An Elf Knight Come from the North Land- Walters (NL) 1920 Greenlief B
[My title. From: Ballads and Sea Songs of Newfoundland; Collected and edited by Elisabeth Bristol Greenleaf and recorded by Grace Yarrow Mansfield. 1933; A rare version from North American that had "elf knight." You have to wonder if the collector (telling the informant the Child title) or print had an effect on the opening text here. Text incomplete.
R. Matteson 2014]
Elisabeth Bristol Greenleaf first visited Newfoundland in 1920 as a summer volunteer teacher for one of the Grenfell mission schools. As she recalls, someone in the family with whom she was staying offered to sing her a song, and "I listened without particular interest, until it suddenly dawned upon me that he was singing a real folk-song, one handed down by oral tradition" (xix). At Vassar College she had listened to ballads sung by the Fuller sisters and had heard lectures on the subject by John Lomax; now she recognized that this was a special experience. "From that night ... I spent my leisure time listening to the songs and writing them down. No pupil of mine worked harder learning to write than I to record the tunes they sang"(xix).
[An Elf Knight Come from the North Land] - Mrs. Susan Walters; Rocky Harbor, NS 1920
1. There was an elf knight come from the north land,
And he came a-courting me.
He said he would take me unto the north land,
And there he would marry me.
2. O, get me some of your father's gold,
And some of your mother's fee.
Two of the best nags out of the stable,
Where there stands thirty and three."
3 So I got some of my father's gold,
And some of my mother's fee,
Two of the best nags out of the stable,
Where there stands thirty and three."
4 He mounted on a milk-white steed,
And she on a dapple gray,
And they rode till they came to the salt-sea side
Two hours before it was day.
5 "Alight, alight, my pretty lady,
And deliver it all to me,
Alight, alight," said he,
For six pretty maidens I have drownded here,
And the seventh you shall be.
6 "Pull off, pull off your silken hose,
And deliver it unto me,
. . .
. . .
7 The parrot was up in the window so high,
. . .
"What ails you, what ails you, my pretty lady,
That you knock so long before day?"