Who of us hasn't been fascinated at one time or another by Child(e) Ro(w)land, as in
Childe Rowland to the Dark Tower came ...
Shakespeare alluded to it in a broken sort of way. Robert Browning wrote a whole poem to it. So latterly has Martin Carthy, in "Jack Rowland."
As many of you know, the "original" is reported as a cante-fable. I have always suspected it might have been a ballad in its earlier incarnation, but was compressed into a cante-fable because it was too long, and to give more storytelling scope.
It traces back through Jacobs' English Fairy-Tales (Jacobs Englished its original Scotticisms) to a mixed song and narrative published by Jamieson in Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, 1814. Malcolm Douglas refers to it, for example, in this thread:
It would be good to see the Jamieson text entire, with Scotticisms intact. (Herewith an earnest request to anyone who can do that research task!!!) But I know of no one who has. So we've been stuck with Jacobs' translation into literary English, which appears at
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/eft/index.htm
But by good luck I did find some of the Jamieson original quoted in a Project Gutenberg ebook, James Napier's "FolkLore: Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland Within This Century."
So we get a chance to see a small portion of what I believe is the oldest known version. So far as I know no one has quoted the Jamieson fragments, at least here on the DT. So, until somebody runs down the Jamieson original and quotes the whole of it, here are the verbatim bits Napier includes. -- Bob
CHILDE ROWLAND AND BURD ELLEN
King Arthur's sons o' merry Carlisle Were playing at the ba', And there was their sister, burd Ellen, I' the midst, amang them a'.
Child Rowland kicked it wi' his foot, And keppit it wi' his knee; And aye as he played, out o'er them a'. O'er the kirk he gar'd it flee.
Burd Ellen round about the aisle To seek the ba' has gane: But she bade lang, and ay langer, And she came na back again.
They sought her east, they sought her west, They sought her up and down, And wae were the hearts in merry Carlisle, For she was nae gait found.
…
… kembing her hair wi' a silver kemb
Was his sister burd Ellen, She stood up him before, God rue or thee poor luckless fode [man] What hast thou to do here?
And hear ye this my youngest brother, Why badena ye at hame? Had ye a hunder and thousand lives, Ye canna brook are o' them. [pron. "ayr" as in "ary']
And sit thou down And wae! Oh wae! That ever thou was born, For came the King o' Elfland in, Thy leccam is forlorn. [body]
…
With fi, fe, fa and fum, * I smell the blood of a Christian man, Be he dead, be he living, with my brand I'll clash his harns frae his horn pan.
Childe Rowland drew his good claymore [excalibar] That never struck in vain …
*That the scansion goes to pieces here may indicate that this part was always spoken, not sung.