The Pepys copy was printed for Thackeray and Passenger. Others are: Crawford, No 1114, Printed for A. Melbourne], W. O[nley], and T. Thackeray; Ewing, 377, for Coles, Vere, and Gilbertson; the Same, 378, by and for W. O[nley]. No 71 in Thackeray's List, printed 1685. A later copy in the Douce ballads, II, fol. 249 b, Bodleian Library, printed by Thomas Norris at the Looking-Glass on London Bridge. Another, without publisher's name, in the Roxburghe collection, I, 502; Ballad Society, III, 200.
'The Daemon Lover' was first published in Scott's Minstrelsy, 5th edition, 1812 (F). William Laidlaw, who furnished the copy, inserted four stanzas of his own (6, 12, 17, 18, here omitted).[foot-note] Motherwell, in 1827, had not been able to get more than nine stanzas (G), but afterwards secured a version of twice as many (B). Kinloch says of D, "My reciter, and others to whom I applied, assured me that they had never heard any more of it than what is given here." Buchan, I, 313, referring to Motherwell's fragment (G), is "happy to say ... there is still a perfect copy of this curious and scarce legend in existence, which is now for the first time given to the public" (C).
An Americanized version of this ballad was printed not very long ago at Philadelphia, under the title of 'The House-Carpenter.' I have been able to secure only two stanzas, which were cited in Graham's Illustrated Magazine, September, 1858:
B-H have for their basis the broadside A: the substance of the story is repeated, with traditional modifications. Two or three stanzas of A are of the popular description, but it does not seem necessary to posit a tradition behind A. The correspondences of the several versions are as follows:
It will be observed that each of the versions B-F adds something which is taken up by a successor or successors. The arrangement of E and F, of E especially, is objectionable.
A. Jane Reynolds and James Harris, a seaman, had exchanged vows of marriage. The young man was pressed as a sailor, and after three years was reported as dead; the young woman married a ship-carpenter, and they lived together happily for four years, and had children. One night when the carpenter was absent from home, a spirit rapped at the window and announced himself as James Harris, come after an absence of seven years[foot-note] to claim the woman for his wife. She explained the state of things, but upon obtaining assurance that her long-lost lover had the means to support her seven ships upon the sea consented to go with him, for he was really much like unto a man. 'The woman-kind' was seen no more after that; the carpenter hanged himself.
The carpenter is preserved in B-E, and even his name in C. He swoons in B, and runs distracted in C, when he learns what has become of his wife; the other versions take no notice of him after the elopement. B-F all begin with the return of the long-absent lover. The ship (as it is to have in A 26) has silken sails and gold masts, or the like, C 10, F 93,4 (cf. B 8, G 1); but there are no visible mariners, F 91,2, G 43,4. The pair have been only a short time afloat when the woman begins to weep for son, husband, or both, B 9, 10, C 14, D 5, E 12, 13, G 5. The seaman (as it will be convenient to call him) tells her to hold her tongue, he will show her how the lilies grow on the banks of Italy, C 16, D 6 (cf. E 16, 17), F 12, and, in a different connection, G 6. The seaman's countenance grows grim, and the sea gurly, D 7, B 10, F 10, G 8. He will let her see the fishes swim, where the lilies grow, in the bottom of the sea, C 21, D 8 (cf. E 16, 17). She discerns that the seaman has a cloven foot, B 11, F 11, G 7. She asks, What is yon bright hill? It is the hill of heaven, where she will never be. What is yon dark hill? It is the hill of hell, where they two shall be: E 14, 15, F 13, 14. The seaman reaches his hand to the topmast, strikes the sails, and the ship drowns, C 22; takes the woman up to the topmast and sinks the ship in a flash of fire, E 18; strikes the topmast with his hand, the foremast with his knee, and sinks the ship, F 15. In E 9 he throws the woman into the main, and five-and-twenty hundred ships are wrecked; in G 9 the little ship runs round about and never is seen more.
In A the revenant is characterized as a spirit; in B, which is even tamer than A, he is called the mariner, and is drowned with the woman; in C he expressly says to the woman, I brought you away to punish you for breaking your vows to me. This explicitness may be prosaic, but it seems to me regrettable that the conception was not maintained. To explain the eery personality and proceedings of the ship-master, E-G, with a sort of vulgar rationalism, turn him into the devil, and as he is still represented in E, F (G being defective at the beginning) as returning to seek the fulfilment of old vows, he there figures as a "daemon lover." D (probably by the fortunate accident of being a fragment) leaves us to put our own construction upon the weird seaman; and, though it retains the homely ship-carpenter, is on the whole the most satisfactory of all the versions.[foot-note]
Scott's ballad is translated by Talvj, Versuch, etc., p. 558; by Gerhard, p. 84; and by Rosa Warrens, Schottische Volkslieder, No 14, p. 61 (after Aytoun, who repeats Scott, omitting one of Laidlaw's stanzas). Knortz, Lieder und Romanzen Alt-Englands, p. 192, translates Allingham's ballad.
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