A copy of this ballad was printed in The New British Songster, a collection of Songs, Scots and English, with Toasts and Sentiments for the Bottle, Falkirk, 1785: see Motherwell, p. lxxiv.[foot-note] Few were more popular, says Motherwell, and Jamieson remarks that 'Captain Wedderburn' was equally in vogue in the north and the south of Scotland.
Jamieson writes to the Scots Magazine, 1803, p. 701: "Of this ballad I have got one whole copy and part of another, and I remember a good deal of it as I have heard it sung in Morayshire when I was a child." In his Popular Ballads, II, 154, 1806, he says that the copy which he prints was furnished him from Mr. Herd's Manuscript by the editor of the Border Minstrelsy, and that he had himself supplied a few readings of small importance from his own recollection. There is some inaccuracy here. The version given by Jamieson is rather B, with readings from A.
We have had of the questions six, A 11, 12, What is greener than the grass? in No 1, A 15, C 13, D 5; What's higher than the tree? in C 9, D 1; What's war than a woman's wiss? ("than a woman was") A 15, C 13, D 5; What's deeper than the sea? A 13, B 5, C 9, D 1. Of the three dishes, A 8, 9, we have the bird without a gall in Ein Spil von den Freiheit, Fastnachtspiele aus dem 15n Jhdt, II, 558, v. 23,[foot-note] and the two others in the following song, from a manuscript assigned to the fifteenth century, and also preserved in several forms by oral tradition:[foot-note] Sloane Manuscript, No 2593, British Museum; Wright's Songs and Carols, 1836, No 8; as printed for the Warton Club, No xxix, p. 33.
'Captain Wedderburn's Courtship,' or 'Lord Roslin's Daughter,'[foot-note] is a counterpart of the ballad in which a maid wins a husband by guessing riddles. (See Nos 1 and 2, and also the following ballad, for a lady who gives riddles.) The ingenious suitor, though not so favorite a subject as the clever maid, may boast that he is of an old and celebrated family. We find him in the Gesta Romanorum, No 70; Oesterley, p. 383, Madden's English Versions, No 35, p. 384. A king had a beautiful daughter, whom he wished to dispose of in marriage; but she had made a vow that she would accept no husband who had not achieved three tasks: to tell her how many feet long, broad, and deep were the four elements; to change the wind from the north; to take fire into his bosom, next the flesh, without harm. The king issued a proclamation in accordance with these terms. Many tried and failed, but at last there came a soldier who succeeded. To answer the first question he made his servant lie down, and measured him from head to foot. Every living being is composed of the four elements, he said, and I find not more than seven feet in them. A very easy way was hit on for performing the second task: the soldier simply turned his horse's head to the east, and, since wind is the life of every animal, maintained that be had changed the wind. The king was evidently not inclined to be strict, and said, Clear enough. Let us go on to the third. Then, by the aid of a stone which he always carried about him, the soldier put handfuls of burning coals into his bosom without injury. The king gave his daughter to the soldier.
An extraordinary ballad in Sakellarios's Κυπριακά, III, 15, No 6, 'The Hundred Sayings,' subjects a lover to a severe probation of riddles. (Liebrecht has given a full abstract of the story in Gosche's Archiv, II, 29.) A youth is madly enamored of a king's daughter, but, though his devotion knows no bound, cannot for a long time get a word from her mouth, and then only disdain. She shuts her self up in a tower. He prays for a heat that may force her to come to the window, and that she may drop her spindle, and he be the only one to bring it to her. The heavens are kind: all this comes to pass, and she is fain to beg him to bring her the spindle. She asks, Can you do what I say? Shoulder a tower? make a stack of eggs? trim a date-tree, standing in a great river?[foot-note] All this he can do. She sends him away once and again to learn various things; last of all, the hundred sayings that lovers use. He presents himself for examination. "One?" "There is one only God: may he help me!" "Two?" "Two doves with silver wings are sporting together: I saw how they kissed," etc. "Three?" "Holy Trinity, help me to love the maid!" "Four?" "There is a four-pointed cross on thy smock, and it implores God I may be thy mate:" and so he is catechised through all the units and tens.[foot-note] Then the lady suddenly turns about, concedes everything, and proposes that they shall go to church: but the man says, If I am to marry all my loves, I have one in every town, and wife and children in Constantinople. They part with reciprocal scurrilities.
Usually when the hand of a princess is to be won by the performance of tasks, whether requiring wit, courage, the overcoming of magic arts, or what not, the loss of your head is the penalty of failure. (See the preface to the following ballad.) Apollonius of Tyre, of Greek original, but first found in a Latin form, is perhaps the oldest riddle-story of this description. Though its age has not been determined, the tale has been carried back even to the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century, was a great favorite with the Middle Ages, and is kept only too familiar by the play of Pericles.
More deserving of perpetuation is the charming Persian story of Prince Calaf, in Pétis de La Croix's 1001 Days (45e-82e jour), upon which Carlo Gozzi founded his play of "La Turandot," now best known through Schiller's translation. Tourandocte's riddles are such as we should call legitimate, and are three in number. "What is the being that is found in every land, is dear to all the world, and cannot endure a fellow?" Calaf answers, The sun. "What mother swallows the children she has given birth to, as soon as they have attained their growth?" The sea, says Calaf, for the rivers that flow into it all came from it. "What is the tree that has all its leaves white on one side and black on the other?" This tree, Calaf answers, is the year, which is made up of days and nights.[foot-note]
A third example of this hazardous wooing is the story of The Fair One of the Castle, the fourth in the Persian poem of The Seven Figures (or Beauties), by Nisami of Gendsch († 1180). A Russian princess is shut up in a castle made inaccessible by a talisman, and every suitor must satisfy four conditions: he must be a man of honor, vanquish the enchanted guards, take away the talisman, and obtain the consent of her father. Many had essayed their fortune, and their heads were now arrayed on the pinnacles of the castle.[foot-note] A young prince had fulfilled the first three conditions, but the father would not approve his suit until he had solved the princess's riddles. These are expressed symbolically, and answered in the same way. The princess sends the prince two pearls from her earring: he at once takes her meaning, — life is like two drops of water, — and returns the pearls with three diamonds, to signify that joy — faith, hope, and love — can prolong life. The princess now sends him three jewels in a box, with sugar. The prince seizes the idea, — life is blended with sensuous desire, — and pours milk on the sugar, to intimate that as milk dissolves sugar, so sensuous desire is quenched by true love. After four such interchanges, the princess seals her consent with a device not less elegant than the others.[foot-note]
A popular tale of this class is current in Russia, with this variation: that the hard-hearted princess requires her lovers to give her riddles, and those who cannot pose her lose their heads. Foolish Iván, the youngest of three brothers, adventures after many have failed. On his way to the trial he sees a horse in a cornfield and drives it out with a whip, and further on kills a snake with a lance, saying in each case, Here's a riddle! Confronted with the princess, he says to her, As I came to you, I saw by the roadside what was good; and in the good was good; so I set to work, and with what was good I drove the good from the good. The good fled from the good out of the good. The princess pleads a headache, and puts off her answer till the next day, when Iván gives her his second enigma: As I came to you, I saw on the way what was bad, and I struck the bad with a bad thing, and of what was bad the bad died. The princess, unable to solve these puzzles, is obliged to accept foolish Iván. (Afanasief, Skazki, II, 225 ff, No 20, in Ralston's Songs of the Russian People, p. 354 f.) Closely related to this tale, and still nearer to one another, are the Grimms' No 22, 'Das Räthsel' (see, also, the note in their third volume), and the West Highland story, 'The Ridere (Knight) of Riddles,' Campbell, No 22, II, 27. In the former, as in the Russian tale, it is the princess that must be puzzled before she will yield her hand; in the latter, an unmatchable beauty is to be had by no man who does not put a question which her father cannot solve.
Here may be put three drolleries, all clearly of the same origin, in which a fool wins a princess by nonplussing her: 'The Three Questions,' Halliwell's Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales, p. 32; a "schwank" of the fourteenth century, by Heinz der Kellner, von der Hagen's Gesammtabenteuer, No 63, III, 179 (there very improperly called Turandot); 'Spurningen,' Asbjørnson og Moe, Norske Folkeeventyr, No 4, Dasent, Popular Tales from the Norse, p. 148. According to the first of these, the king of the East Angles promises his clever daughter to anyone who can answer three of her questions (in the other versions, more correctly, silence her). Three brothers, one of them a natural, set out for the court, and, on the way, Jack finds successively an egg, a crooked hazel-stick, and a nut, and each time explodes with laughter. When they are ushered into the presence, Jack bawls out, What a troop of fair ladies! "Yes," says the princess, "we are fair ladies, for we carry fire in our bosoms." "Then roast me an egg," says Jack, pulling out the egg from his pocket. "How will you get it out again?" asks the princess? "With a crooked stick," says Jack, producing the same. "Where did that come from?" says the princess. "From a nut," answers Jack, pulling out the nut. And so, as the princess is silenced, the fool gets her in marriage.[foot-note]
Even nowadays riddles play a noteworthy part in the marriages of Russian peasants. In the government Pskof, as we are informed by Khudyakof, the bridegroom's party is not admitted into the bride's house until all the riddles given by the party of the bride have been answered; whence the saying or proverb, to the behoof of bridegrooms, Choose comrades that can guess riddles. In the village of Davshina, in the Yaroslav government, the bridegroom's best man presents himself at the bride's house on the wedding-day, and finding a man, called the-bride-seller, sitting by the bride, asks him to surrender the bride and vacate his place. "Fair and softly," answers the seller; "you will not get the bride for nothing; make us a bid, if you will. And how will you trade? will you pay in riddles or in gold?" If the best man is prepared for the emergency, as we must suppose he always would be, he answers, I will pay in riddles. Half a dozen or more riddles are now put by the seller, of which these are favorable specimens: Give me the sea, full to the brim, and with a bottom of silver. The best man makes no answer in words, but fills a bowl with beer and lays a coin at the bottom. Tell me the thing, naked itself, which has a shift over its bosom. The best man hands the seller a candle. Finally the seller says, Give me something which the master of this house lacks. The best man then brings in the bridegroom. The seller gives up his seat, and hands the best man a plate, saying, Put in this what all pretty girls like. The best man puts in what money he thinks proper, the bridesmaids take it and quit the house, and the bridegroom's friends carry off the bride.
So, apparently in some ballad, a maid gives riddles, and will marry only the man who will guess them.
In Radloff's Songs and Tales of the Turkish tribes in East Siberia, I, 60, a father, wanting a wife for his son, applies to another man, who has a marriageable daughter. The latter will not make a match unless the young man's father will come to him with pelt and sans pelt, by the road and not by the road, on a horse and yet not on a horse: see 8 ff of this volume. The young man gives his father proper instructions, and wins his wife.
A Lithuanian mother sends her daughter to the wood to fetch "winter May and summer snow." She meets a herdsman, and asks where she can find these. The herdsman offers to teach her these riddles in return for her love, and she complying with these terms, gives her the answers: The evergreen tree is winter May, and sea-foam is summer snow. Beiträge zur Kunde Preussens, 1,515 (Rhesa), and Ausland, 1839, p. 1230.
The European tales, excepting the three drolleries (and even they are perhaps to be regarded only as parodies of the others), must be of Oriental derivation; but the far north presents us with a similar story in the lay of Alvíss, in the elder Edda. The dwarf Alvíss comes to claim Freya for his bride by virtue of a promise from the gods. Thor[foot-note] says that the bride is in his charge, and that he was from home when the promise was made: at any rate, Alvíss shall not have the maid unless he can answer all the questions that shall be put him. Thor then requires Alvíss to give him the names of earth, heaven, moon, sun, etc., ending with barley and the poor creature small beer, in all the worlds; that is, in the dialect of the gods, of mankind, giants, elves, dwarfs, etc. Alvíss does this with such completeness as to extort Thor's admiration, but is craftily detained in so doing till after sunrise, when Thor cries, You are taken in! Above ground at dawn! and the dwarf turns to stone.
Translated, in part, after Aytoun, by Knortz, Schottische Balladen, p. 107.
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