Motherwell MS., p. 290, from the recitation of Widow McCormick; learned in Dumbarton.
Notes and Queries, Sixth Series, VII, 275, 1883: communicated by the Rev. E. Venables, Precentor of Lincoln, as sung by a nurse-maid from Woburn, near High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, "between fifty and sixty years ago."
Skene MSS, p. 61, stanzas 19-24: taken down in the north or northeast of Scotland, 1802-03.
Buchan's MSS, II, 186, stanzas 16-22.
Notes and Queries, Sixth Series, VI, 476, 1882: "sung in Forfarshire, forty years ago."
a. Notes and Queries, Sixth Series, VI, 415, 1882. b. The same, p. 269.
a. Baring-Gould's Appendix to Henderson's Notes on the Folk Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders, 1866, p. 333, Yorkshire. b. Notes and Queries, Sixth Series, X, 354, 1884.
B.
The title, 'The Broom o the Cathery Knowes,' is not prefixed to the ballad, but is given in the Index.
54. Changed by Motherwell to many's the mile, as in 1.
12. Hey the broom, &c.
C.
This version, which the Rev. E. Venables has also communicated to me in manuscript, was tagged on to a fragment of 'Hugh of Lincoln.'
After 4: "Mother, brother, sister, uncle, aunt, etc., succeed. At last comes the own true love, who replies."
D.
23, 4. Restored from stanza 5.
F.
"It was sung in Forfarshire forty years ago by girls during the progress of some game, which I do not now distinctly recollect. A lady, at the point of being executed, cries Stop, stop! I think I see my father coming. Then, addressing her father, she asks," as in stanza 2; "to which the father replies," as in stanza 3. "Mother, brother, sister, are each addressed in turn, and give the same answer. Last of all the fair sinner sees her lover coming, and on putting the question to him is answered thus," as in stanza 4; "whereupon the game ends." W. F. (2), Saline Manse, Fife.
G. a.
Before stanza 1: "I think the title of this ballad is 'The Golden Key.' The substance of it is that a woman has lost a gold key, and is about to be hung, when she exclaims, as in stanza 1. Then follows" stanza 2. After 2: "Father, mother, brother, sister, all in turn come up, and have not found the lost key. At last the sweet-heart appears, who exclaims triumphantly," as in stanza 3. "I write this from memory. I never saw it in print." H. Fishwick.
b.
"A lady writes to me, My mother used to hear, in Lancashire and Cheshire, a ballad of which she only recollects three lines:
The last line was repeated, I believe, in every verse." William Andrews.
H. a.
The verses form part of a Yorkshire story called The Golden Ball. A man gives a golden ball to each of two lasses, and if either loses the ball she is to be hanged. The younger, while playing with her ball, tosses it over a park-paling; the ball runs away over the grass into a house, and is seen no more.
"Now t' lass was taken to York to be hanged. She was brought out on t' scaffold, and t' hangman said, Now, lass, tha must hang by t' neck till tha be'st dead. But she cried out, Stop, stop," etc., stanzas 1-3.
"Then the hangman said. Now, lass, say thy prayers, for tha must dee." Stanzas 4-6 follow. The maid thinks she sees her brother coming, her sister, uncle, aunt, cousin. The hangman then says, "I wee-nt stop no longer, tha's making gam of me. Tha must be hung at once. But now she saw her sweetheart coming through the crowd, and he had over head i t' air her own golden ball. So she said," as in stanzas 7-9.
b.
Miss Kate Thompson, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, had when a child frequently been told the story of The Golden Ball by a woman who was a native of the Borderland. A rich lady possessed a golden ball, which she held in high esteem. A poor girl, her servant, had to clean this ball every day, and it was death to lose it. One day when she was cleaning the ball near a stream it disappeared. The girl was condemned to die, and had mounted the scaffold. The story was all in prose up to the execution, when the narrator broke into rhyme:
The mother answers that she has only come to see her die. Other relatives follow, and last of all comes the lover, who produces the ball, and the execution is stopped. Miss Thompson adds that two Northumbrian servants in her house remember the story so.
[154] Liebrecht was the first to call attention to this ballad-cycle, Zur Volkskunde, p. 222, repeating, with enlargement, an article in Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie, IX, 53. He gives the Sicilian text, and a Balearic and a Färöe, presently to be noticed, with translations, and points out other parallels. Reifferscheid made additions in his Westfälische Volkslieder, p. 10, p. 138 ff. I have not at hand the Effemeridi for 1874.
[155] "Legen kan nu fortsættes videre" might imply that the ballad was used as a game; but it is presumable that the author would have been explicit, had he meant this.
[156] Translated by George Stephens in the Foreign Quarterly Review, XXVI, 31.
[157] In the same collection, No 297, I, 297, there is no refusal on the part of the kindred, but what they offer is insufficient, and the maid succeeds by outbidding them. So in some of the corresponding German ballads, as Hoffmann und Richter, Nos 9, 10; Erk's Liederhort, Nos 51, 51a, 51b; Elwert, Ungedruckte Reste alten Gesangs, p. 43,=Liederhort, 51c; Longard, p. 22, No 11; Fiedler, p. 141. In Ulmann's Lettische Volkslieder, 1874, p. 168 (cited by Reiffenberg), 'Der losgekaufte Soldat,' a conscript writes to father, mother, brother, sister, to buy him off, and they devote horses, cows, lands, dowry, to this object, but do not succeed. His mistress sells her wreath and frees him.
[158] Goetze, Stimmen des russischen Volks, p. 150; Wenzig, Slawische Volkslieder, p. 151.
[159] Translated by Anastasius Grün, Volkslieder aus Krain, p. 30.
A. 'The Gay Goss Hawk,' Jamieson-Brown MS., fol. 15, No 6.
B. Motherwell's MS., p. 230.
C. 'The Jolly Goshawk,' Motherwell's MS., p. 435; Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 353.
D. 'The Gay Goss-hawk,' Motherwell's Note-Book, 27; Motherwell's MS., p. 415.
E. 'The Gay Goss-hawk,' Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, II, 7, 1802.
F. Communicated by Miss Reburn, as sung in County Meath, Ireland.
G. 'The Scottish Squire,' Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 245.
The 'Gay Goshawk' first appeared in print in the second volume of Scott's Minstrelsy, in 1802. Scott's copy was formed partly from Mrs Brown's version, A, "and partly from a MS. of some antiquity penes Edit." This compounded copy is now given, E, with those portions which are contained in the Brown MS. printed in smaller type, in order that what is peculiar to the other manuscript may be distinguished. A second copy of A was made for William Tytler under the direction of the reciter in 1783, but has not been recovered. There were 28 stanzas, as in A, and the first stanza has been given by Anderson in Nichols's Illustrations, VII, 176. C was furnished Motherwell by Buchan from a manuscript sent him, and Buchan says that he himself took down from recitation the vilely dilated and debased G: Ballads of the North of Scotland, II, 340.
A ballad widely known in France has the central idea of the Gay Goshawk, a maid's feigning death to escape from a father to a lover whom she is not permitted to marry, but in the development of the story there is no likeness. A version of this ballad, 'Belle Isambourg,' was printed as early as 1607 in a collection with the title Airs de Cour, p. 40, and was republished by Rathery in the Moniteur of August 26, 1853, p. 946, afterwards in Haupt's Französische Volkslieder, p. 92. The king wishes to give Fair Isambourg a husband, but her heart is fixed on a handsome knight, whom she loves more than all her kin together, though he is poor. The king shuts her up in a dark tower, thinking that this treatment will bring about a change, but it does not. Isambourg sees her lover riding towards or by the tower at full speed. She calls to him to stop, and says:
Isambourg is now proclaimed to be dead, and is carried to burial by three princes and a knight. Her lover, hearing the knelling and chanting, puts himself in the way and bids the bearers stop. Since she has died for loving him too well, he wishes to say a De profundis. He rips open a little of the shroud, and she darts a loving smile at him. Everybody is astonished.
Other versions, derived from oral tradition, have a more popular stamp: (1.) Poésies populaires de la France, MS., III, 54, 'La fille du roi et le Prince de Guise,' learned at Maubeuge, about 1760. (2.) III, 47, 'Le beau Déon,' Auvergne. (3.) III, 49, 'La princesse de la Grand' Tour,' Berry. (4.) III, 50 (the hero being Léon), Berry. (5.) III, 53, Caudebec. (6.) III, 56, Pamiers, Languedoc. (7.) III, 57, and II, 52, Orléans. (8.) 'La fille d'un prince,' Buchon, Noëls et chants p. de la Franche-Comté, p. 82, No 16. (9.) 'La fille d'un prince,' Rondes et Chansons p. illustrées, Paris, 1876, p. 286. (10.) 'La princesse,' Guillon, Chansons p. de l'Ain, p. 87. (11.) 'La maîtresse captive,' Puymaigre, Chants p. messins, I, 87. (12.) Le Héricher, Littérature p. de Normandie, p. 153 f. (13.) 'De Dion et de la fille du roi,' Ampère, Instructions, p. 38, the first fourteen stanzas; Auvergne. (14.) G. de Nerval, La Bohème Galante, ed. 1866, p. 70, and Les Faux Saulniers, ed. 1868, p. 346, the story completed in Les Filles du Feu, ed. 1868, p. 132; or, in the collection lately made from his works, Chansons et Ballades p. du Valois, p. 16, VIII. The last two have a false termination, as already remarked under No 4, I, 42.
In these traditional versions, the father pays a visit to the princess after she has been confined seven years, and asks how she is. One side is eaten away by worms, her feet are rotting in the irons. She begs a few sous to give the jailer to loosen her fetters. Millions are at her disposal if she will give up her lover. Rather rot, is her reply. Rot, then, says her father. The lover comes by and throws a few words of writing into the tower, directing her to counterfeit death. The rest is much the same. In several versions the king yields.
There are many other ballads in which a girl, for one reason or another, feigns death. In 'Les trois capitaines,' or 'La jolie fille de la Garde,' etc., Arbaud, I, 143, Decombe, Ch. p. d'Ille-et-Vilaine, p. 150, No 51, Champfleury, Ch. p. des Provinces, p. 95, Bujeaud, II, 174, 'La Bohème Galante,' ed. 1866, p. 71 f, Chansons du Valois, p. 19, IX, Puymaigre, Vieux Auteurs, II, 478, E. Legrand, Romania, X, 369, No 6, the object is to save her honor;[160] so in Marcoaldi, p. 162, No 10, Ferraro, C. p. monferrini, p. 41, No 31. The well-disposed hostess of an inn administers a sleeping-draught, in Arbaud's ballad and in Decombe's. The object is to avoid becoming a king's mistress, in 'Kvindelist,' Grundtvig, IV, 394, No 235, 'Hertig Hillebrand och hans Syster,' Arwidsson, I, 380 No 61; in a Bohemian ballad, to avoid marrying a Turk, 'Oklamaný Turek,' 'The Turk duped,' Ćelakovský, III, 11 (translated in Bowring's Cheskian Anthology, p. 129) Erben, p. 485, etc., etc.; to move a lover who is on the point of deserting, Hoffmann, Niederländische Volkslieder, p. 61, No 15, Willems, No 60, Uhland, No 97 B.
In 'Willie's Lyke-Wake,' No 25, I, 247, a man feigns death in order to capture a coy maid, or a maid refused him by her parents.
Birds are not seldom employed as posts in ballads: see 'Sweet William,' Motherwell's Minstrelsy, p. 307, Milá, Romancerillo, No 258; Hartung, Romanceiro, I, 193 (dove). A falcon carries a letter, in Afzelius, III, 116, No 87, and Milá, No 258 K, and Marko Kraljevitch sends a letter by a falcon from his prison, Karadshitch, II, 383. For a love-message of a general sort, not involving business, the nightingale is usually and rightly selected. On the other hand, a nightingale first orders a ring of a goldsmith, and afterwards delivers it to a lady, in Uhland, No 15.[161] In this ballad the goshawk is endowed with the nightingale's voice. The substitution of a parrot in G, a bird that we all know can talk, testifies to the advances made by reason among the humblest in the later generations.[162] A parrot, says Buchan, "is by far a more likely messenger to carry a love-letter or deliver a verbal message," II, 341. The parrot goes well with the heroine swooning on a sofa (stanza 33) and the step-dame sitting on the sofa's end (stanza 36).
Thieves drop three drops of wax on the breast of a servant-girl who is feigning sleep, and she shows no sign of feeling, in a Catalan ballad, Milá, Romancerillo, p. 104, No 114, vv 13-16, Observaciones, p. 147, No 43, Briz, I, 147.[163]
Translated by Grundtvig, Engelske og skotske Folkeviser, No 32, after E, C, G. After D by Talvj, Versuch, u. s. w., p. 560; Schubart, p. 57; Doenniges, p. 19; Gerhard, p. 37; Loève-Veimars, p. 264. By Knortz, Lieder Alt-Englands, No 2, after C; by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, No 38, after C and E, sometimes following Aytoun, I, 178.
Jamieson-Brown MS., No 6, pt 15.
Motherwell's MS., p. 230: from the recitation of Mrs Bell, of Paisley, and of Miss Montgomerie, of Edinburgh, her sister.