'Jellon Grame' was first given to the world in Scott's Minstrelsy, in 1802. The editor says of this copy, A b, "This ballad is published from tradition, with some conjectural emendations. It is corrected by a copy in Mrs. Brown's Manuscript [A a], from which it differs in the concluding stanzas. Some verses are apparently modernized." The only very important difference between Scott's version and Mrs. Brown's is its having four stanzas of its own, the four before the last two, which are evidently not simply modernized, but modern.
There is a material difference between the story furnished by A and what we learn from the three other copies. Jellon Grame sends for his love Lillie Flower to come to the wood. She is very eager to go, though warned by the messenger that she may never come back. Jellon Grame, who has already dug her grave, kills her because her father will hang him when it is discovered that she has had a child by him. He brings up the child as his sister's son. One day, when the boy asks why his mother does not take him home, Jellon Grame (very unnaturally) answers, I slew her, and there she lies: upon which the boy sends an arrow through him.
In B, C, D, the man is Henry, Hind Henry, B, C; the maid is May Margerie, B, May-a-Roe, C, Margerie, D. Margerie, in B, receives a message to come to the wood to make her love a shirt, which surprises her, for no month had passed in the year that she had not made him three. Nevertheless, she goes, though warned by her mother that there is a plot against her life. She is stopped in the wood by Hind Henry, who kills her because she loves Brown Robin. Word is carried that Margerie has been slain; her sister hastens to the wood, takes under her care the child which Margerie was going with, and calls him Brown Robin, after his father. The lad goes to the wood one day after school to pull a hollin wand, and meets Hind Henry at the place where the mother had been killed. No grass is growing just there, and the boy asks Hind Henry why this is so. Hind Henry, not less frank than Jellon Grame, says, That is the very spot where I killed your mother. The boy catches at Henry's sword and runs him through.
C has nearly the same incidents as B, diluted and vulgarized in almost twice as many verses. Brown Robin is made to be Hind Henry's brother. The sister does not appear in the action, and the child is brought up by the murderer, as in A, but is named Robin Hood, after that bold robber. On hearing from Hind Henry how his mother had come to her death, young Robin sends an arrow to his heart.
A story is supplied from the "traditions of Galloway" for the fragmentary, and perhaps heterogeneous, verses called D; I suppose by Allan Cunningham. Margerie was beloved by two brothers, and preferred the elder. Henry, the younger, forged a billet to her by which he obtained a meeting in a wood, when he reproached her for not returning his feelings: sts 1, 2. "She expostulated with him on the impropriety of bringing her into an unfrequented place for the purpose of winning affections which, she observed, were not hers to be stow;" but expostulations as to improprieties producing but slight effect in "those rude times," told him plainly that she was with child by his brother. Henry drew his sword and killed Margerie. The elder brother, who was hunting, was apprised of mischief by the omens in stanza 4. "Astonished at this singular phenomenon, he immediately flew to the bower of his mistress, where a page informed him she was gone to the 'silver wood,' agreeably to his desire. Thither he spurred his horse, and, meeting Henry with his bloody sword still in his hand, inquired what he had been killing." The other replied as in stanza 5. "A mutual explanation took place, and Henry fell by the sword of his unhappy brother."
The resemblance of this ballad at the beginning to 'Child Maurice' will not escape notice. Silver Wood, or the silver wood, is found in 'Child Maurice,' A 1, G 1. A 14, B 10, C 15, is a commonplace: see No 66, A 28, 29, B 20, 21, D 9, E 40; No 70, B 25; No 81, K 13. B 13 is found in 'Willie and Earl Richard's Daughter,' B 24: cf. A 15. The phenomenon in D 4 we have had in No 65, D 17.
'Jellon Grame,' and particularly versions B, C, D, may be regarded as a counterpart to 'Fause Foodrage,' and especially to versions B, C, of that ballad. In 'Fause Foodrage,' B, C, and 'Jellon Grame,' B, C, D, a woman has two lovers. The one who is preferred is killed by the other in 'Fause Foodrage;' in 'Jellon Grame' the woman herself is killed by the lover she has rejected. This kind of interchange is familiar in ballads. In both 'Fause Foodrage' and 'Jellon Grame' the son of the woman, before he comes to manhood, takes vengeance on the murderer.
'Jellon Grame,' as well as 'Fause Foodrage,' has certainly suffered very much in transmission. It is interesting to find an ancient and original trait preserved even in so extremely corrupted a version as C of the present ballad, a circumstance very far from unexampled. In stanza 18 we read that the child who is to avenge his mother "grew as big in ae year auld as some boys woud in three," and we have a faint trace of the same extraordinary thriving in B 15: "Of all the youths was at that school none could with him compare." So in one of the Scandinavian ballads akin to 'Fause Foodrage,' and more remotely to 'Jellon Grame,' the corresponding child grows more in two months than other boys in eight years:
Mei voks unge Ingelbrett í del maanar tvaa hell híne smaabonni vokse paa aatte aar.< Bugge, Norske Folkeviser, No 23, st. 17, p. 113.
This is a commonplace: so again Bugge, No 5, sts 7, 8, p. 23. Compare Robert le Diable, and Sir Gowther.
In B 14 we are told that the boy was called by his father's name (C 17 is corrupted). This is a point in the corresponding Scandinavian ballads: Danske Viser, No 126, st. 21, No 127, st. 34; Levninger, No 12, st. 26, No 13, st. 18; Íslenzk fornkvæði, No 28, st. 33 b; Bugge, No 23, st. 16; Kristensen, I, No 97, sts 7, 11, No 111, st. 9.
A b is translated by Schubart, p. 69; by Arndt, Blütenlese, p. 234.
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