Lyr Req: Le Roi Renaud

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Le Roi Renaud
From: Monique
Date: 23 Feb 21 - 06:57 PM

I don't know about any discussion but the Piemont version is on the Antiwarsongs.org site with a translation into standard Italian and into English. It's called "Re Gilardin" and the story though shorter is the same. It reads that "King Gilardin is not attributable to a historical person. He is rather a mythical figure, who populates the rich tradition of European ballads. The story of the king, who returns home dying and whose death is hidden, appears in various ballads (e.g. Comte Arnau / Le Roi Renaud) and is possibly of Scandinavian or Breton origin." -from Google translate (it's almost 1am and I don't translate anything so late at night!)
On this page of the same site you have a slightly different French version with a translation into Italian and English + a version in Middle Scots that looks like a translation from the French, ditto for a Polish translation.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Le Roi Renaud
From: Felipa
Date: 23 Feb 21 - 09:08 PM

It turns out that there are several Mudcat discussions of Gilardin

https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=19223#195912
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=19223#380929
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=19223#195814

If any mudcat elves see this (and I think Monique has an editing key?), it would make more sense (to me) to link these threads to the Roi Renaud thread than to a bunch of less related Italian language songs (such as Funiculi funicula).

I learned a simple American version of George Collins and I am surprised to read that George Collins may also derive from the Elveskud legend:

From the notes to the Penguin Book (1959):

"...The plot of George Collins has its secrets. From an examination of a number of variants, the full story becomes clearer. The girl by the stream is a water-fairy. The young man has been in the habit of visiting her. He is about to marry a mortal, and the fairy takes her revenge with a poisoned kiss. The song telling that story is among the great ballads of Europe. Its roots and branches are spread in Scandinavia¹, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and elsewhere. An early literary form is the German poem of the Knight of Staufenberg (c. 1310). France alone has about ninety versions, mostly in the form of the familiar Le Roi Renaud, though here much of the dream-quality of the tale is missing, since the girl by the stream is lost sight of, and instead the hero is mortally wounded in battle. The first half of the George Collins story is told in the ballad called Clerk Colvill (Child 42), the second half in Lady Alice (Child 85). Either these are two separate songs which have been combined to form George Collins or (which seems more likely) they are two fragments of the completer ballad. George Collins has rarely been reported in England, though in the summer of 1906 Dr. G. B. Gardiner collected three separate versions in different Hampshire villages, two of them on the same day. (FSJ vol.III, pp.299-301)" -R.V.W./A.L.L.

This version was collected by Dr. Gardiner from Henry Stansbridge of Lyndhurst, Hampshire, in 1906, and was first published in the Folk Song Journal, vol.III, p.301. Another version collected by Gardiner (tune from Henry Blake of Bartley, Hampshire, 1908, with text collated from 5 variants from the Southampton/Lyndhurst area) was published in The Wanton Seed (ed. Frank Purslow, EFDS 1968).

¹ Elveskud, according to Henri Davenson (Le Livre des Chansons, 1955).
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=18313