All these versions of 'Kempy Kay' are known, or may be presumed, to have been taken down within the first three decades of this century; A is traced as many years back into the last. The fourth stanza of A clearly belongs to some other ballad. Both A and B appear to have undergone some slight changes when published by Sharpe and Kinloch respectively. Some verses from this ballad have been adopted into one form of a still more unpleasant piece in the Campbell collection, concerning a wife who was "the queen of all sluts."[foot-note]
Sharpe remarks: "This song my learned readers will perceive to be of Scandinavian origin, and that the wooer's name was probably suggested by Sir Kaye's of the Round Table. ... The description of Bengoleer's daughter resembles that of the enchanted damsel who appeared to courteous King Henrie." It is among possibilities that the ballad was an outgrowth from some form of the story of The Marriage of Sir Gawain, in the Percy version of which the "unseemly" lady is so rudely commented on and rejected by Kay. This unseemly lady, in The Wedding of Gawen and Dame Ragnell, and her counterpart in 'King Henry,' who is of superhuman height, show an extravagant voracity which recalls the giantess in 'Greve Genselin.' In 'Greve Genselin,' a burlesque form of an heroic ballad which is preserved in a pure shape in three Färöe versions (Grundtvig, IV, 737-42), there are many kemps invited to the wedding, and in a little dance which is had the smallest kemp is fifteen ells to [below] the knee, Grundtvig, No 16, A 26, B 29, C 29. Kempy Kay has gigantic dimensions in A 7, C 9, E 7: teeth like tetherstakes, a nose three [nine, five] feet long, three ells [nine yards] between his shoulders, a span between his eyne.[foot-note] Of the bride it is said in A 12 that her finger nails were like the teeth of a rake and her teeth like tetherstakes. This is not decisive; it is her ugliness, filthiness, and laziness that are made most of. We may assume that she would be in dimension and the shape of nature a match for the kemp, but she does not comport herself especially like a giantess.
If Kempy Kay be the original name of the wooer, Knapperty and Chickmakin might easily be derived from corrupt pronunciations like Kampeky, Kimpaky.
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