All the English versions are deplorably imperfect. Clerk Colvill is not, as his representative is or may be in other ballads, the guiltless and guileless object of the love or envy of a water-sprite or elf. It is clear that before his marriage with his gay lady he had been in the habit of resorting to this mermaid, and equally clear, from the impatient answer which he renders his dame, that he means to visit her again. His death is the natural penalty of his desertion of the water-nymph; for no point is better established than the fatal consequences of inconstancy in such connections. His history, were it fully told, would closely resemble that of the Knight of Staufenberg, as narrated in a German poem of about the year 1310. Clerk Colvill and the mermaid are represented by Sir Oluf and an elf in Scandinavian ballads to the number of about seventy. The oldest of these is derived from a Danish manuscript of 1550, two centuries and a half later than the Staufenberg poem, but two earlier than Clerk Colvill, the oldest ballad outside of the Scandinavian series (see Grundtvig, No. 47). The Breton 'Seigneur Nann' is closely akin to the Scandinavian versions, and the ballad has spread, apparently from Brittany, over all France ('Jean Renaud').
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