Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/172

 156 JVofes oil Ballad Origins.

common to the popular tales of the whole world, and that mediaeval literary romances have often really borrowed the ideas from the popular tales. There is a come and go ; literary romances borrow from dateless popular tales, and balladists have sometimes borrowed again from literary romances, notably in the Arthurian ballads, while Arthurian liter-ary romances are, in part, thought to be derived from Breton popular lays.

But consider Professor Child's introductory essay on Lady Isabel a7id the Elf Knight. Hundreds of ballad variants of this piece exist all over Europe, and an analogous yI/^rc//^« is found among the Zulus. The fundamental idea only is the same. A girl is made sport of by a false knight, or fabulous creature, who takes her to a place w'here he has killed many other women. After that point, the ballads introduce every conceivable variation, and every conceiv- able conclusion. Can they then be derived from a romance, which must have taken one definite line of its own ? If so, no such romance is known to me, though Mr. Henderson may be more fortunate. Even if he is, the many variations must be due to " popular imagination," to unknown popular singers and reciters.

Take the case of " The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman ; " in its street guise, even, it contains many traditional stanzas. Professor Child remarks that the story has a close analogue in Robert of Gloucester's Life of St. Thomas of Canterbury. Herein the hero is Becket's father, answering to the Young Beichan or Bekie of some Scottish variants. " Becket " may have suggested " Beichan," our Scots ballad may have the Life of Becket for one literary source. But, says Professor Child, " the

ballad, for all that, is not derived from the legend

The legend lacks some of the main points of the stories ' [Mdrchen), "and the ballad, in one version or another, has them." Here, as usual, I agree with Professor Child.

What is the donnee of this ballad? A lover has left his