This ballad, one of the most important of all that the Percy manuscript has saved from oblivion, was first given to the world in the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (n, 48, ed. 1705; 11, 49, ed. 1707), with conjectural emendations by the editor, and the insertion of some stanzas to complete the story. A second version (B), very much humbled in diction, and otherwise corrupted, but of indubitable antiquity, as Scott remarks, was published in the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border in 1803. Tales of the same general description as this ballad are extremely often to be met with in ballad, romance, chronicle, or saga; nor is the number small of those which have the special traits that the accusation is made by a trusted officer of the husband, who has attempted to seduce the lady, and has failed, and that the wife is cleared by a judgment of God. Our ballad belongs with a very distinct Scandinavian variety of these last, but has adopted one characteristic trait from another source. The Scandinavian ballad in question is 'Ravengaard og Memering,' (Grundtvig, No. 13), of which there are versions from Denmark, Iceland, and the Faroes, as well as a Norwegian prose redaction.
A story essentially the same as that of the English and Scandinavian ballads is told by William of Malmesbury (De Gestis Regum Anglorum, ii, 12), of Gunhild, daughter of Cnut the Great and Emma, who was married in 1036 to King Henry, afterwards the Emperor Henry III. William was apparently following ballad authority. Gunhild never had any trouble with her husband. The story was probably transferred to her from St. Cunigund, the consort of the Emperor St. Henry II, in whose legendary history there is a passage essentially similar. A still earlier instance is that of Gundeberg, wife of the Lombard king Arioald (about 630 A.D.).
The incident of the leper, which does not occur in 'Ravengaard og Memering,' links the English ballad with the story of Oliva, or Sibilla, in the Charlemagne cycle (see the Karlamagnus Saga, Unger, p. 51; the old French chanson de geste of Doon l'Alemanz, etc.). Compare also the Middle English romances Sir Triamour and The Erl of Tolous (the latter professedly a "lay of Britain"), and the old French romance of Joufrois.
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