No. 50: The Bonny Hind
[There are no known traditional US or Canadian versions of this ballad.]
CONTENTS:
1. Child's Narrative
2. Footnotes [There are no footnotes for this ballad]
3. Brief (Kittredge)
4. Child's Ballad Text A.
5. Additions and Corrections
ATTACHED PAGES (see left hand column):
1. Recordings & Info: The Bonny Hind
A. Roud 250; The Bonny Hind (7 Listings)
2. English and Other Versions (Including Child versions A with additional notes)]
3. Sheet Music: The Bonny Hind (Bronson's texts and some music examples)
Child's Narrative
A. 'The Bonny Heyn,' Herd's Manuscripts, I, 224; II, fol. 65, fol. 83.
This piece is transcribed three times in Herd's manuscripts, with a note prefixed in each instance that it was copied from the mouth of a milkmaid in 1771. An endorsement to the same effect on the last transcript gives the date as 1787, no doubt by mistake. Scott had only Manuscript I in his hands, which accidentally omits two stanzas (13, 14), and he printed this defective copy with the omission of still another (4): Minstrelsy, II. 298, ed. 1802; III, 309, ed. 1833. Motherwell supplies these omitted stanzas, almost in Herd's very words, in the Introduction to his collection, p. lxxxiv, note 99. He remarks, p. 189, that tales of this kind abound in the traditionary poetry of Scotland. The two ballads which follow, Nos 51, 52, are of the same general description.
In the first half of the story 'The Bonny Hind' comes very near to the fine Scandinavian ballad of 'Margaret,' as yet known to be preserved only in Färöe and Icelandic. The conclusions differ altogether. Margaret in the Färöe ballad, 'Margretu kvæði,' Færöiske Kvæder, Hammershaimb, No 18, is the only daughter of the Norwegian king Magnus, and has been put in a convent. After two or three months she longs to see her father's house again. On her way thither she is assaulted by a young noble with extreme violence: to whom she says,
Now you have torn off all my clothes, and done me sin and shame,
I beg you, before God most high, tell me what is your name.
Magnus, he answers, is his father, and Gertrude his mother, and he himself is Olaf, and was brought up in the woods. By this she recognizes that he is her own brother. Olaf begs her to go back to the convent, and say nothing, bearing her sorrow as she may. This she does. But every autumn the king makes a feast, and invites to it all the nuns in the cloister. Margaret is missed, and asked for. Is she sick or dead? Why does she not come to the feast, like other merry dames? The wicked abbess answers, Your daughter is neither sick nor dead; she goes with child, like other merry dames. The king rides off to the cloister, encounters his daughter, and demands who is the father of her child. She replies that she will sooner die than tell. The king leaves her in wrath, but returns presently, resolved to burn the convent, and Margaret in it. Olaf comes from the wood, tired and weary, sees the cloister burning, and quenches the flames with his heart's blood.
The Icelandic ballad, 'Margretar kvæði,' Íslenzk Fornkvæði, Grundtvig and Sigurðsson, No 14, has the same story. It is, however, the man who brings on the discovery by asking the woman's parentage. The editors inform us that the same subject is treated in an unprinted Icelandic ballad, less popular as to style and stanza, in the Arne Magnussen collection, 154.
The story of Kullervo, incorporated in what is called the national epic of the Finns, the Kalevala, has striking resemblances with the ballads of the Bonny Hind class. While returning home in his sledge from a somewhat distant errand, Kullervo met three times a girl who was travelling on snow-shoes, and invited her to get in with him. She rejected his invitation with fierceness, and the third time he pulled her into the sledge by force. She angrily bade him let her go, or she would dash the sledge to pieces; but he won her over by showing her rich things. The next morning she asked what was his race and family; for it seemed to her that he must come of a great line. "No," he said, "neither of great nor small. I am Kalervo's unhappy son. Tell me of what stock art thou." "Of neither great nor small," she answered. "I am Kalervo's unhappy daughter." She was, in fact, a long-lost sister of Kullervo's, who, when a child, had gone to the wood for berries, and had never found her way home. She had wept the first day and the second; the third and fourth, the fifth and sixth, she had tried every way to kill herself. She broke out in heart-piercing lamentations:
'O that I had died then, wretched!
O that I had perished, weak one!
Had not lived to hear these horrors,
Had not Iived this shame to suffer!'
So saying she sprang from the sledge into the river, and found relief under the waters.
Kullervo, mad with anguish, went home to his mother, and told her what had happened. He asked only how he might die, — by wolf or bear, by whale or sea-pike. His mother vainly sought to soothe him. He consented to live only till the wrongs of his parents had been revenged. His mother tried to dissuade him even from seeking a hero's death in fight.
'If thou die in battle, tell me,
What protection shall remain then
For the old age of thy father?'
'Let him die in any alley,
Lay his life down in the house-yard.'
'What protection shall remain then
For the old age of thy mother?'
'Let her die on any straw-truss;
Let her stifle in the stable.'
'Who shall then be left thy brother,
Who stand by him in mischances?'
'Let him pine away in the forest,
Let him drop down on the common.'
'Who shall then be left thy sister,
Who stand by her in mischances?'
'When she goes to the well for water,
Or to the washing, let her stumble.'
Kullervo had his fill of revenge. Meanwhile father, brother, sister, and mother died, and he came back to his home to find it empty and cold. A voice from his mother's grave seemed to direct him to go to the wood for food: obeying it, he came again to the polluted spot, where grass or flowers would not grow any more. He asked his sword would it like to feed on guilty flesh and drink wicked blood. The sword said, Why should I not like to feed on guilty flesh and drink wicked blood, I that feed on the flesh of the good and drink the blood of the sinless? Kullervo set the sword hilt in the earth, and threw himself on the point. (Kalewala, übertragen von Schiefner, runes 35, 36.)
The dialogue between Kullervo and his mother is very like a passage in another Finnish rune, 'Werinen Pojka,' 'The Bloody Son,' Schroter, Finnische Runen, 124, ed. 1819; 150, ed. 1834. This last is a form of the ballad known in Scottish as 'Edward,' No 13, or of 'The Twa Brothers,' No 49. Something similar is found in 'Lizie Wan,' No 51.
The passage 5-7 is a commonplace that may be expected to recur under the same or analogous circumstances, as it does in 'Tam Lin,' D, 'The Knight and Shepherd's Daughter,' 'The Maid and the Magpie,' and in one version of 'The Broom of Cowdenknows.' These are much less serious ballads, and the tone of stanza 5, which so ill befits the distressful situation, is perhaps owing to that stanza's having been transferred from some copy of one of these. It might well change places with this, from 'The Knight and Shepherd's Daughter,' A:
Sith you have had your will of me,
And put me to open shame,
Now, if you are a courteous knight,
Tell me what is your name.
Much better with the solemn adjuration in the Färöe 'Margaret,' or even this in 'Ebbe Galt,' Danske Viser, No 63, 8:
Now you have had your will of me,
To both of us small gain,
By the God that is above all things,
I beg you tell your name.
Brief Description by George Lyman Kittredge
This piece is transcribed three times in Herd's manuscripts, with a note prefixed in each instance that it was copied from the mouth of a milkmaid in 1771. In the first half of the story 'The Bonny Hind' comes very near to the fine Scandinavian ballad of 'Margaret' (Grundtvig and SigurSsson, No 14). The conclusions differ altogether. The story of Kullervo, incorporated in what is called the national epic of the Finns, the Kalevala, has striking resemblances with the ballads of the 'Bonny Hind' class (Schiefner, runes 35, 36).
Child's Ballad Text A
'The Bonny Heyn'- Version A; Child 50- The Bonny Hind
Herd's Manuscripts II, fol. 65. "Copied from the mouth of a milkmaid, by W.L., in 1771."
1 O may she comes, and may she goes,
Down by yon gardens green,
And there she spied a gallant squire
As squire had ever been.
2 And may she comes, and may she goes,
Down by yon hollin tree,
And there she spied a brisk young squire,
And a brisk young squire was he.
3 'Give me your green manteel, fair maid,
Give me your maidenhead;
Gif ye winna gie me your green manteel,
Gi me your maidenhead.'
4 He has taen her by the milk-white hand,
And softly laid her down,
And when he's lifted her up again
Given her a silver kaim.
5 'Perhaps there may be bairns, kind sir,
Perhaps there may be nane;
But if you be a courtier,
You'll tell to me your name.'
6 'I am nae courtier, fair maid,
But new come frae the sea;
I am nae courtier, fair maid,
But when I court'ith thee.
7 'They call me Jack when I'm abroad,
Sometimes they call me John;
But when I'm in my father's bower
Jock Randal is my name.'
8 'Ye lee, ye lee, ye bonny lad,
Sae loud's I hear ye lee!
Ffor I'm Lord Randal's yae daughter,
He has nae mair nor me.'
9 'Ye lee, ye lee, ye bonny may,
Sae loud's I hear ye lee!
For I'm Lord Randal's yae yae son,
Just now come oer the sea.'
10 She's putten her hand down by her spare,
And out she's taen a knife,
And she has putn't in her heart's bluid,
And taen away her life.
11 And he's taen up his bonny sister,
With the big tear in his een,
And he has buried his bonny sister
Amang the hollins green.
12 And syne he's hyed him oer the dale,
His father dear to see:
'Sing O and O for my bonny hind,
Beneath yon hollin tree!'
13 'What needs you care for your bonny hyn?
For it you needna care;
There's aught score hyns in yonder park,
And five score hyns to spare.
14 'Four score of them are siller-shod,
Of thae ye may get three;'
'But O and O for my bonny hyn,
Beneath yon hollin tree!'
15 'What needs you care for your bonny hyn?
For it you need na care;
Take you the best, gi me the warst,
Since plenty is to spare.'
16 'I care na for your hyns, my lord,
I care na for your fee;
But O and O for my bonny hyn,
Beneath the hollin tree!'
17 'O were ye at your sister's bower,
Your sister fair to see,
Ye'll think na mair o your bonny hyn
Beneath the hollin tree.'
* * * * *
End-Notes
'The Bonny Heyn,' I, 224.
32. Should be It 's not for you a weed. Motherwell.
43. The third copy omits when.
43,4. he lifted, He gae her. Motherwell.
51,2. The second copy has they.
64. All have courteth. Scott prints wi' thee, with thee.
73. The third copy has tower.
103,4. She's soakt it in her red heart's blood,
And twin'd herself of life. Motherwell.
13, 14. The first copy omits these stanzas.