The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #9564   Message #4044964
Posted By: Jack Campin
09-Apr-20 - 07:50 PM
Thread Name: Origins: Twa Corbies / Three Ravens (Child #26)
Subject: RE: Origins: Twa Corbies / Three Ravens / etc.
This is a different one. From Alexander Gray's "Ballads and Folk-Songs, Chiefly from Heine" (1920). It's a translation from the German of Mosen (who?). Looks like Mosen started with Scott's song and took it off to somewhere totally different.

The Corbies' Sang
Zwei Raben flogen um einen Stein

Twa corbies flew aboot a stane,
And aye they scraighed and made their maen.

Quo' ane, as they sat there their lane:
"Cummer, let's flee to the corbie-stane.

I ken o' a bonnie heid that's there;
The cauld wind blaws through its yallow hair."

The ither spak, and piked a bane:
"I winna flee to the corbies' stane.

An ill-daein' limmer's aucht that heid;
There's a lang road yet she maun gang wi'd.

She put her bairnie oot o' sicht;
She'll need her heid this mony a nicht.

Her lover had pairt in the deidly wrang;
She'll need her heid this mony a lang.

He lichtlie brok the aith her swore;
She maun gae by nicht and chap at his door.

She maun gae to his door when the knock stricks twel',
And speak o' the glame that lowes in Hell.

Till the curse frae the limmer's heid is ta'en,
We corbies daurna pike her een."