Page:Old English ballads by Francis Barton Gummere (1894).djvu/465

Rh NOTES, 361 THOMAS RYMER. From Mrs. Brown's recitation; see Child, II, 317 £[. — This ballad retains the essential features of a story which has served the purposes of political prophecy, and is to some extent connected with historical personages. These essential features are the love of a fairy and a mortal, and the visit which the latter makes to fairy- land. In fuller detail this story is told in the poem known as Thomas of Erceldoune (ed. Murray, E. E. T. Soc, and Brandl, Berlin, 1880), which is probably the source of the ballad. At the end of his visit, Thomas receives from the elf-queen the gift of prophecy, and at his request she tells him a number of things which concern the future of Scotland, — often surprisingly close to history, though clothed in mystical expressions, and made, of course, after the event. Thomas Rymour, * True Thomas,* thus obtained a great reputation, and was potent to console or alarm the Scottish peasant * down to the begin- ning of this century.* For an analysis of the prophecies, see Brandl, p. 29 ff. ; for the historic foundation and the personality of the author, Child, p. 318. It is probable that in the original story True Thomas went back to fairyland, never, or, like Arthur, Barbarossa, and the rest, only at some far-off consummation of things or stress of fate, to return to earth : see Professor Child (p. 319 f.) on Ogier le Danois and Morgan the Fay. Two stanzas (5, 6) are inserted from Scott*s version in the Minstrelsy. 3. This is a trait of the poem as well as of the related romances. 5 1. * Harp and sing*: see Introduction, above, p. Ixxiii. 5 .3, 4. To kiss a fairy or a spirit puts a mortal in the jurisdiction of the other world : see Sweet William^ s Ghost, 4 : And if I kiss thy comely mouth, Thy life-days will not be long. The motive is artistically treated in Goethe*s Braut von Corinth. 6 4. * The Eildon Tree. . . now no longer exists ; but the spot is marked by a large stone called Eildon Tree Stone.* — Scott. 9 4. In the poem this passage of the waters is better emphasized (ed. Brandl, xxviiif.): Scho [she] ledde hym in at Eldonehill Undimethe a derne [secret] lee, Where it was dirke as mydnyght myrke And ever water till his knee. The montenans of dayes three He herd hot swoghyng of the flode. Digitized by LjOOQIC