Page:The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Volume 02.djvu/118

 11. an a bonnie cow low, with an crossed out.

22. yon fall: fauld in margin.

64. auld not in MS., supplied from 94

73, Christend.

81. she says is probably the comment of the singer or reciter.

is scarcely necessary to remark that this ballad, like too many others, has suffered severely by the accidents of tradition. A has been not simply damaged by passing through low mouths, but has been worked over by low hands. Something considerable has been lost from the story, and fine romantic features, preserved in Norse and German ballads, have been quite effaced.

Margaret, a king's daughter, A, an earl's daughter, B, a lady of noble birth, C, as she sits sewing in her bower door, hears a note in Elmond's wood and wishes herself there, A. The wood is Amon-shaw in C, Mulberry in B: the Elmond (Amond, Elfman?) is probably significant. So far the heroine resembles Lady Isabel in No 4, who, sewing in her bower, hears an elf-horn, and cannot resist the enchanted tone. Margaret makes for the wood as fast as she can go. The note that is heard in A is mistaken in B for nuts: Margaret, as she stands in her bower door, spies some nuts growing in the wood, and wishes herself there. Arrived at the wood, Margaret, in A as well as B, immediately takes to pulling nuts. The lady is carried off in C under cover of a magical mist, and the hero in all is no ordinary hind.

Margaret has hardly pulled a nut, when she is confronted by young Akin, A, otherwise, and correctly, called Etin in B, a hind of giant strength in both, who accuses her of trespassing, and stops her. Akin pulls up the highest tree in the wood and builds a bower, invisible to passers-by, for their habitation. B, which recognizes no influence of enchantment upon the lady's will, as found in A, and no prepossession on her part, as in C, makes Hind Etin pull up the biggest tree in the forest as well, but it is to scoop out a cave many fathoms deep, in which he confines Margaret till she comes to terms, and consents to go home with him, wherever that may be. Hastings, another corruption of Etin, carries off the lady on his horse to the wood, "where again their loves are sworn," and there they take up their abode in a cave of stone, C 9. Lady Margaret lives with the etin seven years, and bears him seven sons, A 9; many years, and bears seven sons, B; ten years, and bears seven bairns, C 6, 8, 9.

Once upon a time the etin goes hunting,