the third German class. The oldest Icelandic copy is altogether anomalous, and also incomplete, but seems to imply the death of the woman: later copies suffer the woman to escape, without vengeance upon the murderer.
It is quite beyond question that the third class of German ballad is a derivation from the second.[73] Of the versions T-Z, Z alone has preserved clear traits of the marvellous. A king's daughter is enticed from home by Ulrich's singing, and is warned of her impending fate by the dove, as in Class II. The other ballads have the usual marks of degeneracy, a dropping or obscuring of marvellous and romantic incidents, and a declension in the rank and style of the characters. T, to be sure, has a hazel, and Y a tree-stump and a spring, and in T Ulrich offers to teach Ännchen bird-song, but these traits have lost all significance. Knight and lady sink to ordinary man and maid; for though in Y the woman is called a king's daughter, the opening stanzas of Y are borrowed from a different ballad. Ulrich retains so much of the knight that he rides to Ännchen's house, in the first stanza of T, but he apparently goes on foot with her to the wood, and this is the rule in all the other ballads of this class. As Ulrich has lost his horse, so the brother, in T, U, V, X, has lost his sword, or the use of it, and in all these (also, superfluously, in W) Ulrich, like a common felon as he was, is broken on the wheel.
That the woman should save her life by her own craft and courage is certainly a more primitive conception than that she should depend upon her brother, and the priority of this arrangement of the plot is supported, if not independently proved, by the concurrence, as to this point, of so many copies among so many nations, as also by the accordance of various popular tales. The second German form must therefore, so far forth, be regarded as a modification of the first. Among the several devices, again, which the woman employs in order to get the murderer into her power, the original would seem to be her inducing him to lay his head in her lap, which gives her the opportunity (by the use of charms or runes, in English A, Danish G, Norwegian F, H, and one form of B) to put him into a deep sleep. The success of this trick no doubt implies considerable simplicity on the part of the victim of it; not more, however, than is elsewhere witnessed in preternatural beings, whose wits are frequently represented as no match for human shrewdness. Some of the Scandinavian ballads are not liable to the full force of this objection, whatever that may be, for they make the knight express a suspicion of treachery, and the lady solemnly asseverate that she will not kill [fool, beguile] him in his sleep. And so, when he is fast bound, she cries out, Wake up, for I will not kill thee in thy sleep! This last circumstance is wanting in hardly any of the Scandinavian ballads, whereas the previous compact is found only in Danish E, F, G, H, L, Swedish A, Norwegian A, and the Icelandic ballad. Not occurring in any of the older Danish copies, it may be that the compact is an after-thought, and was inserted to qualify the improbability. But the lady's equivocation is quite of a piece with Memering's oath in 'Ravengaard and Memering,' Grundtvig, No 13, and King Dietrich's in the Dietrichsaga, Unger, c. 222, p. 206.[74]
English A and all the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian ballads employ the stratagem of lulling the man to sleep, but these are not the only ballads in which the man lays his head in the woman's lap. This trait is observed in nearly all German ballads of the second and third class, in all the well-preserved ones, and also in the Magyar ballad. With regard to the German ballads, however, it is purposeless (for it does not advance the action of the drama in the least), and must be regarded as a relic of an earlier form.[75] English B-F and all the French ballads dispose of the traitor by a watery death. The scene is shifted from a wood to a sea-coast, pool, or river bank, perhaps to suit the locality to which the ballad had wandered. In English B, where, apparently under the influence of other ballads,[76] the lady is forced to wade into water up to her chin, the knight is pushed off his horse when bending over to give a last kiss for which he had been asked; in English C-F and French A, B, the man is induced to turn his face to save the woman's modesty; in French C-E he is made to pull off her stockings or shoes, and then, while off his guard, pitched into a sea or river. This expedient is sufficiently trivial; but still more so, and grazing on the farcical, is that which is made use of in the Dutch ballad and those of the German first class, the woman's persuading the man to take off his fine coat lest it should be spattered with her blood, and cutting off his head with his own sword while he is thus occupied. The Spanish and Portuguese ballads make the lady borrow the knight's knife to remove some of the trimming of her dress, and in the Italian she borrows his sword to cut a bough to shade her horse; for in Italian the halt in the wood is completely forgotten, and the last half of the action takes place on horseback. All these contrivances plainly have less claim to be regarded as primary than that of binding the murderer after he has been put to sleep.
The knight in English A is called an Elf, and as such is furnished with an enchanting horn, which is replaced by a harp of similar properties in B, where, however, the male personage has neither name nor any kind of designation. The elf-horn of English A is again represented by the seductive song of the Dutch ballad and of German G-R and Z. Though the lady is not lured away in the Scandinavian ballads by irresistible music,[77] Danish A, E, Norwegian A, B, and Swedish D present to her the prospect of being taken to an elf-land, or elysium, and there are traces of this in Danish G and D also, and in Polish Q. The tongue that talks after the head is off, in the Dutch ballad and in German A, B, C, E, is another mark of an unearthly being. Halewyn, Ulver, Gert Olbert, like the English knight, are clearly supernatural, though of a nondescript type. The elf in English A is not to be interpreted too strictly, for the specific elf is not of a sanguinary turn, as these so conspicuously are. He is comparatively innocuous, like the hill-man Young Akin, in another English ballad, who likewise entices away a woman by magical music, but only to make her his wife. But the elf-knight and the rest seem to delight in bloodshed for its own sake; for, as Grundtvig has pointed out, there is no other apparent motive for murder in English A, B, the Norwegian ballads, Danish A, Swedish A, B, or German A-E.[78] This is true again, for one reason or another, of others of the German ballads, of the French, of most of the Italian, and of the Hungarian ballads.
The nearest approach to the Elf-knight, Halewyn, etc., is perhaps Quintalin, in the saga of Samson the Fair. He was son of the miller Galin. Nobody knew who his mother was, but many were of the mind that Galin might have had him of a "goddess," an elf or troll woman, who lived under the mill force. He was a thief, and lay in the woods; was versed in many knave's tricks, and had also acquired agreeable arts. He was a great master of the harp, and would decoy women into the woods with his playing, keep them as long as he liked, and send them home pregnant to their fathers or husbands. A king's daughter, Valentina, is drawn on by his music deep into the woods, but is rescued by a friendly power. Some parts of her dress and ornaments, which she had laid off in her rapid following up of the harping, are afterwards found, with a great quantity of precious things, in the subaqueous cave of Quintalin's mother, who is a complete counterpart to Grendel's, and was probably borrowed from Beówulf.[79] This demi-elf Quintalin is a tame personage by the side of Grendel or of Halewyn. Halewyn does not devour his victims, like Grendel: Quintalin does not even murder his. He allures women with his music to make them serve his lust. We may infer that he would plunder them, for he is a notorious thief. Even two of the oldest Danish ballads, B, C, and again Danish I and Swedish C, make the treacherous knight as lecherous as bloody, and so with German J, K, L, O, P, Q, R, S, and Italian A, B, C, E, F. This trait is wanting in Danish D, where, though traces of the originally demonic nature of the knight remain, the muckle gold of the maids already appears as the motive for the murders. In the later Danish E-H, K, L, and Swedish C, D, the original elf or demon has sunk to a remorseless robber, generally with brothers, sisters, or underlings for accomplices.[80] This is preëminently his character in English C-F, in nearly all the forty Polish ballads, and in the two principal ballads of the German second class, G, H, though English D, German H, and Polish Q retain a trace of the supernatural: the first in the charm by means of which the knight compels the maid to quit her parents, the second in the bloody spring, and the last in the golden mountains. There is nothing that unequivocally marks the robber in the other German ballads of the second class and in those of the third. The question 'Weinst du um deines Vaters Gut?' in I-L, O-S, T-W, is hardly decisive, and only in W and Z is it expressly said that the maid had taken valuable things with her (as in Swedish D, Norwegian A, B, English D-F). J-L, O-S, give us to understand that the lady had lost her honor,[81] but in all the rest, except the anomalous Z, the motive for murder is insufficient.[82]
The woman in these ballads is for the most part nameless, or bears a stock name to which no importance can be attached. Not so with the names of the knight. Most of these are peculiar, and the Northern ones, though superficially of some variety, have yet likeness enough to tempt one to seek for a common original. Grundtvig, with considerable diffidence, suggests Oldemor as a possible ground-form. He conceives that the R of some of the Scandinavian names may be a relic of a foregoing Herr. The initial H would easily come or go. Given such a name as Hollemen (Danish C), we might expect it to give place to Halewyn, which is both a family and a local name in Flanders, if the ballad should pass into the Low Countries from Denmark, a derivation that Grundtvig is far from asserting. So Ulinger, a local appellation, might be substituted for the Ulver of Danish A. Grundtvig, it must be borne in mind, declines to be responsible for the historical correctness of this genealogy, and would be still less willing to undertake an explanation of the name Oldemor.
In place of Oldemor, Professor Sophus Bugge, in a recent article, marked by his characteristic sharp-sightedness and ingenuity, has proposed Hollevern, Holevern, or Olevern as the base-form of all the Northern names for the bloody knight, and he finds in this name a main support for the entirely novel and somewhat startling hypothesis that the ballad we are dealing with is a wild shoot from the story of Judith and Holofernes.[83] His argument, given as briefly as possible, is as follows.
That the Bible story was generally known in the Middle Ages no one would question. It was treated in a literary way by an Anglo-Saxon poet, who was acquainted with the scriptural narrative, and in a popular way by poets who had no direct acquaintance with the original.[84] The source of the story in the ballad must in any case be a tradition many times removed from the biblical story; that much should be changed, much dropped, and much added is only what would be expected.
Beginning the comparison with 'Judith' with this caution, it is first submitted that Holofernes can be recognized in most of the Scandinavian and German names of the knight. The v of the proposed base-form is preserved in Ulver, Halewyn, and probably in the English Elf-knight. It is easy to explain a v's passing over to g, as in Ulinger, Adelger, and especially under the influence of the very common names in -ger. Again, v might easily become b, as in Olbert, or m, as in Hollemen, Olmor; and the initial R of Rulleman, Romor, etc., may have been carried over from a prefixed Herr.[85]
The original name of the heroine has been lost, and yet it is to be noticed that Gert Olbert's mother, in German A, is called Fru Jutte.
The heroine in this same ballad is named Helena (Linnich in F); in others (German C, D, E), Odilia. These are names of saints, and this circumstance may tend to show that the woman in the ballad was originally conceived of as rather a saint than a secular character, though in the course of time the story has so changed that the devout widow who sought out her country's enemy in his own camp has been transformed into a young maid who is enticed from home by a treacherous suitor.
It is an original trait in the ballad that the murderer, as is expressly said in many copies, is from a foreign land. According to an English version (E), he comes from the north, as Holofernes does, "venit Assur ex montibus ab aquilone" (Jud. xvi, 5).
The germ of this outlandish knight's bloodthirstiness is found in the truculent part that Holofernes plays in the Bible, his threats and devastations. That the false suitor appears without companions is in keeping with the ballad style of representation; yet we might find suggestions of the Assyrian's army in the swains, the brothers, the stable-boy, whom the maid falls in with on her way home.
The splendid promises made in many of the ballads might have been developed from the passage where Holofernes, whose bed is described as wrought with purple, gold, and precious stones, says to Judith, Thou shalt be great in the house of Nebuchadnezzar, and thy name shall be named in all the earth (xi, 21).
In many forms of the ballad, especially the Dutch and the German, the maid adorns herself splendidly, as Judith does: she even wears some sort of crown in Dutch A 16, German D 8, as Judith does in x, 3, xvi, 10 (mitram).
In the English D, E, F, the oldest Danish, A, and the Polish versions, the maid, like Judith, leaves her home in the night.
The Piedmontese casté, Italian E 1 [there is a castle in nearly all the Italian ballads, and also in Dutch B], may remind us of Holofernes' castra.
The knight's carrying off the maid, lifting her on to his horse in many copies, may well come from a misunderstanding of elevaverunt in Judith x, 20: Et cum in faciem ejus intendisset, adoravit eum, prosternens se super terram. Et elevaverunt eam servi Holofernis, jubente domino suo.[86]
In German A Gert Olbert and Helena are said to ride three days and nights, and in Danish D the ride is for three days; and we may remember that Judith killed Holofernes the fourth day after her arrival in his camp.
The place in which the pair alight is, according to German G 20, a deep dale, and this agrees with the site of Holofernes' camp in the valley of Bethulia. There is a spring or stream in many of the ballads, and also a spring in the camp, in which Judith bathes (xii, 7).
Most forms of the ballad make the knight, after the halt, inform the maid that she is to die, as many maids have before her in the same place; e.g., German G 7:
This corresponds with the passage in Judith's song (xvi, 6), Dixit se ... infantes meos dare in prædam et virgenes in captivitatem: but it is reasonable to suppose that the ballad follows some version of the Bible words that varied much from the original.
The incident of the maid's lousing and tousing her betrayer's hair, while he lies with his head in her lap, may have come from Judith seizing Holofernes by the hair before she kills him, but the story of Samson and Delilah may have had influence here.
According to many German versions, the murderer grants the maid three cries before she dies. She invokes Jesus, Mary, and her brother. Or she utters three sighs, the first to God the Father, the second to Jesus, the third to her brother. These cries or sighs seem to take the place of Judith's prayer, Confirma me, Domine Deus Israel (xiii, 7), and it may also be well to remember that Holofernes granted Judith, on her request, permission to go out in the night to pray.
The Dutch, Low-German, Scandinavian, and other versions agree in making the woman kill the knight with his own sword, as in Judith. The Dutch and Low-German [also Danish F, Swedish A] have preserved an original trait in making the maid hew off the murderer's head. English and French versions dispose of the knight differently: the maid pushes him into sea or river. Perhaps, in some older form of the story, after the head was cut off, the trunk was pushed into the water: cf. Judith xiii, 10: Abscidit caput ejus et ... evolvit corpus ejus truncum. The words apprehendit comam capitis ejus (xiii, 9) have their parallel in Dutch A, 33: "Zy nam het hoofd al by het haer." The Dutch ballad makes the maid carry the head with her.
"Singing and ringing" she rode through the wood: Judith sings a song of praise to the Lord after her return home.
In English C-F, May Colven comes home before dawn, as Judith does. The Dutch A says, When to her father's gate she came, she blew the horn like a man. Compare Judith xiii, 13: Et dixit Judith a longe custodibus murorum, Aperite portas!
The Dutch text goes on to say that when the father heard the horn he was delighted at his daughter's return: and Judith v, 14, Et factum est, cum audissent viri vocem ejus, vocaverunt presbyteros civitatis.
The conclusion of Dutch A is that there was a banquet held, and the head was set on the table. So Judith causes Holofernes' head to be hung up on the city wall, and after the enemy have been driven off, the Jews hold a feast.
The Icelandic version, though elsewhere much mutilated, has a concluding stanza which certainly belongs to the ballad: