| Share page | Visit Us On FB |
|
CAPTAIN WEDDEEBUEN'S COURTSHIP. 11
And tell the old abbot when thou comest home, Thou hast brought him a pardon from good King John." |
||
|
CAPTAIN WEDDERBURN'S COURTSHIP.
The two following ballads, in connection with the foregoing, will serve as specimens of the anciently highly-popular class of riddle songs. No ballad, says Motherwell, is even now more frequently met with on the stalls than Captain Wedderburn's Courtship. It was first published in The New British Songster, Falkirk, 1785, and afterwards in Jamieson's Popular Ballads, ii. 154, from which the present copy is taken. Chambers gives a few different readings from a copy furnished by Mr. Kinloch—Scottish Ballads, p. 331.
A fragment of this piece is given in Minstrelsy of the English Border, p. 230, under the title of The Laird ofRoslin's Daughter. Riddles like those in the following ballads are found in Proud Lady Margaret, p. 83 of this volume, The Courteous Knight, in the Appendix, and The Bonny Hind Squire, in Scottish Traditional Versions of Ancient Ballads, p. 42, Percy Society, vol. xvii. — three varieties of one original: and in Gifts from over Sea, Appendix, p. 290. Also, in several of the ancient Norse poems; in the ancient Danish ballad Svend Vonved, Grundtvig, No. 18; in Sven Svanehvit, Svenska F. V., No. 45; Hammers-haimb's Fmroiske Kvader, ii. No. 4 ; Landstad's |
||