This ballad has suffered severely by the accidents of tradition. A has been not simply damaged by passing through low mouths, but has been worked over by low hands. Something considerable has been lost from the story, and fine romantic features, preserved in Norse and German ballads, have been quite effaced. The Etin of the Scottish story is in Norse and German a dwarf-king, elf-king, hill-king, or even a merman. The ballad is still sung in Scandinavia and Germany, but only the Danes have versions taken down before the nineteenth century (see Grundtvig, No. 37). One of the three Danish sixteenth-century versions tells how a knight, expressing a strong desire to obtain a king's daughter, is overheard by a dwarf, who says this shall never be. The dwarf pretends to bargain with the knight for his services in forwarding the knight's object, but consults meanwhile with his mother how he may get the lady for himself. The mother tells him that the princess will go to evensong, and the dwarf writes runes on the way she must go by, which compel her to come to the hill. The dwarf holds out his hand and asks, "How came ye to this strange land?" to which the lady answers mournfully, "I wot never how." The dwarf says, "You have pledged yourself to a knight, and he has betrayed you with runes: this eve you shall be the dwarf's guest." She stayed there the night, and was taken back to her mother in the morning. Eight years went by; her hand was sought by five kings, nine counts, but no one of them could get a good answer. One day her mother asked, "Why are thy cheeks so faded? Why can no one get thee?" She then revealed that she had been beguiled by the dwarf, and had seven sons and a daughter in the hill, none of whom she ever saw. She thought she was alone, but the dwarf-king was listening. He strikes her with an elf-rod, and bids her hie to the hill after him. Late in the evening the poor thing dons her cloak, knocks at her father's door, and says good night to the friends that never will see her again, then sadly turns to the hill. Her seven sons advance to meet her. and ask why she told of their father. Her tears run sore; she gives no answer; she is dead ere midnight.
In another series of Scandinavian versions, which offers the type of the much-corrupted Scottish ballad, the woman has been living eight or nine years in the hill, and has there borne her children. She longs to go home or to church, and permission is granted on condition that she keep silence about the hill-man and observe certain other restrictions. These terms she violates, with the consequence that the hill-man appears and orders her back to his abode. The German versions, from which the Norse are derived, are somewhat nearer to the Scottish.
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