Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 2, 1891.djvu/195

 Rh Remembering the instructions of the Warluck Merhn. " Burd Ellen", said Child Rowland, "I will neither taste nor touch till I have set thee free!" Immediately the folding-doors burst open with tremendous violence, and in came the King of Elfland:

"Strike, then, Bogle of Hell, if thou darest! " exclaimed the undaunted Child Rowland, starting up, and drawing the good claymore [Excalibar], that never struck in vain.

A furious combat ensued, and the King of Elfland was felled to the ground, but Child Rowland spared him, on condition that he should restore him his two brothers, who lay in a trance in a corner of the hall, and his sister, the fair burd Ellen. The King of Elfland then produced a small crystal phial, containing a bright red liquor, with which he anointed the lips, nostrils, eyelids, ears, and finger-ends of the two young men, who immediately awoke, as from a profound sleep, during which their souls had quitted their bodies, and they had seen, etc., etc., etc. So they all four returned in triumph to [merry Carlisle].

Such was the rude outline of the Romance of Child Rowland, as it was told to me when I was about seven or eight years old, by a country tailor then at work in my father's house. He was an ignorant and dull, good sort of honest man, who seemed never to have questioned the truth of what he related. Where the et cæteras are put down, many curious particulars have been omitted, because I was afraid of being deceived by my memory, and substituting one thing for another. It is right also to admonish the reader that "The Warluck Merlin, Child Rowland, and