"Singing and ringing" she rode through the wood: Judith sings a song of praise to the Lord after her return home.
In English #C-F#, May Colven comes home before dawn, as Judith does. The Dutch #A# says, When to her father's gate she came, she blew the horn like a man. Compare Judith xiii, 13: Et dixit Judith a longe custodibus murorum, Aperite portas!
The Dutch text goes on to say that when the father heard the horn he was delighted at his daughter's return: and Judith v, 14, Et factum est, cum audissent viri vocem ejus, vocaverunt presbyteros civitatis.
The conclusion of Dutch #A# is that there was a banquet held, and the head was set on the table. So Judith causes Holofernes' head to be hung up on the city wall, and after the enemy have been driven off, the Jews hold a feast.
The Icelandic version, though elsewhere much mutilated, has a concluding stanza which certainly belongs to the ballad:
Ása went into a holy cell, Never did she harm to man.
This agrees with the view taken of the heroine of the ballad as a saint, and with the Bible account that Judith lived a chaste widow after her husband's demise.
Danish #D# is unique in one point. The robber has shown the maid a little knoll, in which the "much gold" of the women he has murdered lies. When she has killed him, the maid says, "_I_ shall have the much gold," and takes as much as she can carry off. Compare with this Holofernes putting Judith into his treasury (xii, 1),[88] her carrying off the conop[oe]um (xiii, 10), and her receiving from the people all Holofernes' gold, silver, clothes, jewels, and furniture, as her share of the plunder of the Assyrian camp (xv, 14). It is, perhaps, a perversion of this circumstance that the robber in German #G#, #H#, is refused permission to keep his costly clothes.
English #D# seems also to have preserved a portion of the primitive story, when it makes the maid tell her parents in the morning all that has happened, whereupon they go with her to the sea-shore to find the robber's body. The foundation for this is surely the Bible account that Judith makes known her act to the elders of the city, and that the Jews go out in the morning and fall on the enemy's camp, in which Holofernes' body is lying. In Swedish #C# the robber's sisters mourn over his body, and in Judith xiv, 18 the Assyrians break out into loud cries when they learn of Holofernes' death.