Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 3 1885.djvu/166

158 :Therefore thou thoughtest of coming higher. Knewest the way through the valleys, Over the hills, In this great village, To this little cottage-yard, Among these vassals who have got old dollars.

Simple, plain, and natural! The young man wants a rich bride. He scours over the heaths and valleys. Casts an eye over all the country. He sees a peasant's cottage-yard, with pieces of linen hanging to dry.—The door is ornamented with old plated buttons, and other flat pieces of metal nailed to it. A good store of flesh hanging under the eaves.—"This must be a wealthy family," says he. In he goes; finds an amiable young woman, generally of a sallow complexion, of which his imagination makes lilies and roses, with long blond hair flowing down her neck and bosom, which is the common description of the natives; he renews his visits, the father gives her to him, and unites them for ever in the bands of love.

II. Again, an epithalamium. It was doubtless composed so long ago as the Roman Catholic times, as we see by the mention of the mother of our Saviour, according to the notion of the then prevailing superstition.

The hunting-line therein mentioned is the leather thong held in the hand for guiding the horse. "The halters kept hanging on the beams of the sun," is truly poetical: an agreeable image. Even the sun is endeavouring to supplant the young bridegroom, by laying hindrances in the way of his rapid progress to his bride. It is not a stranger, a cold wedding-guest, a lazy old acquaintance, who already, for half a century, has felt the breezes and the blights of love, that unties the hunting-line from the thicket: the restless and eager youth, to whom every minute is as long as ten years, which keeps him from the embraces of his bride, springs out of his kabitka, shakes the entangled hunting-lines asunder, mounts his horse without delay, and hastens forward on the wings of love.

There seem to be two alternate choruses in this ballad. The chorus before the house, begins. The arriving chorus, answers. The questions proposed by the former are such as might proceed from the participating heart of the mother of the inquisitive bride, to whom