English Songs on the Night Visit
by Charles Read Baskervill; PMLA, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Dec., 1921), pp. 565-614.
[Footnotes moved to the end, not proofed]
Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Volume 36; December 1921
XXVII.—ENGLISH SONGS ON THE NIGHT VISIT
The Night Visit
Traces of the aube in English and Scottish literature are to be found in a few titles and a few fragments or adaptations of the type. But the aube, which deals with the parting of lovers at dawn, seems to me to represent only one group in a large body of songs that picture the various phases of a lover's secret visit to his lady at night. No such number of these related songs, either medieval or modern, is to be found in England as on the Continent, but enough material survives in one form or another to suggest their main conventions.
The songs must have arisen from a very ancient pagan custom which seems to have been practically universal among the people of Western Europe—that which allowed a youth to visit a girl secretly and spend the night with her before marriage. Even in the early stages of what might be called civilization in Europe, the custom was perhaps general, and it has been recorded within the last century in Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, England, Scotland, Wales, and America. It may have sprung from a primitive division of the sexes into groups with distinct living quarters, as in ancient Sparta and Rome, and from an obligation of a youth to visit his mate secretly.[1] In modern times the custom seems to have developed into the practice of secret and trial marriages, to be continued beyond a short period or not according to the will of the interested pair.[2] Survivals of temporary marriage, usually for a year, are recorded especially for Celtic Britain and Germany.[3] Probably relics of an ancient annual distribution of mates by lot at a spring sex festival are to be found in customs of Valentine's Day.[4] A related custom required a girl at the coming of the spring festival to forswear her husband or deliver up a symbol of her connection with the maiden group.[5]
The conventions of the night visit and its connection with formal song perhaps appear most fully in the modern survival in Switzerland known as "Kiltgang," the authorized visit of a suitor to his betrothed at night. Miss Lucy E. Broadwood has very kindly called my attention to the importance of the Swiss survival and has given me in personal letters an interesting description of the custom, based partly on her own observation. I summarize her account:[6]
The wooer comes; the girl awaits him at the window and protests conventionally, but admits him. The parents are aware of this but do not interfere or appear, for the young people are supposed to profit by it as they are enabled to break off the final marriage arrangements should either desire to do so. The wooer is obliged to make long rhymed or prose speeches before the girl consents to open the window. These speeches pass from mouth to mouth, but they are sometimes offered for sale at fairs. There is indeed a regular ritual in which the lovers, the girl's parents, and the "Nachtbuben" take part. The last are "young village fellows who act as night-watchmen of behaviour, whose part it is to know all about these courtships, pursue and place obstacles in the way of the wooer, study and proclaim the characters of both parties, and, in short, act as village spies and administrators of a rude justice and censorship showing themselves in accepted forms and customs."
The custom of the ktltgcmg was known among the Germans under the name of "fenstern" and among the Dutch under the name of " queesting." [7] In England, Scotland, Wlales, and America, a similar practice survived well into the nineteenth century.[8] The persistence of the custom in the face of the attitude of the church is indicative of a strong hold among the folk. The church fought long against the treatment of betrothal as marriage, but the folk possibly regarded it as, like handfasting, an ample rite. Moral pressure, however, in the end so modified the traditions of the night visit that, though the lover was received into the girl's bed, inhibitions were supposed to keep the relation an innocent one.
The mass of literature dealing with the general subject I need not summarize. I am interested here only in the marks which the very ancient and very pagan ceremony of the night visit seems to have left on English literature even down to modern times. But the English material is very fragmentary, and the relation between the English songs and those of the Continent, especially of France, is so obviously close that from time to time continental literature will be cited for illustrative and supplementary material.
General Songs On The Night Visit
Possibly there first developed on the Continent a group of songs dealing with the night visit of the lover without stressing any particular feature, though such songs cannot be found in so early a period or distributed over so wide a region of Europe as the aube. The lover's secret coming, his request for admittance, the parley with the girl, his entrance, and finally his departure before dawn, would furnish the main elements. With the small amount of popular medieval poetry that survives there is no possibility of determining the nature of such general songs on the night visit except by attempts at reconstruction through traces of them in medieval literature and through traditional songs and ballads. But there are several pictures of the visit of the lover,[9] which may give a suggestion of the norm.
In the Romaunt of the Rose, the lover is instructed[10]:
And ryse on morwe up erly
Out of thy bedde, and harneys thee
Er ever dawning thou mayst see.
Al privily than shalt thou goon,
What weder it be, thy-silf aloon,
For reyn, or hayl, for snow, for slete,
Thider she dwellith that is so swete,
The which may falle aslepe be,
And thenkith but litel upon thee.
Than shalt thou goon, ful foule aferd;
Loke if the gate be unsperd,
And waite without in wo and peyn,
Ful yvel a-colde in winde and reyn.
Than shal thou go the dore bifore,
If thou maist fynde any score,
Or hole, or reft, what ever it were;
Than shalt thou stoupe, and lay to ere,
If they within a-slepe be;
I mene, alle save thy lady free.
Whom waking if thou mayst aspye,
Go put thy-silf in jupartye,
To aske grace . . .
* * * *
For whom thou hast so greet annoy,
Shal kisse thee er thou go away,
And hold that in ful gret deyntee.
And, for that no man shal thee see
Bifore the hous, ne in the way,
Loke thou be goon ageyn er day.
In spite of the refinements of courtly poetry this passage seems to reflect the general features of the ancient night visit. A fifteenth century French poem, "Trop penser me font amours," published by Gaston Paris in Chansons de XV Steele[11] gives a complete representation of the assignation, the coming of the lover, the meeting of the pair, and the parting before day, without emphasis on any special feature. And even in forms of these songs in which particular features are stressed there is often a picture of the whole visit. A number of aubes that belong to the folk represent both the coming and the parting. The traditional English aube "The Grey Cock" in several versions depicts the coming, the wooing, and the departure of the lover.[12] Indeed many individual songs in the special types of which I shall speak approximate only loosely to the conventions of their type, so that they might be regarded as belonging to a mass of general songs which reflect the night visit as a whole.
Emphasis, however, on one feature or another seems to have developed special types of songs. In certain ballads, both serious and comic, prominence is given, for example, to the secret entrance of the lover and the discovery of him by relatives of the girl. But the songs on the night visit would naturally fall into two types, those stressing the arrival of the lover and his reception, and those stressing his departure. It is to be expected, I think, that the second type, the aube, should have developed first and been more widespread, since the parting offered the dramatic moment for the expression of lyric passion. And such seems to have been the case on the Continent. I shall deal first, however, with the group of songs and ballads depicting the lover's approach and reception.
"Open The Door"
In connection with the coming of the lover certain details recur frequently enough to make up what might be called the type song on the theme. "Open the door," the lover pleads, with so little variation that the refrain "Open the door " may be regarded as identifying a song with the group we are studying. A feature that I take to be an early development is the suffering of the lover from the rain or snow and the cold, as in the Romaunt of the Rose. The parley between the lovers offers the chief point of expansion.- Sometimes the lady scorns the wooer and sends him off. Conventionally she makes a show of reluctance and finally yields, at times with an enlightening disregard of modern standards. The warning that the father and mother or some other member of the family will be awakened and will interfere is usual. This warning or the refusal has developed a second refrain, "Go from my window," which is distinctive of a large number of the songs.
The earliest suggestion of the refrain "Open the door" which I have found in English literature occurs in the title of a work printed by Wynken de Worde, Undo your dore.[13] The title was probably borrowed from a popular song. On August 1, 1586, entry was made on the Stationers' Register of a ballad called "Open the dore &c begynninge you Maidens &c," [14] which must have been a moralization of such a song. An echo of the refrain "Open the door" is found in Monsieur Thomas, in, 3, a scene gay with snatches of popular ballads and with parodies of ballads. Launcelot, in answer to a maid who appears "above " with the question "Why who is this!" sings,
Oh, damsel dear,
Open the door, and it shall appear;
Open the door!
and the maid sings in reply,
Oh, gentle squire,
I'll see thee hang first; farewell, my dear!
During the sixteenth century there was perhaps a broader currency of songs with this refrain than is indicated by the few early references cited. At least in the broadside ballads of the seventeenth century the refrain and the conventions appropriate to it seem to have been popular. The opening stanzas of "John's Earnest Request" [15] are typical:
"Come open the Door, sweet Betty,
For its a cold winter's night!
It rains, and it blows, and it thunders,
And the Moon it do's give no light.
It is all for the love of sweet Betty,
That here I have lost my way;
Sweet, let me lye beyond thee,
Untill it is break of day."
"I dare not come down, sweet Johnny,
Nor I dare not now let you in,
For fear of my Father's anger,
And the rest of my other kin;
For my Father he is awake,
And my Mother she will us hear;
Therefore be gone, sweet Johnny!
My Joy and my only Dear."
After a show of objection on Betty's part and further complaint of the cold on William's, the lover is admitted. The first line of " The Repulsive Maid" is "Sweet, open the door, and let me come in." [16] The maiden pretends to refuse for fear of her parents, but she finally sends the wooer off with a closing stanza in the spirit of the maid of Monsieur Thomas:
"Walk Knave!" is a Parrot's note,
And if the Hang-man don't get your coat,
I'le met you at Holborn-hill in a Boat,
If ever I love you more.
"Loves Return, Or, The Maydens Joy" [17] opens:
Arise from thy bed,
My Turtle and dear,
And let in thy true Love,
that stands coldly here.
"The Young Man's hard shift,"[18] with the refrain "Come away, pretty Betty, and open the door," has the conventions of the "cold tempestuous night," the admittance, and the parting before day. In a song in D'Urfey's Wit and Mirth 19 which depicts the night visit, the refrain varies on "The fair one let me in."
Later balladmongers continued the tradition. In "A Favourite Love Song," printed about 1770 according to Ebsworth,[20] "Open the Window," "Go from my window," and "Open the door" all appear, along with the complaint about the weather, the girl's excuse that she fears her parents, the stealthy entrance, and the parting "in the breaking of the day." "Indifference; or a Rap at the Door," published in Logan's Pedlar's Pack [21] without indication of the source, begins, " The last time I came o'er the muir," and includes the assignation, the request "Open the door," the reference to the girl's father and mother, and her dismissal of the lover as the seducer of others. The final stanza is a variation on that of "The Repulsive Maid." A number of the broadsides, especially those of an intrigue type, show the influence of one convention or another belonging to the night visit, but I have not attempted to take these into account.
The situations and conventional phraseology of the night visit appear also in a group of closely related traditional ballads published by Child in English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Here the interference of the girl's family in one way or another brings a tragic outcome. In Jamieson's version of "Clerk Saunders" (No. 69) the lover comes to his lady's bower and "tirls at the pin ":
"O sleep ye, wake ye, May Margaret,
Or are you the bower within?"
"O wha is that at my bower-door,
Sae well my name does ken?"
"It's I, Clerk Saunders, your true-love,
You'll open and lat me in."
"Willie's Fatal Visit" (No. 225), Buchan's version of "Willie and Lady Maisry" (No. 70), and "The Bent sae Brown" (No. 71) have much the same wording.[22]
The youth of " Clyde's Water" (No. 216) adds that his "boots are full of Clyde's water, And frozen to the brim." In Motherwell's version of "Willie and Lady Maisry" the lover after killing the guard cries:
"Oh open, open, Lady Margerie,
Open and let me in;
The weet weets a' my yellow hair,
And the dew draps on my chin."
The last lines echo the convention of the rain. Willie's buckles, moreover, are stiff with frozen blood.
"O open, open, my true-love,
O open, and let me in,"
says the lover of "Young Benjie" (No. 86), and Marjorie replies,
"I dare na open, Young Benjie,
My three brothers are within."
The ballads of this group echo each other and borrow bodily from each other, an indication, no doubt, of the association of them in the mind of the singer, but the passages which I have cited are stock features of the whole group of poems on the night visit.
Two popular songs on the subject were adapted by Burns. One pictures the lover as dying of cold before the lady admits him. The poem begins, "It's open the door some pity to show," and has the refrain, "So open the door to me, oh!" [23] The other, called from its refrain "Let me in this ae night," [24] runs in part:
"O pity me before I goe,
And rise and let me in, jo!
The night it is haith cauld and weet,
The morn it will be snaw and sleet,
My shoen are frozen to my feet
Wi' standing on the plain, jo."
"My father's wa'king on the street,
My mither the chamber-keys does keep,
My chamber-door does chirp and cheep,
And I dare nae let you in, jo."
The lover prevails and enters stealthily. The final stanza tells how the bottom falls out of the bed and betrays the pair to the mother. The last two stanzas may be an accretion. They are in narrative form while the rest is pure dialogue.
A modern folk song, "The Cottage by the Wood," [25] after a stanza describing the cottage, quite abruptly introduces what is probably an old fragment:
It rains, it hails, it snows, it blows,
And I shall get wet through all my clothes,
So I (pray you love, love, let me in.
"Oh! no, kind Sir, that can never be," the lady replies, but a narrative close tells how she relents immediately when he is about to leave, and admits him for the night.
These conventions of the night visit, though simple and natural enough in themselves, recur so persistently in different types of popular poetry as to suggest that to the popular mind the theme called for the use of certain formulas, and that back of the few examples of " Open the door " recorded early there lay a considerable body of song which had arisen among the folk.
The currency of these conventions in the songs of the continental folk also is still stronger evidence for an ancient tradition.[26] Thus part of a song from the Alps, "Ce matin me suis leve,"[27] recalls the song "It's open the door" adapted by Burns. Two stanzas are especially conventional:
[Ouvre ta porte tentrement-- missing some text]
The youth endures through the bitter night, but when the jeune file opens her door at dawn it is to receive his adieu "pour la derniere fois." In "Le galant indiscret" [28] the lover cries, "Ouvrez la porte," the girl bids him come when her parents are asleep, she overhears him telling others of the assignation, and when he returns with the plea to open the door and with a complaint of the cold, she scorns him.
It is very significant, I think, that the same conventions which distinguish songs on the night visit can be traced in the songs belonging to the elaborate marriage ritual of the French peasants. The mere connection with customs of folk marriage would indicate that the conventions are very old and were widely popular at an early period. In the wedding ceremonies there are songs for the siege of the bride's house on the morning of the wedding, for the entrance to the house afterward, for the entrance to the bridal chamber at night or on the morning after the marriage, and so on.[29] Many of these songs have no reference to the usual features of the night visit, but a number begin with the cry "Ouvrez la porte," and in several the mention of the cold is added. One of them, the Norman "Ohanson des oreillers," will be discussed later. Scheffler prints a portion of a dialogue [30] sung in parts of France when the bridegroom and his attendants appear before the barred door of the bride's house bearing gifts on the night before the wedding. To the request " Ouvrez la porte" the bride or her party answers:
Moi, vous laisser entrer,
Je ne saurais le faire.
Mon pere est en colere,
Ma mere est en tristesse.
Une fille de si grand prix,
N'ouvre pas la porte ft ces heures-el.
This mention of the father and mother in connection with the refusal is reminiscent of songs on the night visit. To the siege of the bride's door by the bridegroom and his attendants belongs a song from Lorraine reported by an English observer about the middle of the nineteenth century.[31] The men entreat:
Open, Marie, for a husband young
Cometh thy love to win;
The rain falls last, and the winds blow cold,
Open, and let him in,
and the women reply,
My father's away, and my mother in bed—
I prithee no longer stay;
You cannot come in at this hour of the night,
Germain, go hence away!
The close kinship of this song to the English tradition is apparent.
Among the Teutonic peoples of central Europe the number of extant songs that may be regarded as reflecting the night visit of the lover is considerable. The larger part of these are of the aube type, but many depict the whole visit or the coming of the lover.[32] In a fifteenth century song, which begins, "Tritt auf, tritt auf, den Riegel von der Thiir," [33] the girl at first refuses the youth admittance for fear of the noise he will make, but he promises to enter stealthily. The refrain here, "Stand auf und lass mich ein," is typical of the fensterlieder.[34] Several modern songs contain the warning that the parents are within or the reference to the cold and rain.[35] The value of these lieder, however, for a study of the corresponding English songs lies less in their use of similar details than in their evidence for the antiquity of the entire genre. The oldest of them show that the traditional songs collected in modern times are but carrying on conventions that were in full swing in the middle ages.
"Go From My Window, Go!"
Among the more general songs dealing with the night visit there developed, through emphasis on the girl's warning or refusal, a large group distinguished commonly by the refrain "Go from my window." So far as I know the earliest reference in English to what seems to be a song of this type dates from about 1525. Among ballads listed in The Seven Sorowes that women have when theyr husbandes be deade, Copland includes the title "Go from my durre "[36]—apparently a direct answer to "Open the door." A song usually known by its refrain "Go from my window, go," was extremely popular in the second half of the sixteenth century. It was entered on the Stationers' Kegister on March 4, 1588, as a ballad "intituled Ooe from the windowe goe."[37] One part of " Attowel's Jigge," 1595, was sung to the tune "Goe from my windo."[38]Apparently Nashe is parodying the song or an adaptation of it when he says in the Epistle Dedicatory to Lenten Stuffe, 1599, " (as it runnes in the old song) Go from my Garden go, for there no flowers for thee dooth grow." Seven music books are recorded as containing the air around 1600.[39]
A moralization of this or a kindred song in the Scottish Gvde and Godlie Ballatis [40] about the middle of the sixteenth century testifies to an even earlier popularity and gives us our first clue to the form of the song:
Quho is at my windo, quho, quhot
Go from my windo, go, go.
Quha callis thair, sa lyke ane stranger,
Go from my windo, go!
Lord I am heir, ane wratcheit mortall,
That for thy mercy dois ory and call,
Unto th6 my Lord Celestiall,
Se quho is at my [thy?] windo, quho.
The final lines of the next two pairs of stanzas correspond to the final lines here, but a number of stanzas follow with a refrain varying on "In at thy dure lat me go." A relenting deity finally answers,
Quho is at my windo, quho?
Go from my windo, go;
Cry na mair thair, lyke ane stranger,
Bot in at my dure thow go.
What must have been an English moralization of a form of "Go from my window" was entered on the Stationers' Register on March 2, 1588, as a ballad "the begynnynge wherof is, goe from thy wanton and be wyse &c" [41]
From the opening of the seventeenth century many plays and miscellanies contained adaptations of "Go from my window."[42] The most complete form is found at the end of Heywood's Rape of Lucrece. It seems to be a comic adaptation, but it gives some stanzas for which the corresponding original stanzas are apparently lost. I omit the long refrains varying on the lines of each stanza.
"Arise, arise, my Juggy, my Puggy,
Arise, get up, my dear;
The weather is cold, it blows, it snows;
Oh, let me be lodged here."
"Begone, begone, my Willy, my Billy,
Begone, begone, my dear;
The weather is warm, 'twill do thee no harm;
Thou canst not be lodged here."
"Farewell, farewell, my Juggy, my Puggy,
Farewell, farewell, my dear;
Then will I begone from whence that I came,
If I cannot be lodged here."
"Return, return, my Willy, my Billy,
Return, my dove and my dear;
The weather doth change, then seem not strange;
Thou shalt be lodged here."
In the Knight of the Burning Pestle, m, 5, Merrythought sings at different points in the scene two stanzas which may belong to different versions of the song. One is substantially the second stanza of Heywood's version. The other runs—
Go from my window, love, go;
Go from my window, my dear;
The wind and the rain
Will drive you back again,
You cannot be lodged here.[43]
The scene in Monsieur Thomas (m, 3) in which a fragment of "Open the door" is found contains also a final stanza of "Go from my window" which is probably closer to the original than is that of Heywood's version:
Come up to my window, love;
Come, come, come;
Come to my window, my dear
The wind nor the rain
Shall trouble thee again,
But thou shalt be lodged here.[44]
"Go from my window" clearly belongs to the type of song in which a girl pretends to be unwilling to receive a lover but calls him back when she sees that she is about to lose him. This we might expect from the final stanza of the moralized version. Large numbers of folk songs, broadsides, and love songs in the miscellanies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries develop the motive ad nauseam.
The vogue of " Go from my window, go" is responsible for the refrain "And sing, Go from my Window, love, go!" in a broadside ballad of the late seventeenth century, called "The Secret Lover."[45] Except for the refrain, and a narrative opening and end, the ballad is in dialogue with the lover, the lady, and her father as speakers. The second stanza reads:
"What is my Love a-sleeping? or is my Love awake?"
"Who knocketh at the Window, who knocketh there so late?"
"It is your true love, Lady, that for your sake doth wait."
And sing, Go from the Window, love, go!
He asks admittance but is denied for fear of the father, who has been roused. The girl frames explanations to deceive the father—she is out of bed because of sickness; the noise he hears is the watchmen passing. This is a motive which appears in some of the traditional ballads, as in Jamieson's version of "Clerk Saunders," and is elaborated in an intrigue ballad to be discussed later. The lover is finally admitted.
A much later broadside, already mentioned, "A Favourite Love Song,"[46] after a stock description of the lover as lying on his bed oppressed by thoughts of love continues:
Unto my Love's window I came,
I boldly call'd her by her name:
"'Tis for thy sake that I came here,
Thro' the bitter frost and snow.
So open me the window, my Love, do!
"My Dad and Mammy's both awake,
And if they chance to hear you speak,
There will be no excuse, but sore abuse,
With words and many a blow,
And it's Go from my window, my Love, do!"
The lover has peeped, he says, and found the parents sleeping. He is admitted with the warning to "whisper low," and remains till break of day. This song or one on which it was founded probably had a wide popularity. The song in the Scots Musical Museum beginning "As I lay on my bed on a night" (No. 581), supposedly transmitted by Burns, is a fragment of three stanzas which evidently have the same original as the first three stanzas of "A Favourite Love Song." A Dorset version collected in 1906 by Mr. Hammond represents the first five stanzas of the ballad.[47]
In a number of badly contaminated songs collected among the modern folk the motive of the night visit is overlaid. A fragment recorded by Mr. Percy Merrick from Sussex is " O, who is that that raps at my window V W5th the warning that the daddy lies in the next chamber and the mammy has sharp ears, the girl bids her lover, "Begone, begone, and court some other, And whisper softly in my ear."[48] The song " I will put my ship in order "[49] contains the stanza:
"Awake, awake, ye lovely sleeper,
The sun is spreading the break of day."
"Oh, who is this at my bower window,
That speaks lovingly to me?"
"It is your own true constant lover,
That would now have some words with thee."
The lover here wakens the lady to ask not for admittance but for the parents' consent to marriage. The father "is in his chamber sleeping" and the mother "in her bower dressing," says the girl, and she too bids him begone and court another. But when she sees him leave, she breaks out with the cry, "Oh, are ye gone, love, are ye gone, love?" The closely related song quoted by Cunningham in his Works of Burns (1834) [50] as "an old Nithsdale song" opens:
"Who is this under my window?
Who is this that troubles me?"
"O, it is I, love, and none but I, love,
I wish to speak one word with thee."
I judge that Cunningham did not forge this opening at any rate. A song collected by Mr. Sharp, "Arise, arise, you drowsy maiden," [51] uses much of the conventional phraseology, but develops the narrative interest differently. Though no attempt has been made to deal with instances where the conventions of the night visit have affected other themes, I mention these songs because, along with the stanza from "The Secret Lover," they support the theory that the opening of the sixteenth century moralization "Quho is at my windo, quho, quho?" followed closely the form of some popular song.
The lines which I have quoted from these related modern songs bear a strong resemblance to corresponding parts of some of the lieder connected with the custom of fenstern. One illustration will be sufficient:
"Wer ist denn dafiir?
Wer klopft an der Thtir? " —
"SchOnster Schatz, ich steh allhier,
Ich komm aus Lieb zu dir:
Mach mir auf die Thtir! "[52]
The " Begone, begone " of the seventeenth century English songs is paralleled by the "Geh, geh, geh du nur fort!" of another of these German songs.[53] An illustration from French songs is found in a single stanza of " Rossignolet du bois joli," which Tiersot calls the oldest "serenade d'amour" transmitted to us by popular tradition: [54]
Amant qui fit' sous ma fenetre,
Je vous prie de vous retirer,
Car la nuit s'en va,
Et le jour viendra,
Ma mer' grondera;
Amant retirez-vous de la.
This stanza seems to me to reflect the conventions of the girl's warning to the lover who visits her by night rather than those of the serenade.[55]
The Intrigue Ballad On The Night Visit
An extension of the song on the night visit is found in a ballad of an intrigue type very widespread among the European folk. Several traditional forms collected in England and Scotland show, by reason of similar lines, a very close connection with the old comic song of the London stage. In this ballad a youth visits by agreement an old sweetheart who has married and borne a child, and the wife as she sings to the child warns the lover that her husband has unexpectedly remained at home.
The form of the ballad closest to the Elizabethan song is a mixture of prose tale and song recorded by Baring-Gould as repeated to him by a blacksmith who heard it about I860.[56] The story is of a girl forced by her father to marry a rich old man instead of the poor youth whom she loves. When the husband is away the lover taps on her window and is admitted. One night the lover's signal wakes the husband, who happens to be at home. The wife explains the youth's tapping as the sound of an ivy leaf against the pane, his calling as the hooting of owls. But she rocks the cradle and warns him away in a stanza sung as a lullaby. The lover, not understanding, taps and calls again and again. Each time when the husband asks the wife the meaning of the sound, she frames an explanation and continues her song of warning. At last in despair she springs out of bed to send the lover off with a final stanza sung from the window. The complete song is—
Begone, begone, my Willy, my Billy!
Begone, my love and my dear.
O the wind, and 0 the rain,
They have sent him back again,
So thou can'st not have a lodging here.
Begone, begone, my Willy, my Billy!
Begone, my love and my dear.
O the weather is so warm,
It will never do thee harm,
And thou can'st not have a lodging here.
Begone, begone, my Willy, my Billy!
Begone, my love and my dear.
O the wind is in the West,
And the cuckoo's in his nest,
So thou can'st not have a lodging here.
Begone, begone, my Willy, you silly;
Begone, you fool, yet my dear.
O the devil's in the man,
And he can not understan'
That he cannot have a lodging here. [57]
In 1855 a Liverpool correspondent gave in Notes and Queries the following traditional version:[58] A collier's wife makes an assignation expecting her husband to be in the pit that night. When the lover taps, she sings,
The wind is in the west,
And the cuckoo's in his nest,
And the coal-pit is to-morrow
[Wife nursing] Uz, uz, uz, uz.
The rapping continues.
The wind and the rain
Have driv'n him back again,
And the coal-pit is tomorrow.
Uz, uz, uz, uz.
The lover is still obtuse, and she ends,
And is the foo' so fond,
That he cannot understand
That the coal-pit is tomorrow
Uz, uz, uz, uz.
Buchan records a version [69] which accounts for the fact that the wind has driven the husband home. He is a sailor. A form that is essentially the same as Buchan's is given by W. A. Barrett in English Folk-Songs (No. 26) as traditional. It begins:
Go from my window, my love, my love,
Go from my window, my dear;
The wind is blowing high and the ship is lying by,
So you cannot get a harb'ring here.
Then follow three stanzas with the variations "The wind's in the West, and the cockle's in his nest," "The wind and the rain have brought you back again," and "The devil's in the man that he will not understan'."
This theme of a wife's warning a lover through a lullaby appears in ballads of Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.[60] The German versions printed by Erk and Irmer follow closely the story of the English ballad, but with the refrain "Mein Mann ist zu Haus." The first (No. 49) opens with the wife singing:[61]
Et het geriept un het gefrorn,
drum is min Moan nich ut-gefoahrn;
min Moan is t'Hus, min Moan is tHus,
min Moan, min Moan, min Moan is t'Hus!
Un schloape da, min Kingeken,
schloap du in goder Ruh,
un duh die Oeglen tu! Widiwisch wisch wisch,
widiwisch wisch wisch! un duh die Oeglen tu!
The two remaining stanzas are essentially the same as the last two of the second version (No. 50), which I give in full:
Der Liebhaber auf der Lauer.
(Das Wieb eingt:)
Wenn et regent, da wird et nass,
da fahrt min Man nich na de Stadt.
Min Man is to Hus, min Man is to Hub,
min Man, min Man, min Manneken.
Busse busse busse basse busse busse bei,
Basse busse busse busse busse busse bei!—
Min Man is, etc.
(dm Weib singt)
Gent mir 'nmal den Dummerjahn!
Der kann mir gâr nich recht verstâhn!
Min Mân ia to Hub, etc.
(Der Mann sprioht:)
Weib I was singst' denn daT (Das Weib singt: )
Kann ick nich singen, wat ick will!
Die Goren sehwiegen och gar nich still!
Min Mftn is to Hue, etc.
Of this intrigue ballad I have run across only a fragment in French and that quite recently in an unexpected quarter. It is one of a number of " chansonnettes" said to have been popular in New Orleans fifty years ago which Miss Lydia E. Frotscher has secured in that region and has kindly communicated to me:
Qui frappe, qui cogne,
Mon mari est ici,
Il n'est point & la campagne,
Comme il m'avait promis-imie-mis.
Que dit -tu, ma femme!
J'endort le petit, mon amie, [bis]
If we disregard the use of a lullaby, the motive of a wife's warning a lover of the presence of her husband oecurs early and late in French. It is a wife who is addressed in a song published by Kaynaud from a manuscript belonging to the end of the thirteenth century:
Ovrez moi l'uis, bele très douce amie,
Ovrez moi l'uis dou petit praelet.
Si m'aïst Dieus, ce n'est pas cortoisiej
Ovrez moi l'uis, bele très douce amie.
— [Râlez vos en, vos n'i enterroiz mie,
Car mes mariz, li jalous couz, i est.
— Ovres moi l'uis, bele très douce amie,
Ovrez moi l'uis dou petit praelet.[62]
The popular refrain here may be much older than the rest of the song, and may have attached itself because of its long use in the more primitive type of song on the night visit. At any rate the basis of our intrigue ballad is here shown to have developed by the end of the thirteenth century.
I have already mentioned the Norman "Chanson des oreillers" used in the peasant marriage. It is a pure dialogue chanted by two "voices." In the first part a knight complains of the loss of his love and is directed to rap three times on the door of his lady. In the second part the knight demands, "Belle, ouvrez votre porte, nouvelle marine." The wife cannot open for she is with her husband, but she bids the lover return in the early morning when her husband will be "a sa journee." He replies that he and his horse suffer from the cold—though he brings the lady flowers from the "garden of the king." The bride yields. The symbolism which Scheffler discusses as underlying this little drama [63] is, I think, less obvious than its basis in an old song on the lover's visit
Among the ballads of the folk dealing with the night visit, the form in which the woman is married would, as it seems to me, represent a late developmenW. In sophisticated literary treatments, however, such a form is to be expected. The courtly aube ordinarily portrays the lady as a wife.
The Aube
In medieval Germany, France, Provence, and Italy, hosts of tagelieder and aubes, both of the folksinger and of the courtly poet, celebrated the parting of lovers at dawn after a night passed together secretly. The conventions of the type are fairly definite. The songs vary, however, from simple forms in which the lovers, waked by the sun or the singing of birds, reluctantly part, to artificial forms in which a watcher on the walls, set to give warning, announces day, and the lovers enter into an elaborate complaint that the night is past or a debate as to whether the day is really at hand.[64]
The aube has left its impress on medieval English literature also, though apparently there was no such vogue of the type in England as on the Continent. Thus a short passage in the romance King Alisaunder not only refers to the parting at dawn but uses the imagery of nature met in great numbers of medieval aubes :85
Mury hit is in sonne-risynge I
The rose openith and unspryng;
Weyes faireth, the clayes clyng; V
The maidens flourith, the foulis syng;
Damosele makith mornyng,
Whan hire leof makith pertyng!
Chaucer has several times made use of the aube situa
•* For the aube and its conventions see Schlaeger, Studien Uber das Tagelied; de Gruyter, Das deutsche Tagelied; Frankel, Shakespeare und das Tagelied; Jeanroy, Lea Origines de la poisie lyrique en France, pp. 61-101, 141-45; Gaston Paris, Journal des Bavants, 1892, pp. 161-67; Be^ier, Revue des deux Uondes, 1906, "it, 419. 24; etc.
"See Weber, Metrical Romances, I, 122 (11. 2901-6). This reference was given to me by Miss Emma F. Pope.
tion and conventions. In Troilus and Criseyde after the first night visit of Troilus, the dawn is thus described:
the oak, comune astrologer,
Gan on his breat to bete, and after crowe,
And Lucifer, the dayes messager,
Gan for to ryae, and out hir bemea throwe.
Then follows Criseyde's warning to Troilus, "tyme it is to ryse, and hennes go," and a long complaint by the lovers in turn, against the passing of the night and the coming of the day. On the second visit, which is more briefly treated, the lovers at the sign of approaching dawn rail against day,
Calling it traytour, envyous, and worse,
And bitterly the dayes light they curse."
In the "dompleynt of Mars," again, at dawn on St. Valentine's Day "a foul" is heard announcing day to lovers "that lye in any drede," and singing of the visit of Mars to Venus, of the coming of Phoebus, and of the elaborate complaint made by Mars. The "Compleynt of Mars'1 seems to me a more typical aube than the early French poem beginning " TJn petit devant le jor." 67
A vogue of the aube in medieval popular song, of Scotland at least, is reasonably to be inferred from a number of titles preserved. The tune "Joly lemman dawis it not day" is recorded in CoUceThie Sou;** probably written about the middle of the fifteenth century. This song can bardly have been other than an aube, and the interrogative form with the address to the lady suggests the conventional debate. Not a question but an announcement of dawn
"Book in, 11. 1415-1533 and 1695-1712. Pointed out by Padalford, Cambridge Hist. Eng. Lit., n, 444. "See Bartsch, Altfranzositche Romanzen vnd PastoweUen, No. 38. "Laing, Early Popular Poetry of Scotland, I, 193.
forms the title either of a single song variously recorded or of a number of closely related songs. In Dunbar's "Merchantis of Edinburgh" it is said,
Your commone menstrallis hes no tone,
But "Now the day dawis" and "Into Joun,"
and Douglas' prologue to the thirteenth book of his translation of the Aeneid contains the line, "As menstralis playng, The joly day now dawis." A refrain in an English manuscript of about 1500 seems to preserve a fragment of a popular aube: 69
This day day dawea
this gentill day day dawes
this gentill day dawes
& I must home gone.
Probably in the popular repertoire of Great Britain the aube was a favorite type, represented by many individual songs that varied but showed a close kinship.
In the case of " Now the day dawis" as of " Go from my window " our earliest clue to the form which the theme took in popular song is found in a Scotch moralization from the Oude and Oodlie Ballatis.70 In the first stanza, which is distinguished from the rest by its more lyrical quality, there is clearly an effort to match the phraseology of the aube:
Hay now the day dallis,
Now Christ on vs callis,
Now welth on our wallis
Apperis anone:
Now the Word of God Regnes:
Quhilk is King of all Hingis,
Now Christis flock singis,
The nycht is neir gone.
"See Fltigel, Neuenglisches Lesebuch, pp. 159-60, 444; from Brit. Mus. Add. Ms. 5465. wEd. Mitchell, Scottish Text Society, pp. 192-95.
We have here the announcement of dawn, the chorus of birds as represented by "Christis flock," and the appearance of a watcher on the walls. This last is a courtly touch which so far as I know is found nowhere else in the literature of Great Briatin. We may be fairly certain, however, that in the lines " Now welth on our wailis Apperis anone" the moralizer was following a formula already established in popular song.
This moralization is the more interesting when set by the side of a later adaptation of the aube found in the opening stanza of one of Montgomery's poems: 71
Hay I nou the day dauis;
The jolie Cok crauis;
Nou ehroudis the shauis,
Throu Natur anone.
The thissell-cok cryis
On louers vha lyis.
Non skaillis the skyia:
The nicht is neir gone.
In spite of the very close correspondence of the two stanzas in form, they may have had different originals. Montgomery's aube in the absence of the watcher seems to belong to a simpler tradition.
There are in later literature a number of references to the tune "JSTow the day dawes" and some apparent echoes of the song. In many cases if the expression is a reflection of the aube the original meaning has faded out with the passage of time. "Now the day dawes" evidently developed into a hunt's-up or general morning song. 72
n Poems of Montgomerie, ed. Cranstoun, Scottish Text Society, pp. 193-94, 371-72.
* There may be an allusion to the song in the sixteenth century "Tayia Bank" (Laing, Early Popular Poetry of Bootland, I, 171):
Conversely, the hunt's-up, originally a hunting song, became in some of its forms a general serenade and was turned to a warning of lovers. The office of the human watcher seems to be reflected here. Ritson quotes the song:
The hunt is up,
The hunt is up,
And now it is almost day;
And he that's in bed with another man's wife,
It's time to get him away."
Among the many Elizabethan references to hunt's-up as a serenade or morning song, several clearly show its use
The nythingall woik of hir nest
Singing the day vpdawis.
The StTachlach MS. (1627) contains an air entitled " The day dawis." Adamson, The Muses Threnodie (1638), pp. 65, 67, refers four times to "Hey the day now dawnes," speaking of it as a celebrated eong used by boatmen and others to awaken companions. "The Life and Death of the Piper of Kilbarchan" in Watson's Collection of Soots Poems (1706), p. 32, has the lines,
Now who shall play, the day it daws?
Or hunt up, when the Cock he craws?
Burns wrote his "Scots wha hae" and "Landlady, count the lawin, The day is near the dawin" to the tune "Hey, tutti taitie, or Hey now the day dawes," and a tradition speaks of the tune as used at Bannockburn (see Dick, Songs of Burns, pp. 431, 448-51). "Bridekirk's Hunting," printed by Gray in his edition of Carliell's Deserving Favourite, p. 174, has the refrain:
The Cock's at the crawing,
The day's at the dawning,
The Cock's at crawing,
We're o'er long here.
■ Ancient Songs and Ballads, ed. Hazlitt, p. lxvii. Ritson does not indicate his source, but Chappell, Old English Popular Music (1893), I, 87, refers this version to the New Academy of Complements, 1649, and Merry Drollery Complete, 1661.
as a warning to lovers to part. Cotgrave, under resveil, makes hunt's-up synonymous with a morning song for a new married wife. In Barnfield's Affectionate Shepherd a maiden promises that each day at dawn "Siluanus Chappel-Clarkes" shall chant her love a lay and play him hunt's-up to rouse him in her bower. At the end of the aube embedded in Romeo and Juliet (in, 5) Juliet says of the lark's song,
arm from arm that voice doth us affray, Hunting thee hence with hunt's-up to the day."
Shakspere's aube is too familiar to call for quotation or analysis. Like that of Montgomery, it is simple in its conventions. No appointed watcher warns the lovers, but the lark as "herald of the morn." Of Juliet's effort to
"See Chappell, I, 88-89, for these and other references to hunt'sup. Padelford, Cambridge Hist. Eng. Lit., n, 444, connects with the aube tradition the little song from Harleian MS. 2252 beginning "Mornyng, mornyng." Coverdale's "Wake up, wake up, ye Christen men" is apparently based on a German moralization of the aube of the watcher type (Herford, Studies in the Literary Relations of England and Germany, p. 15). A moral ballad "a Ryse and wake," which was entered on the Stationers' Register in 1557, is preserved in Ashmole us. 48, ed. Wright, Songs and Ballads (Roxburghe Club), No. 52 (cf. Rollins, Mod. Lang. Notes, xrxrv, 346). Similar are Nos. 30 and 33 in the same collection—"Awak, all fethfull h&rttes, awake" and "Awak, rych men, for shame, and here." Other early entries on the Register are "Awake awake o thow man mortall," Sept. 4, 1564, and "awake out of your slumbre," 1568-9 {Transcript, I, 74, 262, 382). See Wyt and Science (Shakespeare Society), pp. 89-92, and Collier, Stationers' Register (Shakespeare Society), I, 186-87, for a eong of the type. In Bhirbum Ballads, ed. Clark, No. Xliv, there is a ballad entitled "Rise up, my darling," intended for the bridal morn, which introduces dawn, the crowing of the cock, and the singing of birds. It is sung to the tune of "The Bride's Goodmorrow," found in Ro&burghe Ballads, I, 62-64. The morning serenade is represented also in a moralized ballad (Shirburn Ballads, No. XLm) sung to the tune "Awake, awake, 0 England."
delay the separation by declaring the song that of the nightingale instead of the lark, Gaston Paris has said: "C'est probablement dans quelque ballade imitée du français que Shakespeare aura trouvé ce motif, qu'il a immortalisé; la forme qu'il en offre paraît même plus ancienne et plus complète que celles que nous avons conservées: au lieu de donner simplement un démenti à l'alouette, Juliette essaye de se persuader que son chant matinal est le chant nocturne du rossignol, et tel doit bien avoir été le thème primitif." 76 The conventions of Shakspere's dialogue were no doubt derived ultimately from the French,76 for the medieval English lyric seems to have come chiefly from French sources. But Shakspere probably found in English song all of the details that he used. The coming of dawn, the song of birds, the grief of the lovers we have already seen in English poetry. Romeo's
I'll eay yon grey is not the morning's eye,
Tig but ithe pale reflex of Cynthia's brow
"Journal des Savants, 1892, p. 163. Several writers had already called attention to the aube features of Romeo and Juliet. Victor Smith, Romania, vn, 57, says that Shakspere's passage "avait un précédent dans une vieille chanson français où l'amant nocturne dit à son amie que vient de frapper le chant de l'alouette,
Il n'est mie jours,
Saverouze au cors gent:
Si ment, amours,
L'alowette nos ment."
"To see how closely Shakspere's conventions correspond to those of the French aube, it is necessary only to read Gaston Paris'» analysis of the aube, loo. oit., pp. 162-63. See also Jeanroy, Les Origines de la poésie lyrique en France, pp. 68-69; and Raynaud, Recueil de Motets, n, 4-5, for the refrains " Est it jorsî " and " L'abe c'apeirt au jor." De Gruyter, Dos deutsche Tagelied, pp. 28-29, calls attention to the use of allusions to dawn in the minnesingers; see pp. 57-59 and 101-2 for later songs. Frilnkel in Shakespeare und das Tagelied tries to trace Shakspere's details to German songs.
is paralleled 77 in the traditional English aube " The Grey
Cock" (Child, No. 248),
The lassie thought it day when she sent her love away,
And it was but a blink of the moon.
Although the theme of the lark and the nightingale as found in Romeo and Juliet cannot be traced in England, the nightingale was a favorite in the popular love lyric of England before Shakspere's day, and medieval songs on the nightingale survive showing a poetic beauty and a delicacy of fancy which make it easy to believe that the English folk might also have possessed the original of Shakspere's aube.78 Again in the parting of the lovers in
"Jeanroy (p. 69, n. 2) cites the motive from so remote a quarter as an ancient Chinese source. Wood-Martin, Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland, rr, 34, gives a traveler's account (about 1830) of a wedding in Ireland at which a marriage song was eung by a chorus—literally translated:
It is not day, nor yet day,
It is not day, nor yet morning;
It is not day, nor yet day,
For the moon is shining brightly.
"See Furnivall, Laneham's Letter, pp. cxxviii, cxxxi (and also Anglia, xn, 262-65) for two songs from Royal MS. Appendix 53, "The lytyll prety nyghtyne gale" and "By a bancke as I lay." Both are mentioned by Moros of The Longer thou Livest in his medley of popular songs. "By a bancke as I lay" is included in. Laneham's list of Captain Cox's popular songs, and is said to have been a favorite earlier with Henry VIII (Furnivall, crxxi-cxxxii).
Among the popular tunes to which the Bishop of Ossory adapted religious songs in the middle of the fourteenth century (see 1 N. and Q., rr, 385) one which was used twice is
Do. Do. nightyngale syng ful myrie
Shal y nevre for zyn love lengre karie.
(See also in the same list "Hey how ra chevaldouree woke al nyght.") See Marsh, " The Flower and the Leaf," Modern Philology, rv, 40-43, for the prevalence of the nightingale in love poetry.
Troilus and Cressida (iv, 2) Shakspere has echoed the conventions of the aube. The " busy day" is "wak'd by the lark," and the lovers cry out on the swiftness of the night. The motive is not developed, however.
In a lyric "Break of Day," apparently written by Donne but popular in the song books of the early seventeenth century, the aube conventions form the point of departure for a characteristic development of courtly wit:79
Stay, O sweet, and do not rise;
The light that shines comes from thine eyes;
The day breaks not, it is my heart,
Because that you and I . must part.
Stay, or else my joys will die
And perish in their infancy.
The conceits of the metaphysical poet overshadow the conventions of the type.
The Traditional English Aube
Only one English aube has come down in tradition. It survives in several versions and has been confused with other motives in a number of traditional ballads, but the nucleus shows little variation. A girl commands the cock to crow at daybreak, and promises him a reward. But the cock crows too soon, so that the lover is sent away
* Muses Library, I, 22. In 1612 the lyric appeared in Gibbons' First Set of Madrigals and in Dowland's Pilgrim's Solace, in the last with an additional stanza. It was used as the opening of some versions of Donne's related Jyric, "'Tis true 'tis day. What though it be?" See Fellowes, English Madrigal Verse, pp. 99, 263, 395, 443, 616-17. A parting song without the conventional features of the aube except in the refrain "For now the morning draweth near" or "now day is near," is found in the opening song of Attey's First Book of Airs, 1622. '* Open the door, who's there within" in Peerson's Private Music, 1620, ie a song of the lover's plea for before dawn.80 This song I believe to be as old at least as the middle of the fifteenth century, for one of the dances mentioned in Colkelbie Sow 81 has the title "Cok craw thou quhill day." There is no reason to doubt that thia line represents the girl's command to the cock to warn the lover in time but not to disturb him too soon. The corresponding line in modern versions is " And craw whan it fe day," 82 "But crow not until it be day," 84 "Don't you crow till 'tis almost day," 84 etc. Perhaps another early echo of the song is found in a manuscript medley written in a song book of 1530, beginning, "Behold & see how byrds dothe fly coke crow mydey pype mery," 8S etc.
At any rate from the end of the eighteenth century on, several versions of songs and ballads have been collected in folk-lore of which the following is the basis:
Fly up, fly up, my bonny bonny cock,
But crow not until it be day;
And your breast shall be made of the burnish'd gold,
And your wings of the silver grey.
entrance, sophisticated like Donne's lyric, but with the conventional phrase of the opening repeated in "I dare not ope .the doox," Mid with a closing line "Therefore depart, you shall not kiss me." Campion's treatment of the motive, "Shall I come, sweet love, to thee, When the evening beams are set?" closes with a reference to the lover's freezing without but has even less of the conventional phraseology. See Fellowes, op. tit., pp. 158, 305, 357.
"In one of Meleager's "Epigrams" of the aube type the cock is the watcher and wakes the lovers too soon (Frankel, Shakespeare und das Tagelied, p. 44, n. 4). See de Oruyter, Das deutsche Tage~ Ued, p. 143 and note, for a Slavic poem in which the lover gives the cock wheat that it may not crow too soon, and for a reference to a similar Hungarian folk song.
■ Laing, Early Popular Poetry of Scotland, t, 193.
"Herd's. See Child, No. 248.
-IN. and Q., xn, 227.
"Sharp, English Folk Bongs from the Southern Appalachians, p. 128.
"See Anglia, xn, 596, n. 3.
But the cock he proved false, and very very false,
For he crow'd full an hour too soon;
The lassie thought it day,
And she sent her love away,
When 'twas only the glimpse of the moon.
This version, contributed to Notes and Queries 88 in 1852 by a correspondent who remembered it from about 1787, I should regard as the purest form left, largely on account of the perfection of its language. In lilt and in logic it is superior to all the other versions.
This aube is best known in the form printed by Herd in Ancient and Modern Scots Songs as "The Grey Cock." 87 In the edition of 1769 the song consisted of four stanzas:
"0 saw ye my father f or saw ye my mother?
Or saw ye my true-love John 1"
"I saw not your father, I saw not your mother,
But I saw your true-love John."
Up Johny rose, and to the door he goes,
And gently tirlSd the pin;
"First Series, VI, 227. See also Sixth Series, xn, 224.
** See Child, No. 248. Child discusses English variants of the song and refers to related foreign songs. I have had to quote the stanzas on the authority of Child and from the second form of Herd as given by Child. Ohappoll, Popular Music of the Olden Time, p. 731, gives a variant of Herd's early form in five stanzas from the second edition of Vocal Music or the Songster's Companion, n, 36 (first edition in 1770, second in 1772), and refers to various contemporaneous appearances of the words and the air in London. Unaware of the 1769 edition of Herd, Chappell considered the tune and words English. The air was published in Edinburgh in Stewart's Collection of Scots Songs, 1772 (Glen, Early Scottish Melodies, pp. 54-55). Child, quoting Chappell in part, does not take up the problem of the relation of the various versions and airs in the earliest collections. Possibly the song appeared in some printed form earlier than any so far noted, but the other versions cited here make it clear that it was an old traditional song not greatly modified.
The lassie taking tent unto the door she went,
And she opend and let him in.
"Flee, flee up, my bonny grey cock,
And craw whan it is day;
Your neck shall be like the bonny beaten gold,
And your wings of the silver grey."
The cock prov'd false, and untrue he was,
For he crew an hour oer soon;
The lassie thought it day when she sent her love away,
And it was but a blink of the moon.
In the edition of 1776 Herd enlarged this version hy three stanzas. Two of them are in keeping with the rest. The "surly auld carl" of the third may have crept in from some related ballad on the night visit; he ia at least not sufficiently explained as the ballad stands.
In 1916 Mr. Cecil Sharp collected at Hot Springs, North Carolina, a version of "The Grey Cock " 88 that is extremely corrupt but clearly corresponds in part to Herd's first version. After a garbled chanson d'aventure opening89 and a reference to the father and mother, Johnny " dingles at the ring " and is admitted:
She says: O you feathered fowls, you pretty feathered fowls,
Don't you crow till 'tis almost day,
■ English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, pp. 128-29.
"All on one Bummer's evening when the fever were a-dawning I heard a fair maid make a mourn.
Such an opening was used by old singers with almost any theme of song or ballad, but that a long standing tradition is represented in its use with "The Grey Cock" is indicated by the fact that "Willie's Fatal Visit" (Child, No. 265) opens with stanzas from a form of "The Grey Cock" which begins,
'Twas on an evening fair I went to take the air,
I heard a maid making her moan.
There is at least no possibility of borrowing in this case.
And your comb it shall be of the pure ivory
And your wings of the bright silveree [or silver grey).
But him a-being young, he crowed very soon,
He crowed two long hours before day;
And she sent her love away, for she thought 'twas almost day,
And 'twas all by the light of the moon.
Two stanzas are added in which the girl asks her lover when he will return and receives the reply,
When the seventh moon is done and passed and shines on
yonder lea,
And you know that will never be.
Then she laments her trust in one who has proved false.
The opening pair of stanzas in "The Grey Cock" follow, corruptly, the conventions of the "Open the door" type of song. There are references to the father and mother; the lover comes and seeks admittance; the girl lets him in. The next pair of stanzas depict the warning of the cock and the lover's departure. If the close of the North Carolina version is a genuine relic of antiquity, as the formula of Impossibilities suggests, the song may have contained two final stanzas giving the girl's complaint in some form.
In a ballad printed by Joseph Robertson in 1830 (Child, No. 43) showing a confusion of the aube with the motive of "Broomfield Hill," the complaint is added to the stanzas of "The Grey Cock" which tell of the command to the cock and of his betrayal of the trust:
If I had him but agen, she says,
O if I but had him agen
The best grey cock that ever crew at morn
Should never bereave me o's charm.
The impossibility of the lover's return in Sharp's version may be reminiscent of the ghostly or the supernatural lover. A confusion of ballads on the ghostly visitant with a ballad developed out of the aube tradition would be very natural, especially since the crowing of the cock was the signal of departure for ghosts as well as lovers. In a ballad printed by Joyce 90 it is the lady who has returned from the grave and, wishing to remain with her lover as long as possible, uses substantially the stanza of address to the cock found in " The Grey Cock." She promises him a comb of gold and wings of silver if he will not crow before day. The phraseology in the early part of "Sweet William's Ghost" (Child, No. 77) shows again a confusion of the night visit in " The Grey Cock" with the motive of the ghostly lover. There is no command to the cock, but his crowing warns the ghost. In Motherwell's version:
"The cocks they are crowing, Marjory," he says,
"The cocks they are crawing again;
It's time the deid should part the quick,
Marjorie, I must be gane.,,PI
The fondness of the ballad singer for the supernatural may have made him cast the theme of the lover's secret visit in the mold of his ghost ballad after the custom of the night visit had lost its meaning.
The utmost confusion of these motives is found in "Willie's Fatal Visit" (Child, No. 255). The first half of it, says Child, is a medley of " Sweet William's Ghost," "Clerk Saunders," and "The Grey Cock," and he proceeds to parcel it out to these ballads, adding that stanza 13 comes from " Clyde's Water" and that 15-17, "wherever they came from, are too good for the setting." But
"Old Irish Folk Music and Bongs (1909), p. 219.
"See also No. 77 A, stanza 14; F, 7; G, 3. The first and last mention two cocks of different colors. See Cromek, TfithsdaU and Galloway Bongs, p. 94, for a refrain "O dinna leave me, lad, till our twa cocks craw" introduced into "The Bridal Sark."
"Sweet William's Ghost" had been contaminated by "Clerk Saunders" (No. 77, B and F), and it is not surprising to find them both confused with "The Grey 'Cock" in this ballad. The motive of the lover's night visit and of the ghost's visit are crudely neglected, however, in " Willie's Fatal Visit," and the modern balladist, to explain the tragedy of the cock's waking the lovers while the moon was still shining, has attached an ending drawn from some ballad or superstition of the type that motived "Tarn o' Shanter." Without doubt the combination is relatively modern, and Buchan, who is our sole authority for the ballad, may have tampered with it, but the result is probably in the main the product of the folk singer.
Jeanroy argues, very naturally, that the more primitive type of aube is that in which the matins of birds incidentally wake the lovers.92 Of this type are the English aubes, as I have said, with the exception of the moralized form in the (hide and Oodlie Ballatis. In Troilus and Criseyde the cock is the herald of day; in Montgomery's poem, the cock and the thrush; in Borneo and Juliet, the lark.
"Methinks I hear the thresel-cock,
Methinks I hear the jaye,"
MLes Origines de la poc'sie lyrique en France, pp. 66-70. See also Gaston Paris, Journal des Savants, 1892, pp. 161-64, and for German songs using birds incidentally, de Gruyter, Das deutsche Tagelied, pp. 29, 30, 102-3. Jeanroy and Gaston Paris (pp. 165-167) see a natural development from the watcher independent of the lovers, who simply wakes them when in the pursuit of his duty he sounds his "reveille," to one who is their accomplice, and finally to a faithful companion of the lover who takes the rOle of watcher. It is a question, I think, whether this faithful companion may not belong to an older and more primitive tradition than the watcher on the walls of the feudal castle, and represent the lover's friend and accomplice in the folk custom of the night visit.
says the lover of "Little Musgrave and Lady Barnard" (Child, No. 81), where an aube situation occurs. But the cock that crows too soon in the folk aube of England is not incidental. He is an appointed watcher, and apparently belongs to the lady's chamber.
The conception of a household bird that is a watcher in one form or another, whether as ally of the lovers or as * guardian of the family honor, is at least as old in England as Oesta Bomancrum and is found running through a large number of traditional ballads. In Oesta Romanorum 83 the story is told of the three cocks belonging to the household of a knight whose wife one night admits a lover in her husband's absence. The first cock crows in a way which the maid servant interprets to the mistress as meaning, "thow dost thin husbonde wronge"—and his neck is wrung. The second, equally hardy, meets the same fate. The third learns wisdom and is saved. The rhyming English lines which interpret the " songs " of the cocks in this tale may be ascribed with little hesitation to popular song or ballad.
In the traditional ballad the idea of a bird as an appointed watcher comes out in Buchan's version of " Willie and Lady Maisry" (Child, No. 70), where the father, roused from his sleep by the coming of the lover, asks why his house cock has not crowed. Later the house cock is made the equivalent of the son. There is some confusion here, and possibly a reflection of an older ballad or another form. In " The Bonny Birdy" (Child, No. 82) the bird of the lady's chamber reveals to the husband the night visit of a lover. Ramsay has printed in Tea- Table Miscellany94 a pure dialogue between a husband and
"Ed. Herrtage, E. E. T. S., pp. 174-77.
"n, 50-51.
a parrot in which the parrot betrays the presence of a lover with the wife. In " Young Hunting" (No. 68) a lady during a night visit kills a lover who is about to desert her. She attempts in vain to bribe her bird to come down to her hand—in different versions a parrot, magpie, popinjay, or simply a " bonny bird "—and is betrayed. The motive of bribing a parrot is added to several versions of " Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight" (No. 4 C, D, E, F). The conception of the parrot as the watcher seems to be merely a modern attempt to explain the supernatural bird with the power of speech, just as the promise of a golden cage in a number of these ballads is an effort to rationalize the promise of splendid plumage in "The Grey Cock." In "The Gay Goshawk" the bird is messenger and ally of the lovers.95
The cock is the "bonny bird" of the lady's chamber in a lyric from a manuscript 96 of about 1450:
I haue a gentil cook
crowyt me day,
He doth me rysyn erly
my matyina for to say.
& euery nyyt he perchit hym
in myn ladyis chaumbyr.
The elegance of this cock, with his comb of coral, his tail of jet, his legs of azure, his spurs of silver white, is like that of Chaucer's "gentil cok" Chauntecleer.97 To the same tradition belong the breast of burnished gold and the
"Child, No. 96. See Child's remarks on birds as posts in ballads, and Napier, "Old Ballad Folk-Lore," Folk-Lore Record, n, 107-9, for other instances.
"Sloane 2593. See Cambridge Hist. Eng. Lit., n, 444-45. Padelford conjectures from its form that this song is of considerable antiquity.
"" Nonne Preestes Tale," H. 39-44.
wings of silver gray promised the Grey Cock as a reward for faithfulness to the lovers.98
General Peoblems
Many questions of a general character naturally arise in regard to this whole body of song, but an attempt to answer them leads into conclusions highly conjectural. I can only offer a few suggestions.
Originally the custom which allowed a youth - secret access to his lady by night was probably, as I have already said, celebrated in many distinct songs of various forms. The most widespread or popular of these might be expected to live on after similar pieces had largely died out through the decadence of the custom, and to be preserved partly through their absorption into forms with a narrative or dramatic appeal. One of the interesting prob
**A volume could be written on the cock in religion and especially in connection with the household. The ancient conios dressed at times as cocks (Flickinger, The Greek Theater and its Drama, p. 38). Cock dances are represented on Greek vases (Dieterich, PuldneUa, pp. 237 ff.), and traces of similar customs are found in modern mummers' plays (Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine, XI, 33) and children's games (Gomme, Traditional Games, I, 72-74). The code was indispensable at Shrovetide and figured in other festivals (Studies in Philology, xvn, 39; Folk-Lore, xiv, 186; 4 N. and Q., xn, 464-65). 'He represented the corn spirit (Frazer, Spirits of Corn, n, 276-78). In both ancient and modern times he was sacrificed for health (4 N. and Q., n, 505-6; Folk-Lore, xm, 56) and omens were taken from him (4 N. and Q., m, 130-31, 432. See index to The Golden Bough). In general his function was protective (1 N. and Q,, m, 404; Folk-Lore, x, 262-63; 10 N and Q., ix, 486). He was significant in marriage (Blakeborough, Yorkshire Wit, p. 93; Romania, ix, 554). Apparently he was the guardian of the home and at a later period of its morality (3 N. and Q., XOT, 478; Grimm, Teutonic Mythology, trans. Stallybrass, pp. 670-71, 1486). To extend these references see Folk-Lore or Revue des traditions populaires, passim.
lems connected with the surviving English songs of the night visit is the probable nature of the medieval songs from which they were derived.
The most consistent element in the group of songs and ballads in which the " Open the door" motive appears is a dialogue of two stanzas, the first containing the lover's plea to be admitted and his complaint of the weather, the second containing the girl's warning of the presence of her parents and her conventional refusal to let him in. I judge that these stanzas represent an early lyric nucleus which with slight modification has found its way into various types of song where the appropriate situation occurs. That the germinal song developed early is indicated by the use of the dialogue, with almost the same form and wording, among the folk in remote parts of France and Great Britain, at different periods and in different types of literature. In the same way the popular English aube, of the cock that proved false, seems to have developed around a lyric core of two stanzas, one giving the command to the cock, the other telling of his betrayal of the trust. Both these hypothetical lyrics belong to a type of song prevalent in the middle ages, and in keeping with the lyric expression of folk emotion and experience to be found in countries like Italy and Ireland, where ballads have had only a secondary vogue.
Possibly both these songs were dance carols. They might well have been sung by a foresinger and chorus, or better by two choruses of dancers. The one on the coming of the lover is a wooing dialogue appropriate to dance, and its use as a favorite dance carol would readily explain its spread over France and England and the persistence of its kernel in so many settings. Dramatic in form, it would easily find its way into the dramatic games of the folk at a time when such songs flourished at folk weddings, and song dramas represented the play of youths and maidens— before folk games weathered into singing games of children. This suggestion of an origin in dance carols accords with the results of most students of folk song, who have been led to the conclusion that among primitive folk the great number of popular songs are connected with the dance.
A further problem is that of the development of the ballads using the conventional formula of the night visit Coincidences of language in the modern forms of traditional ballads are evidently due in most cases to an extensive borrowing from each other and to the singer's tendency in picturing similar situations to drop into the same formulas of expression. Such modification is clear enough in the tragic ballads cited from Child. In the case of "Clerk Saunders " the "Open the door" convention does not appear in our earliest form, but has apparently crept in later under the influence of other songs. On the other hand, the song "Let me in this ae night" collected by Herd is an example of what seem to me forms little leveled down by tradition. In both France and England ballads on the night visit which use the conventional lines have a variety of openings and endings. Some, moreover, show only the slightest narrative element added to the kernel; others represent a considerable expansion. Possibly the process has not been altogether one of the survival of the fittest by which the favored lines came to supplant all rivals in ballads picturing the night visit. Perhaps at a period when the practice furnished a stock theme for popular song, the folk minstrel frequently chose the familiar lyric as a point of departure for the weavings of his fancy.
Only in the vaguest way is it possible to suggest the period at which the ballads of the lover's secret visit originated. The custom belongs undoubtedly to a social life essentially tribal. The lyric which I have regarded as representing the original nucleus of the " Open the door" motive in English song probably arose while the custom was in full swing but not in its most primitive stage. Tho home, mother and father, doors, windows appear freely in the picture. On the other hand, the group of songs and ballads studied here, taken together, seem clearly to illustrate aspects of medieval social life in a transitional stage—aspects of which society was becoming at least very conscious. In "Glasgerion" the custom of the night visit is apparently taken for granted even in the court," but a more formal organization of society is suggested by the disgrace of the lady because she is visited by a churl's son who passes himself off as the highborn lover at the clandestine meeting. "Clerk Saunders," "Willie and Lady Maisry," and " The Bent sae Brown" show the tradition of the young lover's freedom to visit his lady by night as coming into sharp conflict with a conception of family honor which represents a newer social ideal. The traditional ballads seem to me to reflect the final stages of the custom of the night visit among the upper classes.
Nothing that has been said contributes definitely towards solving the general problems of the origin and relation of the forms of medieval song. Even if it were proved that the similar English songs with the lover's plea "Open the door" went back to a single brief medieval
"See Wright, History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments, pp. 261-62, 273-75, for passages from medieval romances and fabliaux which show that men had access to the bed-chambers of ladies, where they conducted themselves with easy familiarity.
lyric used as a dance carol, there would still be no evidence here against an extensive parallel development of narrative songs on the night visit or against the use of these ballads as an accompaniment to the dance. Yet to my mind we have in the group of diverse but closely related modern songs studied suggestions of a more tangible sort than are usually found as to the origin and transmission of folk song. A fairly constant factor in them, lyric rather than narrative in emphasis, suggests origin in a lyric, probably a carol, describing a phase of primitive wooing. But there is no evidence that a popular song could be a static thing in tradition or survive for centuries in an essentially primitive form. In the course of transmission modification must have been constant, and the emphasis seems to have shifted to the narrative side in a variety of ways. Indications are that by expansion ballads freely grew out of a lyric nucleus. Moreover, during the modern period of several centuries—though this may be discounted as a period of decay—wherever there was an appropriate occasion for using the epic formulas of the night visit, the folk singer has clearly carried lines or even stanzas from one song or set of songs to another. It has already been pointed out that the coloring and phraseology of the night visit have been preserved even when the motive was used merely as the basis of an intrigue ballad. "Willie's Fatal Visit" illustrates the case of a modern ballad composer or compiler's giving the situation of the night visit an entirely new motivation while retaining what may have been the lines of a medieval lyric celebrating an aspect of primitive social life.
Charles Read Baskeevtll
1 See Crawley, The Mystio Rose, pp. 215-16, 219, 328, 332; Macculloch, The Childhood of Fiction, 335-36, and references given there.
2 See Potter, Bohrab and Rustem, pp. 131-32; 11 Notes and Queries, I, 66, 176-77.
3 See Potter, Bohrab and Rust cm, p. 116, for the relation of a man to the clan of his wife until a child is born, and p. 135, n. 1, for the husband's secret visit to his wife for a year among the Circassians.
4 See Antiquary, v, 41-50; Potter, pp. 131-32; Gomme, Traditional Games, I, 292-93; Studies in Philology, xvn, 38; Frazer, Balder the Beautiful, I, 109-10 (in the Vosges).
5 See Antiquary, v, 142; Bolte, Alemannia, xrv, 189-93 (a sixteenth century song of a group of German maidens demanding that H girl forsake her husband or return the bride-ball to the group). Compare related customs in Folk-Lore, xxvn, 270-274, and Potter, pp. 131-32.
6 Miss Broadwood refers to Ernst Buss, "Volksjustiz der Nachtbuben in Kanton Bern," Bchweizerisches Archiv fur Volkskunde, x, 162-66. See Alemannia, rv, 1-12, for an account of the modern kiltgang by Rochholz, who prints the songs, and also for an eighteenth century account.
7 See Potter, Sohrab and Rustem, pp. 134-35; for analogous customs among Asiatic people, see pp. 135-36.
8 Ibid., pp. 133, 136-37; Moore, Marriage Customs and Ceremonies (1814), p. 35; Stiles, Bundling; its Origin, Progress and Decline in America.
9 Only a single English fragment so far as I know suggests the custom of a visit from a girl to her lover on Valentine night—the song of the mad Ophelia in Hamlet, iv, 5:
Tomorrow is S. Valentines day, all in the morning betime,
And I a Maid at your Window, to be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, & don'd his clothes, & dupt the chamber dore,
Let in the Maid, that out a Maid, never departed more.
See, however, Jeanroy, Let Originet de la poisie lyrique en France au moyen Age, pp. 140, 150, n., for the girl as the visitant in Italian songs.
10. LI. 2040-80; Roman de la Rose, 11. 2510-54.
11 Societe des anciena testes francais, No. xxx.
12 See Herd's version, Ancient and Modern Scottish Songs, rt, 208, and a North Carolina version collected by Sharp, English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians, pp. 128-29. For foreign examples see Jeanroy, Les Origines de la poe"sic lyrique en France, pp. 14950; Victor Smith, Romania, vn, 56-58; Erk and Bohme, Deutscher Liederhort, Vol. n, No. 813.
13 See Handlists of Printers, 1501-1556, Bibliographical Society,
14 Arbor's Transcript, n, 209.
15 Roxburghe Ballads, Ballad Society, vr, 202-3. See Chappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, pp. 604-6, for the vogue of the air.
16 Roxburghe Ballads, VI, 209-11.
17 English, Ballads, 1651-5, British Museum, C 20 f. 14. See Romburghe Ballads, vi, 66; nc, 678. "Roxburghe Ballads, vi, 213.
18. 324-26. See Ohappell, Popular Music of the Olden Time, pp. 609-11, for the vogue of this song. It also occurs in Vocal Miscellany (1738), I, 287-88.
19 Roxburghe Ballads, VI, 207.
20 Pp. 363-64.
21 A similar dialogue occurs twice in " Glasgerion" (No. 67), where the assignation is followed by an account of how the lady is visited by the lover's servant as well as by the lover himself. In " The Lass of Roch Royal" (No. 76) the lady, seeking admittance at the lover's castle, uses the same phraseology, in most versions with emphasis on the rain and cold. See also No. 240.
22 See Dick, Songs of Burns, pp. 128-29, 399.
[footnote numbers?]
24 See Hecht, Songs from Herd's Manuscripts, pp. 149-52, 300; and Herd, Scottish Songs, n, 167 ff.
25 See Journal of the Folk-Song Society, I, 18; VI, 19.
26 I have made no systematic search for foreign versions. What I offer is merely illustrative.
27 See Tiersot, Chansons populaires recueilltes dans lea Alpes francaises, pp. 240-247. In Romania, m, 53-54, "Vieilles chansons rec. en Velay et en Forez," Victor Smith gives a variant of this song and refers to F. Mihel, Le Pays basque, p. 313; Caselli, Chants pop. de I'ltalie, p. 199; and Ferraro, Canti Monferrini, p. 84.
28 Tiersot, pp. 272-73. See Victor Smith, Romania, vn, 54, for a variant.
29 See Scheffler, Framosische Volksdichtung und Sage, I, 164, 17071, 179-183, 191, 193, and the authorities cited by Scheffler.
30 Franzdsische Volksdichtung und Sage, I, 17Q-71.
31 Folk-Lore Record, in, 261-66.
32 See Erk and BShme, Deutscher Liederhort, Nos. 469, 797-830; Buss, "Volksjustiz der Nachtbuben in Kanton Bern," Bchweizeriaches Archiv fitr Volktkunde, x, 162-66; Rochholz, Alemaunia, IV, 1-10; etc.
33 Erk and BShme, No. 469; compare "Undo your dore" printed by Wynken de Worde.
34 See Erk and BShme, Nos. 813, 816, 817, 820, 821, 822.
35 See Nos. 818, 819, 820, 824, 830.
36 Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, m, 219.
37 Arbor's Transcript, n, 226.
38 Shirburn Ballads, ed. Clark, No. Lxi; Arber's Transcript, in,
39. "Chappell, Old English Popular Music (ed. Wooldridge, 1893), I, 146-147.
40 Edited by Mitchell, Scottish Text Society, pp. 132-36.
41 Arber's Transcript, n, 485. See 2 N. and Q., xn, 22, for a reference to "Be wise; come away from thy lady so gay."
42 See Chappell, Old English Popular Music (1893), I, 146-47, for the references.
43. A variant of three lines of this stanza appears in The Woman's Prize, I, 3.
44 A stanza from a moralization preserved in Brit. Mus. Ms. 17. B. nn of King's Library (quoted in Ritson's Ancient Songs and Ballads, 1877, p. lxviii) may reflect the "calling back" stanza of this or more probably of some" kindred song:
Com home agayne,
Com home agayne,
Mi nowne swet hart, com home agayne;
Ye are gone astray
Out of your way,
There[for, swet hart,] come home agayne.
45 Roxburghe Ballads, vi, 205-6. i;
46 Rowburghe Ballads, VI, 207.
47 Journal of the Folk-Song Society, in, 79-80. On pp. 78-79 Hammond gives a fragmentary version with a kindred first stanza but with a shift to the motive of the deception of the parents.
48 Journal of the Folk-Bong Society, I, 260.
49 Christie, Traditional Ballad Airs of Scotland, I, 224-26. A very similar dialogue of four stanzas but with phraseology differing throughout is found in Vocal Miscellany (1738), n, 141, beginning,
Awake, thou fairest thing in Nature,
How can you sleep when Day does break?
This dialogue also contains lines similar to lines just cited in a Sussex song:
Go, tell your Passion to some other,
Or whisper softly in my Ear.
See Vocal Miscellany, n, 3-4, for a broad burlesque of songs of the type.
50. IV, 285.
51 One Hundred English Folksongs, pp. 106-7.
52 See Erk and B6hme, Deutscher Liederhort, No. 814*, second form,
53 Ibid., No. 820.
54 See Chansons des Alpes frangaites, pp. 238-39.
55 The conventions of the song on the night visit would very naturally be carried on by the serenade. See, for example, Tiersot, pp. 241-2, 249, 251, 252.
56 Strong Survivals (1894), pp. 203-6.
57 Two correspondents in Notes and Queries (First Series, TX, 75, 153) recall fragments of this song, but with the opening "O go from the window." In 1852 a correspondent recorded the story much as it was given to Baring-Gould (ibid., p. 227).
58 First Series, xn, 498.
59 Ancient Ballads and Bongs of the North of Scotland, n, 221; 6 N. and Q., xii, 224.
60 See Bolte, Die Singspiele der eng. KomSdianten, p. 45, note. Bolte refers to Erk and Irmer, Die deutschen Tolkslieder, 1, 6, Nos. 49 and 50, and Berggreen, Folksmge og Melodier, 5, No. 73, for the German; Berggreen, 11, 166, No. 28, for the Danish; ibid., 2, No. 27 a-c, for the Norwegian; and Arwidsson, Svenska Forns&nger, 3, 155, No. 62, for the Swedish. He cites also "eine tlbereinstimmende Prosaerzahlung" in Ruckard, Die lachende Schule, 1725 and 1736, No. 126.
61 Die deutsohen VoUcslieder, Leipzig, 1843.
62 Recueil de motets, n, 106, from M8. 12786 of Bibl. Nat. Fran. See Jeanroy, Les Origines de la poésie lyrique en France, p. 143, for a fragment of a Greek poem from Athenaeus in which a woman wakes her lover at dawn and begs him to leave before the husband's return; and pp. 148-49, for a pure dialogue in Italian—from a fourteenth century manuscript—beginning "Levati dalla porta" and containing a warning against the husband, who is asleep.
63 FranzosUohe Volksdichtung und Sage, r, 181-83. Scheffler gives the song from Beaurepaire. See also p. 180.