Strange Survivals

“Thou must plough it over with a horse’s horn,
And sow it all over with one pepper corn.

“Thou must reap it too with a piece of leather,
And bind the sheaf with a peacock’s feather.”

“In all stories of this kind,” says Mr. Child, in his monumental work on English Ballads, “the person upon whom a task is imposed stands acquitted if another of no less difficulty is desired, which must be performed first.”

An early form of this story is preserved in the Gesta Romanorum. A king resolved not to marry a wife till he could find the cleverest of women. At length a poor maid was brought to him, and he made trial of her sagacity. He sent her a bit of linen three inches square, and promised to marry her, if out of it she could make him a shirt. She stipulated in reply that he should send her a vessel in which she could work. We have here only a mutilated fragment of the series of tasks set. In an old English ballad in the Pepysian library, an Elfin knight visits a pretty maid, and demands her in marriage.

“‘Thou must shape a sark to me
Without any cut or heme,’ quoth he.
‘Thou must shape it knife-and-sheerless
And also sue it needle-threadless.’”

She replies: —

“I have an aiker of good ley-land
Which lyeth low by yon sea-strand.
For thou must car it with thy horn,
So thou must sow it with thy corn,
And bigg a cart of stone and lyme.
Robin Redbreast he must trail it hame,
Thou must barn it in a mouse-holl,
And thrash it into thy shoes sole.
And thou must winnow it in thy looff,
And also sech it in thy glove.
For thou must bring it over the sea,
And thou must bring it dry home to me.”

As the Elfin knight cannot fulfil these tasks, the girl is not obliged to follow him to Elfin Land. There is another song, known in a fragmentary condition all through England: —

“Cold blows the wind to-night, sweetheart,
Cold are the drops of rain.
The very first love that ever I had
In greenwood he was slain.”

The maiden being engaged to the dead man can obtain no release from him till he restores to her her freedom. She goes and sits on his grave and weeps.

“A twelvemonth and a day being up,
The ghost began to speak;
Why sit you here by my grave side
From dusk till dawning break?”

She replies: —

“O think upon the garden, love,
Where you and I did walk;
The fairest flower that blossomed there
Is withered on its stalk.”

The ghost says: —

“What is it that you want of me,
And will not let me sleep?
Your salten tears they trickle down
My winding sheet to steep.”

She replies that she has come to return his kisses to him, so as to be off with her engagement. To this the dead man replies: —

“Cold are my lips in death, sweetheart,
My breath is earthy strong,
If you do touch my clay-cold lips,
Your time will not be long.”

Then comes a divergence in the various forms the ballad assumes. Its most common form is for the ghost to insist on her coming into his grave, unless she can perform certain tasks: —

“Go fetch me a light from dungeon deep,
Wring water from a stone,
And likewise milk from a maiden’s breast
Which never babe hath none.”

She strikes a spark from a flint, she squeezes an icicle, and she compresses the stalk of a dandelion or “Johnswort.” So she accomplishes the tasks set her.

Then the ghost exclaims: —

“Now if you had not done these things,
If you had not done all three,
I’d tear you as the withered leaves
Are torn from off the tree.”

And the maiden, released from her bond, sings: —

“Now I have mourned upon his grave
A twelvemonth and a day,
I’ll set my sail before the wind
To waft me far away.”

Another ballad of the same class is that of the knight who betrays a maiden, and refuses to marry her unless she can answer certain riddles. These are: —

“What is louder than a horn?
And what is sharper than a thorn?
What is broader than the way?
And what is deeper than the sea?”

The answers are: —

“Thunder is louder than a horn,
And hunger is sharper than a thorn,
Love is broader than the way,