Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/464

360 360 NOTES. TAM LIN. This ballad) interesting in so many ways, is printed here in the version communicated by Burns to Johnson's Museum (Child, II, 340), and freely used by Scott in compounding The Young' Tarn lane for' his Minstrelsy. It is impossible in this place to discuss such features of the ballad as the transformation, and the hints of faery, or the relations and parallels in other literature. Scott wrote an admirable essay * On the Fairies of Popular Superstition ' by way of introduction to the ballad. 1 3. * Carterhaugh is a plain at the confluence of the Ettrick and Yarrow in Selkirkshir<e.* — Scott. 5-6. See Babylon^ 2. 14 2. elfin grey. * The usual dress of the Fairies,* says Scott in his Introduction, * is green ; though on the moors, they have been sometimes observed in heath-brown, or in weeds dyed with the stone- raw or lichen,' — and in a note : * Hence the hero of the ballad is termed an elfin grey.* 20. * Were you ever christened ? ' 24. Hallowe'en is the eve of All Saints (i November), which b easily merged in All Souls (2 November), a festival once purely heathen and celebrated as a part of the universal manes-cult or worship of the dead. A general feast was held at which the dead were thought to be present ; and Widukind, describing such a feast which took place in 980, explicitly tells us of the move by which these rites got a slight change in character and a great change in name. Evidently this is the proper time for spirits to visit the earth. On the night of the second of November European peasants until lately set out food for the spirits, and even went so far as to offer them a bath. 28. See note to Fair Janety 20 3. 33 3, 4. * Immersion in a liquid, generally water, but sometimes milk, is a process requisite for passing from a non-human shape, produced by enchantment, back into the human. . . .' — Child, II, 338. 36 2. The proper sign of a fairy procession. 39 4. groom = man. 41 4. tree = wood. Tam can recognize fairy folk. Digitized by VjOOQIC