This is one of the very few old ballads which are not extinct as tradition in the British Isles. Even drawing-room versions are spoken of as current, "generally traced to some old nurse, who sang them to the young ladies." It has been found in England, (Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, and was very early in print. The ballad is as popular with the Scandinavians as with their Saxon cousins: we have Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian, Faroe, and Swedish versions. There is a remarkable agreement between the Norse and English hallads till we approach the conclusion of the story, with a natural diversity as to some of the minuter detads. According to all complete and uncorrupted forms of the ballad, either some part of the body of the drowned girl is taken to furnish a musical instrument, a harp or a viol, or the instrument is wholly made from the body. Perhaps the original conception was the simple and beautiful one which we find in English B and also in the Icelandic ballads, that the king's harper, or the girl's lover, takes three locks of her yellow hair to string his harp with. Infelicitous additions were, perhaps, successively made; as a harp-frame from the breast-bone, and fiddle-pins formed of the finger joints, and so one thing and another added or substituted, till we end with the buffoonery of English A. All the Norse ballads (see Grundtvig, No. 95) make the harp or fiddle to be taken to a wedding, which chances to be that of the elder sister with the drowned girl's betrothed. Unfortunately, many of the English versions are so injured towards the close that the full story cannot be made out. There is no wedding feast preserved in any of them.
Though the range of the ballad proper is somewhat limited, popular tales equivalent as to the characteristic circumstances are very widely diffused.
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