I have discovered something interesting: This song is an almost exact translation of the first eight verses of a traditional Danish ballad: Eline af Villenskov, DgF no. 52 D, except that it refers to Seven hundred trolls instead of elves. The chorus is a translation of the ballad's tenth verse.

I first discovered this when I followed a link provided by Masato Sakurai in another thread: Page 76 of The Fairy Mythology by Thomas Keightley, where a slightly different translation is quoted in the opening of the chapter about Scandinavia.

In the notes to DgF 52, Svend Grundtvig mentions that an English translation of the D version was printed "in the notes to Walter Scott's Lady of the lake", but offers no further details. Is that the title of one of his books? I wonder if somebody would like to track down this reference for us?

Incidentally, the link posted by Brendy at 12 Sep 00, doesn't work anymore. But the same article can now be found at Plugged in [http://homepage.ntlworld.com/c.kellett/plugin.htm]