Maid Undressed- Burditt (VT) c1930 Flanders R
[My title. Fragment from Flanders- Ancient Ballads, 1966. Notes by Coffin follow.
R. Matteson Jr. 2014]
Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight
(Child 4)
This song is known to practically all the ballad-singing people of Europe from Scandinavia to the Latin countries and into Poland to the Netherlands. Its theme, the story of the ogre who decoys maidens to their deaths but who is at last thwarted by an opportunistic girl, is widespread in tales (see Bluebeard and related matter) as well. Longer versions of the song may involve a conversation in which the girl asks her brother's permission to go with the lover who has sung irresistible melodies; a choice given the maid between hanging and being stabbed; remarks by the head of the decapitated lover; a meeting between the girl, who is carrying the ogre's head, and the ogre's mother; and the conquering maiden's blowing her horn like a warrior as she approaches her father's castle. It is easy to see that the Anglo-American texts, where even the supernatural nature of the lover has pretty well vanished and where the naive chivalry of the villain gives the girl her chance, are abbreviated and somewhat pale. However, the true core of the story, the vigorous nature of the heroine, is preserved faithfully--almost as well as in French Canada where Jeanneton kicks the man in the stream as he pulls off her stocking and then holds him under with a branch.
Versions similar to A and B below (see Child E), in which the girl is told to remove a series of garments, are more common to New England than to the rest of the United States. Texts C and D, in which nettles or other brambles are removed from the river's edge, are not until except in the opening stanza which is borrowed from Child 105, nor are texts like L where the parrot (note he is a pirate in A) has been omitted. The parrot in "Lady Isabel" and the parrot in "Young Hunting" (Child 68) often get confused anyhow. It is somewhat unusual, however, to find as one does in Versions L and M that the girl recites what has happened to her. Obviously, from what goes on between her and the parrot, in Anglo-American tradition she would prefer to drop the subject.
The European backgrounds of this have been intensively studied. Grundtvig (Danmark's gamle Folkeviser (Copenhagen, 1853-90], IV) made an elaborate investigation of its dissemination; Child, 22 f., spent a long introduction on it; and more recently it has come under the thorough attention of Iivar Kemppinen (The Ballad of Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight, Heisinki, 1954) and Holger Nygard. Nygard's two articles, in JAF, LXV, 1-12, and LXVIII, 141-52, give one a start on a bibliography and a nice introduction to the problems involved; his book, The Ballad of Heer Halewijn (Knoxville, 1958), is a complete study. Anglo-American bibliographies and discussion, are found through Coffin, 32-35, Belden, 5-6; and Dean Smith, 97. The song is included in Barry's British Ballad's from Maine, 14.
The large group of tunes for this ballad falls (indistinctly) into two groups: 1) the versions of Burling, Harrington, Moses, Amey, Russel, Fish (which is especially close to Moses) and perhaps Pease (close to Russell?); and 2) Lougee, with Daniels and George (distantly close to Lougee, but close to each other). The Hayes version seems outside these groups, as does that of Lane which may be related to group I. Comparison with BCI groups reveals that our group I is part of BCl's group A, and our group 2, part of his group B.
R. [A Maid Undressed] As sung by Mr. and Mrs. Elwin M. Burditt of Springfield, Vermont. H. H. F., Collector; Early 1930's.
"Turn your back unto the wall,
Your face unto the sea,
For you are too vile a wretch
A maid undressed to see."