The Water o' Wearie's Well- Buchan 1828; Child 4, Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight; Version B
[This is Child 4, Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight, Version B from Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland. I've included Buchan's brief notes at the bottom on this page. Child's notes are directly below. The second rather long footnote is two paragraphs. R. Matteson 2011]
Child: B, in fourteen four-line stanzas, begins unintelligibly with a bird coming out of a bush for water, and a king's daughter sighing, "Wae's this heart o mine." A personage not characterized, but evidently of the same nature as the elf-knight in A, lulls everybody but this king's daughter asleep with his harp, [foot-note: The second stanza, which describes the harping, occurs again in 'Glenkindie' (st. 6). ] then mounts her behind him, and rides to a piece of water called Wearie's Well. He makes her wade in up to her chin; then tells her that he has drowned seven kings' daughters here, and she is to be the eighth. She asks him for one kiss before she dies, and, as he bends over to give it, pitches him from his saddle into the water, with the words, Since ye have drowned seven here, I'll make you bridegroom to them all. [foot-note: Perhaps the change from wood, A, to water, B-F, was made under the influence of some Merman ballad, or by admixture with such a ballad; e. g., 'Nøkkens Svig,' Grundtvig, No 39. In this (A) the nix entices a king's daughter away from a dance, sets her on his horse, and rides with her over the heath to a wild water, into which she sinks. It is also quite among possibilities that there was originally an English nix ballad, in which the king's daughter saved herself by some artifice, not, of course, such as is employed in B-F, but like that in A, or otherwise. Maid Heiemo, in Landstad, No 39, kills a nix with "one of her small knives." Had she put him to sleep with a charm, and killed him with his own knife, as Lady Isabel does, there would have been nothing to shock credibility in the story.
Aytoun, Ballads of Scotland, I, 219, 2d ed., hastily pronounces Buchan's ballad not authentic, "being made up of stanzas borrowed from versions of 'Burd Helen' ['Child Waters']." There are, indeed, three successive steps into the water in both ballads, but Aytoun should have bethought himself how natural and how common it is for a passage to slip from one ballad into another, when the circumstances of the story are the same; and in some such cases no one can say where the verses that are common originally belonged. Here, indeed, as Grundtvig remarks, IV, 7, note*, it may well be that the verses in question belonged originally to 'Burd Helen,' and were adopted (but in the processes of tradition) into 'The Water of Wearie's Well;' for it must be admitted that the transaction in the water is not a happy conception in the latter, since it shocks probability that the woman should be able to swim ashore, and the man not.]
B.'The Water o Wearie's Well.'
a. Buchan's Manuscripts, II, fol. 80
b. Buchan's B. N. S., II, 201.
c. Motherwell's Manuscript, p. 561.
d. 'Wearie's Wells,' Harris Manuscript, No 19
The Water o' Wearie's Well- Buchan 1828
1 There came a bird out o a bush,
On water for to dine,
An sighing sair, says the king's daughter,
'O wae's this heart o mine!'
2 He's taen a harp into his hand,
He's harped them all asleep,
Except it was the king's daughter,
Who one wink couldna get.
3 He's luppen on his berry-brown steed,
Taen 'er on behind himsell,
Then baith rede down to that water
That they ca Wearie's Well.
4 'Wide in, wide in, my lady fair,
No harm shall thee befall;
Oft times I've watered my steed
Wi the waters o Wearie's Well.'
5 The first step that she stepped in,
She stepped to the knee;
And sighend says this lady fair,
'This water's nae for me.'
6 'Wide in, wide in, my lady fair,
No harm shall thee befall;
Oft times I've watered my steed
Wi the water o Wearie's Well.'
7 The next step that she stepped in,
She stepped to the middle;
'O,' sighend says this lady fair,
I've wat my gowden girdle.'
8 'Wide in, wide in, my lady fair,
No harm shall thee befall;
Oft times have I watered my steed
Wi the water o Wearie's Well.'
9 The next step that she stepped in,
She stepped to the chin;
'O,' sighend says this lady fair,
'They sud gar twa loves twin.'
10 'Seven king's-daughters I've drownd there,
In the water o Wearie's Well,
And I'll make you the eight o them,
And ring the common bell.'
11 'Since I am standing here,' she says,
'This dowie death to die,
One kiss o your comely mouth
I'm sure wad comfort me.'
12 He louted him oer his saddle bow,
To kiss her cheek and chin;
She's taen him in her arms twa,
An thrown him headlong in.
13 'Since seven king's daughters ye've drowned there,
In the water o Wearie's Well,
I'll make you bridegroom to them a',
An ring the bell mysell.'
14 And aye she warsled, and aye she swam,
And she swam to dry lan;
She thanked God most cheerfully
The dangers she oercame.
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THE WATER O' WEARIE'S WELL. Page 201. Song Notes: Buchan's Ballads of the North of Scotland--
This ballad is so similar in incident and catastrophe to Fause Sir John and May Colvin, that a good judge might be nearly deceived in saying which of the two had the honour of the greatest antiquity on its side.