'Glasgerion' was first printed in Percy's Reliques, III, 43, 1765, and was not thought by the editor to require much correction. Certainly the English ballad is one which it would be hard to mend. Scottish B is mainly of good derivation (a poor old woman in Aberdeenshire), and has some good stanzas, but Jamieson unfortunately undertook to improve a copy in which the story was complete, but "the diction much humbled," by combining with it a fragment of another version. Dr. John Hill Burton seems, in turn, to have compounded a portion of the ballad as printed by Jamieson with a fragment from tradition (C): Kinloch Manuscripts, III, 147.
Cunningham, Songs of Scotland, II, 32, has fused Percy's and Jamieson's copies, as Motherwell remarks, "in a flux of his own which has disfigured and quite changed the features of each."
The grete Glascurion is joined in Chaucer's House of Fame, III, 13-18, with the harper Orpheus, Orion (Arion), and Chiron, and with Orpheus again by Gavin Douglas, copying Chaucer, in his Palice of Honour, I, 21, vv 15, 16, ed. Small.
Y Bardd Glas Keraint, in English Keraint the Blue Bard (Blue Bard being an appellation of a chief bard, who wore an official robe of blue), is recorded, as Mr. Edward Williams informs us, to have been an eminent poet of distinguished birth, son of Owain, Prince of Glamorgan. The English name Glasgerion, Mr. Williams further remarks, differs not so much from Glasgeraint as most Welsh names, as written by Englishmen, do from their true orthography. There is, therefore, at least no absurdity in the suggestion that the Glascurion of Chaucer and the Glasgerion of the ballad may represent the Welsh Glas Keraint.[foot-note]
A peasant lad, tailor's lad, who had overheard the troth-plight of a knight and lady, anticipates the lover in 'Den fule Bondedreng,' Kristensen, II, 25-27; 'Torpardrängen,' Hazelius, Ur de Nordiska Folkens Lif, p. 138; 'Die Betrogene,' Norrenberg, Des dülkener Fiedlers Liederbuch, p. 79. The adventure is jocosely treated in the first two, and does not amount to a tragedy in the other. A groom forestalls Agilulf, King of the Lombards, in the Decameron, III, 2, again without a bloody conclusion.
The marvellous power of the harp in B 2, C 1 is precisely paralleled in the Scandinavian 'Harpans Kraft,' Arwidsson, No 149, II, 311-17; Afzelius, No 91, III, 144-47; Grundtvig, No 40, II, 65-68; Landstad, No 51, p. 475; Ís1enzk Fornkvæði, No 3, p. 18 f. In these the fish is harped out of the water, the young from folk and from fee, the bairn from its mother's womb, the water from the brook, the hind from the wood, the horns from the hart's head, the bark from the tree, the dead out of the mould, etc., etc. These effects are of the same nature as those produced by the harp of Orpheus, and it is to be observed that in the ballad of 'Harpans Kraft ' the harper is a bridegroom seeking (successfully) to recover his bride, who has been carried down to the depths of the water by a merman. We have had something like these effects in the 'Twa Brothers,' No 49, B 10, I, 439, where Lady Margaret harps the small birds off the briers and her true love out of the grave.[foot-note] There is a fisherman in the Gesta Romanorum who has a harp so sweet that all the fish in the water come to his hand: Oesterley, No 85, p. 413, Madden, No 35, p. 116, No 8, p. 293. Equally potent is pipe, flute, or song in many ballads of various nations; the fish come up from below, the stars are stopped, the brook rises, the pines vail their top, the deer stops in its leap, etc., the musician being sometimes an elf, sometimes an inspired mortal: 'Hr. Tönne af Alsö,' Grundtvig, No 34, II, 15, 19, Afzelius, No 7, I, 33, 128; 'Elvehöj,' Grundtvig, No 46, II, 107-109, Afzelius, No 95, III, 170, Arwidsson, No 147, II, 301; Kudrun, ed. Bartsch, sts 379, 381, 388; the Roumanian 'Salga,' 'Mihu Copilul,' 'Vidra,' Stanley, p. 29, Alecsandri, pp 58, 66, 98 f, the same, Ballades et Chants populaires, pp 118, 168, Murray, pp 44, 53 f, 83; 'El Poder del Canto,' Milá, Romancerillo, No 207, p. 165, Nigra, Rivista Contemporanea, XX, 78; 'Conde Arnaldos,' Wolf and Hofmann, No 153, II, 80. For the soporific effect of such music, as shown in B 5, C 2, there are parallels in 'Albred Lykke,' who sings a ballad which sets everybody asleep but the young bride who had been stolen from him, Kristensen, I, 281, No 105, sts 11, 12, II, 259 f, No 76, sts 13, 14; 'Den fortryllende Sang,' Grundtvig, No 243, IV, 470, Danish A 12, 473, Swedish G 25, 26; 'El Rey marinero,' Milá, No 201, p. 151, Briz, I, 117, IV, 15, V, 75; Campbell's West Highland Tales, I, 291 f.
The oath by oak, ash, and thorn, A 18, is a relic or trait of high antiquity. We have an oath by the thorn in 'Fair Janet,' G 13, 'Young Hunting,' K 26; by corn, grass sae green and corn, in 'Young Hunting,' A 16, D 19, G 7. It is to be supposed that the tree, thorn, corn, was touched while swearing, a sod taken up in the hand. See Grimm's Rechtsalterthümer, 2d ed., p. 896 f, p. 117 f.
For drying the sword on the sleeve, A 22, see 'Little Musgrave and Lady Bernard.'
Translated by Bodmer, I, 73, after Percy; by Knortz, Lieder und Romanzen Alt-Englands, No 59, after Allingham, p. 358.
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