Читать книгу Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes - Eckenstein Lina - Страница 7

VARIOUS nursery pieces deal with material which forms the subject of romantic ballads also. Romantic ballads, like popular songs, are preserved in a number of variations, for they were sung again and again to suit the modified taste of succeeding ages. Many romantic ballads retain much that is pre-Christian in disposition and sentiment. The finest collection of romantic ballads during recent times was made by Child,24 who included the fireside versions of ballads that have come down to us through nursery literature. Child puts forward the opinion that where we are in possession of a romantic and a fireside version of the same ballad, the latter is a late and degraded survival. But this hardly seems probable, considering that the nursery version of the tale is usually simpler in form, and often consists of dialogue only.

In the estimation of Gregory Smith, the oldest extant examples of romantic ballads "do not date further back than the second and third quarter of the fifteenth century" (that is between 1425 and 1475), "since the way in which the incidents in these are presented, reflects the taste of that age."25 This applies to romantic ballads that are highly complex in form. The fireside version of the same story may have flowed from the same source. The question hangs together with that of the origin of the ballad, which may have arisen in connection with dancing and singing, but the subject needs investigation.

Among our famous early ballads is that of The Elfin Knight, the oldest printed copy of which is of 1670.

It begins as follows: —

The ballad goes on to describe how problems were bandied between the Elfin Knight and a lady. The one on whom an impossible task was imposed stood acquitted if he devised a task of no less difficulty, which must first be performed by his opponent. Such flytings go far back in literature. In this case the Elfin Knight staked his plaid, that is his life, on receiving the favour of the lady, and he propounded to her three problems, viz. of making a sack without a seam, of washing it in a well without water, and of hanging it to dry on a tree that never blossomed. In reply, she claimed that he should plough an acre of land with a ram's horn, that he should sow it with a peppercorn, and that he should reap it with a sickle of leather. The problems perhaps had a recondite meaning, and the ballad-monger probably found them ready to hand. For Child cites a version of the ballad in which the same flyting took place between a woman and "the auld, auld man," who threatened to take her as his own, and who turned out to be Death. The idea of a wooer staking his life on winning a lady is less primitive than that of Death securing a victim.

The same tasks without their romantic setting are preserved in the form of a simple dialogue, in the nursery collections of c. 1783 and 1810. In this case also it is the question of a wooer.

Man speaks

Maiden speaks

On the face of it, it hardly seems likely that this version is descended from the romantic ballad.

The tasks that are here imposed on the man are set also in the form of a boast in a nursery song, in which they have so entirely lost their meaning as to represent a string of impossibilities.

Another nursery piece is recorded by Halliwell which, in simple form relates concerning Billy my son the sequence of events which underlies the famous romantic ballad of Lord Randal.27 The story is current also in Scotland relating to The Croodin Doo (1870, p. 51); it was told also some eighty years ago in Lincolnshire, of King Henry my son (N. & Q., 8, VI, 427). The romantic ballad in five verses, as told of Lairde Rowlande, relates how he came from the woods weary with hunting and expecting death. He had been at his true love's, where he ate of the food which poisoned his warden and his dogs. In the nursery version the tragedy is told in the following simple form: —

Other nursery pieces deal with Tommy Linn, the Tam Linn of romance, who is the hero of many famous romantic ballads. The name of Tam Linn goes some way back in history. For the Tayl of young Tamlene, according to Vedderburn's Complaint of Scotland, of 1549, was told among a company of shepherds, and the name appears also as that of a dance, A Ballett of Thomalyn, as far back as 1558.28

According to the romantic ballads, Tam Linn fell under the influence of the fairies through sleeping under an apple tree, and they threatened to take him back as their own on Hallowe'en, when they rode abroad once in seven years and had the right to claim their due. Tam Linn told the woman who loved him that she must hold him fast, whatever shape he assumed owing to the enchantment of the witches, and that she must cast him into water as soon as he assumed the shape of a gled. He would then be restored to human form.

Tam Linn of romance figures in nursery lore as Tommy Linn. His exploits were printed by Halliwell in one of the numerous versions that are current in the north. In these pieces Tommy Linn has only this in common with Tam Linn of romance, that he too is ready with a suggestion whatever mishap befalls.

Several short nursery rhymes are taken from this, or other versions of this poem. Among the pieces printed by Chambers we read —

Sir Walter Scott in Redgauntlet cites a catch on Sir Thom o' Lyne.

In some nursery collections the adventures of Tommy Lin, the Scotchman, are appropriated to Bryan O'Lin, the Irishman.

Many nursery rhymes which dwell on cats are formed on the model of these verses. A rhyme that comes from America is as follows: —

A modern collection of rhymes (1873, p. 136) gives this as follows: —

The association of cats with Tommy Linn reappears in the rhyme in which Tommy, who in the romantic ballad begged immersion for himself, practised immersion on a cat. Perhaps the cat was figured as a witch, who, being suspected, was cast into the water in order to prove her witchcraft.