Also in the Roxburghe collection, III, 534, without printer's name; Ewing, Nos 264, 265; Crawford, No 716. All the broadsides are of the second half of the seventeenth century.
'The Lord of Lome and the false Steward' was entered, with two other ballads, to Master Walley, 6 October, 1580; 'Lord of Lome' to Master Pavier and others (among 128 pieces), 14 December, 1624. Arber, II, 379; IV, 131.[foot-note]
A. The young Lord of Lorn, when put to school, learns more in one day than his mates learn in three. He returns home earlier than was expected, and delights his father with the information that he can read any book in Scotland. His father says he must now go to France to learn the tongues. His mother is anxious that he should have a proper guardian if he goes, and the 'child' proposes the steward, who has impressed him as a man of fidelity. The Lady of Lorn makes the steward a handsome present, and conjures him to be true to her son. If I am not, he answers, may Christ not be true to me. The young lord sails for France, very richly appointed. Once beyond the water, the steward will give the child neither penny to spend nor meat and drink. The child is forced to lie down at some piece of water to quench his thirst; the steward pushes him in, meaning to drown him. The child offers everything for his life; the steward pulls him out, makes him put off all his fine clothes and don a suit of leather, and sends him to shift for himself, under the name of Poor Disaware. A shepherd takes him in, and he tends sheep on a lonely lea.
The steward sells the child's clothes, buys himself a suit fit for a lord, and goes a-wooing to the Duke of France's daughter, calling himself the Lord of Lorn; the duke favors the suit, and the lady is content. The day after their betrothal, the lady, while riding out, sees the child tending his sheep, and hears him mourning. She sends a maid to bring him to her, and asks him questions, which he answers, not without tears. He was born in Scotland, his name is Poor Disaware; he knows the Lord of Lorn, a worthy lord in his own country. The lady invites him to leave his sheep, and take service with her as chamberlain; the child is willing, but her father objects that the lord who has come a-wooing may not like that arrangement. The steward comes upon the scene, and is angry to find the child in such company. When the child gives his name as Poor Disaware, the steward denounces him as a thief who had robbed his own father; but the duke speaks kindly to the boy, and makes him his stable-groom. One day, when he is watering a gelding, the horse flings up his head and hits the child above the eye. The child breaks out, Woe worth thee, gelding! thou hast stricken the Lord of Lorn. I was born a lord and shall be an earl; my father sent me over the sea, and the false steward has beguiled me. The lady happens to be walking in her garden, and hears something of this; she bids the child go on with his song; this he may not do, for he has been sworn to silence. Then sing to thy gelding, and not to me, she says. The child repeats his story, and adds that the steward has been deceiving both her and him for a twelvemonth. The lady declares that she will marry no man but him that stands before her, sends in haste to her father to have her wedding put off, and writes an account of the steward's treachery to the old lord in Scotland. The old lord collects five hundred friends of high degree, and goes over to France in search of his son. They find him acting as porter at the duke's palace. The men of worship bow, the serving-men kneel, the old lord lights from his horse and kisses his son. The steward is just then in a castle-top with the duke, and sees what is going on below. Why are those fools showing such courtesy to the porter? The duke fears that this means death for one of them. The castle is beset; the steward is captured, is tried by a quest of lords and brought in guilty, is hanged, quartered, boiled, and burned. The young Lord of Lorne is married to the duke's daughter.
B. B is an abridgment of an older copy. The story is the same as in A in all material particulars. The admiration of the school-master and the self-complacency of his pupil in A 2, 3, B 3, are better justified in B by a stanza which has perhaps dropped out of A:
The last six stanzas are not represented in A, and the last two are glaringly modern; but there is a foundation for 62-64 in a romance from which the story is partly taken, the History of Roswall and Lillian.[foot-note]
'Roswall and Lillian.' Roswall was son to the king of Naples. Happening one day to be near a prison, he heard three lords, who had been in durance many years for treason, putting up their prayers for deliverance. He was greatly moved, and resolved to help them out. The prison-keys were always hidden for the night under the king's pillow. Roswall possessed himself of them while his father was sleeping, set the lords free, and replaced the keys. The escape of the prisoners was reported the next morning, and the king made a vow that whoever had been instrumental to it should be hanged; if he came within the king's sight, the king would even slay him with his own hands. It soon came to light that the guilty party was none other than the prince. The queen interceded for her son, but the king could not altogether disregard his vow: the prince must be kept out of his sight, and the king promptly decided that Roswall should be sent to reside with the king of Bealm, under charge of the steward, a stalwart knight, to whom the queen promised everything for good service. As the pair rode on their way, they came to a river. The prince was sore athirst, and dismounted to take a drink. The steward seized him by the feet as he bent over the water, and vowed to throw him in unless he would swear an oath to surrender his money and credentials, and become servant where he had been master. To these hard terms Roswall was forced to consign. When they were near the king of Bealm's palace, the steward dropped Roswall's company, leaving him without a penny to buy his dinner; then rode to the king, presented letters, and was well received. Roswall went to a little house hard by, and begged for harbor and victuals for a day. The mistress made him welcome. She saw he was from a far country, and asked his name. Dissawar was his name; a poor name, said the old wife, but Dissawar you shall not be, for I will help you. The next day Roswall was sent to school with the dame's son. He gave his name as Dissawar again to the master; the master said he should want neither meat nor teaching. Roswall had been a remarkable scholar at home. Without doubt he astonished the master, but this is not said, for the story has been abridged here and elsewhere. In about a month, the steward of the king of Bealm, who had observed his beauty, courtesy, and good parts, carried him to the court of Bealm, where Roswall made himself a general favorite. The princess Lillian, only child of the king of Bealm, chose him to be her chamberlain, fell in love with him, and frankly offered him her heart, an offer which Roswall, professing always to be of low degree, gratefully accepted.
At this juncture the king of Bealm sent messengers to Naples proposing marriage between his daughter Lillian and the young prince who had been commended to him. The king of Naples assented to the alliance, and deputed lords and knights to represent him at the solemnity. The king of Bealm proclaimed a joust for the three days immediately preceding the wedding. Lillian's heart was cold, for she loved none but Dissawar. She told Dissawar that he must joust for his lady; but he said that he had not been bred to such things, and would rather go a-hunting. A-hunting he went, but before he got to work there came a knight in white weed on a white steed, who enjoined him to take horse and armor and go to the jousting, promising that he should find plenty of venison when he came back. Roswall toomed many a saddle, turned the steward's heels upward, made his way back to the wood, in spite of the king's order that he should be stopped, resumed his hunting-gear, took the venison, which, according to promise, was waiting for him, and presented himself and it to his lady. The order is much the same on the two succeeding days. A red knight equips Roswall for the joust on the second day, a knight in gold on the third. The steward is, on each occasion, put to shame, and in the last encounter two of his ribs are broken.
When Roswall came back to the wood after the third jousting, the three knights appeared together and informed him that they were the men whom he had delivered from prison, and who had promised to help him if help he ever needed. They bade him have no fear of the steward. Lillian had suspected from the second day that the victor was Roswall, and when he returned to her from his third triumph she intimated that if he would but tell the whole truth to her father their mutual wish would be accomplished. But Roswall kept his counsel very whimsically, unless it was out of respect to his oath and Lillian was constrained to speak for herself, for the marriage was to be celebrated on the fourth day. She asked her father in plain terms to give her Dissawar for her husband. The king replied, not unkindly, that she could not marry below her rank, and therefore must take the prince who had been selected for her; and to the steward she was married, however sorely against her will. In the course of the wedding-dinner, the three Neapolitan lords entered the hall, and saluted the king, the queen, and Lillian, but not the bridegroom. The king asked why they did no homage to their prince; they replied that they did not see their prince, went in search of Roswall, and brought him in. The force of the oath, or the consciousness of an obligation, must have been by this time quite extinct, for Roswall divulged the steward's treacherous behavior, and announced himself as the victor at the jousts. The steward was hanged that same day; then they passed to the kirk and married Roswall and Lillian. There was dancing till supper and after supper, the minstrels played with good will, and the bridal was kept up for twenty days.
Roswall and Lillian belongs with a group of popular tales of which the original seems to have been characterized by all or many of the following marks: (1) the son of a king liberates a man whom his father has imprisoned; (2) the penalty for so doing is death, and to save his life the prince is sent out of the country, attended by a servant; (3) the servant forces the prince to change places and clothes with him; (4) presents himself at a king's court as prince, and in his assumed quality is in a fair way to secure the hand of the king's daughter; (5) the true prince, figuring the while as a menial (stable-groom, scullion, gardener's lad), is successful, by the help of the man whom he has liberated, in a thrice-repeated contention (battle, tourney, race), or task, after which he is in a position to make known his rank and history; (6) the impostor is put to death, and the prince (who has, perhaps, in his humbler capacity, already attracted her notice and regard) marries the princess.[foot-note]
Two Slavic tales, a Bosnian and a Russian, come as near as any to the story of our romance.
A king who has caught a wild man shuts him up, and denounces death to any one that shall let him out. The king's son's bedroom is just over the place in which the wild man is confined. The prince cannot bear to hear the continual wailings which come up, and he sets the prisoner free. The prince confesses what he has done; the king is persuaded by his advisers to banish his son rather than to enforce the penalty which he had decreed; the prince is sent off to a distant kingdom, attended by a servant. One day the prince was seized with thirst while travelling, and wished to get a drink from a well; but there was nothing to draw water with, and he ordered his servant to let him down to the surface of the water, holding him the while by the legs. This was done; but when the prince had drunk to his satisfaction, the servant refused to draw him up until he had consented to change places and clothes, and had sworn besides to keep the matter secret. When they arrived at the court of the king designated by the father, the sham prince was received with royal honors, and the true prince had to consort with servants... After a time, the king, wishing to marry off his daughter, proclaimed a three days' race, open to all comers, the prize to be a golden apple, and any competitor who should win the apple each of the three days to have the princess. Our prince had fallen in love with the young lady, and was most desirous to contend. The wild man had already helped him in emergencies here passed over, and did not fail him now. He provided his deliverer with fine clothes and a fine horse. The prince carried off the apple at each of the races, but disappeared as soon as he had the prize in hand. All the efforts of the king to find out the victor were to no purpose, but one day the princess met the prince in his serving-man's dress, and saw the apples shining from his breast. She told her father. The prince did not feel himself bound to further secrecy; he told everything; the king gave him the princess, and the servant was properly disposed of.[foot-note]
Ivan, the tsar's son, releases from confinement Bulat, a robber, whom the tsar has kept in prison three and thirty years. Bulat tells Ivan to call him by name in case of future need, and he will not fail to appear. Ivan travels in foreign countries with his servant, and feeling thirsty of a warm day tells his servant to get him water from a deep well to which they have come; Ivan will hold him by a rope tied firmly about him, so that he can go down into the well without danger. The servant represents that he is the heavier of the two, too heavy for his master to hold, and that for this reason it would be better for Ivan himself to go for the water. Ivan is let down into the well, and having drunk his fill calls to his servant to draw him up. The servant refuses to draw him up unless Ivan will swear to give him a certificate in writing that he is master, and Ivan servant. The paper is given; they change clothes, and proceed on their journey, and come to Tsar Pantui's kingdom. Here the servant is received as a tsar's son, and when he tells Tsar Pantui that the object of his coming is to woo his daughter, the tsar complies with much pleasure. Ivan, at the servant's suggestion, is put to low work in the kitchen. Before long the kingdom is invaded, and the tsar calls upon his prospective son-in-law to drive off the enemy, for which service he shall receive the princess, but without it, not. The false Ivan begs the true Ivan to take the invaders in hand, and he assents without a word. Ivan calls for Bulat: one attacks the hostile army on the right, the other on the left, and in an hour they lay a hundred thousand low. Ivan returns to his kitchen. A second invasion, and a third, on a larger and larger scale, ensue, and Ivan and Bulat repulse the enemy with greater and greater loss. Ivan each time goes back to his kitchen; his servant has all the glory, and after the third and decisive victory marries the princess. Ivan gets permission from the cook to be a spectator at the wedding-banquet. The tsar's daughter, it must now be observed, had overheard the conference between the pseudo-prince and Ivan, and even that between Ivan and Bulat, and had hitherto, for inscrutable reasons, let things take their course. But when she saw Ivan looking at the feast from behind other people, she knew him at once, sprang from the table, brought him forward, and said, This is my real bridegroom and the savior of the kingdom; after which she entered into a full explanation, with the result that the servant was shot, and Ivan married to the tsar's daughter.[foot-note]
Other tales of the same derivation, but deficient in some points, are: (A.) Radloff, Proben der Volkslitteratur der türkischen Stämme Süd-Sibiriens, IV, 385, 'Der Peri.' (B.) Straparola, Piacevoli Notti, v, 1 ('Guerrino, son of the king of Sicily '). (C.) Grimms, K.- und Hausmärchen, No 136, II, 242, ed. 1857, 'Der Eisenhans.' (D.) Sommer, Sagen, Märchen und Gebrauche aus Sachsen und Thüringen, p. 86, No 2, 'Der eiserne Mann.' (E.) Milenowsky, Volksmärchen aus Böhmen, p. 147, 'Vom wilden Manne.'[foot-note]
(1) The son of a king liberates a prisoner (peri, wild or iron man), A-E. (The keys are under his mother's pillow, B, C.) (2) The prince goes to another kingdom, A-D with attendance, E without. (3) His attendant forces the prince to change places and clothes, only A. (Advantage is taken of the helplessness of the hero when let down into the well to force exchange of parts, in the Servian Tales of Dj.K. Stefanović, 1871, p. 39, No 7, Jagić, Archiv, 1, 271; Meyer, Albanian Tales, No 13, in Archiv für Litteraturgeschichte, XII, 137; Franzisci, Cultur-Studien in Kärnten, p. 99, and, nearly the same, Dozon, Contes Albanais, No 12, p. 83.) (5) The hero, serving as kitchen-boy or gardener's lad, C, D, E, defeats an invading army, C, D, E, wins a prize three successive days, C, E, is successful in three tasks, A, B; and all these feats are performed by the help of the prisoner whom he set free. The variation of the color of armor and horses occurs in C, E, an extremely frequent trait in tales and romances; see Ward, Catalogue of Romances, etc., 734 f., Lengert, XVII, 361. (Very striking in the matter of the tournaments is the resemblance of the romance of Ipomedon to Roswall and Lillian. Ipomedon, like Roswall, professes not to have been accustomed to such things, and pretends to go a-hunting, is victorious three successive days in a white, red, black suit, on a white, bay, black steed, vanishes after the contest, and presently reappears as huntsman, with venison which a friend had been engaged in securing for him.) (6) The treacherous attendant is put to death, A. The hero of course marries the princess in all the tales.
The points in the romance which are repeated in the ballad are principally these: The young hero is sent into a foreign country under the care of his father's steward. The steward, by threatening to drown him while he is drinking at a water-side, forces him to consent to an exchange of positions, and strips him of his money; then passes himself off as his master's son with a noble personage, who eventually fixes upon the impostor as a match for his only daughter. The young lord, henceforth known as Dissawar,[foot-note] is in his extremity kindly received into an humble house, from which he soon passes into the service of the lady whose hand the steward aspires to gain. The lady bestows her love upon Dissawar, and he returns her attachment. In the upshot they marry, the false steward having been unmasked and put to death.
What is supplied in the ballad to make up for such passages in the romance as are omitted is, however, no less strictly traditional than that which is retained. Indeed, were it not for the name Dissawar, the romance might have been plausibly treated, not as the source of the ballad, but simply as a kindred story; for the exquisite tale of 'The Goose Girl' presents every important feature of 'The Lord of Lorn,' the only notable difference being that the young lord in the ballad exchanges parts with the princess in the tale, an occurrence of which instances have been, from time to time, already indicated.
In 'Die Gänsemagd,' Grimms, No 89, II, 13, ed. 1857, a princess is sent by her mother to be wedded to a bridegroom in a distant kingdom, with no escort but a maid. Distressed with thirst, the princess orders her maid to get down from her horse and fetch her a cup of water from a stream which they are passing. The maid refuses; she will no longer be servant, and the princess has to lie down and drink from the stream. So a second and a third time: and then the servant forces her mistress, under threat of death, to change horses and clothes, and to swear to keep the matter secret at the court to which they are bound. There the maid is received as princess, while the princess is put to tending geese with a boy. The counterfeit princess, fearing that her mistress's horse, Falada, may tell what he has observed, induces the young prince to cut off Falada's head. The princess has the head nailed up on a gate through which she passes when she takes out the geese, and every morning she addresses Falada with a sad greeting, and receives a sad return. The goose-boy tells the old king of this, and the next day the king hides behind the gate and hears what passes between the goose-girl and Falada. The king asks an explanation of the goose-girl when she comes back in the evening, but the only answer he elicits is that she has taken an oath to say nothing. Then the king says, If you will not tell me your troubles, tell them to the stove; and the princess creeps into the oven and pours out all her grief: how she, a king's daughter, has been made to change places with her servant, and the servant is to marry the bridegroom, and she reduced to tend geese. All this the king hears from outside of the room through the stovepipe, and he loses no time in repeating it to his son. The false maid is dragged through the streets in a barrel stuck full with nails, and the princess married to the prince to whom she had been contracted.
The passage in the ballad in which the Lord of Lorn relates to the gelding, within hearing of the duke's daughter, the injuries which he had sworn to conceal has, perhaps, suffered some corruption, though quibbling as to oaths is not unknown in ballads. The lady should be believed to be out of earshot, as the king is thought to be by the goose-girl. Unbosoming one's self to an oven or stove, is a decidedly popular trait; "the unhappy and the persecuted betake themselves to the stove, and to it bewail their sufferings, or confide a secret which they may not disclose to the world."[foot-note] An entirely similar passage (but without an oath to secrecy) occurs in Basile's Pentamerone, II, 8, where a girl who has been shamefully maltreated by her uncle's wife tells her very miserable story to a doll, and is accidentally overheard by the uncle. The conclusion of the tale is quite analogous to that of the goose-girl.
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