Young Ronald, a noble squire, but still school-boy (11, 29), lays his love on the daughter of the king of Linne, a locality which, as it occurs several times in ballads, we are glad to learn is not far from Windsor. In the course of an interview with the lady in her garden, she tells him that though she entirely feels the honor he has done her, she must be subject to her father's will. Ronald's father and mother are greatly concerned for their son, seeing that the lady lias already rejected many suitors. He pays his love a second visit, and protests that for her sake he would fight long and hard. Be not too hasty, she answers; you must buckle with a more dangerous foe than you wot of, ere you win me by war. She proceeds to explain that her father will have to go to war the next day with a giant who has been very troublesome, and then to make him various offers with the view of enlisting him in the affair; among which are two standard rings, one of which will stanch the blood of any of his men who may be hurt, the other prevent the drawing of his own blood.
Young Ronald reports to his father the encouragement which he has received from his love, the impending contest with the giant, and the gifts which she has made him; and the father, on his part, promises him a company of a hundred well-armed men. Supported by these, and invigorated by a third meeting in the garden, Ronald rides proudly to the field. The giant, who is handicapped with three heads on his neck, and three more on his breast, challenges the king of Linne to combat, and the king offers his daughter and a third of his lands to any champion who will undertake the giant. Ronald is ready, and, according to the rule in such cases, disdains the offer of any reward but the daughter. The thought of her gives him a lion's courage, and such potency to his arm that he cuts off all the six heads of the giant at one sweep.
If any lover of ballads should feel his understanding insulted by the presentation of such a piece as this, I can have no quarrel with him. There is certainly much in it that is exasperating, the greeters in the school, the lifting of the hat, and, most of all, perhaps, the mint in meadows. These are, however, the writer's own property; the nicking with nay and the giant are borrowed from romances. In this and not a very few other cases, I have suppressed disgust, and admitted an actually worthless and a manifestly at least in part spurious ballad, because of a remote possibility that it might contain relics, or be a debased representative, of something genuine and better. Such was the advice of my lamented friend, Grundtvig, in more instances than those in which I have brought myself to defer to his judgment.
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