This ballad is, in a blurred, enfeebled, and disfigured shape, the representative in England of one of the most remarkable tales and one of the most impressive and beautiful ballads of the European continent. The relationship is put beyond doubt by the existence of a story in Cornwall which comes much nearer to the Continental tale.
Long, long ago, Frank, a farmer's son, was in love with Nancy, a very attractive girl, who lived in the condition of a superior servant in his mother's house. Frank's parents opposed their matching, and sent the girl home to her mother; but the young pair continued to meet, and they bound themselves to each other for life or for death. To part them effectually, Frank was shipped for an India voyage. He could not write, and nothing was heard of him for nearly three years. On All-hallows-Eve Nancy went out with two companions to sow hemp-seed. Nancy began the rite, saying:
Hemp-seed, I sow thee, Hemp-seed, grow thee! And he who will my true-love be Come after me And shaw thee.
This she said three times, and then, looking back over her left shoulder, she saw Frank indeed, but he looked so angry that she shrieked, and so broke the spell. One night in November a ship was wrecked on the coast, and Frank was cast ashore, with 311st enough life in him to ask that he might be married to Nancy before he died, a wish which was not to be fulfilled. On the night of his funeral, as Nancy was about to lock the house-door, a horseman rode up. His face was deadly pale, but Nancy knew him to be her lover. He told her that he had just arrived home, and had come to fetch her and make her his bride. Nancy was easily induced to spring on the horse behind him. When she clasped Frank's waist, her arm became stiff as ice. The horse went at a furious pace; the moon came out in full splendor. Nancy saw that the rider was in grave-clothes. She had lost the power of speech, but, passing a blacksmith's shop, where the smith was still at work, she recovered voice and cried, Save me! with all her might. The smith ran out with a hot iron in his hand, and, as the horse was rushing by, caught the girl's dress and pulled her to the ground. But the rider held on to the gown, and both Nancy and the smith were dragged on till they came near the churchyard. There the horse stopped for a moment, and the smith seized his chance to burn away the gown with his iron and free the girl. The horseman passed over the wall of the churchyard, and vanished at the grave in which the young man had been laid a few hours before. A piece of Nancy's dress was found on the grave. Nancy died before morning. It was said that one or two of the sailors who survived the wreck testified that Frank, on Halloween, was like one mad, and, after great excitement, lay for hours as if dead, and that when he came to himself he declared that if he ever married the woman who had cast the spell, he would make her suffer for drawing his soul out of his body. (Popular Romances of the West of England, collected and edited by Robert Hunt, First Series, pp. 265-7. dating from about 1830.) A tale of a dead man coming on horseback to his inconsolable love, and carrying her to his grave, is widely spread among the Slavic people and the Austrian Germans, was well known a century ago among the northern Germans, and has lately been recovered in the Netherlands, Denmark, Iceland, and Brittany. Besides the tale in its integrity, certain verses which occur in it, and which are of a kind sure to impress the memory, are very frequent, and these give evidence of a very extensive distribution. The verses are to this effect:
The moon shines bright in the lift, The dead, they ride so swift, Love, art thou not afraid? to which the lovelorn maid answers, How fear, when I am with thee?
A portion (or portions) of a Low German tale of this class, the verses and a little more, was the basis of Burger's 'Lenore,' composed in 1773. There are also ballads with the same story, one in German, several in Slavic, but these have not so original a stamp as the tale, and have perhaps sprung from it.
In marked and pleasing contrast with most of the versions of this tale, in so many copies grotesque and ferocious, is a dignified and tender ballad, in which the lovers are replaced by brother and sister. This ballad is found among the Servians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Albanians, and Roumanians. Professor Schischmanov (Indogermanische Forschungen, iv, 412-48, 1S94) makes out a very strong probability of the derivation of all the ballads of 'The Dead Brother' from the Greek.
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