The Ballad of Hind Horn- Walter R. Nelles 1909
The Ballad of Hind Horn
by Walter R. Nelles
The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 22, No. 83 (Jan. - Mar., 1909), pp. 42-62
[Proofed once quickly]
THE BALLAD OF HIND HORN
BY WALTER R. NELLES
INVESTIGATORS of the Horn story have usually dealt primarily with the two earlier romance versions-, the Norman French Horn et Rimel [1] (HR) and the English "Geste of King Horn" (KH),[2] - treating slightly, if at all, the Scottish popular ballad of "Hind Horn."[3] The question with regard to the ballad has been whether or not it is derived from the fourteenth-century English romance of "Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild" (HC),[4] which is generally believed to be derived from HR. This paper will be primarily concerned with the history and origin of the ballad, touching upon the romance versions of the story so far as they throw light upon these matters. I shall consider, first, the relation of the ballad and HC; and, second, the origin of the ballad.
-----I-----
The resemblances which indicate a connection between the ballad and HC are three in number.[5]
1. Horn's mistress gives him a ring which will change color if she is unfaithful to him during his absence. In the ballad she says,
" 'Whan that ring keeps new in hue,
Ye may ken that your love loves you.
" 'Whan that ring turns pale and wan
Ye may ken that your love loves anither man.' " (G, 5-6.)
Rimnild says in HC,
"' When the ston wexeth wan
Than chaungeth the thouzt of thi leman,
Take than anewe;
When the ston wexeth rede,
Than haue y lorn mi maidenhed,
Ozaines the vntrewe.' " (11. 571-576.)
There is a ring in HR and in KH, but its stone does not change color. Its only virtue is to preserve the wearer from harm by fire or water, in battle and in tournament.
2. In the ballad and HC, Horn, returning at the time of his mistress's wedding, meets a beggar and changes clothes with him. In HR and KH it is a palmer that he meets.
3. The ballad concludes,
"The bridegroom he had wedded the bride
But young Hind Horn he took her to bed." (A 24; cf. B 24, C 23.) HC reads,
"Now is Rimnild tviis wedde,
Horn brougt hir to his bedde." (11. III1-III2.)
This resemblance is almost verbal; there is no similar passage in HR or KH.
Two theories to account for these resemblances have been advanced. Professor Stimming, in his review of Wissmann's edition of Horn, said, "Die fibereinstimmunjge ner ziige lasst sich ja zur geniigea us dem umstande erkliiren, dass sowohl die balladen als auch" Horn Childe "im norden entstanden sind, so dass also beide der gestaltung folgten, welche die sage in diesen gegenden angenommen hatte." [6] Professor Child was inclined towards the same view: "The likeness evinces a closer affinity of the oral tradition with the later English or the French, but no filiation. And were filiation to be accepted, there would remain the question of priority. It is often assumed, without a misgiving, that oral tradition must needs be younger than anything that was committed to writing some centuries ago; but this requires in each case to be made out; there is certainly no antecedent probability of that kind."[7]
The closeness of their resemblances makes this theory that HC and the ballad are independent of each other difficult of acceptance. Professor Schofield holds that there is filiation, and that the features in which HC and the ballad agree originated in the former.[8] He bases this conclusion on the character of HC: "The poem is a product of a late period, when old themes were being boldly remodelled to satisfy depraved tastes, when in the composition of romances little respect was paid to the authenticity of tradition, when art was yielding to artifice and originality to convention."[9]
Accordingly, he holds that HC was the source of the ballad, and that the features common to the two were introduced into the Horn story by the author of HC, a professional seeker-out of innovations. My own examination of the subject leads me to agree with Mr. Schofield that HC and the ballad are related. I also agree that the author of HC made innovations. But that the specific features common to HC and the ballad were among his innovations, remains, I think, to be proved. We find these features in a literary version and in a popular version of the story. As Professor Child pointed out, there is no antecedent probability that their first occurrence was in the literary version.
The author of HC, according to Mr. Schofield's own character of him, would not have restricted himself to a single source. If, in addition to the French romance, HR, he was acquainted with a ballad version of the Horn story, he would have used both in the composition of his work. His work gives numerous indications that he was familiar with folk-lore. There is no antecedent probability that, when he wrote, a Horn ballad was not already extant. And the character of two, at least, of the features common to HC and "Hind Horn" is such that they cannot be satisfactorily explained except on the theory that they originated in such a ballad.
Among the features indicating the author's familiarity with folk-lore may conceivably be included the historical setting of HC.[10] Mr. Schofield, while admittingt he possibility that the author may have got his stories of Danish raids from oral tradition, considers a written source more likely. The departures from authentic history, he thinks, are due to the hodgepodging tendency of the degenerate minstrelsy of which HC is an example. He further points out the likeness in spirit between passages of HC and passages of such literary productions as "The Battle of Maldon" and "The Battle of Brunanburh." This second argument, which is interesting though inconclusive, is not directly answerable. [11]
As to the first, however, it seems, though here also there is ample room for difference of opinion, somewhat more likely that the corruptions of authentic history should have come about in oral tradition than that they should be willful perversions by a writer. The corruptions are in the nature of confusions of persons and events; Hatheolf in HC seems to stand for King Ethelred II, for Eadulf, Earl of Northumberland in 966, and for a certain Uchtred, who in 1006 routed Malcolm II of Scotland at Bamborough; Malcolm II is confused with Malcolm I, and, according to Deutschbein, with still another Malcolm. "An interchange o f names," says Professor Child, "is of the commonest occurrence in traditional ballads."[12] When we consider that Danish and Scottish raids were of more than annual occurrence in Northumbria during the reign of Ethelred II, it seems inevitable that they and the warriors concerned in them should have confused themselves in the popular memory. That the departures from authentic history in HC are due directly to such confusion in the popular memory is of course only one of a number of possibilities; but it seems a not unlikely one.
Several other features of HC are less doubtfully of a folk-lore character. While in any single case it may be questioned if the author had not a written source, the aggregate is large enough to warrant a conviction that he had a considerable first-hand acquaintance with folk-lore. King Hatheolf was so formidable in fight that his enemies durst not approach him, but stoned him to death from a distance.[13] Similar stonings occur in Norse mythology.[14] Horn's sword was wrought by Weland.[15] It seems certain that the Weland myth was naturalized in England from early Anglo-Saxon times.[16] It was perpetuated among the folk, not in books; Halliwell [17] asserts that it is mentioned in no known Middle English poem except HC and "Sir Torrent of Portugal," which dates from the next century. Still another feature seemingly derived from Germanic mythology is the well under a tree, which would indicate to Rimnild the constancy of Horn's affection.! This suggests the well of Frau Holde, known in modern German fairy-lore as the abode of unborn infants.[18] The chain of evidence is incomplete; but it is not hard to conjecture that the places sacred to Frau Holde, the pagan German Venus, who in early Christian times got confused with the Virgin Mary, should have acquired a significance in matters of love and chastity. Such a superstition might have settled in England in much the same fashion as the Weland myth. I have found record of what may be a trace of it in Cornwall.[19]
There is nothing to indicate that any of these features were connected with the story of Horn earlier than HC. I have mentioned them merely to establish a likelihood that the author of that romance used popular as well as literary material. In what follows I believe it will appear that the features in which HC and the ballad of "Hind Horn" agree found their way into the romance from a popular source, and, further, that that source was a ballad already connected with the Horn story.
In the first place, I wish to emphasize the nature of the most striking of these features,- the ring which will change color if the lady is untrue. It is a test of chastity or fidelity. As such, it is a talisman of a class well known in folk-lore. Professor Child, in his introduction to "The Boy and the Mantle," gives a long list of such tests.[20] The talisman is not usually a ring. Sometimes it is a flower,[21] nosegay,[22] or garland,[23] which will remain fresh so long as the wife or mistress is faithful; sometimes a shirt [24] which will not soil or tear; sometimes a mirror[25] which will remain clear.
The ring in HC and "Hind Horn" is clearly a test of this sort:
" 'When the ston wexeth wan
Than chaungeth the thouzt of thi leman,
When the ston wexeth rede,
Then have y lorn mi maidenhed.' "
No property other than the indication of chastity or fidelity is specified. But it should be observed that a test of chastity or fidelity is not what the circumstances call for. In neither the ballad nor the romance is there question of the lady's intention to be true to her lover. The ring does not change color because her thought has changed, or because she loves another man, or because she has lost her maidenhead. On the contrary, the change of color takes place because she is in danger; unless Horn comes to her rescue she will be forced into an obnoxious marriage. In order for the talisman to fit the story, the indication of the lady's danger should have been specified as one of its properties.
Talismans with properties which would fit the story are exceedingly common in folk-lore. Mr. Clouston[26] has assembled, under the heading "Life Tokens," a large number of examples. "The welfare or danger," he says, "of the heroes of many folk-tales, is indicated by a magical flower, or some other object, which they leave behind with their friends, on setting out upon perilous adventures." Among such life-tokens are the following: a glove which will drop blood,[27] a ring which will press hard upon the finger,[28] a knife which will let fall three drops of blood at table,[29] a flower which will fade,[30] plants which will fade.[31] Professor Child summarizes the following:
' "A prince, on parting with his sister, gives her a ring, saying,' So long as the stone is clear, I am well; if it is dimmed,
that is a sign that I am dead."'
In addition to the general similarity between the two classes of talismans, it will be noted that the same object which indicates chastity or fidelity often under other circumstances serves to indicate welfare or danger. It would therefore seem natural that talismans of the two classes should in popular tradition tend to confuse or combine. I have found two popular ballads where the functions of indicator of fidelity and indicator of danger appear so to have combined. In both cases, moreover, the talisman is a ring.
The first is accessible only in a sophisticated version. It is a Gaelic legend of the Hebrides, "beautifully versified," says Clouston, by John Leyden as "The Mermaid."[32] Leyden's introduction says, "The following poem is founded upon a Gaelic traditional ballad, called 'Macphail of Colonsay and the Mermaid of Corrivrekin." ' In this ballad Macphail, on going to the wars, receives a ring from his lady.
"' When on this ring of ruby red
Shall die,' said she, 'the crimson hue,
Know that thy favorite fair is dead,
Or proves to thee and love untrue."' [33]
The other instance of a combination of talismanic functions is in the ballad of "Bonny Bee Hom."[34] Here the story is a simple one of a lover who leaves his mistress. At parting she makes him gifts:
"7. She has gien him a chain of the beaten gowd,
And a ring with a ruby stone:
'As lang as this chain your body binds,
Your blude can never be drawn.
"8. 'But gin this ring should fade or fail,
Or the stone shoud change its hue,
Be sure your love is dead and gone,
Or she has proved untrue."'
(Version A, Alexander Fraser Tytler's Brown MS., No. 6.)
Within a twelvemonth the stone grows dark and gray, telling the lover that his mistress is dead. He himself dies of grief. The likeness of the talismans in this ballad to that in the Horn story is extraordinarily interesting. For with the ring which combines the functions of indicating fidelity and welfare is associated another talisman, - a chain of gold that confers invulnerability. Invulnerability is the property, and the only property, of Horn's ring in HR and KH. Furthermore, in Version B - Buchan's - of "Bonny Bee Hom" (which, though a pretty poor ballad, is sophisticated only in regard to phraseology), there is no chain. It is the ring which, like the ring in HR and KH, confers invulnerability. The functions of indicating fidelity and welfare are dropped - with the result that, if we had not Version A, we should not know the meaning of the ring's change of color. This is precisely analogous to the ring's irrelevance of function in HC and the ballad of "Hind Horn." There a talisman to indicate fidelity is substituted for a life-token; here a talisman which confers invulnerability is substituted for a life-token. The analogy suggests an explanation of the inconsistency of the talisman in HC and "Hind Horn."
Suppose that before the composition of HC there was in existence a ballad dealing with the story of Horn. At a stage of this ballad roughly contemporary with HR and KH, Horn's ring, like the ring in those romances, had probably only the property of rendering him invulnerable, and he was warned of Riminhild's danger by a messenger or by a dream. Suppose also that there was in existence at the same time a ballad, not necessarily connected with the story of Horn, in which, as in Leyden's "Mermaid" and "Bonny Bee Hom," a lover's ring would warn him of his mistress's death or danger by changing color. Suppose also that in still another contemporary ballad a ring's change of color indicated infidelity.
Would it not be thoroughly in accord with the principles of ballad formation for these three talismans to combine and confuse ? Professor Gummere, in explanation of the stock phrases of the ballads, says: "The main point is that ballad folk do the same things under the same circumstances, and in a fairly limited sphere of events." [36] This remark applies to the case in hand as well as to stock phrases. The ballad tendency is to reduce all sorts of details to fairly restricted types. If a reciter knew three ballads such as we have supposed, each containing a magical ring with a different property, he would not bother to keep these rings distinct. The ring section of each ballad would be stored in the same chamber of his memory, where the three would quickly become one. This one he would produce whenever any ballad he happened to be reciting required a magical ring. His stock ring stanza might be a combination of the three he had heard, as in Version A of "Bonny Bee Hom;" or it might be a single one of them, as in "Hind Horn." That the significance of the ring was not the significance required by his story, that it indicated infidelity when it ought to have indicated danger, would not trouble him in the least. The popular mind is inaccurate; it contents itself with approximating its meaning, and does not quibble upon nice distinctions.
This seems the most natural way of accounting for the inappropriate significance of the ring in "Hind Horn;" HC must have followed in this particular a popular version of the Horn story which tradition has imperfectly preserved as the modern ballad of "Hind Horn." It is scarcely probable that the color-changing ring was a deliberate innovation of the fourteenth-century romance-writer, for in that case nothing was to prevent him from making its significance appropriate. A fourteenth century romance-writer, as well as a greater poet, might nod; but he would scarcely admit such an inconsistency as we find in HC unless he were following authority.[37] And his authority could scarcely have been anything but a popular ballad.
The two other features common to HC and "Hind Horn" may easily be conceived as parts of an hypothetical thirteenth-century Horn ballad. The first is that the person with whom Horn changes clothes on his return is a beggar, instead of a palmer as in HR and KH. The beggar and the palmer were not far removed in the popular mind. In Version A of the ballad called "Little John a Begging,"[38] Little John's disguise is as a beggar; in Version B of the same ballad he disguises himself as a palmer.[39]
Furthermore, the treatment of the beggar in HC involves an inconsistency, which, like the inconsistency of the ring, can best be explained as due to a popular source. Seeing the beggar walking along,
"Horn fast after him gan ride
& bad the begger shuld abide,
For to here his speche.
The begger answerd in that tide:
'Vilaine, canestow noght ride ?
Fairer thou might me grete;
Haddestow cleped me gude man,
Y wold haue told the wennes y cam
& whom y go to seche.' " (11. 853-861.)
This certainly calls to mind the sturdy Beggar, or Potter, or Tanner, or Pedlar of the Robin Hood ballads.[40] One expects a challenge to play at quarter staff. But there is no such challenge; the beggar's surliness is quite irrelevant. His tone changes immediately; and without solicitation from Horn (whom he has not recognized), he proceeds to announce that he is Wizard, one of Horn's faithful companions in former days, and that he has been seeking Horn to warn him of the impending marriage of Rimnild. His irrelevant surliness is, I think, a borrowing from a Horn ballad. The stock figure of the surly beggar might easily, in a long course of oral transmission, have transferred itself to the hypothetical Horn ballad from some ballad in which it properly belonged. This would be another illustration of the same process by which, probably, the ring whose change of color indicates infidelity attached itself to the Horn story.[41] The resulting inconsistencies in both cases are such as the author of HC is unlikely to have been originally responsible for. Finding these inconsistent features in an authority, however, he may well have considered that their strikingness outweighed their inconsequence, and therefore have included them in his version. That the surly beggar has disappeared from the extant Horn ballad is, of course, no evidence at all that he did not figure in its hypothetical ancestor.[42]
For the third feature common to HC and "Hind Horn," - the identity of idea phrased in the romance
"Now is Rimnild tviis wedde,
Horn brouzt hir to his bedde," --
I can cite no specific evidence that it belonged to the hypothetical ballad. But if HC took the two other features from such a ballad, pretty certainly it took this one too. The narrator's gusto at the discomfiture of the would-be bridegroom seems quite in the ballad vein.
The purpose of what has preceded has been to establish a probability that the extant Horn ballad descends, independently of HC, from an hypothetical version earlier than that romance. This probability is strengthened by certain agreements of the extant ballad with the two older romances (HR and KH), in points where HC takes a different way.
1. In the ballad, when Horn, disguised at the wedding-feast, has dropped his ring in the bride's cup, she does not at once recognize him, but asks how he got the ring:
" 'Got ye't by sea, or got ye't by land,
Or got ye't aff a drowned man's hand ? ' "
(D 28; cf. A 18, B 18, C 20, D 13, H 28, I I2.)
In HC she at once suspects his identity (ll. 1001 sq.).
In HR she asks if Horn be alive or dead, hinting, however, a suspicion that the supposed palmer is he (ll 4241 sq.). In KH, as in the ballad, she asks him where he got the ring, not suspecting him of being other than he seems; he replies that Horn, dying on shipboard, had intrusted it to him:
"Ifond horn child stonde
To schupeward in londe.
He sede he wolde agesse
To ariue in westernesse.
The schip nam to the flode
With me & horn the gode;
Horn was sik & deide,
& faire he me preide:
'Go with the ringe
To Rymenhild the 3onge.'
Ofte he it custe;
God zeue his saule reste." (11. 1179 sq.)
The ballad is here close to KH. The form in which the question is put implies such a reply as that in KH; it seems clear that in an earlier version of the ballad Horn tested the lady further with a fictitious account of his own death in some fashion connected with the sea.[43]
2. In the ballad, after Horn has revealed himself to the bride, she at first believes that he is poor and friendless as he seems; she offers to share his poverty:
"'O I'll cast off my gowns of brown,
And beg wi you frae town to town.
"'O I'll cast off my gowns of red,
And I'll beg wi you to win my bread."' (A 20-21.)
Horn quickly explains that he is not really poor:
"'Ye needna cast off your gowns of brown,
For I'll make you lady o many a town.
"'Ye needna cast off your gowns of red,
It's only a sham, the begging o my bread.'"
(A 22-23; cf. B 20-23, G 31-36, H 31-34, I 4-19.)
In HC Rimnild offers to elope with Horn; but he does not imply, nor does she believe, that he is poor and friendless (v. 11. 1030 sq.).
In KH there is nothing about either poverty or elopement. In HR, however, Horn explicitly declares that he is in poverty:
"'Mbs joe ai converse entre mut male gent,
Ki mut poi m'unt done: n'ai conquest6 neent.
Or me sui ch venu cum tafur poverement.
Ne vus sai t mener; joe n'ai or ne argent,
Ne n'ai en tut le siecle un point de chasement:
E joe sui soffraitus, n'ai fors coe qu'al col me pent,
Ne vus ai dont coverir neis un garnement.
Ki suef est nurri poet soffrir malement
Issi grant povert6 cum joe, chaitif, atent.' " (11. 4288 sq.)
Rimel then offers to share his poverty:
"Par Deul chiers amis duz, poi savez mun talent:
Itiel cum vus soffrez sofferrai bonement,
U jh mais ne verrai nul autre ajornement.
Il n'ad si riche rei de ci k'en Orient,
Pur quei vus guerpisse od tiel aturnement." (11. 4301 sq.)
Horn explains that his poverty was only a sham: he has three hundred ships and many hardy cavaliers. Obviously HR is here strikingly in accord with the ballad.
These two resemblances between the extant ballad and the older romances in points where HC does not follow them stand squarely in the way of the theory that HC is the source of the ballad. It has been shown that the features common to HC and the ballad are not necessarily derived from the former. The circumstances in fact point strongly towards the existence, earlier than HC, of a Horn ballad containing those features, together with features found also in HR and KH.
----------II-----------
Can either HR or KH be regarded as a source for this hypothetical ballad? Of the resemblances above pointed out between the ballad and the earlier romances, one was particularly to KH, the other particularly to HR. It therefore appears that the ballad descends from a lost version of the story combining features of HR and KH.
That this lost versionw as a recombination of HR and KH is unlikely. The two poems are radicallyd ifferenti n charactera nd appeal,- the one French and courtly, intended for the delectation of the aristocracy; the other English and homely, intended for whatsoever thane, innkeeper, or franklin would give the minstrel a meal for the hearing of it. Their paths would not be likely to converge.
The more probable case is that this lost version preceded HR and KH. The one point upon which recent students of the story are tolerably agreed is that a French version of some sort must stand back of these two romances.[44] It is possible that this lost French version was the source of the ballad.[45] But another possibility is open. It is pretty generally admitted that this lost French version was preceded by a version in Anglo- Saxon.[46] Among an Anglo-Saxon folk it seems much more likely that a popular ballad should have grown out of this than that it should have grown out of a French romance or lay.
There is extant one document which affords a fairly clear conception of the contents of this Anglo-Saxon version. The "Gesta Herwardi" is not, to be sure, a version of the Horn story. It is a monkish Latin account of the adventures, historical and apocryphal, of Hereward the Saxon,[47] who headed the last resistance against William the Conqueror at Ely, in 1071. The first chapters purport to be based upon an Anglo-Saxon account of Hereward's youth, by Leofric, his Chaplain. In Chapters 3-5 Leofric appears to be adapting to the career of Hereward a set of adventures from some version of the Horn story. Leofric's adaptation combines features of HR, KH, and the ballad; I have little doubt that the version which he used was their common ancestor.
In Chapters 3 and 4 Hereward's escape from Cornwall, and exploits in Ireland, bear a general resemblance to Horn's banishment from the court of Hunlaf and subsequent exploits in Ireland. But exile stories must have been common in England before the Conquest; the resemblance is not so close that it could not be satisfactorily accounted for as mere coincidence.
Ch. 3. - Hereward, exiled from England on account of his turbulent youth, goes down into Cornwall, where the king, Alef by name, maintains a Pictish giant. Hereward picks a quarrel with this giant, slays him, and is imprisoned by Alef. The daughter of the king, glad of the death of the giant, with whom she was to have been forced into marriage, helps Hereward to escape, and gives him letters to her lover, the son of the King of Ireland.
Ch. 4. - The Irish king, who knows Hereward by reputation, makes him leader of his forces in a war against the neighboring King of Munster. Hereward distinguishes himself in the fight, killing the hostile king in his tent. Then he destroys other enemies of his host and gets great glory, so that many young warriors come to him for instruction in arms.
In Chapter 5 specific resemblances to versions of the Horn story are numerous. Allowance must of course be made for the exigencies of adaptation: the scene of action is different; [48] Hereward, being reserved for another lady, must be made a vicarious lover of the Princess of Cornwall. The resemblances will appear in the following comparative summary.[49]
1. Hereward in Ireland gets word that the Cornish princess is in danger of being forced into marriage with the son of a neighboring kinglet. This has a general resemblance to HR and KH, in which the message is differently conveyed.
2. Hereward goes secretly to Cornwall. He disguises himself, "per unguenta seipso transfiguratom, utataque flaventec aesarie innigridine met barba juventutis in rubedinem" (p. 349). In KH, Horn "makede him a ful [i. e. foul] chere" (1. 1063). In the ballad, Horn "borrows the beggar's wig of hair, to cover his because it is fair." (Version A 13; cf. I 6.)
3. At the wedding-feast, Hereward seats himself on the lowest bench, "discubuit in extremis." In HR, Horn sits among the poor.
In KH, " Horn sat upon the grunde " (1. 1115).
4. The princess looks closely at Hereward and suspects his identity; her "nutrix" confirms her suspicion. In HR, Rimel has a nurse who, on a differento ciasion (118. 53 sq.), revealst o her that a man who is attempting to pass as Horn is not he. Both nurses are familiar with the features of the hero.
5. The princess makes the rounds of the guests with drink; "sponsa namque post prandium regalibus ornata induviis, sicut mos provinciae est, cum puellis potum convivis et conservis patris et matris in extrema die a paterna domo discedens ministratura processit" (p. 350).
In KH, Rimenhild rose up after meat to pour wine and ale, "So laze was in londe" (1. 1110).
In HR, Rimel's father commands her to pour wine to the guests, as her ancestors had done; for
"Custume ert h idunc en icele contrie
Ke kant avaneit issi, ke dame ert espussd,
S'ele pucele fust, k'ele ne fust a sade,
K'ele del beivre servist tut intant definde
Cum le seneschalm angasto d sa mesnde." (114. 137 sq.)
Therefore Rimel puts on splendid clothes (cf. "regalibus induviis") and makes the rounds of the guests with her thirty maidens (cf. "cum puellis").
6. Hereward refuses to accept wine from the hand of the princess's attendant, having made a vow not to take anything except from the hand of the princess herself.
In the two romances, Horn is fastidious only about the vessel he drinks from: in HR he insists on the vessel in which Rimel has just served the bridegroom; in KH he refuses the brown bowl and demands the white. The ballad seems to have preserved a feature of the original which in the romances is obscured:
"But he took na frae ane o them aw
Till he got frae the bonnie bride hersel O." (G 24, H 24.)
7. The princess gives Hereward the cup, recognizes him by the sharpness of his eyes, and passes a ring to him in token of recognition. The difference here is more notable than the resemblance.[50]
8. Hereward takes the harp, and sings so wonderfully that the bride presents him with a cloak, and the bridegroom offers him whatever he may choose, except his wife and his land. In the romances, Horn also is an excellent musician: in HR, before the king's daughter of Ireland, he sang so beautifully the lay of Batulf concerning his own love for Rimel, that his hearers wished to overload him with gifts (11. 2826 sq.); in KH, when disguised as a harper for his second rescue of Rimenhild, he made a lay for her, and she "made walaway" and swooned
(11. 1476 sq.).
9. The bridegroom's professional harper recognizes Hereward and tells the bridegroom; che princess warns Hereward, who slips away from the feast. In HR, Horn, suspecting that the traitor Wikel has recognized him, and fearing that he will be betrayed to the bridegroom, slips away from the feast (11. 4309 sq.).
10. On the next day, when the bridegroom is conveying the bride to his own country, Hereward and his men fall upon them from ambush, kill the tyrant, and convey the princess to the son of the King of Ireland, who marries her.
In HR the rescue is effected at a courtly tournament, obviously French alteration.
In KH, Horn rescues the lady by breaking forcibly into the hall. In both romances, however, Horn keeps his men hidden until he has need of them; this is conceivably a survival of the original ambush.
The above comparison shows Chapter 5 of the " Gesta Herwardi" in striking agreehmenwt ith HR as to points 4, 5, and 9; with both HR and KH as to points 3 and 5; with KH and the ballad as to point 2; and with the ballad alone as to point 6. Whether this fifth chapter is to be accepted as representing the common ancestor of HR, KH, and the ballad, depends upon the date of the " Gesta" and the credence to be attached to its author's a scription of source.
The preface, in which the material of the first part of the Gesta (which includes the adventures connected with the Princess of Cornwall) is referred to an Anglo-Saxon manuscript by Hereward's chaplain, gives the impression of being a veracious document.[51] The monkish Latinist, being solicited to provide his brothers in the monastery with an account of the exploits of the illustrious exile, Hereward, sought high and low for documentary material. He found nothing, however, "praeter pauca et dispersa folia, partim stillicidio putrefactis et abolitis et partim abscissione divisis." The title of the work which these loose leaves represented was "primitivai nsignia praeclarissimei xulis Herwardi, editum Anglico stilo a Lefrico Diacono, ejusdem ad Brun presbyterum." He knew by report the character of this Leofric: " Hujus enim memorati presbyteri erat studium, omnes actus gigantum et bellatorum ex fabulis antiquorum, aut ex fideli relatione, ad edificationem audientum congregare, et ob memoriam Angliae literis commendare." His English was insufficient to enable him to deal with the decayed manuscript in a manner satisfying to himself; "ad illum locum tamen de illo usque collegimus ubi in patriam et ad pristinam domum reversus fratrem occisum invenit." He did not, however, publish a translation; it is implied, I think, that he suspected the authenticity of the adventures told by Leofric.[52] Finding no other written material, he abandoned his intention of writing a life of Hereward. But the friend to whom the preface is addressedu rgedh im to publisha t leastw hat he had accomplished. Therefore he set to work again to translate Leofric's English into Latin as well as he was able. He also incorporated in his work traditions gathered from his fellow-monks and from some of Hereward's own former followers, "ex quibus saepe nonnullos vidimus, viros videlicet statura procerie t magni et nimiae fortitudinis, etipsi [i. e. the person to whom the preface is addressed] etiam duos spectabiles formae viros ex illis, ut a vobis audivimus, vidistis, videlicet Siwate frater, Broter, de Sancto Edmundo, et Lefrico Niger, milites ejusdem, licet a suis membris propter invidiam dolo orbitati speciem artuum per inimicos amiserint. Siquidem de hiis et de aliis, quos ipsi [i. e. the writer himself] in multis probavimus et vidimus, si non aliter, satis nobis daretur intellegi quantae virtutis dominus illorum fuerit, et majora esse quae fecit quam ea quae de illo professi sunt."
I see no reason to doubt the truthfulness of this preface. It is hard to imagine a motive for deception; the Latinist's circumstantial, straightforward, personal account of the composition of his work can scarcely fail to carry conviction. Moreover, the evidence as to the date and authorship of the "Gesta" makes it seem quite possible that the author and his friend may, as he says, have had personal relations with surviving members of Hereward's band. The statement sometimes made, that the "Gesta" is a product of the vogue of outlaw stories in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, is supported by no specific facts. The extant manuscript, to be sure, dates from that period[53]; the work, however, is certainly considerably earlier.[54] The author of the Latin is believed to have been one Richard, a monk of Ely,[55] who died in the first half of the twelfth century.[56] He thus lived at a time when there must certainly have been survivors of Hereward's band in the neighborhood of Ely, from which neighborhood the band was originally recruited; and in a monastery whither Leofric's manuscript might naturally have drifted from his parish of Bourne near by. That the manuscript should have got tattered and partially effaced in the short time between Leofric's death [57] and Richard's writing, might well be due to the contempt of the new Norman monks for all things Saxon. From the wording of the preface it is not quite clear whether, when the monk revised for publication his translation of Leofric's manuscript, he worked in with it material from oral sources, or whether he simply appended such material to his translation. But an examination of the "Gesta" as a whole shows plainly that the latter was the case. Up to "the place where Hereward returns to the home of his youth and finds his brother slain" (the point to which the monk says that he gathered the sense in his first study of Leofric's manuscript), the episodes are of the character to be expected from a man with Leofric's "studium" for collecting "omnes actus gigantum et bellatorum:" Hereward slays a fairy bear, rescues the Cornish princess, wins a witch mare in the Low Countriesa nd an enchantress-wifien Flanders. The fictions in the succeeding part of the "Gesta" are of the sort likely to attach themselves to an historical soldier and outlaw; the actual occurrences underlying them are embroidered and embellished by the tongues of enthusiastic admirers.
The fifth chapter of the "Gesta Herwardi," then, is adapted from a story current in the eleventh century. I see no reason to doubt that this story was already connected with the name of Horn, or that it was of English origin. Foreign sources, e xcept possibly Scandinavian, would hardly have been accessible to Leofric. That he knew Latin is questionable; for he was not a monk, bred in an atmosphere of parchment, but a priest, a man of the people. That he knew French is possible, but not at all likely. As Hereward's chaplain he was associatedw ith the most patriotic and stubborn of the Saxons, and probably took part in the last considerable opposition to the Norman Conquest. It was not to Frenchmen he would go for stories "ob memoriam Angliae literis commendare." And he belonged to Bourne, in Lincolnshire, a district remote from Celtic influence. "Fabulae antiquorum" for him were probably recorded in Anglo-Saxon alliterative verse; "fideles relationes" probably took place over the ale-horn.
The story told in the fifth chapter of the " Gesta" - the story of the man who, after an absence, returns in disguise to save his mistress from forced marriage with another man - is, as even Deutschbein admits,[58] of a type so universal that it might spring up at any time among any people. This heimkehrendegra tte element is the essential thing in the Horn story. HR differs from KH in numerous minor details of action, character, and setting; HC differs radically from HR and KH in action and characters, and totally in setting; the ballad has in common with the other versionso nly the name "Horn" and the heimkehrender gatte features. These heimkehrendgera ttef eaturesa nd the name "Horn" form the vital bond which makes all recognizable as versions of the same story.
Why may not a heimkehrender gatte story have sprung up on the basis of actual occurrences in Saxon England, independently of any similar story springing from similar actual occurrences anywhere else in the world? If such a story had so sprung up, it would perhaps have been told in various places of various heroes. Eventually, however, in accordance with the well-known principle, it would have become indissolubly associated with the name of some popular hero, in this case, Horn. Each new teller would adapt the tale to local conditions, putting it in a scene familiar to his auditors, and introducing names of local celebrities. As time went on, other stories would have been taken into it, just as it, in its turn, was taken into the Hereward story; so it might have acquired the foundling story, the exile story, and the battles with Scandinavian heathen, preserved in HR and KH. I believe that the story developed in this way; I have met with no convincing evidence of the importation of either the heimkehrendegra tte element or the name "Horn."
But whatever may be held as to its ultimate origin, the fifth chapter of the "Gesta Herwardi" leaves little doubt that a version of the story was current in England in the eleventh century, and that from this version the hypothetical ballad ancestor of " Hind Horn " was derived. This version may or may not have been written down in Anglo-Saxon. It is possible and reasonable to conceive of the ballad as coming straight down through popular tradition from popular tradition of the time before the Conquest.
TABLE OF FILIATION
[not avail]
APPENDIX: THE KITCHIE BOY
In the part of his collection given over to fabrications and degenerates, Professor Child prints five versions of a ballad known as the "Kitchie Boy." [59] With other names and places, the "Kitchie Boy" gives what appears to be a debased version of the Horn story. Its resemblances to the other versions are noted in the following comparative summary.
1. A fair lady of birth and fame falls in love with her father's kitchen boy. In all the romances, the lady is the first to fall in love. The descent of Horn into a menial may be accountedf or as an illiterate ballad-teller's interpretation of two features in HR and KH: first, Horn, though a king's son, is a foundling; and, second, Horn is officially the king's cup-bearer--in HR, especially, great stress is laid upon his serving wine at the high feast (11. 755 sq.), and upon his duty of relieving the king of his sword and gloves when he comes in from hunting (11. 1911 sq.).
2. The lady, as in all the romances, sends for Horn to her chamber, and herself makes the proposal.
3. The Kitchie Boy demurs, like Horn in HR, KH; the Kitchie Boy alleges fear of her father, Horn alleges the duty he owes him.
4. The lady equips for the Kitchie Boy a bonny ship, in which he may sail away beyond the wrath of her father and the master cook.
5. At parting she gives him a ring; it has no magic properties.
6. He sails away to Spain (London); cf. Horn's trip to Ireland in the romances.
7. A Spanish lady offers to feast him sumptuously; the king's daughter of Ireland feasts Horn sumptuously (HR, 11. 2688 sq.).
8. The Spanish lady offers him her love; so the king's daughter of Ireland to Horn in HR (11. 2400 sq.). (In KH it is the lady's father who makes the offer.)
9. She offers him gifts; so the Irish princess in HR (11. 2485 sq.).
10. The Kitchie Boy refuses both love and gifts on the ground that he is already engaged; so Horn in HR, KH.
11. Having sailed back home, the Kitchie Boy blacks his bonny face and close tucks up his yellow hair (C 31); his disguise is carried no further. In HR, Horn's only disguise is a change of clothes. But in KH, he made him a foul cheer, and smeared his neck with coal dust, and made himself uncomely, so that he did not look like himself (11. 1O63 sq.).
12. When the disguised Kitchie Boy has shown his love her ring (there is no dropping it into a wine cup), she asks,
"'O gat ye that ring on the sea sailing?
Or gat ye it on the sand ?
Or gat ye it on the shore laying,
On a drouned man's hand?"' (A 34.)
This is obviously almost identical with the corresponding stanza in the ballad of "Hind Horn." I have already pointed out the particular resemblance of this part of the ballad to KH.
13. The Kitchie Boy replies,
"'I gat na it on the sea sailing,
I gat na it on the sand,
But I gat it on the shore laying,
On a drouned man's hand.' " (A 35.)
Buchan's version adds,
"'He was not dead as I passed by,
But no remeid could be;
He gave me this token to bear
Unto a fair ladie."' (B 49.)
This is the reply which seems to have dropped out of "Hind Horn." [60] By it the resemblance to KH is made closer.
14. The Kitchie Boy washed his face and combed his hair, and took his true love in his arms and kissed her. She, fatuously enough, asked him how he could her so beguile. Her father blessed the match and called for a priest, little knowing that the happy lover was his own Kitchie Boy.
The "Kitchie Boy" shows no particular resemblance to HC. Points I, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 10 are resemblances to both HR and KH. Points 7, 8, and 9 are particular resemblances to HR; point 11 is a particular resemblance to KH; points 12 and 13 resemble both KH and "Hind Horn," as to phraseology the latter in particular.
The likeness in phraseology of points 12 and 13 of the " Kitchie Boy" to " Hind Horn " would at first glance seem to indicate that the two ballads had once been connected. A note in Professor Child's Additions and Corrections would tend to support this hypothesis:
"Dr. Davidson in forms me that many years ago he heard a version of 'Hind Horn' in four-lines tanzas, in which, as in HR and HC, Horn t ook part in a joust at the king's court,
" An young Hind Horn was abune them a'."
He remembers further only these stanzas:
"'O got ye this o the sea sailin,
Or got ye 't o the lan?
Or got ye 't o the bloody shores o Spain,
On a droont man's han?'
"'I got na 't o the sea sailin,
I got na 't o the lan,
Nor yet upo the bloody shores o Spain,
On a droont man's han.' "[61]
Clearly these are the "Kitchie Boy" stanzas, associated with the name "Horn." The obvious inference is that the two ballads were formerly one.
But I do not believe that this was the case. For except as to the stanzas above quoted, the "Kitchie Boy" differs radically from "Hind Horn:" one gives an expanded form of the story, slurring the denouement; the other devotes itself altogether to the denouement. Moreover, the distinctive features of "Hind Horn," discoloration of the ring, beggar disguise, discomfiture of the bridegroom, are so striking that I cannot conceive of their disappearance from any ballad with which they had become connected. And it is possible to account for the presence in both of substantially the same stanzas without resorting to the theory that they were once connected. May not this be simply another case of the employment of a stock stanza, such as the ring stanza of "Hind Horn" seems originally to have been? [62] As to Dr. Davidson's version of "Hind Horn" in four-line stanzas with a tournament, I feel no certainty that it ever existed. If Dr. Davidson had ever read HR, it is quite possible that the tournament in which "Young Hind Horn was abunet hem a' "may have invented itself in his mind without his being aware of it, and attached itself to two stanzasw hich he rememberedfr om the "Kitchie Boy" and confused with the similar stanzas in "Hind Horn." [63]
If the "Kitchie Boy" is independent of "Hind Horn," what is its origin? It may, of course, be derived from a very early form of the hypothetical ballad ancestor of "Hind Horn," which had not yet acquired the discoloration of the ring. But nothings tands in the way of a theory that this ballad descends from a romance. Its particular resemblance to "Hind Horn" being disposed of as a borrowing of stock stanzas, its particularr esemblance to KH (point 11) is the only obstacle to a theory that it is derived from HR. Point 11, as well as all the points of resemblance to HR, is paralleled in the fifteenth century prose romance of "Ponthus and Sidoine,"' which is generally regarded as based upon HR. The "Kitchie Boy" is more likely to come from this romance than from the hypothetical ballad.
Footnotes:
1. References are to the edition by Michel for the Bannatyne Club, Paris, 1846; the line numbers agree with those of the edition by Brede and Stengel, Marburg, 1883. The oldest MS. is of the twelfth century; see Hartenstein, Studien zur Hornsage, Heidelberg, 1902, p. 19.
2 References are to the C text of Hall's edition, Oxford, 19o0. The oldest MS. is of the early thirteenth century; see Hall's Introduction.
3. No. 17 of Professor Child's collection, vol. i, pp. 187-208; see, also, Additions and Corrections in each of the five volumes. Professor Child prints nine versions, designated by the letters A, B, C, etc.
4. References are to the text published by Caro, Eng. Stud. xii, pp. 351-356.
5 The bride's offer to elope, A 20-21, has been cited as a particular resemblance to HC, 11. 1030 sq.; but HR, 11. 4301 sq. affords nearly as close a resemblance; see infra, pp. 51 and 52.
6. Eng. Stud. i, p. 361.
7. Eng. and Scot. Pop. Ballads, vol. i, p. 193.
8. Schofield, "The Story of Horn and Rimenhild," Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass. of Am. xviii, p. 78.
9. Page 75.
10. Schofield, pp. 66 sq., points out the originals of the events in the first 500 11. of HC in the history of northern England under the heptarchy. Deutschbein, Studien zur Sagengeschichte Englands, I, pp. 89 sq., supplies additional historical parallels.
11. I question, however, if a certain analogy might not also be pointed out between HC and the Border ballads. The Border ballads are, of course, more practical and matter-of-fact. The struggles they commemorate are between men who knew each other by name and by sight, who spoke the same language, and who fought to a considerable extent for the sheer joy of fighting - in some ways not unlike the conflicts of hostile "gangs" of schoolboys. But in commemorating struggles such as those in HC, battles with savage invaders from over sea, perhaps the popular muse might have been capable of an exaltation comparable with that of passages in HC.
12 Eng. and Scot. Pop. Ballads, iii, p. 451. Mr. W. M. Patterson has supplied me with a number of instances from the Border ballads. It is sufficient to mention the ballad of Otterburn, Version B, where Earl Percy is substituted for Harry Percy; and The Rising in the North, Child, No. I75, where Richard Norton is called by the name of his eldest son, Francis, and Francis is confused with the fourth son.
13 Ll. 214-216.
14 Schofield, p. 74, cites Norse Ham]ismdl, st. 25, and V6lsungasaga, ch. 42.
15 Ll. 400 sq.
16 See Binz, Paul u. Braune Beitrdge, xx, pp. i86 sq. Though certain of the allusions to Weland in early English literature may be re-importations from the continent, independent of English tradition, the place-names cited by Binz and the local traditions, such as that used by Scott in Kenilworth, leave scarcely a doubt that the myth was firmly established on English soil.
17 Ed. of Sir Torrent of Portugal, London, 1842, p. 7.
18 "In thine erber is atre,
Thevnder is a wel fre,
Ygrowen al with yue:
Rimnild, for the loue of me,
Eueriday that thou ther be,
To se the water lithe:
& when thou sest mi schadu thare,
Than trowe thou me namare,
Than am y bon to wiue;
& while thou sest mi schadu nougt,
Than chaungeth neuer mi thou3t,
For no woman oliue." (11. 577 sq.)
19 Kelly, Curiosities of European Tradition and Folk-Lore, London, 1863, p. 92; Golther, Germanische Mythologie, Leipzig, 1895, p. 498; J. Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, Berlin, 1878, vol. i, pp. 222 sq.
20 M. A. Courtney, Cornish Feasts and Folk-Lore, Penzance, 1890, p. 63. Ballads, i, pp. 268 sq. See, also, Clouston, Popular Tales and Fictions, London, 1887, i, pp. I72 sq.
21 Kathd-sarit-sagara, transl. Tawney, i, p. 86; Romance of Perceforest.
22 Persian Tgti Ndma.
23 Amadis de Gaul; Wright's Chaste Wife, ed. Furnivall, London, 1865.
24 Continental Gesta Romanorum, 69; Curtze, Volksiberlieferung aus Waldeck, p. 146.
25 Clouston, i, p. 174.
26 I, pp. 169 sq.
27 Russian tale of Ivan Popyalof, Ralston's collection. Jonathan Scott, Arabian Nights, vi, p. 161.
28 The Icelandic story of the Farmer's Three Daughters.
29 The story of Chitrasekhara and Somasekhara, H. H. Wilson, Descr. Catal. of the Oriental MSS., etc., collected by Colonel C. Mackenzie, Calcutta, 1828, i, p. 51.
30 Rev. James Sibra, Jr., "Malagasy Folk-Tales," Folk-Lore Journal for 1884, ii, 52, 130.
31 From Gonzenbach, Sicilianische Marchen, i, 39, No. 7. See Child, i, p. 201.
32 Leyden, Poems and Ballads, Kelso, 1858, pp. 245 sq.
33 Macphail is carried off by a mermaid while passing the Gulf of Corrivrekin, and lives with her for several years in a grotto under the sea, the color of his ring remaining steadily unchanged. The mermaid sees the ring on his finger and covets it. Macphail promises it to her on condition that she bear him up in the neighborhood of Colonsay. She does so; he leaves her and rejoins his early love.
34 Child, No. 92, vol. ii, pp. 317-319.
35 Gummere, The Popular Ballad, Boston, 1907, p. 305.
36 HC becomes involved in this inconsistency when the ring is first described (in the lines quoted on p. 42). It is possible that the author perceived his inconsistency when it came time for Horn to be summoned home by the ring's change of color. For he does not state that the stone "waxed wan," which would have meant that Rimnild's heart had changed towards Horn; or that it "waxed red," which would have indicated her unchastity. He says merely,
"The hue was chaunged of the stan,
For gon is seuen zere." (11. 839-840.)
Even if he perceived the inconsistency, however, the likelihood that it was due in the first instance to the authority of a popular ballad remains undiminished.
37. Child, No. 142.
38 The Palmer in HR is addressed as contemptuously as if he were a beggar (11. 3730-3732).
39 Child, Nos. 121 (stanzas 1o-13), 126, 132, 134, 142 (Version B, 10). 40 The extant ballad of Hind Horn furnishes several instances of the tendency of ballads to borrow from other ballads. Professor Child points out that B 1, F 3, H 4, are from the Whummil Bore, No. 27; and conjectures that G 16-22, H 18-20, are from some Robin Hood ballad. G 35-36, H 33-34, might have drifted in from such a ballad as The Jolly Beggar, No. 279, one of the numerous class of tales in which an apparent poor man turns out to be a rich lord. The wand which Horn leaves his lady in Versions A 3, B 3, F 4, G 3, I 2, is probably a token of regency; it may have been taken over from a lost ballad version of some story of the heimkehrender Gatte type, in a great number of which the hero is a potentate who leaves his wife to rule when he goes on a crusade; see Child, i, 193 sq. Splettstdsser, Der Heimkehrende Gatte und sein Weib in der Weltliteratur, Berlin, 1899.
41. In fact, the beggar in the extant ballad, who gives Horn instructions in his art, is probably a case of more recent borrowing; compare G 16, H 18, with Little John a Begging, No 142, A 5.
43 Compare Kitchie Boy, Version A, stanza 35; Version B, stanzas 48, 49; see infra, Appendix, p. 6o.
44 Though Heuser, Anglia, xxxi, p. 131, speaks of "der in der luft schwebende verfasser des altfranzbsischen 'Urhorns.'" He wishes to substitute a Breton lay for a French romance as the source of the extant romances. In what language does he suppose it to have been accessible ? As to the French original of KH, see Schofield, pp. 51 sq. 45 The only fact which points definitely towards such a conclusion is the tournament in which "Young Hind Horn was abune them a'" in the version of Hind Horn, if it is a version of Hind Horn, which Dr. Davidson so imperfectly remembered. But see Appendix, p. 61.
46 Schofield, p. 50, and note.
47 The text used is that printed by Hardy and Martin as an Appendix to their edition of Gaimar, Rolls Series, London, 1888, vol. i, pp. 339 sq. The Gesta Herwardi has also been printed by Michel, Chroniques Anglo-Normannes, Rouen, 1836, pp. I sq.; by Thomas Wright, in his edition of Gaimar for the Caxton Society, London, 1850, Appendix, pp. 46 seq.
48 Unless it be held that Cornwall was the original situs of the Horn saga; the evidence of the Gesta can scarcely be regarded as proving that this was the case.
49 I have omitted from the summary several details, such as the forty messengers and Hereward's three companions, which occur only in the Gesta.
50. In Layamon the sister of the disguised Brian indicates in this way her recognition of him; ed. Madden, iii, pp. 234 sq. There is no ring in the corresponding passages of Geoffrey (xii, 7) and Wace (11. 14,693 sq.).
51 The full text of the preface here summarized is accessible in any of the editions cited above, p. 53, footnote 4.
52 See the last sentence quoted in this paragraph.
53 See Int. to Hardy and Martin's ed. of Gaimar, etc., vol. i, p. xlvii.
54 Op. cit. A marginal note in the MS. indicates that the work had belonged to Robert of Swapham, who was dead when the MS. was transcribed.
55 The conclusion of the section of the Liber Eliensis dealing with the defence of Ely says that other episodes "in libro autem de ipsius gestis Herewardi dudum a venerabile viro et doctissimo fratre nostro beatae memoriae Ricardo edito plenius descripta inveniuntur,"ed. D. J. Stuart, London, 1848, Bk. ii, ch. 107, p. 239. See, also, Hardy and Martin, vol. ii, p. xxxiv.
56 See Stuart, Int. to Liber Eliensis. Thomas, the author of the L. E., was alive in 1153; the L. E. alludes to Richard as dead.
57 Hereward's career was at its height in 1071; Leofric was his contemporary; both were probably dead by the end of the century.
58 Deutschbein holds that the "historische" element - Horn's exile in Ireland - was original, and that the "literarische" heimkehrender gatte element was added by the Normans, who got it from Germany.
59 No. 252, vol. iv, pp. 400 sq.
60 See p. 51.
61 English and Scottish Popular Ballads, vol. i, p. 502.
62 See pp. 48, 49.
63 Even if Dr. Davidson's version existed, its mention of a tournament would not necessarily indicate a connection with HR or HC; the tournament might have drifted in from some other ballad, in the same way as the features enumerated above on p. 50, note 3
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1 See ed. by F. J. Mather, Publ. Mod. Lang. Ass. xii, p. 99.