He set her on a milk-white steed, And himself upon a grey; He never turned his face again, But he bore her quite away.
10. _The following stanza, superscribed "~Mrs Lindores, Kelso~," was found among Mr Kinlock's papers, and was inserted at I, 331, of the Kinlock MSS. It may be a first recollection of #D# 10, but is more likely to be another version_:
'We raid over hill and we raid over dale, And we raid over mountains sae high, Until we cam in sicht o yon bonnie castle bowr Whare Sir William Arthur did lie.'
5-6. _"Two stanzas are here omitted, in which Lord William offers her the choice of returning to her mother, or of accompanying him; and the ballad concludes with this [the 6th] stanza, which is twice repeated in singing." Motherwell's preface._
_7, 8 are written in one stanza. Half a page, or about nine stanzas, is gone after st. 11._
[107] 'Erlinton,' though not existing in a two-line stanza, follows immediately after 'Earl Brand.' The copy of 'The Douglas Tragedy' in Smith's Scottish Minstrel, III, 86, is merely Scott's, with changes to facilitate singing.
[108] #B*#, III, 853, a fragment of five stanzas, has been dropped by Grundtvig from No 82, and assigned to No 249. See #D. g. F#. IV, 494.
[109] Though the paradise has not been transmitted in any known copy of 'Earl Brand,' it appears very distinctly in the opening stanza of 'Leesome Brand' #A#. This last has several stanzas towards the close (33-35) which seem to belong to 'Earl Brand,' and perhaps derived these, the "unco land," and even its name, by the familiar process of intermixture of traditions.
[111] Compare vv 49-56, "Wilt thou ride to them, or wilt thou fight with them, or wilt thou stand by thy love, sword in hand?" "I will not ride to them, I will not fight with them [i. e., begin the fight], but I will stand by my love, sword in hand," with Norwegian #A#, 29, 30: "Shall we ride to the wood, or shall we bide like men?" "We will not ride to the wood, but we will bide like men." And also with Danish #Æ#, sts 14, 15.
[112] The chief branches, besides the Helgi lay and Walter, are the saga in Snorri's Edda, Skáldskaparmal, § 50; that in Saxo Grammaticus, Stephanius, ed. 1644, pp. 88-90; Sörla þáttr, in Fornaldar Sögur, I, 391 ff; the Shetland ballad printed in Low's Tour through the Islands of Orkney and Shetland, 108 ff, and in Barry's History of the Orkney Islands, 2d ed., 489 ff, and paraphrased in Hibbert's Description of the Shetland Islands, 561 ff; the Thidrik saga, §§ 233-239, Unger; Gudrun, v-viii. The names of father, daughter, and lover in these are: (1) Hügni, ----, Högni, Högin-, Högni, ----, [Artus], Hagen; (2) [Sigrún], Hilde-gunde, Hildr, Hilda, Hildr, Hildina, Hildr, Hilde; (3) Helgi, [Walter], Hedin, Hithin-, Hedin, ----, [Herburt], Hetel. Hagan, in 'Waltharius,' may be said to take the place of the father, who is wanting; and this is in a measure true also of Hedin, Helgi's half-brother, in the lay of Helgi Hiörvard's son. See the excellent discussion of the saga by Klee, Zur Hildesage, Leipzig, 1873.